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User: Chris+Mattern

Chris+Mattern's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 7,102

  1. Re:What about the Abacus? on Old Operating Systems Never Die · · Score: 2, Informative

    You've obviously never been down to your local Chinatown (assuming you have one). The abacus is still alive and well in a lot of places. Somebody who really knows how to use one can beat out most people with a calculator, simply because the calculator-user can't punch the keys fast enough.

  2. Multics on Old Operating Systems Never Die · · Score: 5, Informative

    Multics is officially dead. The last site to be using it went offline almost nine years ago. Multics was open sourced two or three years ago, but I haven't heard of anybody taking advantage of that to try using it again.

  3. Re:Score (-1) Off-topic on Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Also pronoun trouble, should "a juror" and "his iPhone" and not "a juror" and "your iPhone". Jurors are not asked to sign statements about my iPhone (of which I don't even have one).

  4. Re:Pizza and promises on Casual Games Quickly Transforming the MMO Market · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You want to expand on that? The only thing I can think of with broader appeal than that, is Pizza. Actual bread, cheese, tomato, to your door in 30 minutes or less.

    Everquest II did that. WoW countered with Chinese, but that turned out to be an April Fool's prank. The EQII /pizza command, however, was real, but I believe it's been discontinued.

  5. Re:No moral fibre on Mafia Sinks Ships Containing Toxic Waste · · Score: 5, Funny

    You guys just stopped bleeding from the last time you did it (ask the French about Algeria). It's not *our* fault if you screwed it up.

  6. Re:Do the same to Microsoft on "Right To Repair" Bill Advances In Massachusetts · · Score: 1

    Now you did it. The car companies will now only license our cars to us; and force us to upgrade every 7 years whether we want to or not. Which side are you on?

    Watch car commercials on TV some time. Notice how hard they push leasing the car instead of buying it?

  7. I'm not surprised... on How Wired's Hiding Writer Was Found · · Score: 1

    If I'd been responsible for "Time Speeder", I'd've gone into hiding too.

  8. Re:well, that's a crying shame on Tolkien Trust Okays Hobbit Movie · · Score: 1

    "Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!"

  9. Re:Oh great on Tolkien Trust Okays Hobbit Movie · · Score: 1

    If you were expecting Frodo to be a combat monster, congratulations. You have totally missed the entire point of the story. Go you.

  10. Re:Update on China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports · · Score: 1

    Ha! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Wait, that's not the right one...

  11. Re:I need to find a decent font on this Windows bo on China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports · · Score: 1

    Of course, he meant "insanely fragrant violets". They're a big seller for FTD!

  12. Re:How can you... on Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak · · Score: 1

    And exactly what the Shuttle failed miserably at.

  13. Re:Silly Silly Questions... on Trapped Girls Call For Help On Facebook · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To me, teenager always meant 10 and up.

    "Or, as we say around here, zeroteen!"

    To me, teenager always meant 13 to 19, because, y'know, those are the numbers that actually have *teen* in them.

  14. Re:Anonymous Coward on Google Books As "Train Wreck" For Scholars · · Score: 1

    Google is dealing with a ton of books as fast as they can.

    And that may be precisely the problem. "There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over."

  15. Re:I don't take test as a matter of priniciple on Appropriate Interviewing For a Worldwide Search? · · Score: 1

    The problem is that it's still not necessarily a guarantee. Some people have 30 years of experience. Other people have one year of experience, repeated 30 times.

  16. Re:No thanks on Former Intel CEO Andy Grove Wants Struggling Industries To Stop Slacking · · Score: 1

    If only there were as many protests to stop mountain top removal as there are to stop from putting up wind farms.

    If only the mountain top removal was near rich liberal Democratic politicians, and the wind farms near poor Appalachian mountaineers...

  17. Re:use em or lose'm for patents doesn't fix much on Former Intel CEO Andy Grove Wants Struggling Industries To Stop Slacking · · Score: 1

    Yes, true. AT&T had Bell Labs, which did indeed make all kinds of amazing discoveries that are the foundation of modern computing and data communications. However, AT&T management had no interest in pushing those discoveries out in to the field. They had a government-backed monopoly that was making them more than adequate money, and when push came to shove, they had no interest in disturbing the status quo.

  18. Re:WTF IBM on IBM's Supreme Court Brief Says That Patents Drive Free Software · · Score: 3, Informative

    While I agree with your post, a patent is certainly *not* like a hurricane.
    Hurricanes destroy value. Patents reallocate value to the inventor.

    Patents destroy value because the tarriff exacted by the inventor makes uneconomic uses that would otherwise be practical. Part of the value that is not destroyed is then reallocated to the inventor.

    If the value created by encouraging the inventor to make the invention in the first place outweighs the destroyed value, then the patent is still a good thing. But once the invention is in existence, patents unquestionable destroy value.

  19. Re:My TV is already 3d.... on Sony To Launch 3D TVs By Late 2010 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've been finding that TV has less and less depth for some time now...

  20. Re:Reducing emissions does nothing on UK Royal Society Claims Geo-Engineering Feasible · · Score: 1

    Hiding in the dark will only buy us time, the world needs a plan to use that time to find a solution.

    Which, ironically, will be hiding in the dark.

  21. Re:When Sony exert less control than you on Xbox 360 Version of Champions Online Being Held Back By MS · · Score: 1

    So IIRC, you don't need gold access to play a hypothetical MMORPG on an Xbox

    Not hypothetical. Final Fantasy XI is on the XBox 360, and, no, you don't need Gold access for it. Silver (which is free) will allow you play FFXI. (You still have to pay Square the subscription fee for FFXI itself, though, of course.)

  22. Re:There's more on the table here than money... on Xbox 360 Version of Champions Online Being Held Back By MS · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's also Final Fantasy XI (PS2 and Xbox 360) and Everquest: Online Adventures (PS2), both of which are undeniably MMORPGs. Granted, that's not a very long list.

    The main problem has historically been that you really need a hard drive to support an MMORPG. FFXI on the PS2 came with one to install in your PS2--in fact, it was the only way the PS2 HDD was ever released, and FFXI was the only thing on the PS2 that ever required it (and damn near the only thing that even supported it). EQOA tried to just use the memory card, and suffered badly as a result. Classic Xbox was the only console of that generation that had a hard drive as a matter of course, and they didn't seem to be too interested in RPGs. In the current generation, both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 come with hard drives out of the box, and the Wii supports SD cards, but there's still some inertia, which may be starting to be overcome just now.

  23. Re:Sony - Exert Online Control? Are You Joking? on Xbox 360 Version of Champions Online Being Held Back By MS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    having the game manufacturer responsible for maintaining the online portion of the game I believe is a bad idea.

    In the MMORPGs, it's not a "bad idea", it's a *requirement*.

  24. Re:Common Problem on The Myths of Security · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem is that when computers get to that point, they won't do what you want, they'll do what *they* (and the people who made them) want.

  25. Re:Myths of Security? on The Myths of Security · · Score: 1

    Also, "there are algorithms"