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User: hackwrench

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  1. Re:MEAN time between failures, what does that MEAN on Intel Stomps Into Flash Memory · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That makes about as much sense as declaring that they tested 5 million of them for 1 hour and only one of them failed.

  2. Re:MTBF on Intel Stomps Into Flash Memory · · Score: 1

    Where did you get the idea that he didn't want his pen drive to last 2 1/2 times longer? We get lied to so much that it's reasonable to be skeptical. Why are you trying to attribute ulterior motives to his skepticism?

  3. Re:I've got a bad feeling about this on Star Trek To Return Christmas 2008 · · Score: 1

    No Enterprise was worst for the very basic reason that it didn't stick to it's premise. If you say you are going to do a show that is historical to an established timeline, you don't then go making time travel, an advanced concept in the time line, the major feature in the show. And if you do go making time travel a feature, you need to include more perspective from those people sitting in the future. Enterprise got back on track in the last season, but apparently by then it was too late. Voyager did suffer from the "We can't let them get back in the Alpha quadrant too soon so lets have them make bad decisions or experience nonsensical incompatibilities" issue though. I didn't realize how proprietary "Federation technology" really was. Looking at Voyager, I don't know how they ever got that Cardassian technology working again on DS9.

  4. Indeterminancy on Pthreads vs Win32 threads · · Score: 1

    This is what Shrodinger's cat looks like before the waveform collapses, though once the superposition collapses, all statements made based on that superposition may collapse along with it.

  5. Generalizing on Pthreads vs Win32 threads · · Score: 1

    So how would you suggest generalizing orders from a government to orders from a corporation?

  6. Re:One-Click? on Amazon Using Patent Reform to Strengthen 1-Click · · Score: 1

    They never do explain properly to customers what "1-click" is. I never use it. I keep thinking it would skip steps 2-5 and who wants that?

  7. Re:They aren't out of touch, they're out of time.. on U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter if there are new works that wouldn't get made without copyright if the total available works go down due to the fact that older works keep getting locked up in a vault and no copies can be made due to those copyright laws. If we could be satisfied by currently existing works it wouldn't matter if no new works were made.

  8. Re:No, because... on Apple, the New Microsoft? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only in the same sense that being part of a solution to a problem is less relevant than being the actual problem.

  9. Alberto Gonzales is right on that one point. on US Attorney General Questions Habeas Corpus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But he comes to the exact opposite conclusion one should come to. The constitution doesn't grant rights, it merely protects them. The original writers of the Constitution didn't want a Bill of rights for the very reason that people would get to thinking that the Constitution grants rights.
    Search: "The constitution doesn't grant rights

  10. Dictionary definition of supernatural. on ABC/Disney Shuts Down Blog Exercising Fair Use · · Score: 1
    Except the dictionary definition doesn't stop there
    2. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.
    3. of a superlative degree; preternatural: a missile of supernatural speed.
    4. of, pertaining to, or attributed to ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings; eerie; occult.
    None of which are dependent on definition 1. Also. why does "unexplainable by natural law" have to equate to "unobservable" which is present in the wikipedia version but absent in the dictionary.com version. It depends on who gets to draw the line between "natural" and something else.
  11. Re:Cairo vs NT/Cairo on Vista vs. Cairo - A Microsoft History Lesson · · Score: 1

    I'm 30 and think the Microsoft code name, though I don't bind it so tightly to NT partially on account of the interface shipping with 95, and the object filesystem a no go.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(operating_syst em)

  12. Accounting for progress... on China Readies Royalty-Free DVD Format · · Score: 1

    Let me ask you this: would you rather have a $1000 debt, $100 other expenditures a month and $110 in income or $500 debt, $100 other expenditures and $95 a month?

  13. Re:Anti-Network Neutrality ad. on HR 5252 Bill Dies · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unfortunately, the ad has actually been airing, and I think that there are people uneducated and prone to just follow to buy into it.

  14. Re:Likely on BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias · · Score: 1

    Then how do you propose measuring the health of the scientific community? I can't tell if all the "confirmation experiments" aren't just following the steps of a person teaching them how he deluded himself. To put it another way, I can't tell if they are actually measuring what they claim to be measuring or some aspect of the device they are using to do the measuring with. Of course they are going to get the same results if in fact they are measuring parts of the devices that are calibrated to be the same.

  15. RE:Likely on BBC Wants Evidence of Climate Science Bias · · Score: 1

    if your one experiment flies in the face of well-established existing theory, is it mor1e likely that (a) you've discovered a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research, or (b) your findings were a Type I error? It depends on the health of the scientific community. I see so much confusion in what gets passed to the public that I can't be sure that the scientific community is in any great amount of health and that raises the likelihood that a fundamental flaw with an enormous body of research has been discovered.

  16. Pure chance on The Dolphin With Leftover Legs · · Score: 1

    Except when it comes to natural selection the trigger event always seems to be assumed to have come about by the same pure chance as the mutation is assumed to be.

  17. There are two different types of control on US Citizens To Require ''Clearance'' To Leave? · · Score: 1

    There are two different types of control. When controlling an airplane, for example, you can fly by using signals provided by sight and ATC, or you can control an airplane by putting it in a hangar, posting guards and putting fences around it. I can use as much of the former type of control as I can get, and want as little to do with the latter as I can have. Unfortunately this proposal seems to be of the latter form of control.

  18. Answering the original question, sort of... on Taking Your Programming Skills to the Next Level? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know about books per se, but these links help:
    http://joel.reddit.com/
    http://programming.reddit.com/
    The design patterns book website with, as I understand it most if not all of the content for the book:
    http://lci.cs.ubbcluj.ro/~raduking/Books/Design%20 Patterns/

    The next three I keep the bookmarks to in a folder called "Practicing programming:
    http://www.devblog3000.com/archives/2-Practicing-P rogramming.html
    http://butunclebob.com/
    http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/publishedArt icles.html

  19. What's supposed to happen and what does happen on Laptops Searched and Confiscated at U.S. Border · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's supposed to happen and what does happen are two different things. What processes are in place to ensure that is what happens?

  20. Re:Instant Messengers on What's Different About Vista's GUI? · · Score: 1

    I use MSN and AIM to contact various people and recently they've decided that, no they don't want to stay in the system tray and I need to see their little control stripes every time I start up. And MSN Messenger insists on displaying all the contacts I added with Hotmail whether I IM them or not. I figure if I delete them in Messenger, they get deleted in Hotmail as well, as I didn't import them.

  21. Re:Nuh uhhhh, Picard * on Star Trek XI - What We Know · · Score: 1

    # Picard was actually in his own show's pilot episode.
    ...where he managed to parlay a harshly worded threat into a trial because he wanted to lecture Q instead of trying to figure out what he was going on about.

  22. Re:I Feel so much safer on US Outlaws Online Gambling · · Score: 1

    Apparently those nanites from Doctor Who in WWII are still about and they still haven't quite given up on that "Mummy" theme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctor_Dances

  23. Re:Reasonable person on Students Protest Turnitin.com · · Score: 1

    Ah, well that explains that then. I am not a reasonable person as anyone would tell you, a reasonable person adjusts themselves to the situation, while an unreasonable person adjusts the situation to fit them. Thus all progress depends on unreasonable people, such as myself.

  24. Adding all papers it encounters is a massive flaw on Students Protest Turnitin.com · · Score: 1

    What if you wrote a paper wanted to turn the same paper or a somewhat improved version in to a later class? If TurnItIn automatically adds it to the database, it will mark it as fraudulant, even though it was all yours. It also opens the door for cheaters to claim that's what happened to them.

  25. Effort on controller? Solution cleaning! on Twilight Princess Mirrored on Wii · · Score: 1

    Open up the controller and scrape the black residue from the d-pad off the metal contacts and it will work much better. Goes for both NES and SNES controllers.