Slashdot Mirror


User: Charliemopps

Charliemopps's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
5,838
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 5,838

  1. Re:Patents are terrible for the little guy on ITC Investigates Xbox 360 After Motorola Complaint · · Score: 2

    That's why a patent should be for a finished product and not the components and processes used to make it. Patents exist to ensure the inventor can make a profit off his invention... they should not exist to lock away a device in perpetuity so that only some giant conglomerate that bought the patent 3rd hand can milk future inventors of their profits. The current patent system works to retard progress, not promote it. All patents should be for an actual working device and should last no more than 10 years. Genes, Chemicals and other natural elements should not be patentable.

  2. Re:Why trust your ears? Unless you're blind that i on Electric Cars May Be Made Noisier By Law · · Score: 1

    Commercial electric vehicles have had noise making devices for decades for this very reason. The fact of the matter is that the human mind is animal at its base, and split second decisions like "Jump back out of the street!!!" are decided by that animal part of our mind. Our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors would assume that something that weighs 2tons and his hurtling at you at 60mph should be making some sort of noise. So you see such a thing out of the corner of your eye, and your defense mechanisms decide it's probably an optical illusion due to the silence so it turns the whole affair over to the logic part of your brain, so you turn your head to review the situation just in time to an old lady in a Prius with murder in her eye.

  3. Re:Increased IT literacy??? on Why Android Is the New Windows · · Score: 2

    lol, your quoting the price of the first IBM PC ever made, and probably the most expensive. Dell was selling IBM PC clones in 1985 for under $800 (although they weren't called dell yet) I know because I bought one. True IBMs were selling for around the same price as apples ($1200-$1300) and running at about 4Mhz compared to apples Apple IIc at 1Mhz or the Macintosh that was almost $2600 but at least had the nifty graphics.

  4. Re:Increased IT literacy??? on Why Android Is the New Windows · · Score: 1

    There are STILL towns in which the only restaurant is a McDonalds. There's one less than 40 miles from me and I live in the capital of my state.

  5. a good example of abuse of power... on Recording the Police · · Score: 1

    I can almost guarantee this guy is a total asshat... and was a real jerk when he requested the court reporter. I've met the type before as I also work on cars frequently. The fact of the matter is, if you live in town, you can't have a dozen doner cars sitting on your lawn. You also have to mow your lawn, shovel the sidewalk, and not blare your music at 3am. If you don't like it, move to the country. So he was guilty of everything until he got nailed with the bullshit felony. The Judge in question probably knows all the cops involved, as well as the poor clerk that had to get screamed at by the jerk. Then thought himself clever for coming up with a way to scare the crap out of the guy. This crap will get thrown out by a higher court and the asshat guy will feel more empowered. Way to go Judge.

  6. KaWow on How a Leather Cover Crashes the Kindle · · Score: 1

    Whomever designed the case should be fired with extreme prejudice. They're lucky they didn't fry a significant number of very expensive ebooks with something this stupid. If I were a victim of this I'd demand a replacement kindle while I was at it... no telling what long term affect this had on the device.

  7. Re:The only question I have is on Firefox 4 Beta 8 Up · · Score: 1

    And yet if I open Firefox it takes nearly 30 - 45 seconds, while Chrome opens almost instantly. Bragging about its javascript performance is like bragging your new car can do 0-60 in 4 seconds and not mentioning it can only take corners at 10mph. I like Firefox, but it's really become a dog lately.

  8. Re:Increased IT literacy??? on Why Android Is the New Windows · · Score: 3, Insightful

    McDonald gave us a restaurant in every city in America. That would be a better comparison. I'm guessing you weren't around in the 80's when the ONLY home PC was an Apple. DOS was hard to use for your average non-techie and Apple was ridiculously expensive. A similar quantity of ram for an apple was easily 10x the price of that for a PC. Almost all software written for Apples was also prohibitively expensive. Apple really did themselves in back then, had they priced their stuff reasonably, they would have crushed Microsoft.

  9. Re:Backlash on Obama FCC Caves On Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    I'm a pretty hardcore libertarian... and would agree with you on principle. But the libertarian ideal falls short when it comes to publicly held services like phone, television and internet. If I didn't work in the field myself, I probably wouldn't have the opinion of it that I do, but the fact of the matter is, I know the deepest recesses of both the cable and telecom industries. I've worked in the field, seen how cables are routed... I've worked in the NOC and watched services and equipment be provisioned and deployed and now maintain a database that oversees all of the above and because of my role attend meetings with executives to plan the future of our equipment. There are only 2 ways that wired services can work: Government owned systems like Korea... or heavily regulated monopolies. We have very very loosely regulated monopolies that are cajoled by the government into doing what the government wants through grants and stimulus projects. Within a week of Obama announcing his broadband stimulus plan we had an entire department created with dozen of people dedicated solely to ass raping that stimulus fund. We've been awarded sums of money so large they defy belief to install broadband into neighborhoods that we had already had designs in place and equipment ordered for. That's right, the stimulus went to pay for projects we already had in place. "Shovel ready" as the quote goes I guess. I have fiends that work for other companies and their all doing the exact same thing. It's nothing more than free government money to them.

    Executives have no idea what net neutrality is, they have no interest in the future of the internet. They are only interested in the next financial quarter. There will never be profit in selling an honest product to such a naive audience. We have an entire town comprising 50,000 internet customers that's fed by a single 45mb trunk. We sell 10mb service in that town. I'm not kidding. It's still available. In total we've had about 20 complaints. Out of 50,000 people, 20 complaints. The top executives that approve expenditures to buy more equipment to improve those customers service have absolutely no reason to do so. They don't understand how the equipment works and try talking them into spending a couple of hundred grand to pacify 20 customers that probably only come to a few hundred dollars a month in revenue and they're going to laugh you right out the door. It's not that they are bad people, it's just that they have no understanding of what the problem is, and really have no reason to. 99%+ of their customers are happy. Why spend a lot of money and raise everyones rates to make a few internet nerds happy?

    Every ISP has core routers that are their exit points to other ISPs. You have large trunks that connect to Level3, ATT, Sprint, MCI, etc... The government should mandate that an ISP must provide the speed of service they advertise to those routers 24/hrs a day and should provide an easy means for their customers to measure that speed. It's one thing to measure your speed to some foreign website and say "well that leaves out network so we can't be responsible" if that's the case then the ISP should be required by law to measure the speed of your connect to every possible exit point in their network and should be subject to heavy fines if they deliver anything less than what they are selling. This is a public utility, not a toaster. There is no competition now, nor will there ever be. The government should stay out of just about every aspect of our lives, but in the case of public utilities, they should either be wholly owned by the government or so heavily regulated that they can't pull the shit they are pulling now.

  10. Re:One of the reasons for the failure was due to D on AT&T To Pay $1.93 Billion For FLO TV Spectrum · · Score: 1

    Agreed. The entire world is moving away from broadcast TV to video on demand via the internet. Then this company comes along with broatcast TV that requires an internet connection? The ONLY demographic this device had was the hardcore sports fan that just couldn't bare to miss a game no matter where they were. It still amazes me how corporate America will drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a project without first having someone with common sense come into the room to tell them if it's a stupid idea or not.

  11. god damn on Minecraft Reaches Beta Status, Price Goes Up · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    This game is about 1 step above "Dora the explorer's Big Adventure Game!" The fact that adults place this boggles my mind. I expect that soon there will be Minecraft conventions in which those that consider themselves "Geek-Sheik" will show up wearing cosplay outfits made from cardboard boxes and wallpaper.

  12. thank goodness on Google Declines To Turn Over Harvested Wi-Fi Data · · Score: 1

    I'm just glad our government has found something else to focus on other than the economy, tax reform, the 2 wars we're involved in, net neutrality or any of the other pressing issues that are so difficult to tackle.

  13. Re:How long will IPv6 last? on Military Pressuring Vendors On IPv6 · · Score: 1

    I remember someone saying the same general thing to me when I bought my first 80Mb hard drive. You could practically install every piece of software ever written for a PC on that one drive! Why would you ever need anything bigger.

  14. lol on Microsoft Puts the Kibosh On Kinect Sex Game Plans · · Score: 1

    Murder / Prostitutes / Robbery etc:
    http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Xbox-360/dp/B000FRU1UM

    Headshots / General killing / Machine guns etc:
    http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Black-Ops-Xbox-360/dp/B003JVKHEQ/ref=pd_ts_vg_?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

    Assassination / Poisoning:
    http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Creed-Brotherhood-Xbox-360/dp/B003L8HQ7S/ref=pd_ts_vg_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

    Steroid use:
    http://www.amazon.com/Madden-NFL-11-Xbox-360/dp/B002I0JB6E/ref=pd_ts_vg_4?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

    Witchcraft:
    http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Deathly-Hallows-Xbox-360/dp/B003R3JNN2/ref=pd_ts_vg_50?ie=UTF8&s=videogames\

    Stealing the souls of people for power or some shit:
    http://www.amazon.com/Bioshock-2-Xbox-360/dp/B0016BVYA2/ref=pd_ts_vg_54?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

    all family friendly... but sex? Hell no! That's not for kids! We won't allow it! Now lets kills some prostitutes for fun! Just don't have sex with them.

  15. Re:Theory on Microsoft Kills Office Anti-Piracy Program · · Score: 1

    Yea no, if you're savy enough to pirate office, you're also savvy enough to get around something as silly as WGA/OGA. Most pirated copies already include software to disable these "features" on install. So it had absolutely no affect on pirates. I imagine their were plenty of false positives however that lead to a lot of ticked off actual customers. I remember a long time ago a lot of Canadians couldn't get direct TV, it wasn't sold there. So they started making bootleg access cards and getting it for free instead. Finally DirectTV sent some signal that fried the boot leg cards... and also unfortunately fried a LOT of valid cards as well. This was less than a week before the superbowl. What did DirectTV gain in all that? A lot of pissed off customers... and that's about it.

  16. Re:bias maybe? on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 1

    No, you convert them to ASCII numbers then their hexadecimal equivalents, after that you swap every 13th character with "I am the walrus" and you have a Beatles song.

  17. Re:Sheesh on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 1, Troll

    You're right. It would be completely impossible for an intelligent person to have a differing opinion with someone as intelligent as yourself. We should just make a law that declares liberals right, republicans stupid and MSNBC as the national news network while banning all other channels so they stop misinforming people with these scandalous opinions that disagree with common sense.

  18. bias maybe? on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Worldpublicopinion.org founded by Pipa.org
    http://www.pipa.org/sponsors.htm

    Their sponsors are a who's who of liberal politics.

    Sponsors

    PIPA's activities have been supported by:

            * Rockefeller Foundation
            * Rockefeller Brothers Fund
            * Tides Foundation
            * Ford Foundation
            * German Marshall Fund of the United States
            * Compton Foundation
            * Carnegie Corporation
            * Benton Foundation
            * Ben and Jerry's Foundation
            * University of Maryland Foundation
            * Circle Foundation
            * JEHT Foundation
            * Stanley Foundation
            * Ploughshares Fund
            * Calvert Foundation
            * Secure World Foundation
            * Oak Foundation
            * United States Institute of Peace

  19. Re:Success on Stuxnet Virus Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by 2 Years · · Score: 2, Funny

    I absolutely guarantee the US government payed as much for this code as it would have for any comparable attack with hardware. Hell, the company I work for just payed $19,000 for a SQL statement shorter than this very sentence.

  20. Re:Geniuses on Designer Arrested Over Anonymous Press Release · · Score: 1

    yea, if I were to do anything like this it would be inside a virtual machine, on someone else's hijacked computer in some other country.

  21. Re:Will this ever improve? on First-Sale Doctrine Lost Overseas · · Score: 1

    The US is trying to push other countries into have as strict of copyright law as we do. I think our legislatures see that our major export as "ideas" Which is laughable as we outsource our coding and design to India and then claim copyright on those "ideas" The fact of the matter is, when our only real export are our patent trolls lawsuits, the rest of the worlds going to get fed up and put an end to all of this fairly quick.

  22. yahoo = radioshack on Yahoo Lays Off 600; Free Beers and Jobs Flow · · Score: 2

    Yahoo is like RadioShack, they've been in business forever, dumped everything that was cool about their service years ago and it's a marvel how they stay open despite having nothing that anyone really wants anymore.

  23. Re:But but but on FBI Alleged To Have Backdoored OpenBSD's IPSEC Stack · · Score: 0

    I can, and do, write stuff that's indecipherable to an outsider. When you're the only coder in a specific department in a certain kind of company, it's a very good way of ensuring your continued employment. The stuff I writes code is available to anyone that uses it as well. You'd be amazed how something as simple as using a non-standard variable scheme will confuse an outsider. When you start calling modules outside your own procedure it really starts getting confusing. Then do all that in something as large as windows? And only do it in the 1 little part you want to hide your code in? It'll never be found. You're not hiding the text in The Lord of the Rings... you're hiding it in the bible. It's full of all sorts of stuff most readers don't understand already, everyone reads around the stuff they don't understand and just pretend they do so they don't sound stupid.

  24. Re:And this is why e-books won't replace paper. on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    Ebooks were dead as soon as they came up with the concept. It's only a matter of time before a REAL ebook is made... It'll be color i-ink, open source, and the books will be stored on a flash drive with no possibility of anyone but the owner deleting them. Then all this Kindle/Nook garbage will be fade into obscurity like so many other poorly thought out tech gadgets in the past. Of course, Apple will still sell it's garbage to its zombie hordes but Mac users were never of any real interest to the rest of us anyway.

  25. Re:1984 on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 0

    They did... but then they removed that statement.