Slashdot Mirror


User: chasm!killer

chasm!killer's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
59
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 59

  1. Re:It's just fine the way it is now! on Don't Expect an OpenOffice/LibreOffice Merger · · Score: 1

    Agreed, I think this is the best thing I have gotten out of Libre Office. I have a lot of old Power Point sets that need to be revised because they seem to be falling apart in newer Microsoft PowerPoint versions (they still look barely OK in the viewer), but they look just like the originally did with Libre. I have noticed many times that open source is often more compatible with 5-year old Microsoft 'documents' than the current Microsoft products.

  2. Re:What Oracle Could Do on Don't Expect an OpenOffice/LibreOffice Merger · · Score: 1

    I have to agree, at least to the extent that granting them a board seat (one) and letting them contribute, as mentioned by Bruce Perens, would do a lot to heal the ill will. And if there are no other corporate board members (IBM?) then they could provide useful input from that point of view, too.

  3. It's just fine the way it is now! on Don't Expect an OpenOffice/LibreOffice Merger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Been using Libre Office since the first release (sorta buggy, but from second on, it's much more solid than Open Office ever was). Without the drag from the corporate offices, releases seem Really Fast (compared to the Open Office process) and easier to install, probably because of the shorter lag between underlying package releases and Office releases. I think the smaller group seems to have it together, and I sorta like it being fully independent (like Linux is). So in conclusion, let's just keep it the way it is....

  4. Re:Dramatic effect and scientific precision on Is Sugar Toxic? · · Score: 1

    Um, I beg to disagree, sucrose and lactose can't be absorbed in the stomach, they get broken down (in the sucrose case, into glucose and fructose) in the small intestines. In case you missed that biology class, the intestines are on the other side of the stomach from the mouth.

    On the other hand, monosaccharides can be absorbed in the mouth or the stomach. Thus, they are not recommended for diabetics.

    And by the way, some starches are broken down by saliva, others are broken down in the stomach. And the maltose produced is then digested in the small intestines (same place sucrose is absorbed, and about the same speed). So actually, starch and sucrose are pretty much equivalent as foods.

    Here is a link to the Colorado State University quick handbook on the subject:

    http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/absorb_sugars.html

    Note: no biochemistry - just human biology here.

  5. Re:Dramatic effect and scientific precision on Is Sugar Toxic? · · Score: 1

    Pure opinion! Potatoes have starch, very little sugar or fiber and only traces of everything else. And most of that is in the skin. They are a lot worse for you than cane sugar (raw sugar cane is a quarter dietary fiber - vs. a few percent dietary fiber in a baked potato). [My opinion.]

    Onions and garlic would meet my requirements, but probably are not so good for your breath.

  6. Re:WTF? on Bug Forces Android Devices Off Princeton Campus Network · · Score: 1

    Closed = not open now. Think about OpenWatcom. It spent a dozen years as a closed source commercial product (not open yet). It's open source now. Same game. [Some] Android source is not open today. It might be some day in the future.

    Gotcha wins!

  7. Re:"Failure to show significant market growth" on Torvalds Rejects One-Size-Fits-All Linux · · Score: 1

    It may be funny, but I wonder how true it is. Do you know anyone who runs Windows/XP with IE 7 so he/she can access particular web sites. It's not hard with virtualization or even simple minded LILO or GRUB solutions. I'm sure I hit over 50% of the web sites I access as a Windows box, even though I run either Gentoo or Ubuntu at least 95% of the time....

  8. Re:Nothing better than Firewire on A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed · · Score: 1

    I think the problem Apple had with keeping the Firewire port might be more that it was not unpopular enough. At one time the only ubiquitous Firewire interfaces were on Macs. Today Windows supports ieee1394 (same thing) except in the 800 flavor everwhere. Dell systems for $399 have firewire and seamless support. So can you really use it to sell a Mac anymore?

    Not including second and third mouse buttons (and making your system unique) is a lot like getting rid of a cheap, fast, commodity peer-to-peer interface that is relatively rarely used. Neither really makes the system a lot less useful.

    Seriously, I think Steve would get rid of the wired Ethernet interface (wireless is just as good, and just as easy to set up, ;-) if he thought he could sell the idea - hardly anyone really needs more than 54Mbit throughput (+ or -). Or wired security. Or ignorance of WPA2, WEP, TLS, TKIP and mandatory access points.

  9. Re:DIESEL on Environmental Cost of Hybrids' Battery Recycling? · · Score: 1

    I think the biggest factor is that the great diesel mileage cars in Europe just don't stand up to what Americans want from a car -- acceleration, and cheap to build. That's the big reason that a Prius gets 45-65 MPG (I get 55 from mine) in the US. Drive it like it was a Porche and you won't even get 45. But one of the European 65 MPG diesels doesn't give you the choice. It drives like a babied Prius.

    Another factor that occasionally comes up is the fact that tests in the UK convert metric mileage (kilometerage?) to Imperial gallons (about 20% more fuel per gallon than in the US) so that makes even the Prius look better in Europe.

  10. Re:allowing speech is hard on In Leaked Email, NASA Chief Vents On Shuttle Program's End · · Score: 2, Interesting

    off topic

    This is VERY off topic, but I think he mentioned something about baselessness. It looks like you believe anything your talk-radio buddies tell you. So far I've heard nothing but the truth from real liberals I know about Palin (she's a hockey-mom who went from small town mayor to big, rich state governor, she's young and pretty, she is for Republican big government -- anti-abortion, pro-big-military, pro-jail-for-anyone-but-her-friends).

    He also commented that things like "I think" are used a lot by rabid Republicans to avoid being trapped in lies. I would also add the phrase "tried to" seems to show up a lot. And the idea that criticizing any powerful group is usually going to result in being compared to something nefarious -- in some cases BROWNSHIRTS -- of course, people who were alive back then know that the BROWNSHIRTS were not criticizing the powers that be, THEY WERE THE POWERS THAT BE and did a lot more than just exercise their free speech. One more inconvenient truth that talk-radio seems to be able to ignore with ease.

    /off topic

  11. Re:Slow News Day on How HP Could Turn a Novelty Into a Revolution · · Score: 1

    Is this a troll?

    Just like almost every license in the world, GPL versions are static. Any lawyer worth his salt would not allow the other party to change the terms of a contract on the fly without renegotiation. The only place you see stuff like this is in shrink wrap licenses and credit card terms.

    You can license any GPL code you want and keep using it forever under the license you originally "signed". But like every other license I know of, the two parties are not required to keep the same license terms forever. Imagine if Microsoft were required to release every version of Windows to HP (successor to Compaq) for no charge. That might have a significant impact on their revenue stream.

  12. Re:Pot kettle on Phil Zimmermann Replies To CNet On Biden · · Score: 1

    I don't know, what about the rest of the Congress-critters? We are in politics now, so you gotta take the lesser of the evils presented....

  13. Re:Makes me wonder... on Study Concludes "Planet" Was Just Stellar Spots · · Score: 1

    The "Endless September", Mk 2.

    Should we, perhaps, call this the Endless August? Where the World Wide Web faded into the "net"?

  14. Re:Change on A Look At Joe Biden's Tech Voting Record · · Score: 1

    I am not sure McCain ever was against that type of thing. He has been involved in scandals, one after another, from the beginning of his career. That is one reason that he could not carry the Republican primary in Arizona against George W Bush in 2000.

    Remember the Keating Five? Five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).

    The Senate Ethics Committee finally determined, in 1991, that three of them had "substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings". Glenn and McCain were cleared of criminal behavior but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment". Sounds like pork in the worst way, to me.

  15. Re:How Atari Failed on A History of Atari — the Golden Years · · Score: 1

    I'd have to say that Nolan sold out to Warner Brothers (you know, "Time Warner" of these modern times). And having tried to do business with that outfit, I would say that was the real end of it all -- it just took a bit longer for the rest of the world to realize that (if you are old enough, that was the days of MyDOS, the FastChip and Percom peripherals for Atari computers -- I worked on all of those).

    I could have warned the AOL folks about getting involved with that crowd.

    [Did I say I was bitter? Not really, no, I mean no, not really.]

  16. Re:One solution on What Tech Workers Need To Know About Overtime · · Score: 1

    So I only imagined that pretty much everywhere you look (union or not, exempt or not) jobs are moving to India and China.

    Personally I have decided not to move to one of the low pay regions of the world so I can work longer tech hours for less pay....

  17. Re:flamebait? on Replacing TCP? · · Score: 1

    I have to agree with N3wsByt3 -- look at the PNG/GIF uproar of a decade or so ago. PNG, it turns out was really an improved algorithm with improved business characteristics. And it has taken at least a decade (I think) for PNG to become reasonably common. Long enough that the business arguments are no longer valid.

  18. Re:Take note on Global Air Pollution, From Above · · Score: 2, Informative

    OK, burn coal or gasoline and the nitrogen stays in the air and doesn't chemically combine with anything. If you don't burn it in air....

    But if the air gets hot (like in any thermal engine), some nitrogen reacts with some oxygen and you get some NOx. And hydrogen is pretty much the same or somewhat worse than gasoline with respect to this property depending on how you look at it.

    If you look at the autoignition temperatures (the lowest temperature a fuel will burn) hydrogen's is 530 C. And the autoignition temperature of gasoline is about 260 C. So you can make gasoline produce much less NOx than hydrogen with some effort.

    Hydrogen's flame temperature is 2045 C in air. Gasoline's is 2197 C, almost the same. This is the worst case temperature for the two. Sloppy engines will probably put out about the same NOx.

    (Info from http://www.fuelcellstore.com/information/hydrogen_ safety.html,
    http://www.hut.fi/Units/AES/projects/renew/fuelcel l/posters/hydrogen.html and http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ShaniChristoph er.shtml.)

  19. Re:Eat food? on TMBG on DRM · · Score: 1

    I might easily be convinced that you are right in that the hypocritical spin-doctors running the Republican Party have never compared their political foes to Adolf Hitler.

    However, they have on vast numbers of occasions referred to them as not just "like" Communists, but actually called them Communists and terrorists. They have instigated their arrests. They have interfered with their free speech. They have done almost everything the National Socialists did, except for operating large numbers of concentration camps (I have seen evidence of only one, so far, in Guantanamo).

    And someday I might also be convinced that the Republican Party is not as bad for the US as the Nazi Party was for Germany. Maybe,....

    But I have not yet seen any evidence implying Bush and Ashcroft are significantly less competent than Hitler and Goering (Oops! I compared Republicans to Nazis, and in an uncomplimentary way, too).

    Goldspider, do you agree that the Republican Party's (or for that matter, the Democratic Party's) attacks on the September 11th murderers, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden and Sadam Hussein are hate-motivated attacks? Are you as critical of them as you are of move-on?

    I might agree that you don't know what hate is.

  20. Re:Eat food? on TMBG on DRM · · Score: 1

    Quoting gcaseye6677, "The far left is not exactly know for being accommodating of free speech, unless it's speech they agree with."

    And the far right has even less accomodating of others' free speech. For that matter, the middle of the road seems not to have a lot of interest in free speech either.

    Let's be honest -- 40% of the far left approves of free speech, 20% of the middle of the road folk, and only one of the right wingers,...

    (that's why I prefer to associate with liberals and not other conservatives -- at least since Barry Goldwater died).

  21. Re:Thus the phrase... on EPA Fuel Economy Myth: Too High, Too Low? · · Score: 1

    And I have a 2001 Prius with about 58000 miles -- in that time I've averaged about 45 mpg (equally as estimatedly as ApharmdB, because I also get about 40-45 in winter and summer, and about 47-55 in the spring and summer). Most of this time was in the Phoenix, AZ, area where ALL SUMMER the A/C is running, and when it gets cold it often gets foggy (still 40 or so in the morning, but you have to run the defroster because of the difference between morning and late afternoon temperatures). And of course in town driving is on flat roads (in the VALLEY of the sun, they call it, not the hills of the sun). Probably about 25% of the time on non-urban highways that have quite a bit more vertical features.

    Since moving to Austin, TX, the in town hills are more characteristic, humidity is high year round, more 70 mph freeway shots up and down I35, and I spend more like 33% of the time on the interstates. So the high mpg numbers are lower, but not much, and I get them slightly less often. The low mpg number are about the same, so I think the climate/area has less impact that I would have guessed before buying the car.

  22. Re:Relevance on Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report · · Score: 1

    I think that was his point. In 35 years lots of people, companies, governments, etc., worked on aircraft (blimps, airplanes, even hang gliders).

    In the same 35 years since we landed on the moon we have had very little interest in space and have not been able to do even an order of magnitude less innovating in either theory or practice.

    And I would say the landing on the moon was much more comparable to Lindberg's flight or at least that of the NC-4 in May, 1919, that the Wright brothers' flight (maybe that would compare to Alan Shepard's?).

    BTW, on August 11, 2003, the first successful robotic flight across the Atlantic took place -- based on this and the robotic flights to Mars, manned flights should have occurred 76 years before Mariner....?

  23. Re:A view from a 60's relic on Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report · · Score: 1

    And even more impressive is that the social security tax (no longer paid into a trust fund literally) is providing nearly as much money to the government as the income tax . See the White House budget numbers , Table S-10.

    It estimates that the 2004 receipts from individual income taxes are going to be $765.4 billion and from social security taxes, $732.4 billion.

    We'll also borrow $521 billion in 2004 (based on the known bad HHS estimate of the drug benefit, so this is really lowball). And everything else (estate taxes, cigarette taxes, gasoline taxes, corporate income taxes, park fees, 9/11 fees for air travelers, customs fees, etc.) bring in the remaining $300 billion.

    I am really depressed, when I see these numbers, and despair of any realistic funding for the forseeable future.

  24. Re:X-Prize on Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report · · Score: 1

    What no one seems to be considering is that adding 2000 lbs of suppiles to 170 lbs of astronaut and 200 lbs of life support per astronaut really is increasing the payload over 400%.

    We then have to increase the size of the lauch vehicle 400% (otherwise we don't have the boost to get it 100% of the way to Mars, probably just past the moon.

    So total weight of the lauch vehicle is 5X that of a comparable size (1110 lb robot lander, if we have 3 astronauts) robot mission.

    I think we do need some planning and intelligent budgeting, rather than "back of the envelope" executive summaries.

  25. Re:Why is this good for Sony? on Sony, IBM Announce Cell Workstation For PS3 Dev · · Score: 1

    OK, lets look at the SGI chip architecture: MIPS. I think they did manage to hit pretty decent production levels -- lots of set top boxes, quite a few (Microsoft style) Pocket PCs, etc.

    But Intel was able to push them out of a significant part of the PPC market. So Sony/IBM might be able to win, they might lose, they might wind up with only 50% of the market.

    I'd say they have to try, and they might win or lose, but we don't have enough information now or maybe even in the next year or two to say for sure.