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User: thedonger

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  1. Re:I don't get it on Book Review: Head First HTML5 Programming · · Score: 3, Informative

    How can there be a book on HTML 5 when it isn't even a finished specification yet? This book is a waste. At any moment the spec can change drastically and render this book useless. I'm sure half of it is just hacks to get it to render the same HTML 5 and CSS3 content across FF, Chrome, IE and Opera since they all have their own versions of HTML5.

    There is enough that won't be changing - conceptually and literally - to warrant a thorough treatment of HTML5; however, I doubt it is worth the cost of this book given the volume of people writing about it for free on the intertubes. And for the truly masochistic, there is always w3c.org, where you can read the entire specification for free.

    As for how browsers interpret the standard, that probably changes faster than the specification itself, so one is better off looking to quirksmode, et al, for how browsers handle various elements of HTML and CSS. Or better yet, just experiment with it.

  2. Re:Strange animal on Book Review: Head First HTML5 Programming · · Score: 3, Funny

    The O'Reilly "Head First" series turned into hardcore porn so gradually I didn't even notice...

  3. Re:Dunno... on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    I disagree with your disagreement of his disagreement. There is a such thing as looking too real, at least at the current level of CG technology. But then, if we are talking about a Camaro turning into a two-story building I say all bets are off (no, not strictly sci-fi in the outer space sense). Perhaps a more apropos example is the shiny silver space ship in Star Wars The Piece-of-Crap Prequels.

    The other aspect of this discussion is, what happens when CG is so good it is impossible to tell from the real thing? Particularly, when human interaction with generated elements becomes completely fluid?

    People still do stop-action animation as an art form; however, at some point it will so completely be for the sake of the art that one wonders if there will be a point to doing it the "old way."

  4. Re:Sensible on Study Says Quantum Wavefunction Is a Real Physical Object · · Score: 5, Funny

    My salt and pepper shakers came as a set. They did not, however, come with salt and pepper in them. They were a - wait for it - Empty Set.

    Hope I didn't break the maths too much.

  5. Re:WOW on US Army Completes First Test Flight of Mach 6 Weapon · · Score: 0

    We can spend billions of dollars for useless weapons, but can't bother to spend the necessary money to keep our infrastructure from crumbling. What a fine use of our tax dollars!

    I won't argue whether or not the weapon is useful (in fact, that is unknowable - either we use it one day and thank [insert favorite deity here] we developed it, or we never use it, which takes an awfully long time find out), but I will argue that we waste - provably waste - far more money than the development costs of this weapon. It is sad that the majority of people (or at least the vocal minority) focus so hard on symptoms that they completely miss the problem.

  6. Re:Well... on Toronto School Bans Hard Balls · · Score: 1

    In the days where there are lawsuit trolls roaming the earth trying to turn any mishap into $$$, I can't really blame them.

    Of course, take it out on the kids instead of the lawyers or politicians that allow the lawyers to conduct business as they do.

    Now that is insightful. Seriously, what is next? Broken legs are bad. Everyone is to have their legs removed to avoid law suits from leg injuries.

  7. Re:Missing element.... on Gadget Allows You to Keep Bees In Your Apartment · · Score: 1

    Great, until they get stuck in Manhattan traffic on their to Central Park, where they will have to compete with all the other city bees for flowers.

  8. Re:Content Uncontrolled on Facebook Unveils Timeline, Updated Open Graph · · Score: 1

    Here's the primary problem with this: Uncontrolled Content Publishing

    Hey, welcome to the internet era. We still have the same amount of useful information; what we gained was a shit-ton of noise (my comments included).

    • I'm thinking about kittens!
    • Time to vacuum the house!
    • I'm an armchair [quarterback; president; reality television show producer] and this is how [they] SHOULD HAVE [done something about which I have little to no real world experience].
    • LOL Took a huge dump (see picture)

    The internet has made me hate people way more than I ever thought possible.

  9. Re:It's a shame... on Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination · · Score: 1

    I think what he is getting at is that one can clearly be not fit for survival in the natural sense (e.g., the slower or sicker antelope becomes dinner), but in humans we have created a society where that idea is non-existent. In other words, Whoosh! Clearly humor has been selected out of your line (that was also a joke).

  10. Re:How does this voodoo work? on Microsoft Demonstrates Practical Homomorphic Computing · · Score: 2

    So let's get this straight... You take a bunch of encrypted numbers, never ever decrypt them but somehow still add them together to get the right encrypted answer.

    WTF???

    No details in TFA but HOW does this voodoo work?

    More importantly, when will we get lazy enough that the encrypted version of our medical stats becomes commonplace? E.g.,
    "Hey, what's your cholesterol?"
    "9E024B9D7G129F8A7D084HF0241746GAE98364FA9295HA82754834H9328747FA 8907A089F004375G73649E746D92850F872892B398D93095738A74674F943834B3."

  11. Re:What's a Bing? on Do Two-Screen Laptops Make Sense? · · Score: 1

    I just wonder why someone would spend all that money on a laptop with two displays and have Bing in both of them...Or one of them.

  12. Re:Just that pesky Constitution on Slate: Amazon's Tax Stance Unfair and Unethical · · Score: 1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64yhiih53F4

    We have a lot of other stuff on our plate, so we shouldn't have to worry about the ins an outs of how a treasury auction works, etc.

  13. Re:Just that pesky Constitution on Slate: Amazon's Tax Stance Unfair and Unethical · · Score: 2

    Don't worry. There is a clearly movement growing to "redo the constitution". Look at the recent Time article and that CNN douchebag Fareed Zakaria's comments about how it's "time to update the constitution". After all, Iceland is writing a new constitution for the second time in the past sixty years or so using the comments of citizens via Facebook and Twitter and Youtube. Why shouldn't we? ...

    I am suddenly reminded of the Despair poster: None of us is as dumb as all of us.

    Hopefully our corrupt politicians will never let that happen. And based on Obama's recent press conference (something about us regular people shouldn't have to know the minutiae of complex economic vehicles and we should leave it up to our masters [OK, the "master" thing is my word]), you can rest assured it won't happen while he is in office.

  14. Re:X=Y=new invention? on GM Patents Data Mining Method For Refining the Chevy Volt · · Score: 1

    So sick of these patents that are nothing more then taking a few existing ideas re-configuring them and calling it whole new idea. Patents should protect revolutions in design, not evolutions.

    I agree. This so-called patent sounds more like a mash-up.

  15. Re:Cognitive Dissonance on GM Patents Data Mining Method For Refining the Chevy Volt · · Score: 1

    Aren't issues two and three part of the same issue - I'll call it #4 - that the patent system is broken? I don't know who they hire, but I remember reading once that Einstein was at one time a patent clerk. Something tells me they aren't getting such smart people these days.

  16. Re:Well shit on Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide · · Score: 1

    I'm kidding about AIDS. There is myth associated with it; however, I believe that it exists, at the very least as a bunch of associated symptoms. The real tragedy is the people scared into taking drugs to prevent HIV from becoming AIDS, but the drugs destroy their kidneys and eventually kill them anyway. And don't get me started on fibromyalgia...

  17. Re:Well shit on Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    AIDS, like restless leg and chronic fatigue syndromes, is a myth. And last I checked cancer kills lots and lots of people. Some cancer can be avoided or reduced to a statistical impossibility with good lifestyle choices. Others, like my friends anaplastic astrocytoma, are just shit luck that fucks you in the ass for a month or a year before they kill you (if the chemo and radiation don't first lead to your death). Alzheimer's sucks (got my granddad), but maybe he just had variant CJD from eating tainted meat. Hey, maybe someday a cranky doctor (not a magician, mind you) will just wave some beepy tricoreder thingy in front of you and instantly cure everything. Except baldness. Even Star Trek technology failed on that one.

  18. Re:Well shit on Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide · · Score: 0

    The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

    So, one must ask if (1) is the global scope is broad enough to confer the intelligence of the inter-linked hypertext documents; or (2) if it is in fact the inter-linked hypertext documents that create the global scope.

  19. Re:Hacked? on LastPass Password Service Hacked · · Score: 3, Funny

    My climbing gym web site was hacked recently and used for a phishing scam and general fun for the script kiddies. The annoying part is that, even with absolutely nothing critical to lose (other than site up-time due to our host taking the site down), there is still a lot of work to do just to make sure they didn't leave another back door. I know this because...I missed the backdoor. They dropped a nice PHP script on the server that gave them unrestricted access.

    Anyway, the point is that just thinking one has been breached is shitload of work for someone, and probably a good reason to beat the bad publicity of a full breach with a press release that at first sounds worse than it well may be.

  20. Re:Digital Dickwaving on Triple Monitor Gaming: Dual GPU GeForce Vs. Radeon · · Score: 1

    Do you actually know anybody who "dickwaves" about their 3 monitor setup or an expensive video card...

    [flap flap flap flap flap flap flap]

    Just kidding. All I have is a 19" LCD being fed by water-cooled dual SLI. And all I really did was buy it cheap from a friend when he built a better machine. I'm a fraud.

  21. Re:Digital Dickwaving on Triple Monitor Gaming: Dual GPU GeForce Vs. Radeon · · Score: 2

    Sounds like someone has a case of tiny dick syndrome.

  22. Re:Why not free? on University Proposes Tuition Based On Major · · Score: 1

    Nope. SSI and Medicare are pyramid schemes.

    Fixed that for you.

  23. Re:It could come with perpetual free beer... on Sony's New Android-based Dual Screen Tablets · · Score: 1

    And what would come next after that?

    "Sony" tattoos on all new born children? I'll vote for that!

  24. Re:Groceries and Rickrolls on Sony's New Android-based Dual Screen Tablets · · Score: 1

    Shit. In that case you better make sure you don't ever e-mail someone who may look at your message on a Sony computer. In fact, someone may have read your post on a Sony computer. I just typed "Sony" twice - no, three times including that one. Better not read this response.

  25. Re:USPO on Malaysian Government Offers Free E-mail To All Citizens · · Score: 1

    The Post Office has traditionally been self-sufficient. Whether it can remain self sufficient in the e-mail age is yet to be determined.

    Yeah, if only they could invent a way for us to send our mail "electronically." Oh...