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User: Epistax

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Comments · 1,093

  1. Re:Things of the past on Nanoloop: GameBoy Advance Hard Disk Recording · · Score: 1

    Everything will turn into a megadevice so expensive that only the government will be able to afford it. One will be given to each baby at birth. Unfortunately a large portion of the population will eat their device before they know better. This will be the new lower class.

    I just hurt myself.

  2. Re:So Ridiculous on TiVo to Sell Your Fast-Forward Button · · Score: 1

    I think most advertising is ridiculous anyway. Every ad I have ever seen which hasn't influenced my decision about a product has been wasted money. By this point in my life that's been thousands of dollars, multiplied by the number of people that saw the ad, hundreds of billions of dollars. I don't know about you but most of the decisions I make about products is not based on air time bought by a corporation. A friend's referral is almost certainly #1, and I very often refer friends to things. I sometimes see a commercial and think "That's a good commercial", but I just don't care about the product.

    Overall I think commercialism is a giant sham. It inflates the price of what you want to buy with the benefit of showing you things you don't want to buy with shiny lights. Advertising is so expensive that a product in any market could survive on the basis that it doesn't advertise, but costs considerably less than the competition. People will randomly try the product after happening to notice it. If it's up to the quality of the competition, they will refer other people to the product.

    Another group of commercials are those that try to convince people that they want something that they simply don't. This is just a downfall of capitalism to which I don't have anything to say.

  3. Re:Speed isn't the main reason for PCI-Express on Reviews Arrive For nVidia GeForce 6600GT AGP · · Score: 1

    I gotta say what you really want is HyperTransport.

    But I guess an improvement is still an improvement.

  4. Re:upgrades are stupid and pointless on Fedora Core 3: Worth The Upgrade? · · Score: 1

    I am really testing Fedora for the first time. FC3 is my first shot at it. The impression I have so far is that I can't edit it much without a whole lot more knowledge of Fedora specifically.

    There is no control center / panel. Instead there are three disjointed, partial lists of configuration programs (Preferences, System Settings, System Tools).
    If you want to change your window manager (to say Ice) and you're no expert, you're out of luck-- it's not there.
    Or if you want a software respository. We use yum. It comes completely unconfigured and operates on the command line. I needed to search through several forums to get all the configuration files correct. It works alright now but the "Add/Remove Applications" in my opinion is broken as it only lets you add applications from the installation CDs locally. I installed via ftp.
    There are other annoying things like "Disk Management" control will simply die on launch if you aren't logged in as root. All the other controls ask for a root password at launch. Apparently this wasn't good enough for them.

    I must say though, this is the first linux installation I've ever done where every piece of hardware was recognized. I do need to question the sanity of not including nvidia drivers in the releases themselves. Either it's against nvidia's license or they're idiots. Setting the default run level in inittab, rebooting, installing the nvidia drivers, resetting the runlevel in inittab, rebooting is the method that was referred to me. Not amusing.

  5. Re:Size? on Fedora Core 3: Worth The Upgrade? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually you can do an http or ftp install from just the boot image which is about five megs. That's how I installed it. I don't see a reason to download several gigs of things I don't use, such as emacs.

  6. Re:Repeat after me on Hitchhikers Movie Update · · Score: 1

    Your argument would be perfectly valid if the Heart of Gold wasn't a blueberry, but it is, so it isn't.

  7. Re:To Bad for the sonic Boom. on NASA to Attempt Mach 10 Flight Next Week · · Score: 1

    Maybe s/he is saying there should be an end to the means. If this is military or commercial research, it is silly. If it is research for the sake of research, I certainly can't object to the premise, although I'd look for better ways to spend the money.

    Let's find a way to get a Boeing 777-sized across the Atlantic on half the fuel it uses now. Then we'll talk about silly speeds, ok? Can the ramjet be used to improve fuel efficiency? If so, why is this our test?

  8. Re:Power architecture does well on Earth Simulator, G5 Cluster Drop In 'Top 500' List · · Score: 1

    Well the thing is any system could be at any position on the list. These aren't the computer makers competing, it's the computer buyers. You want the fastest computer in the world? Fine, pick a processor. To say any particular vendor has any particular spot is to say that vendor was chosen, and really nothing more. I'm sure anyone could beat the top spot by 20% if they received the order.

  9. Re:Convergence isn't a bad thing! on Megapixel Cameraphones Compared · · Score: 1

    I take the avenue that if the service providing companies don't lose as much money on the cell phones, I won't be over charged as much in these invented "fees". Of course there is still the issue that adding new features gives cell phone companies an excuse not to fix the old ones. I personally would never want a camera phone but it looks like I might have no choice in the near future. My current phone lasts about a week and a half on a battery charge, but it looks like whatever my next one is won't last a week.

    There are features I think actually would be useful in a cell phone. Put in a little IR port or a usb port and give it some storage. Then let me record audio on it. Writing notes on my phone while walking around is damn annoying if not impossible but a brief audio message would do fine. Sure, that would up the price of the phone, but not nearly as much as a digital camera.

  10. Re:Sure, but on Programmers Hold Funerals for Old Code · · Score: 5, Funny

    A pet has more of a soul than any anonymous coward.

  11. Letter to MPAA and RIAA on Movie Industry to sue File Sharers · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Dear Sirs:

    If you sell your music CDs and movie tickets for $5, I will stop trading them illegally.

    Signed,
    Epistax

  12. Re:Oh, shove a sock in it. on Kerry Concedes Election To Bush · · Score: 1

    We know we're not smart, no one is. However, some are smarter. I actually believe conservatism such as the kind we are experiencing in America is an illness and if it continues to grip the country we'll be ruined.

  13. Re: Patriot Act, Bush, etc. on How has the USA PATRIOT Act Affected You? · · Score: 1

    I'm an American who is deeply disappointed that more people can't see past the B.S. that is corporate capitalism.

  14. Re:Evolution vs. Creationism on The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism · · Score: 1

    Move them into another climate where they need to become smaller because the ground is too tough for them to borough, however another small animal in that climate is able and the rats can steal their homes. Then move them to a climate where their teeth and stomach are no longer able to consume most of the food. Then move them to a climate that has wildly different summer / winter temperatures.

    Our rat is now black, smaller, different teeth, different digestive system, grows a thick coat in the winter and sheds it in the summer (er if they do not already--I confess I know little about rats). Add a few more to give it a poofy tail and a purple nose. Heck let's put it on an isolated island that is slowly sinking, say, an inch every thousand years and watch it evolve to swim and eventually live totally in the water. As I said, I gave a most simple example.

    As for sexual evolution perhaps one will be born with a boney head and the chicks find it irresistible. Several generations later we have them knocking horns for dates. Some rats, huh. Sorry it's not a ferret--you'd be hard pressed to exactly duplicate the conditions that changed one animal into another and even if you do, it's kind of random as to what change takes off. All that matters is that it works.

  15. Re:Evolution vs. Creationism on The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism · · Score: 1

    I don't understand how anyone can really completely dismiss evolution. It can be demonstrated very easily.

    Get a bunch of rats, white ones and black ones. Let'm have fun for a few months.
    Remove every black rat. The white rats will have black babies. Remove them before they can mate.
    Keep this up for a year.
    The white rats aren't having nearly as many babies. Keep it up and they won't have any.

    Let's say that there's been a climate shift and a once arboreal region is now frozen tundra. The black rats are easily seen by predators and so are eaten. The white rats live to mate. This is all evolution is (in it's most simple form--removing a trait). To not believe in evolution is to not believe in heredity. If you believe in heredity but not evolution (aka survival of the fittest, sexual evolution) I'd love to hear you make your case.

    Now if your argument is against adding a trait (mutations, etc) then you already didn't completely dismiss evolution and so I don't think you're stupid ;)

  16. Re:Worldwide results on The Votemaster Is...Andrew Tanenbaum · · Score: 1

    Yes, I am interested in knowing what the 95% of the world thinks about our election. I trust the average European to know the facts far more than the average American. You say we by and large hate the French president. I doubt one in ten even knows his name. Taking a one issue opinion on somewhat might as well be bigotry. They are perfectly entitled to their stance so we are ours, however our stance is wrong. Who am I to say this? I am a person who likes to think they have free speech. No twisting of my words can demean that. I am really really sick of twisted bigoted Americans--which I have to see everyday. Get a damn clue.

  17. Re:Will they ever beat intel on New Intel Chipset and Extreme Edition CPU Tested · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Long pipelines have a few bad side effects. Of those directly impacting performance: longer latency, worse branch miss penalty.

    Now for the first one I will tell you: You do not care how latent (that is, laggy?) your processor is, as long as it is not extremely high. A lack of throughput is what slows down an application, not how long any individual instruction takes to go through the processor. This may change with multi-processor systems where something as fast as the processor (another processor) is active, but not in a conventional system. You want latency? Check out main memory.

    Now the branch miss penalty is a bigger issue. The 20 stage P4 has a 19 cycle branch miss penalty meaning that if there's a branch and it guesses incorrectly, it will lose 19 cycles worth of work. What you need to take into account is that the P4 has one of the best branch predictors ever. The P3 is 10 stages, the P4 (pre-Prescott) is 20 stages with a 30% (this is what Intel says) better branch predictor, and of course a much faster clock. The P3 would not be able to run at the faster clock time (that's the advantage of pipelining).

    The other side effects of many pipeline stages include a core size increase therefore a lower yield therefore a higher cost and longer design and redesign time, and more power consumption / heat dissipation therefore clock limited. That last one is the kicker at Intel right now. The Pentium M is Intel's rising (albeit embarrassing) star. All I know about the Pentium M's pipeline is that it is "between 10 and 20", unless Intel has said anything new.

    So I don't mean to say you're wrong, just it's not so simple. There are plenty of factors playing a roll. There may be a sweet spot in number of stages which has been exceeded, although I don't think there will ever bee a stable number.

  18. Re:Will it support on Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC1 · · Score: 1

    It's entirely slashdot's fault. No, really.

  19. Re:Don't think so on Hypo-Allergenic Cats Now Available for Pre-Order · · Score: 1

    There's one company where one division markets cigarettes to minors. The other division fills my omelets which cheesy goodness. I don't think either is at all capable of doing both.

  20. Re:Confused on Brazil Successfully Launches Its First Rocket To Space · · Score: 1

    The Earth is taller than it is wide, that is, the circumference is less along the equator than pole to pole. What this is means is there is more stuff underneath you the closer you are to a pole, so gravity is higher. It's actually enough to be measured by a conventional scale. At a pole, Earth's gravity pulls at 9.83 m/s^2. At the equator it pulls at 9.78 m/s^2.
    This isn't the only reason, however.

  21. Re:Macintosh = The Industries Retarded Son on Macs Do Star Wars Dirty Work · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well you see back when Mac and PC were growing up (they are brothers) PC would always be studying his math and science for school. Mac played with dolls. We discouraged this, but he'd just started kicking and screaming if we gave him a math problem. One day he found art and worked feverishly on it. It was the day of the big art show and Mac had his favorite painting on display. Unfortunately on a whim PC had decided to draw a picture the night before and it was just as good as Mac's, despite all the effort.

    It's ok though, because Mac is special.

  22. Jar Jar Binks... on Macs Do Star Wars Dirty Work · · Score: -1

    just wouldn't be the same shade of green on a PC.

  23. This is awesome on Shatner Aims for Real 'Star Trek' · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think everyone, including Shatner, who sings like Shatner, should go in to space.

    Oh they're bringing him back? Darn.

  24. Re:Hate to remove your blinders on Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire · · Score: 1

    A government run health care system is bad because it pushes the decisions away from doctors and patients. It lowers the quality because it lowers the competition between doctors if they're going to get paid the same anyway. And you say I have the choice not to take it if I feel it's rubbish? Yes I do! But my taxes still pay for it. That is how it hurts me.
    First, even if the employee chooses this system (which you imply) they still choose their doctor. This increases the competition, actually, because it forces the HMOs to compete with whatever the government is offering. This is sort of like how the federal reserve and interest rates work. Also, in the "worst case scenario: where you never get sick and everyone else gets sick, it can be shown that it is economically better for you to help pay for everyone else. That's just a fact (sorry I don't have the numbers available). It's the same with paying for other people's education. You are better off economically helping out.

    Yes they do! Small businesses pay taxes similar to the regular guy. Taxing them means they have to lay off people. Lessening taxes means they might be able to hire somebody. I don't know about you, but I think someone having a job is better than someone on welfare.
    You completely ignored what I wrote. Ok the numerious tax cuts we have for business are almost wholely one-industry or even one-business will get the cut due to the restrictions they put on it. Small businesses don't see these tax cuts. This means that pulling back on them do not effect the small business. That last bit "I don't know about you, but I think someone having a job is better than someone on welfare." is a "spin". I suggest you avoid them.

    Alright, I feel gay marriage should be allowed. I think it's a right for everybody. However, Bush never said homosexuality is immoral. You're spreading a lie to promote the second part of your statement.
    For a health panel Bush chose Jerry Thacher, who calls AIDs the "gay plague". What you need to look at is what Bush actually does, not whose hand he is shaking for a camera or what he claims to believe. What else do you call a constitutional amendment limiting the freedoms of one particular group? If he doesn't think it's immoral, he is at least bigoted.

    When you call it the "coalition of the coerced", yes, that does demean them.
    Poland, the most obvious choice, has admitted to doing it just for the oil. The other countries fell in line for sake of relations. I think coerced is a good word.

    I think we need to stop being political about politics. Everything thinks this is just a game and it's really pissy. You throw that Chrstopher Reeve thing on (surprised you didn't bring up the Cheney's daughter remark) but you've got to realize: those are just words. They are non-issues. I don't think that either thing should have been mentioned, but it has no bearing. Notice I don't call someone on what they are saying, but instead what they are doing. When a president runs for a second term, the election is not about one guy versus the other. The first question is: do you like where the country has gone in the past four years. If not, the second question is: who would you like for the next four years. The media transformed this into an A or B category but it's not that at all. Negatively attacking Kerry doesn't improve Bush's record.

  25. Re:Hate to remove your blinders on Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire · · Score: 1

    The republicans are on a massive blitz of taking things out of context. That makes them easy targets. Describing Saddam Hussein as the biggest threat in the world is a flat out lie, and John called him on that in a very funny way (for instance).

    I mean seriously, just look at the republican arguments.
    * John Kerry's health care will hurt X. No, it's a completely optional choice to compete with existing HMO options. Don't want it don't touch it. The republicans lied.
    * Taxes / minimum wage hurts small businesses. No, tax increases for businesses come in the form of removing tax breaks. 97 of the forbes top 100 companies ended up with a tax bill of $0 in (I believe) 2002. Minimum wage can be capped by business size, such as exempt businesses with under 10 employees. At least one state already has this model for minimum wage so that small businesses aren't affected (capped at 5). The republicans certainly mislead there, although not a flat out lie.
    * You cannot be both against the war and support the continuation of it. Sorry, this is simply a giant lie.
    * Gays are immoral, marriage has sanctity. Marriage is a religious institution whose word was exported to the general public. As a religious thing it can stay as hateful as it wishes. You can go back to banning interracial too. As for the government (socioeconomic) aspect of "marriage" (civil-union) and form of restriction is completely against the law. Republicans act that there is no difference between the religious and socioeconomic aspects and so they are lying about it.
    * Criticizing our lack of a proper coalition demeans those who support. What the hell crawled up their ass to say this? Complete lie. Not enough people vote. I'm not demeaning everyone who actually does.

    I'm sorry I can't keep going because it really pisses me off that people actually believe this when their told it enough.