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User: RobPiano

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Comments · 119

  1. Re:Livelihood on Google Staff MD on Carpal Tunnel & RSI · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm a pianist. We call those hand grips you are using "unemployment". THROW THEM OUT!!! They will just serve to make your wrists tight.

  2. No zips with binary files on GMail Adds Virus Protection · · Score: 1

    I can't say I know much, but I have been irritated many times that it would not let me include a zip with a binary file (something I do often in testing programs).

  3. Re:Closing my Anime store today on The Business of Anime · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anime is extremely overpriced. I can buy the complete season of futurama for $40, if I try to buy the complete season of Cowboy Bebop (a very popular anime) it will cost over $100, probably closer to $150.

    Its simply economics. Every anime I have watched in fansub all the way through, I have bought the series. Fansubs are the only thing that gets me to buy anime at all.

  4. The GPL needs court cases on PearPC Trying to Sue CherryOS · · Score: 4, Informative

    As a GPL developer I understand that the GPL needs court cases to maintain validity. So I donated $15. Please consider doing the same.

  5. Professional Open Source Developer Here... on Open Source is Not a Career Path · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dear Slashdot,

    My name is Rob, I'm 24 and I'm a professional open source programmer. I like my job, and I'm paid comparably to other programmers in my field. The difference between me and most, however, is that I'm a researcher and I'm funded by a grant. Our software is developed to be used by the research and academic community. Now I'm not saying I'm typical, but certainly I see jobs similar to mine forming. Its no longer okay to just submit a paper and call that research. People are beginning to demand the code to go along with the paper and granting bodies understand this.

    The market is changing everyday. Companies like IBM are proving that software is a service and not a product, and competition from other countries is turning many software jobs to commodity jobs. Everyone in software reinvents themself. My father has reinvented himself about 6 times during his career and will retire within the next 10 years doing a job completely different from his post graduate training.

    I'm not going to sit and preach, but in two paragraphs I was able to give plenty of personal basis to reconsider the crux of the argument.

    Food for thought

  6. Because there is nothing else to comment about... on A Pizza Box for Your Laptop · · Score: 1, Funny

    Goddamn it! There's no pizza in here! What a total rip off! I guess I'll just have to take this laptop.

    Boring...

  7. Why are blogs news? on How Can I Trust Firefox? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What surprised me most about this article, is that its a blog posting where the guy asks a simple question: Why has Firefox not purchased a VeriSign code signing certificate. Why did the poster not take the time to state this very simple sentence?

    Well, regardless of the empty implications, the blog posting is not really that exciting. It is really an attempt for this guy to validate his existence as a guy who thinks about security stuff. His job is to say signing software is the only way to really be safe and this is exactly the kind of thing that makes sense when you hear it in a business meeting.

    Great, I just want two things from both parties. From the poster: I want an uneditorialized explanation digest linking to a story and from the Microsoft security expert I want actually statistics and case studies on the importance of code signing.

  8. Re:I'd love a breakdown of legal vs. illegal files on BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of Traffic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anime which hasn't/won't come out in the US is legal to download unless it has been licensed. It is probably the most popular use of legal bit torrent due to shear volume of episodes.

  9. Re:Longest Election Season Ever on Pre-Election Discussion · · Score: 1

    I agree. It has gone on far too long and mostly its a pointless affair. Non-issues and personal bashing take precedent over the things voters are actually concerned with. Oh and I can't tell you how little I care about what dress the wives are wearing or if Jenna Bush wore jeans.

    End the gross media field day and commercialization of the democratic process. Its time we pass a law: no campaigning more than a month before the election begins.

  10. I love beer but.. on Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine · · Score: 3, Insightful


    I think the reason wine drinkers are healthier than beer drinkers remains consistent. Wine has fewer calories, so you don't get as fat. As a general rule, wine drinkers have healthier weights than beer drinkers.

  11. 'True Zoom' on Sony Develops TVs That Zoom in for True Close-ups · · Score: 5, Insightful

    True zoom is a bit of a stretch.. The only way you could have a true zoom is if you have a higher resolution digital image to look at, or an analog image... This produce creates sophisticated, but generated results. There is nothing true about it.

    Regardless, this is one of those features that "sounds nice", but I think its the company telling the consumer what to want rather than vice versa. Never once have I wanted to zoom in on a modern or high def television image.

  12. On-the-fly on Live Nightclub Hacking · · Score: 1

    http://on-the-fly.cs.princeton.edu/

    Those Princeton goofs went a step further. Its now this whole genre of amazing stuff. If you haven't read the papers or tried the software (which is FREE) then you're totally missing out!

  13. My Job on The Python Paradox, by Paul Graham · · Score: 1

    I think my job defies most of the argument, and many major software arguments in general.

    I'm paid to write open source software in Python and C++.

    Kinda funny huh?

  14. There was only one Matrix Movie on Ten-disc 'Matrix' DVD Box Set Planned · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I only acknowledge one Matrix movie. I know they did make 9 DVDs worth of advertising/money gouging however..

  15. Re:I want the second disc damnit! on EA, Atari Sue Over Videogame Copying Software · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    No, I'm an informed voter. (What's great about this comment is that its totally 'subtle' You see I don't have a party I belong to, but I read up before voting.. So I'm an informed voter... Not that I'm trying to imply anything.... Cause I'm not.....)

    Also I meant Playstation 1.

  16. I want the second disc damnit! on EA, Atari Sue Over Videogame Copying Software · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I had a game that takes several hours to defeat and spans more than one disc called, ``Lunar 2 Eternal Blue'' for Playstation 2. I was playing through the game very slowly and when I got to the second disc I realized the disc was scratched. Well, it had already passed the 30 day point, so I wrote the company and asked if they would sell me a replacement second disc. The answer, of course, was no. I would have to buy the whole thing over again.

    What kind of crap are they pulling. I am legally entitled to backup my games, but they put in measures to prevent me doing so. Would these companies allow me to ask for a copy? No. Could I send in a damaged copy and get another? No.

    Okay fine, piracy is a problem for you. You lose tons of money (well I don't actually believe this). Then it is your job to provide me with backups. I have a legal right, and a need as a consumer for legitimate backups.

    It is in the best interest of corporations to take away your rights if they can instead sell them to you. The only way our rights stand a chance is if we stand up for them. In fact I will go a step further and say, the only way our rights stand a chance is if we demonstrate common practice what our rights are.

    Laws are defined by practice. They are both made and broken by what we do. When we started buying ``copy protected'' materials we set a precedence that copying was not a legitimate activity. Had we wanted to keep our right to copy we would not have bought anything copy protected.

    This case is clear. Our right to copy is almost gone. We set the precedence for it by buying things with copy protection and now we have to live with it.

    Grr! I want the second disc damnit!

  17. I sat through on New Digital Audio Formats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sat through a very painful lecture by a guy from Phillips telling us about how wonderful SACD was. The end story is that its backwards compatible with CD, but extra DRM goodness. The technical difference between DVD audio and SACD were so fabricated as to make me lose all of my dwindling respect for the audio industry. I wasn't the only one to think so either. They talked a lot about frequency response, smearing, head room, and trelis algorithms. The end result was it was not better quality than DVD audio, but it sold better.

    Don't give a technical presentation and tell the audience of engineers that the reason the technology is better is that it sells better and is harder to pirate.

    If given a choice between the two pick DVD audio.

  18. Re:Silent fans are a BAD thing on BYU Project to Silence Computer Fans · · Score: 1

    That's just silly. Most computers have temperature monitors on the CPU. If it gets to hot there are PLENTY of programs that will warn you or turn your machine off. Acoustic monitoring may not even work! It could easily be whirling loudly and you wouldn't know that the CPU was 80 C.

    A temperature monitor is the way to go in all cases.

  19. Can the noise be more predictable? on BYU Project to Silence Computer Fans · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Blood Donation

    I don't know as much about noise cancellation as I would like, but I understand most of the concepts. Although the method described in the article certainly is very cool, I wonder if they couldn't get better results by redesigning the fan. It seems that the fan generates too much random noise. Is it possible to make a fan that has a more predictable noise source? It could even be a fan that is way noisier before noise cancellation...

    Another thought on this is that you really shouldn't consider the fan alone. The G5 has a beautiful interior with a ton of fans. Its not terribly loud, however, because the airflow is well designed.

  20. Interesting, but what are the benefits of Java? on Cellular Automata and Music Using Java · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I really love this stuff and I'm just finishing my master's in music technology (go figure..). This isn't the first time I've seen CA in music. I know for sure of a cell examples in Max/MSP, PD (Pure Data), and Common Music.

    I don't see any real benefits for doing this kind of task in java. It's very nice having another option, but are there any reasons to use this software over the other very good options? I am much more excited about the possibilities with ChucK.

  21. Since I can't see air it must be another universe! on The Home Parallel Universe Test · · Score: 1

    I'll say it for you, 'laser pointers are cool!'

    Anyways, there are plenty of ideas that come to mind that don't help this guys hypothesis. Phase, filtering, and the plethora of other particles in the room come to mind.

  22. I live in Canada on Corporate Work in the US vs. Canada? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would say its much harder to get a job, but the people are pretty nice. I would say you'll deal with the most crap in Quebec. Its hard to set things up as the burecracy is huge.

    If you've got a job, go for it! You'll pay more in taxes than the states, but you'll have a good quality of life.

  23. Interference on In-Flight Wi-Fi Makes its Debut · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would love to have wifi on a long flight and $30 isn't completely unreasonable for a flight from Germany to California. This is all fine, but can someone explain to me if we can have wifi on a flight, why can't I have my CD player turned on when the plane first takes off? I've never understood how a CD player could mess with their equipment very much, but I can imagine wifi being a bit of a problem...

  24. audio stuff on Using GPUs For General-Purpose Computing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At my work we do audio stuff. It would be really neat if I could do some of the more complicated audio analysis (FFT etc) that requires lots of vector math using the video cards gpu. There is probably even some way you could sync the timing for multimedia stuff.

    I know nothing about CPU design though

  25. I took it in Pascal way back when on First Java AP Computer Science Exam Complete · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have never used Pascal since, and I felt it taught me some incorrect concepts. A small percent of my class (myself included) then took the course again over the summer in C++. I felt the C++ experience was much more worth my time. I honestly don't know about how I think about teaching kids java first.

    I think you should start with C and assembler. Learn the very very basics of computing before you teach OO programing. I personally don't consider my AP experience worth while. Its hard to get a decent computer science professor in a highschool and even harder to teach complex concepts to students who think computer programming is "making video games" and "lots of money". This was especially the case when I took it (during the dot com boom) and even terrible programmers were making lots of money.