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User: Ebon+Praetor

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Comments · 26

  1. Re:A dupe in itself? on Blizzard and Activision Announce $18.8bn Merger · · Score: 1

    I blame the editor for quoting the story when I had already bothered to summarize it.

    Also, more coverage from the Guardian.

  2. Defense Work on High Paying Jobs in Math and Science? · · Score: 1

    If you're in Texas (or willing to move to the Baltimore/DC area or California), there is lucrative work, assuming you're an American citizen and don't mind selling your soul to the military-industrial complex. It doesn't matter what branch of science: biology or chemistry people are needed for chem/bio warfare; physics, math, and engineering are needed for every other kind of weapon or defensive system out there.

    Starting salary in my area (one of those areas from above) with a B.S is $55k+ in the defense field, as long as you're able to hold a clearance.

  3. More Stories on South Korean Scientists Clone Dog · · Score: 1

    Somehow, the editors removed the Reuters link from the original story.

    Also, for those who already have an account (so don't have to fork over their first-borne), from the New York Times.

  4. Re:Two drives: one flash, one magnetic on Flash Drives in Future Apple Laptops? · · Score: 1

    Right idea, but maybe a bit backwards. For me anyway, the "important stuff" are the DivXs, the CDs, the other stuff that I have to search for again (whether my own collection or otherwise). On the other hand, the OS and user docs I can easily install from a single DVD or two in an operation that takes at worst two hours.

    This is true for any system that handles are large amount of data. You want the data to be the most backed up, on the most reliable hardware you have and the OS to be on the less reliable one (if you have to make that choice) because the OS is many times easier to install than rebuilding all of the data that you lost.

    That, of course, is the general case. It doesn't extend well to flash since the flash drive has so much lower capacity than the magnetic HDD.

  5. Photo Age on Google Adds Satellite Imagery to Maps · · Score: 1

    Just out of curiosity, I put in the address of my university, just to see what it looked like from above. Interestingly, the photos seem between 3-5 years out of date. I know it's a free service (I'm certainly not complaining), but is the information going to be updated or has the US government cracked down on that sort of thing?

    Or will Google next year on the birthday of the service unveil real time satellite imagery?

  6. Re:I *want* to be enthused, but... on Python 2.4 Final Released · · Score: 1

    There are still performance consierations that keep people on C. While desktop apps can be written in just about anything, ie Visual Basic (though poorly), there are still a good number of applications that require natively compiled code. Servers, embedded systems, military applications, kernels all jump to mind and while most people aren't programming for any of those, it's still a useful language to know for people who want to expand their marketablility.

    Not everyone has to a Java/.Net/VB/"programmer-efficient-language" writing code monkey.

  7. Re:More than just programming on Northface University - Computer Science in Half the Time? · · Score: 1

    I agree completely. I'd be far more likely to take a CS student who understood all of the math (most college students hate that word) behind the CS they were supposed to learn. Problem is that schools can't get enough enrollment in their CS programs if students think it's a lot of math. Instead, they graduate a bunch of webmonkeys who can barely hack Java because they don't understand even the theory behind OO.

    I would be happy to see schools go back to teaching programming using in-house teaching languages that have ABSOLUTELY no practical use in the real world. That would teach students the requisite theory behind all of the code they were writing that they could reapply to ANY language on ANY job.

  8. Re:Common Policy on iPod: Your Portable Corporate Hellraiser · · Score: 1

    Agreed. I'm in the defense industry and we have many of the same measures. Certain areas can't have cameras, certain ones can't have phones, certain ones make you cover the IR port on everything you own with copper tape, but the parent poster is right, those heavy-handed policies make sense when national security is in question.

    The other key part of it though is being able to trust your employees. Given the amount of data I work with, my desktop machine has a DVD burner, there are zip drives all over the place, and we can (sometimes) transfer things across the network. There really isn't a way to make sure that every single employee CAN'T do anything, you have to make sure that your employees WON'T do anything.

    That being said, most of the people I work have an iPod in their office, and for the office part of where we work, that's just fine.

  9. Operating Lifetime on OLED Displays Technology Primer and Forecasting · · Score: 1, Redundant
    "Operating lifetime exceed 1000 hours"

    Normally, when I see things about operating lifetimes exceeding some number, it means that they normally fail around that point. This means that at continuous use, the OLED would fail after 42 days. Let's say that it's in an computer monitor and is on for 8 hours a day. That means it's expected to last 125 days. I for one do not want to replace my monitor three times a year. If this technology is to get widespread acceptance, it's going to need an operational lifetime much greater than that.

  10. /. First on On Collaborative Weblogs · · Score: 2, Funny

    This may quite possibly be the first time that all the readers have read at least one of the linked articles in the story. Maybe the editors should link back to /. more often.

  11. Re:Simple.... on What Network Sniffing Tools Do You Use? · · Score: 1

    I bow to you. I would have suggested a DLA, but I find myself bested.

    Maybe some LED's would do for 1's and 0's...

  12. Was't that the point of /opt on Zero Install: The Future of Linux on the Desktop? · · Score: 1

    You would put the app in /opt/<package-name>, and then when you wanted to get rid of it, you could just rm -rf /opt/<package-name> (or /opt/<vendor-name> if you wanted to do it that way).

    I don't know why Linux people insist on reinventing the wheel every few months.

  13. Re:It was *always* about money savings... on CIO Magazine On Offshore IT · · Score: 1

    Ok, I'll try competing.

    But wait, I can't even legally work in India to compete. The goevernment there won't let me have a permit and companies won't hire Americans. When their employnment system matches our's in nondiscrimination and I can compete on the basis of ability in the same environment, then I'll compete instead of whine. But as long as I'm not even given the chance to compete, then I think that whining is the only option I have.

  14. Re:This was already posted on Saturday... on Japan Takes A Look At Open Source Software · · Score: 1

    Slight difference. On Saturday, it was the Japan Times, a leftist paper that very few people actually read. This time, it's a respected news source, the Associated Press, even if it is in the guise of yahoo.

  15. So WE all agree on RMS Urges Opposition to "Trusted Computing" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok ok. We, the geek community, agrees that Palladium and the "Trusted Computing" initiatives are bad. So what, there are not enough of us to excecise our "consumer power" and stop them. If the geek community really had that much power, Windows would no longer exist and Linux would have a 90% desktop market share.

    Obviously, this is not the case. It's because no one in the real world cares or thinks about the geek community. Moreover, searching google for 'palladium' or 'tcpa,' will reveal that they are Microsoft and other copyright holder's initiatives. So what does Joe Consumer do? He visits microsoft.com and learns about all the wonders that Palladium will do for him. If he really does his research, he may stumble across a page like the Digital Speech Project, and promptly decide that the anti-TCPA community consists of a bunch of hacks.

    Simply put, the web page is lacking, PR is lacking, and we can not compete with corporations unless we capture the hearts and minds of the normal consumers. Sure, the page may be standards compliant and be light on the server, but it looks bad. It looks like a voulnteer operation. This community needs to make itself look better than the corporations. Consumers expect a certain style, so let's give it to them. That means creating visually appealing web pages, pushing technical material towards the back, and creating a presense that appears credible. And for God's sake, stop asking for donations on the front page of every FSF site.

  16. Grammar Lessons! on Portable MP3 Player w/ Unix Support? · · Score: 1

    (My apologies if english is not your first language.)

    "I want something that works good with Linux/OpenBSD"

    "Good" is now an adverb?! You don't need an mp3 player; you need lessons on basic grammer. Since this is slashdot though, it seems that the only requirement is random words that might be english.

    --

  17. At 3:00? on Slashdot IRC Forum Today · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could we please do this at some later time, such as 8:00 EST so the majority of the United States could get out of work? I, for one, do not do anthing on IRC while working, and I hope that most of the readers out there do work when they're supposed to, too.

    By the way, I don't troll slashdot under company time; this is my lunch break.

  18. Re:Hmmm :-) on Canadian Company Claims RDF Patent · · Score: 1

    Though it'd be funny and appropriate, I think a few hundred years of prior art are going to kill you on this one.

  19. Re:all rightey then! on FBI, Pentagon Talk to MS about XP Hole · · Score: 1

    Hold on a minute. They want me to connect to the internet to download a patch when connecting to the internet can result in being compromised?

    Its like having to grab a fire extinguisher from the middle of a burning room.

  20. Re:native widgets? on Mozilla 0.9.7 Released! · · Score: 1

    I don't think its just on Macs either. If I change the GTK widgets (or the colours on them) then they show up in Mozilla as well. The old 'clunky Mozilla' widgets still appear in Preferences, but there are native widgets when veiwing and dealing with forms in pages.

    And I agree, hats off to them for not forcing me to theme yet another thing in the same way I have everything else themed.

  21. Re:for the lazy on Generate AM Radio Broadcasts With Your Monitor · · Score: 1

    Now that you've composed music, go and copyright it. Then you can say to your friends, 'You can't use that combo of moves in Half Life, I've copyrighted the monitor signals of reloading a weapon.'



    Anyone else who opens or closes some windows must pay me royalties...bwahahahahaha...

  22. Redundant? on Open Source And Genetics · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Didn't we see this article yesterday right here?

  23. Reduces the stature of science? on Researchers' Right To Open Source Research · · Score: 1

    But he says the money isn't the issue -- it's respect. Open source publishing devalues what they do, he said....
    "I don't think computer programmers should be treated any differently than other scientists,'' Green said. "It sort of diminishes the stature of the science."


    And I'm sure that the private funding to get the desired results out of research (i.e. tobbaco harm studies funded by RJ Reynolds) doesn't diminsh the stature of real science. They seem to diminsh science more than the people who publish their findings. Take any of the great scienctists: Einstein, Curie, Borh...they all published and shared their studies for the sake of bettering science and making a name for themsleves. What happened over the last century to make researches into money-grabbers?

  24. Re:The Peoples' Rocket on China Plans Manned Space Launch By 2005 · · Score: 1

    The Chinese have got a pretty good point. There's no particular reason that they can't militarize space the same way the US is trying to. The US isn't even very secretive about its plans to flaunt international treaties regarding the militarization of space. In fact, their websites have stories about how they are currently researching war in space. If anyone started an arms race in space, it wasn't China, it was the US and the former USSR.

  25. Slack for schools on Is Slackware Fading Away? · · Score: 1

    I'm doing the same thing for a school. They were going to throw out a lot of old Pentium-1s that they thought were obsolete. Since Mandrake doesn't have much lower system requirements than Windows, I went with Slackware did what I needed it to:

    1. Installed
    2. Ran
    3. Didn't crash
    4. Ran Netscape w/o crashing
    5. Kept the damn script kiddies from screwing around with the systems.

    There'll always be a place for good old Slack.