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User: _Mycroft_VII

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  1. Re:Right to Privacy? on Borland Kylix/JBuilder License Reviewed · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actualy It's not directly in there. But in the bill of rights it basically says 'we didn't list all your rights here, and our not listing them does not mean that you don't have them, and thier still fully protected by the constitution'
    and the supreme court has repeatedly held that privacy is one the unlisted, but still constitionaly protected right.

    Mycroft (since 1984)

  2. Re:Hate on The Year In Ideas · · Score: 1

    And now we know why so many women wind up with abusive looses. "giddy happenstance" that leads to a worthwile relationship occures about as often as winning the lottery. though speed dating goes to far the other way. I get so frustrated hearing women go on about the kind of man they say thier looking for, nice, caring, etc. only to see them chase after mr. thrills who's an arrogant selfish jerk. and give just friend's speaches to the nice guys who'd treat them right. Like someone said on the radio, women say they want allen alda but chase john wayne and then don't understand why thier not happy.
    you have to have some degree of rationality and reason involved. to honestly think about the kind of person your looking for and how to spot them. and to take the time to find out about someone and NOT expect instant chemistry and love. all those dime romance novels and movies etc. are fantasies. that sort of thing happens about as often as winning the lottery twice in a row.

    Mycroft

  3. Re:Why does Everything require a Lawyer? on Unreasonable Searches When Going to Work? · · Score: 1

    "Well, then it seems to me that the logical solution to the problem you describe in your post would be to start considering anti-tank and anti-aircraft assets as "arms" covered under the 2nd Amendment. "

    Actually they already are, if you read what the people who wrote the second amendment have said about it.
    One of them was asked what he meant by 'arms', his reply was:
    "Every arm of the soldier, however terrible"

    Mycroft

  4. Re:This is why... on Mandrake Linux Gamer Edition · · Score: 1

    I don't know who said it was unstable, it has to install to be unstable. I've tried two different versions of mandrake 6.x and 7.x iirc on three different computers and not once got through the installer without it crashing. at least once with a divide by zero error. not flaming but thats been my experience so-far, havent had any trouble with any other distro's I tried so I'm guessing the installer doesn't like somthing in common with my various computers, eigther via chipsets (one socket seven and two socket a's) or the SB Live series of adio cards, all else differs.

    Mycroft

  5. Re:Ornithopters got played in Pro Tours on Real-life Ornithopter to Take Flight? · · Score: 1

    pardon the off topic comment, but a sacrificed creature did not 'die' it goese dirctly to the graveyard. effects that aply when a creature dies doese NOT apply for a sacrifice. unless the enduring renewal. (can't remember the card) specificaly mentions sacrifice, it doesn't apply. (well if it says 'goes to the graveyard' without limiting itself somehow, then maybee)

    Kasey

  6. Re:What the heck is wrong in California ? on Scientology Critic Flees U.S. Over Usenet Posts, Pickets · · Score: 1

    I could be off but doese not the constitution spefically mention the rights of the states to deny powers to federal government. though my vauge memory of that section is that it's not as clear as most of the rest of the constitution is. Mycroft

  7. Re:What I did on Adam Hinkley's IP Hindsights · · Score: 1

    IANAL, but I'm fairly shure the 'clauses' on the aboved website are too vague to help that much in the USA, mayby standing law/case law in Astralia provide sufficient framework, but here in the US there are too many ways to get screwed by the companies with those one paragraph wonders.

    The longest one actually could make matters worse! depending on your employment situation as it starts out giving all sorts of rights to your employer.

    My advice if you want to write software that your employer cannot encumber in any way is to get a REAL lawyer of your very own!

    I worry for a society that has has laws that require such consultations on nearly everything as ours (USA) does. But thats what you get when you let lawyers write laws. And thats what we have so try and deal with it smartly rather than niavely.

    Mycroft

  8. Re:a bible quote on Series on Wizard Of the Coast · · Score: 1

    "...And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell..."

    "...if you are telling me that people shouldn't follow this part of the bible than we need to throw the whole thing out. not dismiss the parts we are uncomfortable with
    ..."

    err am I the only one who sees this.

    book say:
    throw out bad parts rather than have the whole thing ruined and tossed out.

    person say:
    all or nothing.

    hmmmm....

    Most religions are so full of contradiction.
    esp ones that bassically graft a partial re-write
    of one old religion on top of another old religion.
    Though to be honest its not a 100% literal contradiction in this case. Also it is one poster's opinion contrasted with a quote he made.

    Mycroft

    ---same handle since 1984----

  9. Re:BBS Doors on A Little Bit Of BBS Nostalgia · · Score: 1

    I was NOT going to do this, but you KIDS have driven me to it.:)
    Try going back to 1984. I spend the entire summer on the St. Louis boards back then, mostly the color64 and MTABBS systems (If you knew the mtabbs systems you may have known me as Mycroft or UatU)
    Later on me and a good friend ran a color64 board. he bought the good (4800 baud!!!!) modem and bbs software,and later the ram pack and 1851 drive (we had over a meg online!) I provided the line,physical,location, and coding needed to mod the system and run the add on prog's.
    The mid 80's where the hey-day for bbs's to me. The bbs outings for mtabbs boards was a lot of fun. I miss the old Junk Drawer and Rolla-link in Exile, among others. --sigh--.
    and we did this uphill in the snow both ways :)

    Mycroft <---my handle since 1984

    p.s. if you do remember the old mtabbs boards I'd like to here from you, esp if any are still up, just tack @postnet.com to my hanldle (no _VII crap) to email me.

  10. Re:Thanks to everyone who responded on Review: "Unbreakable" · · Score: 1

    How doese it blow a hole?
    oposites remember! he see's others recent crimes
    she's unreadable, thats a sort of opposite.
    not that i buy her as the villian, more the aunt May type (she was always trying to 'protect' her nephew)

    just a thought

    Mycroft

  11. Re:No moving parts... no truly "magic" b on 3D Printers · · Score: 1

    "there's no way to magically insert 'space' between 2 parts unless you can somehow levitate one of the parts"

    Howabout laying down a few unfused/unglued layers of the substrate between the sub-components in question. this should 'levitate' things quite well, as long as there is space for the powder to flow out after the your done it should be feasable as long as the parts don't sink down throught the packed powder to fast.

    Mycroft

  12. Re:Whistler was the blind guy in Sneakers on Windows Whistler Screenshots · · Score: 1

    o.k. this is off topic but i just thought i'd point out that Whistler in sneaker was sorta based on a real person (unless i'm repeating an old (mid-80's was when i read about it) urban legend) who being both blind and possesed of perfect pitch could whistle all of the old ma-bells controll tones. he finally got caught playing with the system and was offered a job or jail by ma-bell (he took the job).

    Mycroft

  13. Re:Diary on Will Legalities Choke Off Online Volunteerism? · · Score: 1

    Hey when did you meet my father?!?!?
    I'm barely exagerating here, he's just about that clueless. I'm gonna print this out and give him a copy. (he still doesn't believe that all caps is bad!)

    Mycroft

  14. Re:It's been done.... on What Happens When Patents Meet Antipatents? · · Score: 1

    I'm not so shure about your line of reasoning there. Heinlein pretty much kept someone from getting a patent on waterbeds a while back because he had pretty thouroughly described them in stories. When someone tried to sell him a waterbed bed pat pend he took action.
    It's been a while since i first heard the story though, so if anyone can find a link or better details....

    Mycroft

  15. Re:Machina: more than just a quirky hobby? on Machinima On The Horizon · · Score: 1

    I have to say that I agree that the cut scenes in MOST games i've played haven't been stellar, not really as terrible as he says, certainly not worth the expense the game companies put into them.
    That said the I really the like the ones int diabloII sofar they make it worth the high price it's selling for even though a higher poly count per frame on the rendering woulda been nice.

    Mycroft

  16. Re:Breaking news on AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella · · Score: 1

    Now why where the other replies to the above post modded down? admittedly your could argue they deserve it for bitting if you see the above above post was left as a troll but then the above was left at 1.
    I think they were modded down out of dissagrement with the opions they contian, not thier actual merrit.
    for those at reading at 1+ heres what was modded down:

    Re:Breaking news
    (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22, @19:19 CST

    No, it will restrict law abiding citizens from owning guns and being able to protect themselves. Moron.

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]

    Re:Breaking news
    (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22, @20:02 CST

    >What's wrong with suing the firearm companies?

    >Seems to me a fairly good way to restrict gun use.

    Second amendment to the Constitution, for one.

    For two, is a /. post I grabbed as a text file, but forgot to grab the author's name (ie, it ain't original, and I don't have the citation) here goes:

    "In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control.
    From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "In 1911, Turkey established gun control.
    From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "Germany established gun control in 1938.
    From 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "China established gun control in 1935.
    From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "Guatemala established gun control in 1964.
    From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "Uganda established gun control in 1970.
    From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

    "Cambodia established gun control in 1956.
    From 1975 to 1977, one million 'educated' people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated."

    Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century bceause of gun control: 56 million.

    It is going to take an awful lot of random crime to make up for those numbers.

  17. Re:Firewire on the INSIDE on USB 2.0 Spec Is Final - Up To 480 MB/s · · Score: 1

    I for one hope they don't finish off isa untill some one manages to make a pci modem that works.
    I've put quite a few win-'modems' into systems and unlesss your in that magic range that lets v.90 work (and not behind more than one a-d conversion) your lucky to get >14.4.
    Plus linux support for anything other than a real modem is crappy at best (I wouldn't wanna write those drivers eigther).
    That said a LOT of the aspects of the pci bus and current pc architecture are long overdue for improvement. preferably somthing a lot more open ended with lots of future expansion potential.
    I was thinking that it is time to actually go backwards in a sense. Once apon a time each expansion slot in many computers (the apples for example) was a unique identity. by doing this with irq's and i/o space assigned to each slot and have drivers written so they don't depend on any particular io/irq combination, and of course the hardware just see An irq line and an address region.

    just my .02 (give or take inflation)

    Mycroft

  18. Re:We need a new analogy. on Eazel's Nautilus Preview 1 Released · · Score: 1

    I would like to see somthing new as well. However it will have to be VERY intuitive. The current metaphor seems so instinctive to many in part because it IS so heavily used. And it may take more than mere genuis to overcome this sort of inertia.
    A big part of the dificulty lies in the limits current phyisical interfaces, namely the keyboard,mouse, and monitor.
    As far as what to do about the montitor we are rapidly closing in on the tech for holographic displays from several angles. (the plastic lasers, the millions of mirrors on a microchip, the grey spinning spiral thing the us military is working on for air traffic controll displays, high speed lcd shutter arrays, etc.)
    I've been thinking keyboards need someway of re-defining the keys of keyboards apearance visually on the fly, possibly even the shape and placement of the keys themselves as well as adding feedback. This may actually be possible soon. if some sort of flexible, visualy variable, material (are the plastic lasers flexable enough?) where attatched to the top 'surface' of one of the million metal pin things or somthing simular (forget what thier called, they used in the xmen movie to plan with) , and put the whole thing under computer controll with the comp able to both read the pressure on the 'button' and push back you would have a much more usefull device. At the very least just being able to display small images on/under/over some of the keys would be usefull. An additional possibly is having graphic tablets that could also display imagery as well.
    And for replacing mouse with somthing better, the Spaceball with it's 6dof, several function buttons and no moving parts (other than the buttons) is long step that way (if only i could afford one:( ).
    Not 100% on topic I know, but I do think re-hashing the same old gui's over and over again( though this is a nice looking re-make with some interesting features) Is gonna dead end soon if it hasn't already.

    just my $.02

    Mycroft

  19. Re:Be illogical: the odds are agin it on Intelligence In The Cosmos: Flesh or Machine? · · Score: 1

    Actually no one really "knows' the odds. we
    don't even know enough about 'life as we know it'
    and it's begginings to state those odds, let alone
    the more general question.
    Most of the the "odds" given are based on a
    huge number of assumptions, more so than the
    number of facts usually, and are almost always
    quoted to bolster one side of the evolution vs.
    creation argument.
    In one such case I recall the odds against where
    quoted involving a number they said was greater
    than the number of atoms in the universe (nice of
    them to take the time to count all the atoms:)
    yet as part of a math class we had taken what was
    claimed(by the text book) to be real measurments
    of a cc of sand to compute the number grains of
    sand in some beach somewhere, that number was the
    largest of the three. hmmmmmmmm...
    What experements have been done to try and
    simulate the early conditions of earth (based on
    admittedly limited evidence) seem to me to end up
    supporting the idea that life is actually much
    more likely than even the optimists thought.
    Hopefully someone can provides links as many of
    the details of these experiments a faded in
    memory.

    Mycroft

  20. How the answer effects seti imho on Intelligence In The Cosmos: Flesh or Machine? · · Score: 1

    While I do hope Seti(@ home or otherwise)
    succedes I strongly suspect it may not if other
    civilized life follows a path at all simular to
    ours in terms of communictaions.
    A large part of our communications these days
    are not really dectable at any real distance, or
    discernable as such. what with otpical
    transmision, spread spectrum technology,
    (invented by Hedi Lemar durring WWII btw),
    encryption (one of the clues that a crypto system
    is bad is when it DOESN'T look like so much
    random noise), compression, ect.
    Seti basically requires eigther a purposefull
    effort to be noticed (our best hope imho) or
    powerfull but inefficient communications means,
    and generally as you learn to make more powerfull
    transmitters you learn to make them more
    effecient.
    And we've gotten to the point where our leakage
    is probably near peak if not on the way down in
    less than a century, an eyeblink cosmically.
    This is part of why I would bet that any race
    we would detect by thier leakage to be
    "biological" (evolved locally rather than
    descended from another races creation) whereas
    detecting a race that's advertising it's presence
    could be eighter.
    A "machine" race (second stage is how I think
    of them) being inefficient enough to be detected
    by accident seems unlikly as they where probably
    started by a race more advanced than us and
    already beyond the leakage stage themselves let
    alone the descendants of thier creation.

    Mycroft

  21. Re:A Dime? on Human ID Chip Implant Prototype Unveiling · · Score: 2

    Slightly larger than the chunk of plastic missing out of the center of a cd/dvd disc (I'm to lazy to go find a ruller at 4 am:)

    Mycroft

  22. obligatory 1984 post on Human ID Chip Implant Prototype Unveiling · · Score: 1

    This is scary tech indeed. but inevetible.
    supposedly you can turn it off, except for 'certain crimal cases' or political dissidents, or .............

    And how can you be SHURE it's off. If the thing is an implant then it seems likely the on/off switch will be some sort of radio based remote.
    All it would take is to replicate the ON signal.

    This is post is a little paranoid I know, but
    when you consider goverments ALWAYS tend towards increased authority and controll it seems inevitable that abuses by them will happen.

    Mcyroft

  23. Re:Faster does not mean better... on New GHz Competitor In Processor Market Soon · · Score: 1

    Pardon me if i missed somthing, but first half of post you bassically imply intell makes better processesors(not saying they do or don't), and imply you have a reason to know these things. Yet you then talk about VIA competing against Cyrix....................

    just pointing out how that sounds.

  24. Re:Good but sad... -- known as Espy (different sad on Debian 2.2 To Be Dedicated To Joel 'Espy' Klecker · · Score: 2

    (this is kinda off topic)
    I can see where handles can seem so de-personalizing to some, what with thier transience and psuedo-anonimity as used by many. But I generaly don't view them that way. The reason being that i've effectivle had one all my life. When I was born I was named for my father, and imeadiatly given a nickname (that apears no-where on my birth certificate) to keep us readily seperated, it's not even derived from my given name (like Rick or Dick for richard or even Bill for william). If anything about handles/nicks bothers me it's the people who change thiers every few days or weeks, creating confusion.
    I've been using mine (Mycroft) for 16 years now. to me a handle/nick/name is just a shorthand and convient way of referenceing someone.

    As far as the topic goes I wish I could say somthing deep or even meaningful, but not having had the honor of meeting 'Espy' i'll just have a simple 'me too' type condolence to those who did and must suffer the loss. 'Espy' no longer has the pain but others must still live with the sorrow.

  25. Re:Uh-oh... on The Linux Development Platform Specification : Beta · · Score: 1

    Although I believe i see where your fears are comming from, there must be Some level of standardization or writing for linux based systems becomes difficult if not futile. The real trick is to write standards as non-restrictive as possible while still getting the job done.