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User: Decado

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Comments · 188

  1. Re:Wouldn't this movie... on Sam Raimi To Direct World of Warcraft Movie · · Score: 1

    It will be released in two different versions, the Alliance version has all the horde dialogue subtitled and the Horde version has all the alliance dialogue subtitled. This way they can make sure to keep the fans happy regardless of their faction.

  2. Re:Cars on Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves · · Score: 0, Redundant

    A company refusing to do business with a person who they think stole a product from one of their customers is, in fact, being incredibly loyal to their customer.

    The guy they are treating like crap is not a customer because with no receipt and no warrenty he is quite likely a thief. If the sale was legitimate why would he have any trouble getting the warrenty number from the seller?

  3. Re:Cars on Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves · · Score: 1

    Alienware have no obligation to deal with this guy. They do not sell PC parts individually and they don't have to. If the sale was legitimate then the guy who bought the PC should have absolutely no trouble getting the warrenty number from the seller.

    The previous rant about the hassles of DRM just to install a dual boot also suggests that he does not have the CDs to reinstall his operating system etc if needed furthering the idea that the laptop he bought was, in fact, stolen.

  4. Re:Corporations on Battle Lines Being Drawn As Obama Plans To Curb Tax Avoidance · · Score: 1

    You are missing the point. Poor people paying proportionally more tax is morally wrong. It doesn't matter if the rich person can choose to pay more, what matters is that only the rich person gets that choice.

  5. Re:Researchers discover 'cloud' means multiple thi on Researchers Critique Today's Cloud Computing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What puzzles me though is that the article tries to argue that on one hand the cloud concept is no different from client-server as it stands but on the other that the problem is the lack of interoperability.

    A random Microsoft server can no more interoperate with a random Oracle or Apple server than a cloud service can so exactly how is it worse?

    I also think the term cloud computing is just a bit jumbled. I think of it as the Amazon model, you basically design your server as a VM and then multiple copies of that get instanced as needed. The strange thing is that model is far more vendor neutral than anything currently on the market. In theory there is no reason why any company with the hardware resources can't fire up 1000 copies of that VM if you choose to change vendor. In effect cloud computing by that definition (which I believe is the most common) is no different than leasing servers from a hosting service at present, it just scales a lot easier if you need to.

    The economic comparison is equally false. If for example Amazon were to oversell their hardware by 10% then all that happens is the sites they host end up running a bit slowly and people move off the service. The whole company doesn't end up in negative equity and going broke because of that. That metaphor just seems so wrong in this situation that it pretty much makes no sense.

    If we were seeing a situation where web hosting and data center companies were merging wholesale while pursuing shaky business models then you could argue that there was a comparison but we are not. Cloud computing is a technical development, and until we see huge companies hosting the entire internet there is no real risk.

  6. Re:Misleading Headline on MIT Tracking Campus Net Connections Since 1999 · · Score: 1

    They keep 3 days of logs and a 30 day log of malicious activity. That the article describes their policy while claiming they don't have one pretty much proves the "storm in a teacup" point.

    The policy they are using is both practical and reasonable from a privacy standpoint. It may not be an "official" policy but it is a policy and it is a good one. It is just a case of arguing over definitions.

  7. Misleading Headline on MIT Tracking Campus Net Connections Since 1999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, they keep the records for 3 days for most traffic and 30 days for anomolous traffic which might indicate a threat to the network. Most networks I have seen keep data for far longer just because nobody ever bothers to clean out the logs.

    The fact that they have a policy for cleaning the logs puts them streets ahead of the most network admins and yet they are being portrayed as the bad guys here.

    Storm in a teacup if I have ever seen one.

  8. Re:Nuke... on How Do You Deal With Pirated Programs At Work? · · Score: 1

    These are multimillion dollar operations. You can't make that kind of decision, you're just a grunt.

    No offense.

  9. Re:OUCH on Mythic Shutting Down 63 Warhammer Servers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think they did the right thing, they started with a lot of surplus capacity and now are scaling back to what they are actually using. Unless (by some miracle) they could guess exactly what capacity would be needed then they have two options, provide too much or provide too little. From a customer service standpoint it is certainly much better to err on the side of providing too much.

    I feel a bit bad for Mythic in that this will probably be spun as some sort of death knell for the game when in fact it is simply the logical outcome of the company doing the right thing at launch.

  10. Re:Not a bad thing on UK Proposes Broadband Expansion, Plus a Music and Film Tax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So let me get this straight.

    1. You tax the people.
    2. You give the tax to the record companies.
    3. The record companies use this tax to sue the very people who were taxed.

    Isn't that just a roundabout way of forcing the defendant to pay all the legal bills regardless of the outcome?

  11. Fuck You Eircom on Ireland's Largest ISP Settles With Record Industry · · Score: 1

    After years of dicking around and holding back the broadband rollout in Ireland so they could squeeze every extra penny out of people stuck with dial up they immediately roll over for the content companies and decide to screw over their customers again.

    I am very glad I switched away from eircom years ago. The main problem though is that they control all the actual physical lines and others have to lease bandwidth so I can see them quite happily using this shit as a stick to beat their competitors.

  12. Re:Not banning plasmas. on Efficiency Gains Could Prove Proposed Plasma Ban Shortsighted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the problems is that having low energy requirements could potentially limit the chance for new technologies to develop. If for example plasma TVs cannot meet the new requirement they may well be scrapped, but potentially if they can remain on the market it is possible that in 5 years time that technology will have developed to the point that plasma TVs use much less energy than the LCD TVs.

    A system which prevents any technology from co-existing also prevents that technology from developing which is a bad thing.

  13. Re:Popular, unpopular on GTA IV On PC Goes Exclusive With 'Games For Windows Live' · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not being available on Steam reduces the chance that I will buy a PC game by about 90% these days. It is just so handy to have all my games in the same location, automatic patching, no need to worry about CD keys etc.

    If GTA IV doesn't come on Steam I won't be buying it. That said I would take this announcement with a very large game of salt. Considering GTA IV was announced as being exclusive to pretty much every platform in existance before its release it is more likely that they have some little piddling exclusive for Games for Windows Live players that nobody will really miss.

  14. Re:Harmonics on Wood Density May Explain Stradivarius Secret · · Score: 1

    The thing is, nobody can really tell the difference. They just think they can. There are several instances of famous strad owners who played with just a normal violin in front of experts who hadn't the faintest notion they weren't using their strad. Like many things it is just self deception that makes us think it sounds better. It sounds better because we expect it to. Nothing more.

  15. Re:There is only one true keyboard... on Review of Das Keyboard · · Score: 1

    Isn't this whole review pretty bullshit? Negative review because a windows keyboard isn't a mac keyboard? It isn't to any appreciable extent even a review, it is just a list of gripes about using a windows keyboard with a mac. If it is a windows keyboard at least review it as such.

  16. Re:Ban Horror, Monsters or Shlock Stock? on China Bans Horror Movies · · Score: 1

    "More than 500 gamers signed a post, announcing they would boycott the game."

    Funny, I don't think I can recall a single change to anything in WoW good or bad that didn't have more than 500 players saying they would boycott the game in disgust.

  17. Re:Memory Usage / No Script on Serious Vulnerability In Firefox 2.0.0.12 · · Score: 1

    Ok, assume 10 pages cached, about 1 megabyte of data each (in fact they are a lot smaller than that). What is it doing with the other 130 megs?

  18. Re:Memory Usage / No Script on Serious Vulnerability In Firefox 2.0.0.12 · · Score: 1

    Right now my firefox is using 171MB of memory. The page on which I am editing this post is the only page open and this is the only browser instance running. It is, in short, an utter joke how much memory firefox hogs.

  19. Re:Potential for rigging on Mac Hack Contest Redux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would have said that the challenge pretty much amounts to saying "The next OS we find a vulnerability for is the weakest". In the long term it is a meaningless piece of data. If we hear about a new exploit for any OS tomorrow it means nothing, you have to look at long term trends to find a correct answer.

  20. Re:No on Heavily Discounted Zune Outpacing iPod Sales · · Score: 1

    Many people make the reasonable assumption that resyncing is basically a merge of both sets of files which is what many other players do, they copy files the PC is missing from the player and files the player is missing from the PC. Lots of people get burned by it at least once, and if your player deletes your entire library once you don't recommend it to others. If apple mean "Do you want to delete all files from your iPod and copy the ones from this PC instead?" that is what they should ask, "Do you want to resync?" is misleading and not nearly clear enough for the severity of its actions. I would say you are the one with the literacy problem since you can't see that "resync" is a word with some ambiguity in its meaning and several valid interpretations.

  21. Re:Actually.... on How Tech Almost Lost the War · · Score: 2, Funny

    When the only joke you have is windows, +1 Funny may as well be -1 Redundant.

  22. Re:Fortran on Choice Overload In Parallel Programming · · Score: 1

    You heard the man, lets all stop innovating and developing because there are too many choices already.

  23. Re:Habeas Corpus not "revoked" on US Senate Fails To Reinstate Habeas Corpus · · Score: 1

    Further, we don't have a Republican Congress anymore, so I'm not sure how that is even meaningful. I guess I'm supposed to assume that even a Democratic Congress doesn't want to "restore Habeas Corpus"?

    If you look at the voting record every single Democrat voted in favor of the bill (as did two Republicans). The Nays were the rest of the republicans and a single independent. The bill didn't pass because it requires a 60% majority of votes to carry it so you are certainly being disingenuous by implying that there is no will to pass this bill amongst the Democrat representatives. The Democratic Congress overwhelmingly wants to restore Habeas Corpus but is being held back by a large Republican Opposition.

  24. Re:I don't quite get it.. on Canadian Bureaucrats Don't "Think Different" · · Score: 5, Funny

    Would have been much funnier if the city had agreed to remove the parking meters, taken the 35k and put 3 much larger and more obtrusive No Parking signs there instead.

  25. Re:Uh, no. on The Zen of Online Game Design · · Score: 1

    Exactly, it doesn't matter if wow is perfect or not, what matters is that articles describing how to do what wow does shouldn't be masquerading as new and inciteful design ideas.