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User: jandrese

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  1. Re:Yay! on Mac OS X Panther On A 25MHz Centris 650 · · Score: 1

    Holy crap dude. What is your "normal" pressure for installing DIMMs? I can understand breaking the little crappy clip or guides, but demolishing the socket including the contacts? Your normal install doesn't involve a rubber mallet or anything does it?

  2. Re:And in other news, I sat and watched plaster dr on Mac OS X Panther On A 25MHz Centris 650 · · Score: 1

    Worse, it appears to be a perl script. I don't know if it actually works though, I'm afraid to test it out.

  3. MP3 is like FAT on MP3 Going the Way of the 8-Track? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you ever noticed how almost every small storage technology uses the horribly limited, slow, badly designed FAT filesystem? There is a reason for this: FAT is the most compatable FS available. Few people use it anymore on their main filesystem (because it sucks), but almost everything else seems to use it.

    I see the same thing happening with MP3. People just digitizing their music so they don't have to pull out CDs all the time will use whatever has the best sound/size tradeoff (or whatever comes with the system). If they're encoding their music for use on joe random device, they'll use MP3.

  4. Re:SATA 3Gb/s hard drives... on New nForce Boards Previewed · · Score: 1

    At 3 Gb/s, you're going to need a whopping 0.04 seconds to empty out that cache (assuming a 100% hit ratio).

  5. Re:This has potential as a laptop on Sharp To Ship New HD-equipped Zaurus In Japan · · Score: 1

    I've got a SL-C750 and I have to say that it's not really a laptop replacement. You don't understand just how _tiny_ text is on that screen (it's like 120dpi). Sure I've browsed Slashdot and whatnot on it (the Xscale processor is not particularly speedy either, so be prepared to wait for your pages to render), but you need good eyes and a bit of patience for dealing with webpages that assume you have a larger than 640x480 display.

    Still, it is extremely nice to have when I don't want to lug a laptop around and just want to look something up on the web.

    You can play movies (although with pdaxrom they tend to be kinda choppy. The Sharp rom is better at the moment), but the screen is pretty small and movies tend to eat into the battery life. It is good for playing mp3s though, especially if you have a player that understands the jog dial and ok/cancel buttons on the side.

  6. How realistic? on Catan Online Set to Debut This Month · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are they going to make this like the real Settlers of Catan where the dice that come with the box seem to skew (and change the skew randomly?).

    I don't know how many games of Catan I've played where the dice suddenly seemed to start rolling 2,3, and 4 over and over again then suddenly start rolling a huge long string of 9, 10, 11... Around here the Catan dice are infamous for that behavior.

  7. Re:This just screams......... on Biggest Console System Collection on eBay · · Score: 1

    He's probably some reseller that got this lot by mistake somewhere. Or it "fell off of the back of the truck".

    Still, it seems like a professional reseller would break up the lots and sell them individually for a lot more money.

  8. Re:Wolfenstein 3D on Doom Movie Scriptwriter Dave Callaham Interviewed · · Score: 2, Funny

    How are they going to ruin the atmosphere of Wolf3D? By having the hero _not_ run down hallways banging on every blue brick wall in the hopes of opening up a secret passage?

  9. Re:haven't i seen this already? on Doom Movie Scriptwriter Dave Callaham Interviewed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In other words, he's just making whatever movie he wants and slapping the Doom name on it? That is probably for the best actually, as trying to make a movie based on a game with 2 paragraphs worth of plot is not a good idea. Still, I think it will be a good idea to set your expectation bar to "low" for this movie.

  10. Re:Video Game FAQs on How To Build And Maintain A Good FAQ · · Score: 2, Informative

    GameFAQs actual content varies in quality a lot depending on the author. Some of the FAQs are basically just reprintings of the manual, but there are some that are very good. Most of the time the game is simple enough that you don't really need a FAQ per say (few people have questions about it), but people feel compelled to write one anyway just because they like the game. Other times there are just one or two things that confuse players, but nobody wants to write a 1k FAQ for some reason.

    Anyway, I think the overall quality of the FAQs is directly proportional to the size and enthusiasm of the fanbase. Final Fantasy Tactics has some fantastic FAQs for instance. My only big complaint about GameFAQs is that it seems as if there is nobody older than 15 on any of the message boards and nearly every discussion ends up with someone saying "but I can beat it in 5 seconds with just the pointy stick, you guys just suck". When that attitude spills over into the FAQ section you end up with some awful material.

  11. Don't let Marketing write your FAQ on How To Build And Maintain A Good FAQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The FAQ should be written by your tech support people, not the marketing people. In fact the marketing guys shouldn't be allowed to look at it. There's nothing worse than having some problem with a product and going to the FAQ and seeing stuff like:

    Q: Is this product fully buzzword compliant?
    A: Yes! We have integrated full buzzward compliance into this product.

    Q: How fast is this product?
    A: The product is the fastest in the industry!

    GRR! All I want is some help trying to figure out how to set some option with your horrible interface.

    Many times you can search the web and find a _real_ FAQ, written by users, that gives you actual information. Unfortunatly, those FAQs are the ones that get taken down by the same corporate douchebags that wrote the useless FAQ.

  12. Re:Wait for the investigation... on A Car With A Mind Of Its Own · · Score: 1

    More importantly, if you panic and turn the car all the way off (IE, turn the key back to the position where you can pull the key out), it will _lock_ the steering wheel and pretty much guarentee your demise on the next corner.

    Still, unless the guys was going downhill, or in an extremely windy section of road (in which case he is fubared either way), it seems a lot safer to kill the engine and just let your car coast to a stop.

  13. Re:My Penny Jar... on Space Tourism is Off and Running · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This got me wondering, how much would 10,000,000 pennies weigh on Earth? Assuming you are in a area with 1.0g gravity and you collect nothing but post 1982 pennies, your jar is going to weigh in at 25,000 kg before you hand it off to Virgin in exhange for a ticket.

    For those of you not well versed in the Metric system, this is about 27.6 tons (not counting the weight of the jar). You will probably also have a significant fraction (perhaps greater than 100%) of all pennies ever produced.

  14. Re:Hope it comes to Mac/PC on Halo 2 Ready to Ship · · Score: 1

    It was one of the few FPSes that ran decently on my old LC (Marathon was close, but the LC was just a little too slow to make the game playable). IIRC, it was one of the few games where your starting weapon was entirely worthless (it started out empty and there was never any more ammo for it in the entire game). The only other thing I remember about it was getting my butt kicked fairly regularly and going up and down ladders a lot.

  15. Re:Its really a merger on TiVo and Netflix Hook Up · · Score: 1

    You must really be disappointed that NetFlix doesn't carry porn anymore, unless you're into pretentous French art house porn at least.

  16. Re:I'll try it on TiVo and Netflix Hook Up · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Network bandwidth is _cheap_ compared to paying actual live people to open envelopes all day long. You are forgetting that labor costs are the most expensive part of most businesses, and I'm sure Netflix is no exception.

  17. Re:I'm shivering... on Auto Accident at SANE Conference Kills One · · Score: 1

    That is only surprising if you were working in the WTC at the time. As I recall Slashdot was one of the first places to report it (although at first the post was lacking a lot of details).

  18. Re:Funny... on Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain? · · Score: 1

    Wow, how in the world do those other space vehicles handle it then? They're not shaped anything like the shuttle! I can guarentee that the takeoff has nothing to do with the shape of the vehicle by the way.

    You know what's even better? Have you ever looked at the concept designs for future space vehicles? You know what they don't look like? The Shuttle.

  19. Re:Funny... on Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain? · · Score: 1

    The only major different Wiki mentions is the fact that the Buran can land by computer control only. This is a fairly minor point since the astronauts on a Shuttle don't actually land it either (it's almost all done by the computer). The lack of external engines is a fairly big difference, but that's still within the realm of "modifications to the original design" than anything else. I'm more interested in the airframe construction, layout, and factors like that. Even the design of the human habitable sections should be quite different since that is largely up to the preference of the engineer designing the vehicle.

  20. Re:Gender? on Verisign Develops Token for Age Verification · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Better yet, they shouldn't talk about that at all. I mean it's just gross, right? I don't know what all of those special interest chat groups (not cybersex people, cmon!) are for. I mean isn't this the sort of thing that is never spoken of? If people start getting too much information they might get ideas, and ideas aren't good for keeping people in line.

    One of the biggest strengths of the internet is the ability to discuss issues anonymously that you may be too embarrassed to discuss with your friends and family--friends and family who would be of no help anyway since they know just as much as you.

  21. Re:Funny... on Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain? · · Score: 1

    That first response sounds like a big load of horse hockey to me. While there is a nugget of truth to the statement (it still has to be aerodynamic), regular aircraft have the same limitations. Look at the wide variety of aircraft designs in the world today.

    It wouldn't be so bad if the Soviets had at least given it a different paint job, but from the outside it looks like a complete rip-off. I would be curious to learn just how different they are on the inside. People are claiming that it is original on the inside, but other than Soviet propaganda what do we have to go on?

  22. Re:Remember MPC? on "Levels" of Computers the Future? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, I was going to mention this. It died pretty quickly. The problem was that applications often require certain components to be faster/better (your application may be MMC1, except you needed 8MB of RAM so you were stuck with the MMC3 designation). People who had computers that would run your software (and otherwise generate a sale) were scared away because they only had a 2xCD-ROM (leaving them at the MMC2 level). I think the hardware also changed too fast for the MMC guys to keep up (especially when 3D video cards/games started appearing on the market).

  23. Re:obligatory: on Samsung Demos Future Memory Chips · · Score: 1

    Lucky thing most of that non-8 bit hardware is not hooked up to the internet. I mean when was the last time you actually used a PDP-9? It's not easy to keep those old dinosaurs working these days since replacement parts are getting extremely hard to find.

  24. Re:Le *sigh* on Nintendo DS to Launch November 21 · · Score: 1

    I remember that. I was young at the time though, I could never tell if I was actually winning or not. It seemed like I could "run" the little sprite down to the endzone fairly well, but there were other things the game wanted to do (field goals for instance) that I never really understood. It might have helped if we hadn't picked it up in a garage sale with all of the stickers pulled off and no manual. The three buttons on the left (up, down, and left/right) seemed pretty straightforward, but there buttons on the right that I never really understood. It might have helped if I knew the rules of football back then...

  25. Re:This has been used internally for years on AOL Moves Beyond Single Passwords for Log-Ons · · Score: 1

    I did see the ones that were like a little pocket calculator with buttons that you entered in your pin with to get the key. They looked a little flimsy. The ones that fit (kinda) on your keychain are the ones I was talking about though. When my old one expired, they told me to just toss it in the trash. Well, being the geek that I am I decided to take it apart first before tossing it. The thing is pretty much encased in a solid shell of tough plastic. It's really hard to get down to the chips when you try to take it apart.

    Oh, and the new one came with a nice little leather case that should keep the plastic from getting too scratched up.