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User: poot_rootbeer

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  1. Re:Adapt on Windows and Linux Not Well Prepared For Multicore Chips · · Score: 1

    Remember "AltiVEC" [...] which turned out to just be a slightly better MMX-like SIMD addon?

    Are you proposing that "AltiVEC" was any worse a name for that type of technology than "MMX"?

  2. significant spaces on Making Sense of Mismatched Certificates? · · Score: 3, Funny

    What is "Cap It Alone"?

    Doesn't sound like a website I'd entrust my financial information to...

  3. Re:Were nerds here... use the f'ing metric system on The 100 Degree Data Center · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When is this Fahrenheit unit going to die?

    Not until people develop the intuition to evaluate temperature relative to a volume of water, rather than to their own bodies.

    Which is a more logical numeric range for representing a perceived continuum from "cold" to "hot": 0 to 100 , or -18 to 38?

  4. Re:Ummm yes... on It's Not the 15th Birthday of Linux · · Score: 1

    Or maybe nothing is missing at all.

    Then the project lead should officially tag it as '1.0' to let the world know that no essential functionality is missing.

    Version numbers have meaning, or at least used to prior to 1995. If the developers have designated a release as version 0.35d, you'd be a fool to entrust it with any critical or sensitive information.

  5. Re:In Ancient Times on Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse · · Score: 1

    Somehow Joplin was making a $100,000 a week in the 1920's, even though it's fairly trivial to simply hand-copy someone-else's work.

    Funny, because Scott Joplin died in 1917.

    Even if hand-copying ragtime sheet music were trivial, which it is not, it was still more convenient to spend the 5 cents on an officially published copy of 'Maple Leaf Rag' than it was to spend 2 cents on some blank staff paper and three hours transcribing a copy borrowed from a friend.

  6. Re:facepalm on Linux Foundation Asks Who Says "I'm Linux" Best · · Score: 1

    Isn't part of the point of linux that there isn't a face to it?

    Linux is my mailserver
    Linux runs on my access point
    Linux runs on our company's DVR.

    Linux is not an operating system for the desktop or for the server, or for the embedded device. Linux is an operating system for EVERYTHING.

    I believe as far as commercial marketing goes, Cisco is already taking credit for running all of those things. Or Sun. Or Bernard Purdie.

  7. Re:Easy solution on Internet-Caused Mistrials Are On the Rise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I myself have always wanted to do my civil duty and serve on a jury but know that I will never be able to because of some stupid stuff I did when I was young.

    There's the foolish indiscretions of youth, and then there's felonies.

  8. everything old is new again on Auto Safety Tech May Encourage Dangerous Driving · · Score: 5, Funny

    perhaps we could design cues -- steering-wheel vibration devices, as in video games?

    You act like this would be an innovation, but my 1990 Geo Prizm had this feature, in a compact car no less! If ever I got above 75 mph, the entire vehicle would start to shudder.

  9. Re:Why? on What Does a $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway? · · Score: 1

    That's one heck of an audio editing machine*

    Why in god's name would it be equipped with an Asus internal soundcard, then, rather than a Firewire-based external audio interface?

  10. significant figures on US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    FTA
    The approximately correct answer range for this question was defined as anything between 65% and 75%. Only 15% of respondents answered this question with the exactly correct answer of 70%.

    I'm sorry, no. Seventy percent is not "exactly correct". At best it is an estimate, and one that is subject to natural fluctuations due to things like temperatures, tidal patterns, etc.

    How much should a layperson actually know about the planet's water coverage? "More than half water" is probably a little lacking; "between two-thirds and three-quarters" is probably about right.

    "Between 70% and 71%" is worthless nitpicking, a rote recitation of a rule of thumb learned in grade school, the same place they learned that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, there are 2,000 pounds in a ton, and 1 yard = 1 meter.

  11. Re:Mouse on Researchers Sniff Keystrokes From Thin Air, Wires · · Score: 1

    One might also note that the PS/2 port is electrically compatible with the old AT keyboard that debuted in 1984, on a system with a 6MHz 8086.

    Additional things that one might note:
    - the AT keyboard debuted in 1984 as part of the IBM PC/AT system, which was based on the 80286, though some 8086/8088-based PC- and XT- compatibles got BIOS updates that allowed the AT keyboard to be used on them
    - with the advent of USB, fewer and fewer desktop PCs over the past decade have been including PS/2 ports, with inclusion on laptops now approaching zero

  12. Re:Lawyers? We don't need no stinkin lawyers for t on So Amazing, So Illegal · · Score: 2, Informative

    I thought if one is using 10secs (I'm unsure if there is a real number or duration) of any video, song, or literature it is not 'reproducing' or distributing IP or copyright, but Fair Use, and therefore not against a civil or criminal law.

    Fair Use is about HOW a copyrighted work is used, not simply HOW MUCH of it is used.

    If the source material is readily identifiable, and it is not clearly apparent that the re-user is engaging in a protected action like academic study, critical review, or parody, then the odds are pretty good that in the eyes of the law it will be considered a derivative work, and a copyright violation if not properly licensed.

    Adding the video aspect of this work actually makes it MORE likely that the source material will be identifiable. You probably wouldn't be able to tell from 2-second audio-only snippet that a drum pattern was originally performed by Bernard Purdie, but when the audio is accompanied by the video footage of him actually playing it in one of his instructional videos, it gets a lot more identifiable.

  13. Re:What the hell? on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 1

    The same could be said of the guy working at the QuikyMart. Do you treat them with the same 'respect' that you do the police?

    'Respect', in sociological terms, is little more than acknowledgement of a power differential. It is irrefutable that at the moment when a police officer has stopped a citizen on suspicion, the police officer wields a lot more power.

  14. Re:What the hell? on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 1

    The alleged drunk driver refused a breathalyzer test at the time, which some people consider an admission of guilt.

    I dunno about "some people", but at least in the state I learned to drive in, it is written into law that refusing a breath test carries similar penalties as DWI.

  15. Re:Ram drives suddenly new again? on Sun To Include SSDs On Server Motherboards · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Throw and equivalent amount of money at REAL RAM, such that your machine never swaps and everything will run much better.

    This approach works, but only up to a point.

    Sure, a system with a 64-bit address bus is theoretically capable of addressing 16 petabyes of RAM, but how many motherboards do you know of that have more than six or eight DIMM slots? I don't think they make 2-million-terabyte DDR3 sticks, yet...

  16. Re:Should have included PostgreSQL and DB2 on Refactoring SQL Applications · · Score: 1

    This study would have carried more weight if it had included PostgreSQL and IBM's DB2. These two databases do more serious work than MySQL although many believe MySQL is more widely deployed.

    "Study"? This is a book review.

    Thanks for getting the "WHAT ABOUT POSTGRES" comment that must accompany every Slashdot story submission that mentions MySQL out of the way early, though.

  17. Re:Taste is subjective, Sound waves aren't on Young People Prefer "Sizzle Sounds" of MP3 Format · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no accuracy in coffee that expensive coffee is closer to than Sanka is.

    Who says 'accuracy' is a desirable quality of a musical recording?

    Certainly not the musicians who "punched in" re-takes of passages where they were unhappy with their first performance, or the producer who demanded that the singer's performance be processed with autotune, or the engineers who applied reverb, compression, and EQ to each recorded part individually, made volume adjustments to everything during mixdown, and then applied more compression and EQ to the finished product, or the CD duplicator that took the 48kHz/24-bit master DAT and transcoded it down to a 44.1kHz,16-bit master...

  18. Re:And Futurama on What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows? · · Score: 1

    And don't tell me Fox doesn't know this, their syndication of The Simpson all through high school at 5 & 5:30 on weekdays was very popular.

    It's worth pointing out, if it's not already clear to everyone, that daytime scheduling of syndicated content is done by the affiliate station, not by the network. So you may have got a double-dose of The Simpsons at 5:00 and 5:30PM watching Fox 5 WNYW in New York, but a viewer watching Fox-affiliated My13 KCOP in Los Angeles might only get a single episode, at 6:30PM.

  19. Abrams on Could Fuller Take Trek Back To TV? · · Score: 1

    "If J.J. Abrams' reboot is successful (and the latest trailer suggests it will be!) perhaps we'll see him involved with a new Star Trek TV show with the style and impact of Fringe or Lost."

    Oh, you mean it will start off with a compelling premise, but it will eventually become clear that the writers are just making shit up as they go, and soon everyone (Abrams included) will have given up on it and moved on to the next new, compelling premise?

  20. Re:Copyright definitely kills innovation on Copyright and Patent Laws Hurt the Economy · · Score: 1

    , a Wiley Interscience Publication. Xeroxing the articles under fair use from the library was free for me.

    The Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment came when I checked online to find out how much it would cost to subscribe to [the Journal of Applied Polymer Sciences]. I thought someone misplaced a decimal point: $23,245 a year is the institutional subscription rate!

    Sounds like an equilibrium of supply and demand to me.

    Let's say that the JoAPS has five fulltime employees, plus another five people at Wiley Interscience whose duties are split among all their journals. It could easily take half a million dollars a year to keep the journal running. At their current rates, they'd need 20 institutional subscriptions just to break even.

    If they sold the journal at a more typical newsstand rate, say $5/issue, how would they make money? Let's see, that would be 20 institutions at $60 a year, plus let's say another 50 institutions that decide to subscribe since it's affordable, plus ten independent polymer science hobbyists such as yourself... hmm, almost 1% of their expenses. I guess there would have to be some layoffs.

  21. Re:porn tax (with apologies to Mr. Heston) on Mississippi Bill Would Tax Software Sales · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, New York State already has a tax rule on the books that the customers residing in state should be taxed on downloads when the company delivering it maintains a "digital warehouse" in the state...

  22. 'let me google that for you' in real life on Best Wi-Fi Portable Browsing Device? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "I'm a library worker, so I get lots of questions about our collection when I'm out in the stacks. I'd love to be able to access our online catalog and give patrons more comprehensive guidance without directing them to the reference desk."

    Okay, but how does your supervisor feel about that idea?

    A reference librarian's entire job is to help patrons find relevant information, and they had to earn a graduate degree in the field in order to get that job. A "library worker", who has been tasked with re-shelving books in the stacks, is not a capable substitute. Even if he/she has a wifi-enabled PDA.

    I've worked as a page myself, I know that patrons will always approach the first member of the library staff they spot. But when somebody has a reference question, the only appropriate response is to direct them to a reference librarian for assistance

  23. Re:65 TB?!?! *gasp* on Big Swedish Filesharing Server Seized · · Score: 1

    Every slashdot user can divide 65 TB by the size of a DVD. Unfortunately, full-length movies are NOT a standard measure of storage space. Least of all on slashdot in the context of file-sharing.

    Um, why not?

    If the allegation is that this server (farm) was used primarily for distributing full-length movies, why would the data NOT be quantified in terms of the number of full-length movies?

  24. just to clarify on ScummVM 0.13.0 Delivers New Adventure Games · · Score: 1

    By 'new adventure games', they mean 'games that were released 15 years ago'. HTH.

  25. Re:First Amendment on Doctors Silencing Online Patient Reviews Via Contract · · Score: 1

    Please stop claiming First Amendment rights when the government is not involved.

    Hey! I'm allowed to mischaracterize the First Amendment if I want to! It's a free country! Stop trying to take my rights away!