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User: Frymaster

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Comments · 986

  1. Re:Strange on Happy 35th birthday, RFC 1! · · Score: 4, Funny
    I'm probably burning karma with this post but i think its completely unfair that that post got knocked down.

    i think you're confusing the subject of this story with the lesser-known RFK.

    request for karma

  2. Re:First Glance on E-Voting Company Reveals Their Source Code · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    That is almost certainly because it contains strong encryption, which is considered munitions (!) under US export law.

    no, it's because of bush's foreign policy of "exporting democracy" to...

    oh, wait.

  3. Re:Train My Replacement? on Train Your Own Replacement · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Any economic model which doesn't account for power disparity is one that simply isn't going to be accurate.

    ergo: union. a union is about balancing the power between ownership/mgmt and labour. when you negotiate your contract - if you have one over and above the nda, that is - it's usually you versus the entire, organized, funded monolith of management. they hold all the power and the most you can do is threaten to walk.

    with a union, you have the threat of the entire labour group's work to rule, slowdown or strike. it balances things out a bit.

    programmers need to stop thinking about themselves as some sort of "upper" class. yes, we have some very specialized knowledge and create things that have great value... but so do carpenters and electricians.

    we're tradespeople and we need a trade union. if you think otherwise, remember your hubris and vanity when you get the shaft from management.

  4. Re:First Headline on Microsoft Launches 'Channel 9' Blog · · Score: 0
    Microsoft would have fixed the glaring security holes that the open source community has been pointing out for years a very long time ago

    well at least they've picked up one thing from the open source community: developer blogs... which have been around so long in the foss world that we still call them "usenet".

  5. Re:Train My Replacement? on Train Your Own Replacement · · Score: 3, Insightful
    you do need to question the employers loyalty to YOU

    loyalty? i think a lot of the people in this situation would settle for "respect". and if you're not getting any of that, i have one word for you to consider:

    union.

    remember: your boss bargains in good faith with his supplier because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him. your boss bargains in good faith with his distributers because if he didn't they wouldn't do business with him either.

    why does your boss think his labour is exempt from this common sense?

  6. Re:Excellent Question on Developing Open Source Defense Projects · · Score: 4, Interesting
    cruise missle? amateur!

    the internet is knee deep in instructions on how to build and h-bomb.

  7. Re:In the name of "software development" on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had? · · Score: 5, Funny
    Yeah. Populating a database .. manually.

    quote from a former boss:
    "while it may be faster than dlt tapes, 're-typing' is not a valid recovery strategy."

  8. Re:Mugging on iPod: This Season's Must-Have for Muggers · · Score: 4, Funny
    You've obviously never been mugged.

    mugged? i thought the only people who ripped off apple was microsoft.

  9. Re:The telegraph itself, ditto on Signor Marconi's Magic Box · · Score: 4, Informative
    Unfortunately history doesn't repeat itself EXACTLY. So the similarities are parallel at best.

    even if history did repeat itself exactly, it wouldn't matter because we only choose to remember a small part of it.

    witness reginald fesseden. while marconi gets the lion's share of history credit, no one remembers that it was fesseden who first transmitted voice signals - making him the inventor of "radio" in the common sense - and that he was the inventor of sonar. heck, fessenedn's voice transmission experiments happend almost a year before marconi's morse-only newfoundland stunt.

    fessenden was also a major contributor to the improvement of the lightbulb (which was invented by two people called henry woodward, mathew evans... not this edison guy).

    so, please, for the sake of actually learning from history, look up fessenden.

  10. Re:Personally on Build From Source vs. Packages? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In my opinion if Gentoo wants to gain a larger user base it needs one.

    and why does gentoo need or want a larger user base? gentoo is geared towards a niche market and those people will be attracted to the distro whizzy installer or no.

    porsche has a tiny market share - but nobody suggests they should make a k-car version to get a bigger slice of the pie!

  11. Re:Holding Back The Inevitable on China Blocks Typepad, Prompts Weblog Blackout · · Score: 2, Interesting
    When did communism ever look great on chalkboards?

    when was communism ever tried in reality? i believe you're referring to a system called state capitalism that has often been mistaken as "communism" in the west.

    if you want to discuss communism, i'd suggest you first investigate catalonia from '36 to '38.

  12. Re:QT? What about licensing? on Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated] · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Besides, whats wrong with software you have to pay for?

    the most obvious is that it is a barrier to adoption. if your model is to sell software and make yr money that way, everything's fine... but if you're model is have free wares to drive sales of other commodities (hardware, support, data &c) then the extra pricetag on the software can tank your business.

    since you asked....

  13. Re:Creativity? on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I think you're confusing revolutionary with evolutionary.

    exactly! currently, the overwhelming majority of games fall into the following categories:

    • first person shooter
    • real time strategy
    • simulation
    • puzzle/solitaire
    • arcade action

    everybody remembers when sim city first came out. it was revolutionary. why? because it developed a whole new category: simulations.

    now there's a billion sim-foo games out there and the whole genre is in evolution mode: the sims "homeland security" expansion pack for example.

    what the gaming industry needs is a genre-defining game. something that breaks open a whole new gaming motif like doom and sim city and warcraft did.

    of course there will be those who say this isn't possible - that all the gaming paradigms have already been defined and nothing is really new anymore. but that's okay: we can't all be geniuses.

  14. Re:make us pay for relgious value! thanks! on WTO Wants USA to Gamble Online · · Score: 1
    I so love it when my taxes go up to fund addtional services and welfare costs so that you can feel free to make a total ass of yourself.

    your taxes wouldn't have to go up if we'd just (cough cough) tax the churches...

  15. Re:Nothing New Here on WTO Wants USA to Gamble Online · · Score: 1, Insightful
    The U.S. did not withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol... it never agreed to abide by it.

    okay, how about the withdrawal from the anti ballistic missile treaty. the u.s. withdrew from that. yes, i have a source

    and then of course there's the whole softwood lumber dispute. even with the wto ruling in canada's favour, the eventual resolution included quotas set by the us... and even that lame settlement didn't last more than a year. the ustr pressured the wto on the issue until wto caved and reversed the ruling! yes, i have a source for this too.

    so. bottom line: the us likes to act unilaterally and wto doesn't have the gumption or strength to stop them. if the wto will cave to the ustr against canada, what chance does antigua have?

    oh yeah. i work in the online lottery industry. we're an american company... but our site runs in europe.

  16. Re:AAC on BusinessWeek on Opening Apple's iTunes DRM · · Score: 2, Interesting
    That one Apple probably could License.

    for the one millionth time: apple is a hardware company.

    remember when apple tried license the os to clone makers back in 96 or so? total disaster. that's because gil amelio forgot the basic tenet of the apple business model:

    "software is written to drive hardware sales".

    the mac os exists to sell mac computers. itunes and fairplay and itms and all that exists to drive ipod sales. period.

  17. Re:Pre Alpha Release? on Prothon - A New Prototype-based Language · · Score: 5, Funny
    A pre alpha release really isn't newsworthy. Is this some one's pet project?

    this language doesn't just use prototypes... it is one.

  18. Re:some stuff on Why You Should Choose MS Office Over OO.org · · Score: 4, Informative
    you have a competent IT staff (or even just one good programmer), you can fix it yourself

    more than just that! you can:

    • submit a bug report to the developer
    • find solutions or workarounds in public fora
    • contract someone else to fix the bug for money

    and when you're done, you can just kick it back to the project and no one will ever have to deal with it again.

    all these added features for infinitely less money.

  19. Re:i can hear see it now on Opera Promises Voice-Operated Web Browser · · Score: 1
    actually, since the first version is for windows, i was thinking more of hearing "Where do you want to go today?" when you start it up...

    man, i wrote a voice-command processor for explorer on mac in applescript back in, uh, 1998.

  20. Re:Power Power Power on PHP 5 RC 1 released · · Score: 1
    kitchen sick included lanaguage of perl.

    in perl it would be "kitchen sink required". if you want to include or include_once your kitchen sink, stick with perl. as a java fan i, of course, prefer my kitchen sink to be imported.

    no domestic sinks for me!

  21. Re:Meteor? on UFO Streaks Through Martian sky · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It skimmed the atmosphere of Mars and bounced off and then travelled to Earth at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, to miss Earth by a few Earth radii.

    joke? immanuel velikovsky has made himself quite a reputation positing such events. calling himself a "scientist" he's claimed that venus was "ejected" from jupiter 3500 or so years ago whereupon it cruised around the solar system with a whole bunch of near misses of larger bodies before settling into its current orbit.

    the majority of his "proof" for all this are biblical stories about astrological events. for instance, velikovsky posits that the friction of venus passing closeby earth raised the surface temperature of this planet " sufficient to make the vermin of the earth propagate at a very feverish rate" thus resulting in the plagues in exodus. that's just a sample.

    wildly improbable to say the least - but velikovsky has managed to sell millions of books to the heroically undereducated public flogging this theory. a nutbar... but a rich nutbar.

    right. sensical talk about velikovsky can be had here.

  22. Re:Different Market on MSFTs "iPod Killer" Readied for Europe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    they're playing for an entirely different market segment.

    my question is "what market segment would that be?" people who want to pay almost as much as the cost of a laptop for significantly less functionality and a marginally smaller size? people who want to watch movies while jogging?

    this beast reminds me of the newton. lots of features but too damn big and clunky. of course newton had the saving grace of being the first to market...

  23. Re:Canadian laws on Time Warner To Comply With Wiretap Law · · Score: 2, Interesting
    How on earth could that be construed as an "unfair subsidy"? Honestly?

    as a tbt (technical barrier to trade). despite the wto's fluffy wording about not wanting to impose standards on member nations, the definition of tbt's is very loosely worded. the mitigating factor to this are a series of special case exceptions that deal with: human and animal health, the environment and a few other areas. i spent 20 minutes looking for anything on privacy as an escape from tbt action and came up with zilch. it may be there, but i doubt it.

    now, for this to happen, a nation would have to launch a complaint with the wto and go through the whole rigamarole. it's not like the wto keeps it's own watch dog. however, given the united states' recent, uh, "committment to domestic security" i suspect that this issue is more likely to find itself at the top of the pile than the bottom.

    lastly, the wto likes for complaining nations to be able to present a dollar value for damages. but it is not required. the entire dispute procedure can be followed through without the complaining nation ever formally stating how much money was lost due to a tbt.

    Moreover, as the US's behaviour regarding soft wood and Canadian wheat has shown, these "dispute resolution bodies" have, apparently, no teeth, anyway, so who gives a damn?

    no teeth? if you're the united states, maybe. if you're a smaller nation you often can't afford economically to piss off the big players. nobody wants to give the ustr an excuse to retalliate. and don't forget that the dsb can get member nations to impose sanctions. technically these sanctions do not even need to be limited the same sector as the disagreement.

  24. Re:Canadian laws on Time Warner To Comply With Wiretap Law · · Score: 2, Interesting
    move to canada? sure.

    when the us had strict crypto laws, the openbsd team made canada their home. so moving to a "warmer" legal climate has worked in the past.

    except... since both canada and the united states are members of the wto and signatories to the ftaa a more "relaxed" set of privacy laws in one country could be construed as an unfair subsidy and taken up with either of the two trade organizations dispute resolution bodies.

  25. Re:It's true on How Not To Sell Linux Products · · Score: 1
    capitalism isn't about aristocracy

    only inasmuch as the people who own the country didn't get it automatically at birth and their position isn't mandated by some religious edict.

    the bottom line is this: there are those who control the means of production and there are those that don't[1]. those that do either live by a different set of rules or at least think they do.

    1. and then there are the very few who are owner-operators, mom-n-pop operations and collectivized workers. but really, they have minimal economic and political clout.