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User: elmegil

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  1. Re:Maybe... on MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I suppose. It doesn't seem to me that one does much good for a reputation as a skeptic by being dogmatic though. The point of skepticism is "prove it" not "that's impossible".

  2. Re:If they weren't children... on The Rise of Cyber Bullying · · Score: 1

    It's kind of hard to jump from a "nonreality" circumstance to assault. Given what I know of the person, and what I know of the "military environment" from others who have been in the military, the simplest explanation of the facts is that he was indeed harassed and assaulted. Do I think he responded in a way that would have aggravated the situation? Absolutely, he was an insufferable geek (which actually gives some credence to his claims for exactly that reason). Do I think he may have exaggerated some? Quite likely. Do I think he was generally factual in his description of events though? Certainly. Given that I was younger, still in High School, not in any position to do anything for him (i.e. my sympathy was worth zero, we were just chess buddies when he needed to get away from a rotten home life) and he didn't just rant about it every time I saw him (i.e. an ongoing sympathy ploy) I am inclined to believe the outlines if not the complete scope of the details. I'm sure the dishonorable discharge was mostlikely for desertion or some such, but I can't say that I'd have responded much better to even half of his experience.

  3. Re:If they weren't children... on The Rise of Cyber Bullying · · Score: 1
    pete when did you go to boot camp?

    Try again slowly: I knew a guy who was harassed in boot camp. I think you put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble, or in this case, wrong clause. I didn't know a guy in boot camp who was harassed. I knew a guy who was harassed in boot camp, where he was, and I was not.

  4. Re:Union of the underdogs? on Sun Announces New AMD-Based Product Line · · Score: 1
    I don't recall making any claims about Sun's motivations, much less their behavior or PR. You are one who should put up or shut up, as the one "just bitching". I asked you to put up or shut up, and you put words in my mouth. Very nice.

    If you're going to claim Sun is greedy and only after their own monopoly, provide facts or admit you're the only one here full of shit.

    Oh, and go find someone else to cry about your ex-employee status to; sounds to me like your attitude was a big part of why you're no longer with us, and good thing, too.

  5. Re:Maybe... on MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call? · · Score: 1
    When you're offering millions of dollars to anybody who can prove their claims, and even letting the people chose their own testers and their own testing methods, and people keep losing anyway, you have a right to be cocky about it.

    There's quite a bit of difference between being "cocky" and being "an asshole". Randi is the kind of guy who would stand up in front of a church full of people and berate them for their belief in God.

  6. Re:If they weren't children... on The Rise of Cyber Bullying · · Score: 1
    I knew a guy once who was harassed mercilessly in boot camp, got a reputation as a whiner based on his complaints about said harassment, and ended up with a dishonorable discharge. Yes, he was a complete geek (so was I). Did he deserve this treatment? Hell no. Did he have any recourse? Of course not.

    Why do you think things like Tailhook and the scandals at the Academy are still happening?

  7. Re:Maybe... on MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call? · · Score: 1

    Of course "the amazing" Randi is one of the most dogmatically rude materialists I can imagine. I am entirely in support of debunking people who are making money taking advantage of the credulous, but he goes much farther over the line and will basically rudely denounce anyone making any claim that he hasn't personally verified. He has one of the most closed minds imaginable. If there were some way, for example, to counteract gravity that were to be discovered, he would be the last one to acknowledge that it was real, having wasted tons of rhetorical venom denouncing and assasinating the character of the discoverer. Such a waste of an otherwise excellent intellect is very sad to see.

  8. Re:Exploding CD rom drives on MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call? · · Score: 1

    Yah, they came up with a "yes" for this one. You have to spin the thing really fast, and it usually has to be somehow slightly off center or off balance, but it was not very hard for them to blow up CD's in their tests.

  9. Re:Union of the underdogs? on Sun Announces New AMD-Based Product Line · · Score: 1
    But the problem with AMD and Sun is they would love to be the next Intel and Microsoft, complete with vendor lock-in, anti-competitive actions, and the ability to leverage a monopoly to force their users to conform to the way they want to offer their products/prices.

    I work for Sun, and I call you full of it. Care to back up your BS claims with some hard facts? Or is it enough in your little world that Sun isn't all up on the Linux bandwagon 110%?

    I'm really curious how you can say on one hand "the same mess" and on the other hand "we have a choice". What, you think Sun is going to take that choice away? How?

  10. oh no! on Australian Road Safety Authority Criticizes Racing Game · · Score: 3, Funny

    We had better ban Flight Simulator too, in case people get the idea that they can actually crash planes into things without any consequences!

  11. Re:My 2 cents as an older brother... on Rules for Teenage Internet Access? · · Score: 1

    Personally I see no problem with unrestricted access, as long as it's a public room. I don't have a TV in my bedroom with my wife, my children won't either. I don't have a computer in my bedroom, my children won't either(well, there's that wireless laptop, but that's another issue to deal with eventually, and it's not in the bedroom ever so far).

  12. Re:Interesting requirements... on What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen? · · Score: 1
    You have to take into consideration that 17-19$ canadian, for a level 1 tech support job, is actually a good offer.

    Anyone who knows any significant fraction of their laundry list of software and taking a $17-$19 canadian Tier 1 position is insane. Tier 1 is usually lucky to know how to answer the phone.

  13. Re:Viruses and weapons on First Reproducing Artificial Virus Created · · Score: 1
    Releasing a reproducing bio-weapon with no known antidote requires a level of insanity unmatched in human history.

    I think you underestimate the power of human insanity.

  14. Re:Computer embroidery on Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines? · · Score: 1
    here is a better description than Wotsit, though it took me some time to work out that the descriptions talking about "+49" and "+512" etc were assuming that the first byte was numbered 1 rather than 0. It still isn't quite enough to just plop in place, but it covers a more recent format than Wotsit. I downloaded a .PES to check the Wotsit against and spent a lot of time being confused that the formats weren't particularly similar until I realized that the start of the file included a version number. The Wotsit stuff covers PES0001, and most of the files I was finding are PES0020, described in that document.

    Wish me luck, I'm mostly interested in converting from .PES to images.

  15. Re:okay, now what? on Belkin To Offer Firmware Fix For Router Hijacking · · Score: 1

    Given that every belkin product I've used has fscked up in some manner or other, hearing about this was just the icing for a long standing personal boycott against them. Couldn't get their USB ethernet to work worth a damn. The KVM switch had to be rebooted (unplug, no power switch, did I mention it had an ugly wall wart unlike my keyboard-powered linksys?) on a regular basis. The only Belkin stuff that has ever worked reliably for me were cables, so I'm hardly surprised. Time the rest of the world woke up and ran them out of business as they deserve.

  16. An additional question on Computer-Controlled Embroidery Machines? · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I've been looking for either 1) a free/cheap means to convert between the typical formats for the files that drive the computer embroidery (.pes is the format I have, I want it in jpg or gif) or 2) a format definition for .pes so I can roll my own coversion.

    I've done a lot of searching and all I seem to be able to find are $900 packages that do it all and sing too. Absolutely no luck with the format definition, only pages that say essentially ".pes is a format for computer embroidery". Big help....

  17. Re:Corporations dont have an interest on Memory Holes and the Internet (updated) · · Score: 1
    You don't suppose there was any pressure from the government to do this then?

    Glad to see you're so naive.

  18. Re:Decency? on Review of Mac OS X 10.3 · · Score: 1
    Let's try this again.

    The reports say that existing software in some cases won't work with the "upgrade". There are certainly going to be releases that will only support the upgrade and not run on the previous "dot" release. There is an expectation, in my opinion a reasonable one, that if the number at the beginning or the name or whatever the hell else you want to do indicating a "version" is THE SAME then the SOFTWARE SHOULD STILL WORK.

    If it doesn't, it should get a new name/number/whatever. Breaking stuff means it's a major release, period. There is also an expectation that price maps this way too; upgrades are reasonably cheap (i.e. $50 or less) and new versions are not.

  19. Re:expose on Review of Mac OS X 10.3 · · Score: 1
    Exactly. Windows 98 came out in...something like 1998. Windows XP only came out sometime in the last couple of years. Let's be generous and say, 3 year difference.

    That means I've had 3 years to get the benefit of the $100 it cost to buy Windows 98. $30 a year is a price I think is reasonable for an OS and good upgrades (yah, I know, it's arguable whether windows has good upgrades, but we're making analogy to apple, right?). I do not think $130 a year, more than four times the cost, is nearly as good a deal.

    For the record, I still run Windows 98 on my PC's anyway. As someone else pointed out, for windows I can get critical bug fixes for 98 even now. Apparently Apple thinks I should pay for that too. Which is a non-starter, and why I complained in the first place.

    In fact for my particular case, I've only been using MacOS 10.2 for about 3 months, and paid a premium for it then; to pay another $130 right now for an upgrade/fix release is not acceptable.

  20. Re:expose on Review of Mac OS X 10.3 · · Score: 1

    Since I just spent $2000 on the iBook and accessories a couple months ago, $800 isn't really going to cut it :-).

  21. Re:Decency? on Review of Mac OS X 10.3 · · Score: 1

    That's one part of it. The other part of it is that from the sound of it, even though they call it "10.3", it really is being treated like a whole new OS. If there are so damn many new features in it that they need to charge $130 for it, then they should call it 11.0.

  22. Re:expose on Review of Mac OS X 10.3 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The animation might be gratuitous, but I'd really like to have that feature on the iBook at home, it's a pain to have to log the wife out to do anything since it's primarily her box.

    What I want to know is whether there is an upgrade price that's cheaper than the $130 for the "new release". If not, that's just !@#$ insane on Apple's part. There may be lots of nice new features, but I ain't paying $130 for them, especially if they're labelled as a dot release.

  23. Re:Hope this doesn't effect... on Sun to Merge UltraSPARC with Fujitsu's SPARC64? · · Score: 1

    I thought you had something here until you said ECache ECC was an advantage over UltraSPARC. Sun has that too, and mirrored ECache to boot.

  24. Why the hell is it on Victoria's Secret Fined for Security Leak · · Score: 2, Interesting
    That corporations never have to admit guilt?

    If I break the law, I don't have the same luxury, how is this equal protection?

  25. Re:Definitely MapQuest on Best Online Mapping Site? · · Score: 1

    El Camino Real translates as "The King's Road", or so I was once told...