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User: Derleth

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Comments · 208

  1. Re:Is everything currency, then? on Federal Judge Declares Bitcoin a Currency · · Score: 1

    As a note, salt was never used as a currency. It’s a common myth, but it isn’t true.

    The etymology: It was an allowance for buying salt.

  2. Re:Title not entirely accurate on Man Accused of Selling Golf Ball Finders As Bomb Detectors · · Score: 1

    Dowsing rods are indeed crap, but this was more about straight-up fraud.

  3. Red Hat - Slackware - DSL - Ubuntu on Ask Slashdot: What Distros Have You Used, In What Order? · · Score: 1

    My first was Red Hat 7.x out of the back of a book I bought at Barnes and Noble. I got a number of later Red Hat distros the same way, largely because downloading ISOs isn’t an option when you’re on dial-up.

    The first set of ISOs I did download was for Slackware. Can’t remember the version, but I ran it until a hard drive died. Kinda lost the ability to run a full-size distro without a hard drive.

    (At some point prior to Slackware I fooled around with OpenBSD. Not entirely relevant, but true.)

    Damn Small Linux (DSL) was next. That worked extremely well and got me hooked on package management as a concept.

    After I got a new hard drive I looked at Debian but the install process was too much of a pain in the ass. Remember that I’m coming from Slackware and OpenBSD at this point, with MS-DOS in my more distant history. So, no, I refuse to see this as my fault. Back then, Canonical was still giving away free Ubuntu DVDs so I ordered one. I got it in the mail and I've been using Ubuntu ever since. I think it was either Dapper or Edgy.

    Also: I’ve been using the same window manager since Slackware. Window Maker just fits me.

  4. “Wasp” by Eric Frank Russell on Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels? · · Score: 2

    Wasp by Eric Frank Russell is about a human dropped onto an enemy alien’s planet to cause as much confusion and destruction as possible to destabilize the occupying force in advance of a human assault. It’s a great ‘war novel’ about, essentially, spy stuff and what would now likely be called terrorism. Eric Frank Russell is generally ignored now, in fact, and does not deserve to be.

  5. Re:Peter Wayner on Firefox 4 Beta 1 Shines On HTML5 · · Score: 1

    It also was not designed to display images, or replace Gopher, or become one of the major foundations of the modern economy.

    Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

  6. Re:Why haven't we heard about this? on Sidestepping A-to-D Convertors For Town Government's Cable TV? · · Score: 1

    Well, the analog over the air signal was phased out already. OTA should be digital now.

    Unless you’re served by LPTV stations, for which there is still no mandated analog sunset:

    The June 12, 2009 DTV transition deadline does not apply to low-power television stations. The FCC will determine a deadline for these stations to transition to digital at a future date.

    Personally, I’m still receiving analog OTA TV near Havre, Montana from four American broadcasters and two Canadian ones. The American stations, being translators, identify as digital, but they are analog. I can’t get any digital OTA TV out here.

  7. Re:Some hardware needs them on The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk · · Score: 1

    There’s also a special filing system for those documents, one that gets emptied automatically at the end of the day. I believe you techies call it “garbage collection.”

  8. Re:We need standards, good ones too. For Linux, to on The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk · · Score: 1

    Cars work with today's gas and roads.

    No, not if they need leaded gas.

    Old televisions work with today's services and electricity.

    Not in the US they don’t, unless some old TV maker had a time machine and access to ATSC hardware, or if your definition of an ‘old’ TV includes TVs recent enough to be cable-ready and you have an analog cable hookup.

    Yes, recompiling and recoding works - but why does Linux always have to rely on that, and other systems less so, having better binary compatibility?

    I can run 32-bit binaries on my 64-bit system just fine. I just need the right libraries, just like with all of the other software I run. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  9. Re:A possible solution to this problem for all tim on Extremists Warn South Park Creators Over Muhammad In a Bear Suit · · Score: 1

    What if hundreds of thousands or even millions of westerners drew and posted online depictions of the prophet Mohammed? Would that finally make the point that secular cultures are not bound by religious law and enjoy the freedom to ignore dogma as desired?

    No, it would convince them (the morons protesting South Park, the morons who rioted over the Danish cartoons, and similar people) that all Christians hate Islam and the Prophet and therefore want to kill them. They are convinced that we would be just as angry as they are if someone made really offensive pictures of Jesus. They do not understand our way of life.

    I think a better plan might be to give them those offensive pictures of Jesus. Make a million images of Jesus being humiliated, urinate on a few thousand crucifixes, and maybe then they will begin to understand that we are not like them when it comes to religion.

    Of course, then we might have to work on the fact a large number of us have no religion at all. That might take a while.

  10. Re:Problem on Why Computer Science Students Cheat · · Score: 1

    The fittest survive.
    What is meant by the fittest?

    The ones whose children have the most viable children, where ‘viable’ means ‘healthy and able to reproduce.’

    That is not a quote from Darwin, by the way, but it sums up one small aspect of his whole theory. Where some people who do not understand it go wrong, however, is ascribing a moral dimension to all this. Nature is not moral.

  11. Re:Become a ham because it's fun, not just for emc on Ham Radio Still Growing In the iStuff Age · · Score: 1

    When the shit hits the fan, how are you going to power your radio? How are you going to fuel that generator? And if the infrastructure to do those things exists, how long is it going to be before cell coverage is re-established?

  12. Re:For one thing... on Ham Radio Still Growing In the iStuff Age · · Score: 1

    You get to talk without infrastructure

    But with a large amount of more-or-less direct Federal government oversight. To quote the artist, the FCC won’t let you be: As long as you are using the “public airwaves”, you are subject to laws that would not pass Constitutional muster in nearly any other space. You can’t even encrypt your communications to prevent ‘sensitive ears’ from hearing them.

    Anyway, that’s what prevented me from pursuing a Ham license about fifteen years or so ago. I doubt very much has changed since.

  13. Re:"many developers are so intrigued" on Google Go Capturing Developer Interest · · Score: 1

    There hasn't been a successful new systems programming language

    Go is garbage-collected. That keeps it from being a systems programming language for a lot of people who actually use systems programming languages.

    I’m not saying that’s ‘fair’ or ‘right’, it’s just the way it is.

    (The difference with D is that in D, you can explicitly disable garbage collection for stretches of the code. A ‘Real Programmer’ would presumably disable it for the whole program.)

  14. [OT] Sig question (Was: Re:What a load of crap) on Why Top Linux Distros Are For Different Users · · Score: 1

    The enemies of Democracy [blackboxvoting.org] are

    ... what? Is this signature broken for everyone, or just for me?

    I’m running Firefox 3.5 on Linux, for the record.

  15. Re:Technically... on Is That Sushi Hazardous To Your Health? · · Score: 1

    But the English language does, and it's in Oxford.

    This is simply false. Nobody who has actually studied language could make this mistake.

  16. Re:Then you can work, thief! on Facebook Photos Lead To Cancellation of Quebec Woman's Insurance · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the gov stepped in and mandated more seats in medical schools, there would be more doctors and less of a shortage.

    And a lower average quality of physician. The government can’t mandate skill or talent among its citizens.

  17. Re:List his peace initiatives... on Linus Torvalds For Nobel Peace Prize? · · Score: 1

    Saying that Tibet must be either an aristocratic theocracy or an imperial possession seems like a horrible false dilemma. Would the theocracy necessarily be re-established in a new free Tibet? I doubt that, given that the world would be watching, and not just hippies: An oppressive theocracy so close to Central Asia would be an intolerable power shift.

  18. Re:If Paul had won.. on Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad. · · Score: 1

    Had Ron Paul won, the Office of the President would have become effectively powerless for four years. Read your Constitution and list the things a President can do if the House and the Senate are both dead-set against him.

  19. Re:"Quality" on Paywalls To Drive Journalists Away In Addition To Consumers? · · Score: 1

    I should probably clarify that I have no love or hate for Objectivism. I'm merely trying to get a cogent argument out of someone who obviously hates it.

    Why? Because it should be amusing. Everyone who comments on it online, it seems, has an almost cartoonish hatred of the philosophy, its adherents, and Ayn Rand. However, it seems that most of them cannot separate those hatreds in a rational fashion, leading to purely ad hominem attacks against the philosophy. In short, it seems like they hate it because some of the adherents are assholes and Ayn Rand was really ugly.

    So I'm happy I found someone who has an actual argument.

  20. Re:"Quality" on Paywalls To Drive Journalists Away In Addition To Consumers? · · Score: 1

    Objectivism as a foundation for economic systems is a failure, since it fails to accurately reflect the fact that actors can be, and often are, irrational.

    A problem with your attack is that standard economic theory works the same way. Look up Homo economicus some time.

  21. Re:"Quality" on Paywalls To Drive Journalists Away In Addition To Consumers? · · Score: 1

    Everyone hates Objectivism but nobody has any arguments against it. Everyone who I've ever heard putting Objectivism down is putting Rand down in the same breath, as if her personal qualities were at all relevant to a philosophical discussion.

    In short: Explain to me why Objectivism is evil without once attacking Ayn Rand or any other human being.

  22. Re:Happy birth-day OpenSSH on OpenSSH Going Strong After 10 Years With Release of v5.3 · · Score: 1

    Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

    MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!

    La Lune Noir! Noir! Chat!

  23. Re:Happy birth-day OpenSSH on OpenSSH Going Strong After 10 Years With Release of v5.3 · · Score: 1

    6) My toad loves cheese

    7) I live with two mimes, and I cannot scream

    8) Loose a thumb, but only on Thursdays

    9) I'm a wallaby. Mooo!

    10) Unicorn. Love. Hate.

    11) Understanding you'r Swede

  24. Re:Linux Wins on OpenSolaris vs. Linux, For Linux Users · · Score: 1

    upgrades, RPM

    I find it easy to upgrade my deb-based Ubuntu system. I imagine Debian users find it just as easy.

    Linux does not always imply RPM any more than Solaris always implies SPARC.

  25. Re:One word on UK's Oldest Computer To Be "Rebooted" · · Score: 1

    Stonehenge is seriously claimed by some to be the UK's oldest computer.

    Only by people deliberately misconstruing the term ‘computer’ to be cute.

    How about this: Single-celled life is, collectively, the world’s oldest computer. After all, it multiplies without external help!