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User: RatFink100

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Comments · 273

  1. Re:Russell T Davies on Doctor Who Comeback · · Score: 1

    "fanwank" is a term usually used when fans come up with explanations to bridge the gaps or plot-holes not explained by the show explicitly.

    Hence by definition if it's in an actual filmed script it's not fanwank.

  2. BBC Report on this on Doctor Who Comeback · · Score: -1, Redundant
  3. Re:Webster was a tool. on Flavor vs. Flavour · · Score: 0, Redundant
    For correct reason, see quote Robin Williams Live on Broadway 2002 in reference to a parallel situation: King James breaking away from Rome and starting the Anglican church:

    That would be Henry VIII not James.

  4. Re:Nitpick... on Comparison of Bayesian POP3 Spam Filters · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a Babylon 5 reference.

  5. Re:You don't have to pay for bandwidth on Evaluating a System for Selling and Delivering MP3s? · · Score: 1

    How would you stop people who haven't paid getting a copy of the files?

    If you don't try to stop them you might as well just have all the tracks free to download and a "Donate" button on your site.

  6. Re:DNA Question on Twist on DNA Privacy · · Score: 1

    This is how many of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks are being identified. (By matching DNA from victims' toothbrushes, razors, hairbrushes, dirty clothes, etc. to the DNA of the body parts found at the site; and also by kinship analysis.)

    Indeed and the way it was reported on the TV news was (something like) "The same techniques uesd to identify victims of the WTC attacks has been used to find the killer of ...". In fact I think they said that the DNA testing was done in New York by the same labs that did the WTC work.

  7. or as Morpheus said on Apple Sued Over Unix Trademark · · Score: 1

    "No one can be told what Unix is, you have to experience it for yourself."

  8. BBFC gave it a 15 on Matrix Gets Egyptian Ban For Explicit Religion · · Score: 1

    There's no such rating as 'restricted', unless you meant R18. However both The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded were passed 15.

  9. Then hook it up to your TV on Archos Releases Portable Video/Image/MP3 Player · · Score: 1

    or any TV for that matter. Think of it as a portable Tivo.

  10. Re:Should Linus be afraid? on SCO Might Sue Linus for Patent Infringement? · · Score: 3, Funny

    Linus is treating this with the level of seriousness it deserves. I think that's a fine example, to the community and everyone.

  11. Re:Censoring? on Buffy Series Finale Tonight · · Score: 1

    Sky showed Warren's skinning - it was just really really brief. Instead of the 3-4second shot it was a 1/2 second shot.

  12. Re:It depends where you are on Widescreen (Finally) Winning · · Score: 1

    The difference being that the US TV industry had tried to push adoption of HDTV, so that widescreen in the US means HD means expensive.

    Here in the UK and the rest of Europe widescreen has been implemented before HDTV (largely cos they're still trying to agree Europe wide standards I understand)

  13. Re:Released or reimplemented? on IBM Denies Charges of Unix Theft · · Score: 0

    I believe that they are alleging patent infringment i.e. not that they directly copied code, but they used techniques covered by SCOs patents.

    Of course if you want to play the patents game, IBM own one heck of a large set of patents...

  14. Re:USENET's problem was solved by Slashdot on Spaf's Farewell, Ten Years Later · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Slashdot is probably the most advanced of web-based fora, but I still prefer usenet.

    When was the last time you had a discussion on Slashdot that last more than a day or two past the article being on the front page?

    I like the fact that usenet is text-based. It's simple and straightforward.

    I like the fact that it's client-based, rather than browser-based. I can modify the look and feel, the filtering capability and a host of other features, by changing, or re-configuring my NNTP client program. With a web-board, I'm limited to the options on the server-based board software.

    I agree Slashdot's moderation is a powerful system - something I'd like to see added to usenet to make it more powerful/useful. There's nothing inherent in the protocol that would stop you extending it with something like this.

    As for the volume of traffic, since when has the most popular been the best? :) As long as there's groups with posts I'm interested in then I'll be subscribing.

  15. Re:I agree but I'll add more on Salon on Gollum's Failed Oscar Nomination · · Score: 1

    But it's only sinister and manipulative if you choose to see it that way. If you see it for what it is - a promotional tool for selling movies, a contest based on a bunch of people's subjective opinions (which can and will disagree with yours) then it's harmless.

  16. Re:The Academy on Salon on Gollum's Failed Oscar Nomination · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The thing to remember about the Oscars is that they are promotional tool to sell movies. It's one of the ways to give the subjective process of assessing quality some semi-objective measure. Of course it's flawed, but all the others - box office, word of mouth, trailers, critic's reviews, track record - are equally flawed.

    And I don't think it's shabby or dishonest as long as you approach it that way. After all if you're buying a tin of baked beans or a car you can try out the product first. There's no way to do that with a movie except to go on someone else's judgement. The Oscars are one source of information for doing that.

    As with any contest where the result is determined by a vote there are many different reasons why people vote they way they do which don't necessarily relate to the matter at hand. This is human nature and we expect this to be the case and treat the result accordingly.

    But the only way to remove those non-relevant voting influences is to use some objective measure. But if there was an objective measure we wouldn't need to have a vote.

    As for it being cliquey - there are other awards that are voted for by the general public. If you want to pay more attention to those results you are free to do so.

  17. Re:Childish on Opera Releases "Bork" Edition · · Score: 1

    No Opera 6 is not broken in that way. See here for a screenshot of Opera 6 displaying the page correctly (given the correct style sheet)

  18. Re:Hold on here on Opera Releases "Bork" Edition · · Score: 1

    Read the more in-depth technical article:

    http://my.opera.com/dev/discussion/openweb/20030 20 6/

    They send a different style sheet to the Opera browser even though Opera works fine with the MSIE one.

  19. Re:true story on Aggressive Email Filtering Blocks Political Debate · · Score: 1
    i looked, and there it was, 2 months back, in my spam folder (yes, i keep all of my spam, the folder is gigantic)

    If you're only going to look at it every 2 months you may as well not have a spam folder and just delete it all. But I guess you've learnt that the hard way.

  20. Re:Noone really understands the GPL... on Derivative Works And Open Source · · Score: 2
    In the worst case, you can ask the software's copyright holder for clarification of what he or she counts as a derivative work.

    IANAL but surely the definition of what is derivative should be an independant legal one - not defined by one of the parties. Otherwise you may as well replace the language that says "if you produce a derivative work you must publish the source" with "you must publish the source if I say so".

  21. People still use floppy disks? on Philip's SFFO 3cm 4Gig Optical Discs · · Score: 2

    I was trying to remember the last time I used a floppy rather than a network connection or a CD-RW.

    A few months ago I installed linux on an old machine without a bootable CDROM drive.

  22. You expect bugs in a Beta on Bero Quits Red Hat Over Treatment of KDE · · Score: 2

    You're talking about bugs. That's the whole point of releasing beta versions - to find and correct bugs.

    It's unfair to criticize a beta release for having bugs. Do you really believe that releasing buggy code is a goal for RH in the same way that those other useability changes are?

  23. Re:15 minutes into the show and I'm out of there. on Firefly Premieres Tonight · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry but 15 minutes doesn't qualify you to have an opinion.

    This is exactly the problem with a lot of TV today - it's designed to appeal to the lowest common attention span. Only the most banal and sensationalist can survive that.

  24. Re:Geek-friendly my a** on Firefly Premieres Tonight · · Score: 2

    and it that were all it were about you might have a point.

  25. Re:Fan Site? on Firefly Premieres Tonight · · Score: 2

    This is Slashdot right? I mean this is the place where we believe that a labour of love (fan site, Linux) can be better than a corporate for-profit effort (Windows, official site)?