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  1. Great OPL music on It's Time For the Descent Games Return · · Score: 1

    While we're on the subject of Descent, the Yamaha OPL MIDI tracks were some of the best I've heard. The way it was meant to sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Playing it in DOSBox doesn't sound anywhere near as good as the real deal... you've got to switch the OPL instrument patch bank and the support for doing that in DOSBox isn't too good. If you play the OPL MIDI files with adlmidi and the proper Descent patch bank, then it sounds good.

  2. Re: Slashdot being a prime example of bad on Ask Slashdot: Why Do Mobile Versions of Websites Suck? · · Score: 1

    I need an app for every website I visit like I need double pneumonia and a infected hemorrhoid.

    Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1174/

  3. Re:Same as last time on No, the Tesla Model S Doesn't Pollute More Than an SUV · · Score: 1

    Correction, it was an I6, not a V6.

  4. Re:Same as last time on No, the Tesla Model S Doesn't Pollute More Than an SUV · · Score: 1

    The original Corvette only had a 150-hp V6, according to Wikipedia.

  5. Re:Questions... on ARM In Supercomputers — 'Get Ready For the Change' · · Score: 1

    I think GP meant the Intel 8052 core.

  6. Re:Where did the chips come from? on EPA Makes a Rad Decision · · Score: 5, Informative

    The only radioactive isotope of carbon is C14. The amount of C14 versus C12 is roughly 0.0000000001%. That is one part in one trillion. A human body has roughly 80 trillion cells.

    Yes.

    So 80 of your cells contain *ONE* atom of C14. Your whole body contains 80 C14 atoms ...

    No. An 80-kilogram person has about 14 or 15 kg of carbon atoms. This works out to trillions of carbon atoms per human cell. Therefore every cell has approximately one atom of C14, and the human body as a whole has almost a quadrillion C14 atoms.

  7. Re:Java and flash... on Apple Nabs Java Exploit That Bypassed Disabled Plugin · · Score: 1

    Actually, we get gaping holes in the Java environment that the applets run on. But I think you get the idea.

  8. Re:Java and flash... on Apple Nabs Java Exploit That Bypassed Disabled Plugin · · Score: 1

    On Linux and probably some other unices, chroot is not intended for use as a security mechanism. See http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/09/27/2256235/when-not-to-use-chroot and also man 2 chroot.

    If you can take the performance hit, a VM of some kind (emulated bytecode, virtualization or JIT compilation) is much better for security. Unfortunately, security is more difficult than it seems at first glance, so it doesn't always get the attention it needs. Hence we have gaping holes in Java applets. This is why we can't have nice things.

  9. Re:Are you a human being? on Following FEMA's Zombie Preparedness Plan Could Land You On Terrorist List · · Score: 3, Interesting

    there was an IWW member (Industrial Workers of the World for anyone unfamiliar -- aka "wobblies") standing on a street corner doing nothing but publicly reading our own Declaration of Independence. After a few minutes, a police officer comes by and arrests him

    That was Frank Little.

  10. Re:Satellites in zero-gravity? on Microthrusters For Small Satellites · · Score: 4, Informative
    From Wikipedia:

    "zero-gravity" is usually used synonymously to mean effective weightlessness, neglecting tidal effects.

    So, yes, there is plenty of gravity acting upon satellites in orbits, but they are in free fall, so there isn't a significant gravitational force experienced by the components of the satellite due to their accelerating reference frame. Thanks to our somewhat sloppy terminology, this is zero-gravity.

  11. Re:What are they selling these days? on Resumegate Continues At Yahoo: Thompson Out As CEO, Levinsohn In · · Score: 1

    Call me curious, but what does Yahoo! offer these days besides a buggy version of Gmail and Flickr?

    Yahoo! Answers, which admittedly is very hit-and-miss, but sometimes it gets the job done.

  12. Re:Everyone loves... on Ask Slashdot: How To Give IT Presentations That Aren't Boring? · · Score: 1

    Too many car analogies in your presentations is just like too many Ferraris. Sure, the first one or two are fun to take for a spin around the countryside, but when your garage or presentation is full of them, it gets kind of crowded and reduces the overall value of them.

  13. Re:Feynman - Books and Covers on Math Textbooks a Textbook Example of Bad Textbooks · · Score: 1

    Humans work with base 10 [ten] for good reason.

    What reason(s)? All I can see are:

    • Because we have ten fingers and ten toes,
    • because ten is a product of two and five making division by these two numbers easier,
    • and simple momentum (it's too late to change now).

    I personally think that hexadecimal is a superior system, especially for communicating with binary computers which use binary naturally. The only reason we can't use it is because we decided that ten was a great number base for some reason.

  14. Re:China unblocks Google+ on Google+ Unblocked In China; President Obama's Page Flooded With Comments · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fortunately, Slashdot lacks Unicode support, so we're already protected.

  15. Re:Leaking silicone... on The Transistor Wars · · Score: 1

    I obviously have much to learn about pronunciation, as I have always understood that the word "cone" has a silent e and is one syllable long.

  16. Re:Leaking silicone... on The Transistor Wars · · Score: 1

    Who pronounces it with a silent e.

    I've never heard it pronounced without a silent e. How would you pronounce it without a silent e? Sil-ih-co-neh? Sil-ih-co-nee?

  17. Re:Not a random comment on Exploiting Network Captures For Truer Randomness · · Score: 1

    But really you'll never achieve randomness, at least not using a traditional turning machine...

    What are you talking about? I make random things with my lathe all the time!