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User: uigrad_2000

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  1. Re:Marketing on Apache OpenOffice Downloaded 50 Million Times In a Year · · Score: 2

    Depends on how you download. In Fedora, I typed this, and got LibreOffice:

    >sudo yum install openoffice

    But, if you go to the openoffice website looking for a download, there's no mention of LibreOffice there at all.

  2. Re:Stop complaining about DRM on Amazon Debuts Mixed Bag of Original Comedy Pilots · · Score: 1

    Um, you do realize you posted this to Slashdot, right? Linux support always matters here.

    The last time I posted something from my own website to slashdot, my webserver logs showed a solid 40% representation of Linux-based browsers.

    If you post article here that says "you can view this for free in your browser!", then linux support most definitely matters.

  3. Re:Demands to be asked. on Ask Dr. Robert Bakker About Dinosaurs and Merging Science and Religion · · Score: 1
  4. Re:Try an E-mail multiplier on Kim Dotcom's Mega Claims 1 Million Users Within 24 Hours · · Score: 1

    But, if you get spam at one of those addresses with added periods, there is no way to turn it off.

    And, unless you have a really large email address, it's going to be hard to keep track of more than about 20 or 30 different variations. I just checked spamgroumet.com, and I currently have 650 disposable addresses. I easily can tell what each address is for, based on what words are in the address.

  5. Re:Oil may not be a fossil fuel then? on Cassini Discovers First River On Another World · · Score: 2

    Actually, just after posting that, I looked it up. Wikipedia says:

    Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic.

    And, it turns out, natural gas is generally considered a fossil fuel. So, I was pretty much wrong.

  6. Re:Oil may not be a fossil fuel then? on Cassini Discovers First River On Another World · · Score: 0

    The term "Natural Gas" is to indicate that it is not from plant or animal remains.

    Even though crude oil does contain hydrocarbons, it is far from the most abundant source of them. Crude oil is a fossil fuel. Natural gas is not.

  7. Re:Fahrenheit? on Cassini Discovers First River On Another World · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is one of the few times that I'd rather see the temperature in the Rankine scale over Fahrenheit!

    Essentially, they had 4 systems to choose from (Kelvin would be ideal), and they picked the very worst choice!

  8. Re:what about nuclear fusion? on Astronomers Search For Dyson Spheres of Alien Civilizations · · Score: 1

    Are you familiar with rubble piles? When you get a lot of mass together in one place in space, rubble piles end up being the result.

    There really is no way to build a 0.35mm steel plate in space for more than 500 miles without it collapsing into a rubble pile. We think of steel as being strong, but when you start talking about astronomical-type distances, even the strongest materials we have begin acting more like liquids. It would be easier to make a cellphone tower out of tapioca pudding.

  9. Comparison to vGo? on Suitable Technology's Telepresence Robot Lets You Roll Remotely · · Score: 2

    We have a robot much like this at work already. It's a vGo, and can be driven around to meet with other people at the office.

    How does this new one compare?

  10. Re:Wow on Kickstarter Introduces New Hardware and Product Design Project Guidelines · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obviously you're not aware of the Eyez scam.

    The first update after they were successfully funded was a picture of the design crew enjoying a Caribbean vacation. They took $344,000 in the scam.

  11. Re:"powered glide flights" on SpaceShip Two, XCOR Lynx Prepare For Powered Flights · · Score: 2

    Nevermind... it does say that. Clearly the word "glide" in that sentence should have been omitted.

  12. Re:"powered glide flights" on SpaceShip Two, XCOR Lynx Prepare For Powered Flights · · Score: 1

    I don't see that in the summary. Perhaps it's been edited already?

  13. Re:In Olde English units on Mt. Fuji May Be Close To Erupting · · Score: 2

    How exactly do they measure the magma pressure?

    I looked through this whole page on volcano monitoring techniques, and it never mentions monitoring the pressure.

  14. What's Cambodia getting out of the deal? on Cambodia To Extradite Gottfrid Svartholm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I visited a friend in Phnom Penh a couple of years ago. They have lots of "DVD shops" in any of their shopping areas. 100% of the DVDs are pirated. If you want a non-pirated DVD, you have to find an airport. I think there's also one high class mall that contains one dvd store with non-pirated DVDs and software.

    Cambodia has no taxes. The money the government runs on is half bribes and half foreign aid. To bring in more foreign aid, they know they have to stop piracy, but that's their only incentive. When foreign ambassadors come to visit, they'll send out a signal to all the DVD shops, and they'll all close down. 3 days later, they all come back.

  15. Re:Not a rover on Meet the Very First Rover To Land On Mars · · Score: 1

    It contained a rover.

    The article title says "First rover to land on Mars", not "First rover to rove on Mars". So, I guess it's accurate.

  16. Re:That's nice, but... on Next Mars Mission Selected For Funding · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Same here, minus the "kind of".

    Current theories are that the methane rain falls in giant (3 inch) droplets, but just gently floats down due to the increased atmosphere and lower gravity. I'm really hoping that we get more images of this truly alien world sometime within my lifetime.

    The TiME proposal seemed unusually inexpensive, and it pains me to think that it's not going to happen. As much as I dislike James Cameron's movies, I hope he suddenly gets an urge to pitch in some additional funding here :)

  17. Re:Nicely done! on Project To Turn Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music Completed · · Score: 1

    Aren't you helping make his point?

    Tough Love (great-grandparent of this message) suggested that MusOpen shouldn't need to edit out coughs because we (as the downloaders) should be capable with tools at our disposal to do it ourself.

    You seem to be saying that Audacity is far behind the tools that the studios have. So, you, also should be arguing against the comment from Tough Love.

    The person you called a troll was simply saying that Audacity, the best freeware tool available, is not up to par.

  18. Re:Field dependent requirement on Ask Slashdot: How Many of You Actually Use Math? · · Score: 1

    I see you just posted this a few minutes ago, so you really have no excuse for not reading the other posts near yours.

    If you do a linear interpolation do determine remaining battery life, then your result will be off badly. This may explain why some cheaply made devices have very bad assumptions about how much power remains.

    To get the right answer, you most definitely need calculus.

  19. Re:What? Since when... on Wikipedia Edits Forecast Romney's Vice Presidential Pick · · Score: 1, Funny

    Tea Party --> Freedom from government and lawyers
    SOPA --> More power to government and lawyers
    Wikipedia opposes SOPA, tea party supports Wikipedia??

  20. Re:not life as we know it on A New Glider Found For Conway's Game of Life · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm pretty sure I attempted a hexagonal game of life. It's the first thing people would think to try after discovering Conway's original version.

    The problem with the hexagonal version is that each tile has only 6 neighbors, as opposed to 8 in Conway's version. This reduces the complexity so finding interesting patterns is a lot more difficult. The way around this is to add more states.

    After reading the article, it sounds like one researcher theorized that a stable glider could not be found for the Penrose tiling, and offered $100 to anyone who did. Some other friends of his found an answer, but had to "cheat" by expanding the number of states (for a given tile) from 2 to 4.

    It is kind of cool, or would be if they actually showed the 4 states and the exact rules. Since they decided to leave the technical explanation out, it's a rather uninteresting article. It's not really slashdot worthy, in my own humble opinion.

  21. Re:So what? on NASA's Own Video of Curiosity Landing Crashes Into a DMCA Takedown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This seems to be the most important comment on here so far.

    We have NASA that uses taxpayer money for servers, but people shy away from their website because it is unfamiliar.

    So, NASA sends it to a private company that hosts webcam videos for free, and that private company puts ads at the beginning of the video, and ads in popup windows over the video. You would think no one would use the version with ads all over, but people like what is familiar, so it gets lots of views.

    Then, since it is subject to takedown notices (the same way as your hot neighbor's webcam is), some partner in Youtube's giant network requests it to come down, and it goes down with no questions asked. These takedowns happen all the time, and rarely are DMCA takedowns, regardless of what the text may say. Basically, any one that pays Google enough can become a "trusted partner" and tell them which free videos should be removed.

    Youtube is perfect for sharing thousands of hours of crap when you have no other platform for sharing your video. It's like today's equivalent of Geocities. It's not the proper place for hosting important content from NASA. If you choose to use Youtube (or Geocities) to find NASA content, you my get lucky and find what you are looking for, but if so, it's just lucky coincidence.

    TL;DR: Not News.

  22. Tablets are still young on Why the Tablet Market is Really the iPad Market · · Score: 1

    The tablet market is still young, and no one knows for sure yet what customers want. Assuming that the market is totally driven by stats (Mhz, resolution, price, etc) is extremely short-sighted.

    The key difference between tablet's development and PC's is form factor. Once PC cases/towers became large enough to hold anything people wanted (mid 90's), the winners were those that offered the most customization, and that brought around widely accepted standards (ATX, PCI, USB, etc.). Eventually consumers were able to pick and choose all the components separately, and entire markets started up around each type of component (ie. nVidia does not compete against Broadcom, etc.)

    The tablet market will never get to that point, because form factor is so important, and there is no way, yet, to tear away the app store and OS choice from the hardware. With iOS, every part of the purchase is tied to Apple. The company that chooses which hardware devices are used is the same company that builds the app store, and that provides updates to your OS, and you have no choices to change OS. Android is gives a little more for customization options, but you still are buying into one complete system or another when you make your initial hardware purchase.

    Things will change dramatically. Apple is the best company for doing all in one products, but as the market matures, the piecewise model (whatever that will be) will come close to catching the all-in-one model. Until it matures, it's silly to try to compare the products to each other by simply looking it prices and specs.

  23. An Apple Geniusly on Critics Blast Apple's Cheesy New Ad Campaign · · Score: 1

    If you take "Think Differently" and change the adverb to an adjective, it becomes "Think Different".

    I'm not normally annoyed by small grammatical errors, but when it's a multi-million dollar ad campaign, it really drives me crazy. I figured that the campaign worked only because the grammatical error caused people to repeat the phrase in their head multiple times in an effort to reconcile the error (ie. "maybe it will sound okay if I stress the syllables differently"). Repetition builds recognition.

    Now that they've started the precedent of incorrect grammar, they should continue it. Genius could be changed from a noun to an adverb, for example.

  24. Re:stackoverflow too... on Dropbox Confirms Email Addresses Were Pilfered · · Score: 2

    How do you know it was dropbox that let your address out?

    I use spamgourmet to create unique email addresses for every site that wants my email address. I've used this for nearly 10 years and have created 616 different email addresses. The one I used for dropbox has never received spam, but I have gotten spam on the addresses I created for a samsclub rebate, and for the email address I used to make an account with Sony Online Entertainment, and on a few various other websites. These types of database cracks are common, and it really shouldn't be a news story.

    I do not wish to advertise for the site mentioned above. As it stands now, google and yahoo mail both give the opportunity to make disposal email addresses now, so the service I use is no longer unique. But, I do recommend that everyone does use a service of this type, so that you can shut down only the addresses that you get spam with.

  25. Re:I bought one 4 months ago! on Budget 27" IPS Displays From Korea Are For Real · · Score: 2

    I bought one on Ebay also. The seller asked what amount to declare on the customs form, since some countries charge duties on imports. I said to be honest and print the full amount, since there shouldn't be any duties importing into the U.S.

    It seemed weird that he even asked this question. If he makes a living by selling these things to other countries, shouldn't he know whether the U.S. charges duties or not?

    Unfortunately, my monitor did not work as well as this guy's. It was DOA, and I had to send it back for a refund. :(