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User: metamatic

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  1. Re:Simpson's are worth it. on Simpsons Actors on Strike · · Score: 1

    A lot of folks on the ole /. seem to think replacements and less money is okay.

    I'm waiting for the right-wing libertarians to explain to us all that FOX should outsource the voice acting to India, so that the US actors can move on to a more highly-skilled position.

    Hell, they already have Apu on the show.

  2. Secret terms on Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation · · Score: 3, Funny

    As part of the deal, Sun has also agreed to cripple Java by making Java applications really ugly and slow, and...

    Oh, wait, never mind.

  3. Re:This is a good deal - no Applets included on Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation · · Score: 1

    The point is, there's no sense in Windows shipping with a JVM - you're just going to go around it with each Java product you install anyway.



    If Windows shipped with a JVM that worked well and was standard, you wouldn't see every product installing its own. When's the last time you saw a Mac Java product ship with a JVM? Never, because Mac OS X has a working JVM that lets you simply double-click .jar applications to run them.
  4. Re:In other words... on Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation · · Score: 1

    1. Enforce patents on .NET, killing Mono and all the GNOME applications built on it.

    2. Release Office for Linux, which they're already working on, if it becomes absolutely necessary.

  5. Re:Where do you want Java to go today? on Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation · · Score: 1

    More likely, there's a ton of patented technology Microsoft wants to copy from Java and incorporate in .NET.

  6. Re:Does this mean Sun will be profitable this quar on Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation · · Score: 1

    Sorry, that's just not true. You have it ass-backwards.

    Sun told Microsoft they had to ship either the current standard version of Sun Java, with no Microsoft extensions; or no Java. Microsoft picked "no Java", because they wanted to keep shipping the old, crappy 1.1.8 Java with their broken extensions to the Java language.

    Then Sun tried to sue Microsoft to force them to ship Sun Java, and lost.

    As a result, Microsoft ended up with no license to ship any kind of Java. However, they were allowed to distribute their 1.1.8 "extended" JRE for an interim period. That's how we ended up with Microsoft only being able to ship their 1.1.8 JRE--if Sun had agreed to Microsoft's terms, they'd have shipped the 1.1.8 "extended" JRE *indefinitely*.

  7. Re:Game coding on a crappy project on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had? · · Score: 1

    "Terrible game-design ... Fragile, super-crufty codebase ... Emphasis entirely on marketability as opposed to quality" -- I was thinking Xbox developer myself.

  8. Re:.com with aggresive transexual boss on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had? · · Score: 1

    OK, this is off topic, but just to point something out:

    Crossdressing is engaged in by both heterosexuals and homosexuals and is generally done as a means of gaining sexual satisfaction.

    Crossdressing is also engaged in by some bisexuals.

  9. Re:A way to monkeywrench "the system"? on People with real l337 speak names? · · Score: 1

    If you really want to fsck things up, do what I did and change your name to be one word. It's amazing how many database systems are designed to insist on two names, or even two names plus an initial. It's not like it's even that uncommon to have a one-word name... there's Green, Freff, Sting, Madonna, and I knew a guy called Wookey.

    If that's not enough mayhem for you, change one of your names to "Deceased". It'll certainly cut down on the junk mail.

    I've sometimes wondered: if you changed your name to "Par Avion", would your mail arrive quicker?

  10. The MA housing crisis on Study Says Massachusetts Best State For Technology · · Score: 1

    I live in Cambridge, MA. It looks like I'm leaving Massachusetts. Why? Because I can't afford to live here.

    $350,000 will get you a small apartment or a condo in a moderately undesirable part of town. If you want a house somewhere in the Boston metro area, you're looking at $450,000 starting price, $550,000 is more realistic. And no, salaries aren't high enough to make that feasible unless you're married and both working a high-paid tech job.

    You can go out as far as Salem and still not see any improvement in housing costs. To get affordable housing you have to go out to some suburban hellhole where the closest thing to culture is the video store and everything closes at 5pm.

    That's why people are leaving Massachusetts in their tens of thousands every year. Even in the 1990s boom years, income growth was outstripped by cost-of-living increases.

    See http://www.massinc.org/research/index.html

    I like it here, and if there was any way I could afford a home here I'd stay. (I'm open to suggestions.) But right now I'm looking at Austin. (Sorry, Austin.)

  11. Why do they even bother? on New Zaurus Linux PDA Available In the U.S. · · Score: 1

    Nobody wants the vertical format PDA with thumb keyboard. Everyone wants the CL-7x0 and CL-8x0 models. I even spoke to some Sharp USA guys at a trade show, and they said *they* wanted CL-760s, and that dozens of people had walked past, seen the 6000, and asked when the 760 was coming out.

    Look at the discussion for this story, for example. Count all the people saying the Zaurus is great, then see how many are using CL-7x0 machines.

    Dynamism must be laughing all the way to the bank.

  12. Re:Skip the computer, use a DVD player on Building an Unattended Computer Presentation? · · Score: 1

    Yup, I was going to suggest using a DVD player. Advantages:

    1. Reliability. (Ever seen a DVD player crash? Ever seen optical media wear out from over-use?)

    2. Cheapness. (Pick up a DVD player for $60 from Best Buy and attach it to an old TV.)

    3. Capability. (Nicer sound and video than you'll get from an old $60 computer.)

    4. Familiarity. (At this stage, most people know how to operate a DVD player.)

    5. Portability. (You can get a handheld DVD player for a few hundred bucks that'll play for hours and is much lighter than any inexpensive laptop.)

    6. Ease of authoring. (Use iMovie and iDVD.)

  13. Re:All these gentoo comments on Build From Source vs. Packages? · · Score: 1

    You were fed up with Gentoo being too slow to release stuff, so you switched to Debian?

    Oh, I get it, it's comedy hour!

  14. Re:Quit fucking around; build a native aqua versio on OpenOffice.org For Mac OS X Hits 1.1.1 (Finally) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    OK, well, I am a customer. I'll pay $50 for OpenOffice, but only when they have a native Aqua version.

  15. Re:Enough on Gates: Hardware, Not Software, Will Be Free · · Score: 1

    I want a tablet PC. I just don't want one running Windows.

  16. Re:Visual design inevitable on Gates: Hardware, Not Software, Will Be Free · · Score: 1

    Damn right. But if there was a visual XHTML editor that didn't suck, I'd be eager to use it. Unfortunately it's practically impossible to find one that'll generate correct XHTML and CSS and support all XHTML features.

    My general test is to fire up the package and try to create a page with a couple of different levels of heading and a few paragraphs of text, then run the result through a validator and check for correct heading elements. It's sad how many "professional" web tools can't even pass a trivial test like that. (Hello, GoLive.)

  17. Not any more on Fighting the Forced Ranking of Employees? · · Score: 1

    IBM has completely changed the performance assessment process this year. Managers no longer have fixed allocations of each grade to hand out. If anyone at IBM is reading this and hasn't heard about the new system, ask your manager.

  18. Re:All these gentoo comments on Build From Source vs. Packages? · · Score: 1

    99% of the time you can take the ebuild for foo-3.2.5, copy it to foo-3.2.6.ebuild, edit the one line which says what version it builds, and it'll work. There's no need to wait for the Gentoo maintainers to do it for you.

  19. Re:Who are these people? on Build From Source vs. Packages? · · Score: 1

    Gentoo has a handy script which makes a Portage ebuild for any CPAN package. The ebuild downloads the package from CPAN and builds it. So you get the latest code from CPAN, but you still get to use Portage to handle packages and dependencies.

  20. Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep on KDE And Gnome Together At Last? · · Score: 1

    UI issues with the window manager aren't a good reason to reject the entire architecture. Look at OS X--lots of people decided they hated the dock, so there are numerous replacements.

  21. Re:GTK is out, then? on Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated] · · Score: 1

    Please, I beg you, look at GnuStep.

    See my previous comments on the subject.

  22. Re:My thumb thanks you on Congress To Force Cable a la Carte Plans · · Score: 1

    Well, (a) the legislation could easily state that the companies are not allowed to discount their bundle packages by more than X%. So yeah, they'd be allowed to charge $3 per channel, but only if they made their full bundle $300. Think they'd do that?

    And (b) even if they charged an outrageous $3 per channel, I'd still end up paying half what I do now for cable TV.

  23. Re:He who pays the Piper calls the tune on Congress To Force Cable a la Carte Plans · · Score: 3, Funny

    But even at those prices, I'd still save money.

  24. Costs of administering the choices? on Congress To Force Cable a la Carte Plans · · Score: 1

    Maybe where you live it's different, but here the cable company *already* charges a fee every time I change my selection of channel packages. So they can just continue to charge the same fee.

  25. Just desserts on Oddworld Ditches Money Hat, Seeks Stranger Route · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They got in bed with Microsoft, they alienated their fans (anyone else remember the Oddworld forums at the time?) and sold very few copies of the game as a result, they destroyed their developer credibility by shamelessly shilling for the Xbox, and now Microsoft has got what it wanted they've been hung out to dry. Now there's a surprise.

    Maybe if they ported Munch's Oddysee to run on the PS2 like it was intended to, some of us would buy it. If they're going to make another Xbox-only game, let 'em go bust.