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User: Sleet01

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Comments · 55

  1. Re:Your poor spelling and lack of cultural awarene on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 0

    Thank you very much ^_^

  2. Re:Yet another problem here in America: on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 0

    I guess I proved my own point ^_^ And besides, isn't meta what /. is all about?

  3. Yet another problem here in America: on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Egregious grammatical errors. To wit: characterizing my "America-bashing" as *not* rlevant, grautuitous(sic), and 'a troll'. Corrected, it would read, "and frankly your America-bashing is irrelevant, gratuitous, and trollish."

    Additionally, I never stated that we must ignore all others' problems; I merely stated that I believed our own problems are more important than _this_ problem.

    *Your* comments, sir, were the first to take my serious and deeply-held opinions personally; you dubbed them America-bashing instead of accepting them as the concerned criticism they were. You flamed first, Troll, and Troll you are.

    Get thee back to school, Troll.

  4. Your poor spelling and lack of cultural awareness on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 0

    ... made Cthulhu cry in his sleep.

    First, what do you know of samurai? Do you know that they don't exist, at least not in the form idealized by Westerners, and have not for nearly 100 years?

    Second, _kamikaze_ pilots died out with the end of the Second World War. Any pilots you have seen crashing into buildings have been insane Arab fundamentalists or drunken American idiots.

    Third: You only know of suicide clubs because of this story, you great steaming pile of hikikomori putrescence. What about the various American religious cults of the past twenty years? Yes, it's odd to commit suicide with other people so you don't feel lonely; how much *more* odd is it, then, to do so in the hopes that your soul will live forever on a great comet?

    You know nothing about Japan; I'd wager you know less than that about English grammar (and you an Aussie!), which is why you have no friends here.

    Me, I have no friends because I hate you all.

  5. Re:Your hunches are worthless on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 0

    That's fine; I stated I used the 1997 data, but I erred in my choice of present, rather than past, tense. That doesn't change the fact that *I* raised, the fact that our country sees around ten times more people killed by their neighbors, their friends, their classmates, or their lovers.

    Just, y'know, by way of comparison.

  6. Never heard of 'hiri kiri' on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 0

    Nor of 'hare kare', nor of the dozen other mispronounciations Americans toss off when they want to point out how odd Japanese people are.

    It's Hara kiri. Hara = stomach / guts, kiri is the noun form of kiru, 'to cut'.

    Your local grammar nazi at work.

  7. Re:Your hunches are worthless on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 1

    I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your exclamation point is meant to indicate surprise and shock, and not a factorial... but that's all the leeway I'll give you.

    If you bothered to read the article, you would see that the 91 was the *total* number of people who participated in web-based suicide pacts, not the overall suicide rate of the country... unless you are poorly-informed enough to believe that the total population *of* Japan is 100,000. While Japan's suicide rate is high at around 24 per 100,000 (found some more recent data), I'm certain more would be made of a 1 in 10,000 rate.

    My comment regarding which is worse was in specific reference to the previous poster's question about this 'tragic issue'; I simply feel that our own citizens' uncivilized treatment of both our own people, as well as those of other countries, should be of more immediate concern.

    I guess my comment to *you* would be, 'you do the reading.'

  8. Your hunches are worthless on Internet Suicide Pacts Surge in Japan · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Japanese are, on average, in better shape and longer-lived than Americans - and that goes for teens and young adults as well. Before worrying about Japan's high suicide rate, perhaps you should worry about this: in addition to a suicide rate of 12 in 100,000 persons (most recently measured in 1997), America also has a death by _homicide_ rate of 7 in 100,000. By comparison, Japan's rate is only 0.6 in 100,000.

    There's more: American servicemen are constantly raping, murdering, and accidentally running over Japanese citizens, but we hardly ever hear about that.

    So what's worse? The country where a higher percentage of people take their own lives because they can't deal with what the world around them has become, or the country where one in 14,000 people dies at the hand of one of his or her countrymen and which exports rapists and killers?

    You do the math.

  9. Frogpad on New Keyboard Has Just 53 Keys · · Score: 0

    I'm not sure where the utility in this new keyboard is, but there is already a portable "twiddler"-style keyboard that uses three rows of five keys, plus (from what I can tell) three shift keys, , and . Find it here.

  10. Re:Utopian Visions? on Broadband from Airships · · Score: 0

    Rouges? That some kinda Commie crack?

  11. No details are emitted? on Mini-ITX Computing For Everyone · · Score: 4, Funny

    How will we read about it then? What happened, did they fall within the event horizon created by the over-abundance of pr0n data on the net?

  12. Re:Launch Loop on Thoughts on the Space Elevator · · Score: 1

    Or, leaving aside Analog hard sci-fi, we can go for the real deal: a tether-powered station to pitch smaller rockets from LEO to GEO (or higher). Tethers Unlimited, Inc. already has a plan, called MXER ( Momentum-Exchange / Electrodynamic-Reboost ), for a simple slingshot system that would be capable of lifting satellites into geostationary or -synchronous orbit... or launching manned ships into a
    lunar orbit. The best part is they've already tested their system in space and have tethers in operation on commercial satellites right now.

  13. Re:Local Government on Sonic 'Lasers' to be Deployed in Hurricane Region · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure where you're getting your propaganda shipped in from, but three years ago when NO did their natural disaster wargaming and told the federal government they needed tens of millions of dollars to upgrade their infrastructure, when the Army Corps of Engineers told the administration they needed nearly $80 million to reinforce the levees, did Bush give them that money? Did he say, "Gee, well, that's a piddling amount compared to billions we spend each month in Iraq, so why not?" Nope. He cut the funding, congress tried to add a little extra, and nothing was done. If the Mayor of New Orleans is enraged, if he didn't release buses, I'm not so sure it's any different from FDR witholding intelligence about Pearl Harbor before the the Japanese raid in '41. If it was simply bureaucratic sluggishness, it's hard to compare his weeks of immobility with years of inaction by the Feds.

  14. Loose their bowels, you mean? on New NASA Admin Griffin Cleans House · · Score: 1

    I would, if I were getting shitcanned from NASA. Oh, and FYI: there shouldn't be a comma between replacements and that.

  15. Re:Protection is a non-issue on NPR Talks Skyhooks · · Score: 1

    Fort Knox has a tank force because it's the ass-end of nowhere and they can afford to train gormless new Privates on the things without worrying about tearing up land that actually costs money. I should know, I was a gormless new Private! Anyhow, there isn't anything to protect at Fort Knox anymore anyhow, and even if there were, they'd probably ship in infantry from Fort Campbell rather than using the trainees. Go Bravo 2/81! Echo Company, how can somebody need remedial _pushup_ training?!

  16. Re:Text of the legal threat: on Charter School Firm Attacks Online Criticism · · Score: 1

    I agree. I hate to be a grammar nazi, but my Japanese wife has far better grammar, diction, and control of the basics of the English language than these bozos do. Oops, looks like I just defamed and libaled (sic) a law firm; I'd better watch out!

  17. Y Kant Fundie Spell? on The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but I find it difficult to take seriously the ramblings of a person who can't even spell the movement he or she purportedly associates with correctly. If there really were a God, would that God truly allow his (or her) followers to blunder on in such ignorance? I should hope not!

    Additionally, "YHWH" is a tetragramma_TON_, not a tetragrammon. Similarly, "SPLCHK" is a septagramma_TON_ meaning, "the spell-checking function that exists."

    I like that 'no man is without excuse to be without faith'; obviously this means that no man is with an excuse to be with faith, right? Good thing for us athiests!

    Keep on proving a credit to your faith, dude.

    --
    "A scientist is one who actively pursues science;
    a creationist is one who actively pursues ignorance."

  18. Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. on Windows Journalist Takes On Tiger · · Score: 1

    It's nice to _imagine_ that, but it isn't _true_, and hasn't been for a long time. Apple uses the same hardware that PCs use, but constrain their users to a certain small range of officially supported add-ons.

    I recently renovated a beige G3 with an old Hitachi laptop HD (requiring a little bit of ResEdit work), XP-compatible USB 2.0 card, and OS 10.1.5. The after-market hardware just happened to be from companies that Apple uses, so the HD and USB card were supported. Strangely enough, the G3's fancy AV card and floppy were left behind in the switch to OS X.

    Apple uses this strategy because it allows them to ensure that the hardware they sell is completely supported by the OS they package with it; they choose the hardware and then write the drivers, leaving nothing in the hand of the suppliers. That's the main difference between MS and Apple.

  19. Blipvert-power'd? on Commercial Exoskeletons · · Score: 1

    You are, of course, forgetting the aweful effects of the super-concentrated Blipvert commercials! 1 second of Blipvert was enough to cause a man's head to explode! Imagine that power harnessed toward stomping around on people in a bad-ass metallic 'mech!

  20. Re:Science illiteracy! on Internet-By-Airship Scheduled For Trial Next Month · · Score: 1

    The main concept of LTA flight is, for the most part, similar to a ship: you rely on displacing a certain mass of air while weighing *less* than that mass. Because the atmosphere gets thinner the higher the altitude, the less buoyancy you get from straight displacement, and the more useful lift would be. At any rate, wind itself wouldn't be the operative factor - the Stratellite would just be carried along with the wind like a leaf in a stream - but would need to be coupled with station-keeping thrusters. And if you assume that the thrusters will be able to drive the Stratellite at tens - or hundreds - of miles per hour at sea level, it should also be capable of doing so against the lesser force of stratospheric winds, even *with* a comcommitant reduction in total thrust.

    Personally, I'm waiting for them to sell 20-person group HALO jump tickets from reconditioned Stratellites!

  21. Stratellite? on San Fran Mayor Declares Wireless for All · · Score: 1
    I understand that Sanswire was recently purchased by a larger company; their plan was to provide city-wide wireless services (cell and wi-fi) via stratospheric balloons ('stratellites'). Perhaps this is the first instance?

    In a non-related note: Y Kant Slashdotterz spell?!

  22. Re:Palm M100 on Note Taking Devices for Students? · · Score: 1

    I'd have to amend this suggestion to: Handera HE330 + Palm or Palm IR keyboard, for a few reasons:
    1) The Handera has a 320x240 QVGA screen which, although greyscale, has a brilliant blue backlight visible in any conditions. The screen includes a minimizable silkscreen,can rotate (for use with IR keyboard), and has extra-small or -large fonts.

    2) The 330 also includes a voice recorder which can A) record to CF or MMC/SD card, and B) sync to the desktop.

    3) If Wi-Fi is necessary, a CF 802.11 card can be added later, plus it works with any of the old (and thus very cheap!) Palm III-series peripherals.

    4) The battery life is phenomonal. Even using the keyboard, standard AAs will run it for nearly a week and a half (taking ~2 hours of notes per day, plus using it as a PDA for several more hours). With a Li-Ion battery, it can recharge in the cradle, or you can carry the folding-prong AC adapter with you, and it still runs for ~24 hours straight before needing a recharge.

    I use the HE330/Palm KB combo myself, and it's phenomonal. I have a high-res screen, long battery life, and can sync my documents easily with my home PC. If I want, I can buy a Wi-Fi card and browse the web from my Palm. I run most of my apps from cards, saving my main RAM, and can also use the cards as a thumb drive by carrying a CF reader to school. It's a total package, and can be had for US $100 or so on E-bay.

  23. Re:Upgrade to what? on Second Post-Apple Newton Life? · · Score: 1

    They should use what they are already developing on to make the iPod: PXA2XX-series X-Scale boards!

    With support for PCMCIA, CF, and MMC/SD built in, plus AC'97, serial, and LCD controllers on_CHIP_, it's a no-brainer. Plus, the X-Scale is already used in several high-quality PDAs, including a Linux-based series (the Sharp Zaurii).

    One quick way to test the idea would be to recompile XDarwin for the Zaurus SL-6000. Why?
    1) Put a Mac-like OS on a PDA and you're halfway there.
    2) Zaurus sports the largest array of expansion types (CF, SD/MMC, _and_ USB Host!), clearly a worthy successor to the Newton's dual PCMCIA slots.
    3) With the only full-VGA Sharp LG Silicon screen available in the U.S., a large pop-out thumb-board, and a 1500mAh battery, the Zaurus is a beautiful monster, overpowered and meaty... like a hand-held Mac IIfx!
    4) It's ridiculously expensive... and, c'mon, isn't that a prerequisite of Macintosh *anything*?

    If you're too impatient to wait for Apple to bring the iNewton to market, and too broke to afford a Zaurus, you can probably hack together your own version using a Gumstix board. I figure this homebrew Newton could probably use the Linux 2.6 kernel, XDarwin, and a spare portable DVD screen, and go by the name of iOfNewt :)

  24. Re:The real innovation on Laser Vision Offers New Insights · · Score: 1

    Microvision actually came out with this stuff back in '96 or '97; I don't recall them ever mentioning adaptive optics. It's just a straightforward adaptation of the system used by supermarket scanners, although at much lower power.
    Actually, the Nomad system has been out for a couple of years; I'm curious what led the BBC to pick it up now. Back in '97, Microvision was proposing putting a laser display into cell phones and Palms, but looks like that hasn't gone anywhere.
    After they snagged that Air Force contract, I thought MV would extend their line a little, maybe go out and search for a retail vendor to bring their color system to the real world. It's been really frustrating to watch these guys sit on the tech that could make wearable computers and HMDs a household item.
    Oh, and the 'zero refresh rate' guys? It's _still_ too low-power to do any damage; you'd just see a single pixel.

  25. Re:fanless pc with dvi-output on Small Form Factor Comparison Matrix · · Score: 1

    A Shuttle SFF will give you AGP capability, but the cheapest would probably be to roll your own with an Epia, a PCI FX-Something card, and maybe the right-angle PCI daughter card for Epia boards. With that, RAM, HD, and CD drive, you're looking at just over $500 U.S. Stick it all in a .50 cal ammo can lined with foam for noise control, or hang the components from rubber bands inside a plexiglass box just to be spiffy.
    The Hush box is just an Epia board, a proprietary backwards PCI daughter board, and a special heat-pipe cooling system. If you can mill and polish solid aluminum, you could probably get the same silent effect through passive cooling and massive amounts of metal.
    Cheers!