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User: srvivn21

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Comments · 600

  1. Re:But you still need broadband on VoIP for the Masses! · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I like the links, but they don't lead to anything related to "not getting booted off" or "flat-rate unlimited internet access". Both of those terms are usually used in relation to dial-up access. And that would be just plain dumb.

    I need an internet connection to use my phone, but I need to dial my phone to get an internet connection...

    In short, $62.95 per month for unlimited local and long distance calling (as long as you don't go over your bandwidth allocation) and high-speed internet access.

    It's only worth it if you want both long distance (international is CHEAP (look, proper use of links!) with this service ) and high-speed internet access. If you just want one, look elsewhere.

  2. Re:What's so great about Halo? on PS2 Vs. X-Box: Winner Emerging? · · Score: 1

    What's so great about Halo? Perhaps you missed Warthog Jump.

  3. Re:Unix is the light on Slashback: Deception, Fusion, Membership · · Score: 1

    Watch the Windows XP commercials again. None of the people that use XP get to fly.

  4. Re:What about the Vikings? on Chinese Explorers 'Discovered America'? · · Score: 2
    Blockquoth the poster:


    This 'noble savage' theory is as intellectualy bankrupt as social darwanism. Their are no 'good' guys, the vast majority of people throughout history are mean, nasty, and brutish no matter their location or race.



    The main difference between the perceived 'noble savage' and us, is they were not bent on world domination. Humans (for most of human history) have not held the belief that they had the "one right way to live". That is a very recent shift (the past 10,000 years or so), and limited to society where food is kept under lock and key.

    Here is a beautiful excerpt from a speech by Daniel Quinn:


    It has been the work of my life to pin down and demolish the lie that is at the root of this mythology in our culture. It's to be found in the way we tell the human story itself in our culture. You can see it perpetuated in textbook after textbook, and if you keep your eyes open, you'll see it repeated weekly somewhere---in a newspaper or magazine article, in a television documentary. Here it is, the human story as it's told in our culture, day in and day out, stripped to its essentials. "Humans appeared in the living community about three million years ago. When they appeared, they were foragers, just like their primate ancestors. Over the millennia, these foragers added hunting to their repertoire and so became hunter-gatherers. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers until about ten thousand years ago, when they abandoned this life for the agricultural life, settling down into villages and beginning to build the civilization that encircles the world today." That's the story as our children learn it, and it has just this one little problem, that it didn't happen that way at all. Ten thousand years ago, it was not HUMANITY that traded in the foraging life for the agricultural life and began to build civilization, it was a single culture. One culture out of ten thousand cultures did this, and the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine went on exactly as before. Over the millennia that followed, this one culture, born in the middle east, overran neighboring cultures in all directions, finally arriving in the New World about five hundred years ago. At which point it began to overrun the native cultures of THIS part of the world as well. It is a truism that the conqueror gets to write the history books, and the history our children learn is history as WE tell it. And the central lie of this history is that HUMANITY ITSELF did what WE did.



    There may not be a 'noble savage', but mean, nasty and brutish as "they" may be, "they" are nothing compared to "us".
  5. Re:*Sigh* You already can... on Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions · · Score: 1

    1) I will not argue with you about the virtues of modding stories. I don't have an opinion either way. :o)

    2) Sorry for not taking it as a joke. I was just trying to be helpful. No harm done.

    3) It might be a fact about your opinion. It's an opinion that I (and many others) share with you. That's what the check boxes are there for. If you can't enjoy /. for the very fact that you are aware of Katz' existence...You have my sympathy.

  6. *Sigh* You already can... on Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions · · Score: 1

    Go here. Click the box that says JonKatz. Enjoy /. Katz-free.

  7. Re:I don't blame them... on Legal Analysis Critical of Blizzard v Bnetd · · Score: 2

    Had Warez kiddies put out those early Star Craft demos, then when the game was released it might have bombed because people had played a crappy game with the same name a year earlier.

    Horse shit. Look at Daikatana. That game had the buzz. Pre-release news that I saw about it was nothing but exciting. Then the reality hit. And people saw how it stank.

    If a game is good, it will do well on its own merits. If it's not good, word will get out. If a preview of SC was crap, but the final game rocked, sales would be through the roof, despite the leaked copies. There would be enough people who (a)didn't see the crap preview or (b)bought the game anyways to spread the word about how great it was. Then of course, there would be the gaming sites. I don't put too much stock in their opinion, but some gamers do. If the final release of SC was hot, it would get great reviews. And has. And sales are through the roof.

    Litigating against some of your greatest fans is poor form.

  8. Useless movie trivia... on Two Approaches to the Next-Generation Desktop · · Score: 1

    The film speeds by at 24 fps, but there is a shutter that covers the light (xenon bulb, neat stuff) twice per frame. At 24 frames per second you can see a noticable flicker. When you see a movie on the screen, it's actually at 48Hz.

    Not that I'm contradicting what you had to say, just clarifying on a point that I have authority on.

    Woohoo.

  9. Re:XBOX != PC on Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals · · Score: 1

    Actually, I'm guessing you, like most, will try to use the waranty period to your advantage as much as possible. So if you plug in a peripheral, and it hoses your machine, you'll be expecting a replacement console. So Microsoft does have a period of responsibility, implied and explicit, for which they have every right to attempt to protect themselves.

    And that warranty probably explicitly denies culpability for harm done by third party products. BFD. Besides, if they (Microsoft) are not expecting a certain amount of warranty repairs, and subsequently adding that into the price of the unit + games, I'll eat a live chicken.

  10. Re:XBOX != PC on Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals · · Score: 1

    You know who the first person Joe Consumer will go to when his cheap-ass $5 XBOX controller doesn't work is? Microsoft.

    Do you really think that Microsoft hasn't factored support costs into the price of the console and games?

    Microsoft has been proven to follow anti-competitive practices. Until they show a propensity to allow competition, there is no reason not to have "a little kneejerk with the anticompetition statement."

  11. Re:XBOX != PC on Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals · · Score: 2

    Hm... and if you don't need a license to operate a fork, why should you be required to have a license to operate a car?

    What? I need a licence to operate an XBox? When did that happen?

    And what's with all this rental stuff -- let me pay rent once and KEEP the dang apartment; after all I only have to pay once for a fork! ;)

    You want to rent a fork? I can rent one to you for a monthy fee of 10% of the retail cost, plus first and last month's rent, and a security deposit. If you stop paying, I'll take it back and take any money you owe and damages out of your deposits.

    Neither of these arguments has any relevence to the XBox. Yes, some of the words are the same (licence, pay, etc.), but the context is completely different.

    You rent an apartment, you buy an Xbox. If I want to trash the apartment, the landlord has the right to keep my security deposit. I don't own it. If I trash my XBox... No one has any recourse for my actions. It [is/should be] mine to do with as I please.

    (Cowering in fear of the "Flamebait" mederators...)

    Personally I think you should cower in fear of the "Overrated" moderators.

  12. Re:Just think of the entertainment. on Slashback: Playstation, CueCat, Games · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a site dedicated to trimming a Cue Cat for meditational purposes.

    Perhaps you meant kamikazecuecat.com?

    ;o)

  13. Re:one word (or maybe two): spellcheck on Google Programming Contest · · Score: 1

    Something like www.spellonline.com?

  14. Re:My Airline Security Story on Feds Undertaking Massive Passenger Profiling Plan · · Score: 2

    Here's the really funny thing. If you carry a knitting bag (with yarn and the like), security won't bat an eyelash at knitting needles. They don't even ask you to prove that you can knit.

    But a pen knife (such as the one you describe) or finger nail clippers with a nail file (they are very specific about that, without the nail file, clipper are just fine) are big no-no's.
    The hypocrisy is maddening.

  15. Re:He contradicts himself on Borking Outlook Express · · Score: 1

    Because it's Windows-based. If you are using Windows, you had to click agreement to "a license that makes you promise not to share with your friends."

  16. Re:Odds on 3.5 Ton Satellite to Crash Back to Earth · · Score: 1

    The previous poster also stated you have a one in 80 million chance of winning the current Power Ball Jackpot.

    You have less of a chance of winning one specific lottery than getting whacked by any one of several thousand satellites.

    How's that for statistic skewing?

    Just because something is more likely, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to happen more often.
    How's that for justification?

  17. Re:Transparent building materials on Transparent Concrete · · Score: 1
    Expense not size is the deal breaker.

    For the paranoid, this is an article describing "the San Francisco bachelor pad owned by the bad boy of high tech, Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle":


    A visitor's experience begins at the front door, a half ton of stainless steel with an inch-thick pane of opaque electrochromatic glass. "When you turn the doorknob, a 125-volt charge makes the glass transparent so you can see the Japanese rock garden on the other side," Green says. The unusual glass alone costs about as much as a high-end Mercedes.
  18. Re:Not ready for prime time. on Time for a Beer? · · Score: 1

    I can see two problems.
    1) What heppens if your mule gets drunk as well?

    2) If you get drunk enough, you might mistake you mule for an ugly girl. That might go over really poorly the next morning.

  19. FYI... on VeriSign Buys .tv · · Score: 1

    AM Armenia
    FM Micronesia

    Aw hell... Here's the whole list:

    AD Andorra
    AE United Arab Emirates
    AF Afghanistan
    AG Antigua and Barbuda
    AI Anguilla
    AL Albania
    AM Armenia
    AN Netherlands Antilles
    AO Angola
    AQ Antarctica
    AR Argentina
    AS American Samoa
    AT Austria
    AU Australia
    AW Aruba
    AZ Azerbaijan
    BA Bosnia and Herzegovina
    BB Barbados
    BD Bangladesh
    BE Belgium
    BF Burkina Faso
    BG Bulgaria
    BH Bahrain
    BI Burundi
    BJ Benin
    BM Bermuda
    BN Brunei Darussalam
    BO Bolivia
    BR Brazil
    BS Bahamas
    BT Bhutan
    BV Bouvet Island
    BW Botswana
    BY Belarus
    BZ Belize
    CA Canada
    CC Cocos (Keeling) Islands
    CF Central African Republic
    CG Congo
    CH Switzerland
    CI Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
    CK Cook Islands
    CL Chile
    CM Cameroon
    CN China
    CO Colombia
    CR Costa Rica
    CS Czechoslovakia (former)
    CU Cuba
    CV Cape Verde
    CX Christmas Island
    CY Cyprus
    CZ Czech Republic
    DE Germany
    DJ Djibouti
    DK Denmark
    DM Dominica
    DO Dominican Republic
    DZ Algeria
    EC Ecuador
    EE Estonia
    EG Egypt
    EH Western Sahara
    ER Eritrea
    ES Spain
    ET Ethiopia
    FI Finland
    FJ Fiji
    FK Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
    FM Micronesia
    FO Faroe Islands
    FR France
    FX France, Metropolitan
    GA Gabon
    GB Great Britain (UK)
    GD Grenada
    GE Georgia
    GF French Guiana
    GH Ghana
    GI Gibraltar
    GL Greenland
    GM Gambia
    GN Guinea
    GP Guadeloupe
    GQ Equatorial Guinea
    GR Greece
    GS S. Georgia and S. Sandwich Isls.
    GT Guatemala
    GU Guam
    GW Guinea-Bissau
    GY Guyana
    HK Hong Kong
    HM Heard and McDonald Islands
    HN Honduras
    HR Croatia (Hrvatska)
    HT Haiti
    HU Hungary
    ID Indonesia
    IE Ireland
    IL Israel
    IN India
    IO British Indian Ocean Territory
    IQ Iraq
    IR Iran
    IS Iceland
    IT Italy
    JM Jamaica
    JO Jordan
    JP Japan
    KE Kenya
    KG Kyrgyzstan
    KH Cambodia
    KI Kiribati
    KM Comoros
    KN Saint Kitts and Nevis
    KP Korea (North)
    KR Korea (South)
    KW Kuwait
    KY Cayman Islands
    KZ Kazakhstan
    LA Laos
    LB Lebanon
    LC Saint Lucia
    LI Liechtenstein
    LK Sri Lanka
    LR Liberia
    LS Lesotho
    LT Lithuania
    LU Luxembourg
    LV Latvia
    LY Libya
    MA Morocco
    MC Monaco
    MD Moldova
    MG Madagascar
    MH Marshall Islands
    MK Macedonia
    ML Mali
    MM Myanmar
    MN Mongolia
    MO Macau
    MP Northern Mariana Islands
    MQ Martinique
    MR Mauritania
    MS Montserrat
    MT Malta
    MU Mauritius
    MV Maldives
    MW Malawi
    MX Mexico
    MY Malaysia
    MZ Mozambique
    NA Namibia
    NC New Caledonia
    NE Niger
    NF Norfolk Island
    NG Nigeria
    NI Nicaragua
    NL Netherlands
    NO Norway
    NP Nepal
    NR Nauru
    NT Neutral Zone
    NU Niue
    NZ New Zealand (Aotearoa)
    OM Oman
    PA Panama
    PE Peru
    PF French Polynesia
    PG Papua New Guinea
    PH Philippines
    PK Pakistan
    PL Poland
    PM St. Pierre and Miquelon
    PN Pitcairn
    PR Puerto Rico
    PT Portugal
    PW Palau
    PY Paraguay
    QA Qatar
    RE Reunion
    RO Romania
    RU Russian Federation
    RW Rwanda
    SA Saudi Arabia
    Sb Solomon Islands
    SC Seychelles
    SD Sudan
    SE Sweden
    SG Singapore
    SH St. Helena
    SI Slovenia
    SJ Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
    SK Slovak Republic
    SL Sierra Leone
    SM San Marino
    SN Senegal
    SO Somalia
    SR Suriname
    ST Sao Tome and Principe
    SU USSR (former)
    SV El Salvador
    SY Syria
    SZ Swaziland
    TC Turks and Caicos Islands
    TD Chad
    TF French Southern Territories
    TG Togo
    TH Thailand
    TJ Tajikistan
    TK Tokelau
    TM Turkmenistan
    TN Tunisia
    TO Tonga
    TP East Timor
    TR Turkey
    TT Trinidad and Tobago
    TV Tuvalu
    TW Taiwan
    TZ Tanzania
    UA Ukraine
    UG Uganda
    UK United Kingdom
    UM US Minor Outlying Islands
    US United States
    UY Uruguay
    UZ Uzbekistan
    VA Vatican City State (Holy See)
    VC Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
    VE Venezuela
    VG Virgin Islands (British)
    VI Virgin Islands (U.S.)
    VN Viet Nam
    VU Vanuatu
    WF Wallis and Futuna Islands
    WS Samoa
    YE Yemen
    YT Mayotte
    YU Yugoslavia
    ZA South Africa
    ZM Zambia
    ZR Zaire
    ZW Zimbabwe
    COM US Commercial
    EDU US Educational
    GOV US Government
    INT International
    MIL US Military
    NET Network
    ORG Non-Profit Organization
    ARPA Old style Arpanet
    NATO Nato field

  20. Re:Democracy's good, unless it's not ours on Ukraine Tries to Avoid U.S. Trade Restrictions · · Score: 2

    How so? To live on the street I would have to change my personal legitimate beliefs (i.e. eating out of trash cans is nasty). For Ukraine to avoid sanctios they have to change their legitimate national laws (i.e. put identifying marks on CD presses).

    In each case something has to be done (against one's preferences, for me it's working, for Ukraine it's passing useless laws) to continue living at an acceptable level of comfort.

  21. Re:not the US - it's the RIAA on Ukraine Tries to Avoid U.S. Trade Restrictions · · Score: 2

    Eh? Since when has the RIAA had enough clout to impose trade sanctions on another country?

    U.S. Govt: "But they told me to do it"

    U.S. Govt's Mother: "If they told you to jump off a cliff..."

  22. Re:And still, Americans continue to ask... on Ukraine Tries to Avoid U.S. Trade Restrictions · · Score: 2

    What?!?!?!? Did you interview one of the (final) pilots? Have you personally spoken to the people that gave those terrorists their orders?

    You say that the 9/11 bombers hated us for reasons the we have no way of altering. I say the terrorists hated us for reasons we may never know.

    You can either belive the reasons you are told, or try to find reasons on your own. The second choice is much more effort, but far more fulfilling.

  23. Re:Democracy's good, unless it's not ours on Ukraine Tries to Avoid U.S. Trade Restrictions · · Score: 2

    Better example:

    "Forced is a bit of a strong word. Force implies that society has troops in the steet pointing guns at people, forcing them to work. Don't want to get a job so you can live in a personal shelter and eat food from a plate? Go live in the street and eat out of garbage cans. It's your choice.

  24. Yet another good web site on the topic... on New Thoughts in Public Transportation · · Score: 2

    ...is SkyTran. Brought to you by Doug Malewicki, inventor of Robosaurus(tm) (the 4 story tall car-eating, fire-breating monster) and the "California Commuter" (a two person vehicle capable of getting over 150MPG on regular petrol).

    Personally, I hope this stuff takes off. I'm getting tired of putting up with traffic.

  25. Re:First SoftImage, now SGI on MS Buys (Some) SGI Patents · · Score: 1

    Nah, that would mean the projector was running some version of Windows.

    The film would show fine, but it would just be past deadline and over budget.