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User: zeda

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  1. Re:This is a non-event. on Lost Northwest Pilots Were Trying Out New Software · · Score: 1

    This is an event, it just occurs at a higher level than you consider.

    The autopilot can't fix the errors of the people programming it.

    In this case the emergency was that the emergency that the autopilot can't handle reliably wasn't handled.

    The biggest responsibility of the human pilots is to be human, i.e. be situationally aware, to ask the "Why?" that the autopilot can't ask.

  2. Re:Clock can run in reverse. on National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "When the budget had a surplus back in Clinton years,"

    What struck me most about those times were all the optmistic projections of surplus. There may or may not have been an actual surplus at the time, but even that is questionable when it turns out all these years that the whole basis of wealth and money was questionable.

    So maybe there was a surplus, but in what? Real dollars?

  3. Re:Against the TOS on Comcast Confirmed as Discriminating Against FileSharing Traffic · · Score: 1

    Just because Comcast says something doesn't make it true.

    If you are old enough to remeber dialup, then you remember how a real telco operated. A 9600 baud modem connection was symetrical because the voice circuit was symetrical. Many of us ran "servers", they were called BBSes and they worked fine.

    You are buying into the arbitrary "server" distinction because asymetrical connections are how the ISPs make money.

    It's always been symetrical because voice has always been symetrical, since the dawn of it all, and now it comes again full-circle with VOIP.

    Or is the copper and fiber fatter on one side and not the other?

  4. New is relative. on Brain Differences In Liberals and Conservatives · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

    ... like conservatism. For those of us educated in the great liberal arts institutions of higher education, and who only encountered real conservative theory afterwords.

  5. Popup Hypocrisy on Cartoon Network CEO Resigns Over Aqua Teen Scare · · Score: 1
    Here is a metaphor for you: ATHF signs -> Popup Ads.


    Even if ATHF is popular with you kiddies, it doesn't change the fact that this was guerilla advertising, aka unsolicited commercial speech, you know, the kind that the Supreme court erroneously believes is covered by the First Amendment.

    I mean the signs didn't even have a copyright notice or some other clear form of commercial labeling. Thus proving that the signs were trying to bypass our regexes. OMG haxors!

    Everyone saying that "they don't look like bombs." Quit trying to excuse their subterfuge. They purposefully hid commercial speech to get at your eyeballs. We hate that when spam does it, why don't we hate it here.

    Boston over-reacting is akin to /. freaking out and having an adbusters jihad when a new popup technique is found in the wild, because hey, it could be a new javascript exploit. Not really the same degree, but maybe the same dislike of attempting to subvert the system.

    I mean hell, they were even using the [blink]blink[/blink] tag! It's like Minority Report all over again!!!!

  6. Next step on PK'ing Banned in China For Minors · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ban noobs.

  7. Uhm.. on Who Needs Case-Sensitivity in Java? · · Score: 1

    Quick guess:
    We need case sensitivity because the English language has two cases.

    I mean 'R' and 'r' don't look the same do they?

  8. What's the diff on Act On Total Information Awareness · · Score: 3, Funny

    How is this different from a really huge IDS? Shouldn't they just be modifing snort?

    And is the Cisco patent going to stop the government from using regexps?

  9. Re:don't believe it on NSA Director, Congress and Monitoring · · Score: 1

    Watch C-SPAN you moron.

    I saw Lt. Gen. Hayden speak those words as testimony in front of the joint committee, as did thousands of other people.

  10. Interesting quote on NSA Director, Congress and Monitoring · · Score: 4, Interesting
    An excerpt:
    "During that session I even said without exaggeration on my part or complaint on yours that if Usama bin Laden crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York, U.S. law would give him certain protections that I would have to accommodate in the conduct of my mission. And now the third open session for the Director of NSA: I am here explaining what my Agency did or did not know with regard to 19 hijackers who were in this country legally."

    It seems then, that the safest place for a terrorist to hide would be in US.

  11. Re:doh on OSI Starts Selling Preleveled UO characters · · Score: 2, Funny

    Over #500 punk

  12. Re:Okay, I'll explain all my reasonings, then. on Any rxvt-Sized Unicode-Aware Terminal Emulators? · · Score: 1

    The OS manages memory better than you, so let the OS do its job.

    Post a 'top' of your system and then everyone here can all get together and critique your memory usage. I'm sure there are other things you can stop using to save an extra K or two, so maybe you can splurge on an extra xterm.

    Don't expect other people to care all that much about your particular set of tradeoffs. If you care that much, take the xterm and cut out all the Tektronix graphics and other stuff yourself.

    If you are using xterms on multiple desktops, look into just using one and making it sticky.

    As far as saving state, nothing beats screen. It saves state even if X dies.

    You should get over your irrational problems with Qt also.

    You do realize that some of the old folks had to run good old xterms back in dinosaur times, on machines with half as much RAM as your laptop.

  13. Why so many xterms? on Any rxvt-Sized Unicode-Aware Terminal Emulators? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Memory is cheap, why worry.

    Using screen also helps.

  14. Re:fortran joke on Is FORTRAN Still Kicking? · · Score: 1

    An Abelian grape

  15. Closed Environment on China Modifies Weather For 2008 Olympics · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We can't not change the weather. Everything we do effects the weather. Globaly there is no such thing as doing nothing when it comes to the weather.

    Your other ideas also neglect to consider closed environments. World hunger is related to population growth, food distribution and power (food is a weapon). You can't eliminate pests because lifeforms always adapt, bugs haven't existed for thousands of years for no reason. All our super food does currently is abuse certain current forms of pesticide in a monoculture crop. When that monoculture loses to the pests then bad things will happen.

    There is no silver bullet in an ecosystem.

  16. Re:Maybe Woody will be released soon... on Bdale Garbee elected Debian Project Leader · · Score: 1

    And the other distro's aren't crapshoots?

    Everybody updates everything, errata etc.

  17. Re:Responsibility on Air Force Warns Microsoft/Others to Tighten Security · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How do you think Outlook got deployed.

    Some Generals were probably conned by M$ sales reps like usually. Except when Generals give orders you have to obey.

  18. Re:My one worry on Review Of Netflix DVD Rental Service · · Score: 1

    The queue maxes at 500. I know because mine is full.

    :P

  19. Make money fast. on Future Pocket P2P - Discreet Data Sharing? · · Score: 1

    Strip club with a giant Faraday cage.

    There, happy.

  20. Startup Time on Michi Henning on Computing Fallacies · · Score: 1

    I was under the impression that startup time has actually been made worse by hardware.

    Specifically, if you run SCSI it takes ages to probe.

    So don't blame software when all sorts of broken hardware runs around screwing up standards and taking forever to plug and pray.

  21. Copyrights create bandwidth burden. on 9th Circuit: Thumbnails Are Big Enough For Fair Use · · Score: 1

    When you limit the availability of a work, then you are absorbing the burden for providing access to that work.

    More control requires more resources.

    If you allow for mirroring and caching then the burden of hosting is distributed.

    Thus copyrights create inefficiency.

    This implies that copyrights can't scale because there is no easy way to distribute load dynamically based on demand.

  22. Solved on Future Pocket P2P - Discreet Data Sharing? · · Score: 1

    Large Faraday cage and controlled admission, like speakeasies.

  23. Re:Very useful, actually on Geolocation Enables Internet Borders · · Score: 1

    Languages and countries are in some respects becoming meaningless.

    Witness the Euro.

    Assumuptions are both good and bad. Assuming that all people accessing a german site want the info in german is not always valid. The majority of business sites are for business and business is in english.

    As for ads based on geography, why would you want that? Business is already global, that's what credit cards and the Euro are for. Also everybody knows Europeans have better adds. (more innuendo, more sex)

  24. Re:Silly counter-argument on Open Source And The Obligation To Recycle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    MS didn't give IE away they just made it part of the windows tax.

  25. Re:This would be worse in Linux on Clever New Windows Worm · · Score: 1

    Whatever. Like there is a common mail reader for every linux user.

    Some of use just more /var/spool/mail cuz we are lazy.