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User: ndogg

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  1. Re:Or maybe not... on Sniffing Out Cancer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's a little hypocritical, now isn't it?

    We constantly complain about the RIAA not being able to see the benefits of new audio and file-sharing technology, and only being pessimistic about it.

    Why, when something like this can be used for good (i.e. early detection of cancer, and drunk drivers), must we prevent such a technology just because it can be used for privacy invasion?

    We need to be on the watch for such wrong uses, but we need to allow the technology to be (as in existence) as well.

  2. Re:CNN math wizzes on Live Worms Found in Columbia Wreckage · · Score: 1

    It's a plot, I tell you! It's all a plot! The C. elegans are going to take over the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I can't believe we're going to be ruled by microscopic, invertebrate worms!!

  3. Re:Actually I imagine a lot of Iraqis have CD burn on Hilary Rosen from RIAA will write Iraq's Copyrights? · · Score: 1

    Sure, but it's pretty difficult to think intelligently when you're starving or dying of thirst.

  4. Re:Hope you use breathing masks... on An Affordable Air Purifier For Dusty Computer Labs? · · Score: 5, Funny
    Every 5 years you're required by law to have a chest x-ray to check for silicosis if you still work in the industry.


    Can't you spell the word out? For Pete's sake, it's only 45 letters long:
    pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconios is
  5. Re:air purifier on An Affordable Air Purifier For Dusty Computer Labs? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I won't don't that it works well, but have you used other products of this type to be able to compare?

    Perhaps the Ionic Breeze works well, but perhaps there are other filters that work many times better, and that's why CR rated the Ionic Breeze as poor.

  6. Re:He did his time on Should You Hire a Hacker? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know people who work in the prison system, and I can tell you that the prison system does nothing to help these people feel like they're people.

    Our system throws a person into a cell, expecting them to "learn a lesson" from just that. It is likely that they are not educated in how to live life like a normal, law-abiding citizen. They're given the basic necissities of life, and that's it. After a number of years, they are given their freedom, but they don't understand how to live with that freedom. Their basic necissties of life are no longer simply provided to them. They are too institutionalized at that point. So what do they do? They purposefully committ another crime so that they can get back into the prison system where they did not have to worry about those things.

    Education is a powerful tool, and it's what will keep people out of prison, and working in society as a useful member.

    Your revenge style thinking will only make the prisons more crowded and more expensive.

    I will not deny that reform will not work for all people. There are many people in prison that really ought to be in a psychiatric ward. To not try to reform a person is one of the most inhumane things you can do.

  7. Re:Acceptance on Lycoris Build 71 Beckons For Your Desktop · · Score: 1

    No, it doesn't work for 95% of the people. 95% of people happen to understand how it works, and they take advantage of that.

  8. Re:What difference does it make? on Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks · · Score: 1
    Their heads aren't stuck in a hole in the ground.


    Sure they are, they just don't realise it yet.
  9. Uhh... on Open Source DRM · · Score: 1

    April Fools was two days ago guys...

  10. Re:You mean... on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    No, no, no, the navy would put them on dolphin's heads first.

  11. Re:Woohoo! on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    You forgot one other technical hurdle: Somehow putting a giant frickin' laser on the moon too.

  12. Re:Pick A Product on Progeny Releases Linux Platform Manager · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Progeny's main purpose is to render services and support to its customers, first and foremost, not to release yet another Linux distribution like all the other Linux companies out there.

  13. Re:Civilian uses on Synthetic Vision · · Score: 1

    It's already available for civilian use. Though, as you can tell if you read the link, not all uses are so great.

    This technology has great potential for good things, as well as potential for lots of privacy rights violations. Obviously the technology should not be outlawed, but most certainly conduct should be monitored, and it should be easy for victims to take action against violators of their privacy.

  14. Re:Double-edged sword? on Hacker Leaks Unreleased CERT Reports · · Score: 1
    What usually happens in this scenario is that parents remove the childs seats in blind panic and as a result 10x more kids are killed by seatbelts and not being in carseats than would have been killed by the carseats.


    Most parents I know aren't that irresponsible. They would remove the defective car seat, and buy one from another manufacturer before they put their child back into the car.
  15. Re:Easy to cause trouble with on Beep! Beep! You have Broken the Law. · · Score: 1

    For a good time, call 555-9348...

    Gotta love bathroom stalls.

  16. Re:Honestly.... on Are We Not Ready For 64-Bit? · · Score: 1

    I dispute your figure because there are a lot of gamers out there, and computer games are continually pushing hardware. It will be no different with this either. Maybe, for once, we'll see a game (commercial, that is) come out for Linux, even if it's entire purpose is just to showcase the power of 64 bits.

  17. CNN's not the only one on Major Strike on Iraq Underway · · Score: 1

    CNN is not the only news station with a reporter in Baghdad.

  18. Re:Why this is important. on Chi Mei Announces 20" Active Matrix OLED Display · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're not making it easier for me to justify my new LCD that I bought that cost me an arm and a leg. It's really hard to type and get around these days.

  19. Re:the draft on Strike on Iraq · · Score: 1

    It's not going to happen for a few reasons...

    The military hates conscripts. They learnt their lesson in Vietnam. Conscripts are the worst soldiers you could have in an army. They're going to be first soldiers in Saddam's army to be surrendering. Actually, they already are.

    We already have an enormous force. The only other military force that has higher numbers of soldiers is China, but the reason for that is pretty obvious.

    While we've deployed many people over there, we haven't deployed all of them. I have friends who could still be deployed, but haven't been (they're actually bummed that they haven't been yet, and we occasionally give them crap about it all.)

    Technologically, we are the most advanced military on this planet.

  20. Re:Legitimizing Open Source on O-STEP In The Limelight · · Score: 1
    :-o

    It should acknowledge the free software movement as a part of our community, and acknowledge Microsoft as its adversary.


    Did I read that correctly? That's almost as strange as naked Raelians!
  21. Re:Record your life? on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 1

    However, this is a good step in the right direction for understanding how the brain works.

    A lot of times, in mathematics, you will find a mathematical model for a system by playing around with it (i.e. brute forcing it), but that gives you some sort of direction for which to find a proof.

    So far, no one has proven the neural net algorithms out there. For now, they just happen to work.

  22. Re:Brain Implants on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 1

    Neural nets make you wonder about telepathy, huh?

    After I had taken my AI class, I was a lot more skeptical about telepathy than I was before the class. Any transfer of information that would be coherent to the other neural network would be mathematically mind boggling, not to mention that nobody has any clue as to how that would happen.

  23. Re:Contiune your education... on Internships in the Post-DotCom Era? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    CS requires that people pay for software, and that is not the direction the economy is headed. Sorry, boys. Unless you know something I don't, proprietary software has been opening more and more, except in Microsoft's case. Even they are anticipating losing market share to OSS.


    I disagree. If majors were based on people being able to find a paying job based on that major, there would be no art or history majors out there.

    My impression of CS at my university is that it is a major for people who find programming interesting. Even if all software went the way of OSS/Free Software, there would still be jobs out there for us. They may or may not pay as much, but I can guarantee that it would require us to not be anti-social. In fact, I would say that OSS/Free Software would require us to be almost as social as a psychologist. To write and maintain programs that would ultimately be used by some group of people, we would have to understand how that social group thinks. We would have to take some of the same education that our target end-users take.

    Software would still be very difficult to create and support, even with the Perfect Programming Language(TM), because programming goes beyond memorizing syntax.
  24. Re:The history of Corel's Crazes on Microsoft Writes Off Corel · · Score: 1
    And then the linux thing. Everyone said it was a neat distro, not *very* revolutionary, but that it needed more work. Did they do the work? Did they develop the product until it lived up to its stated goals? Did they even maintain it long enough for it to take hold? No, they just went "hm, this isn't taking over the world overnight, it probably isn't worth the bother". Then they ran out of money.


    That's somewhat sad because Corel Linux was the first distribution of Linux I ever actually *used*. It was the first distribution that I found *easy* to use. They had done a really nice job with the installer, and had cleaned up KDE (which was still 1.0 at the time.) I knew very little about Linux at the time, and my attempts before Corel Linux had ended in spectacular failures, and then one of my brothers had given me Corel Linux, and all was well.

    Corel really showed that they understood how the end user thought with their distribution. If they had stuck with it, I have no doubt that they would have eclipsed Mandrake, SuSe, and all the other "desktop Linux" distributions very quickly.
  25. Nail on the head on Slashback: Humility, Patents. Vapor.com · · Score: 1

    I have worked with Qt before, and I must say that it's one of the nicest C++ toolkits I've ever worked with. The documentation is second to none (check it out: http://doc.trolltech.com/3.1/index.html), but...

    Right now, I'm working on a closed source project. I am just about to rewrite the entire thing in C++ (the current version was written by someone else in VB6, and the source has no documentation, and sparse comments, and some of the worst code and logic I've ever seen), and so I was given the task to choose what libraries the new version was going to use. I wanted to use Qt, which I had experience with and was very happy with, but its cost is prohibiting. In the end, I had to choose wxWindows due to costs (I refuse to touch MFC, even with a long stick.)

    I cannot agree with you more. At the very least, Trolltech should reduce their pricing on Qt significantly to make it at all viable to closed source developers. It doesn't matter how well made it is, its price can't be justified.