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User: penguinstorm

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  1. So this has to be troll bait on Ask Slashdot: Suitable Phone For a 4-Year Old? · · Score: 0

    This is fake. It has to be fake. It it's not fake, the authorities should be visiting your house.

    > because he's got other things to do, i

    Really? His days are booked? All those board meetings are interfering with, you know, BEING A FOUR YEAR OLD.

    No four year old should have their own mobile phone. Not one.

  2. as it turns out... on Myst Was Supposed To Change the Face of Gaming. What Is Its Legacy? · · Score: 3

    because for teenage boys shooting things and blowing stuff up is a lot more fun over the long hall

  3. Re:Who Cares? on New Documents Detail FBI, Bank Crack Down On Occupy Wall Street · · Score: 2

    What the hell does an "astroturf movement" mean?

  4. Television... on Syfy Reality Show Will Feature Giant Boxing Robots · · Score: 1

    has achieved the ultimate expression of the medium. People are no longer relevant to the process.

  5. Re:Follow the money on New York Plans World's Largest Ferris Wheel · · Score: 1

    If you define "a good 30 minutes" as "quite some time" I shudder for the future of your attention span.

  6. Re:Why? on New York Plans World's Largest Ferris Wheel · · Score: 1

    > I can't see flying to Idaho just to ride this

    Seriously dude, every word in that sentence after Idaho is 100% redundant.

    (I jest. I jest. It's a lovely state with some very nice $69 a night hotels.)

  7. Re:Why? on New York Plans World's Largest Ferris Wheel · · Score: 1

    It's not that every part of New York has to become a tourist/terrorist trap: it just has to become a way to part people from their money.

  8. Re:Oh, crap, it's a wiki on WTFM: Write the Freaking Manual · · Score: 1

    A Wiki isn't an inherently bad or good form of documentation: like a light saber, its power can be used for good or evil.

    If it's properly maintained and _key documents are managed and controlled_ it works well.

  9. Google is Evil on Google Could Face Heavy Antitrust Fines In the EU · · Score: -1, Troll

    I, for one, welcome our new European overlords if they actually prove effective at punishing Google for their transgressions and regulating them into compliance.

  10. Dreamweaver is an abomination on Ask Slashdot: Value of Website Design Tools vs. Hand Coding? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see Dreamweaver code, I expect nothing but pain.

    I like Panic's Coda, which is more of a web project oriented IDE than a Design Tool.

  11. Who the eff cares? on San Francisco To Stop Buying Apple Computers · · Score: 0

    Seriously? Are people around the world basing their IT decisions on what the City of San Francisco does? Does the City of San Francisco's hardware purchases make a significant impact on Apple's bottom line?

    What a waste of bandwidth.

  12. Re:Rewarding people for helping us on Anger With Game Content Lock Spurs Reaction From Studio Head Curt Shilling · · Score: 1

    Sure, dummy. The issue is a debate over what constitutes "equal value." He certainly doesn't have an obligation to give you a product that you can resell. Video games aren't generally purchased with resale value in mind.

    In the case of a car the situation is a bit different: there's an expectation that a car should have a certain residual value at the end of its first owner's period of use. It's the norm.

    If you think the game is overpriced, don't buy it. He's entitled to charge what he wants and structure pricing how he wants. If it puts him out of business, it's the circle of life.

  13. Re:I'm not changing to IPv6 on a specific date... on June 6 Is World IPv6 Day 2012: This Time For Keeps · · Score: 2

    Viva la revoluzione, my friend but seriously...are you going to hold out forever?

  14. Re:You know what they're doing... on RIM's Playbook On Clearance · · Score: 1

    Others have pointed out how stupid what you've said is, so I won't. I *could* be generous and suggest that you *meant* they'd make it up in volume selling apps and accessories, but hey...why bother?

    I'm not sure how even that arguably viable strategy would as "very smart" this late in the game. It's popularly compared to the Video Game Console sales strategy, and it can work but frankly this product has failed and the market is ignoring it that this would be like introducing an Atari 2600 into today's market and expecting consumers to buy it and the software to go with it.

    The Playbook is dead. RIM will follow it in 2013.

  15. Re:Why does this CarrierIQ stuff matter anyway? on Carrier IQ Software May Be in iOS, Too · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When was the last time you got any useful technical support from a cell phone carrier? Those guys play a classic game of passing the buck, blaming your handset (which they didn't make) interference (which they can't control) and anything else that's not the service they provide.

    The notion that some Level 42 World of Warcraft Paladin who spends his days providing tech support for a cell carrier:
    1) Has access to any useful information that relates directly to your handset,
    2) Has the analytical skills to determine its meaning without rolling a 20 sided die
    is patently ridiculous. They'd at best have access to your current outstanding balance.

    North Americans need to stop buying handsets from manufacturers: start buying unlocked, carrier independent handsets and you'll change the industry. As long as over 90% of us are committing to contracts that are longer than the average length of time your phone lasts, the oligarchy that is the North American cell phone industry can do whatever it wants.

  16. Re:Canon or Nikon on Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The G series is f2.8 which is as fast as most of my good quality glass for the 5d. The zoom that comes with your crap-tastic budget SLR is probably a 4.5 - 5.6.

    The S95/s100 is f2.0 which is fast.

    Add to that the fact that there's no mirror-slap to introduce vibration, and you're going to have an easier time getting steady shots with a point and shoot. You still have to be careful, but I can reliably hand hold my s95 down to 1/8s shutter speed at every zoom length. I can do that with my 20mm f2.8 on the 5d, but not my 200mm f2.8 + 2x teleconverter (which makes a very light and sharp 400mm f5.6.)

    I'm not saying I'm calling bullshit on your post, I'm just calling bullshit.

    Also: I'd throw my 3200ASA concert photography from my 5d up against your shitty crop-sensor medium ISO shots and win any day for lower noise at all but the most insane enlargements. If you're going to spend all your time looking at photos through a loupe well, godspeed you black emperor.

  17. Re:Canon or Nikon on Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography? · · Score: 2

    Sorry about that Nikon there. Your wife seems like a nice lady though :)

    Honestly, just to put my two cents in on a topic that's probably already com up: Nikon, Canon...who cares. I shoot Canon because I've shot canon for my entire life because my grandfather shot Canon. Shoot what you can borrow lenses for.

    I do think Canon's all electronic and physically larger lens mount is better, but not at a level which would impact 99% of the people who own one. (Including, incidentally, me.)

  18. Re:Canon or Nikon on Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Canon G12 or whatever the most recent iteration of it is.

    I normally shoot with a Canon 5d MkII and owned a G11 before when I was still shooting--shocking!--film, up until last year. Honestly, the average person couldn't tell the difference between the shots I took with the G11 and the 5d from a *quality* perspective. (I swapped for an S95 when I bought my 5d, purely for the smaller size.)

    There are differences to be sure, and work I do with the 5d that could NOT be done with the G cameras. The most notable difference is the greater depth of field afforded by the full frame sensor and how I use it, but from an "I'm just taking pictures..." perspective the Gs are excellent and you can exert as much or as little control as you want with shutter and aperture priority modes.

    MOST and by MOST I mean ALMOST ALL people who buy a Rebel wind up shooting with the kit zoom anyway. It's a crappy, slow lens and I'd argue that MOST people would be better off shooting with a G--which is also free from the dust on the senor problem--seeing if they like it and then deciding to move to a Rebel or a 60d or a 7d or whatever suits their budget.

    You'll carry the G much more than you'll carry a rebel. Though it's not tiny, it's noticeably tinier.

  19. Ah! The Thread! on Anne McCaffrey Passes Away At 85 · · Score: 1

    Wheel and turn
    Or bleed and burn.
    Fly between,
    Blue and green.
    Soar, dive down,
    Bronze and brown
    Dragonmen must fly
    When Threads are in the sky.

  20. Re:Speak for yourself on Whither the Portable Optical Drive? · · Score: 1

    Remote disc isn't "Apple's Solution." The external superdrive is. Remote Disc requires you to own another computer, so it's a solution for a small number of people.

  21. Re:Speak for yourself on Whither the Portable Optical Drive? · · Score: 1

    Recordable DVDs are completely unsuitable for archiving.

  22. Re:Speak for yourself on Whither the Portable Optical Drive? · · Score: 1

    I'm not *done* with my optical drive, but I'm done with an internal one that costs a fortune to fix/replace/repair if something goes wrong.

    I'm basically expecting the next 15 inch Macbook Pro to have no built in optical drive, offer an option to have an SSD for the OS and a set of spinning platters to store huge amounts of data and to be compatible with Apple's $79 external superdrive.

    This will let me rip a CD or a DVD when I need too, and to leave it at home when I don't. When it breaks it'll cost me $79 for a new one, and not the $150+installation (which I can do myself, but takes time) for my current MacBook Pro.

    I don't expect there to be a "15-inch MacBook Air" per se, as the Airs are really focused on super portable machines, and offer a limited number of ports to connect and expand too. 15" machines are the workhorse of the laptop world, striking a balance between the desktop replacement 17" screens and the portable but squint inducing 13" screens.

    I could be wrong, of course, it's been known to happen.

  23. Re:Least effective method of reducing Spam possibl on Ask Slashdot: Spoof an Email Bounce With Windows? · · Score: 1

    which is to say: your method depends on a person receiving the response, noticing it, parsing it properly for your email address, and then remembering to delete it from their address book/list of remembered email addresses.

    which is to say that it doesn't really work.

  24. Re:Duopoly? on Canada CRTC Rules Against Usage Based Billing · · Score: 2

    Not really though. The cost of bandwidth is somewhat arbitrary, in the way that the price of automotive fuel is arbitrary: that is, there are real hard costs associated with it but they're not the major input and the price is driven quite a bit more by demand (which in both of these cases has proven to be extremely elastic) and not as much by inputs.

    It doesn't cost my cable company $40 more per household in equipment to provide service to my home, which is already plumbed for cable. They didn't even have to come in to install it. Despite this, the price for "normal high speed internet" has remained at about $40 a month since my first installation, some 10 or 12 years ago.

    The inputs don't nearly equate to the costs they're asking and the number of gigabytes I pull per month has nothing to do with how much pipe they have to lay, except inasmuch as they want to provide a certain *quality* or service to a give number of customers and so avoid saturating a pipe.

  25. Re:Least effective method of reducing Spam possibl on Ask Slashdot: Spoof an Email Bounce With Windows? · · Score: 1

    I just add them to a blacklist. It's a more permanent solution.