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User: Macdude

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  1. Re:Unfortunate Move. on Itani-what?: Merced is Renamed · · Score: 1
    but "Merced" sounds pretty snappy to me.

    How do you pronouce that anyway? I always pronounce as murked (i.e. the past tense of murk), but I've heard mur-said, murk-ed, mur-ked, murk-id, mur-sid...

  2. Re:Based on the rules system? on D&D Movie on The Way · · Score: 1
    An unprotected thief can take the full force of dragon fire face first and leave if the dice roll right.

    While I don't disagree with you (reality in the rule system for D&D is poor--to say the least). For an example of how a movie could portray the above example see Dragon Slayer.

    I want to see adventurers loaded down with the normal compliment of equipment (8 weeks of food, 20 torches, plate mail, a few hundred pounds of gold and silver, half a dozen swords, halberds, pikes, war axes, etc.) in a melee after hiking for a couple of weeks through the forest...

    I want to see the Magic User start casting a spell that takes 10 minutes only to have the fight end before he's halfway through.

    I want to see a lone experienced adventurer take on a 20 ton Dragon singlehandedly (outfitted as above of course), and win!

    I want to see the above adventurer come across a 100 foot cliff, hurl himself off, land, pick himself off, dust himself off and continue on his way (while carrying all the stuff listed above naturally).

    D&D the movie, should be a hoot.

  3. Re:hot wheels and barbie computers on Barbie and Hotwheels PCs for Kids · · Score: 1
    Well, naturally speaking, we're predators too. Perhaps we need better rituals to blood the children. Or maybe reason should prevail over instinct in rational beings?

    Naturally speaking we are prey, not predators. Don't believe me? I'll put you naked in a box with a starving real predator(tm) with half your mass and we'll see who survives.

    Human beings have instincts, and they influence every aspect of our lives. From how we structure our families to the sports we play. The more we deny our instincts the more trouble we get ourselves into (as a society). Reason shouldn't pervail over instinct, it's not a one or the other situation. And yes we need rituals, we've been abandoning rituals left and right and look at the dysfunctional mess we're in.

    One of the best toys ever invented is the box your fridge came in (toy manufacturers would have a hard time making money selling boxes). If you want to try an interesting social experiment give some large boxes to a bunch of kids and watch HOW they play with them. Given a large enough sample you will see a clear distinction in the playing styles between the boys and the girls. The difference crosses all races, religions and cultures.

    If you are going to propose that the difference between boys and girls is totally nurture, show me one culture where the roles are reversed.

    The real truth is there are measurable differences in the way the brains of boys and girls function.

  4. Re:hot wheels and barbie computers on Barbie and Hotwheels PCs for Kids · · Score: 1
    Is it nature that cause little girls to play with toy kitchen while little boys play with toy cars and toy guns? I would like an evidence of that.

    Get married and have a couple of kids. Or just spend some time working with the very young. Sexual differenciations start at the same time personalities start. It's hardwired in the brain.

    I think destroying the myth that you need testicles in order to understand how a computer works is good for society as a whole.

    You can try to force gender neutrality on PCs, but that won't make girls* any more interested in them. Instead of trying to create a neuter utopia allow individuals to advance in whatever field they want and stop worry about the relative numbers of boys and girls.

    *Note: The above is discussing generalities, there are overlaps in both sexes in both directions.

  5. Re:geeky girls? on Barbie and Hotwheels PCs for Kids · · Score: 1
    Buying a special computer that is 'only for the girls' is acknwledging that girls can not use 'normal computers'. I do not think that is anywhere near a good idea.

    Does buying a special computer that is 'only for the boys' acknwledging that boys can not use 'normal computers'? The Barbie computer isn't some dumbed down PC with a simplified interface, it's a pink PC bundled with Barbie software.

  6. Re:Why English is better in Machining on Mars Orbiter Lost Over Metric Conversion Error · · Score: 2
    It turns out that a thousandth of an inch is an extraorinarily usefully sized increment when dealing with machined parts.

    Only becuase that's what you are used to dealing with. .01 mm would be just as usefull (if not more so) than .001 inch.

    This also results in a unit that does not line up well with engineering notation, where exponents are multiples of three to help avoid errors - to fix this you either need to write .001" as .0254 mm or 25.4um (micrometers)

    Your only problem is trying to convert. Start with .025 mm and you have no problem. Quit trying to use "round" imperial measurements in metric and use "round" metric measurements instead.

    Oh, and we'd have to build houses out of 5.08x10.16's (2x4's) that actually measure a nominal 4.445x8.890 (1.75x3.5)??

    No, you'd built it out of 5 x 10s (nominal 4.5 x 9). Convert that to imperial...

    The only thing that keeps Americans from adopting metric measurments is arrogance (i.e. not-invented-here syndrome).

  7. Re:FireWire only for External? on AMD to Build G4 CPUs? · · Score: 1
    Yep. For historical reasons, Mac users have been big purchasers of external drives, much more than PC users.

    Mac users use external HDs for one reason, they can. PC users (in general) can't and so spend exorbanent amounts of time explaining why external HDs are bad. Of course once the ability to use external HDs becomes common on PCs (say with firewire) they will start saying how great it is... For similar situations see: mice, windows, menus, plug and play, 24 bit colour, WYSIWYG, etc.

  8. Re:FireWire only for External? on AMD to Build G4 CPUs? · · Score: 1
    Swapping 18 GB external HDs around is common practice here.

    Yep. Swapping hard drives around on Macs is a grande-olde-tradition from back in the days when Networking on the Mac platform was a sick parody called pokey-talk (called Appletalk by TrueBelievers(tm).)

    Spoken like a TrueMacAtheist(tm). They guys around the office swap around 12+ GB datasets all the time. I can't speak for your servers but finding free space for a couple of dozen 12 GB data sets on our servers is not easy.

    Peer to peer networking would first off assume the recipient has that much free space on their system. Transfering 12 GBs over 100 base-T would take 20 minutes (best case scenario), swapping a HD takes 5 minutes (including walking time) max.

    Add in the problems associated with having multiple versions of the same dataset and a quick HD swap (from one hot-swappable drive enclosure to another) is the best way to go--by a long shot.

    BTW: I can get almost 9 MBps transfer rates using AppleTalk over 100-base-T -- how is that a sick parody?

  9. Re:FireWire only for External? on AMD to Build G4 CPUs? · · Score: 2
    How many external drives are the average Mac user going to have?

    Almost every Mac at the office has external drives connected to it (Audio, Video, and Graphic work). Swapping 18 GB external HDs around is common practice here. Some even have arrays.

    Apple has gone with ATA becuase it's cheap and for most purposes just as fast as SCSI, Macs (new Macs at least) don't suffer the same kind of CPU usage with ATA drives that many PCs do. For Apple the low-end get's IDE, the mid-end get's IDE and Firewire ,the high-end gets SCSI (via a PCI card) and Firewire.

    Firewire is going to be very cool, the problem right now is there are no native firewire drives, all the firewire drives you see for sale have a SCSI or IDE drive with a IDE/SCSI--FireWire converter in the exclosure. The Sawtooth G4s have an internal Firewire port and once two things happen you're likely to see internal firewire offerings. First someone has to start shipping firewire HDs, second Open Firmware has to support booting from FireWire.

    They cheaped out on the Disk subsystem and that's that.

    I'd rather see SCSI offered as an Ultra2 LVD dual channel PCI card then the 5 MBps SCSI port seen on the 9600...

  10. Re:More Mhz? What else is new. on PowerPC Processor Roadmap · · Score: 2
    I don't care much about increased cruft in the instruction set (e.g., MMX, AltiVec). So what.

    So What? AltiVec is going to make have huge impact on the graphic, video, audio, scientific, voice recognition and gaming world (and probably others). AltiVec is NOT MMX. Here is a quote from MacOSRumors' report for Sept 15th comparing a G3 using OS 8.6 and a G4 using OS 9 (which has an AltiVec optimized version of Open-GL).

    OpenGL-based games and rendering applications simply screamed with even a single 450MHz G4, between 4 and 10 times faster than the same apps running on a 450MHz G3.

    Note that there was NO difference in the applications being run (i.e. the applications aren't AltiVec optimized), the G4 was using a Yosemite motherboard (i.e. the same slow memory system as the G3), the only difference was that Open-GL in OS-9 is AltiVec enhanced.

    The real bottleneck in PCs (a blanket term including Macs) is the bus. No one except SGI and Sun are doing anything interesting about the bus bottleneck problem.

    The Sawtooth motherboards (using MaxBus) TRIPLE the memory speed and DOUBLE the PCI speeds of the Yosemite boards. I would classify doubling and tripling speeds as interesting. According to reports Apple and AIM are on track to fully support PC266 RAM once it's availabale.

  11. Re:Completely False on Apple Disabling 3rd Party CPU Upgrades? (Updated) · · Score: 1
    Intel makes the Pentium processor. Apple does not make the G4 processor.

    Apple is the A in AIM. Apple may not own the fabs but they are involved in the chip design.

  12. Re:Nice to see a non-standard aspect ratio on New Flat Screens From Apple · · Score: 2
    1.8:1 is "anamorphic" widescreen. It's used by all of the newer, big budget movies (Titanic, Episode 1, etc.)

    Most movies are at LEAST 1.85:1, Titanic and Ep1 are 2.35:1. Anamorphic is a proccess of horizontally compressing the image on film and is independant of the display aspect ratio. 1.56:1 is "letterbox" widescreen. That is the aspect ratio that has been in use by hollywood since the mid 50's, when they needed some kind of "hook" to differentiate themselves from TV.

    To repeat the Hollywood standard is 1.85:1. 1.78:1 (16:9) is the "widescreen" TV standard. 1.56:1 isn't a standard that I'm aware of...

  13. Re:Queer on Segfault South Park Geek Extravaganza · · Score: 1
    I personally think what the nazis did is awful, as does most of the world, but that doesn't make it objectively wrong.

    Exactly. What makes it wrong is not your thinking it so, but it's being a case of inflicting tremendous pain and suffering on a huge number of sentient beings.

    You've made the classic mistake of assuming "inflicting tremendous pain and suffering on a huge number of sentient beings" is objectively wrong. It isn't.

  14. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies on 2.3TB drives for $50 · · Score: 1
    No thats a double sided, double (or is it triple?) layered disk that hold that much. I believe the typical 2 hour movie not including all the little extras you get is around 1.5GB

    A single-sided single-layered DVD holds 4.6 GBs, enough space for a "normal" two hour movie. If the movie is less than two hours, or the compression ratio is better than "normal" there will be room left over for extras.

  15. Re:The access is a nightmare. on 2.3TB drives for $50 · · Score: 1
    ...if you are trying to do anything like perusing a database using a field which isn't indexed, it's going to be glacial.

    Glacial? This is a RANDOM access system, not linear. There is no need to scan the entire 2.3 TBs unless your database is that big, and if your database is that big you'd better index anything you want to search for.

    It would make much more sense to have 100 23 GB drives than 1 2300 GB drive for a great many purposes...

    I would rather have one 2,300 GB drive than 100 23 GB drives... I can partition the 2.3 TB drive anyway I need (say to store that 24 GB movie file) without worrying about RAID configurations. With your 100 drives you've just increased the likely hood of a drive failure by a factor of 100. I'll gladly take two 2.3 TB drives and use one as a backup (mirrored) over trying to find room on my desk for 100 drives...

  16. Re:The access is a nightmare. on 2.3TB drives for $50 · · Score: 1
    Assuming this is bytes, the 2300 Gb drive would take over 6 HOURS to be read from one end to the other.

    For a system that would hold 500 (SSSL) DVD's worth of data this is bad how? Besides if 12.5 MBps (MegaBytes) isn't fast enough, stick six together in a stripped array... 13.8 TB at 75 MBps... That should be fast enough for most anybody...

    Frankly, latency and seek times are more of a concern that raw throughput.

  17. Re:Ability to send files & video/voice, share desk on Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger · · Score: 1

    I have bumped up against this with IT personnel who will not do what I need them to because they don't think that it is necessary, or worth their time. As an IT person I have _personally_ had to help rebuild systems messed up by email worms. Not to mention dozens of Office Macro viruses... Go ahead an ignore their advice, but I don't expect you to run to them for help after you've double clicked "goodtimes.exe".

  18. Open Source (tm) on MS Dirty Pool Against AOL? · · Score: 1

    I wonder where this leaves the "Open Source" trademark?

  19. Re:I like the Q500 better on How to Build a Clear Computer Case · · Score: 2
    oh, and people, remember to have some fans REMOVING air. When air is compressed it heats up

    Just don't over do it. Remember that convection cooling comes from air-FLOW -- think "wind chill factor". Creating a vacuum in your case reduces the amount of air available to transfer the excess heat to.

    Just moving the air around inside your case doesn't do any good, you have to move air _through_ your case.

  20. Re:RF Interference? on How to Build a Clear Computer Case · · Score: 3
    Plastic may be an "excellent" insulator but to shield RF you need a good conductor, and plactic is a lousy conductor. All plastic cases have some form of conductive coating on their inner surfaces, or an internal metal cage.

    Re: holes in your case;

    Radio waves have a physical size, if the hole is too small the wave can't get through (see: mesh satellite dish). A good case has a metal shield over any unused drive slot.

  21. Re:I'm with Justin.. on Streaming Server for Linux · · Score: 1

    The no-client :(-dept. It sucks. Why can't we get to see a client? The specs for the file formats are public. Go write one. Or just a codec? Which Codec? MPEG? JPEG? DV-NTSC? MS RLE? TIFF? Oh, you mean Sorenson, sorry Apple doesn't own Sorenson. If you want source for Sorenson go complain to Sorenson... Power Computing. It was competition. So it was removed. Power Computing was dieing. They didn't like the new licensing agreement for OS 8. Apple bought the pieces. PPCLinux. It didn't suit Apple. So specs were withheld. Same with BeOS (sorta.. Be is a diff case) Be was an Apple licensee. They didn't agree to the new terms. They stopped getting info. Then there are the legalese issues on the ASPL. I'm no lawyer so I can't touch on them. So you're saying "I don't know what the license says, but I know I don't like it"? But I hope they're reviewed and fixed. Version 1.1 of the license has been out for quite a while. It fixed the problems. Plus, whatever happened to that issue with OSX/Apache crashing..? You mean the extreamly obscure bug that could cause some systems to fail after thousands of concurent processes are started? It's fixed in DR 1 for OS X client. For OS X Server, you have the source, why haven't you fixed it yet? Anyway.. I just have to say that Apple is really annoying me. Translation: I hate Apple, I don't know why, I just do.

  22. Re:Mozilla is still in the womb, that's why on AOL Considers Ending Mozilla? · · Score: 1

    I myself have several ideas for Mozilla (one on the software bazaar is to stop animated gifs and blink tags).

    I think you'd like iCab (http://www.icab.de), options like "Play GIF animations: Once" and options to turn off Blinking Text and Marquees...

    P.S. It's Mac only, small, and quick.

  23. Re:Old Rumor, New Buyers on Apple Sale Rumors · · Score: 1

    I don't see a content company buying apple (especially for the 3-4 billion that it would take)

    Your estimate is a little low... Apple's current Market Capitalization is 6.6 Billion. With 3 Billion in CASH to defend itself buying Apple would cost significantly more than 3-4 Billion.

  24. Re:Nice size, but slow as hell! on Firewire Harddrives · · Score: 1

    They're slow as hell.

    Slow? Compared to a Zip or a Jaz drive they're pretty quick. These are not drives designed to be your main HD, they are portable HDs.

    The damn things have an average sustained transfer rate of 8MB/sec. [snip] Don't the USB HDs on the market now, go faster?

    USB has a max rate of 12 Mb(its)ps, that's 1.5 MB(ytes)ps. So no, a USB device with an ABSOLUTE maximum of 1.5 MBps transfer rate is more than 3 times slower than a VST FireWire drive with a 5.5 MBps transfer rate.

    My IDE drives go faster than that! I really hope nobody gets suckered into buying these things.

    Are your IDE drives packaged to fit in your pocket? Are they hot swappable? Do they get power from the IDE chain? Do you even HAVE an external IDE port?

    These drives should be compared to Jaz disks and other removable media, not fixed HDs.

  25. You don't need to be a lawyer... on APSL 1.1 Released · · Score: 0

    To the Mac users: Run LinuxPPC if you want Open Source. Fuck Apple.

    So, does your penis feel larger now???