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User: Useful+Wheat

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Comments · 79

  1. Re:No such thing on Copyright and the Games Industry · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The best example of using Valve's assets in a community creation would be Gang Garrison. Gang Garrison is a sprite version of Team Fortress 2 made in a parody style. Instead of the pyro you have the firebug. Instead of the heavy you have the overweight. Instead of eating a sandvich (spelled with a "v", I swear) you eat a manwich.

    Although the gameplay is interesting by itself, the faithful 8-bit midi renditions of all the Team Fortress music is pretty much worth downloading the free game. Its not the best game I've ever played, but I'd be sad if it never existed because Valve screamed foul over IP rights.

  2. That's weird on Google Releases Source To Chromium OS · · Score: 1

    I wonder if this is doomed to become a niche operating system that doesn't even scratch the surface of the market. Preventing your most enthusiastic linux base from trying out your software unless they purchase a new computer will prevent a large majority of people from playing with Chrome. The main thing I'm afraid of is that we're brewing a new Apple. At least they're not going for the single mouse button (yet).

  3. Re:Alternative materials? on CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium Shortage · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem is that plutonium is a man-made material. We make it from uranium by bombarding it with high energy particles. So if you run out of uranium, you also run out of plutonium. This is of course dependant on us not discovering alchemy in the next 10 years. To be honest, that would be pretty awesome, if watching TV has taught me anything.

  4. Re:just like.. internet sharing on Unfinished Windows 7 Hotspot Feature Exploited · · Score: 1, Informative

    Now slow down a minute.

    My very first laptop that I purchased back in 2003 could do this, and it was running Windows XP. I used this feature almost every day in the dorms to put up a wireless network with Internet so that we could have some small lan parties. The Internet was a little slow with a huge group of people using a single connection, but it worked really well. This feature worked naively in Windows XP and didn't require an additional software or special tinkering, you just had link the Ethernet to the wireless port. It also worked in reverse (You just had to swap a check box), but I never had the opportunity to try it.

    What this feature does (in addition to that) is reshare a wifi connection with a single wifi card. That way 1 person could pay for the wireless Internet, and then immediately reshare it on the same computer.

    Just because you didn't know a windows machine could do it, doesn't mean it can't. Apple is not the foundation of all ideas when it comes to computers. Sometimes Microsoft gets something right too.

  5. Whoops on Data Entry Errors Resulted In Improper Sentences · · Score: 4, Funny

    I always knew using microsoft excel would damn your soul to hell, but I didn't know it could also send you to jail as well.

  6. Lie about windows to get posted on slashdot on Some Users Say Win7 Wants To Remove iTunes, Google Toolbar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did the poster even read the article? The summary is longer than the sentence that mentions this.

    "The upgrade process gave me a list of about 5 programs to un-install," he says. "Which I did, it was some drivers, iTunes and the Google Toolbar." What does the author say about this horrible, horrible thing? "I have to say that is about the most successful Windows upgrade I have ever personally experienced."

    That's not sarcasm, that's not some biting commentary at microsoft, that is a user who is content with his instillation of Windows 7 on a computer. This is not an article about how microsoft is afraid of competition and squashes even the slightest attempt at competition, this is about how 3 people were relatively happy with their instillations.

    The poster picked the single most insignificant statement out of context, and made it their headline. I'm not sure if the poster was being ironic, or trying to troll linux fans into reading a pro-microsoft article, but the summary has almost nothing to do with the article.

    The upgrade didn't make you purge your computer of open source software. Windows 7 didn't make you uninstall OO.O, or even Lotus Notes (which really, needs to die). The upgrade did not purge your computer of competitor's software, it just so happened that those 2 programs needed to be reinstalled.

  7. I don't understand? on How To Play Poker With Your Rock Band Guitar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't really understand why this is news. I have a friend that can kick your ass at any fighting game using the guitar instead of a controller. Myself, I've played Halo with the rock band drum kit, and I had 1 kill. You can't move or fire, but you can do the melee hit, which I used to ambush people who thought I was AFK. I've played several Xbox live games with the guitar, including that free side scrolling shooter. The main disadvantage was I couldn't go left or right, but up and down was easy, and all you really need. The controls for poker are so trivial I can't imagine this took more than 5 minutes of effort. The real story would be if he was playing counterstrike with the guitar, or if he was writing software with the guitar instead of using a keyboard. Because really, what coder wouldn't want to strum a guitar and have code flow from his awesome chords?

  8. Re:interest prospect on Using the Sea To Cool Your Data Center · · Score: 4, Informative

    A low carbon stainless steel such as the 316 series should be more than sufficient for any piping. Moving parts such as pumps and impellers would be made of titanium for optimum durability and minimum downtime. Lifetime of the pipes is assured by simply adding a small corrosion allowance to the wall thickness (maybe 1/4"), and checking for corrosion once in a while to make sure its not being destroyed faster than you predict. Although that may sound ridiculous, I promise you it is both fairly common and not that hard. Seawater is the lifeblood of many power plants, and it doesn't take a miracle to handle it.

  9. Although it uses less electricity, not "green" on Using the Sea To Cool Your Data Center · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although this solution is certainly "low power" by no means should it be considered to be entirely green. I work as an engineer on many projects that involve sea water, and when you're using it for a cooling source you typically need to inject some sort of chemical to sterilize the water to keep growths off your heat exchangers (barnacles are sort of a pain in the ass in your exchangers). As a result, using sea water for large scale cooling operations is prohibited in large regions of the United States (specifically the gulf coast) mostly over concerns that the large amounts of warm bleached water will damage the ecosystem. Although, that issue aside, using the ocean as a cooling medium is a great idea, and has been used reliably by power plants for many years.

  10. Really? on Shadowed Lunar Craters May Be Coldest Spot In the Solar System · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since nobody is going to read it, the coldest temperature is 33K. The reason they care is because they'll probably find a lot of ice there.

    I'm not sure how I feel about this. I was of the understanding that space was on the order of 3K due to the cosmic background radiation. 33K is positively warm compared to this.

  11. Re:Why is OS/2 mentioned twice in the article? on Old Operating Systems Never Die · · Score: 1

    I used to work for a large HMO. Large enough that I can't tell you what state I was in at the time, otherwise you'd figure it out. The software that we used to keep track of pretty much everything (client information, billing records, payments) ran on Windows 3.1. It was a special miracle that we were able to keep the machine alive, and all patches and modifications we made had to be applied via floppy disc. The main benefit of the system was that it never had any downtime, but it was a pain in the ass to troubleshoot.

    So yeah, you've got several million lives depending on Windows 3.1. And to think all you did with it as a kid was pay with the paint program. Or MS Logo if you were lucky.

  12. Re:WTF Summary on Google Buys reCAPTCHA For Better Book Scanning · · Score: 1

    The system works by having you validate 2 words. One of the words is a word that already been verified to be correct, a known quantity. The other word is the unknown word. If you get the first one correct, it assumes you got the other one correct to. Error correction is done by having multiple people evaluate the same unknown word. If 3 people agree that the unknown word is "Bacon", the word is then taken to be bacon.

    Random people trying to mess up the system will not suceed. However, if you convinced everyone to simply enter "Bacon" we could have some amazing google book searches.

  13. Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course on Does Your College Or University Support Linux? · · Score: 1

    At the Colorado School of Mines our physics department only uses Linux on their computers. Every computer in every lab is equipped wiht Linux In addition to this, you can typically find a linux box in most of the computer labs. They even issue you linux notebooks from the laptop checkout center if you specifically request it.

  14. That's not really the issue here. on The Case For Mandatory Touch-Typing In High School · · Score: 4, Funny

    Say goodbye evolution/creation debate. Say hello keyboard layout wars.

    I won't have you teaching my children DVORAK, you left wing hippie! If QWERTY was good enough for our founding fathers, its good enough for us!

  15. Re:Good luck on Running Old Desktops Headless? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're all putting WAY too much thought into this. The easiest way to do this is to take a magnet and manually adjust your hard drive until it has the SSH capability you're looking for. Everyone has at least 1 or 2 good magnets laying around, and with a steady hand this could become a great do it yourself project. Plus, you get epeen bragging rights when people start talking about how they used to code in assembly. You coded with a magnet and a HD.

    Wait? That would be a pain in the ass? Almost impossible?

    The AGP card is rated for 63 watts, maximum. Over a year that's 552 kWh. Paying for electricity at $0.15 a kWh you run into an additional $6.90 a month to run the AGP card.

    1. Find a quarter in your couch cushions.

    2. Plug the damn thing in for the 10 minutes it would take to setup a remote SSH connection using the suggestions people have put in this thread.

    3. Pay the additional power bill with the quarter.

    4. Move on with your life

    5.....

    6. Profit!

  16. Careful on Running Over Virtual Pedestrians Helps In-Game Ad Recall · · Score: 4, Funny

    Quick, hide this research as fast as you can. Otherwise the next Bioshock will have you kill little sisters to various advertising jingles. I can just see the little girl in my hands, begging for mercy while in the background you hear, "J. E. L. L. O, Its Alive!" In Wait...that might actually work.

  17. Don't trust anyone on Virtual Bank Woes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to play Eve-Online, and the only rule that was absolute, was that you should NEVER trust people that you are not in real life friends with. Almost every person in the game would rob you at a moment's notice with no remorse, and brag about it afterwards. There's stories where people joined companies and rose to the ranks of massive alliances, just so they could close the alliance and screw everyone ever. To top it off, there's not a single thing you could do about it. That's why the banks have always baffled me. I've never been able to understand how giving your isk to somebody else could ever possibly turn out to be good. One other major example of this was the lotteries they used to run, somebody ran a lottery giving out massive prizes for weeks, until he was trusted enough to get a few billion isk in lottery ticket purchases. Then he ran off with the entire thing and vanished.

    This seems very cynical, and I'm sure many of you are members of successful corporations where you trust the random people you meet on the Internet. However, I was in the Phoenix Alliance, and I remember the first Dreadnought stolen because somebody has the password to the damn space station and gave it out.

    So yeah. In summary, trust nobody that you can't go beat up in person.

  18. Re:Wasted fruit? on Watermelon Juice Makes Great Biofuel · · Score: 5, Informative

    My family owns and operates a peach orchard in Colorado. I've helped with harvesting the trees and pruning the crop, and I'm reasonably familiar with the entire process. Any kind of surface defect or imperfection results in the fruit being thrown on the ground, or discarded. Our farm is fairly small, and only the truly massive farms can really make money selling fruit at less than grade A standards, because the prices are simply awful. Its just not worth the fuel to ship it at that point.

    Most of your grade "B" fruit and veggies comes from grade "A" fruit that sat around too long, and was sold at the lower price rather than thrown out.

  19. Re:From the license... on Behind Menuet, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly · · Score: 1

    I hate to be difficult, but from what I remember in my computer science classes optimizing by hand isn't always a good idea. Unless you know exactly what you're doing and what your compiler is doing at every step in the process, the odds are good that you're going to make it slower. Indeed, I think a recent article on slashdot discussed the merits of optimization in video games and the underlying message of the author was that unless you had a routine you used literally a billion times, it wasn't worth it to write the code in assembly. Certainly writing a modern OS in assembly is interesting enough, but it seems like this is more on the level of building a bridge out of toothpicks. Something that you would do for the challenge of it, and not for any practical concern.

  20. Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game on StarCraft II Single-Player Details Revealed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This sounds suspiciously like a standard tower defense game. They were wildly popular when I played starcraft (9 way lurker defense anyone) and if you visit any flash gaming website you'll find a dozen. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (I'm addicted to gemcraft), but it does seem unoriginal. I wonder if they'll give you the ability to change it to nighttime at will.

  21. Re:Solution? on US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did nobody actually read the linked documents? All of them are promoting hiring students from the university. They simply list what laws apply when a busness hires international students. All of them exist to clear up misconceptions people might have about hiring foreign students, so that they are not unfairly ignored in the hiring process.

    For example, one question is "Does the student need a work permit to be hired" and the answer is no. The student cannot get a work permit until they have a written job offer, so any employer waiting for proof of a work permit before giving an interview is asking for the impossible.

    I think Cmdrtaco should read TFA.

  22. Did nobody here take chemistry on Printable Batteries Should Arrive Next Year · · Score: 1, Interesting

    In my high school chemistry class we made paper batteries. We took a single piece of filter paper, and we took an eyedropper and we spilled various chemicals on the filter paper in an "X" pattern. You would then place a piece of metal (depending on your liquid, copper, zinc, lead) and put it on the paper, and figure out what combination of chemicals and metals gave you electricity (as measured by a handy multimeter). The entire thing was soaked with a saline solution so it conducted electricity. The exercise was fairly simple, and well understood. It was also one of the two labs we did in chemistry, which was really depressing because it was the "advanced class" and the loser normal class was making silver coated bottles, tie die shirts, candy, silly putty, and all sorts of things week after week. Stupid normal class with their fun and useful facts.

    Anyway, I did this experiment in 2003. The real news story here should be, "New way to use something old." not "New and mind bogglingly challenging concept".

  23. Re:Vista was the fastest Windows on Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked · · Score: 1

    What prerelease hype? Go to the Microsoft website and download it for yourself.

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

    Its one thing to say you'll only believe it when you see it for products that exist only in the hands of the coders and beta testers (Duke Nukem Forever), but for something that's had an open beta for nearly a year now, its sorta just saying "I need ninjas to break into my house and install it on my hard drive". Which is unfair, because ninjas are expensive as hell. The only significant difference between the free beta and the final version is language support. I think you're unwilling to even try it, and have already decided that Windows 7 has failed.

  24. Re:From a typical web surfer's point of view on Bell Starts Hijacking NX Domain Queries · · Score: 1

    I think you're wrong that this is helpful to the typical surfer. Sprint does exactly the same thing to me, and their redirect search page is a clone of google, but with one important "feature" that google missed. Not a single item on the page is returned from a search, its all advertising and sponsored links. I have never seen such worthless search results in my life. They allow you to opt out of the page with a measly 6 clicks, and you end up with a cookie (just like in TFA), but its still an annoying process that I have to go through every time I dump my cache. If ISPs want to sell this as a feature, they need to return useful search results, instead of worthless advertisements. Also (and I know this is fantasy) they need to make it opt-in.

  25. Lets try to be helpful on English DJ Claims Wi-Fi Allergy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've heard of this before, and I've always been skeptical of it. Not because that I think it's impossible for people to absorb electromagnetic radiation, but because the first people to expose me to this sensitivity believed pyramid shaped crystals could fix them. I really blame them for killing all of the credibility this condition may have had with me, but it's their own fault. This always struck me as a powerful example of the placebo effect. People want to feel sick when electromagnetic waves are around them, so they do. I've had a few friends deeply wrapped up in holistic medicine, and you could pick any random ingredient on your soda (anything man made) and they give you a story of how they feel sick when they are in the room with that ingredient.

    I'm not going to sit here and bash the people who think they have this symptom. You're going to get 50 posters who have done that thoroughly by now. Instead I'm going to offer them a suggestion. Find a person who exhibits a visible symptom when they're exposed to the types of radiation you object to. If we can take a person and reliably give them a rash with a wifi router, then we're in business. Until then you're...well this lady who had her house covered in tin foil.

    "But beneath the coats of magnolia paint, she points out, the walls are lined with a special paper that contains a layer of tin-foil; and upstairs, the windows are hung with a fine, silvery gauze."
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-450995/The-woman-needs-veil-protection-modern-life.html