Slashdot Mirror


User: Chmcginn

Chmcginn's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,120
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,120

  1. The only thing I'm gonna say on West Virginian Mayor Might Defy Popular Vote · · Score: 1
    Putting the environment before people Well, honestly, we might very well have to, if we don't start making some sacrifices soon. Callous as it may sound, the livilehood, even the life, of some people is not worth a serious catastrophe.

    (And, no, don't even bring up "The Day After Tommorrow." That's like bringing up "Star Wars" when people start talking about the dangers of totalitarian governments.)

  2. Re:And as an added side bonus... on Xbox 2 Concept Designs Leaked? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Okay, I know I'm ignoring the "Don't feed the..." signs, but... Why would I buy a PC for a grand or so, when I can buy an XBox for 150, do pretty much the same stuff, and have it on a much bigger screen.

  3. Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war! on Assault Weapons Ban · · Score: 1
    First: No gun would help you against a tank, much less a million.

    Then: I said is that no matter the gun, it wouldnt really help you against one, much less a million

    Well, considering it's a hell of a lot easier to hide a person than a tank, one of those weapons would actually be very, very effective against a tank. Especially if you have a bit of knowledge about the particular tank you're targeting. A couple of shots, and at the least, the commander is dead. Or, depending on the design, the engine. Whatever, it's your call.

    More importantly, it probably wouldn'tbe a one-on-one situation...

    And the million tanks is just kinda silly. I don't know of any tank you could buy for forty to fifty thousand dollars. That's a few orders of magnitude low, really. Really, it is.

  4. Selfish works, too on The Dangers of One Party Rule · · Score: 1

    After all, if you're in the 100K+ bracket, and don't have any immediate family / friends in the military, it's beneficial to vote for the guy who is going to cut taxes (or at least keep them the same) on the rich.

  5. And as an added side bonus... on Xbox 2 Concept Designs Leaked? · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can play a console game while running on the treadmill. Try doing that with a game that requires mouse & keyboard...

  6. I think Lucas wins by default.... on Star Wars TV Show, And An Unmade Trilogy · · Score: 1

    Because future lovers of campy sci-fi will agree than Roddenberry would have come out of retirement to beat Rick Berman into a pile of goo. Therefore, everything after DS9 (which got bad enough as it is... but still, Episode one went past all that) doesn't really count.

  7. But for the really pedantic among us... on Is Science Fiction About The Future Anymore? · · Score: 2, Informative

    TNG wasn't 250 years after the original series. It was placed about 90 years after the end of the series (or about 70 years after the last movie).

  8. Almost had me there.... on Debian Project Rejects Sender-ID · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I probably would have clicked on it without looking, except for the fact I've already got a gmail account...

  9. Re:Tragic misunderstanding on SETI Finds Interesting Signal · · Score: 1

    But the DNA by itself isn't so useful. To stretch an analogy, it's like getting the source code with any of the hardware - there's no telling what it's supposed to do if you've never seen the architecture or the language it's supposed to run on.

  10. Isolation isn't necessary on Searching For Trouble With Google · · Score: 1

    In fact, there wasn't isolation in the original example that inspired Darwin to pen 'The Origin of Species'. All of the finches on the Galapagos were assumed to come from the same original species, possibly as little as a few pair.

  11. Re:insurance? on Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact? · · Score: 1
    You have a free, secure, off-site storage area that's reasonably secure against unauthorized online access and very secure against unauthorized physical access.

    And even if that's not the case... if the network is 0wned/burned up in a freak blaze/crushed by falling meteorite, your professor will probably see fit to give people at least an extra day or two. :)

  12. Just bring the old stuff on Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact? · · Score: 1

    I brought my XT when I went to college (early 90's.) It was still fine for playing the original few Wizardy and Bard's Tale. Who's going to steal a 10 year old computer? :)

  13. A new age of Slashdot on Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact? · · Score: 5, Funny
    We've transcended the dupe story. Even the dupe post. We now present to you, for the first time ever, the intra-duped post.

    (Scratches head)

  14. Re:What the fuck? on Vote Tabulator Security Hole Exposed · · Score: 1
    I'm not actually arguing with the assertion that more tech doesn't equal more productivity, all the time... but the original article wasn't saying that, at all. And even in this second article...

    These may be called "productivity tools" but they may do more to help improve the appearance of documents and presentations, to deepen analysis, and to improve control over one's work relationships -- especially with reduced secretarial support. These are valuable gains, but they may not translate into "throughput productivity."

    That's just dumb, IMO. Unless I'm hallucinating here, he's basically saying "productivity" only include the total amount of work done, not the quality of said work. Bad way to measure productivity. To use your secretary example - sure, she can't type any faster. First, though, 98% accuracy is pretty bad if you're trying to get new customers. (A "Exclusive offer" letter with 100 words, and two spelled wrong, isn't too professional.) Or if she's doing a form letter, for instance, she can write it once, and then just change the names & reprint it every time. Did you ever see one of the pre-1980's form letters, where you could see that 95% of it was XEROXed, and the rest stuck in a manual typewriter? Sure, you're basically just as productive with cheaper material... but Mr. Jones might not know that his "exclusive offer" isn't so exclusive...

    Just to be clear on this - I pretty agree with you on PDA's. The only thing I find more useful about mine is the ability to copy documents onto it, so I don't have to carry around paper manuals for any of our equipment anymore. And I don't keep names or addresses in it... that's all in my cell phone, which I consider a vastly superior piece of equipment to the PDA. (Of course, the real reason I've got the PDA so that I can play RISK and pretend I'm doing important work, but that's besides the point.)

  15. What the fuck? on Vote Tabulator Security Hole Exposed · · Score: 1

    Dude, that source you cited didn't support you at all! He pretty much says that it has increased productivity, just not as much as mechaninization of manufacturing did in the thirty years prior. There was anything about making your life more simple or more complex, and he didn't say a single thing about a PDA!

  16. I know, I know, I know, this is a troll.... on Senator Blacklisted by No-Fly List · · Score: 1
    An atrocity, or a few (thousand) people having their noses put out of joint, what's a few thousand out of the entire population of U.S????

    Well, one could point at that said atrocity killed a few thousand people out of the entire U.S. population...

  17. Re:Stupid on Florida Ruling May Lead To E-voting Paper Trail · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Unless, of course, there are no votes for X (assuming X != Nader) in a voting district. Then a manual recount would be expected, the machine assumed to be mis-programmed... then we go through all the reciepts, and the original votes are counted.

    Really, they should do some random checks of machine vs. paper anyway, to allay people's fears...

  18. Re:hmmm on Independent Adventuring Leads To New Horizons · · Score: 1

    That explains why I keep hearing voices when I check Slashdot...

  19. Feeding da trolls, feeding da trolls.... on Independent Adventuring Leads To New Horizons · · Score: 1
    Games are for people who want to be spectators of someone else's creation.

    Congratulations! You just won the "Ridiculously Sweeping Generalization of the Day" award!

    I mean, seriously, you couldn't even say "video games" or "online games" or something slightly more specific? Because by saying "games", no modifier, you've just included sports, word games, party games, board games, and a thousand other types of amusements. It's like saying literature, or film, are just for spectators. It's not even an opinion, it's just plain wrong.

  20. Re:That's what you get... on Cheating Made Easy · · Score: 1
    How many people remember creators of specific schools of psychology from psych 101? On what date did the Civil War end?

    What passes for 'education' in the US is gameshow knowledge; memorizing a nearly endless stream of disjointed factoids just long enough to repeat it on a test.

    The really sad thing is, I didn't even have to delete anything out of the middle to highlife the massive cognitive dissonace that's threating to blow my brain out of the back of my head from trying to understand your choice of opener & arguement.

    In case you don't get what I'm saying... What is knowing the date the Civil War ended, or the name of a creator of a field of pysch, but disjointed factoids?

  21. "Stop" trusting? on MPAA Piracy Survey - Junk Research · · Score: 5, Insightful
    That assumes we ever trusted it to begin with...

    Okay, seriously, for the slightly less-paranoid... It's always a good idea to find out, at the very least,

    a.)Who payed for the research

    b.)Who they work for/own stock in/represent/want you to vote for.

    While most of the time, a research group is not going to make up numbers out of whole cloth, writing the questions in a way that could influence the result is bound to happen most of the time.

  22. Depends on how you define "a few". on U.S. Cancels Fusion Program · · Score: 1

    This site seems to say that "However, the total lifetime of a black hole of M solar masses works out to be 10^71 M^3 seconds".So it would depend on the size of the initial black hole - A black hole of mass of about 3*10^6kg (or a little more than 10^-24 the sun - say, the space shuttle) would last about a second. One a hundred times that size would last for a week - more than enough time to swallow the whole moon. The moon, at about 10^-9 of the mass of the sun, would take about 10^44 seconds to radiate away.

  23. Re:To identify... on Your Right to Travel Anonymously: Not Dead Yet · · Score: 1

    It's not whether or not you have the ID after the crash - if you have it before, they're going to create a passenger list.

  24. Re:Why else? on Your Right to Travel Anonymously: Not Dead Yet · · Score: 1

    More than half. 11 out of the 19 were flagged. (Really, 12 out of the 20 were identified as potentially bad. And 1 out of 12 identified were detained & questioned. Sigh.)

  25. Ferret defense on BSA Asks Kids to Name Copyright Weasel · · Score: 2, Informative

    They're mustelids, not rodents. They aren't any more prone to rabies than other mammals - skunks (which are, admittedly, cousins), coyotes, foxes, and bats are the most common carriers of rabies in the U.S. So two out of the four are related to dogs, not ferrets... (I don't honestly know the figures for outside of the U.S.)