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User: Reality+Master+101

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Comments · 5,234

  1. Re:Eh on Cold Fusion in a Breadbox Instead of a Bottle · · Score: 1

    Dude, what are you talking about? I'm deadly serious. If they can't have a decent football team, why the hell would we trust their research?

  2. Eh on Cold Fusion in a Breadbox Instead of a Bottle · · Score: 0, Troll

    UCLA -- they have a crappy football team. Let me know when a university with a decent football team has some results.

  3. Cool on Apple Switching to Intel · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Wonder how long it will take for someone to get OS/X -for-Intel running on a standard Intel platform?

    And yes, I know that many of you think it will never happen because Apple will do some shenanigans at the hardware level to make sure it never works. But I'm not so sure they can. Remember -- OS/X runs on an open-source Kernel. The point of a kernel is to be a hardware abstraction layer between the upper layer software and the hardware. This means that the part that Apple can fool with is Open Source.

    Now, I'm sure they'll put in some sort of dealies here and there to test if they're running on genuine Apple hardware, but these things can be fooled.

    It may take a little while, but we will definitely see OS/X running on standard hardware. And what's interesting is that Apple knows it. So here's the big question...

    Will Steve allow it to happen, perhaps grudingly, and make a ton of money in the process? Yes, yes, I know, Apple makes their money from hardware. But selling software hasn't exactly hurt Microsoft, now has it? The money has always been in the software.

    We'll see, should be verrrry interesting.

  4. Re:Stupid ruling on Judge Rules Offering != Distributing · · Score: 1
    Is your credit card number copyrighted? How about your SSN number? No? Then you have nothing to worry about. This ruling covers copyrighted material, not confidential information.

    The point is that it's irrelevent whether we're talking copyrighted material or not -- it's still restricted material banned from distribution. The illegality is the publishing -- not the downloading.

  5. Stupid ruling on Judge Rules Offering != Distributing · · Score: 3, Insightful
    As usual, people who simply want the "right to steal" will look at this as a win, instead of looking at the bigger picture.

    If someone, say, gets ahold of medical information (or my credit card number, or my SSN number, or pick your private info) and offers it up on their server, I don't care if anyone has downloaded it or not -- I want the information off there and off now. It should make no difference at all whether anyone actually got it. If someone is making information available, that should be enough to nail their ass.

    Of course, I once had a Libertarian try and convince me that it should be legal to fire guns at people, until you actually hit someone, so I'm sure there are people who think that anything should go.

  6. Re:What about Nokia!? on Settlement Proposed in iPod Class Action Suit · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can replace your cell phone battery. The issue with iPods was that the battery was irreplaceable, and Apple told people to buy a new iPod when the battery failed after a year.

  7. Re:Lawsuits on Settlement Proposed in iPod Class Action Suit · · Score: 1
    In other news: Several car owners are suing GM because they're cars ran out of gas.

    Um, this would be a fine analogy -- if GM made a car where the gas tank shrunk after every use, and after a year of heavy use, the gas tank no longer held gas. And when you complained to GM that the tank was irreplaceable, you were told to "buy a new car". That's exactly what Apple did.

  8. Re:What really amazes me... on Windows Servers Neck and Neck with Unix Servers · · Score: 1
    Is that this is happening DESPITE all the problems with Windows-related security. I guess all those MCSE's are really bucking to keep themselves employed.

    The security problems are typically in their desktop products, not their server products.

    Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2005 and provide the ability to edit posts?

    No, never. Because that's an invitation to trolls to post something, get it modded up to +5, then change it to link to goatse.cx or whatever.

    Note that you can edit journal posts. It's intentional that you can't edit regular posts.

  9. Re:They got what they deserve on Stanford Rejects Business School Hackers · · Score: 1
    But a public website is exactly that - public.

    The information was not intended to be public. Period. I don't care how easy it was to get -- they still had to manipulate the system to access the data.

    Or are you saying that if a computer has a public web server, then anything you can gain from the computer is fair game, including by running root kits?

    What is astounding to me is that people seem to think that how easy it was to break the security is relevent to anything. They weren't intended to see that information, they knew they weren't intended, but they did it anyway.

  10. Re:They got what they deserve on Stanford Rejects Business School Hackers · · Score: 1
    Um, no, they showed curiosity and a certain resourcefulness in finding data. Traits I can certainly appreciate in colleagues.

    Yeah, just like spyware companies are just "showing resourcefulness" in exploiting bugs in Windows to "find data" on your computer. I certainly appreciate those traits from spyware companies.

    (rolls eyes at naive Slashdot ethics)

  11. Re:Screw that on Sirius in Negotiations With Apple · · Score: 1
    What you fail to acknowledge is that your iRiver has the antenna in the headphone cord, meaning you'll never be free of their crappy headphones.

    Dude, what are you talking about? It comes with a standard set of Sennheiser headphones (it says 'Sennheiser' on them), which are hardly "crappy". In any case, it's entirely possible that it uses the headphones as an antenna; so what? It still doesn't have "an antenna sticking out of it somewhere" as you allege.

    but there's a lot of people who would rather do something useful with their lives. FM adds complexity, size, and cost, and in fact fails to deliver good performance without making sacrifices to the antenna god.

    Sheesh. How about just adding the radio into the standard playlist and have it look like just another song? Nah, that'd completely ruin the interface. Oh, the confusion that would result! And that 50 cents that an FM receiver would add to the cost would really blow the budget.

    Go outside. Breathe some real air. Ride a bike. You'll find you might not have such an incredible need to be entertained if the exercise isn't mind-numbingly boring.

    Or maybe you can think things through before typing. I'm happy you live in a climate where you can exercise all year 'round, every day. And even then, you can't get a balanced workout from just riding a bike (not to mention that consumes a lot more time than a rigorous gym workout can supply).

    Jeez, reaching just a little to justify Steve's horrible decision to refuse to add radio?

  12. Re:Screw that on Sirius in Negotiations With Apple · · Score: 1
    Have you ever used an FM receiver that didn't have an antenna sticking out of it somewhere? Did it work? No, probably not.

    Yes, on my itty bitty iRiver. The FM works great. Reception is perfect.

    And the iPod outsells all the other music players with FM radios combined, which makes a pretty compelling case for Apple not to include that feature. Clearly, it's not hurting sales.

    Yeah, imagine all those people that would avoid the iPod if it had an FM reciever. ::rolls eyes::. No one would avoid it, but there are quite a number of people who will never buy an iPod because it doesn't have the feature. The fact that they sell well despite missing a radio receiver says nothing, except that iPods are popular and trendy.

    Besides, most people who buy an iPod are doing so because they're sick to #%$^ of listening to FM. Do you really like FM?

    Just because you have crappy radio stations doesn't mean everyone does.

    With the exception of NPR, there's very little left on FM that appeals to anyone with any kind of musical taste much more evolved than a 12 year old.

    I have multiple classical music stations (I suspect your "evolved musical taste" is oh-so-trendy obscure bands), not to mention that I kind of like the recent "Jack Format" where they've expanded the playlist to thousands of songs.

    But that's not even the big reason for it. My gym broadcasts the TV sound over FM. If I want to watch ESPN or whatever, I need FM.

  13. Re:Screw that on Sirius in Negotiations With Apple · · Score: 1

    I hate Sony almost as much as I hate Apple, so that one's out. :) But thanks, I already have one with FM.

  14. Screw that on Sirius in Negotiations With Apple · · Score: 2, Insightful
    When is the iPod going to get a frickin' FM reciever?? One of the things that I hate about Steve Jobs is that if he doesn't like something, then NO ONE should be allowed to have it. He doesn't like FM, therefore no one should listen to FM.

    Would it really be that hard to add a radio? And I don't want satellite radio. Sorry, Steve.

    Ah well. If an iPod had radio, I might tempted to get one, and I've sworn a holy oath never to give Apple any of my money because of their business practices. :D

  15. Re:This is treason on the part of our govt on Feds Shut Down Elite Torrents · · Score: 1
    Er, you want them tried in a court of law for... enforcing the law? Ooooookay.

    If you don't like the laws, then work for change, but it's just stupid to blame law enforcement for doing what they're supposed to do.

    And please learn what "fascism" and "treason" actually mean before you go throwing the words around.

  16. Re:All right! on MSN Virtual Earth to Take on Google · · Score: 2, Funny

    The communist state is the People's Republic of San Francisco.

  17. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? on Give Your DVD Player The Finger · · Score: 1
    Look, your original rant was about SUVs versus fuel-efficient cars. I took the statistics for the first--SUVs--and the statistics for the second--mid-size cars such as the Prius. I took the *relevant* measure, which is fatality rates per billion miles of travel, and compared them. SUVs turned out worse. End of story.

    Not end of story. I called you on manipulating statistics because you did... you selected only the one that made your case. Why midsize SUVs? Why not the big ones?

    Let's look at this way... The largest SUV has a rate of 10.03. The smallest, fuel-efficient cars have a death rate of 15.73. So the small cars are 57% more deadly than the big SUVs. Did I just prove my point? Exactly the same as you did.

    The problem here is defining the "classes" of cars. We simply don't know what goes into a class. We could have one particularly bad SUV design pulling up the death rate of the "mid-size 4-door SUV" class. And what the hell is an SUV anyway?

    What we do know is that HEAVIER IS BETTER, and that's the central point.

    That SUVs might not be so bad compared with other classes of vehicle I didn't even consider, that SUVs might be safer the heavier they are, that fatality rates might be worse for lighter cars of the same class--all of that may be true, but is utterly irrelevant to the point of contention, which was your claim that SUVs were safer than fuel-efficient cars. Nice attempt at smokescreening, though.

    What the hell? Read the thread. I talked about "tiny little deathtrap cars", YOU brought SUVs into the conversation, with "You're aware that SUVs are far more dangerous, both to their occupants and to other people, than those "tiny" cars, right?" And that's clearly a false statement.

    Heavier is better, lighter is deadlier. We may have some variation based on design, model, etc, but there's no arguing that if you want safety, big and heavy is the way to go.

  18. Re:Why cheaper!? on Apple to Use Intel Chips? · · Score: 1
    So you want to use emulation. Sure, why not, who needs to run apps at a reasonable speed?

    Most likely app developers would offer a free x86 download of their app for existing customers, so it's just to get people over the hump. As I said, we already have precedent for a move, and it was a lot harder to make the switch before the web.

  19. Re:Why cheaper!? on Apple to Use Intel Chips? · · Score: 1
    What bloody good does a OS do, when you have ZERO apps? There are no x86- or Itanium-binary apps for Mac OS X .

    You could've asked the same question about the 68,000 => PPC move. Apple would probably supply a cheap-o PPC emulator on the x86, and then developers would just have to recompile their apps.

  20. Re:Why cheaper!? on Apple to Use Intel Chips? · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Currently all of Intel's stuff runs hotter, so Apple would have to work significantly harder at heat dissipation issues in all but their tower designs.

    That's a design issue, not a manufacturing issue.

    And what, pray tell, do you expect them to do with little-endian issues, backwards compatibility, and all those little details?

    It's commonly known that Apple keeps a version of OS/X for Intel current and ready to go if they should ever have to switch because of supply problems (which has always been a real threat).

    The biggest reason they don't switch is because Apple likes incompatibility where they can do it -- it locks people in. If Apple used the Intel architecture, it would be a lot easier to run their software on less expensive hardware.

  21. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? on Give Your DVD Player The Finger · · Score: 1
    LOLOLOLOL!! Did you READ what you wrote? You selected a particular class against another particular class, and then concluded that "the chances of being in a fatal crash are 30% higher for an SUV [ALL SUVS AGAINST ALL OTHER CARS]." I couldn't have demonstrated a better manipulation of statistics myself. Also note that this is from 1990-1999, and SUVs have been far improved in rollover safety since then.

    Since you apparently didn't even read the report, Let's pull the important quotes, shall we?

    "In MY 1991-99, and earlier, heavy vehicles had lower fatality rates per billion miles of travel than lighter vehicles of the same general type."

    "As curb weight decreased by 100 pounds, fatality rates increased by 2.5 to 3 percent in rollovers and fixed-object collisions."

    "As curb weight decreased by 100 pounds, fatality rates increased in every crash mode - although the observed increases in collisions with pedestrians (1.24 percent) and with cars (1.13 percent) were small and not statistically significant. In rollovers and collisions with fixed objects, heavy trucks or other (usually heavier) LTVs, fatality rates increased substantially (3.15 to 6.98 percent) as the weight of the "case" LTV decreased."

    Also make sure you read the part where pedestrian fatalities increase ("The strong increase in pedestrian fatalities for the lightest cars is surprising").

    I think I'll resist further quoting to save you further embarrassment.

  22. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? on Give Your DVD Player The Finger · · Score: 1
    I was going by the raw statistics of those Communists at the NHTSA.

    No, you were going by a biased analysis of NHTSA statistics. Look at death rates of heavier cars. Like I said, I don't feel like dredging this up again, because even if I prove it beyond any doubt that heavier is safer (which ought to be a big DUH moment), you won't believe it.

    If you legitimately want to be educated about this (which I highly doubt, you WANT to believe that SUVs are evil planet-killers), then go find the stats yourself.

  23. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? on Give Your DVD Player The Finger · · Score: 1

    You're aware that SUVs are far more dangerous, both to their occupants and to other people, than those "tiny" cars, right?

    -sigh- I don't feel like going through this yet again, but dig out the raw statistics yourself. This "SUVs are far more dangerous to their occupants" bullshit is a perfect example of how you can prove anything by manipulating statistics (and another reason I generally hate environmentalists (but I don't hate legitimate environmentalism)). On the other hand, it probably is more dangerous to other people (that's simple physics), but since I'm a safe driver and they aren't, I'd rather not get taken out by joe zippy in his econobox driving like a maniac.

  24. CGI on mod_perl 2.0.0 Released · · Score: 4, Informative
    Everyone bitchin' that "CGI is dead" should broaden their horizons a bit. CGI may be stupid and dead, but Perl is used in a lot of different ways. It's still one the best languages for getting good work done.

    For example, Mason is a pretty good tool for doing Perl-based web components.

    So bitch about CGI if you wish, but that's not what Perl is for.

  25. Re:Gifts? Online purchases? on Give Your DVD Player The Finger · · Score: 1
    you are presumably in agreement with me that Americans don't give a crap about conservation, and that the original claim was nonsense.

    Americans care about reasonable conservation, hence the widespread recycling trash cans. What doesn't typically happen is going backward to driving tiny little deathtrap cars.