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User: platypussrex

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  1. Re:"The Slowdown" IS Martyn Zachary on Avataritis — On the Abundance of Customizable Game Characters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I concur.... my first thought upon (trying) to read the summary was that perhaps April Fool's Day had come sooner than expected, but then I realized that even the worst April Fool's Parody couldn't touch this guy... he's in a league of his own. My brain still hurts from the onslaught.

  2. Re:Yep on Inside the Windows 7 Launch Party Pack · · Score: 1

    wow, no kidding about the video. It looked to me as if it had been done by a retarded chimpanzee on crack. All the terrible camera angles, the jerky zooms, it didn't look "cool", it just made my head hurt.

  3. Re:WoW was ruined on Casual Games Quickly Transforming the MMO Market · · Score: 2, Insightful

    this is too funny. I don't think I have ever heard a casual gamer complain that they had too many epics. The complainers are almost always the (self-proclaimed)hard-cores who think the size of their epeen depends on having more epics than anyone else. But guess what, we all pay the same (approx) $15 a month to play the game. Blizzard finally understands that to expend huge amounts of resources to create content that was only seen by a fraction of the player base was not a bright idea. So the obsessive player can get their leet gear and run the new content when it comes out, the less obssesed players get almost as good gear after a month or two, and they too can then see the high end content. Only a completely self-centered person would fail to understand the appeal of that process.

  4. Re:It is astounding .... on Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant Two Months Ago · · Score: 1

    The only problem here is that you are pretty much wrong on all counts. Humans didn't evolve by sitting around in lovey-dovey quilt making sessions. They evolved by the ones who were better able to survive wiping out the ones who were not.

    The problem is that the majority of the population are lazy gets who when given a choice between 1) work hard and earn something for yourself and 2) let your neighbour work hard and earn it for you, pick 2) every time. So you can prattle on as much as you like about collective endeavours, but that's not human nature. Come down from your ivory tower and smell the coffee. Most of the world is perfectly happy to let other people carry the load for them.

  5. Re:2 Months is very fast on Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant Two Months Ago · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is the crux of the issue. a) that somehow medical treatment is totally different than any other service/commodity (it's not) and b) that we should be force at gunpoint to pay for every unhealthy
      clown on the planet because of their bad choices.

    If i want a better house, I earn more money so I can buy it. Ditto with a car. Want a better education? Pay for it. That's how the world works.

    As for the second point, all you need to do is work at the ER in a major hospital for a while to see what happen when you give people free medical care. All the welfare grabbing losers who are already sucking on the government teat like that was no tomorrow show up for the most trivial reasons you can imagine, just because it won't cost them anything. Things that any normal person would either self treat of see their doctor in the morning. I'm not kidding, I saw a guy arrive once in an ambulance because he ate something that gave him gas. Think of how many thousand dollars that cost the taxpayers.

  6. Re:Good idea on Windows 7 Will Be Free For a Year · · Score: 5, Funny

    Didn't your mom warn you about that? "They give you one for free, and then when they have you hooked....wham!"

  7. Re:Sure it will. on BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 · · Score: 1

    If a student has been showing up to class for several weeks, and then come test day a different, formerly unknown person shows up to sit in that seat and take the test, all but the most braindead professors will figure out that something is amiss. And at large colleges, with large class sizes, it's common that students will be required to show a picture ID to enter the testing room. (Thinking here of some multiple section courses, where 300 stendents take the exam in a large auditorium or something similar).

  8. Re:Sure it will. on BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I didn't say community colleges, I'm talking about the "all online" ones you see advertised all over the place, but which claim to have accreditation. And to the poster who said I have no clue, I have been to training seminars where these companies tout their job opportunities. You truly do get paid for counting how many times each student logs on per week, and no, there is no security in place for testing or anything else.

  9. Re:Sure it will. on BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do you have any idea how bogus the whole online diploma process already is? None of the major "all online" schools have any way to check who actually did the work. So student A signs up, and Student B does the work, but Student A gets the credit. As an employer, when I see a "degree" from one of this places, I just laugh.

  10. Re:Just use Ninnle! on "Apple Tax" Report Backfires On Microsoft · · Score: 1

    modding on parent brought to you by the humour impaired sheesh

  11. Re:sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 1

    ah, but you forget that defamation (the term I used in my post) covers more than libel and slander. There are things such as public disclosure of private facts, false light, invasion of privacy, etc. that also fall under defamation and truth may not be an absolute defense at all in some of those cases.

  12. Re:sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 1

    except they must have left out one important fact about this in your classes. "Publication" in the case of defamation has a very specific legal meaning, and it's not "being published in a newspaper" but rather refers to disseminating the information, via a number of possible routes. So it might well be possible to "publish" information by standing on a stage in a large auditorium full of people and saying it over the PA system.

  13. Re:sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The defamation part is in publishing information that might harm the person's character. Nothing there about truth. In some cases truth is a defense, sometimes not, but it's not part of the original tort. So yes, it's sometimes possible for a true statement to be defamatory.

  14. Re:sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 1

    No, there is a different tort for written material. Slander must be spoken. An action might lie for libel, but not slander.

  15. sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 5, Funny

    This would be funny except it's scary instead . . .

  16. Re:tinfoil is the answer on Reliability of Computer Memory? · · Score: 4, Funny

    I have an even better idea. You know how water cooling makes your computer run better? Well my theory is that water cooling would work the same way for the OP. He needs to get a large tank, fill it with ice water, and be sure to keep his head fully submerged while doing all his computer work. I'm sure he'll be amazed at his increased productivity.

  17. Re:Food security is a measurable risk on The Underappreciated Risks of Severe Space Weather · · Score: 1

    Read TFA, they say that bringing them back on line might take up to a year, because the transformers are custom made, and don't exist as readily available replacements. So yes, I'm sure it would be a priority, but how will those millions in NYC last the nine months or so it will take (according to TFA) to get them back on line?

  18. Re:Install Ubuntu on Configuring a Windows PC For a Senior Citizen? · · Score: 1

    except that "easier" is contained in "no harder" so the parent was correct :-)

  19. Re:From the comments to TFA on Psystar Claims Apple Forgot To Copyright Mac OS · · Score: 5, Informative

    Registration is not required to secure a copyright on a work. Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created. So the very fact that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard exists is a copyright.

    However, Apple must have registered their copyright on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard before they can file suit for infringement on this copyright.

    Read about all that at copyright.gov:
    http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html

    This would all seem to be moot though. According to copyright.gov, Apple registered their copyright on Mac OS X Leopard Version 10.5 on January 24, 2008, Registration Number: TX0006849489.

    http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=4&ti=1,4&Search_Arg=Mac%20OS%20X%20Leopard&Search_Code=TALL&CNT=25&PID=-H_wcyyigtEZ3UT-QtRpXsTJUefv&SEQ=20081222171112&SID=1

    I have no doubt that there is something we're missing here, as it seems unlikely that Psystar's Lawyers couldn't do a simple search at copyright.gov for "Mac OS X Leopard". But this article offers little more than an announcement that Psystar has responded to Apple's copyright suit.

  20. mod parent up n/t on Google To Sell Truly Open Android Dev Phone · · Score: 0

    n/t

  21. Re:That's easy. . . on Artist Wants to Replace Lost Eyeball With Webcam · · Score: 1

    If you really want some fun, try asking for directions in a small town in the rural south. You'll get such gems as "turn left past where the old Walmart used to be " (it's been moved 10 years, and the building is now a flea market) or even "Go about a mile past where that old oyster roast place burned down" (it burned in the 1990s).

  22. Re:Killing Raiding on The Changing Face of World of Warcraft · · Score: 1

    That's exactly it. The same hard core raiders who are whining here are the ones who talk about "ghetto epics" for ones you can buy with PvP honor. For these poor souls, it's not enough to get the gear, in order to maintain their self esteem, they have to prevent others from getting any kind of good gear at all. I feel sorrow for them.

  23. Re:compensation? on WoW Database Site Sells For $1 Million · · Score: 1

    Um, sounds like what Gracenote did to the CDDB, doncha think?

  24. Re:Doublespeak he can't avoid... on Jobs Unfazed by Zune · · Score: 1

    which, by the way, iTunes DRM counts against a maximum number of times you can burn a given track

    Not true. You can burn individual tracks an unlimited number of times. What has a limit is a specific playlist. Once you burn your limit all you need to do is change one song in the list, and the limit starts over.

  25. Re:Feh on Apple Launches 1 GB nano, Slashes shuffle · · Score: 1

    I do something similar, but I have one more condition that makes it even better (IMO). I create a smart playlist that randomly fills 1Gig with songs that are rated at least 3 stars, that meet some genre conditions (such as no holiday music) and then I add one more condition that the song hasn't been played in the last 2 months (but you can pick different time frames). This way, as each song is played it will drop off the playlist to be replaced by another (the next time I sync the nano). The result is an always fresh list of songs I like, but which I haven't heard in a while.