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User: redcane

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  1. Re:And that's one of the features. on Why "Upgrade" To Office 2007 · · Score: 1

    This sticks out as a classic example of the upgrade march. They throw in a little carrot (>64K rows), and some people need that, so they'll take a beating with the stick to get it. But they could have just patched the existing excel to do >64K rows, therefore saving people from having to learn a new product. I am glad you found the learning curve was not to steep, but I believe you should have the choice of whether to climb it or not.

  2. Re:Metric Imperialism - Globalisation the goal? on How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? · · Score: 1

    Being that most recipes are not exactly accurate (i.e. a heaped spoon versus a flat spoon?), I imagine you could round everything to near sensible units anyway. Of course it would be ironic if a cup just happened to be 100mls (which is 100g water) so the units were nice enough anyway. The easiest counter example is of course to measure your units in metric, and convert them to cups or whatever: 600 ml flour 200 ml water 12 g yeast 6 g salt. 4 g sugar. Now I sure could do that from memory if I could be assed to cook without doing it from a packet or a recipe. Of course, the old system needs no embelishment to look silly after doing a conversion either: 2.53605169 US cups of flour 0.84535064 US cups water 1 pkg yeast 1 tsp salt. 1 tsp sugar. Nor do I need to talk about the fact cups are non-standard world over, so your recipe would likely fail me if I tried to use your "cup" measure, but I can use your gram measure fine. I think your probably best to measure in volume terms, though (litres), as you'd normally pour flour into a measuring cup rather than weighing it. I'm also quite surprised the density of salt and sugar differ by two thirds, so that they are both a "tsp" even though they are 6 and 4 grams respectively.

  3. Re:well than my next point is.... on MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but I make a habit of buying bags of white powder from unusual people thinking that it's probably flour. One day I might get lucky and get a bag of cocaine, but I always *expect* it to be flour. (or oregano!)

  4. Re:I'll stretch it on Unofficial Win2K Daylight Saving Time Fix · · Score: 1

    How could they possibly have foreseen? For a start, this particular change was written into legislation 2 years ago (according to the article). Secondly, you have to put the original timezone data into the system somehow, why not make it a repeatable process? Thirdly, time zones change all the time across the world. Of course microsoft only sells it's OS to people in U.S right? Not like they need to cater for the other 95%+ of the planet right? In the last two years I know of at least two time zone changes applying in this country. It *should* be darn easy to change this in an OS.

  5. Re:Third party auditing of government software on Unofficial Win2K Daylight Saving Time Fix · · Score: 1

    Yes, but if the OS only accepts valid (perhaps XML) input files that at worst can only mess up your time zone, there is little harm in it. Especially if it is a human readable format where anyone can audit it, and in fact the main reason to get it from the government is convenience (since it would be easy to "roll your own" given the file format).

  6. Re:Another Problem on UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you should make use of your 1990's inventory by making use of software that still runs fine on it, and still demonstrates basic computing concepts. That way you wouldn't need to waste money on a new OS and new hardware when it could go into learning. Oh, but of course, the administration time to look after that would be too expensive, so it all goes to waste in the throw-away society! yay!

  7. Re:Performance? on CodeWeavers Releases CrossOver 6 for Mac and Linux · · Score: 1

    You can use module assistant to rebuild the nvidia kernel module whenever you upgrade, easy as. Or you should pin your nvidia-glx so it doesn't upgrade, and make sure your not auto upgrading kernels, then you'll never need to reinstall it. simple.

  8. Re:Cool... hope it didn't cost too much on Pillars of Creation Destroyed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The value is in knowing. The more we know about the universe, the more we can make use of it. Especially when it comes to the point that we *need* to get off this rock. At that point all the AIDS vaccines, wells and roads all over the world become worth squat. Of course I don't think it will happen in our lifetime, and you can certainly debate if it will happen. But I'm sure that more primitive societys saw mucking around with plant extracts as pointless when it was more useful to gather food for the tribe. Of course some of those plant extracts are now medicines.

  9. Re:Ah ha! on Pillars of Creation Destroyed · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well played sir. Of course that is *an* athiest organisation, just like I am *a* god (but not *the* god).

  10. Re:heavily flawed on Chip & PIN terminal playing Tetris · · Score: 1

    In regards to point 1: Shop attendant hacks card terminal to store transaction details and PIN, with realistic screen displays throughout. Attendant reads said transactions after customer leaves, and puts them through manually on the legit terminal. Customer gets charged as expected (perhaps 5 minutes later than otherwise). In this case the customer is none the wiser, the bank sees a normal transaction, and the attendant gets the card details. As far as I can tell this would work, but I'm basing it from my experience with the Australian EFTPOS system, where you swipe a magnetic strip in a vendor terminal.

  11. Re:Replacing Electronics on Chip & PIN terminal playing Tetris · · Score: 1

    They are intending it as a proof of concept, and probably don't want the liability of having actually retrieved real card data.

    Of course, they have basically demonstrated that it is possible to get peoples card details.

  12. Re:What is GM doing? on GM Working on Feasible Electric Car · · Score: 1

    OR have an electric for day-to-day stuff, and hitch up a trailer with a generator for long trips. Thus avoiding carrying the weight of a petrol engine when it isn't necesary.

  13. Re:Don't be silly on GM Working on Feasible Electric Car · · Score: 1

    Why aren't you going to tow a camper, a boat or a snowmobile with a prius? My family never had any problems towing an 8ft trailer full of firewood, and our boat with our 82 model 1800cc subaru and 90's model 2L Camry. I have no reason to believe a new prius is any less powerful as that camry, and I think its likely to be better at towing due to an electric motor making torque at 0 rpm. Also we managed to tow a 1500kg Panel van 300 kms with that 2 litre Camry. Granted it wasn't quick up the hills under this load, but nor did it need to be. I can't see that all but a handful of people need to tow bigger loads than that on a regular basis, and thus for most people, it's practicle to hire a truck on the occasions it is needed.

  14. Re:Japanese porn on Blurring Images Not So Secure · · Score: 1

    You know I think I am ashamed that I get that joke. But now I'm trying to remember the source of that particular mythic factoid. (It's a movie right?)

  15. Re:Length on Dark Corners of the OpenXML Standard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think they may have implemented it, and then made a spec to take into account their horrible implementation.

  16. Re:Sounds Like the Funniest Joke in the World on DNA So Dangerous It Doesn't Exist · · Score: 1

    Lovely logic... HPV is not exluded from married couples, nor rape victims. It's also something they check for in women over 18 regardless of whether they have had sex or not.

  17. Re:e-book vs dead-tree formats on Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany · · Score: 1

    Every now and then you need to sacrafice convenience for the greater good. Every now and then you need to sacrafice convenience for the environment.

  18. Re:300 wires with a conduit sawed off-cutups. on What Bizarre IT Setups Have You Seen? · · Score: 1

    Only useful if the cable runs where it could be in contact with said sharp edges. I imagine the hole they put the patch panel in through is far enough from sharp edges.

  19. Re:Ask a scientist on When Celebrities Speak on Science · · Score: 1

    The actual quote of Douglas Adams in context says that Man proves the non-existance of god (with a humourously convoluted twist of logic), thus making god dissapear in a puff of logic. However I can see that Adams may have been making the point you allude to (that god dissapears when you use logic), but I felt I should note the context of the quote.

  20. Re:leechers on Researchers Create Selfish BitTorrent Client · · Score: 1

    One site I use allocates "bonus points" for various things, one of which is 1 point for every hour of seeding. You can trade these points in for upload (150 points is 1Gb). This helps keep old torrents alive too. People will just hang around seeding stuff to get points.

  21. Re:Just great on Researchers Create Selfish BitTorrent Client · · Score: 1

    So people are paying for the product (Internet Access) that your workplace provides, because they now have a use for it (P2P), and that disgusts you? I'm just picturing an oil company executive, being disgusted with cars, because it leads people to overuse the oil bandwidth! how disgusting! It should be banned, and oil should only be used to make petroleum jelly, plastics, and generate power.

  22. Re:Well, uhm. Ban the client? on Researchers Create Selfish BitTorrent Client · · Score: 1

    This is what bitTyrant does. It chokes access to peers with a lower rate of data transfer to the bitTyrant client.

  23. Re:Well, uhm. Ban the client? on Researchers Create Selfish BitTorrent Client · · Score: 1

    If you read the paper attached to the article you'd see what they are trying to achieve is exploitation of the altruism exhibited by some bit torrent clients. i.e. Using as little upload as possible for as much download as possible. This would be bad for the swarm, but their actual implementation is still somewhat altruistic, i.e. it will still use excess upload capacity even when that extra upload won't benefit download rate. However if all upload capacity is used, it will only upload to the peers it will get the most benefit from. This will obviously skew it's ratio towards 0 if enough peers are willing to dump data to it.

  24. Re:Well, uhm. Ban the client? on Researchers Create Selfish BitTorrent Client · · Score: 1

    Uhm, no, it will upload as little as possible to get as much download as possible. It's based on the principle of offering upload only to the peers it is benefitting from, with less optimistic unchoking. Although they didn't prevent it from using excess upload (i.e. upload that brings no benefit to download rate), but they could have.

  25. Re:BT on Which Movie Download Site Is Best? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My personal favourite is demonoid.com. For $0 I can watch a HD full length movie on my TV in my living room. The copy protection is unrestrictive, so I can burn to DVD (and potentially HD-DVD if I bought a burner). The biggest problem is the download time. It takes about 16 hours to download the 6GB torrent over my DSL modem. At this rate, I just tell it to download all the movies I think I might want to watch, then when I feel like watching a movie, I just pick out of the ones sitting on my MythBox that have finished downloading. Until the movie studios provide me with some of that convenience, I'm not going to be paying for downloads. I'd just go back to the method of borrowing a bunch of potential movies from the video store, ripping en masse, then choosing out of the current collection when I felt like watching a movie.