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  1. Re:Knighthood makes sense on Alan Turing Apology Campaign Grows · · Score: 1

    Parent post moderated funny?

    I assumed it was a mistake. I know that I've accidentally selected the item below or above the one I meant to when moderating on more than one occasion. I've also accidentally moderated someone by using the scrollwheel on my mouse while hovering over the moderation pulldown. It's just bad design.

  2. Knighthood makes sense on Alan Turing Apology Campaign Grows · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree that apologizing for something that you didn't to to people who are no longer alive doesn't make much sense. I think that John's first suggestion of knighting him is a great idea. It's not an apology; it is honoring him for his tremendous contributions to the country, in spite of the horrible way he was treated.

    It has much of the same social benefit that apologizing to him would. He should have been knighted while he was alive, and the only reason he wasn't was because he was gay. Choosing to do so now recognizes this fact and states that we will no longer overlook someone because of their sexuality.

    If you want to apologize, apologize to the people who are still living that were put though this garbage. For Turing in particular the important thing is to remember what he accomplished and what he was put through, and officially honoring him is an excellent way to do this.

  3. Re:The same for drug industry on EA Spends 3x More On Marketing Than Development · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One thing that someone in the biomedical industry told me is that the path that drug research usually takes is that a Phd candidate will do basic research at the university, carry this research with them to a small startup company, which is then acquired by a big pharmaceutical if one of their drugs looks promising, who then goes thought the FDA testing process and gets the drug to market.

    According to her these marketing/research numbers that get thrown around don't include the costs of acquiring start-ups. Since it is pretty much impossible for a small company to afford to get a drug through the FDA approval process, their entire business model is to sell-up to the big phamaceuticals, either the entire company or individual drug patents. Therefore, this aquisition / patent license money funds an awful lot of research that doesn't get counted in the numbers.

    And it seems to me that this system works fairly well - the university / small lab environment is really more conducive to basic research than a large company who is focused on getting products to market. And in this case, the patent system helps provide a business model for these research labs that wouldn't exist otherwise.

    Thanks for the folks that posted those sources, I'll have to check them out in detail later on, and see if they confim/refute what I've heard.

  4. Re:Component on Microsoft Drops Xbox 360 Pricing · · Score: 1

    Well, I was actually talking about the component video cables for televisions that don't support HDMI at all, just component video.

    The kit you are talking about is something different and costs $45-50. If you don't care about optical audio, I think you can just use the RCA cables that come with the system for audio and your own HDMI cable.

  5. Re:Easy... on Watermelon Juice Makes Great Biofuel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, yeah, the buyer doesn't want to sort the things themselves, that's obvious. The parent is asking where the B-grade buyers are, given there is such a large amount of left over fruit. There are lots of crops that are sold in different quality lots.

  6. Component on Microsoft Drops Xbox 360 Pricing · · Score: 1

    If you have an older television that needs component cables though, you'll have to shell out $35-40 for the XBox specific ones.

    But -$100 +$40 +40GB = still a better deal than before the price drop.

  7. Re:Speaking from personal experience on Depression May Provide Cognitive Advantages · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I'm having a really hard time buying this as well. Maybe it is true of short-term situational depression, but as someone who has had to deal with cronic low self-esteem my entire life, and cyclical depression since puberty, this seems like a real rose-colored view based on a contrived definition of "logical thinking".

    Thinking logically about a subject is more than systematically breaking it down into sub-problems. It requires the ability to discard ideas that are not supported by evidence, and to weigh things honestly. I cannot do that when I am depressed. All this "logical thinking" amounts to is obsessing over every detail, cataloging every negative thing about myself, while dismissing anything positive as not important. I know that people like me, but damned if I will admit it when I'm depressed. I know that I have gotten somewhat better at social situations over time, but when I'm depressed it's "this is the way I've always been, this is the way I'll always be". A state of mind where I cling onto beliefs regardless of evidence or reason is not what I would consider to be logical.

    Furthermore, I can't say that I have made any progress as a result of my ruminating while depressed. It has all been due to dispassionate decisions made while sober, that I made a point not to become hyped-up about because that would only cause disappointment later on.

  8. Re:32b? on Behind the 4GB Memory Limit In 32-Bit Windows · · Score: 1

    Linux is allowed and supported, and the software is cross-platform. All the data we process ourselves is done on a 64-bit Linux machine spec'ed for the purpose (32GB RAM, 8TB RAID array).

    But most of the employees use their computers primarily for stuff like Outlook, Office, OrCAD, and a spattering of other windows-only applications. We also work with a lot of domain-specific hardware what only has windows drivers / application software. There is just too much momentum to get people to change. The engineers want to be able to analyze test results on their current machine, and so far most of them consider the pain involved in being limited to 1GB of actual data in memory to be less that the pain involved in having to split work between two separate computers.

  9. Re:32b? on Behind the 4GB Memory Limit In 32-Bit Windows · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, I hate it. I write software to process large scientific datasets. Corporate IT still will not support 64-bit XP or Vista, so all the scientists/engineers are running 32-bit. It is usually easier to try enabling 3GB user space or PAE and hope their drivers are complaint than it is to get them to upgrade their OS.

  10. Re:It's not open source. on ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps · · Score: 1

    I snapped to difference between Free Software and GPL/Copyleft after posting. They are not the same.

    You are right that this is very simular to Microsoft's Shared Source license, and absolutely wrong that either qualify as Open Source according to OSI or any reasonable definition I have ever heard.

    The fact is that OSI's definition of Open Source software and FSF's definition of Free Software (as well as the common use of both) are very similar in terms of what is allowed by the licenses. The difference is the motivation - whether it is done for practical advantage or philosophical. Both require the ability to redistribute derivative works.

    I strongly encourage you to read the FSF's explanation of the differences between open source software and free software . Or at least not spread misinformation while using your FSF membership address.

  11. Re:"It's the Network" on Why the Google Android Phone Isn't Taking Off · · Score: 1

    Do you seriously think you're getting something for free?

    Of course he doesn't, he just knows that that he has to pay whether he gets the phone or not.

    You're better off paying for the phone out of pocket and getting a prepaid plan.

    That's what I do, but I don't use my phone very much. My brothers looked at how much a prepaid T-mobile or Tracfone plan would have cost them and it was more per month than their current plan with unlimited texting, on top of the fact that they would have had to pay the full price for a phone.

  12. Re:It's not open source. on ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps · · Score: 1

    No he isn't. The difference between Open Source and Free Software is an issue of copyleft - whether your modified version of the software can only be distributed under that same license or whether you can release the software under any license you wish, including incorporating it into proprietary works.

    I have seen lots of debates over what the "correct" (as opposed to official) definition of Open Source Software should be, and over what license is "best". But never in all my years have I seen anyone seriously suggest that a license that doesn't even allow you do redistribute the modifications qualifies as an Open Source license. I am shocked to see so many people claiming that today, and actually be modded up +5. WTF has happened here?

  13. Re:Anonymous Coward on ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps · · Score: 1

    With commodity hardware, the value is in the bits and bytes now.

    What about most device drivers? They still seem to be closed.

    Reread his last sentence. Most consumer hardware today is fairly basic with all the important functionality implemented in the firmware if you're lucky, or the driver if you're not. Or as is most common, the firmware is just a "bootloader" that has all it's real code (a binary blob) uploaded by the driver each time it is initialized.

    That was JBL2's whole point - even device drivers have as much or more value than the hardware they were written for these days.

  14. Re:I half-ass did this a few years ago on Wired Writer Disappears, Find Him and Make $5k · · Score: 1

    Hmm, so is this where I should feel bad for realizing that I had been living in my new house for 6-7 months before any of my friends knew the address, and unlike the parent I wasn't even trying to keep it a secret?

  15. Re:I don't think it has been a problem. on Is Typing Ruining Your Ability To Spell? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Unreferenced footnotes aren't the worst[6] thing you could do.

  16. Re:Consistent and Manditory Ruleset. on Smarter Clients Via ReverseHTTP and WebSockets · · Score: 1

    You're right of course. I was misusing "router" to mean "that multi-purpose box the user has that does DHCP, NAT, firewall, and stuff". Sometimes that box is the broadband modem, sometimes it's a wireless access point. In the case of IPv6 it wouldn't need to be a router at all. I suppose you could even do away with DHCP and let the ISP handle that, although they way I've had it explained to me, the ISP will assign the modem a block and it is up to the user (equipment) to divvy up addresses from there.

  17. Consistent and Manditory Ruleset. on Smarter Clients Via ReverseHTTP and WebSockets · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I actually do think that NATs have been a boon to end-user security, more so than firewalls would have been, because they created a (relatively) consistent ruleset that software developers were then forced to accommodate. Hear me out.

    Imagine an alternate universe where IP6 was rolled out before before broadband, and there was never any technical need for NAT. In that case the consumer routers would have all come with firewalls rather than NAT. First off it is very possible that router manufacturers would have shipped these with the firewall off to avoid confusion and misplaced blame: "I can't connect to the internet, this thing must be broken". If they were enabled by default, with common ports opened up, there would still be applications (server and P2P) that would need to have incoming ports manually configured to be open in order to work. Most users wouldn't be able to figure this out, and the common advice between users would become "If it doesn't work disable the firewall".

    And the fact of the matter is that requiring a novice user to configure his router just to use an application is not a good approach. There needs to be some sane form of auto-configuration. Even if the firewall tried to implement this internally, you would run into problems with different "smart firewalls" behaving differently, which would create even more headache for application developers.

    With NAT you have the same problem in that manually configuring port forwarding is confusing to users. The difference is that there is no option to disable NAT. So it became the application developers' problem by necessity, and this is a good thing, because they are better suited to handle technical problems than the end user is. It was a major pain in the ass, but eventually all the router manufactures all settled on similar heuristics on how to fill the NAT table based on previous traffic, and we learned strategies to initiate P2P traffic that didn't require user intervention.

    In end, default behavior of NAT (outgoing traffic always allowed, incoming only in response to outgoing) gave us the auto-configuration ability that we needed, and the result was something much more secure than would have existed if the firewall was optional.

  18. Re:Not traffic shaping! on Comcast Finally Files Suit Against FCC Over Traffic Shaping · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why, if we both pay for the same service level, should your packets get priority just because your protocol wants less latency? That means that you get the service you paid for and I don't.

    No it doesn't. If the network isn't saturated then giving his VoIP application higher QoS priority just means that some of your individual packets will be delayed by a few microseconds, but the total throughput will be almost identical. Furthermore, when the network is saturated, it is completely possible to give one application (like bittorrent) a higher throughput priority while another (like VoIP) a higher latency priority. Then his packets will only have a higher priority than yours if he is using less bandwidth than you are anyway.

  19. Boring. on COLLADA Contest Winners From Siggraph 2009 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ordinarily this wouldn't interest me, but the grand prize winner, NaviCAD, really did submit something rather interesting â" an iPhone app

    WTF? This has to be the least interesting thing related to Siggraph ever. I'm sure they did a good job designing it for the platform, but it's just a fucking model viewer.

  20. More precisely on Burning Man Responds To EFF's Criticism of Policy · · Score: 1

    This isn't a EULA at all. It is standard contract that you agree to in the standard way when you purchase a ticket. There is no reason I can't sign away my copyright to a work if I choose to, or place limitations on how I distribute these works.

    The reasons that people object to these terms (and I don't blame them) have nothing to do with the objections to EULAs.

  21. It has been the same for the last 30 years on NASA's Cashflow Problem Puts Moon Trip In Doubt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Our manned space program has been on a budget that amounts to just enough to keep limping along in LEO, but not enough to do anything useful for the last thirty years. And honestly, we don't care about what the Chinese do. We don't need an excuse to develop nuclear capability anymore. We aren't in a battle of ideologies where allowing the Russians to be better than us in anything would be a "win for communism". If the Chinese put a man on the moon we'll say good "job catching up", and then do nothing.

    Congress doesn't have the decisiveness to kill the manned space program altogether nor the will to spend what is genuinely needed to kick start a colonization effort. So we continue with uninspired mediocrity. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this will change any time soon.

  22. Re:"But it might be possible... on A Planet That Orbits Its Star the Wrong Way · · Score: 1

    Oh, and somehow a car is involved.

    Of course there is. Someone has to deliver that pizza to my house. The planet eater doesn't always like going out for dinner.

  23. Re:The Geek Atlas on Science, Technology, Natural History Museums? · · Score: 1

    Well, there is a reason he wrote one of the first Bayesian SPAM filters. Keyword filtering just doesn't cut it sometimes :)

  24. What a stupid law. on Database Error Costs Social Security Victims $500M · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not getting this law. First off, social security isn't some charity program, paid for by other taxpayers. It is money that the citizens/criminals paid into the system and deserve to get back, regardless of what else they have done in life. Besides, are we really doing ourselves a favor by denying ex-cons their own money that they need to survive in their old age?

    Furthermore, if it really is about current fugitives, then wouldn't the government love to know a mailing address for these people so they can arrest them, rather than just refusing SS payment?

  25. Re:those poor chickens with boneless breasts on Scientists Create Artificial Bones From Wood · · Score: 3, Funny

    I did my own experiment this weekend involving boneless chicken breasts sprinkled with calcium chloride, and placed over wood that had been previously heated in a vacuum till nearly carbon.

    The scientific results were tasty.