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User: sjpadbury

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Comments · 27

  1. Congress is ever the opportunist on Congress Is Trying To Expand The Patriot Act (rare.us) · · Score: 2

    "Quick everyone's distracted with Pokemon Go, let's see what we can get away with!"

  2. Read the article? on Disney Pulls a Reverse Santa, Takes Back Christmas Shows From Amazon Customers · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA:
    Amazon blamed the removal on "a temporary issue with some of our catalog data" which it says has been fixed, adding that "customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases."

    One person claimed on another blog that Disney was retroactively removing this on purpose, So of course we'll sensationalize that as the Headline here....

  3. Re:Ah... on The Dangers of Beating Your Kickstarter Goal · · Score: 3, Informative

    Someone hasn't looked at Civilization V, then.
    Civ V was good.
    Gods and Kings made it better.
    Brave New World (releases in about 4 hours for me) according to reviews is making it even better still.

  4. Greed on DC Comics Announces "Before Watchmen" · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Meanwhile, DC continues to show there is no move too desperate that they won't risk alienating their fans in the quest for the dollar.

    (Note: Not multiple dollars, they'll do it for just 1....)

  5. Sun came up in the East today, too.... on Zynga Accused of Cloning Hit Indie iPhone Game Tiny Tower · · Score: 1

    Zynga? Copy someone else's Game?

    I'm Shocked! Shocked, I say!

  6. Map Choice on Notch Asks For Trial By Combat · · Score: 0

    Q3DM17, The Longest Yard, is almost mandatory, I would think...

  7. Re:are the police extra sure he did it? on The Wi-Fi Hacking Neighbor From Hell · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the summary:

    'I decided to "get even" by launching computer attacks against him,' said Ardolf

    Sounds like he confessed, so, um, yeah?

  8. Re:oh noes, the newspaper is broken on NYT Update Breaks iPad App, Annoys Subscribers · · Score: 1

    If everyone was going to go away for a long weekend, maybe that wasn't the best time to be releasing an update then, hmm?

  9. Not unpatched here... on No Additional Firefox 4 Security Updates · · Score: 1

    I wasn't even given an option to upgrade or not, it just happened without asking and broke a couple add-ons I use every day.

  10. eBay on GPS Maker TomTom Submits Your Speed Data To Police · · Score: 1

    And in related news, the number of TomTom units available for sale on eBay tripled last night

  11. Re:I don't understand their justification on Google Delays General Release of Honeycomb Source · · Score: 1

    People already have the dev kit running on the Nook Color.
    If anything, source would *improve* the user experience at this point...

  12. More Accurate? on Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We're going to ignore the fact that this is more accurate, as a democracy is where everyone makes every decision, which is impractical on any large scale, while a republic is where we elect people to make decisions for us.

  13. Baen on Book Piracy — Less DRM, More Data · · Score: 4, Informative

    In all fairness, one of the reasons there's such a low piracy rate on Baen's books is that they are free to distribute as long as you don't charge for them

    Baen on their own website has many first books in series available: http://www.baen.com/library/

    Also, they've released CD's of books in many of their hardcovers over the years, with a license that allows copying, including online. One site that has them available is http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

    The only versions of their books that are electronically available and not allowed to be distributed are the ones purchased at http://www.webscription.net/

  14. Re:Stop daily service to save money on A Blue-Sky Idea For the USPS — Postal Trucks As Sensors · · Score: 1

    And Express mail isn't really handled on the regular routes, but a separate truck anyway.
    Days I get Express and the like delivered, I get an extra mailman in addition to the regular drop.

  15. Re:Dont hate, educate on Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous? · · Score: 1

    Except you don't know which person you're going to try and call on it is actually a complete whack-job who will now tailgate you and generally make a nuisance of themselves all the way to your destination where they will threaten you with bodily harm...

  16. It's Obvious on Google Apps Gets Two-Factor Security · · Score: 3, Funny

    Learn to keep track of your damn phone...

  17. Re:good on Copying Trumps Creating For FarmVille Creator Zynga · · Score: 1

    > Let's not forget all the FOSS clones of proprietary software too.

    Nearly all of those proprietary apps are themselves clones.

    So 2 wrongs makes a right?
    Heck, even if you're just copying a copy, it's still a copy of whomever had the original idea somewhere back up the chain.

    (Note: I'm not saying reusing an idea is right or wrong, I'm just pointing out the hole in this particular argument)

  18. Re:hmm on The iPad As In-Car Entertainment System Killer · · Score: 1

    I paid about $40 for the last one I got.
    Before that I got a dual-screen one that was about $70, the player died, but the second screen still works and I use a video out cable for my iPod to play movies on it.

  19. Re:Baen Free Library on Copyright Infringement of Books · · Score: 1

    In fact, their license agreement for the CD's encourages you to make copies and give to people, and they've had no issue with them being placed online, because it's just taking their request, and extending it to the logical conclusion.
    They figure that between the people that will read it, like it, and go out and buy it to support the author, and the people that start reading, and transition to paper books for a personal preference, they more than outweigh the people that would have bought a paper copy, but didn't once they found it online, since those are the same people that would have gotten them from a public library rather than buying it anyway...

    Anyway, the site that has copies of all the Baen CD's, which Baen knows about and approves of is http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
    They have expanded copies of the books hosted, and link to other sites that have the torrents on them.

    Read, Enjoy, and then support the authors!

  20. Re:I've got a bunch of digits of pi on 1.7 Billion Digits Of Pi On CD · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't that mean that any piece of code is actually a sequence of digits of pi, therefore nothing is copywritable since you can prove prior art as being a randomly starting sequence from pi?

  21. Patch has been posted! on Yahoo Changes Protocol, Blocks Third Party Clients · · Score: 1

    Trillian has a patch which allows you to connect normally again. Same place as the original announcement...

  22. Re:Finally, there's no objection! on Screensaver Bug in Mac OS X · · Score: 1
    Not only is it a security hole, it's a security hole in the screensaver!


    I remember the good old days of NT, when all you needed to do was replace login.scr with cmd.exe, log out, wait for 15 minutes, and you then happily play "logged in" as the system.


    Moral of the story: the only secure computer is the one sitting in a locked room, without any users on it at all!

  23. IE Doesn't render correctly anyway! on MSN Blocks Mozilla, Other Browsers [updated] · · Score: 1


    Running IE 5.5 under Win98SE on my machine here at work, and it's cutting off the beginning of the headlines in the middle of the page.
    Also, my attempts at messing with the user agent have been unable to work, although I will note that saving the page and then opening it with mozilla 0.9.4 it looks just fine to me.

  24. Re:What would happen on Going Up? · · Score: 1

    Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson has an example based on a martian space elevator, where the tether is severed at the couterweight end.

    Short version: cable wraps itself around the planet a couple times, with the parts that were higher up hitting faster. Of course you have the friction of reentry as it comes back in to take into account, so the thing is fairly nasty. You end up not wanting to be anywhere near the equator when it comes down.

    Another interesting thing he brings up in a later book, Blue Mars, is a way to get around the tether point needing to be on the equator: Split the cable about 10,000 miles up, and have it tethered to 2 points eqiudistant from the equator. This opens up _lots_ of possibilities for where to put the thing, as opposed to being stuck right on the line.
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  25. BUSLink on USB Hard Drive Recommendations? · · Score: 1

    Personally, I've been using Buslink's 20 GB USB Hard drive for the past 6 months.
    Bought it in Comp USA for about $300, it's running closer to $200 now.
    Haven't had any problems with it under Win98, just download the drivers from the web page and go.
    Haven't had the time to look into Linux support for it, but if someone wants to slap me upside the head with info on it, I wouldn't argue. :)
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