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Comments · 277

  1. Re:The text in a readable format on Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice · · Score: 1
  2. Re:MS is hurting on Media Loves Apple and Its Army of Fans · · Score: 1

    I still haven't found a player for my Mac (or Linux laptop) that can run songs/movies at double speed without making everyone sound like chipmunks.

    MPlayer can supposedly do it, though I haven't tried.

    mplayer -speed 2 -af scaletempo foo.avi

  3. Re:Dear US Government on US Tests System To Evade Foreign Web Censorship · · Score: 1

    It's the great firewall of America, duh.

  4. More science questions on Parents Baffled By Science Questions · · Score: 1

    How is babby formed? how girl get pragnent?

  5. Re:In other news... on SMS Hack Could Make iPhones Vulnerable · · Score: 0, Troll

    -1, Troll, I assume?

  6. Re:and yet NYC still has traffic jams on Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams · · Score: 1
    Your father probably could have beat that ticket. PA Title 75, 3368(c)(4) says,

    No person may be convicted upon evidence obtained through the use of devices authorized by paragraphs (2) and (3) unless the speed recorded is six or more miles per hour in excess of the legal speed limit. Furthermore, no person may be convicted upon evidence obtained through the use of devices authorized by paragraph (3) in an area where the legal speed limit is less than 55 miles per hour if the speed recorded is less than ten miles per hour in excess of the legal speed limit. This paragraph shall not apply to evidence obtained through the use of devices authorized by paragraph (2) or (3) within a school zone or an active work zone.

    Paragraph (2) refers to radar, and paragraph (3) refers to timing a car between two points. Strangely, this doesn't seem to cover a cop pacing you and looking at his speedometer. Also, I think that if you admit to speeding, you can still be convicted regardless of the above.

  7. Re:Harshness is all about color temperature on CFLs Causing Utility Woes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to Wikipedia, heat pumps are often 300-400% efficient, compared to 100% for resistive heating. This means that a heat pump could add 3-4 Joules of heat to your house while only taking 1 Joule of electric energy from the grid (most of the heat comes from the outside air, the rest from resistive heating, etc.).

    OTOH, a resistive heater adds 1 Joule of heat by consuming 1 Joule from the grid (minus a smidge lost in your outside wiring).

  8. Re:In Soviet Russia... on Raytheon Exoskeleton Brings "Iron Man" to Life · · Score: 1

    No, that would be an endoskeleton.

  9. Re:Did any of you actually believe they would be ? on Lawyer Thinks Microsoft Can Evade GPL 3 · · Score: 1

    I agree, that's a more accurate summary.

  10. Re:Did any of you actually believe they would be ? on Lawyer Thinks Microsoft Can Evade GPL 3 · · Score: 1

    No. The recommended license notice for GPL2 is in part:

    "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

    The "your option" text means the receiver of the software chooses which license to abide by, not the author(s).

  11. Re:Like this matters on Sony and Universal Prohibit Sharing Via Zune · · Score: 1

    Squirting a satellite sounds like a superhuman feat. Squirting a "handheld device" sounds, umm, less impressive.

  12. Synfig on Efficient 2D Animation Software? · · Score: 5, Informative

    I haven't used it, but Synfig's capabilities look similar to Moho. Synfig is Free software.

  13. Re:Atheist Symbols? on Craigslist Sued For Violating Fair Housing Laws · · Score: 1

    Actually, the comment prompted me to look for one. All I found was this. I must admit, the idea seems a bit silly.

  14. Re:Measurements I have made on Searchable C/C++ DB surpasses 275 million lines · · Score: 1

    At first I thought it was a dead pixel, can't have that! But I see your point, literally and figuratively ;). I had to use a mirror to read it myself. Even if one draws a thick line of constant color between the two squares, it still looks like the line is a smooth gradient between different intensities.

  15. Re:Measurements I have made on Searchable C/C++ DB surpasses 275 million lines · · Score: 1

    Is there a reason why the caption of Figure 0.19 is mirrored, upside down, and has its period in the right margin? That's some right fancy formatting you've got in that document! (only half-joking)

  16. Re:IANAE on Used Microsoft Licenses For Sale · · Score: 1
    Witness books - do you know any college students who plan to sell their used texbooks? ask them if they would have bought them if they knew the couldn't sell them back.

    My guess would be yes. College students are lucky to recoup a third of their costs by selling back books, at least to the on-campus repurchasers. Often the repurchasers will only take the first so many copies of a given book, and those at a steep discount. And if it's not being used next semester or there's a new edition coming out, fuggitaboutit. So no, students don't "know" that they won't be able to sell a given book back, but they know it's quite possible, perhaps even likely. Students know they might get screwed, but they buy books anyway.
  17. Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin on Microsoft's Unique Innovation · · Score: 1

    Tang is nasty powdered orange drink mix. Supposedly drunk by astronauts. link.

  18. Re:UN Agreement on Human Rights on Finland Adopts New Copyright Legislation · · Score: 2, Informative

    Careful about telling people to read the whole document. They may flip out about Article 29(3): "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." Seriously, there was a lot of discussion about this in a previous story about the UN. WIPO, part of the UN, seems partial to DRM, so would Article 29 come into effect?

  19. Re:Nuclear Fusion on Linux Five Years Away From Mainstream · · Score: 1

    Supurbly put.

  20. Re:Sorry...I'm not seeing it. on Top 8 Reasons HCI is in its Stone Age · · Score: 1
    Hmm, although I agree that effective computer use often requires critical thinking, I'm unconvinced that your example, uh, exemplifies that.
    quaternion:/tmp$ mutt -s 'Can You See This?' -a `mogrify -geometry '50%' -rotate '90<' foo.jpg`
    mutt: option requires an argument -- a
    Point being, critical thinking can lead one to use the GUI even when the CLI is capable. Unless you already know the options to "mogrify" by heart, it's more efficient to just do what the author suggests as method A (though I don't see where the mouse drags come in). I know for me it would take at least a couple minutes to scan for relevant options in the man pages for mutt and mogrify, which has an overabundance of options. Batch conversion is a different story, of course. The point-and-drool interface makes (at least some) easy things easy, even if it makes hard things maddening.
  21. Re:Er, uh on Linux Trademark Protection In Australia · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think we can be pretty sure Linux infringes on hundreds of patents. Just like every other nontrivial program. Supposedly OSRM will tell you which ones if you ask, although they do have a vested interest in saying Linux infringes. But the famous setuid bit patent is one concrete example, albeit expired. Whether the patents "could lead to further litigation" is a different question.

  22. Re:Student's and Instructor's POV on Clickers Redefining Classrooms · · Score: 1

    Perhaps instead of asking students to click in their answers to multiple-choice questions, the clickers should have three buttons which students can push at any time: "interested", "bored", and "WTF?". The results could be displayed in realtime to let the instructor gauge the audience's engagement. Now that I would actually be interested in using as a student.

  23. Re:Assumption is wrong on Amazon's 1,082-volume Classics Collection: $7,989 · · Score: 1

    1082 books would appear to be about 0.00003731 Libraries of Congress!

  24. Re:Flash sucks for this. on Samsung Announces Flash-Based Disk Drive · · Score: 1
    What I would like, though, would be to mount the free part of the video RAM as a hard-drive backed file system. You could put a swap on that one and actually get better performance in the end, althouth only for a few (hundred) MBs.

    This may be possible in Linux.
  25. Re:It just won't work on Microsoft's New Mantra - It Just Works · · Score: 1

    Please provide a reference that windows can symlink or hardlink a file, as opposed to a directory.