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User: BillX

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  1. Re:Will the market really sort itself out? on Net Neutrality, Schlocky Salesmen vs Monopolist Plumbers · · Score: 1

    That 20MBit/sec has to come from somewhere, though...it's not as if your cable company laid another cable directly from SuperCorp to your house; the total carrying capacity of the pipe hasn't changed. It's just a "cut to the front of the line pass" for preferred (paying) traffic. By giving certain packets a boost, it's effectively penalizing the rest.

  2. Re:I think... on Net Neutrality, Schlocky Salesmen vs Monopolist Plumbers · · Score: 1

    Google could easily tell the telcos to to go to hell, and get throttled. But proving they've actually been throttled (with sufficient certainty to come out and warn their loyal Googlers, "hey, if we seem slow today, it's not us, your ISP is throttling us, here is a list of replacements that don't...") would be pretty much impossible. And since it's (especially if neutrality bills fail on our COMMON CARRIERs) not a crime to throttle, they can't sue to initiate discovery and find out for sure.

    To the end user, Google just gets slower, and they don't know (or can't prove) why.

  3. Re:I think... on Net Neutrality, Schlocky Salesmen vs Monopolist Plumbers · · Score: 1

    If you want DSL pay-per-view, there's not much preventing them from selling you a channel of that.

    That's not really far off from what they're trying to do now, under the big hype of "digital cable". Their pitch is often along the lines of "improved image quality! blah blah". I've seen today's digital offerings, and in general it looks like ass -- not just any, I'm talking fat-naked-guy-wedged-into-a-tiny-phonebooth-agains t-the-glass, heavily compressed ass. The whole idea behind digitizing as much of what comes down the wire as possible, is that now they can compress the hell out of it, and offer TV + internet + 12 different home shopping channels + random PPV services over those same corroded coax drops without upgrading their infrastructure.

    (This isn't really a reply to the parent post, I just got off on a rant...)

  4. Re:Goodbye Finger on Implants for Sensing Magnetic Fields · · Score: 1

    You might be right. This girl turned out to be certifiable (the doctor's suggestion of an MRI should have tipped me off...), so it makes sense to take anything she says with a grain of salt.

  5. Re:Goodbye Finger on Implants for Sensing Magnetic Fields · · Score: 1

    Someone I once knew with numerous tattoos told me that she couldn't have MRIs (or at least, it would be excruciatingly painful) due to the metal content of the ink.

  6. Feel The Energy on Implants for Sensing Magnetic Fields · · Score: 1

    So now you'll be able to literally feel the power?

    Did MIT students come up with this?

  7. Haha! This should be followed by... on Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users · · Score: 1

    "Oh...wow, I was totally wrong about the dumbed-down interface, and the pricey hardware, and heat issue, thanks for pointing that out folks. In fact, my opinion has done a complete 180..."

  8. Forget the user-generated scammer content... on Fraud in Internet Dating Prompting Regulation · · Score: 1

    Granted, many of the "scams" listed in TFA are common sense "well, duh" situations - your late-30s, balding, overweight profile netted a hot supermodel who is just dying to meet you but needs some $$$ for travelling money? Yeah.

    But I did have a brief stint with a few online dating sites, and can corroborate the following sly goings-on by the sites themselves:

    1) Free-as-in-beer (glass only; beer extra) : A number of sites claim out the ass that they are "completely, totally, absolutely free"...only after wasting two hours filling out exhaustive profiles and personality surveys is one informed that to actually send/receive/make contact with another user requires a paid membership. That should be disclosed up front. When the canonical Hot Chick signals interest in the hapless user (see #2 below), the options are a) pay for a membership, or b) wait for her to pay for a membership. I can't speak for everyone, but (a) is not an option on principle (I consider this undisclosed membership requirement deceptive, and as such, am NOT supporting it with my dollars), and (b) is also a no-go because... well, have you seen some of the women who have to pay for memberships, rather than let the guys pay for them? I think I'd rather take my chances at the pub, much as the typical "bar girl" is not my type.

    2) The quite plausible scenario of "date bait" profiles/inquiries created by non-users (i.e. the site itself) : Mentioned by a few previous posters and the article blurb. For some services, people have definitely noted a "statistically significant" correlation between the number of "winks" / hits / etc. (and corresponding low skew in age, etc.) and the expiry date of a paid membership to a site as described in (1). It's not that other users are rushing to get it in before the deadline; I don't suppose a real user would have any way to know when another real user's membership expires.

    2) "Woohoo, free Google keywords!" : Sites that retain one's profile (for the benefit of search engines) in perpetuity, even if a user cancels their membership, delete their profile, etc. (Americansingles.com, I'm looking in your direction.) I made the mistake of using the same username there as I use in a few other places; now any search on it returns a dating profile deleted two years ago, marked "deleted" (though full contents still intact), and has the audacity to assert that it was probably deleted because I "found that special someone" through that service. (In reality, the service fit criteria (1) above and I said, "fuck that"...)

  9. Re:But what about the worn out gamer's body? on Gaming Detox Center Opens In Netherlands · · Score: 1

    Lepers.

  10. Re:TOR Versus Tim O'Reilly on Pirates, Web 2.0, and Hundred Dollar Laptop · · Score: 1

    Think you've got it bad... I thought at first the abbreviation was referring to TORvalds. Need more caffeine...

  11. Re:Relatedly? on Google, Submission AdSense and NoFollow Letdown · · Score: 1

    If enough people use it, it's a word. Kind of like "blog" several years ago.

  12. Re:Livejournal Incompetent? on Slashback: Walmart and Wiki, Alan Ralsky · · Score: 1

    That and most ads these days are served by an external image reference to 3rd-party server named e.g. ad.sendmecrap.com; the LJ servers would not easily be able to detect if these weren't being downloaded.

  13. Re:Only Skype? on RICO Suit Filed Against Skype Founders · · Score: 1

    According to Beryllium Sphere's PDF link,

    http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181331&thr eshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14998381#15 000610

    it sounds like they're claiming their FastTrack P2P technology got ripped off, passed through a number of hands and eventually wound up in Skype. The who invocation of RICO is because all these P2P guys are trying to evade responsibility for Evil P2P by their usual chains of shell companies and foreign business addresses, and the plaintiffs want to blow through the web of shell companies and go after the founders directly.

  14. I did *not* punch that monkey on The State of Online Advertising · · Score: 1

    I don't care, as long as it doesn't BLINK.

    Interrupting my page-read to put an adserver on my block list (I use Proxomitron) is in itself a distraction for me, so many adservers are not blocked. But if an ad is flickering loudly to get my attention, dancing around the page or floating over the content I'm trying to read, such that I find that step less of an interruption, that ad company loses its place on my screen permanently. If so many people block the ads that piss them off, I think web companies will start to figure it out eventually and shy away from filling their sites with ads that piss people off.

  15. Re:fire retardant on Philips Recalls Almost 12,000 Flat Panel TVs · · Score: 1

    Does that necessarily mean "impregnated with a flame-retarding chemical"? Concrete is a good flame-retardant material, but I doubt it's banned by RoHS. (yes, IAAEE, but RoHS hasn't hit our 5-prototypes-a-year lab yet)

  16. Re:Two Words on Copy Protection Firms Encourage Piracy? · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that requiring the notebook user to put in an optical drive takes up a slot that could be used for something else (say, another battery). Then there's the effect of spinning up the drive all the time on battery life...

  17. Re:I feel so dirty. on What is Microsoft's Origami Project? · · Score: 1

    So far, it's said "Touch me. Hello. Do you know me? Do you know what I can do? and where i can go? or how I can change your life?"

    Sounds like one of those conversations people on the subway have with me.

  18. Re:Mmmm, MDA on Pros and Cons of MDA Code Generators? · · Score: 1

    Crap, was I the only one whose first thought was Missile Defense Agency?

  19. Re:100% *increase* in efficiency? on Self Contained Power Source? · · Score: 1

    Careful though; here they're talking doubling the "output power possible without frying the motor", not "output power per unit input power" (which they don't make especially clear for those not familiar with NEMA ratings).

  20. Re:The Articles on Interview with a Botmaster · · Score: 1

    It could also be that with companies like Gator/Claria et al using their PR/legal heavies to remap the terminology from "spyware" to "adware" in the media, disgruntled tech writers are not letting them get away with it so easily.

  21. Re:I'm not surprised... on Pigeons to Blog Pollution · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but who would read it?

  22. Re:major busnesses have no security. on Newspapers Wrapped in Credit Card Data · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the OP's spelling brought tiers to my eyes.

  23. LSP-Fix is *not* a malware remover! on Stubborn Spyware Removal Advice? · · Score: 1

    A quick note... LSP-Fix doesn't make any distinction of "good" or "bad" files...it does not target specific products. (If it did, I would be fending off lawyers from every 'product' it removed.) If something appears in the righthand (Remove) window, it's an invalid entry, e.g. a registry key pointing to a non-existent file.

    (Yes, I wrote LSP-Fix :-)

  24. Re:Optimus on Slashback: Dry Mars, Wet Doc, Keyboard Teaser · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that should appear on the 'insert' key.

  25. What I want to know is on The 2005 IT Year In Quotes · · Score: 1

    why Intel has anthropologists.