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User: TheMuon

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  1. Re:Wow, Opera has what I call ambition... on Opera 10.10 Released, Includes New "Unite" Tech · · Score: 1

    I have to agree with the latter two examples but Opera is perfectly capable of the first. You disallow JS globally and enable it on individual sites.

    One thing to add to the list is a better adblocking system. You can add premade block content lists with Opera to serve the same purpose as adblock but it is not entirely trivial to do.

  2. Re:Meanwhile on Fox News on Obama Talks Internet Freedom, China Censors · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you are thinking of Chris Mathews of MSNBC. Unless someone at CNN said the same thing.

  3. Re:Psychonomics on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Labor

    This is the resource that you are missing in your equation. Combined with time, we have a vast amount of this resource to draw on. Wealth is never created from thin air though. We may think we have large amounts of virtual wealth, like credit, but its all worthless unless its backed by real wealth. If a person doesn't have a job to pay off their debt and doesn't have the physical wealth to cover the debt, a good bit of the stated value of that debt doesn't exist.

  4. Re:Bullshit! on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 1

    That software did not come out of thin air. Yes, the copies you made were essentially free but resources were initially consumed to produce it. The value of copies of that product when access and distribution are nearly free is essentially zero. Which is why we have copyright laws to give it artificial value.

    For that reason, spreading around existing software doesn't really create any new wealth using p2p since very little resources are expended. It just redistributes existing wealth. If you want to create new wealth with software you have to write new code. This takes labor.

    Here's an example for you. A book has value. Resources were expended to produce it. An author wrote it. A publisher edited it, printed it and distributed it. The physical material making up the book had to be produced. Some of these costs are constant regardless of how many books are printed and thus the cost per book approaches zero. This is the actual writing and editing. The other costs like printing and distribution increase with each book such that the cost per book approaches some value greater than zero. Thus every book, no matter how many books are printed, has some significant value.

    An ebook has insignificant value. The cost to produce an ebook is primarily the writing and editing, which approaches zero with every copy made. Again, copyright gives the ebook and artificial value but that value is not real since copyright can be circumvented.

  5. Re:Lawmakers? on Lawmakers Caught Again By File-Sharing Software · · Score: 1

    "Or do they all just mindlessly parrot one another"

    Judging by the way me-mes tend to spread throughout the media, even if they are shown to be false, I'm going with the latter.

  6. Re:They have no business in knowing who viewed the on Music Rights Holders Sue YouTube Again · · Score: 1

    By that same logic, how is a person's short term memory, let alone their long term memory, not copyright infringement? No, scratch that, how long before people start getting fined for infringing by copying a work into their short and long term memory as by the above logic it is infringement.

  7. Re:Terrible analogy on Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Necessary? · · Score: 1

    Mortal Online

    Its still in beta so its future success is yet to be determined but considering you have to pre-order the game to get access to the beta and that over 10k people have done so, tells me the game is at least on the right track at the moment.

    I can't really say anything about my personal beta experience, they have an NDA, but overall it is definitely a good game. Its whether that will translate into success or not that is still uncertain.

  8. Re:do you mean mandarin or cantonese? on EU Paves the Way For Three-Strikes Cut-Off Policy · · Score: 1

    English is a bastard language We native English speakers will gladly steal any word you folks come up with, butcher its spelling and pronunciation, and use it as our own. Hell, Shakespeare, the paragon of English writing, invented, altered, and borrowed a large number of words and forever altered the English language. So you may jeer about how you are going to corrupt our language but I tell you now, you cannot corrupt what is already corrupted.

    PS The reason many native English speakers have trouble with English spelling is because it doesn't make much sense phonetically. We learn to speak the language before we even begin to learn to write it so in our mind there isn't much difference between "there", "they're" and "their" when we are first learning the language. Or at least that is the reasoning I was given by my German professor.

  9. Re:you're wrong. on Sequoia Voting Systems Source Code Released · · Score: 1

    "(the Congress chose Jefferson(D) over Adams(F))"

    First the 1800 election was a rather unique case, second Congress chose Jefferson(D) over his "running mate" Burr(D-traitor).

  10. Re:No one should have expected on Legal War For WA State Sunshine Law · · Score: 1

    From my understanding, the origins of marriage have less to do with religion and more to do with an exchange of property. As in, I'll give you 7 goats 3 cows and a horse for your daughter.

  11. Re:javascript whitelisting ? on Chrome 4.0 Vs. Opera 10 Vs. Firefox 3.5 · · Score: 1

    First f12 brings up quick preferences

    second, yes, the only point in using site preferences is if you have javascript and other things turned off by default and only turned on on sites you choose.

  12. Re:If it makes you feel better on Proposed UK File-Sharing Laws May Be Illegal, ISPs Upset · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After the bit about the post office I strongly suspected sarcasm. After the second line about the bus-lines I was certain this was sarcasm. By the time I got to "Woosh hammer" I thought this was such well written sarcasm making such a good point that your average sixth grader would fully comprehend this comment.

    After reading the comments I realize I've either severely overestimated the reading comprehension of your average sixth grader or severely underestimated the reading comprehension of your average slashdot reader.

    PS, that "or" is inclusive.

  13. What games is this true for? I play PC games exclusively and I cannot recall ever having to do such a thing.

    I think you are referring to CD keys. There is no online activation. Its a check before installing to determine if you have a valid serial key to go along with the disc. If it is a game with multiplayer this acts as a fairly effective anti piracy mechanism since they can detect if 2 people with the same CD key are trying to access the multiplayer through their servers at the same time. If you are playing single player or multiplayer via LAN or unofficial servers then it does nothing to stop piracy.

    The reason you can't resell PC games is because there is nothing to guarentee that you've uninstalled the game from your PC or that you haven't made a copy. Unlike with consoles, not having the disc is no hinderence for a PC gamer to still play the game.

  14. Re:Science/tech illiteracy on Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016? · · Score: 1

    To be fair, almost your entire statement is BS. All heat engines that we use add heat to the Earth, not near enough to matter but they do. If you burn coal you unlock chemical energy, same with natural gas. If you use nuclear energy you are using energy stored in the nuclei of uranium atoms. Energy that was not available to warm up the Earth before. But as I said, its all of no significance compared to the energy we get from the Sun.

  15. Re:For specific applications, YES! (Remote Militar on Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016? · · Score: 1

    Only if it were to significantly heat up the air in the path of the beam, which I doubt it would.

  16. Re:skeptical on Man Attacked In Ohio For Providing Iran Proxies · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Read about this on Huffpo after seeing it first posted on dkos. Nico Pitney, the guy doing the excellent live blog there apparently tried to confirm this story and was unable to. I'm thinking that this is very likely a hoax.

  17. Re:Medical commnuity in other countries... on Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English? · · Score: 1

    Thats a good point it should be 'atturney'. Or better yet, it should be 'atterney'. Oh hell, I'd better stop or just post that Mark Twain bit about making English spelling make sense.

  18. What if t is a subset of rationals? on If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons · · Score: 1

    If time were discrete then your argument would collapse.

  19. What if you assume on If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons · · Score: 1

    that time at some small scale is discrete and not continuous. Then it would not be possible for there not to be a first event if the universe is of finite age, which seems to be the case.

  20. Re:I knew it! on If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons · · Score: 1

    That sounds a whole lot like "random," which (it seems to me) must surely mean "not subject to cause and effect."

    There is no such thing as "random" in that sense. "Random" is just a way of saying something lies outside the perceptual/computational capacity of the brain. Everything in the universe is basically deterministic.

    This may be true. However, we have no evidence to support such a claim. From what we can see and from what our mathematical models seem to indicate, some things, ie position/momentum, are truly random.

  21. Re:First step: Understand why women have babies. on Women Skip Math/Science Careers To Have Families · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First why on Earth do you think we need to increase the world's population? It won't be long now before we hit 7 billion people on this rock.

    Second, you are a racist. To begin with I'd want to see citation to your statistics about Europe. Further, assuming your numbers are correct, I fail to see the problem unless you believe there is something wrong with non Europeans.

  22. Re:Intelligence in animals on Chimp Found Plotting Against Zoo Guests · · Score: 1

    A few hours ago you believed educated people 500 years ago believed the Earth was flat. In reality people how known the Earth was round for thousands of years. Columbus was a fucking moron who thought he knew better than the ancient Greeks and miscalculated the size of the Earth thinking he could make it to Asia without running out of supplies. The fact that we celebrate that slave trader/mass murderer is rather disgusting.

  23. Re:I am tired of UK being a EU member on UK Government Wants To Kill Net Neutrality In EU · · Score: 1

    You are absolutely correct. US culture is directly descended from English culture. US law and our political system is directly descended from English politics and law.

    Immigrants to the US did bring their culture with them and it has influenced US culture as a whole but the foundation is solidly English.

  24. Re:Politics of health care on Why Doctors Hate Science · · Score: 1

    The McCain plan would essentially mean employers would not be able to afford to provide health insurance to employees so employees would have to buy the insurance themselves. A $5000 tax credit isn't enough to get insurance with, especially when you consider that you've lost a great deal of bargining power. It would hurt competiton severely. Why? The average person does not have the time or likely the skill to find the best available insurer. People would get screwed left and right and there would be naught that they could do. Our current system may be deeply flawed but McCain's plan, not that it would have ever gotten off the ground even if he'd been elected, would have utterly killed our healthcare system.

  25. Re:I hope P.B. win this trial on The Pirate Bay Is Making a "Spectrial" of It · · Score: 1

    Perhaps not in the US but it may be in Sweeden. We shall see.