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User: smchris

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  1. If he hadn't pushed the "compatible" Plus/4 on Jack Tramiel, Founder of Commodore Business Machines, Dies At Age 83 · · Score: 2

    I'd have known a lot less about computers -- since the built-in decompiler came in handy when "compatibility" with C64 programs meant you had to recode because they moved the video addresses, among other things. I guess sometimes the best master is the one who throws you down a well and makes you find your own way out.

  2. Re:Better phrasing on Should Failure Be Rewarded To Spur Innovation? · · Score: 1

    Indeed. I don't hear the statement saying that every employee is a uniquely valued snowflake. One can read a bit of the opposite in the tone, really, if the idea presented turns out to be stupidly thought out, but it expresses an open and non-punitive philosophy on the part of the company to keep an open ear to ideas that seems very reasoned.

  3. Re:not real time internet, but same content on Online Services: The Internet Before the Internet · · Score: 1

    It's true and it's weird. If you let a kid experience an hour at 300 baud on a Commodore he'd go crazy, but I'm sometimes surprised at how blase I am. Like the speed bump of a new computer that you're already used to the next day, it's all just been little bumps: maybe around 2400 bps when the text speed was getting pleasant, USENET, Mosaic, streaming audio, then video, then Skype, etc.

  4. CompuServe was like $14/hour (at 300 baud) in '86 on Online Services: The Internet Before the Internet · · Score: 1

    I quickly spent most of my time on GEnie. I think their leadership can be really proud of themselves. Like the article alludes to, it was clear that GE itself didn't really give a crap. It was just a way to pay for their computers in the off-hours. Despite what it must have been like working within that environment, somehow the GEnie team managed to create a really nice and competitive system. Didn't make it to '99 but I hung on to their text service longer than I should have into the Mosaic and early Netscape era.

  5. Re:Remember Delphi? on Online Services: The Internet Before the Internet · · Score: 1

    Delphi had their "internet portal." My first taste of the "wider world," in text of course, in '94.

  6. High 60s to 8.8.8.8 at the moment on Ask Slashdot: What Is an Acceptable Broadband Latency? · · Score: 1

    But then QWorst/Centurylink has dropped my connection four times in the last nine hours. Not that unusual days after a storm. If I didn't have _so_ many reasons I don't want Comcast.....

  7. Re:Legacy works on Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only · · Score: 1

    Maybe. But an awful lot of news sites I visit seem to feel obligated to leap at the latest release like a snake on a rat before I'm aware of an update.

    That said, on the the "stupid me" category, a year+ ago I happened to have both Gnash and Flash installed and I _thought_ Firefox was using Flash. Was wondering why videos weren't working so well -- but the interesting thing was that more than half _were_ working well enough. Might be promising.
       

  8. Re:Lower crime rate is a bonus on Mozart and Bach Handel Subway Station Crime · · Score: 1

    I think the horrible speakers are an important factor in Minneapolis as well.

  9. Re:Nail in the coffin for Keynesian economics on Japan Plans To Merge Major Science Bodies · · Score: 1, Troll

    Except that people don't eat and excrete microchips and we have perpetual growth of the population. Perhaps innovative creations can improve the standard of living of a _stable_ and _sustainable_ population.

  10. Well, at least the White House is being consistent on White House Refuses To Comment On Petition To Investigate Chris Dodd · · Score: 2

    Obama never wants to prosecute anything past (oh, say: war crimes, torture, murder) because it's, like, so "yesterday." Let's just get all hopey and come together for a brighter future instead of being gloomy old negative gusses. I"m sure Mr. Happy President wants us all to sing "Kumbaya" and see happy faces all around, OK? OK?

  11. Hard to believe he's ever driven a hybrid on Another Stab At Sorting Hybrid Hype From Reality · · Score: 1

    Or we're _really_ going to have to sue Toyota for gaming the mpg indicator.

    "To get a steady 40 MPG (let alone 50 MPG) out of any hybrid -- and I have driven all of them, extensively -- you must keep your speed under 50 MPH and treat the accelerator as if it were a Fabergé egg. "

    Seems like nonsense. To get an average summed FIFTY on something like a 400 mile three-day weekend trip last year of city, 2-lane, and Freeway with the Prius, I _did_ do 55 and play at driving to the hybrid's strengths. To average _below_ 40, it'd have to be below zero F with SNOW TIRES and over 60 mph. Mid- to upper- 40s on the freeway for hundreds of miles just this New Year's in not-so-warm Minnesota going a legal 70. With the snow tires.

  12. Re:What rights? on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way To Deal With Roving TSA Teams? · · Score: 1

    Actually the president can send out the hounds when there's "lawlessness" and "insurrection." I look forward to our new definition of "micro-lawlessness" that includes groups of two or more people. There's also the "inadequacy" clause and, gosh don't you know, local police just don't have the expertise of the TSA to handle the threats of Terra that lurk on every corner.

  13. Re:Crazy vs. Evil on New Study Confirms Safety of GM Crops · · Score: 1

    All the rain forests are being razed anyway. When the Population Bomb came out around 1970, the central thesis was correct. There are _way_ too many people on earth. Ways of exploiting the planet blunted the impact for several decades, but it's clear that GM foods, _if_ they are a good thing, are a short-term fix. Like steroids or meth, they are not without their own problems. People as a herd are stupid and love to breed, so should we let them starve instead of employing this short-term Band-Aid? Rock/hard place.

    I would question the term "nutritionally equivalent." Do they mean "chock full of the same vitamins and minerals discounting the innate low-level pesticide."

  14. Re:All Open Source projects must reject "designers on GNOME 3 Wins Linux Journal's Readers' Choice Award · · Score: 2

    He,he. What I find funny about the venom from some people is that Gnome 3 without a touch screen _forces_ me to use 2 or 3 times more hot key combinations and quick loads than I'm used to. Stuff people have been _telling_ us would be great for ages if we would just _use_ it. And they were right. Sometimes, it is almost like the speed and freedom of being back at a terminal.

    I suspect part of the venom is that it's a bit like making a commitment to the Dvorak keyboard and if you work in an environment that requires you to switch back and forth between a Windows scheme and a Gnome 3 scheme, that can be disconcerting.

  15. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employe on Are You Better At Math Than a 4th (or 10th) Grader? · · Score: 1

    That explains a lot about 21st century America.

    Frankly, I'm atrocious at maintaining numbers in visualization even if I do realize that (47*75) is half of 7500 minus three 75s. But, good god man, with a calculator? Maybe every kid should be required to use a slide rule to get a feel for the idea that this "weightiness" of a number times that "weightiness" of a number gives this approximate result because with those multiple choice options you really can just guess at the nearest answer.

  16. Ugly on Amazon Is Recruiting Authors For Its eBook Library · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of Microsoft using their money to offer Office 97 at a near liquidation special to kill the then dominant WordPerfect -- in my opinion far superior at the time to Word.

  17. Re:Why I don't have a kindle (yet) on How Publishers Are Cutting Their Own Throats With eBook DRM · · Score: 1

    And is "tools" why I have to update Nook for PC every couple weeks? I'm OK with the back light of the Aspire One I'm using, with the weight, even with the battery life. But I'm really getting annoyed with the "Do you want to update your Nook" window that comes around like a bad friend (and takes focus). So far, the program works great with WINE but with the mandatory fortnightly updates, I'm just waiting for the moment when a spokesman says, "Linux? People are using Nook for PC on linux? We never intended that so if our latest, improved version broke compatibility, it isn't our problem." What are the odds I'll see that in the future?

  18. Re:They are brave, but there's a difference on The Future of Protest In Panopticon Nation · · Score: 1

    I guess that's why I'm neither encouraged nor discouraged by OWS at this point. This is their "Summer of Love." Last time the young people got uppity, they started shooting them. We'll see where this is a few years from now. Will that guy watching TV in rural Kansas care if they're shooting people in the streets, because, you know, it isn't just FOX. The mainstream media can always pull up a clip of a protester looking ugly, so people need to get over their Jesus complex of creating images of glorious suffering for the cause. People remember that photo of the woman in shock kneeling over the body at Kent State? She got inundated with death threats and it crushed her. And mostly what the 60's got us was the Neocon counter-revolution that has so successfully destroyed this country. Will OWS help crank that up to a new level? Just saying, if this uprising doesn't coalesce into a movement that succeeds in changing the country, the price of failure could be a murderously crazy backlash. As if this country weren't crazy enough already. So we'll see whether this becomes a grass-roots movement or fails miserably as media performance.

  19. Re:This is a scam on DNA Test To Determine Kids' Sports Futures · · Score: 1

    Totally agree on the price. 23andme.com periodically runs specials at $99, they've even done FREE+S&H, (with $9/month for a year commitment) and provides a ton of results on disease susceptibility, carrier status, traits, and continuing results as research comes in plus their ancestry and "cousins" angle, message boards, and informative blogs.

    I don't know. They say I'm "CC" with two working copies of ACTN3 and I've never played "football, rugby, wrestling, or hockey" but I did finish three marathons in my early thirties. Seems like total reflex response time often has more practical value in sports than just "fast twitch muscle response" so it wouldn't surprise me if assessing the value of ACGN3 gets fuzzy.

  20. Pretty much the standards solutions I figure on Earth Officially Home To 7 Billion Humans · · Score: 1

    War, pestilence, famine. The classics never get old.

    The people who say we should "consume less" seem to discount people's pesky habit of eating and how we're gleaning the land and oceans bare.

    Intelligent population control? He, he. That's a good one.

  21. Would buy a lot of metal detectors on DARPA To Sponsor R&D For Interstellar Travel · · Score: 1

    That stargate has to be around here somewhere.

    Really? Assuming we actually can't go that close to the speed of light, much less faster, shouldn't we be looking at uploading our consciousnesses to quantum dots first so the payload is manageable?

  22. Re:Change for the sake of change? on Linus Torvalds Ditches GNOME 3 For Xfce · · Score: 1

    Could be. The initial iteration of KDE4 sent me back to my Gnome past. There's much I like about Gnome 3 so I have to wonder whether this isn't just another v.1.0 scuffle. Surely, Gnome _will_ return desktop icons, or panel icons, or SOMETHING for removeable media, won't they? As for keyboard commands, I'm rather glad to be forced to _finally_ learn them and find it rather bumusing that "power users" hate the idea.

  23. 23andMe includes a suscepibility test now on New Blood Test Can Detect Alzheimers · · Score: 1

    One of those with a "click" if you really want to know directive. They claim the genetic link is quite strong and APOE gene variants can be a predictor.

  24. Re:I went to both CTY and TIP on Fond Memories of Nerd Camp · · Score: 1

    I worked for CTY for a few years in the late '80s. I never fully digested the history of the politics but CTY and TIP apparently agreed that CTY would get the coasts for talent search and TIP would get the interior. Didn't seem to me like that was a great deal for TIP. That was a long time ago. Wasn't TIP based on the ACT? CTY had kids from TIP's territory too. Fine if you heard about it. They just didn't promote in each other's territory.

    Glad it worked out for you. Back then the internet wasn't common, dial-up like CompuServe was just getting into the home and I know the opportunity for kids to mingle with kids like themselves was a really intense experience. The RA's used to joke that the final dance was hell. They practically had to say, "Untangle yourself from that boy and go to the dorm. You're never going to see each other again for the rest of your lives. Until you die!"

  25. Re:Logic on Fond Memories of Nerd Camp · · Score: 1

    I worked _for_ CTY in Baltimore and spent two summers on site at F&M in the '80s. It seemed like an extraordinary program. There was some institutional regimentation however, and I hear you about "Mandatory Fun." You understand that since you were hardly off campus, in class all day and study hall in the evening before being herded to your dorm "Mandatory Fun" was taken very seriously and intentionally planned to burn off youthful energy so you wouldn't go stir crazy?