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User: The+Monster

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  1. Watt wood-eyed dew width aught mine ice bell Czech on Programmer's Language-Aware Spell Checker? · · Score: 1
    So when is it "I", and when is it "i"?

    A spell-checker either sees the word as being in its dictionary or not, but doesn't know in what contexts it is valid. It doesn't know that a possessive pronoun doesn't have an apostrophe in it, but a contraction or possessive noun does; that there are pairs and triplets of homophones; and other ways in which words can be used incorrectly, yet still be valid spellings in other contexts.

    Their having trouble with there server they're. I knew on cite that the sight was hosed, but I can't site the exact reason why. Allot of coders thing grammer and spelling isn't important anyways; they don't want to here about it, but it has an affect on the work they do. I must of been razed by weird parents to grow up knowing the difference between and article an a conjunction.

    Watt wood-eyed dew width aught mine ice bell Czech her?

    And don't forget 'referer', 'umount', and similar misspelled words that are correct when dealing with computers.
  2. How is NOT doing something an 'act'? on Man Arrested for Refusing to Show Drivers License · · Score: 1
    "shall do any act"

    Not showing the cop the drivers' license isn't an act. It's a non-act.

  3. Reserve Task Mangler on Mark Russinovich On Vista Network Slowdown · · Score: 1

    I wish there was some method to reserve some processing power for launching taskmgr, so that I can kill problematic processes with ease. Any suggestions?
    how about putting a shortcut to

    cmd.exe /c start /min taskmgr
    in your StartUp folder? It'll be sitting there on the taskbar doing nothing, ready to be used as soon as you need it. If you use Power Menu, you could alter this to minimize taskmgr to the Tray. Make a batch file with these commands in it:

    @echo off
    start /min taskmgr
    ping -n 3 127.0.0.1 >NUL:
    "C:\Program Files\PowerMenu\PowerMenu.exe" -minimized on "Windows Task Manager"
    (The ping command is just a hack to force the batch file to wait a couple of seconds.) Stick the batch file or a shortcut to it in your StartUp folder, and now you don't even have to see it on the taskbar, but it's still ready to use in a heartbeat.
  4. What the fsck does 'dethaw' mean? on Star Wars Fan Puts Himself in Carbonite · · Score: 2, Insightful

    freeze them . . . And you can pick and choose when you are dethawed!

    I've heard people say 'unthaw', but never 'dethaw'. Logically, both words would refer to the process opposed to 'thaw', aka 'freeze'. But somehow I don't think either means that.

    Maybe someone's brain needs to be thawed out.

  5. Changing rate of Tech Change on A Non-Toxic, Paper Battery / Supercapacitor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Technology has never been changing as fast as it is now, but that's also been true for as far back as I'm aware...each generation just doesn't seem to see the trend of acceleration that came before them because it all seems so slow compared to what's happening just then.

    This simply isn't true. There have been periods in history when generations would pass without any discernable technological improvements. There have also been things called Dark Ages where technology actually recedes. (I guess that's still change, though.)

    We have had steadily-accelerating technological progress for the last two centuries or so, which covers our memories and the stories passed down for a few generations. That's apparently enough to make people think it's been that way for all time.

    Now the rate of change is so great that people factor it into their decision-making. We just assume that the computers we buy two years from now will be twice as powerful as the ones sold today. We fully expect our next cell phone will do more for less power and money, and we're actually a bit miffed that we don't have our flying cars yet.

  6. s/NASA/Diebold/g on Blogger Finds Bug in NASA Global Warming Study? · · Score: 1

    What is interesting is that since NASA refused to release the code or describe the algorithms,

    When Diebold refuses to release its code, that's all the proof most people need to assume they're stealing elections. Why doesn't the same logic apply to climate data?

    It used to be the rule in the scientific community that if you don't disclose your methodology so that others can check your work and repeat your results, you get no respect. What happened?

  7. Pedantry begets pedantry on Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community · · Score: 2, Informative

    Welcome to capitolism.

    Where everybody is forced to live in the city containing the main government buildings.
    And not just anywhere in the capital city, but either inside those buildings or on the land between them.
  8. Buying a phone because you need a new battery on Apple Sued Over iPhone Non-Replaceable Batteries · · Score: 1

    The reverse of that - people buying a new phone because their old phone needs a new battery - would be planned obsolescence.

    I don't consider it obsolescence, just taking advantage of weird pricing. (Sell the razors cheap and make the money on the blades?)

    I've actually done just that with my Virgin Mobile phones over the years. The list price for a replacement battery for several of their Kyocera phones is $70, but I've usually been able to get a phone for $20-30 on sale. (I actually stuck the new battery from my K-10 into my K-7 rather than reprogram all the contacts.) Why would I want to buy a battery for multiple times more than the price of a whole new phone?

    There's no good reason for the battery to be soldered in, though. It can be soldered to wires that lead to a connector, as many cordless phones do. Not having an easily-removed battery door is a separate issue. The phone could have been designed to require tools to open up without the battery being soldered.

  9. Re:Meaning of plaintiff on German Court Convicts Skype For Breaching GPL · · Score: 1

    plaintiff initiates a lawsuit
    Easy to keep straight: The person who brings a complaint to the court is the plaintiff. Then the person who responds to the complaint is the respondent
  10. Since when is Cox = Time Warner? on TimeWarner DNS Hijacking · · Score: 1

    You're the bright person who submitted this story, which is actually about Cox, only you said it was Time Warner. Your own page has TW in the title, but only talks about Cox. Do you know something about a merger between the two that isn't yet public knowledge?

  11. Re:Can we get the pronunciation right yet?! on Ubuntu Continues to Grab Market Share · · Score: 1

    Isn't 'oo-BOON-too' and "Ooo-buhn-two." pretty much the same?
    No. The former is the correct pronunciation. The latter is something the third base coach might signal after the prior batter had bunted. While we might consider certain buns to be 'boons' as well, they are indeed pronounced differently.
  12. The McDonald's Defense on Groklaw Explains Microsoft and the GPLv3 · · Score: 1
    I'm no MS fan, but I think this is the wrong battle to fight.

    As I see things, the only possible way one could argue the vouchers are distribution would be under some sort of contributory infringement theory---the kind of liability you would have if, for instance, you distribute coupons that some pal of yours will redeem for pirated software.

    And that brings us to the McDonald's Defense. These vouchers are roughly equivalent to McDonald's gift certificates. Suppose I buy a bunch of gift certificates, give some to my daughter, she sells some to her friend, and they redeem the certificates. Have any of us thereby 'conveyed' hamburgers? Is the kitchen in my house now subject to Health Department regulations on restaurants, or McDonald's quality guidelines on its franchisees?

    Further suppose that someone sells stolen meat to the restaurant where these gift certificates are redeemed. Does that make me, my daughter, and her friend guilty of some crime, even though we have no knowledge that it was happening when we 'abetted' it?

    Eben Moglen says the way he enforces the GPL is to tell the violator that they're breaking copyright law. How would MS selling Novell vouchers violate anyone's copyright? A 'contributory' theory requires an actual violation to which the voucher somehow 'contributes'. And if somehow a judge can be persuaded that these vouchers contribute to copyright violations, Gates is going to have a field day talking about how viral the GPL is.

  13. Science ... Math on Text Compressor 1% Away From AI Threshold · · Score: 1
    Here's what I told Monsterette 2, when we were talking about fields of knowledge:

    The 'social sciences' are really biology.
    Biology is really chemistry.
    Chemistry is really physics.
    Physics is really mathematics.
    And mathematics is really hard.
    It boggles the mind that one can get a 'Bachelor of Science' degree from a university without first passing Calculus.
  14. Free Will vs. Determinism on Robert A. Heinlein's 100th Birthday · · Score: 1

    Whether you have free will or not, you'll face the consequences regardless, and so, yes, you should live your life as if you have free will and hope that you either have or "luck out".
    But Determinism is trotted out as 'proof' that the public policy of meting out such consequences is flawed, and should be revoked.

    After all, if a poor black teen from a broken home has no free will, sending him to prison for robbing a bank is cruel and racist to boot.

    The proper response to this argument is that if there is no free will, the advocates of punishing bank robbery are themselves just as blameless as the robber, for they too lack the free will to be culpable. The unspoken assumption is that some people have more free will than others, which sounds like "the soft bigotry of low expectations" to me.

  15. Tactics include being the victim? on Cyberbullying Gains Momentum in US · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But mom some kid in my class posted on MySpace that I'm a moron, sue him mommy
    The most pernicious aspect of this is that the people with the thinnest skins get to define "bullying", while they may do objectively worse things to the "bullies".

    Maybe that explains this curious wording:

    Tactics cited include being 'the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message' and 'having a rumor spread about them online'.
    I've seen people complain in an online forum that someone's objections to an ideology constituted a personal attack against its adherents, then turn around and declare "open season" on those who espouse the alleged bully's competing ideology.

    Then they pat each other on the back for being so much more civil than the 'troll' they've just dispatched.

  16. Can a EULA on a physical product even be valid? on Gateway Customer Sues to Get His PC Fixed · · Score: 2, Informative
    #include <ianal.h>

    The elements of a contract are Offer, Acceptance, and Consideration. Once you've agreed to certain terms and money has changed hands, neither party can impose additional terms on the other. I know that argument by analogy is fraught with peril, but let's try this one on for size:

    I buy a new Chevy. My signature is on the purchase contract, I've handed the salesman a check and he's given me the keys. I get in the car, turn the key, and out of the dashboard comes an End User License Agreement that says that if I have any problem with the car, the venue for the action will be Oakland County, Michigan, despite the fact that the car dealer is in Johnson County, Kansas. From my layman's understanding of KS law, such ex post facto terms are completely invalid. If something like that happened, I'd contact the AG's office so they could investigate it.

    The only reason why software EULAs have any traction at all is that installing software onto a computer requires copying of copyrighted files to the hard drive. In the case of an integrated computer system, the software has already been installed. I take the position that any software advertised as part of the purchase is, well, part of the purchase. The legalities of getting that software onto the computer's hard drive have been worked out between the publisher and integrator are their affair, not mine. If the software publisher alleges that their product was illegally installed on the computer I bought, they need to go after the person who did it, not me.

    The retailer has advertised a computer with certain hardware and software installed, and a price that I find agreeable. I've given them my money; they've given me the computer. It's a done deal, and neither can later come along and make any new demands on the other.

  17. It's a logarithmic scale. on Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6 · · Score: 1
    The number of orders of magnitude difference between two values A and B is:

    N = log(A) - log(B)
    where a negative number is stated as "A is N orders of magnitude smaller than B". So two orders of magnitude means a 100:1 ratio. Arguably, anything between 10^1.5 and 10^2.5 times B (31.6-316) could be described thus, since the main use of the phrase "order of magnitude" has traditionally been to express that not even one significant digit of data is known, but the exponent is known... to within a significant digit?
  18. How do you know that you don't know, you know? on Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6 · · Score: 1

    What if you don't know that you don't understand them?
    Then you'd better have an editor to tell you you're an idiot.
  19. Order of magnitude more orders of magnitude on Vista Not Playing Well With IPv6 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "2^32 unique addresses ought to be enough for anybody."
    Well, there really aren't that many unique addresses available for machines, thanks to the fact that every subnet requires two addresses for the subnet itself and the broadcast address (never did understand why those couldn't have been the same address), but the article puts it this way?

    Pv6 supports a 128-bit addressing scheme, which lets it support an order-of-magnitude more devices that are directly connected to the Internet than its predecessor, IPv4.
    order of magnitude

    : a range of magnitude extending from some value to ten times that value
    For every ~3.3 bits added to a binary number, it supports an order of magnitude more addresses. Leaving completely aside the upper half of the address (since devices are supposed to be mobile, and should therefore have a unique 64-bit host address), the added 32 bits add nearly TEN orders of magnitude, or an order of magnitude more orders of magnitude.

    Note to authors: If you don't understand what words mean, don't use them.

  20. Hiring a pro? on Pimping Out a New House · · Score: 1

    Is there a name for the profession that handles this for homes?
    It is a subset of the profession "Electrician". I'd like to tell you that it includes all the practitioners of the trade, but I know better. I've seen people hook up RJ-45 jacks 'straight through' (with one pair on 1-2, another on 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8) which is good enough for phone lines or 9600 bit/s terminals, but not going to work well for 10 MB Ethernet, much less 100 or higher.

    Get referrals from computer and A/V stores on electricians who know what to do with things other than AC power.

  21. STRING that conduit! on Pimping Out a New House · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Also, don't just string cable, string CONDUIT so you can upgrade the networking should you ever need to.
    Literally 'string' it. That is to say pull a line of string in the conduit along with whatever cables, so that you don't have to push a fish tape through a conduit that already has cables in it; you always pull whatever wires you're pulling, plus another string for next time. A friend who has pulled a lot of cable taught me that a long time ago.

    You can use cheap PVC stuff instead of the expensive rigid metal variety, so that you can afford to use larger-sized conduit (although the latter provides some nice shielding if it's properly grounded); and use gentle, sweeping curves instead of tight corners, but make sure that if the signal conduits are parallel to any power, they're several feet apart, to avoid inducing a current in your Ethernet. Since standard AC wiring puts outlets near the floor, and light switches are 3-4 feet from the floor, that means running the signal cables more like 6 feet from the floor, and dropping down to the outlets you wish to install.

    Since the cost of pulling cable is generally a lot more than the cable itself, do yourself a favor and put in the Cat6, even though you don't think you need it yet. A centrally-located wiring/server closet isn't a bad idea, provided that you give it good ventilation. Use the upper part of the closet for the electronic gear and patch panel, middle for your AC distribution breakers (if any) and UPS to power the server and network switch, router, etc., and the lower part for storage of things that won't die if they get wet.

  22. contractor under different color of authority? on Google Street View Raises Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1

    Sort of - they can buy the results of that work. They can't hire people to do illegal things (like lynching, terrible example), but they can buy the results of a private investigator's search.
    If the private dick does a search that would be unconstitutional if the police did it, then they can use that loophole to get evidence introduced that should be thrown out.

    Lynching is a great example because of the fascinating historical coincidence of the Sheriff and his Deputies always being in some other part of the county whenever one of those necktie parties came about. I live in one of the cities where airport security is contracted out. Are they any less subject to controls against abuse than actual government officials 'acting under color of authority'?

  23. BIG Loophole on Google Street View Raises Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1

    So you're saying that the government can bring in a private contractor to do what the government can't legally do itself? They can hire rent-a-cops to do unconstitutional search-n-seizures? Pay the KKK to lynch some uppity Negroes?

  24. Not your property. on MLB Says Slingbox Illegal, CEA Thinks Otherwise · · Score: 1

    MLB is using copyright laws to enforce their marketing agreements.
    Well then, I am going to use sodomy laws to complain about Microsoft's deceptive marketing practices in regards to security. In both cases, it sounds good, but it's worthless legally. Copyright laws prevent me from making additional copies of the content and distributing them to others.
    At least in the MS 'security' case, you have the fact of getting it in the shorts to justify calling it sodomy.

    My own copy is only subject to property laws - as MY property that is illegal for MLB or anyone else to muck with.
    Except that the video of a baseball game isn't your property. You didn't pay anything to MLB for the right to see that video, unless you've partaken in one of those special package deals where you're specifically buying access to out-of-market games.

    I'm with the FP: I just don't care about MLB anymore. But that's easy for me to say. I live in Kansas City.

  25. Dilemma on IPv4 Unallocated Addresses Exhausted by 2010 · · Score: 1

    I'd rather MS owns this block than Halliburton.
    Alrighty, where does Wal-Mart fit on your hierarchy? Better or worse than MS or HB?