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User: SuiteSisterMary

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Comments · 6,159

  1. Re:As the old fable goes on Writing in Space with a Cheap Ballpoint Pen · · Score: 1
  2. Re:But, in a way, it *is* true.. on Writing in Space with a Cheap Ballpoint Pen · · Score: 1

    Actually, the problem with a pencil is that you really don't want little flammable bits of wood shavings and graphite floating around your closed environment, if you can at all avoid it.

  3. Speaking as a Canadian.. on Canada Dismayed Over Quebec Terrorist Game Plot · · Score: 1

    ..Canadians aren't dismayed. Militant Quebecois who love to take offence are dismayed.

    Slightly OT, but have you ever noticed that in almost every SF story or RPG that mentions Quebec, they always seem to break away and turn Communist?

  4. Re:Bad Idea on id Says 60fps Is Enough For Doom III · · Score: 1

    They just had a different thrust. 3dfx went for film-like quality of motion without requiring massive amounts of horsepower, everybody else went for pretty lighting without requiring massive amounts of horsepower.

    Me, I don't know off hand which I'd rather go for. Possibly the first one; like antialiasing, it can make something look much better without doing very much.

  5. Re:The man on Software Exorcism · · Score: 1

    Or, after a phone conversation, write a quick email to the person 'summing up' what you just discussed, and makeing sure that everything was 'understood.'

  6. Re:Bad Idea on id Says 60fps Is Enough For Doom III · · Score: 1

    3dfx realized exactly what you're saying; thirty frames per second is fine, other than the fact that graphics are freeze frames, not film frames. hence, they tried to implement their T-buffer concept, to do motion blur and so on.

    Then, the card improvement would be in features and power, not raw frame rate increase.

  7. Re:Office and innovation on Microsoft Office 2003 - Reviews, Overviews, Issues · · Score: 1

    Aye, I can think of several times when locking that Excel spreadsheet to only be readable by the HR department and the executives would have saved some people a lot of embarassment when a certain accountant sent it as an attachment to the wrong distribution groups....

  8. Re:Havoc on Max Payne 2 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    See my journal entry for an idea on how to make things like that happen.

  9. Re:Dubious Study on Tall People Earn More · · Score: 1

    Scott Adams points out in one of his books that in Presidental elections, 80 percent of the winners since some date were the taller ones; the two shorter ones who won had noticably better hair.

  10. Re:Nobody will ever need more then 4GB of memory.. on Bill Gates: Windows Patched Faster than Linux · · Score: 1

    Can you name an application other than photoshop that runs on the desktop, and needs more than four gigs? No.

    Note that he doesn't say 'never ever;' in fact, he specifically says, '*right now*, it is costly.'

    In other words, yes, everything will eventually want/need 64 bit, but at the moment, it's not filling a need, it's filling a marketing checklist.

  11. Re:is P2P really piracy? on RIAA Sequentially Repeating Edison's Mistakes? · · Score: 1

    Civil disobedience is refusing to pay attention to stupid gov't laws about race segregation, or not being able to vote due to your genetalia being internal rather than external.

    Stealing something because you don't agree with the policies of the seller, however, isn't.

  12. Re:When shall we be free of the X86? on AMD to debut multi-core CPUs in 2005 · · Score: 1

    All I know is, it runs Quest for Glory 4 (which .58 didn't) PROPERLY (even the CD enhanced version, with John Rhys-Davies narrating!), and the digital sound is fixed in Quest for Glory 3. So I'm happier than I can comfortably be, especially since I'm at work, not at home playing.

  13. Re:When shall we be free of the X86? on AMD to debut multi-core CPUs in 2005 · · Score: 1
    dosbox is ok for 16bit stuff.. though i'm kinda waiting for 32bit

    .60 came out yesterday, with the first go at supporting protected mode DOS progs.

  14. Re:is P2P really piracy? on RIAA Sequentially Repeating Edison's Mistakes? · · Score: 1

    Oh, and yes, downloading music does drive sales; Napster drove sales up, and more albums made platinum in *one year* during Napster's heyday than made platinum in the last ten, or ever, or some such.

    However, if they choose not to give you that option, that's their choice.

    You, of course, can choose to do it anyway, but it doesn't make it legal, or change what it is.

  15. Re:is P2P really piracy? on RIAA Sequentially Repeating Edison's Mistakes? · · Score: 1

    Did you listen to any given song, even once, in a manner that they copyright owner didn't give you permission to?

    Yes? Then it might not be a lost sale, but it's still theft.

    Listened to it on the radio? Fine; that's what it's there for. Recorded it? Fine; it's not good quality, it's usually overlapped with DJs or other songs or commercials. Downloaded it? Ooops.

    Should this be wrong? No. Should the labels have this sort of sampling? Yes. Do they? No.

    And no, this isn't 'civil disobedience.' If you want to change their minds, then boycott their products, conduct letter campaigns, and so on. It's their product, their business, and if they don't want to sell in a way that you'll buy, that's their right. This doesn't give you the right to then steal their product.

    If it's good enough to steal, it's good enough to buy.

    Am I a hypocrite for saying all this? Possibly.

  16. Re:My favorite part of the update procedure... on Yet Another Critical Windows Flaw · · Score: 1

    'Tis a sad day indeed, when people consider 'back up before altering vital components of your operating system' to be folly.

    'Tis a sadder day, of course, when the automatic response isn't 'no problem, my backups are up to date anyway.'

  17. Re:But... on BIND Patches Make Bad Situation Worse · · Score: 1

    That response was far too reasoned and thoughtful for my sarcastic point.

    You're right, of course, but when you get right down to it, the simple fact of the matter is that in OSS you have the properly done projects; the Linux kernel or apache, for example, then everything else.

  18. But... on BIND Patches Make Bad Situation Worse · · Score: 1

    But I thought, regression testing, hell testing at all, was a bad thing. Isn't it *good* that in the open source world, a patch gets slapped together and applied the world over, within an hour?

  19. Re:Audiophiles are idiots on iPods are for Audiophiles · · Score: 1

    Yup. I remember one site, pissed at this, took a coat hanger, plugged one end into a DVD player, the other end into a receiver that could display an error count, and lo, it passed the signal just fine, thank you.

    These are the same people who think spraying a special stuff onto a DVD can enhance the picture quality.

  20. Re:Audiophile journalists. on iPods are for Audiophiles · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but you can take a bunch of audiophiles, lock them in a room, claim you've got a new thingy for CDs that 'improves the reflectivity, and thus the sound fidelity by sharpening the return of the laser,' play a CD, take it out, put it back in, play it again, and they'll think that one sounded better than the other.

  21. Re:So TiVo is a really big VCR on Book Review: Hacking TiVo · · Score: 1

    Can your VCR note that you really like The Simpsons, so find it on various channels at various times, when you're not watching/recording anything else, and record it for you?

    Can your VCR note that you really like The Simpsons, and therefore would probably like Futurama, and record that for you to watch if you so choose?

    Can your VCR pause whilst you're recording something?

  22. Re:The Pledge: A Modest Critique on Supreme Court Will Hear Pledge of Allegiance Case · · Score: 1

    Less worthy of justice? No, of course it. Deserving of differing treatment? Of course.

    To put it another way, if you captured a serial killer, in the process of butchering and eating a baby, should he be treated in exactly the same way as Bob, who got drunk and got in a fight? Of course not. The serial killer should be held in confinment until his trial; Bob will probably get bail, if he winds up going to trial. Both get justice, but one gets treated far differently than the other.

    But if you choose to see the terrorists acts as acts of war, which I think they are, then civil liberty doesn't really enter into it; the Genevea conventions do.

  23. Re:i was actually punished for refusal to recite.. on Supreme Court Will Hear Pledge of Allegiance Case · · Score: 1

    I'd have gone to a newspaper, or even published a few broadsheets myself; 'Principal SoandSo Claims Freedom of Expression, Of Opinion, Of Religion 'Un-american.'

  24. Re:Very creative on Roland Attacks MT-32 Emulator Project · · Score: 1

    But doesn't it free you from having done it, but prevent you from continuing to do it?

    I.E. you did it, but it's OK, because you didn't realize it was copyrighted, due to them failing in some way, but now that they've remedied it, further use becomes copyright infringement?

  25. Re:Naive? on Tickets for Tracking Players in Casinos? · · Score: 1

    It ain't random. It's statistical, designed to mimic randomness.