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User: billcopc

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Comments · 5,620

  1. Schmantum Physics on Hubble Too Sharp? Quantum Theory Flaws? · · Score: 0

    Why is it that someone or thing challenges the entire sphere of quantum physics every time an Avril Lavigne song is played on MTV, which is about every 3 minutes ?

    Quantum Physics is a theory, it's a collection of drunken synaptic misfires that have been magically put into words. It's religion for people too smart to believe in god. It mostly makes sense, but only in relation to itself, or to other trivial facts that don't really mean anything.

    A picture is only too sharp when Photoshop adds multicolored ringing artifacts to your edges. but THIS is just some clever scientist wannabe who is trying to prolong his career of doing nothing for lots of money.

  2. from iBox to iDiot on Beige Box Apple Clone? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The whole point of Apple is that THERE IS NO 3rd party. Yes the Mac is expensive upfront, but look at it this way : if you buy a PC, either assembled or part-by-part, you know you're going to spend hours, no, days tweaking it and stamping out the zillions of compatibility issues and hardware glitches. If you buy a Mac, Apple has already done all that tweaking and testing and you have a solid finished product, identical to the other millions of Macs sold all over. You don't have to futz with a Mac, it just works and works well. You have to pay for that extra effort and quality, but in the long run you save lots of time (thus money).

    Now if this guy sells you a naked board, and you find a CPU somewhere, then a cheap-cheap IDE drive from your favorite asian importer, and some Kingston Value Crap Ram, well you have yourself a 1500$ iBox with an identity crisis. And it is really much cheaper than a 'true' Mac ? Not that much.

    If you want a cheap Mac, buy it used or get a lower-end model. If you just want the cheapest computer, then go grab a 500$ PC from Walmart. The bottom line is that a fully-equipped PC that works as well as a Mac, costs as much as a Mac.

  3. Re:and then ? on Multiple Users and Multiple Inputs on One Machine? · · Score: 1

    For the web-surfing email-sending crowd, the world had thousands of old sleeping 300mhz systems just waiting to be powered on. I actually have 4-5 of those junkers lying around waiting for a project to happen upon my sick mind. I keep the multi-ghz PC for my main carnal use.

  4. and then ? on Multiple Users and Multiple Inputs on One Machine? · · Score: 1

    Could someone please clarify why 2 people on one bastard PC would be better than 2 people on two normal PC's with some Cat-5 between them ? Here we actually have two _interactive_ users running amok on the same system, twice as likely to crash something. Or have we invented a PC that can reboot one-half at a time ? This isn't like high-end citrix servers which actually run everything remotely, but those machines usually have a truckload of ram and diskspace. THAT system is suited to concurrent interactive sessions, because the hardware itself is a limited resource that can't be replicated on each desk like you would a common PC.

    Now if you're being spacewise, then just get those neato super-slim PC's build inside the base of an LCD screen. Eurocom has them in Canada, don't know about USA/foreign. Not to mention, the money saved by cramming more people into the same office space will more than pay for the equipment in no time at all, and they'll like the new slim desktops.

  5. Rock fans rejoice! on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 1

    Finally we'll be able to decipher what Ozzy's been saying all this time.

  6. Re:Won't work on Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit · · Score: 1

    Or just mangle the sensor somehow, or stick it in the microwave for 10 seconds, or duct-tape it to my car's subwoofer system for a day.

    Either way, that ink-level sensor's going bye bye.

  7. Re:23GB? on Sony First To Market With Blue-Laser DVD Recorder · · Score: 1

    My answer to you is to stop mirroring every damned file on the net. We've got Sourceforge for that now!

  8. Re:No Such Thing Asd Bad Advertising on TechTV Screen Savers Host Tries "The Switch" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because they could really use the market share.

    I'm also a die-hard PC freak who has recently decided to look into Macs. Like everyone, I just can't afford them. I've got my well-equipped Athlon 1800 with 1.0gb of ram and a 40gb hard disk. I do just about anything with it: audio, video, gaming, development, graphics; and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg. Let's say it's worth 1500$ today with all the gadgets.

    Now I could buy an entry-level Mac for that same 1500$, and it would carry 256mb of ram, 30gb HD, 700mhz CPU (I know, more power/hz), and no monitor, no burner, no Geforce4 TI, no high-end pro-audio card. And no optical mouse, too.

    So basically, to get something functionally equivalent to my current PC, i'd have to spend nearly triple the amount. Yes, I know the Mac is expertly designed and rock stable. Yes I know it's got the most amazing UI the world has to offer. Yes, I know it's probably worth every penny, but there's thing concept in life called Budgeting. I just happen to have a zillion other things to pay, so blowing 4000$ on a computer raises a Big Red Flag (tm), especially when I know I'll have to upgrade in two years at most.

    If the first rule of business is "ignore all the losers without money", then the world will soon be run by Verizon, Disney and Microsoft. People with limited funds make up a big majority of the population, because if you hadn't noticed the whole continent is in a financial slump and we're all broke and bleeding.

    Selling cheap computers might not make you a zillionaire in 7 days, but it will buy you market share, thus the power to control that market. And wouldn't you know, power eventually leads to money and respect if you wield it well.

  9. Continuing the War On X on French Legislators Vote to Ban Spam · · Score: 1

    Let's ban drugs, that'll make them disappear forever.

    Government just never learns from its past, does it ?

  10. Karma drought on Presenting The CDR-ROM · · Score: 1

    Hey, if only you hadn't mentioned AOL in the story, I could have first posted for Funny +5 Karma.

    Sneer!

  11. Re:Er... on Slashback: Stupidity, Telebastardy, Fast Search · · Score: 1

    Create answering machine software that responds with a 'live'-like greeting, waits for the sales guy to pause, and says "Yes I'd like to hear more". Record the rest, then sue.

    Yee hee hee.

  12. Re:stalagtite? on Build Your Own Snow Gun · · Score: 1

    Let's just call 'em Bubba and go on with our lives.

    "Hey, you've got a big ole' Bubba drippin' down."

  13. Only the interface is protected on Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit · · Score: 1

    From reading SCC's site, they talk only about the 'chips' that interface with the printer. What if there were a way to (very easily) salvage the chip from a genuine Lexmark cartridge, and just slap it onto a recycled ink bin ?

    Perhaps some sort of cheap tool could be developed to mutilate a cartridge and extract the interface 'chip'. Heck, what if SCC did this itself, transplanted Lexmark-made chips onto their ink and sold that ? They wouldn't be violating the DMCA because they wouldn't be reverse-engineering the Lexmark interface. Just like when you send laser toner kits to be 'recycled', they pop them open and fill em with fresh dust, then send them back.

  14. American Corporation = Cry Baby on Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit · · Score: 1

    "
    -But Daddy Government, these companies are stealing away our sales by offering nearly same-quality products at a lower price.

    -Son, that's what we outsiders call competition. It's what keeps your head from blowing up too big. It's all about playing fair, boy.

    -

    -Aww alright son, you can have your stupid injunction, now go annoy your mother for a while"

  15. Yay, Switches on The Next Level of X-Box Modding · · Score: 1

    I like how the guy went for an Altair look with those switches, but all in all doesn't his rig look kinda dull ?

    "Hey man, look what I did to my Acura; I turned it into a Yugo!"

  16. How did they know ? on Cracker Gains Access to 2.2 Million Credit Cards · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If they don't know who did it, not even the tiniest little hint, then how can they know it even happened ? There was a similar 'accident' some time ago where a disgruntled tech ran off with a hard drive full of bank account numbers from his workplace, but they knew who did it and they had the missing hard drive as 'proof'. The trouble was just finding the guy who had skipped the country or something. Much different.

  17. Re:More details.... on Apple Reports Q1 Loss · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why didn't they just lead them to a secluded area and shoot them ? I thought these high-paid executives were there just to serve as scapegoats for when the going got tough.. :)

    It's not like most of them can even USE their own brains, much less a Mac.

  18. Kazaa bliss on The Wireless City · · Score: 2

    Yay, now New Yorkers can step outside and Kazaa themselves to oblivion without fear of busting their cable provider's monthly download allowance.

    I need to move out of Canada, like, now.

  19. Underachievers! on Hard Drive of the Future: Ram Drive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't get it.. let's assume, in the name of generosity, that U160 actually pushes 160mb constantly. Then the rocket drive pushes 320mb constantly. Now we've got PC3200 ddr ram that can theoretically push 3.2 gigs per second, while this rocket drive only does a tenth of that.

    What's the damn point ? It has to go through some sort of slow-ass bus anyways.. it's not like it has precisely timed local access to the northbridge, like traditional ram.

    It would be better for motherboard (and chipset) makers to accomodate buckets of ram sticks, so we can allocate a real RAM disk using 8 or 16 sticks of 512mb/1gb ddr.

  20. Red Hat = stupid bunch of microsoft lovers on Red Hat Nullifies Differences Between Bash, Csh · · Score: 1

    Let me get this straight: the whole point of having different shells is because they're DIFFERENT! Now RedHat is saying "Let's un-differentiate them". Why not just install Bash and leave the other shells alone ? It's never been a problem in the past. They should work on un-differentiating their public image instead. These days they're really bent on fucking up Linux, turning it into windows-like bird seed. They fail to acknowledge that the whole drive behind Linux software is to have something that perfectly suits YOU, hence the bazillion Mozilla spinoffs and umpthousand window managers.

    Once again, Red Hat sucks (ass).

  21. Du-uh on Moving to Mac Made Easy · · Score: 1

    Why is this any different from using two USB network adapters and a Xover cable ?

    If only this were innovative and practical, then it might be newsworthy, but this is just empowering those who can't handle the power, like your typical 9$/hr Circuit City tech.

  22. Ahh I feel ignorant on Microsoft takes on PDF · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I fail to see the threat in all this. The only thing that distinguishes PDF from any other format is the way it's handled. They treat it like this sterile god-given piece of magic, when it's really just a load of Postscript wrapped with proprietary tags.

    XDocs is probably just MS Word doc format with a few extra tags for content control and author signatures. As long as the renderers remain consistent across platforms then it's no better/worse than PDF. It's the viewer software that makes the difference. You could practically define the specifics about rendering HTML a certain way, and call that set of rules a PDF-Killer, because the only thing Adobe has going that the others don't is consistency.

  23. Major disappointment on 1+ GHz Commodore SX-64 Mod · · Score: 1

    I was thinking the guy had used the laser clock generator to run his SX64 cpu at 1.2ghz. That would have been a hell of a lot more worthy than just sticking a goddamned Wintel chip in a weird box.

  24. Pathetic PR stunt on Reuters Accused Of Hacking For Typing In URL · · Score: 1

    "Look people, Reuters, the friendly neighborhood news outlet, is EVIL! We, the small unknown firm that wants YOUR money in exchange for vapor services, are the VICTIM. And now we're all over your web, print and tv news, time to watch the stock ticker go up up up!"

    This world is run by idiots and their money.

  25. Ugly, but almost neat on Mice Designed by Famous Anime Artists · · Score: 1

    They're weird alright, but I have to say the first one (by M. Shirow) ain't half bad. It is consistent with his usual design theme and looks like a cool conversation piece to have sitting on your desk. Is it usable though ? That's hard to say from the pictures. I've been quite accustomed to my comfy oversized M$ Optical Intellimouse for the past year or so, I don't know how my tall slender fingers would adapt to this gadget.