Slashdot Mirror


User: qoncept

qoncept's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
663
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 663

  1. Re:Illusion on In-Game Advertising Makes Games Better? · · Score: 1

    You're nitpicking. Product placement is advertisement. The article is obviously referring to product placement. Who would say that watching a commercial before being able to play your game is good?

  2. Angular diameter on NASA Discovers Giant Ring Around Saturn · · Score: 0

    naked eye from Earth, it would cover a patch of sky roughly twice the angular diameter of the Moon

    At first, I thought angular diameter sounded stupid (in the way saying "utilize" instead of "use" sounds stupid). I realized I didn't know what "angular diameter" meant, so I looked it up. Turns out, not only does it sound stupid, but it's wrong. Planets are spheres. They don't get distorted by viewing angle.

  3. Re:Seems fair to me. on New Bill Proposes Open Source Requirement for Publicly Funded Books · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, I'd say it's pretty much common sense. A city doesn't pay to have a playground built in a park just so the construction company can say who can and can't use it.

  4. "Thermally isolated" on First Look At Wild New "Level 10" Concept PC Case · · Score: 1

    The guts of the Level 10: individual compartments keep components thermally isolated. And it looks wicked.

    Sweet! Now my hard drives and CPU get hotter and my DVD drive stays at room temp! HOW ADVANCED!!!

  5. Re:Cut Out the Middle Men on Why Games Cost $60 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Because no one is going to sell a game to you for $35 when people are obviously buying it for $60.

    Oh, and what a waste of breath that article was. Summed up, "$60 because that's what they charge."

  6. Manufacturers on Ballmer Admits "We Screwed Up Windows Mobile" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm glad I'm not the manufacturer of a WinMo phone right now. It's tough enough to choose one over the other options based on its actual merits, without the king of the developer essentially saying it sucks. Wonder if Ballmer thought of the implications before he spoke.

  7. Re:digitization vs. digital modification on French Deputies Want Labels On Photo-Altered Models · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hence, common sense. Take 100 pictures with 100 different regular ol' cameras and you'll have 100 slightly different pictures. Use Photoshop to pinch in someone's waist in one of those and you'll have one photo that is relevent to the topic.

  8. Re:Aren't ALL photos modified these days? on French Deputies Want Labels On Photo-Altered Models · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't the very act of scanning and printing using a computer a digital modification?

    Yes, they are. And they pretty much always have been. All photos are pretty much artifact to a greater or lesser degree.

    No, it's not. Digitization and digital modification aren't the same thing. The comment about white balance and such done by the digital camera itself is more questionable, but I would think common sense would cover that.

    Models have always been shot with artificial make-up, hair, fans blowing their hair and carefully controlled lighting to create an artificial image of the person.

    Controlled, optimized, sure. But that is a real image of that person. If you're dropping chemicals on your film to cover a splotch on someone's face, that's altered, but slapping some baby oil on Arnie and having him flex or having Paris Hilton bend over and spread is just putting them in the position that makes them look best, not modification.

  9. Re:Had a chuckle at this. on The Perils of Ramming Products Down IT's Throat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly. My entire attitude has changed. I still provide my input at work, do what I can to guide the decision makers toward what I think are the right decisions. But then if they make the wrong decision, I move on and keep doing my job. Maybe they could have done things better, but who cares? I'm still working.

  10. Re:Worst move ever, on TI vs. Calculator Hackers · · Score: 1

    What makes them so smart? Is TI selling more calculators because you can play games on them, or because some kid has to buy one to do his homework? I had a TI-85 in high school and played games all through whatever math class I was in at the time, but I would have had one regardless of whether it did anything other than my homework.

  11. Re:Worst move ever, on TI vs. Calculator Hackers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I really have to wonder what dope modded the parent post as insightful. Enthusiasts aren't any manufacturer's target audience. There are (say) 10 million kids who need a graphing calculator for college or high school, and (say) 100 that are hacking them. Claiming those few are the key to success is just plain wrong.

  12. Re:Bogus outdated thinking on RAID's Days May Be Numbered · · Score: 1

    Show me three hot chicks doing things even I think are gross and I'll show you three bills.

  13. What are you fighting for? on Amazon Delaying Public Domain Submissions On Kindle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Amazon is implicitly deciding what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of e-books.

    No shit? It looks more like they're deciding to limit copies of a book to one in their store. The implications of that are probably more like "... deciding what they think is in their own best interest as a profit seeking company."

    I like how you took the high road here and argue your point on a moral level. You know, when it's obvious your beef with Amazon is over the income it's costing you. Normally "yro" means a bunch of annoying BS to me, but masquerading as someone that generally think the decision by a company to limit the books to one copy (not even prevent you from reading it, but eliminate the dupes!) that can be read on a device I've never even seen anyone use is going to somehow have even a slight impact on society takes the cake.

  14. Re:Is it $0.43 or $100? on How Much Is Your Online Identity Worth? · · Score: 1

    Were you ever very good at answering story problems? What about multiple choice?

    A. $0
    B. $100
    C. $.43
    D. Between $.43 and $100

  15. Re:Am I missing the point? on The Coming Problems For Rolling Out 3D TV · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    No, you're just being a nerdy douchebag. If you're going to nitpick, at least do it when someone is saying something incorrect instead of only when other nerdy douchebags will notice that it could be interpreted another way.

  16. Re:Nothing to do with Porn, it's the Awfulbar agai on Fear of Porn URL Exposure Discourages Firefox 3 Upgrade · · Score: 1

    That's funny, I type "wik" to get to wikipedia. I feel like I've transcended normal geekery to the point that I no longer care to know details like what the path and arguments are to a phpbb post. Or maybe I've gotten used to Firefox. It generally gets me what I want, better than IE at least.

    Examples:
    IE gets me to my Google stock portfolio when I type "goo" -- as long as I'm careful to not visit too many google sites. Luckily, whatever the parameters are (and, like I said, I'm such an advanced human being that I feel I no longer need to) are toward the top of Google's suite alphabetically. In Firefox, I type "port" and don't worry about what other google sites I use.

    If I've visited a forum, say, to find the torque specs for a 97 Nissan Sentra flywheel, and I remember the name of the forum, and haven't viewed more than a couple other posts on that forum, IE will get me there reasonably fast. In Firefox, I can type "sentra torque" and it'll find the post for me based on the title.

    What I don't like is that, by default, Firefox keeps your history forever. When I typed "fac" to go to Facebook, the first entry, until I finally cleaned my history, was facesloaded.com, since I was duped (I didn't say I regretted it) in to clicking on a link on IRC. Finding a balance between keeping my history around long enough and not regretting visiting a certain site because it gets in the way of my -- I guess it's called the Awesome Bar? -- is something I haven't quite nailed yet. In any case, I almost never use bookmarks anymore.

  17. Buyer protection on "Hidden" PayPal Fees Inciting Community Unrest · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't know any details, but I'd imagine you'd be waiving any of your buyer's protection rights by sending money "as a gift" instead of for a good or service.

  18. Re:I'll say.. on Preview the Office 2007 Ribbon-Like UI Floated For OpenOffice.Org · · Score: 1

    When you're writing an email it does. And they definitely DID change the appearance of the toolbar and titlebar in the main Outlook window, apparently in order to make it "out of place" and less usable.

  19. Re:Nuisance of free software on Digsby IM Client Quietly Installs Badware · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unless you've done the market research, studied the budgets of the developers, guaged the economy, researched the public willingness to buy games that have ads, and considered inflation and any number of other factors, your opinion is worth about as much as anyone else's. Acting like it's so blatantly obvious that your opinion is better than his doesn't put you in a very good light.

  20. I'll say.. on Preview the Office 2007 Ribbon-Like UI Floated For OpenOffice.Org · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "... and feel that the Ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."

    Ya think? The Ribbon UI is out of place in Windows. With Outlook 2007 running on one of my screens, you couldn't come up to me and tell whether or not that window was in focus. It doesn't match anything else in windows, it doesn't look cool, and its a huge, huge step backward in usability. I finally gave up Office 97 for Open Office about a year ago, and now I just do my best to not have to use either because they're both complete garbage.

  21. Amazing! on US Marine Corps Bans Social Networking Sites · · Score: 1

    Wow! I wonder how many bases didn't already have it blocked on their firewall. I'm guessing 100%. Mine did.

  22. Get your heads out of your asses on P2P Network Exposes Obama's Safehouse Location · · Score: 1

    I read through here and basically saw nothing but a bunch of smart ass comments about other ways documents could be lost or leaked. Great.

    Tell me* when the last time you installed software on a briefcase and it automatically indexed all your media and documents, by default, and then broadcast it to millions of other people.

    Tell me* when the last time you downloaded [ a linux distro / "something" ] from an ftp server, while in the meantime everyone else connected downloaded all of your media and documents (that were shared, again, by default).

    Tell me* when the last time you posted a message on a forum, and while you did it, you accidentally attached a document containing all your passwords. Shared by default in Limewire.

    And finally, tell me* the last time you downloaded ANYTHING via ANY p2p protocol that was legal and that didn't have an alternative place to download. Why the hell should anyone using a government computer be using Limewire or Bittorrent?

    * Don't actually tell me. I'm not at all interested.

  23. Re:This is a common stack in wifi APs on Critical Flaw Discovered In DD-WRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are you talking about?

    1. If people not only updated the firmware on their router, but had to do hacks to get it on there, don't you think they're probably at least a tad more likely to keep the firmware up to date than Joe Blammo with the factory firmware installed?

    2. Do you think DD-WRT was really all that much more susceptible to having a flaw than, say, something from Cisco? Or, by the same thought process, do you think open source Linux is inherently more vulnerable than Windows?

    3. Homogeny? Huh?! Do you mean the homogeny that's defined has "a significant portion of huge nerds (though certainly not even close to a majority) uses this software" ? How many routers are being used in homes and small businesses around the world? You think enough of them are running DD-WRT to call it a homogeny? Name a router that you think has more instances of DD-WRT installed than the factory firmware.

    Software bugs happen. You don't need to get all philosophical about it. And besides, this is no more dangerous than the much larger number of people probably still using the default password on their router, and probably only slightly more dangerous than the huge number of people who don't have any kind of security. Relax.

  24. Re:Too lazy to check myself. on Entire Moon Added To Google Earth · · Score: 1

    That's the thing, though. No one is profiting unless you are buying at something. Or at least clicking on an ad.

  25. Re:Too much cost... on Music Game Genre On the Decline · · Score: 1

    Buying the new version of the game is a much cheaper way to get a boatload of songs than buying "add-on pack" DLC. Downloading a song is $2+, while you can get a game with 80 songs for $60 new. And the controller prices really aren't that unreasonable. $30 for a guitar controller? What does a wireless Xbox 360 controller go for?

    I'm assuming, with DLC, they're making plenty of money. I'd guess the profit margins on the controllers are modest at best.