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User: EmbeddedJanitor

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  1. Porn ads from Virgin Media? on UK ISPs To Start Tracking Your Surfing To Serve You Ads · · Score: 1

    Makes sense!

  2. Don't discount him yet on Inventor to Launch Pop Bottle Rocket into Space · · Score: 5, Funny

    He stretches the bottles. This is a very important point that you have missed. So far he has only stretched them slightly but if he stretches them to be 100km long then he's made it.

  3. Of course! on Robot Interprets, Plays Back Dreams · · Score: 1
    It is fine to have dreams/feelings of anger/lust etc. It is not always fine to act on them (assault/murder/rape etc)..

    Just using a machine to carry out your dirty work does not let you off the hook.

  4. $/watt is more important than eficiency on New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water · · Score: 1
    Except where space/weight might be very limited (eg. space applications), the important measure is $/W. Silicon PV is nowhere near a viable $/W for general purpose application.

    Who cares if the efficiency is 10% and you have to cover your whole house in the stuff?

  5. They don't need nukes on Satellite Spotters Make Government Uneasy · · Score: 1
    They'll just call in some loans...

    Why fight with weapons when you can use money which is far more powerful, but maybe a bit slower?

  6. USA has no national goals on China Plans to Surpass the U.S. in Nanotech Development · · Score: 5, Insightful
    USA made great strides during the 1960s because the whole space thing was seen as a national goal with everyone onboard. Getting there was a national priority, above just any individual company's priority. That has ceased to be. Sure there were some Lockheed vs Boeing etc spats, but nothing like the inter-corporate fights of today. Major tech companies now just spend more time body-slamming each other.

    USA lacks national technological goals now and no matter how bright the minds, if they don't have a supporting environment then they will not reach their potential.

    China is working as a nation whiich means they will get further with what they have.

    Money and equipment don't make for winning. Here's the story of the 1996 Americas Cup: The US team had the might of Boeing (Crays etc) and fleets of white coats to do their math modelling etc. The kiwis had a corner in their warehouse with a couple of SGI workstations. The kiwis achieved more with their math modelling because the math guy was onsite and slept on the floor next to his computers. They used what equipment they had with maximum effectiveness.

  7. Re:Air: Five bucks on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 1
    You are not paying for the water. You're paying for the purity or perhaps the convenience of getting it away from home.

    If someone was handing out bottled water for free outside the store you'd hardly pay for it.

  8. What do they expect from Oz? on Australian Government Considers Copying UK Copyright Law Ideas · · Score: 1, Troll

    The same happens in all prisons.

  9. Re:But how much would you pay for air? on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 1

    Compressed air is not just air. You're selling the pressure (or the ability to breath underwater for SCUBA). THis comes into the "sell the sizzle, not the steak" catagory. You could give Linux away and sell support. However if you're just trying to sell generic Linux you're SOL.

  10. Air: Five bucks on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 1
    Air is valuable, yet unless someone had your head underwater you would not pay $5 for air. Nor would you pay $200. That's because air is free and you'd feel ripped off paying for it.

    The problem with charging for Linux is that the first thing people hear about it is Linux is free, so anyone charging you for it must be ripping them off!

    Put free stuff in a box and charge $100 for it and you'll soon get labelled a ripoff artists (this fscker charged me for free stuff!) and your company will fold.

    The only way to sell free stuff is to establish brand loyalty or image. Selling the sizzle, not the steak. But that requires Coke-scale advertising. Alternatively you have to sell something a bit more. Free Linux + paid-for support can work, but there better be something more in the box than free stuff.

  11. Linux has no value on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 1

    for the sales channel. They control the distribution more than anyone else. They get money out of selling Windows and zero from selling Linux, so what's the motivation?

  12. But how much would you pay for air? on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 1
    Unless someone holds your head underwater you would not pay $5 for a bag of air. People would feel ripped off if they had to pay $10 for something that should be free. It does not matter that people value it, money and value are not the same.

    When people buy a computer, it is easy for the sales droid to FUD them into windows even if there was a Linux option. Sales company and Sales droid makes zero profit/commission for selling Linux, so they FUD the customer (Ooh! compatability, ooh! warrantee, programs etc etc).

  13. Follow the bullshit too on Digital Picture Frames Infected by Trojan Viruses · · Score: 1
    A "nuclear bomb" virus that does not leave traces.

    What flavor of crap is that? Most nuclear bombs leave plenty of traces.

  14. But does not work for MS on Is Microsoft just Screwing with Yahoo's Mind? · · Score: 1
    MS have acquired many compnaies http://www.microsoft.com/msft/investments/default.mspx . Only very few of these have actually turned into profitable business units.

    No folks, Ballmer is Google Obsessed. Making money and core business no longer seem to matter for him. Attacking Google (profitably or not) is all he cared about. He'll spend 40-odd bn for Yahoo, but put 5bn into developing Vista (core business). He's just bought Danger (a deliberate attempt at Google Android).

    The dumb thing though is that Yahoo is a sinking ship and buying them would only give a small cosmetic market share.

  15. Blacks are stupid: it's scientific! on California Lawmaker Seeks Climate Change as part of Public Education · · Score: 1
    I've seen phd-level science used to "prove" that black people are more stupid than white people. This was conducted in South Africa during the 1960s/70s. The process involved, amongst other things, measuring skull thickness and by finding that black people had thicker skulls they proved that the ideas could not get into their thick heads. Of course a similar study showing that Indian's had thinner skulls was buried. So science can be used to support irrational claims.

    If Global Warming is to be added to education, then it should not be as a fact. It should be presented as a vehicle for understanding scientific methods. There's a hell of a lot of "bad science" that has been thrown into the GW pot. For example, the use of historic temperature data is only valid when other variables are compensated for.

  16. Read it again on Google's Research on Malware Distribution · · Score: 4, Insightful
    There are three million bad URLs being served off 180,000 web sites.

    Three million out of billions is not bad, assuming randomness (only, say 1 in 1000 chance of using a bad URL), but it is a lot worse than 180k out of billions.

    However not all URLs are used equally. Bad URLs linked to some popular pron site, for instance, will get hit a lot more than Joe Sixpack's facebook site.

  17. No! That won't work on How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters? · · Score: 4, Funny
    I don't watch TV. I floss while changing oil (yup, about never).

    Oh, btw I've also been using the same passwords for 16 years.

  18. No need for complex legal BS on Developers Warned over OOXML Patent Risk · · Score: 2, Insightful
    You can make a valid legal document that is only a couple of lines long that is easy to understand. No need for legalese. eg. "Anyone can use the OOXML structure for any legal purpose. The End."

    The first step to "open" or "sharing" or whatever TF you want to call is is making stuff accessible (ie easy to use and understand) and making clear licensing is part of that.

    If every OpenOffice user needs to first get a legal opinion before using OO, then they may as well buy MS Office. Companies that want to be legal won't just take the advice of www.jimmy.org.

  19. Too late, the McBrides have the money on Darl McBride Leaving SCO? · · Score: 1

    Darl managed to pay the lawyers a lot of money. Kevin McBride (Darl's brother) made a good bundle out of the whole SCO fiasco.

  20. Rock, paper scissors.... on Dell Set to Introduce AMD's Triple-core Phenom CPU · · Score: 1

    Three choices, three cores. Everyone's happy!

  21. A put-down to Pacific Islanders on Natural Selection Can Act on Human Culture · · Score: 1

    Either TFA author thinks that canoes reproduce and have evolved independent of human forces, or he thinks Pacific Islanders are sub-human and not capable of thinking.

  22. How to convice a non-Christian that Christ matters on How to Convince Non-IT Friends that Privacy Matters? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    IT people tend to be pretty security focussed with borderline paranoia. That is healthy because that's there role in society.

    Talk to a dentist. You'll hear a whole lot about how important it is to floss your teeth for 15 minutes a day. A fitness nut will tell you how you need to exercise an hour and a half a day. The house painter told me I should wash the house once every 3 months to preserve the paint. A mechanic friend told me to check my car's oil every week. etc etc.

    Most people just don't have the time/energy to do everything they're told so they ignore most advise.

  23. Also a change in role on Is This the Future of News? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In the old days, people would read,watch or listen to the news as a civic duty to keep informed. Now news is just "infotainment" and is an eyeball magnet to attract eyes and advertisement revenue.

    News competes with reality TV and sitcoms. Thus the dry facts are ditched in favor of "edgy" "newsworthy" stories with more interest value.

  24. It is easy to make predictions like this on Artificial Intelligence at Human Level by 2029? · · Score: 1
    and far harder to deliver. "Flying cars by 2000" was not made by the people designing fly cars.

    At this stage, AI is perhaps at the bug level or lower. Sure, for select tasks, AI can do some interesting things like fly flight simulators etc., but for "whole being intelligence" (what's needed to make an "organism" that can survive on its own, AI cannot keep up with a fly.

  25. But the look on their faces on UK Commissioner Seeks To Ban Ultrasonic Anti-Teen Device · · Score: 1

    is priceless