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User: flymolo

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  1. Re:Not sure how I feel about this one on Aereo To SCOTUS: Shut Us Down and You Shut Down Cloud Storage · · Score: 1

    I was figuring they could manipulate their reencoding to insert iframes at expected commercial times. Since it's transparent to the end user, they could be overaggressive in their detection and still win on disk space. But maybe it's not worth the extra complexity.

  2. Re:Not sure how I feel about this one on Aereo To SCOTUS: Shut Us Down and You Shut Down Cloud Storage · · Score: 1

    But probably at the block level. It would be hard for the networks to argue that they own each 16k block encoded in a different way they encode it compressed in a different way than they compress it.

    Each user has a file. They may start and end at different times and they can choose to "delete" their file to get back "free space". The same commercial in different shows may share the same blocks even more than the shows.

    This make perfect technological sense, but may still be illegal.

  3. Fork it. on FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback' · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If GPL is superior, do a GPLed fork of LLVM/clang and beat the BSD licensed version with their own code.

    You should be able to grow faster.
    You have access to their improvements, while they don't have access to yours.
    But then you'd be doing what you criticize corporations for, what you fear being done to LLVM by corporations.

    You obviously could, but it feels wrong to me. But if it's freedom you are protecting why does it feel wrong?

  4. Advertising on Ask Slashdot: How To Reimagine a Library? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Get a display space near the cafeteria or some other place where students go frequently. Put books there that are interesting to the students. Thor comics, Ender's game whatever the media is already advertising for you.

    Talk to teachers and hold classes in the library occasionally so the kids feel comfortable there.
    See if the school will add DVDs to the library's collection.

    Get them there and they'll figure out how to use it, but you have to get them there.

    If they can put meeting rooms in, so clubs can meet there that would be great as well.

  5. Evilhat on Emmett Plant Talks About the Paper-Based RPG Game Business (Video) · · Score: 2

    Look at Evil Hat. Fred Hicks is the most open I've seen of the RPG publishers. You see hard sales numbers quarter to quarter. Discussions on what makes a kickstarter work. Shipping costs. All sorts of useful stuff. Steve Jackson Games yearly reports are good too, but they are more summarized. SJG at this point is basically the Munchkin company with everything else as a sideline, so their information will be less relevant.

    But this is a good time to be an RPG publisher, print runs and poor management crippled a lot of companies. One of those problems has been eliminated, and the other is easier due to the way the market has shifted.

    Good luck.

  6. No copycatting on Ask Slashdot: Do You Run a Copy-Cat Installation At Home? · · Score: 2

    My home projects tend to be on the peripheral edge of my work. I proof of concept stuff. I try a new library that might turn out to be useful. That's the best balance for me. If I pitch it at work, I have to promise return on the time. This makes my creative projects stressful. If I play with it, it fails or it doesn't. Either way I've learned something, and haven't had to worry about deadlines.

  7. Re:yes, there are a reasonable number of positions on Ask Slashdot: Scientific Research Positions For Programmers? · · Score: 1

    That really depends on the job and the institution. I am a research programmer and am being encouraged to be more independent. Write papers and come up with grant ideas in particular. I will most likely never be faculty with a B.S., but grad school is almost free while I'm in my current position and there are past and present faculty who only had/have a Masters.

    Get in the door any way you can. If you find a project and supervisor you can work with, doors will open. Most of the paths will be through grad school, but finding the research you like first is a good option.

  8. Re:Seems logical.. on Enlightenment Terminal Allows Video Playback, PDF Viewing · · Score: 2

    I like it. I'm often annoyed at the split between the GUI and command line. What if I want to run a find and view the images or videos that result? Or I write a program that produces images, and I want to test many parameters without having to write a GUI to view the results. This allows shell script style programming to interact with graphical data, and that is something I've wanted for a while.

  9. Re:I've known a solution for this for years on Scientists Study Getting an Unwanted Tune Out of Your Head · · Score: 1

    I do a similar thing. I sing a song I know all of. When a song gets stuck in my head the whole song doesn't get suck in my head, a minute at most does. If you can sing through a whole song it tends not to get stuck because it's too long.

  10. Following the Google/Motorola vs. Microsoft on To Mollify Google on Moto Patents, Apple Proposes $1/Device Fee · · Score: 1

    I think Apple knows this offer will not be taken, but they decided to make one to make their position in the eventual lawsuit stronger. One of Google/Motorola's arguments against Microsoft is that Microsoft will not negotiate, so Google/Motorola could not have violated their FRAND obligations.

  11. This is absurd on FSF Uses Android FUD To Push GPLv3 · · Score: 1, Informative

    The GPLv2 may not be the right license for Android, but GPLv3 isn't either. There's no way cell phone manufacturers would distribute patent licenses with their code, especially with all the patent lawsuits happening now. Ignoring a one critical aspects of the use case for another makes this useless.

  12. Re:Appeal? on Yahoo Beats Patent Troll That Beat Google · · Score: 2

    The linux kernel is modular. You can execute some parts and not others. They were able to argue that they didn't use the part of linux that could infringe this patent.
    Different distributions compile their kernels with different options with different things enabled or compiled as modules.

  13. Re:As I and many others pointed out yesterday on Amazon's Cloud Player: We Don't Need a License · · Score: 1

    It's usually block level, so if you and I rip a CD it's possibly that we share most blocks except where I had a scratch, or we share just the metadata because we both ripped with the same program.

  14. Re:Data over power lines? on California County Bans SmartMeter Installations · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see the reference. It seems to me broadband over power lines would be a shared bandwidth solution, and the number of consumers of the data wouldn't matter much.

  15. Re:Still no patent-related indemnification on WebM Licensing Problems Resolved · · Score: 1

    Your blog discounts the likely possibility that this is lies for the purpose of FUD, or that even if true the FUD is more valuable than actually asserting the patents.

    I think the patent allegations are made to slow adoption. But I think indemnification may be still be necessary, because even proving non-infringement is expensive.

    I hope if the patent pools manifest, Google sues for a declaration of non-infringement.

  16. CPU Limit Ridiculous on Good Language Choice For School Programming Test? · · Score: 1

    The CPU Limit is there mainly so they can abort programs rather than wait for potential infinite loops. Or at least that is what it was for in the programming competitions I participated in. Get some example problems before making a decision, but I'd definitely lean toward a scripting language, and something with a robust set of shipped libraries.

  17. Re:Random today, but still random tomorrow? on New Method for Random Number Generation Developed · · Score: 1

    Part of the source for this randomness is the propagation of electricity in the circuit which can be different due to manufacturing impurities. You could potentially predict it, if you had the individual chip. That's better than what we have now, by a mile.

  18. Automated Harassment on Getting Company Owners To Follow Their Own Rules? · · Score: 1

    Get them to append the policy (they probably won't read it), to allow you to send remind emails and texts. Have the frequency ramp the longer they don't comply. Eventually they will give in, or fire you.

  19. Re:Electric car with problems? on Electric Mini Cooper Has Rough Start · · Score: 1

    Building efficient systems is difficult. Building them small is even more difficult. By shifting the problem, you have one less problem. We already need more efficient less polluting power plants.

  20. Re:The World is America? on Symantec Wants To Use Victims To Hunt Computer Criminals · · Score: 1

    And even if the hacker is in the US, getting law enforcement cooperation to get logs from that hacked box will be nigh impossible.

  21. The World is America? on Symantec Wants To Use Victims To Hunt Computer Criminals · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How many of these scams and hack originate in the US anyway? Will their customers really have information to share?

  22. Re:Junk patents on IBM's Supreme Court Brief Says That Patents Drive Free Software · · Score: 1

    Agreed, I think less than 1% of the patents accepted now should be, but I believe there may be valid patents that have unfair terms and are stifling new development.

    Ultimately the only entity that can force a sale is the government. The government made a mess; they need to clean it up. But even if they clean up the mess, they need to solve the corner cases.

  23. Re:Junk patents on IBM's Supreme Court Brief Says That Patents Drive Free Software · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sadly, I think the answer may be government intervention. I was at the aviation museum in Seattle, and I learned something interesting.

    The government had to nationalize a bunch of patents, set the license fees reasonably and pay back the original inventors to get more people working on planes.

    It may be that something similar has to happen to get us the web we want.

  24. Re:The largest thing I'm missing from 4e... on A Veteran GM's First Impressions of D&D 4th Edition · · Score: 1

    There are less spells now, because powers for all the other classes took up page count.

    But there are 50 rituals in the last chapter that cover a bunch of divination, magic item crafting and weirdness(feather fall, tenser's floating disk)

  25. Re:I stopped caring about Qt on In-Depth With Qt 4.4 · · Score: 1

    On Mac it's just plain ugly. It looks native on Mac. I'm using it now. Sadly it isn't 64 bit yet, but that's slated for 10.5 .