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User: argent

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Comments · 12,456

  1. Re:Sucks to be you on Anti-Speed Camera Activist Buys Police Department's Web Domain · · Score: 1

    Pointing out that this is likely to be an "own goal" doesn't imply approval of bad laws.

  2. Re:I want the opposite . . . on HDTV Has Ruined the LCD Market · · Score: 1

    Lowering the resolution makes the fonts fuzzy and almost unreadable.

    Don't lower the resolution, increase the scaling on the desktop... with applications that are scaling-aware and use larger fonts.

  3. Tweetstore in 3... 2... 1... on Library of Congress To Archive All Public Tweets · · Score: 1

    How long before someone comes up with a scheme to backup files in encoded tweets "for posterity"?

    Seriously, they should be spending their effort on funding or replicating the Internet Archive instead.

  4. Re:Why? on Google to Open Source the VP8 Codec · · Score: 1

    Remind me again why everyone has to agree a codec before it can be used?

    Because video takes up a lot of space and having to keep copies of videos in three formats around gets expensive.

  5. Re:Apple Tax! on New MacBook Pros Launched · · Score: 1

    It must be "Talk Like a Pirate Day".

  6. Re:Bad summary on How To Exploit NULL Pointers · · Score: 1

    OK, picky: "... through this mechanism".

  7. Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande on Will Adobe Sue Apple Over Flash? · · Score: 1

    There wasn't any iWhatever hardware in 1997.

  8. Re:Bad summary on How To Exploit NULL Pointers · · Score: 3, Informative

    The OP's article wasn't very long, so you should be able to figure out that you just rephrased what he said: you need to have a null pointer function call kernel bug to exploit this. No combination of null pointer vulnerabilities in user space, and no null pointer reads and writes in kernel mode (which are more common) will get you root.

  9. Re:I get music for free online! on Feds Question Big Media's Piracy Claims · · Score: 1

    The problem is that most people see that some music is given away for free and then suddenly the demand that all their music is free.

    No, that's NOT the problem. That's A problem, but not THE problem.

    The problem is that the Internet makes the distribution of music cheaper.

    This has two effects:

    1. People can more efficiently distribute music illegally.

    2. More people can afford to distribute music legally without going through the people who were handling the distribution before the Internet.

    There is debate over the relative sizes of these two effects.

    The existing illegal music distribution channels were already more efficient than the music distribution industry, because they didn't have to pay for advertising. The existing out-of-band legal music distribution channels were pretty limited... I never mail-ordered much, for example, I mostly bought tapes and later discs from local bands. See, they couldn't really effectively piggyback on the channels the pirates were using (well, they could, but they didn't get paid).

    So the biggest change has not been in the availability of illegally distributed music... you could always get all that you wanted if you wanted to... it's in the availability of LEGALLY distributed music outside the "distribution industry" channels.

    TL;DR: see my previous message.

  10. I get music for free online! on Feds Question Big Media's Piracy Claims · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "There's no doubt that the music industry has declined significantly over the last 10 years," Lamy said. "Countless studies have blamed this on the fact that millions of people have been getting their music for free online. That has translated to thousands of lost jobs in the industry and that's undeniable."

    I get music for free online!

    I get free samples from iTunes every week.

    I get free music from magnatune.com every day.

    I get free samples distributed directly by the artists and advertised on 3hive.com.

    I don't buy as many CDs because there's so much legally distributed good music online. I buy music online as well, but not as much as I used to buy CDs, and I usually only buy a couple of tracks instead of the whole album. So I don't need to pirate music for my demand for the traditional music distributor's high-overhead services to go down.

    I don't buy a newspaper any more, because I get better and more timely news online, some through reprinted wire services, some through independent journalists. I'm not "pirating news" any more than I'm "pirating music". I can see how this is a problem, but it's not a problem that's going to be solved by writing stricter laws or putting people into jail... or by charging newspaper prices for digital news. The internet makes distributing information more efficient. Businesses based on a percentage of older more expensive distribution mechanisms are going to have to change or adapt... but trying to use the law to attack a decreasingly important part of the problem isn't going to solve it. It's not going to magically become more expensive to distribute bits... it's going to get cheaper. There's going to be less and less overhead to get your margin from as the industry gets more efficient.

  11. Re:DRM makes this useless crap. on Hard Drives Shipping with Star Trek · · Score: 1

    Luckily you're paying $40 less for this.

  12. Re:Apple Tax! on New MacBook Pros Launched · · Score: 1

    If OS X isn't worth $1000 to you, then OS X isn't worth $1000 to you. It's obviously worth that much to some people. It's not like Apple's anemic quirky hardware is worth that much, that's for sure.

  13. Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande on Will Adobe Sue Apple Over Flash? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to mention telling Apple "No, we're not going to port Photoshop to Yellow box (even though it's based on our Display Postscript technology)". It was a nasty one-two punch that could have put Apple out of business.

  14. They *are* dumb pipes! on In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride" · · Score: 1

    Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content.

    That's because they *are* dumb pipes. That's their bloody job, moving bits around. That's all I'm paying my ISP for... I don't use their portal or email account or anything. Get used to it... you worked hard enough to become dumb pipes, throwing out services that you could actually provide more efficiently than websites like Usenet... you made your bed, sleep well.

  15. Furtive: from the latin for "thief" on US Rejects Demands For ACTA Transparency · · Score: 1

    The word "Furtive" is derived from the Latin word for "thief".

    That seems about right.

  16. Re:Isn't Google missing the point? on Google Incorporates Site Speed Into PageRank Calculation · · Score: 1

    Did you search for "garden lighting" and her local area?

    There are 350 "metropolitan areas" in the US, each of which must have at least a couple of shops selling "garden lighting". Let's say only half of them have a web page. At 10 results per page, unless there's something particularly compelling about her particular store, you would expect to find her around 17 pages down.

  17. Re:Isn't Google missing the point? on Google Incorporates Site Speed Into PageRank Calculation · · Score: 1

    Where does she come up when people look for lighting and *her area*?

  18. Re:The real story. on Microsoft Promises To Fully Support OOXML ... Later · · Score: 1

    Nice Try, but that's what they said about MS-DOS 4.0, that was supposed to have multitasking and Microsoft Xenix compatibility.

  19. Revenge is a dish best served cold on Adobe Evangelist Lashes Out Over Apple's "Original Language" Policy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1997: Adobe wants Apple to pay workstation prices for Display Postscript licenses for the new OS, "Rhapsody", which would have completely priced them out of the market. Apple has to rewrite the graphics layer for Rhapsody/OS X, and it's delayed 2-3 years.

    2010: Payback is a bitch.

  20. Re:Office...15? on Microsoft Promises To Fully Support OOXML ... Later · · Score: 1

    Where's Office 13?

  21. Re:They could have avoided this problem... on Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record · · Score: 1

    I loved fig newtons when I was a little kid, but I had no idea what they actually had in them, so I called them "squashed fly biscuits".

  22. Re:Why did they ever have Yahoo? on Firefox Search In Ubuntu 10.04 Changed To Google · · Score: 1

    I've used Yahoo since the mid 90's. Where was Google then?

    What part of "Altavista" and "Lycos" did you miss?

  23. What's he measuring? on MIT Making Super Efficient Origami Solar Panels · · Score: 1

    Efficiency per unit area?

    Efficiency per "swept area"?

    Efficiency per surface area?

    His construct appears to require more than 2.5 times the material of a flat collector, and generates only about 30% more energy at peak. How does it compare to a flat collector with the same surface area, or to three flat collectors angled for morning, noon, and evening sun?

  24. They could have avoided this problem... on Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record · · Score: 2, Funny

    The obvious next steps below Zepto would be Grouchto, Harpto, and Chicto. If they'd followed the logical course they'd be set for another two orders of magnitude, instead of having to come up with a new name in the middle of a recession. Do they think SI prefixes grow on trees or something?

  25. Why did they ever have Yahoo? on Firefox Search In Ubuntu 10.04 Changed To Google · · Score: 1

    Has Yahoo EVER been the preferred search engine? By ANYONE?

    As far as I can recall the least sucky search choice before Google was Altavista, and before that Lycos.