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User: Shimmer

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Comments · 739

  1. Re:Train simulation on Dirty Coding Tricks To Make a Deadline · · Score: 1

    Ender's Game, Steampunk Edition.

  2. Re:Of course there's a pattern! on Pi Calculated To Record 2.5 Trillion Digits · · Score: 1

    Some patterns do not repeat, and thus do not correspond to rational numbers. The one I recall is:

    0.1234567891011121314151617181920...

    I think that's actually a transcendental number (not a root of any normal equation).

  3. Re:Thanks on Alan Cox Quits As Linux TTY Maintainer — "I've Had Enough" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So you spend about half your waking hours doing stuff you don't care about? Let us know how that strategy works out for you after 10 or 20 wasted years.

  4. Re:Bad in any region on Licensing Issues Shut Down Pandora Outside US · · Score: 1

    The internet restricted by borders is silly and wrongheaded.

    Only because your computer seems more real to you than old-fashioned notions of borders, nations, sovereignty, etc. While it's fun to imagine a world where these do not exist, there are good reasons why societies govern themselves the way they do - calling these restrictions "silly" just reveals your ignorance of the underlying issues.

  5. Re:BAD summary on IBM Claims Breakthrough In Analysis of Encrypted Data · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My problem with this is that you'd have to expose the structure of your data, if not its contents. Using your example, the cyphertext might look like: "QEDD32JFS3234DSF31". You'd have to tell the analyzer that integer A starts at index 3 and integer B starts at index 10. That information alone could help the analyzer crack your encryption.

  6. Re:Look on the bright side... on Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016? · · Score: 1

    Thank you. In other words, such a satellite would recoup its own deployment energy after about 9 hours of operation (= 15yrs/15000). That seems a bit optimistic, but it makes the point.

  7. Re:Look on the bright side... on Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016? · · Score: 1

    That makes no sense: The one-time cost of deploying a power plant into space will quickly be recouped once the station is operating.

  8. Re:until you CLONE THEM! - Nope on Dinosaur Posture Still Wrong, Says Study · · Score: 1

    That's an interesting idea. Think about where the photons from the dinosaur age are now: 150 million light years from Earth, spread out in every direction. Gathering those photons so we can look at them now would be quite the achievement.

  9. Re:Holy Crap! Calm down on Making a Child Locating System · · Score: 1

    As a parent of complex and challenging situations, I can say that you are talking yourself into a pickle.

  10. Re:Cloud computing is on Are Amazon's Web Services Going Open Source? · · Score: 1

    SFA = ?

  11. Re:Cars on Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves · · Score: 1

    Worst car analogy ever.

    Have you ever heard of "pink slip"? Car ownership is registered with the government especially for this purpose. There is no doubt who owns your car, and I think the dealership could check if they were suspicious.

    You want to register your computer with the government to establish ownership? No, I didn't think so.

  12. Re:Two key differences on What the Pirate Bay Verdict Could Mean For Google · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I think I should've said "tracker servers" rather than "tracker files". I'm not very familiar with the BT protocol.

  13. Two key differences on What the Pirate Bay Verdict Could Mean For Google · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. TPB exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation. Google is a common carrier.

    2. TPB hosts the BitTorrent tracker files. Google does not.

  14. Re:15 years or so ago on Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In? · · Score: 0

    "Tweaking the code"? We don't do that in a production environment, do we?

  15. What happened to the Canadian scientist on Volunteers Simulate Mission To Mars · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sexual harassment, rather than a soap opera.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6955149/page/3/

  16. Re:I have a way of dealing with this, on Is Your IM Buddy Really a Computer? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What does "inferring things" have to do with emotions?

  17. Re:Sure... on eBay Describes the Scale of Its Counterfeit Goods Problem · · Score: 1

    Why would Lee send the factory 600 logos when they only want 500 jeans made?

  18. Re:Honor on Gravitational Waves May Have Been Detected In 1987 · · Score: 1

    This would imply that you could communicate from inside a black hole to an observer outside the black hole, which I believe violates the proposition that "black holes have no hair" - i.e. no discernible attributes other than mass and spin.

    I'm not disagreeing with you, just wanted to point out the apparent contradiction.

  19. Get a grip on How To Handle Corporate Blackmail? · · Score: 1

    I will be marked as leaving the company 'on bad terms'

    Ooh, a bad mark! Scary. "This is going on your permanent transcript, son."

    Think for a minute: You're an adult now. Your self-worth is not dependent on what some vague authority figure thinks of you. From now on, it's your personal relationships with coworkers that will matter for future recommendations/networking/etc. You're leaving the company, for pete's sake, so it doesn't matter what it says in your HR folder - no one will ever look at it again.

  20. Fuzzy photo fail on Gnome, KDE, LXDE, IceWM All Working On Android · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You'd think someone smart enough to create this hack would be able to use a camera to take a decent picture of it... but no.

  21. Re:So something which we can't define... on Earth May Harbor a Shadow Biosphere of Alien Life · · Score: 2, Informative
  22. Re:After all these years, on Post-Beta Windows 7 Build Leaked With New IE8 · · Score: 1

    It's not like your development software is really going to work on the thing

    You are wrong. I have the 64-bit version of Windows 7 running on a laptop and my entire development toolchain works flawlessly. VS.NET 2008 WinForms + SQL Server 2008.

  23. Re:Correlation is not causation on Court Rules Autism Not Caused By Childhood Vaccine · · Score: 1

    4) The health system has to treat the kids who get sick needlessly. That means higher taxes and/or insurance premiums for everyone.

  24. Someone please call the waahhhmbulance on YouTube To Allow Self-Serve Ads For Major Media Players · · Score: 1

    "Problems"? The Constitution doesn't guarantee a life without problems. All it says is that he is entitled to a fair trial before the Feds throw his sorry ass in jail. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal tenet that applies to trials, not public opinion.

  25. Re:Well, duh on Whistleblower Claims NSA Spied On Everyone, Targeted Media · · Score: 1

    You're right, I confused the two.