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User: eric434

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  1. Re:Offer the Ebook for free. on What Can I Do About Book Pirates? · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    isn't this exactly what is the problem with copyright? People sitting on their asses, demanding to get paid, while blaming piracy for not getting money for some work created ages ago.

    Fuck you. Stop talking about industries you know nothing about.

    Go try making a living at this. Go try making any money at all as an author, a musician, an artist, or anything creative, THEN come back and tell us that it's all about "sitting on your ass and demanding to get paid."

    The reality is exactly the opposite. Just because the law makes it possible for someone to sit on their ass doesn't mean that anyone ever makes money doing that. The reality is you have to put days, months, and years into creating work and you never know if you'll make a damn penny off it. You have to write, you have to paint, you have to perform, and then you have to go out and promote your work over and over again until someone comes along and pays you money for your copyrighted work.

    Any other business, you would get paid while you were working. By relying on copyright, you work for free now -- to create something of value to society -- in hopes that someone will find it worthwhile enough to pay you later. It's one of the riskiest businesses out there, and it takes so much hard work and dedication that saying creative people "sit on their asses and demand to get paid" shows you know nothing about how these industries work.

  2. BSOD on British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows · · Score: 1

    The term "Blue Screen of Death" is now deprecated. It has been replaced with "Blue Mushroom Cloud of Death."

    Also, does that 22-million-saved figure include the cost of fixing the horrible errors and accidents that occur as a result of this?

  3. Cameras aren't the same as people on Online Colleges Could Spy On Students – By Law · · Score: 2, Insightful

    These designers need to get a clue. Cameras will not replace human proctors any time soon.

    Instant distance learning cheat:
    1) Plug magic 360-degree anti-cheating fingerprint camera into laptop.
    2) Sit down at desk with other laptop.
    3) Bring your buddy the anthropology-whiz-for-hire into the room. Hand him the laptop from step 1.
    4) Buddy gets under desk and takes test. You spend an hour on IRC basking in the epic lulz.

  4. Get rid of registration, first on Congress Considers Reform On Orphaned Works · · Score: 1

    As a content creator, having to register my work with the Copyright Office is the bane of my existence. Why should I have to spend hours sitting in an office sifting through my work to sort out published from unpublished, declaring each published work (where there might be 600 such works in a registration) as a separate line-item on a form, then pay $45 per registration just for the privilege of being able to claim my rights?!

    And then if I ever decide to sue Disney or whomever because they used something of mine without asking, I'll spend years and thousands of dollars in court as they try to find the most minor errors in my record-keeping or registration procedure. Blah!

    It's time to strike one for the little guy, for the creatives that don't have a whole corporate infrastructure dedicated to making sure someone gets paid for their art. Enough with this "artists should be starving or cogs in a machine" crap. Get rid of registration and even the playing field so your average Joe with an artistic side can stand up to corporations that would otherwise happily run roughshod over everyone else's rights.

  5. van Eck? on Computer Control, by Bug and by Brain · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is this the same Wim van Eck that's known for van Eck phreaking; i.e. using radiation from a CRT to replicate what's being displayed on said CRT?

    http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,s id9_gci550525,00.html

    "This term combines the name of Wim van Eck, who in 1985 authored an academic paper that described this form of electronic eavesdropping, with the term phreaking, the earlier practice of using special equipment to make phone calls without paying. Van Eck phreaking is identified in the U.S. government project known as Tempest and, although some information remains classified, has probably been used to spy on suspected criminals and in espionage."

  6. Awesome! on A Cleaner, Cheaper Route to Titanium · · Score: 4, Informative

    I took Sadoway's class last year. Awesome guy -- this is right up his alley (making things more environmentally friendly).

    Here's a PDF presentation on the process:
    http://web.mit.edu/dsadoway/www/MOE_Ti.pdf

  7. Start practicing on Reporter Phone Records Being Used to Find Leaks · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    What with these developments, it might be a good idea to start practicing for the soon-to-come rallies.

    1) Remember, use your right arm. Palm flat, pointing towards the ground, with the edge of your hand over your heart. Salute by swinging your arm out stiffly until pointing forwards. "Sieg Heil!" has been deprecated in favor of the English translation, "Hail Victory!"

    2) Back rigid and straight. Legs as stiff and straight as possible. Raise one leg until it is at a 45-degree angle to the other (which is vertical). Step forward.

    3) Nucular, not nuclear.

  8. Re:Kim Peek & NASA on Scientific Brain Linked to Autism · · Score: 1

    This is Harvard. They cannot and will not fail any of their students.

  9. Re:Not Feynman. on Steve Jobs In Praise of Dropping Out · · Score: 1

    Richard Feynman is mildly famous for having said that "I love to think and I don't want to screw
    up the machine," electing to go with sensory deprivation instead of drugs to get a hallucinogenic experience going.


    This was the same sensory deprivation experience where he smoked pot beforehand to get the process going, of course. Read the book if you don't believe me...

  10. MirrorDot on Homebrew Air Conditioning for Under $25 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Next up, a $24 watercooling rig for his web server.

    http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/5cb66a4a72a5269bc 29e9dd8f982b3da/index.html

  11. Re:Revolutionary. on A Projection Display For Your Pocket · · Score: 1

    Actually, it's considerably *more* accurate and positionable than you'd need, since you need much higher accuracy and far higher speed to do raster scanning (like this) as opposed to vector graphics (like most laser shows).

  12. Re:Already been discussed over at HF on Making Holograms In The Kitchen · · Score: 1

    Oooh, fun :)

    (I'm a total hobbyist -- you can probably tell from my table and my work.)

    Saxby is definitely more oriented towards practical holography, which is why he called it Practical Holography. :) There's a reason it's the Definitive Reference for display holographers, though. (next to Unterseher et al.'s Holography Handbook)

  13. Re:Already been discussed over at HF on Making Holograms In The Kitchen · · Score: 1

    Hariharan?! Saxby all the way, baby! ;)

  14. Re:Already been discussed over at HF on Making Holograms In The Kitchen · · Score: 1

    For the record, dichromated gelatin makes *extremely* bright holograms that are viewable in daylight; they're the ones you see on pendants and novelty items where foil-stamping won't work. (for example, those swim goggles with skulls or snake eye holograms where you'd normally see the swimmer's eyes)

    Since he said the holograms were feeble and weak... I doubt DCG was used.

  15. Re:Already been discussed over at HF on Making Holograms In The Kitchen · · Score: 1

    Not quite. What he's talking about -- as far as I can tell -- is mastering foil holograms. The master is nickel-plated, and then used to stamp the interference patterns in foil. That's how they make holograms on Visa cards and any kind of printed matter; it's the only way to mass-produce holograms.

  16. Revolutionary. on A Projection Display For Your Pocket · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If they can manufacture this cheap, then it will revolutionize laser lightshows. Effectively, this is a closed-loop scanning galvanometer capable of 30K+ speeds -- and current scanners with similar capabilities cost thousands of dollars per axis. They're a lot bigger too.

    If you replace the dinky red diode with a few hundred milliwatts of green, then guess what? Laser show in your pocket, at a price that any would-be laserist can afford. Not to mention all the applications in laser marking: the flexure arrangement means that the Fraunhofer galvo can achieve much longer lifetimes than standard ball-bearing arrangments. When you're scanning thousands of times per second, 24 hours a day... that's a good thing.

  17. Already been discussed over at HF on Making Holograms In The Kitchen · · Score: 3, Informative

    We've been discussing the Liti 'instant hologram' film over at HolographyForum for awhile. The big downside is that these are transmission holograms, and are therefore quite a bit harder to view than reflection holograms. On the other hand, self-developing film is very cool -- normally, you need to develop holograms in a fashion quite similar to photographic prints.

  18. Re:Looking at picture of lock on Kensington Laptop Locks Not So Secure · · Score: 1

    No, with the lock locked.

    Again, you use the exact same technique as you would with a conventional tubular lock. Insert the pen, apply torque, apply forward pressure, wash rinse repeat... :)

  19. Re:Looking at picture of lock on Kensington Laptop Locks Not So Secure · · Score: 1

    Nope.

    Look at how tubular lock picks work. Now consider that the plastic used with Bic pens is soft. Now look at the diameter of the pen.

    The only reason you need the scissors is to cut the Bic.

  20. Re:So, so corporate on Kensington Laptop Locks Not So Secure · · Score: 1

    Just to let you know, Marc Tobias (the guy behind the site) is a lawyer... in fact, he's written something like five police textbooks.

  21. Re:What I love about slashdot (Was: Re:Audiophile on Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers · · Score: 1

    The Rockport Sirus III (the turntable) did indeed slaughter the Meitner.

    Actually, I don't know what the cables were made of. I do suspect that much of the cost was to finance Transparent Audio's insane marketing budget...

    Something I'm starting to learn about the audio cable industry is that you can have a fantastic and revolutionary technology, but if you don't have the marketing department or even if you price it in a sane fashion then it gets treated like a "budget" cable. Coming soon: the AGTech Reference series, featuring rhodium over copper connectors and an even more transparent, natural sound. Starting at $1000/m...

  22. Re:What I love about slashdot (Was: Re:Audiophile on Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No kidding.

    You think those speakers were good... I recently had the opportunity to audition the Kharma Exquisite 1D ($70,000 to $120,000 depending on upgrades), albeit in a sub-standard room. Now that was audio :)

    Granted, the sources were a $15k CD/SACDAC and $75,000 turntable... complete with $30,000 speaker cables!

    No I'm not kidding!
    But man -- it sure sounded awesome. As in, mind-blowingly ear-opening good.

    All I can say is -- if you think $15 headphones is as good as it gets, I both pity and envy you. The former because you haven't heard music reproduction at anything approaching good, and the latter because you don't lust after audio systems that cost as much as a house.

  23. Re:Wrong questions on Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, that cable phenomena you speak of has nothing to do with which directions electrons "flow better" in. Generally, many audiophile cables have a separate shield that is connected at one end, and in order for it to introduce the least amount of noise possible it should be connected at the source end -- hence cable directionality. Also (and more debatably), if you see the trace on a time domain reflectometer of an audio cable (with said construction) connected wrong way round, then you'll be pretty horrified at the massive impedance artifacts.

  24. Re:What I love about slashdot (Was: Re:Audiophile on Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers · · Score: 4, Informative

    Uh, I did read the article. But the speakers they're making look like they're aimed at the "Executive desk stereo" market, not the audio market.

    These are audiophile speakers:
    http://www.wilsonaudio.com

  25. Audiophile applications on Sake Used to Make Wooden Speakers · · Score: -1, Informative

    I wonder when we'll see wood-cone based speakers filter into the world of hi-fi, if ever.

    High end manufacturers already use titanium for tweeters and epoxy-treated paper for woofers. The question here would be whether the wood could be manufactured with enough consistency in sonic properties as to ensure reliably good sound quality. The problem with most wood is that the grain varies, and hence the propagation of sound through the driver cone.