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User: extrasolar

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Comments · 1,139

  1. Re:resources on Surveying the Challenges of Linux On Cortex A9-Based Laptops · · Score: 1

    You know, at the end of the day, Canonical needs to concern itself with *its* bottom line too, you know.

    Sorry, but I hate it how people think they can tell companies how they should allocate their resources to fix their own personal problems. FWIW, I haven't had any problems with wifi on the computers I've installed Ubuntu on, so obviously they're doing something right.

    And I *really* want an ARM based GNU/Linux laptop,tablet, netbook.

  2. Re:That's not even what this debate is about on Climategate's Final Days · · Score: 1

    It's interesting that you brought that up, given the history of the climate change "debate." Because until about 10 years ago, saying global warming doesn't exist was the position of the deniers. The position was that global temperatures were not increasing. Then the position was changed to admitting that that temperatures were increasing, but no faster than historical rates, even though it's clearly exponential growth.

    Sir, while what you have discovered appears to be a conspiracy, after further digging we have determined that what you allude to is the result of (1) people changing their mind in response to new data, and (2) new people entering the debate with different points of view. I'm afraid the plot is more sinister than we had thought! As we know, only the noble and true follow their convictions until death.

  3. Re:Riiiiight on Science Historian Deciphers Plato's Code · · Score: 1

    Thanks for posting this (though why as AC? are you a competing scholar?).

    One possibility though, would it make a difference if you excluded/included the names in the dialogue? You know how the dialogue says "Socrates:" and then what Socrates says. Your numbers seem so close...

  4. Re:This November.. on Congressmen Send Letters, Hope For Net Neutrality Fades · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think that will actually work, because by supporting minority parties you're not actually making any changes to the government. Okay, you hope that it would, that if you make enough slashdot comments you'll be able to elect a green or a libertarian, but honestly I just don't see that happening. There are a lot more voters than people reading slashdot.

    One thing I think might work is voting against incumbents. What will that accomplish? I don't really know. But it's a stark way of expressing your disapproval of the people who *have* been running things.

  5. The problem is GNOME on Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS · · Score: 1

    I have an Asus EEEPC 2G Surf--you really can't get lower end on a netbook than this one. I use it regularly for IRC, Web, and programming projects and while, yes, it is sluggish, the key is to go for a minimal Debian install and work your way up from there. Forget about GNOME or KDE, if you're looking for a desktop experience, then you're looking at the wrong place.

    As old and outdated as this computer is, is more than beats the user experience of an iPad since I can comfortably rest it on my lap in the lazyboy and tilt the screen up while using it :)

  6. Re:I gotta ask myself... on 13 Open Source Hardware Companies Make $1+ Million · · Score: 1

    Hear hear!

  7. Re:The equation of truth on Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading? · · Score: 1

    Like Medicaid. That's "welfare" according to most people, because if you can't afford to see a doctor then you're the scum of the earth and [i]deserve[/i] to be sick. Other forms of welfare I'm less leniant with, but come on! This discussion makes me sick. The grandparent poster sounds to me like someone who disguises "I deserve more" into "They deserve less." People are pissed off about their own financial problems love to take it out on poor people. Poor people know something about financial problems too, you know.

  8. Re:The equation of truth on Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "In our world, here and now, there are any number of people who have more rights than I have, and my service to my country means just about squat."

    Are you going to actually substantiate your outrage or are you going to give us the outrage? This is sounding like an OReilly rant more than anything else.

    So, first, who has more rights than you do? And are you suggesting that your service to your country gives you more rights? What service? Military? I respect military men, but they don't get more rights than I do. Sorry. I have a thing.

  9. Re:G(a)nash on Is Apple's Attack On Flash Really About Video? · · Score: 1

    I saw that too. The way to look at it, I guess, is that Gnash is the GNU replacement for Adobe's Flash program and a counter to their proprietary technology. On the other hand, Ganash is the open source version of Adobe's Flash technology that justifies putting Adobe Flash in all Apple products and, indeed, in all products period.

  10. Re:Faster and faster on Looking At Google's Flashified Chrome · · Score: 1

    Mathematically, if every release the javascript is 10% faster, that is 10% faster than the last fastest release, so maybe we're talking about smaller and smaller values of fasterness.

    IOW, if it takes 10 seconds to complete a javascript script, then it takes 9 seconds because 1 second is 10% of 10 seconds; then it takes 8.1 seconds because .9 seconds is 10% of 9 seconds; then 7.29 seconds; then 6.561; and so on.

  11. Wow on IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low · · Score: 1

    Wow, at that rate everyone will be using it, even people who don't exist!

  12. Re:Nuclear waste on US To Build Nuclear Power Plants · · Score: 1

    Hell yeah.

    And if technology progress at the speed it has been (and it always does), we won't even *need* bodies, so what the hell are we even worried about?

  13. Re:Too early yet on Legal Code In a Version Control System? · · Score: 1

    Just so you know, in my other response to you, I read your post the same way. You objection was that anyone could walk up and get treatment. The appearance was you were offended that they were able to get treatment at all. This message says you're offended if they don't have to pay for their mandatory treatment. That makes more sense to me. I think you should be sure to include that in future posts on this topic :)

  14. Re:Too early yet on Legal Code In a Version Control System? · · Score: 1

    What it did NOT say, which nobody realized until about a week later, is that patients were not required to show any ID. The bill as written allowed people to simply walk into a hospital and demand healthcare, whether they were american, illegal residents, or foreign tourists just dropping-in for a visit.

    I don't understand this argument, and yeah I've heard the same thing on the airwaves. But the only conclusion I can come up with is that you and other conservatives don't want to allow illegal immigrants access to the emergency room if they need it. Or even worse, if I'm in a head on collision with a drunk driver and the paramedics weren't able to find my wallet in the wreckage, the hospital won't be able to verify my citizenship and therefore I don't get treatment.

    Now it boggles the mind that anyone would actually argue that, but I've also come to realize that a lot of people are so angry about illegal immigration that they will go to any length to make life here as horrible as they can for them. It's not that I agree with illegal immigration either. We have national borders and crossing those borders illegally should be considered a criminal act. However, I'm also a humanitarian. Even native criminals get to have medical treatment. And, yes, they get to go to the emergency room. So, if you agree that crossing the border is a criminal act, then you should treat illegal immigrants the same way we treat other criminals.

    And no medical treatment for foreign visitors who are here legally? Are you kidding me? If you're visiting Spain and have a heart attack, you'd rather be forced to endure an international trip back to the US to get treatment? That's beyond the pale.

    If you want illegal immigration reform, we should wait until that is the actual item on the agenda. Health reform is about insurance reform. Illegal immigration reform, which is badly needed, will be taken up later. This is obviously an attempt to hijack the agenda by using people concerned about illegal immigration to undermine the work for health reform. I'd just recommend that you and Joe Wilson cool down and keep your eye on the ball. I just hope that when illegal immigration reform does happen that people like you will have enough decency to treat people here illegally humanely. And by humanity I just mean that tiny bit of positive respect that we give, or at least ought to give people, even our worst enemy. I don't see illegals as our enemy either, but as rather desperate criminals who are escaping the hell that Mexico has become. It is just like a thief who steals in order to feed his family. He is still a criminal and has broken the law. But to say that because he's a thief he doesn't deserve medical treatment is beyond the pale, in my opinion.

  15. Re:If the legal code is too confusing on Legal Code In a Version Control System? · · Score: 1

    Hello. Could you speak at our next TEA Party meeting about your ideas. I think the word needs to get out.

    Thanks!

  16. Re:Don't blame the protestors on G20 Protesters Blasted By "Sound Cannon" · · Score: 1

    You can't legally break up a peaceful riot, so you send men in, incite the crowd, and then break up the riot you started.

    That's hilarious. "Peaceful riot"--what kind of doublespeak is this? :) I could make a political point here, but that would be too obvious. Everyone make up your own witty comment bringing out the irony here. As for myself, I'll just point at you and say, "Hah hah!"

  17. Re:To be so lucky... on Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing · · Score: 1

    Well exactly. Someone up there in the comments mentioned how Open Source Developers like to "Scratch their own itch" - which in my opinion is really the wrong way to tackle a problem.

    The "scratch your own itch" isn't the recommended problem-solving strategy. Rather, it is meant to express the motivation that free/open source developers have for writing free software in the first place. Another reason is ideology--that all software ought to be free.

    But, yeah, "scratching an itch" is what has yielded the crazy situation we have today with free software.

  18. Re:STFU needs to be heard. on Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing · · Score: 1

    What exactly do all these "Gnome won't let you configure anything! KDE 4Evar!" people want to be able to do with Gnome that they can't?

    Spend more time configuring their settings than getting work done? Or, in the worst case, trying to get GNOME to mimic some bizarre configuration they had set up in fvwm for 20 years. There are benefits to the Out of Your Way Interface (OYWI) that many power users don't understand.

  19. Re:seed the planets on Future of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Looks Bleak · · Score: 1

    Okay, I killed my mod points just to reply to you.

    Just to tell you that I've wondered about the same thing. It's wildly entertaining and interesting that a big oil company thought it was interesting enough to ask about it :) I think I saw a Wikipedia article about some interplanetary space route that takes very little energy to navigate across the solar system, provided you were willing to wait a long time.

    Someday...I bet it will happen. Unless we give up on space entirely.

  20. Absolutely "good enough" on Is "Good Enough" the Future of Technology? · · Score: 1

    Because I don't want a table piece, I don't want a fashion statement, I don't want an appliance. I want something I can make into my own. If technology is too expensive, I'll be afraid to hack it. This is the number one reason why netbooks are so popular among geeks, no matter how much snobbish Mac users and Wired writers hate it. It's not because netbooks are super great products, but because we're not afraid to hack them, we're not afraid of them breaking. If it breaks, we'll buy a new one, or even several. And that's why we hate proprietary cell phones where the manufacturer controls the device even after you own it. If I can't hack it then it's dead to me.

  21. Re:Do your own damn work on Making an Open Source Project Press-Friendly · · Score: 1

    Secondly, YOTLD is an utopia us *nixers want where we get all of the good stuff associated with popularity (better hardware vendor support, mainstream acceptance of F/OSS principles, increased interoperability, richer software library, more developers/code contributors/bug fixers) without any of the bad stuff (malware, brainless users, bigger stakes on the developer Ego Wars, more hardware/software support nightmares, more pressure, more "boring bits" and less coding fun, etc). If YOTLD is delivered by reporters (instead of by technical merit and word-of-mouth), it will be because they dumbed it down, and we'd get mostly disadvantage and only a few of the advantages. Basically, YOTLD is a wet dream where society changes to be more computer literate, and most/all of our current IT nightmares die because everyone's using their brain.

    Hear hear! +1 :)

  22. Re:Presidential Ban Button on Emergency Government Control of the Internet? · · Score: 1

    Then how will I be able to subscribe to the power station's live Twitter feed?

  23. Re:Linux TV Ads on FSF Attacks Windows 7's "Sins" In New Campaign · · Score: 0

    Wow, just imagine. All the taste and good judgment that went into this 7 Sins campaign put on television for millions to watch!

    I think I'll die of embarrassment.

  24. Re:Great idea on Twitter Developing Location-Based API · · Score: 1

    I was thinking more in lines of "natural disaster", so that the weather service can send everyone within a county a text message that there's a tornado warning.

    But odds are, this will be used so that the grocery store next door to the shoe store you're shopping in can tell you about their sale on bread.

  25. Re:Bloody difficult. on How To Prove Someone Is Female? · · Score: 1

    This is why I don't like the "unfair advantage" argument against using steroids in sports, because it really is a slippery slope, as nearly any advantage can be construed as being "unfair" (since not everyone has access to such advantage). My problem with steroids has always been that the advantage comes at a health cost, or at least a health risk; a risk that athletes shouldn't have to take to do well in their sport. If this lady has a natural hormonal imbalance that gives her an advantage, then I have nothing against it, especially if it doesn't harm her.

    Name one sport where the winners aren't determined by "unfair advantages"?