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User: pelrun

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Comments · 149

  1. Re:Aww.. on Mobile 'Remote Wipe' Thwarts Secret Service · · Score: 1

    Watch out - remember they've almost figured out how to detect sarcasm in forum posts now!

    http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/05/17/1541236/Software-Recognizes-Sarcastic-Tweets

  2. Re:Why?? on Why I Steal Movies (Even Ones I'm In) · · Score: 1, Funny

    Steal a car? Hell, I'd kill a policeman, steal his helmet, poop in it, give it to his widow, then steal it back again if it meant I'd never have to see that wretched thing again!

  3. Where have I seen that before...? on Sony's PS3 Motion Controller Gets Demoed and Named · · Score: 1

    Looks like Sony ripped off the open-source Atlas Gloves (http://atlasgloves.org/) so they could get gesture control without bumping into Nintendo's patents.

  4. Re:damned faintly praising? on Schooling Microsoft On Random Browser Selection · · Score: 1

    Hah! The mp3 shuffle thing isn't a case of poor randomisation - humans just tend to pick a poor definition of random here. Usually people expect "play stuff I haven't heard recently, and in a completely new order that I haven't heard before". True random shuffle will give you songs and orders you've already heard, and your brain is good at picking them up.

  5. Re:EEEEK! GIANT ANTS! on Tritium Leak At Vermont Nuclear Plant Grows · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah, bring that up next time someone cries about the amount of mercury in a CFL. Incandescents have no mercury, but all the energy they use actually disperses MORE mercury into the environment around the coal-fired power plant than is *contained* in the CFL. Oops.

  6. Re:I Actually Side with Dick's Estate on Nexus One Name Irks Philip K. Dick's Estate · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, I think "Google rips off Dick heirs" works even better.

  7. Re:Why? on 3D Blu-ray Spec Finalized, PS3 Supported · · Score: 1

    It's actually probably the *only* thing that would make me want to spend money on the format. I'd be just as happy with frame-sequential 3d dvds, though.

  8. Re:3D subtitles! on 3D Blu-ray Spec Finalized, PS3 Supported · · Score: 1

    It's a little more complex than that. It's important to keep the 3d field internally consistent - it's bad when 'forward' elements of the scene (i.e. placed 'in front' of the screen plane) have 'further back' elements forced in front of them. This includes the *edges of the screen* and subtitles that are fixed at the screen plane but still drawin in front of elements that should be in front of them. There are parallels to issues found in (mostly older) 3d games, when the draw order is wrong.

    If the forward elements and the subtitles don't intersect, though, it can work to have the subtitles further back. I noticed this a couple of times when seeing Avatar tonight - the Na'vi subtitles weren't absolutely in front of everything, but the rest of the scene was carefully arranged so as not to conflict.

  9. Re:Vinyl... on Not All iPods — Vinyl and Turntables Gain Sales · · Score: 1

    sound quality on vinyl tends to degrade much more gracefully to the human ear.

    Not really - it's very much a cultural preference. If you grow up listening to audio that's distorted the way vinyl/tubes make it, then you think that it sounds better than the undistorted audio (or audio that is distorted differently.) It's becoming apparent that younger people are preferring the lossy sound of lower-bitrate MP3's (which are *definitely* not 'better') over vinyl or uncompressed audio, simply because they're always listening to that sort of audio on their ipods.

  10. Re:Ok really? on After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo · · Score: 1

    Actually establishing communication is a secondary goal - just detecting incidental radio output of an alien civilisation would be a monumental discovery. That said, it does require both sides to have radio capability. So it's probably unlikely that we'll see anything if there are/were only a couple of other inhabited planets out there, but if instead the universe has a lot of life in it, we may get lucky and be in the right place and time to see *one*. If we aren't looking, then even that possibility is wasted.

    Additionally, we're able to see a hell of a long way out there; astronomers are peering deeper and deeper into the universe all the time. If the universe systematically scattered all energy from far away, we wouldn't be able to do that. And in fact, matter that's 'in the way' can be a major advantage, with gravitational lensing.

  11. Re:Wishful thinking on After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo · · Score: 1

    But *why* is it still the square of the distance when I always thought that was just a natural consequence of the increase in volume of a sphere as it's radius increases? If antenna gain makes no difference, then why bother with it at all?

  12. Re:mythtv website on MythTV 0.22 Released · · Score: 1

    I got modded troll? Really? It's not a stupid suggestion, thin skinned moderator dude.

  13. Re:mythtv website on MythTV 0.22 Released · · Score: 1, Troll

    Why oh why is it so hard for people to stick .nyud.net onto urls so they get coral cached before submitting them to slashdot? You people are supposed to be smart!

  14. Re:Security... on Test of 16 Anti-Virus Products Says None Rates "Very Good" · · Score: 1

    Which is fine until that one virus manages to get through by accident. I ran my machine AV-free for a long time until that happened, and the cleanup was unpleasant - the preventive features of AV software are far superior their cleanup ones. :S

    That said, the performance of my machine running AVG got worse and worse with each new version till I got fed up and ditched it. I'm running Avast now, and the best feature is the easy access to the "disable on-access protection" option in the systray. It stays on most of the time, but I don't have to go digging through menus when I just want it to get the hell out of the way.

  15. Re:He needs thicker skin on Ryan Gordon Ends FatELF Universal Binary Effort · · Score: 1

    Hang on, they repeatedly tried to help you, but they're arrogant assholes because they were wrong? Because they couldn't magically pull the correct answer out of their arses when only given a limited view of the machine?

    The real problem is that they have to deal day-in and day-out with people who come in to the channel with a problem, give inaccurate information about their system, refuse to listen to the advice they are given, then storm off in a huff even though the advice was *right*. And yet they were still trying to help you out.

    Arrogant assholes are on both sides, buddy.

  16. Re:You can already get something very similar. on Physics Rebel Aims To Shake Up the Video Game World · · Score: 1

    There's nothing special about these devices. Hell, I got a similar device on sale over a decade ago - an Aura Interactor - and it was pretty meh.

  17. Re:Research, patent, troll; repeat as desired on CSIRO Reinvests Patent Earnings · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Getting royalties on a patent does not make you a patent troll. Buying up patents you didn't invent just to make money off them IS. (There is NO "research, patent, troll" cycle, only a "buy/write trivial patent, wait, troll" one.)

    The CSIRO spent money developing the technology in the patents. They're reinvesting the royalties (which are a fucking PITTANCE) back into new research. That's the very opposite of being a patent troll.

  18. Re:Bathtub & RFID on AU Government To Build "Unhackable" Netbooks · · Score: 1

    Sure, for subcutaneous use, but there's nothing stopping one being put in a ceramic package and placed on the motherboard looking like just another IC.

  19. Re:Interesting poll on the article site on Model Drops Lawsuit After Outing Anonymous Blogger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it's more a case of "if you're going to be an asshole, don't be a coward as well." You can be critical without being a dick (and in that case anonymity is worthwhile/necessary) but if you're being a dick just for the sake of being a dick, you shouldn't expect to be protected.

  20. Re:Anonymous political speech is protect on Model Drops Lawsuit After Outing Anonymous Blogger · · Score: 1

    I think the perceived value of the 'speech' in question should be taken into account. There can be valid reasons to keep the author of a text anonymous - but protecting the author of hate speech from a (well deserved) lawsuit shouldn't be one of them.

  21. Re:good riddance on Are Information Technology's Glory Days Over? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly - he's only talking about people with "entrepreneurial spirit", i.e. those people who only care about getting as filthy rich as possible, as fast as possible, and not about working in an industry they enjoy. If they all decide to piss off to China then good luck to them.

  22. Re:Missing the point. on Feds At DefCon Alarmed After RFIDs Scanned · · Score: 1

    It still makes sense as Piece Of Shit into the second sentence...

    "instead of needing to scan your crap"

  23. Re:What do you bet... on Feds At DefCon Alarmed After RFIDs Scanned · · Score: 2, Informative

    Most RFID cards are completely unencrypted, and even the encrypted ones have only basic encryption implemented (it was quite spectacularly reverse engineered a couple of years ago) - there just isn't enough power available to do anything robust.

  24. Re:Bingo on A Hypothesis On Segway Hate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, it's because you're changing the bike's forward direction using the handlebars to nudge the bike back under your centre of gravity. Once you stop, the handlebars don't do that any more (they just turn the front wheel) and you fall over.

    If you tried riding a bike with fixed handlebars you would fall over just as fast as if you were stopped, which wouldn't happen if gyroscopic effects were dominant.

  25. Lies, damned lies, and statistics on Symantec Exec Warns Against Relying On Free Antivirus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And *that* is a crap statistic; it does nothing to describe the severities of the vulnerabilities, the vendor response, or the amount of time each was left unpatched. Who cares if FF had 184 vulnerabilities and IE 1, if the FF ones were hard to exploit and patched within a few days and the IE one was left open all year and readily attackable by script kiddies?