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User: Anomolous+Cowturd

Anomolous+Cowturd's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 259

  1. Re:I'm in Australia (Adelaide) Looking to move cou on Moving Between Countries? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bet Americans are wondering why on earth we would want to leave Australia..... There have been some recent unpleasant changes in Australian society. The Iraq war and anti-Islam propaganda has started turning the knuckle-draggers here into nationalists. Every day sees more crosstikas plastered on the rear windows of SUVs, and Aussie flags are cropping up in incongruous places. It used to be that Aussies were only nationalistic when it came to sports... now, I feel an ugly change coming.
  2. Re:This is a little ridiculous. on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement · · Score: 4, Funny

    Obviously not an Apple fanboy.

  3. Re:screwed. on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    Infowars and PrisonPlanet. Take their output, add to the mainstream media, divide by two and you might get a picture of reality.

  4. Re:Oh Yes It Will on Windows XP SP3 Creating Havoc · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So if you jump through a whole lot of bizarre flaming hoops before installing the upgrade, you should be ok. Could MS be trying to kill off XP for some strange reason?

  5. Re:It looks nice on Do Zebra Stripes Actually Help? · · Score: 1

    How on earth is this offtopic? Very relevant, potentially useful idea. Bad moderator! No cookie!

  6. Re:Literate programming... on Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More · · Score: 2, Informative

    Something like this might help: folding in vim. Emacs probably already has an 11-note chord that does this.

  7. Re:Two things... on Best Way To Avoid Keyloggers On Public Terminals? · · Score: 1

    Just adding, if you manage to arrange hookups on your vacation, you can use their PC to check your email. Doesn't have to be hookups, I mean you're fielding highly sensitive emails while on vacation, seduction is probably not your strong suit. Just make a friend at your destination before you got there.

  8. Re:Two things... on Best Way To Avoid Keyloggers On Public Terminals? · · Score: 1

    I can't believe you've been modded offtopic. If submitter is on vacation, for crying out loud, have a vacation. Don't communicate with anyone who's going to be sending you sensitive information. Create a throwaway gmail account or two and forward your not-worth-stealing personal stuff there. Use it to arrange hook-ups with the chicks at your vacation spot which with great foresight you have been warming up for the last two months. If someone compromises it, well, do you really care if they rub one out to your dirty talk? You lose nothing.

    If you have to field sensitive emails, you're not really on vacation. So buy a tiny laptop, chuck Ubuntu on it, lock it down and stay at a hotel which offers an ethernet port at a decent price. Phone around.

  9. Re:It's all in the spin... on Free Open Source Software Is Costing Vendors $60 Billion? · · Score: 1

    Hey boss, the competition has lowered their prices, and they're eating our customers. They must have reduced their costs somehow, too.

    What do we do now, boss?

  10. Re:What can be done now? on The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML · · Score: 1

    My parents went to Norway and all I got was this stupid document standard

  11. Re:The word "owned" comes to mind on Monster Cables Pushes Around the Wrong Small Company · · Score: 5, Funny

    Then take him to English court; if you dare, Bitch.

  12. Re:Don't you mean what colors? on What Font Color Is Best For Eyes? · · Score: 1

    I'm a bit short-sighted, so with light-on-dark the edges of characters tend to blur outward, turning them into blobs. With dark-on-light, the background blurs into the characters, much easier to read. So I prefer the web in black-on-white.

    However, I prefer my terminals light grey on black because I don't like staring at bright white all the time, and furthermore that's how I grew up, grey on black. Just have to make the fonts larger to compensate for slight blurriness.

  13. Re:So how does one make money in this market? on Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over · · Score: 1

    Oooh, a low profit margin, worst thing in the world.

  14. Re:It's nice to share. on The Death of Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Sadly, as anyone who does this day in and day out can tell you, that is not enough to ensure a system is clean. Windows (any version, any service pack) does not need any user intervention or use to get infected. I'm not saying it is horrendous (nor am I saying it's not - not making any statement either way)... what I am saying is that machines do get infected even with all updates installed - and no user in front of the keyboard.


    A paranoid firewall should be enough to prevent that sort of thing... unless a fresh install of windows actively downloads malware without prompting, but that would be ridiculous.
  15. Re:GNOME and screen real estate on From GNOME to KDE and Back Again · · Score: 1

    GDM expands to: GNU's Not Unix Network Object Model Environment Display Manager. That's some acronym :)

  16. Re:Bad joke. on Beatles and iTunes At Last? · · Score: 1

    Yeah... I downloaded their whole discography from mininova, the songs worth listening to all fit on a single audio CD. I'm so glad I didn't bother buying my way through all that filler just to get a few gems. Now I only by albums which prove their awesomeness in the download first...

  17. Re:Yes. on Time To Abolish Software Patents? · · Score: 1

    Muahaha, my sig is working. Any Latin geeks here wanna check the grammar for me, please?

  18. Re:That's just about the single stupidest idea... on Is Microsoft just Screwing with Yahoo's Mind? · · Score: 1

    Microsoft will simply buy up their own stock while it's down, then sell more when it's up, further boosting the "war chest".

  19. Re:Infertility Applications on Sperm Made From Female Bone Marrow, Men Obsolete? · · Score: 1

    It would be hilarious if the sperm this produced were also infertile.

  20. Re:In other news on Italian Parliament To Mistakenly Legalize MP3 P2P · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can just see it now: Mafia versus MAFIAA.

    (Music And Film Industry Association of America)

  21. Re:The curse of DRM on DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble? · · Score: 1
    The only thing pirates offer that the labels do not is that they don't charge anything.

    That's not the only thing. Here are a few advantages of getting your music from pirates versus getting it from legal sources:
    • No charge. You already said this one, but it leads to a related benefit:
    • No payment step. You don't need a credit card, you don't have to protect your credit card number, you don't have to go through the entire fuss of paying. To me a dollar is nothing, having to enter credit card details, name, phone number, address, email address, sexual preference and so on - a dealbreaker. So pirates cater to a wider market.
    • Relative anonymity. I like that. Pirates neither need nor want to know who I am. I am not going to be marketed to and data-mined by pirates. They're not going to try to manufacture another focus-grouped "artist" to market at me.
    • If the music turns out to be crap, there's no option for a refund from a legit seller. With pirates, you just delete the crappy file. Furthermore, you can download an entire discography, listen to it on loop for a couple of days, then pick out the few songs you like for your collection. This is only practical through piracy, would be too costly legally.
    • Fully functional files. The practical effect of DRM is reduced usability. I prefer my files uncrippled. I want them to work with any and every device I have.
    • Choice. Anything you can buy, you can pirate, but not vice-versa. Some of the best music is only available from pirates.
  22. Re:DRM is that big of a deal, but the other way on DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble? · · Score: 1

    A lot of people seem to feel this way about data, myself included. If it's in my possession, and I got it fairly and squarely, then within my private domain I'll do with it as I please.

    You say "as long as I'm staying within the constraints of the law ... it's none of their business". I would take it one step further, and say, even if I am not behaving within the constraints of the law, my right to privacy trumps anyone else's right to enforce copyright law. If I break copyright law in a private transaction, that's between me and any co-conspirators, and ought to be unprosecutable.

    For a long time the status quo was that private violation of copyright went un-noticed and un-enforced. Nobody really knew what you did with your data, which kind of balanced out some of the inherent unfairness of copyright. Now DRM has come along, and aims to enforce the law through technical means, in an arena where the law effectively did not (and ought not to) apply. I consider it an unreasonable trespass in my private affairs.

    Whether it's "wrong" to violate copyright law is another issue entirely. All I'm saying, there's a boundary beyond which people should be left alone to be as wicked as they please, and DRM is crossing that boundary.

  23. Re:Wait a second? on Microsoft Confirms IE8 Has 3 Render Modes · · Score: 1

    Each of Firefox, IE and Safari have enough of a presence now that you have to support them all. Coding to just one then trying to support the other two is madness. The only sane thing to do is code to standards and work around browser bugs as they crop up.

  24. Re:People think Microsoft is a software company. on Microsoft Confirms IE8 Has 3 Render Modes · · Score: 1

    Sometimes I wish there were a clandestine organisation which systematically murdered unethical businesspeople. It probably wouldn't stem the tide of crappiness very much, but would be quite satisfying just knowing it was happening.

  25. Re:My experience on Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I tell my boss to send me specs/todos and so on in email because that's where I keep track of them, and cross em off as they're done. Otherwise it's in one ear and out the other. Not always about CYA.