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User: meldroc

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  1. Re:Lay the blame where it should be. on Are Kids Turning Your Kids Into Killers? · · Score: 5

    Another thing that bothers me is the lack of traditional Christian morals that are being instilled in today's youth. You never hear about a Reverand's son or a child of a devoutly religious family shooting up a school. It seems like today's family's would rather watch WWF Smackdown than enrich themselves with the wholesome teachings of Jesus Christ.

    As a Buddhist, I resent the "My religion is better than your religion!" mentality that you imply here. I agree that religion has a place in society, but please do not denigrate people as immoral because they do not agree with your religious beliefs.

    May I remind you that the young lady Smith who commited suicide in Detroit was bullied partly because of her religious beliefs. She was a Wiccan, or at least curious about Wicca, and her tormenters were Christian Fundamentalists (though they weren't acting according to the teachings of Christianity.)

  2. Ding-Dong the DOS is Dead! on CNET Reviews Windows XP Beta 2 · · Score: 3

    The one basic change that I've noticed that many people have overlooked is that Win XP is using the Win NT/2000 kernel and finally retiring the MS-DOS/Win 3.1 codebase. Say "So long" to all the MS-DOS drivers that mucked things up. Kiss goodbye to hidden pieces of 16-bit code lurking inside of Windows' innards. I won't miss having to put up with an OS that swiched to cooperative multitasking and froze everything while one misbehaved program refused to relinquish control. Good riddance to holes in the memory protection architecture that allowed misbehaved programs to scribble on the kernel.

    It only took fifteen years after Intel released the 80386 (first x86 CPU with 32-bit addressing & registers, virtual memory, a usable protected mode (though Protected mode and virtual memory date back to the 286) for Microsoft to remove all the 16-bit code from its OSes and move to a more worthy architecture.

  3. Soviet-era Repression, Who Owns Your Computer? on Development of the Secure PC Proceeds · · Score: 2

    In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, it was illegal for "little people" to own or usecomputers, photocopiers, printing equipment, even typewriters without permission and close supervision because the Communist Party was afraid that people would distribute information harmful to Communism.

    Now, it may again become illegal for "little people" to own or use computers, photocopiers, printing or recording equipment, even VCRs without permission and close supervision because the Corporations are afraid that people would distribute information harmful to Profits.

    Now, who owns your computer? I paid good money for my computer, so I'd like to say I own my computer. Any data that is stored or processed on my property is done so at my sufferance, so I want absolute control over all of the data on my machine. Copy control measures rob me of control of my own computer. The organizations who make copy control schemes are denying me permission to use my own computer and sending the message "We own your computer."

  4. Re:Don't go looking for a mate - pay someone else on Where Can Geeks Meet Mates? · · Score: 2

    Be very careful when looking into matchmaking services. Many of them are ethical, good businesses, but some of them (Great Expectations comes to mind) will simply take your money and provide little more than photo albums for you to look at.

  5. Sounds like Carl Friedrich Gauss as a kid... on Georgia Teen Stumbles On New Theorem · · Score: 2

    In my discrete math class a few years back, my professor taught me a story about Gauss, when he was a kid.

    He was in an arithmetic class, and the teacher wasn't in a good mood - it was a Monday or something. So he made the kids add up every integer from 1 to 100. The kids groaned and started working on this long, tedious problem. The teacher then walked towards his office to read for an hour, when young Carl Gauss announced "I'm done!!! The answer is 5050." Flabbergasted, the teacher demanded to know where Carl got the answer. Turns out that Gauss discovered the formula

    sum = (n(n+1)/2)

    Thus began the career of a brillian mathematician.

  6. What about students, college graduates? on Even Programmers Get the Job Search Blues · · Score: 3

    As a college student expecting to graduate with a bachelors in computer science this May, I'm rather worried about the tightening job market. Sure, experienced geeks may be able to ride this out, but I'm finding that companies that would previously hire almost anyone are getting really picky now when they recruit at universities. I've had some real difficulties and I'm worried that I may remain unemployed after I graduate.

    Any ideas on scaring up more job opportunities?

  7. Re:Save six months pay? Yeah, Right! on Internet Speed Applied to Careers · · Score: 2

    It's unrealistic to assume that anybody can put aside six month's pay into a low-risk minimal-interest account and never touch it.

    I can and have done this, and the truth of the matter is it's not that hard.

    Nearly every expert in personal finance says the key to keeping your shit together is to Pay Yourself First. The way you do this is have your bank automatically transfer a percentage of every paycheck you receive into your savings account before you even see it.

    I have a broader definition though of what constitutes an emergency serious enough to justify tapping the savings account. A job loss is one of those emergencies, but so is an unexpected large car repair bill, or a deposit to move to a new apartment, or a minor fender bender you'd rather pay for yourself than let your insurance company hear about it. These kinds of minor emergencies can really dent your standard of living if you don't plan for them.

    The amount does not have to be that big. 5-10 percent of your paycheck is enough to build a rainy-day fund over time without a meaningful impact on you ability to pay your regular bills (assuming you're getting paid more than minimum wage :) Even twenty bucks a week will make a dent in a year.

    Of course, I also put a good chunk of my money into higher-risk, higher-return investments (for me that's mutual funds), but that's not an emergency fund - it's a retirement fund. You don't want to touch your retirement fund under any circumstances until you retire.

  8. Screw them anyways, use freedb.org. on CDDB No Longer Allows Grip Users to Connect UPDATED · · Score: 5

    Set your CDDB apps to access www.freedb.org instead. No licensing or patenting nazis there.

    In kscd (my CD player of choice) simply click on the preferences button, set your CDDB server to "www.freedb.org http 80 /~cddb/cddb.cgi". Other CD players should have similar configuration procedures.

    Problem solved.

  9. Re:Terse on Descrambling CSS w/ 7 Lines Of Perl A DMCA Violation? · · Score: 2

    I'm hoping the authors entered this code into the Obfuscated Perl Contest. Then they can claim this code has two uses: descrambling CSS and teaching good programming style through the use of a bad example.

  10. Long History of Destructive Civil Disobedience... on Is Hacktivism Robin Hood Politics? · · Score: 2

    One of the most famous examples of civil disobedience was very destructive. The Boston Sons of Liberty dressed up as Indians, boarded several ships of the British East India Company and dumped what would be millions of today's dollars of tea into the harbor. The Brits were so enraged they ordered a naval blockade of the harbor until the entire city of Boston paid reparations. (Nyah nyah England, we all know who won that one :)

    Sometimes destruction is necessary when the injustice is serious enough. Though I would draw the line at committing crimes against property versus crimes against the person. It's one thing to destroy property, it's another to physically harm another human being.

  11. Re:Bush's Ideals on NASA Shuts Down X-33, X-34 Programs · · Score: 5

    I'm hoping that the Military will atleast get its act together and militarize space properly. We need obiting battlecrusiers. :)

    The military is what kicked the airline industry into high gear. Before World War II, the airline industry was struggling to stay afloat transporting a few thousand passengers a year in old biplanes, hoping they didn't crash too often.

    After WWII, the airlines got to use all the aircraft technology developed during the war. The first post-war airliners were converted bombers, which were larger, faster and more efficient. The airlines were now capable of the holy grail of Making Money! The military is much more interested in efficient development and use of technology, since the consequences of inefficiency are high (being blown to smithereens.) If the military decided they needed a much larger presence in space (for missile defense for instance,) chances are a cheap launch vehicle would be developed in a hurry. A few years later, the military technology would trickle down to the civilian market and we would have cheap spaceliners.

    This almost makes me want a good Cold War style arms race between the U.S. and China, if it weren't for the risk of nuclear Armageddon. If Dubya decides to build a missile defense system, China and Russia would respond by building zillions of ICBMs, which would prompt the US to improve the missile defense, creating a higher demand for space launches, thus necessitating the development of a cheap, reusable, reliable, high-turnaround launch vehicle. Hopefully the civilian market for launches, manned spaceflight and colonization will develop before someone presses the Button.

  12. The settings could be flexible... on Marine Corps Testing Maser for Anti-Personnel Use · · Score: 2

    The article stated that the microwave beam was specifically tuned to heat the outer layers of the skin to 130 deg. F in two seconds, which is enough to hurt a lot and discourage people with low pain thresholds, but not do any serious damage.

    However, what would happen if the microwave beam was tuned somewhat differently. The microwaves could penetrate more deeply into flesh, cooking internal organs, or causing 3rd degree skin burns.

    Also, this maser weapon could be effective for disabling electronics. When microwaves hit conductive materials such as metals, they become electrically charged. The charge quickly becomes so great that the material heats up, bits of it vaporize, and the charge arcs through the vapor. This is graphically demonstrated by the lightshow seen by putting a CD in the microwave. The maser shoots the same microwaves in a focused beam. If that beam strikes electronics, integrated circuits and other delicate components would be quickly fried. This has many useful military applications such as disabling enemy radios, radars, computers, night-vision systems, the ignition systems in vehicles, civilian cell phones, aircraft avionics. I would be surprised if the Marines weren't investigating these possibilities as well.

  13. Re:remote control? on Build Your Own X-Ray Machine · · Score: 1

    step into the bathroom and fire it off while your unsuspecting in-laws remain in the living room....

    Naw, set it up in the guest bedroom and give them an 8 hour tan while they sleep.

  14. Re:Most distros use a badly configured QT... on Interview: KDE League Chairman Andreas Pour · · Score: 2

    It would be a problem if QT used exceptions. I'm not sure why it was written that way, maybe performance reasons, but it doesn't use them a all.

    It is most certainly for performance reasons. Every time you use a try{}/catch{}structure, the computer has to keep track of every possible exception that could possibly be thrown, know which ones are caught and which ones are passed up the call stack, and have code to jump to the exception handlers for every function call that could throw. It eats up a lot of memory, which causes performance problems in graphics libraries like Qt.

    Also, not all C++ compilers are equal. There are a lot of systems out there with older compilers that have buggy, slow, or nonexistant exception handling. Qt has to work on those systems as well.

  15. Re:Has anyone thought about on OpenNaps Targeted; Gnutella "Validated" · · Score: 2

    While we're at it, have a ORBS-like blacklist of clients and servers known to be used by the RIAA. Not a perfect solution, but will help slow down the process of gathering evidence for their legal attacks.

  16. Re:Scare tactics on OpenNaps Targeted; Gnutella "Validated" · · Score: 1

    Anybody up for starting a black market in untaxed hardware and media? If the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and other unholy organizations keep driving up prices, this is exactly what is going to happen.

  17. STL Rocks!!! on ESR's Art of Unix Programming Updated · · Score: 2

    I hate to pull an AOL, but I can't emphasize enough the usefulness of the Standard Template Library and the rest of the ISO C++ Standard Library. It comes with a string class that already knows how to concatenate, search for substrings, resize itself and Do The Right Thing in most cases. Never write a linked list again, because the STL contains a list class template (in other works, a linked list of whatever you want.) It already handles all the ugly new/delete memory management for you. The vector class is an improved array. It can resize itself, it can easily be adapted to perform automatic range checking. The STL is a godsend for lazy programmers like me. Yes, C++ has its warts, but when you code wisely and use all of its capabilities, it is an incredibly powerful tool.

  18. Sometimes Slow is Fast Enough... on ESR's Art of Unix Programming Updated · · Score: 2

    Yes, Java suffers in terms of performance when compared with C++. But then again, C++ takes a performance hit when compared with C, or assembler. Yet people still use Java, and other "slow" languages such as Perl and Python.

    Ten years ago, the general rule was to use the tool that gave you the best performance possible, because CPU cycles and memory were expensive. Now CPU cycles and memory are very cheap. For many tasks, it is cheaper to spend a few thousand dollars to throw a faster computer at the problem, or let the computer crunch at a problem for more time, than it is to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra development time to pay experienced gurus to rewrite in C++, C or assembler, hand optimize the code and fix all the bugs that inevitably come from developing in that way.

    But I'm not a language zealot. I believe in using the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's Python + Tk, other times it's Java, or Perl with CGI.pm, or C++ or assembler. For my current little project (a ray-tracer for a graphics class) I chose C++. The job is CPU intensive, so I rejected Java, Python, all the other interpreted languages. I also refused to do the job in straight C because the algorithms and data structures are so complex I found the extra tools (classes, encapsulation, the limited but still better than C tools for memory management, the STL) to be a necessity. But that's just for this little project. I'll choose something else for the next project.

  19. There is no 100% sure way to destroy data. on How To Really And Fully Wipe A Hard Drive? · · Score: 2

    Several wiping programs are available that will overwrite data multiple times with binary patterns - checkerboards, solid 0's, solid 1's, random patterns, etc. Even after all of that, it is still possible for an organization with lots of resources such as a data recovery service or a three-letter agency to recover the residual remains of the data, though it would be very difficult.

    The only sure way to eliminate the data entirely is to completely destroy the media. Sandpaper on hard disk platters or CD-Rs (the top side, make sure you sand off the silver and dye layers) works, incinerating also works. Be careful. I saw a case where a suspect tried to destroy a floppy disk with incriminating evidence by cutting it up with scissors. The FBI was able to put the disk back together like a jigsaw puzzle and recover the data. Make sure there is nothing left of the recording surface.

  20. Re:New application: Telemarketer Turing Test on Personal CallerID-Aware 'Answering Machines'? · · Score: 1

    This program is also good when you're being lectured by your mother or SO over the phone.

  21. Re:Use more cunning dialog on Personal CallerID-Aware 'Answering Machines'? · · Score: 1

    I like that idea. Also you could try "Excuse me, could you hold on for a second?", put him on hold for 3 minutes, then say "Ok, I'm back, I forgot where we were, could you explain things again?"

  22. Re:New application: Telemarketer Turing Test on Personal CallerID-Aware 'Answering Machines'? · · Score: 1

    This just begs the question: Does the Telemarketer Turing Test show the computer is indistinguishable from a human being, or does it show that the telemarketer is indistinguishable from a machine?

  23. New application: Telemarketer Turing Test on Personal CallerID-Aware 'Answering Machines'? · · Score: 3

    Here's a little project for those of you who are dedicated to wasting as much of your friendly telemarketer's time as possible. When the phone rings, and Caller-ID shows up as Unavailable, let the computer have a nice, long conversation with him.

    When the computer picks up, it plays back a "Hello?" recording, pauses, plays "Hello?" again, to fool the predictive dialers. Then it listens for speech on the other end. When the speech pauses, the computer plays back one of a group of recordings such as "Uh-huh", "Okay", "I'm listening", "Sounds good", to fool the teledroid into thinking a live person is on the other end.

    Here's the challenge. Who can keep a telemarketer talking to his computer for the longest time? The winner gets bragging rights and contributes towards making the world telemarketer free.

  24. Flicker threshold on Will Flat Screens Save Your Eyes? · · Score: 1

    I believe the flicker threshold for most people is somewhere between 60 & 75 Hz (though I don't have any references to back this.) For the same reason, the frame rate in games like Quake III don't give additional perceptual improvement beyond 75 fps. As long as you set your monitor's refresh rate to 85 Hz or higher, monitor flicker shouldn't be a problem.

  25. Re:"Packed with little kids"? on Hannibal's Return · · Score: 1

    Aww, horror films are just like any other unpleasant thing for little kids(like lawn mowing) - they build character. My sister was scarred for life by seeing Amityville Horror, and my aunt was traumatized in the same way by seeing Psycho when she was little. I'm going to suggest my sister take my niece to see Hannibal. Builds character.