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User: _merlin

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  1. Re:with what? on US Links North Korea To Sony Hacking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Keep in mind, I can't recall if it was 2k11 or 2k12 but the Obama admin did not exactly dispute the pentagons view that "cyber" attacks could/should be viewed as an act of war. The "terror" threats against theaters have escalated things from a criminal matter, attack on a corporation, to a state matter attack on the public and order; therefore some kind of "response" is required. I am sure 0bama is trying to find a way to "do something" or appear to be without pissing off the Chinese.

    So the US has committed acts of war against Germany by tapping their head of state's phone, etc. Or is it only an act of war when it's against US interests?

  2. Re:Driver in video was unfamiliar with the car on Jaguar and Land Rover Just Created Transparent Pillars For Cars · · Score: 1

    In Australia, many European cars (e.g. BMW, VW, etc.) have the turn signal stalk on the left even though they're right-hand drive models.

  3. Re:Check your math. on Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney · · Score: 1

    How does this legitimise the raids? They didn't get anyone connected to this incident when they conducted the raids. They didn't obtain any information allowing them to predict or prevent today's incident. They didn't even manage to charge anyone. All they did was piss off a significant proportion of the population by harassing people who, as far as we can tell, were innocent (lack of charges points to this). For all we know, today's incident could be a direct result of the raids. Harassing innocent people tends to radicalise them.

  4. Re:Check your math. on Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, but they managed to piss a lot of people off mightily. You can't expect no backlash if you do shit like that.

  5. Re:Professional courtesy on Attorney General Won't Force New York Times Reporter To Reveal Source · · Score: 1

    You obviously aren't a whore and don't know any. Whores don't try to poach customers from each other. Whores don't take it personally when a customer chooses another whore. I could go on, but it's off-topic. But I can assure you, professional courtesy definitely exists among whores.

  6. Re:Nerd Point of Contention on Dad Makes His Kid Play Through All Video Game History In Chronological Order · · Score: 2

    I don't think there was a mad scramble to copycat, the Dual Shock is a better controller than the N64 controller.. Nintendo should have never let Shiggy near the controller design people.

    The funny thing is, the PlayStation controller is very much a clone of the SNES pad layout. All equivalent buttons in the same places. They just added some extra shoulder buttons, jammed in analog sticks within thumb reach, and then added vibration.

  7. Re:Effort dilution on Node.js Forked By Top Contributors · · Score: 1

    Funny, the biggest issue I get with switching RHD to LHD is checking my blind spot over the opposite shoulder. The motion feels unnatural.

    PAL actually has reasons besides intentional incompatibility. Alternating phase on alternate lines makes it possible to correct for phase shift, so the tint control can be set and forgotten.

  8. Re:Apple pay already lost... on The Cashless Society? It's Already Coming · · Score: 1

    Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 are capable of emulating EMV provided you have an app from your bank (in Australia CBA and Westpac provide apps, I think some UK banks do as well). It's coming to everyone slowly but steadily. Apple Pay is just Apple's spiffy marketing for their implementation of EMV emulation on a smartphone.

  9. Re:SiwftKey? on Stephen Hawking's New Speech System Is Free and Open-source · · Score: 1

    I seriously don't understand all the love for SwiftKey. When Samsung switched from their own proprietary predictive input to SwiftKey, the net effect was that input became a whole lot slower and less accurate for me. It just doesn't seem to be that good.

  10. Re:Cash no longer talks I've found on The Cashless Society? It's Already Coming · · Score: 1

    The only consumer-oriented places I go that require payment by credit/debit cards are hire car joints. However many trade supply shops, web hosts, and other business-oriented places only accept payment by direct deposit, credit, etc.

  11. Re:Apple pay already lost... on The Cashless Society? It's Already Coming · · Score: 1

    Apple Pay is EMV-compatible and requires no work for the merchant to support over supporting regular Visa/Mastercard NFC cards.

  12. Re:More than cash and cc on The Cashless Society? It's Already Coming · · Score: 1

    So true. I check in at home, then print a boarding pass at the airport because it's so much quicker and more convenient when going through the gate.

  13. Re:Girls, girls, girls... on Google, National Parks Partner To Let Girls Program White House Xmas Tree Lights · · Score: 1

    My brother was a nurse in Australia for a few years before advancing to become a paramedic. He actually did encounter a lot of sexism at work. The older female nurses would treat him as though he shouldn't be there - "What kind of girly man are you? What are you doing here? This is a women's domain!" The younger female nurses would flirt, proposition him, grab his arse, etc. Basically all the same stuff that women in male-dominated spaces complain about. Makes you wonder whether men and women really are all that different.

  14. Re:IBM and HP, please release the source! on DOOM 3DO Source Released On Github · · Score: 1

    Yes, she would have needed to obtain redistribution rights for the source code from all copyright holders.

  15. Re:IBM and HP, please release the source! on DOOM 3DO Source Released On Github · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trouble is there's so much cross-licensing and license pollution involved. No-one would know for sure whether a codebase contains something licensed in a way that prevents them from redistributing it in source code form. Well, IBM might, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to.

  16. Re:quick notes? on Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing · · Score: 1

    Mechanical pencil is definitely fastest for me, but if I'm writing for an extended period of time I find a pen more comfortable to use. Speed isn't the only consideration.

  17. Re:Marriage is 80%/80% on Ask Slashdot: Making a 'Wife Friendly' Gaming PC? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Mod parent up. If you're always looking to make sure your partner's doing "their 50%" and you're not doing more than "your 50%" you're going to end up bitter very quickly. You don't want to go there.

  18. Re: Wife has the money on Kim Dotcom Says Legal Fight Has Left Him Broke · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but in his position would you rather have the assets in a trust fund for your kids, or appropriated by the MafiAA? Even if the wife leaves, his kids ultimately get the proceeds of the fund.

  19. Re:Stick shift isn't just nostalgic on Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing · · Score: 1

    I don't know any more. I learned to drive with manual transmission, and drove manuals for years. The few occasions when I had to drive autos were incredibly frustrating: can't control speed precisely in a low gear with just accelerator, engine braking not very effective, etc. Then I drove an Lexus IS-F. Granted, it isn't an epicyclic gearbox like a traditional auto, it's effectively an electronically actuated manual with a torque converter stuck on the front. But it was like a glimpse of the future - almost instantaneous shifts, near-perfect throttle blipping, and the torque converter stays locked up all the time when you have anything other than first gear selected.

    This technology is slowly filtering down to cars that normal people can afford. The seven-speed auto in the current Toyota Auris feels like a similar setup. I think it's finally getting to the point where a manual gearbox really could become obsolete soon. Or I could just be getting old.

    (As an aside, I've been pretty unimpressed with the VW DSG. It adds a lot more weight than a torque converter, and in city driving it grinds the clutches all the time - I can see why those things overheat and fail so often. Also, the stop/start thing can be borderline dangerous. For example if you come to a standstill in a position where you're having to hold the steering (e.g. waiting to turn facing down a hill), the wheel will kick very hard when the engine cuts out and you lose power steering. I'm sure it saves fuel, but it's got to have got someone into trouble at least once.

  20. Re:What's happening to Linux? on Bad Lockup Bug Plagues Linux · · Score: 1

    Every commercial software product I've worked on has had at least some level of unit testing, QA and UAT before it's considered ready for prime time. You'd be sacked for using, "Does it compile?" as your metric for it being ready.

  21. Re:Wife has the money on Kim Dotcom Says Legal Fight Has Left Him Broke · · Score: 2

    You know, I wonder if that isn't just a smart business move on his part. Break up with wife on paper so she and the kids get the money and MafiAA can't take it away from them. Worst that can happen is they drag his fat arse off to jail, and daddy becomes a martyr who stuck it to THE MAN.

  22. Re:512 bytes on Edsac Goes Live, At UK's National Museum of Computing · · Score: 2

    It's 512 words, not bytes. Each word was over two bytes long. Memory was word-addressable.

  23. Re:Obsession on Australia Elaborates On a New Drift Model To Find MH370 · · Score: 2

    It's also a useful training exercise for the navy. It lets them practice a near-impossible salvage operation that isn't contrived.

  24. Re:Americans are known to be ignorant an shallow.. on Blame America For Everything You Hate About "Internet Culture" · · Score: 2

    You can't remove my State's direct democracy by simply believing we don't have it, though you're certainly free to believe whatever you want, and spew it around the internet.

    I might believe in it when you vote down the PATRIOT Act, kick the TSA bullshit out of your state, get rid of civil forfeiture... None of these things benefit the people, so why do they exist in a "direct democracy?"

  25. Re:The French are the world's Standards Board on Blame America For Everything You Hate About "Internet Culture" · · Score: 1

    It's not just stupid, it's insulting to the audience. And the video will look just as stupid back in the US because of context.