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User: mikeplokta

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Comments · 166

  1. Re:Knew of a guy who'd do a similar thing. on Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills · · Score: 1

    If Canada doesn't require you to accept its own currency to settle a debt, what on earth does constitute a legally satisfactory attempt to discharge a debt?

  2. Re:Knew of a guy who'd do a similar thing. on Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills · · Score: 1

    The limit on coins is not just an urban legend; such a limit exists in the UK, where 20 pence pieces and 50 pence pieces are legal tender in amounts up to 10 pounds, 5 pence pieces and 10 pence pieces are legal tender in amounts up to 5 pounds, and 1 penny pieces and 2 pence pieces are legal tender in amounts up to 20 pence.

  3. Re:Law Enforcement Ahoy.... on Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Not everyone knows about $2 bills, $1 and 50 cent coins, etc.

    She's a cashier; it's her job to know what currency is and is not valid.

  4. Re:Its your age on Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills · · Score: 1

    It's lucky for me (and everyone else in the UK) that those "studies" are not true (or don't exist). In my lifetime:

    Five and ten pence coins introduced to replace one and two shillings (1968)
    Halfpenny withdrawn (1969)
    Half crown withdrawn (1970)
    Twenty pound note issued (1970)
    Currency goes decimal (1971): Penny, threepence and ten shilling note withdrawn; new half penny, penny, two pence and fifty pence coins issued
    Ten pound note issued (1975)
    Old (pre-decimal) sixpence withdrawn (1980)
    Fifty pound note issued (1981)
    Twenty pence and one pound coins issued (1982)
    One pound note withdrawn (1984)
    Half penny coin withdrawn (1984)
    Five pence coin reissued at a smaller size (1990)
    Ten pence coin reissued at a smaller size (1992)
    Fifty pence coin reissued at a smaller size (1997)
    Two pound coin issued (1998)

    And strangely enough, I still know my currency.

  5. Re:Not The TV Companies' Fault on Aussie TV Networks Fight BitTorrent · · Score: 1

    Alias does have some reruns mixed in witht he new episodes, but seems to be pre-empted a lot for scheduling conflicts.

    I don't have details on what they were showing on the off weeks, but for example check here for the release schedule for Stargate SG1 season 8, where 20 episodes took about 39 weeks to broadcast.

  6. Not The TV Companies' Fault on Aussie TV Networks Fight BitTorrent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Other countries have to run behind the US due the the insane American custom of spreading 22 new episodes out over 44 weeks (or thereabouts), and alternating a few new episodes, then a few reruns. No other country's TV-watching population would tolerate this, so they can't start to show a series until it's already been running in the US for six months, to ensure that they can actually show a 22 episode season over 22 weeks.

  7. Re:Pi Accuracy on Gigapixel Tapestries & Gigadecimal Pi · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's no such thing as flat in the real world. Space-time is curved.

  8. Re:Pi Accuracy on Gigapixel Tapestries & Gigadecimal Pi · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, pi's value never changes. But the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, which is approximately pi (and only exactly in a flat space-time) varies. Consider a circle drawn on the surface of a balloon. For a small circle, the local balloon surface is nearly flat, and the ratio of the circumference to the diameter is nearly pi. But for a big circle, the circumference is much less than pi * diameter, as the diameter has to be measured around the curvature of the balloon.

  9. Re:Pi Accuracy on Gigapixel Tapestries & Gigadecimal Pi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pi's definition is mathematical, not physical. No one really knows the exact ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, but it definitely varies depending on how curved space-time is in the vicinity of the circle, and on the size of the circle.

    Pi is 4 x (1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 + 1/11 ...). (Or the limit of that series as its length tends to infinity, for the mathematical formalists among you.) Your accuracy in computing pi depends on how many terms of the series you can calculate (actually, there are alternative formulations that converge much more rapidly, but are less easy to write down in ASCII.)

  10. Re:River of Gods on 2005 Hugo Nominations · · Score: 1

    Traditionally, the English-speaking world is divided between North America and the Commonwealth for publishing purposes, and the rights are sold separately. So the UK publisher can't distribute books in the US, as they don't have the rights. This actually makes sense for the authors, as they can effectively get paid twice for the same book -- if a UK publisher could distribute a book in the US, they wouldn't necessarily do so as effectively as a US publisher.

    (Yes, Canada is in both North America and the Commonwealth. It generally counts as NA, but sometimes not. The publishing world is not consistent.)

  11. Re:There should be more online awards given....... on 2005 Hugo Nominations · · Score: 1

    With "open online voting", there's no way to stop someone from voting twice. Or a dozen times. Or tens of thousands of times, if they happen to 0wn a botnet.

  12. Re:A Hugo First: The British Invasion on 2005 Hugo Nominations · · Score: 1

    In 2001 there was no American SF on the final ballot; the only American was George R R Martin's A Storm of Swords.

  13. 90% Discount for DRM on When Would You Accept DRM? · · Score: 2

    Anything you acquire that is encumbered with DRM is only rented, not purchased. I'd accept it for a similar discount level to rental vs purchased DVDs -- 10% of the purchase price. If a DVD costs $20, but that includes the media, packaging, shipping and retail costs that don't apply to electronic delivery, then a reasonable price for an unDRMed download might be $10. And a resonable price for a DRMed version of the same movie would be $1. For music, $1 for a track without DRM and 10 cents with DRM. Apple and Napster are trying to charge purchase prices for rental product.

  14. Re:Don't you guys realize... on Buying DRM-Free Songs From the ITMS · · Score: 3, Funny

    Cool! You mean that I just have to enter my iTunes username and password on my Sony Clie (runing Palm OS), my iRiver MP3 player, my Linux box, and the computer I'm going to own in 20 years' time running an OS that hasn't even been conceived yet, and it will play my DRMed iTunes music? Why did no one tell me this before?

  15. Re:Don't think so on GPL Violators On The Prowl · · Score: 1

    But it's only legal because of the GPL, which licenses you to use the code in this way. The GPL only restricts distribution, but it applies to use as well. If it didn't, then use would not be permitted.

  16. Re:How can you enforce a non-contract? on GPL Violators On The Prowl · · Score: 1

    Yes, anyone using your code who breaks your conditions is violating your copyright, as they don't have a valid license, and you can sue them in just the same way as Microsoft can sue someone who is using Windows source code in their products. Only with less money to spend on lawyers.

  17. Re:How can you enforce a non-contract? on GPL Violators On The Prowl · · Score: 1

    Code that you have written is your intellectual property. You can put whatever restrictions you want on its use. Anyone who doesn't accept the restrictions can simply choose not to use the code -- which would be the situation they were in if you weren't licensing it at all, so they don't lose anything.

  18. Re:How can you enforce a non-contract? on GPL Violators On The Prowl · · Score: 4, Informative

    If the violator doesn't accept the GPL, nothing else gives them the right to use the code -- it's not public domain, it's licensed under a specific license. It's not a matter of contract law, it's copyright law, and no contract is required, any more than New Line Cinema needs to have a contract with you to stop you from selling a remixed version of The Fellowship Of The Ring.

  19. Re:Clearly doesn't understand IT costs on Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song? · · Score: 1

    Apple are probably paying around $50 per Mbit/sec capacity/month. If a music track takes around 6MB, then at 1Mbit/sec it takes one minute to download. So that $50-worth of bandwidth can serve 43,200 tracks. Bandwidth cost/track of $0.001. Which leaves plenty of room for profit if they're getting $0.02 per track.

  20. Re:No matter what free will always win... on Would You Pay 5 Cents For a Song? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, free won't always win. Convenience will always win, and free is part of convenient. But I would rather (for example) pay US$1 to download an episode of a TV show instead of messing around with BitTorrent, as long as they genuinely make it more convenient -- which means a big fat pipe and a choice of unDRMed video formats.

    The big mistake that the music industry is making, and the TV and movie industries are stumbling into, is to make their products less convenient on other grounds as well as more expensive -- region codes, release windows, DRM, etc. Once something is released to the public, it needs to be released to the public -- TV shows and movies need to be available for download on the day that they're first shown.

  21. Re:Hard hat required on Li-Ion With 300% More Power, Minutes to Recharge · · Score: 1

    No, because those 12Ah are at 5V, while the mains supply is 110V, 22 times as high (and twice as high again in Europe). So you would actually need a bit under 7A, which is perfectly reasonable.

  22. Re:'gain a relative economical advantage'.. on Kyoto Protocol Comes Into Force · · Score: 1

    India, China and Brazil don't need to be involved, as their CO2 emissions per head are so much lower than the western world's that if targets are set based on emissions per head (the only fair way to do it) then their targets will be well above any conceivable view of what their actual emissions will be during the life of the treaty.

  23. Re:Indexing gone wild on MSN Search Has Arrived · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Session IDs have to go in URLs, because there's no other way to preserve session state for users who have cookies disabled.

  24. Re:Hey! My Mom Can Build One! on PC Competition for the Mac mini? · · Score: 1

    You need to put XP Professional and XP Plus! Digital Media Edition on the HP to make its software remotely comparable with the bundled software on the Mac Mini. That will add close to $200.

  25. Re:bigger explination on LiveJournal Servers Go Down · · Score: 1

    The website I manage is one of the busiest UK websites, but our traffic is a fraction of LJ's. And we have forty-two web servers, handling around 170 million pages per month. I would be surprised if LJ didn't have hundreds of servers.

    Of course, we also have three separate colocated data centres, with data replicated between sites, so if one centre loses power, blows up or is eaten by mighty Cthulhu, we can stay up.