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User: mr_mischief

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  1. Re:A serious question on Mozilla: Following In Sun's Faltering Footsteps? · · Score: 1

    I won't debate your test, but was it repeatable and did you have control of the other end? Now, test rendering of a complex CSS3 style on a large document. Then, test a single-page application with heavy use of JavaScript and lots of DOM manipulation. There's a lot more to a browser than download times or even rendering times. I have plenty of experiences showing Chrome is faster in most cases that stress the browser than is Firefox. It's not a myth. They do play catch-up with one another, but Chrome with the V8 JavaScript engine and the WebKit rendering system is very quick indeed.

  2. Re:A serious question on Mozilla: Following In Sun's Faltering Footsteps? · · Score: 1

    If one is a professional web developer then the tools for Firefox are astoundingly good compared to about anything else. For daily browsing, Chrome is much faster. Horses for courses.

  3. Re:Forget fair use. Call it parody or commentary. on Gritty 'Power Rangers' Short Is Not Fair Use · · Score: 1

    From your sources:

    parody:

    A form of speech protected by the First Amendment as a "distorted imitation" of an original work for the purpose of commenting on it.

    satire:

    Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
    See also: caricature, distortion, irony, parody, ridicule
    Burton's Legal Thesaurus, 4E. Copyright © 2007 by William C. Burton. Used with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

    I would trust Black's over TFD, and a lawyer over either of us. Still, there's nothing at either of those URLs that appears counter to the work being parody or satire. The definition is even more broad than that of Webster's.

    There's a legal blog post (which is not by me and is not case-specific legal advice by anyone) from Legal Process Outsourcing Services that has much more about the topic. The "Elements of Parody" is exceptionally clear and important here.

  4. Re:That's because it's not entirely copyright anyw on Gritty 'Power Rangers' Short Is Not Fair Use · · Score: 1

    True, but Mickey Mouse is in every market. Tshirts? Hats? Lunchboxes? Mickey. Watches? Curtains? Bes sheets? Mickey. Breakfast cereals? Pastas? Clock radios? Mickey.

    If you can find a market in which there's no Mickey Mouse licensed good, then there's a damn good chance they'd sue you instead on diminishing their image through an implied endorsement of your Mickey Mouse submachine gun.

  5. Forget fair use. Call it parody or commentary. on Gritty 'Power Rangers' Short Is Not Fair Use · · Score: 4, Informative

    The original Power Rangers is campy and laughable. Showing gritty topics in a saccharine sweet, good guys always triumphant without any real struggle or doubt way that the children's shows often do is worth satirizing.

    From Webster:

    Full Definition of SATIRE

    1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
    2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

    Definition of SATIRE

    a creative work that uses sharp humor to point up the foolishness of a person, institution, or human nature in general
    Synonyms lampoon, pasquinade
    Related Words burlesque, caricature, parody, spoof, takeoff; comedy, farce, sketch, skit, slapstick, squib; derision, ridicule; cartoon, mockery, travesty

  6. Bah, Harris produces everything on Feds Admit Stingray Can Disrupt Bystanders' Communications · · Score: 2

    Harris won't care about restrictions on Stingray devices. They'll still sell them. They also sell actual cellular radio equipment, TV broadcasting stuff, and AM and FM radio broadcasting stuff. If it's a big tower with antennae on it and a shed next to it, Harris probably produced some part of the equipment involved.

  7. Well, that would help on The Peculiar Economics of Developing New Antibiotics · · Score: 2

    Competitions like that can help. However, funding of basic research that can then lead to big breakthroughs later is also a good idea.

    Here's a proposal: stop granting hugely profitable exclusive patents on university research funded by the federal government. Give the government a right to license broadly patents it helped fund and share the proceeds with the discovering professors and students. That way the cost to the pharma companies would be smaller.

    Use the government's proceeds from licensing said patent to fund the FDA's evaluation of any drugs based on the research. This further cuts down on the costs to the drug company.

    Make it a term in the research's patents that final drug patents based on it must be similarly licensed. Use those proceeds to subsidize Medicare and Medicaid.

    Then, the drug research is more widely spread, the benefits and risks of the research are more widely spread, the risks are lower per company, the costs of the drugs are lower to bring to market. The market prices may even follow suit.

    Then, tie the research funding to a certain amount of the funds across the country being used for classes of drugs the public really needs but are being underrepresented, like antibiotics.

  8. the oil already moves on Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill · · Score: 1

    Right now this oil moves via rail, which is far riskier than a pipeline.

  9. Re:Already sloved on New Encryption Method Fights Reverse Engineering · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hardware by Intel, code by Escher.

  10. Re:Why is this a big deal? on EFF: Hundreds of S. Carolina Prisoners Sent To Solitary For Social Media Use · · Score: 1

    There's no revenue stream for the prison from Facebook posts, and apparently they also haven't figured out a great way to monitor the posts.

  11. There's no money for the prison vendors. on EFF: Hundreds of S. Carolina Prisoners Sent To Solitary For Social Media Use · · Score: 1

    There's no money for the prison vendors when an inmate uses Facebook. Those calls aren't cheap, and neither are letters. Count on these folks being able to use social media when there's an app to give the state and some contractor a cut of a fee for each post collected from the family of the incarcerated.

  12. Re:$45 Billion is just another tax, different form on US Wireless Spectrum Auction Raises $44.9 Billion · · Score: 1

    This is the ideal, yes. Possibly with a lower bandwidth point-to-tower connection for sideband and failover.

  13. Re:$45 Billion is just another tax, different form on US Wireless Spectrum Auction Raises $44.9 Billion · · Score: 1

    Typically the homeowners and business owners own the land, the government demands a right of way through it or above it (for pole-hung services), then leases that right-of-way to too few companies.

  14. "Concessions"? more like "bribes" on Comcast Pays Overdue Fees, Offers Freebies For TWC Merger Approval · · Score: 2

    Giving away basic cable, which for buildings already wired has a marginal per-unit cost approximating zero, in exchange for a quid-pro-quo from a political entity sounds like public corruption to me.

  15. Re: With taxes you buy civilization, remember? on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    What the fuck part of " A pat-down of someone who's being detained for probable cause is okay" did you manage to misread?

  16. Re:Firefighters use IR-detecting devices on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    A firefighter has a reason to be there if there is a fire to fight. As the SCOTUS already said, police using this sort of thing without a warrant is an illegal search.

  17. Re:With taxes you buy civilization, remember? on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    If you're talking about "stop and frisk" then the courts are certainly not okay with that. A pat-down of someone who's being detained for probable cause is okay. Being black, young, or poor is not probable cause.

  18. Re:"prevailed"? on The Mainframe Is Dead! Long Live the Mainframe! · · Score: 1

    Not every computing task needs 10 TB of common RAM. Mainframes have their place, but it's not in doing every task.

  19. Give us a backdoor into your communications. on Obama: Gov't Shouldn't Be Hampered By Encrypted Communications · · Score: 1

    How about some of that transparency we were promised? Where's the American people's backdoor into Obama's communications?

    Oh, that's right... All people are created equally until one of them is working for the government.

    Fuck Obama and his spooks.

  20. Scotland should have seceded with the UK willing to have such a daft demagogue in charge. Now he's trying to turn the UK and the rest of the world into even more of a surveillance nightmare than the street cameras London already has.

    He can piss up a rope and then hang himself from it.

  21. Re:"prevailed"? on The Mainframe Is Dead! Long Live the Mainframe! · · Score: 1

    Nobody expects a single desktop PC to do the job of a mainframe. It's true, too, that mainframes have their place for certain types of work. Don't claim, though, that a rack full of blades can't be clustered to do a similar job. It happens all the time.

  22. Maybe I'm old, but when I was in grade school kindergarteners on up had to walk to and from school if they lived less than a mile away unless there was some major road in between or they had a parent or babysitter ready to drive them.

  23. "prevailed"? on The Mainframe Is Dead! Long Live the Mainframe! · · Score: 1

    I think "prevailed" is a bit overstating things. Mainframes have more "held on" despite the march of the killer micros.

  24. If by celebrity we mean... on Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science? · · Score: 1

    If by celebrity we mean that good scientists get famous for actual research and get patronage to run their labs free of government funding, then hell yes.

    If by celebrity we mean that their career as a "Scientist" means to be an advocate for one bit of research over others even well outside their own work, then probably not.

  25. Re:The beast and the hero on Microsoft Ends Mainstream Support For Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    It's not shocking, as it seems a good portion of every profession is incompetent.