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User: macraig

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  1. Re:The Widget on Social Desktop Starts To Arrive In KDE · · Score: 1

    That's not a bad implementation. I think I've seen it once before, but since I haven't done coding in years my problems are all hardware or compatibility. I don't see a reason why it can't be adapted to suit any sort of troubleshooting.

  2. Re:The Widget on Social Desktop Starts To Arrive In KDE · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, it is, isn't it? :-)

    Forums are useful for the collaboration that precedes the creation of a wiki page, but they certainly do a lousy job trying to supplant one. If the initial post in a thread is consistently updated to reflect the best and latest collective wisdom of the discussion, it can almost take the place of a wiki, but in my experience that is rarely done, and even when done is even less rarely done well.

    Wikis are indeed better storehouses of collective wisdom, but there aren't enough of them and they often don't rank as highly in search engines as the forum posts they should be superceding. That's perhaps what needs to be fixed: more, and more easily found.

  3. Re:The Widget on Social Desktop Starts To Arrive In KDE · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Forums, as most of them exist now, are actually an exceptionally lousy way of publishing collective wisdom. The problem is that they don't just collect actual wisdom, they collect lint, cruft, and other sundry garbage as well... and all too often even a smart person can't always discern one from the other.

    There is as much or more MISinformation accumulated in forums as there is useful information.

    Now, if you wanna invent the Next Big Thing in online collaborative problem-solving that will obsolete vBulletin and phpBB and all the rest, please get back to me! Until then, I'm pretty much sick and tired of spending hours trying to sift forums for that one nugget of informational gold hidden amongst all the pyrite, feldspar, mica, and hematite.

  4. No, no, and never! on Would You Pay For YouTube Videos? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My simple answer is the same, but my extended answer is different: I won't then run off to some other ad-supported site and endure advertising... I'll simply stop watching such things in that medium, period. I don't go to YouTube for commercial content at all in the first place, and I'll be damned if I'll pay for the privilege of viewing the non-commercial things I do want to view, not will I tolerate "interstitial" ads for that privilege.

    I'll simply do without, if it comes to that, in the same way that some people eschew television. The absence of YouTube videos does not significantly diminish my life, any more than the Web's complete absence diminished my grandparent's lives (and quite the reverse, they'd probably argue now).

  5. Re:Filtering the Web's insights from the noise on Treating the Web As an Archive · · Score: 1

    BTW, that was supposed to read "some computer model (specs OR specifications)", but I goofed it. I've tried that search, and normally I have to refine it by adding site exclusions to the query; adding term exclusions doesn't work, because words like "battery" appear in not only the parts-suppliers hits but also the actual specifications themselves.

    It's a tricky process that the average person, I suspect, never really learns to master. The result is, of course, that the Web owns them rather than the reverse. People were told the Web would be "something completely different", and I think Berners-Lee actually had something more egalitarian in mind, but that isn't what we've got.

  6. Filtering the Web's insights from the noise on Treating the Web As an Archive · · Score: 1

    The problem is that the vast majority of "information" on the Web is (a) hopelessly commercial, (b) non-objective chatter, or (c) actual misinformation. Have you tried to use Google lately to solve some specific technical problem or better understand a specific issue? Unless you are very skilled with search query syntax, the majority of hits on the first several pages are likely to be useless, irrelevant, or worse misleading.

    Take for instance this search:

      (specs OR specifications)

    Now, you'd hope that would consistently get you only pages that detail the specifications of that system, right? It doesn't: what it will get you, primarily, is page after page of hits from commercial interests - parts suppliers - who I suspect have figured out that they can subvert this search simply by ensuring that the word "specifications" appears somewhere in all their item pages.

    Searching for solutions to technical problems, OTOH, is likely to get you page after page of hits from forum discussion groups, where the majority of what you'll find is illiterate, off topic, and just downright wrong.

    Now, maybe the much-hype Wolfram Alpha engine will make REAL information more accessible to people, but I doubt it... where's the commercial value in actually educating consumers? As the old cliche reminds us, "a fool (uneducated consumer) and his money are soon parted". There are a LOT of people who want to preserve that dynamic because they benefit from it.

  7. Re:Anyone ever watch that Joss Whedon movie? on Lithium In Water "Curbs Suicide" · · Score: 2, Funny

    What are ya talkin' about, man? The title of the movie is all about non-aggression!

  8. Haven't you heard? on Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready · · Score: 1

    It's not a PROVEN epidemic until people have died or are veggetized. WHO cares about Veratect's anecdotal rumor of an epidemic? WHO's not on first!

  9. Re:RF vs Bluetooth Mice on Bluetooth Versus Wireless Mice · · Score: 1

    Nope, already had them located within three feet.

  10. This is NOT news.... on Think-Tank Warns of Internet "Brownouts" Starting Next Year · · Score: 1

    I've been observing these "brownouts" on a small scale for at least several years now, during the act of something as bandwidth-friendly as sending a plain-text e-mail. The catch is that these brownouts have occurred at rather suspicious times of day: when people are changing daily activities en masse, changing gears, if you will.

    Have you ever tried to call into a radio station during a contest or promotion, and encountered that lovely "all circuits busy" signal, because the lines at that instant were jammed with hundreds of other people trying to do the same thing? Have you ever been trapped in a sea of unmoving cars during so-called "rush hour"? (Never mind that these days rush hour is a three hour window.)

    Rush hours happen on the Internet already, and have been happening for some time.

  11. Re:Plunder on Intel Faces $1.3B Fine In Europe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Please. Nobody prints money to create money any more... that's old school. They just make more loans and then sell the "paper" to some sucker as if it's tangible. The mortgage on your house effectively "printed" some more money.

  12. Re:RF vs Bluetooth Mice on Bluetooth Versus Wireless Mice · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Conversely, I have just installed a Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 V3 tonight, and I have already encountered significant hiccuping and lagging with both the keyboard and the mouse. The keyboard is actually missing keystrokes entirely, lagging at times, and the mouse... the mouse is just horrid! This is apparently a 2.4GHz non-Bluetooth variety. The mouse in particular seems to be adversely affected when I have WCG (World Community Grid, BOINC) running in the background; WCG is running at lowest priority and is supposed to yield to virtually everything, even normal-priority processes, but the mouse still seems to be affected. The mouse also seems to be VERY sensitive to the surface it's on, even though I have two other optical MS mice here that have worked fine on it for years. My guess would be that the mouse emitter was deliberately under-powered versus its wired cousins to try to save battery juice, with predictable consequences in the variety of surfaces it can tolerate.

    The short story is that this RF-based product, at least, is awful. I've deliberately omitted mention of issues not pertinent to this, but there are more. Had I still been using my previous keyboard and mouse as I wrote this, it would have taken only one third the time it has required now from having to accommodate said hiccups.

    You'll have to excuse me now... there's an RMA I need to arrange.

  13. Re:RF vs Bluetooth Mice on Bluetooth Versus Wireless Mice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whether or not a Bluetooth mouse was given CPU cycle precedence would depend entirely upon how the Bluetooth protocol stack was developed, wouldn't it? It's my understanding there is more than just one monopolistic stack available, so it may be a matter of understanding the issue - you do now at least - and choosing to use the better one. This has been the case with Bluetooth on Windows Mobile devices: there was a Widcomm BT stack and a Microsoft one. Guess which one had fewer problems on that platform?

  14. This is how it always starts.... on WHO Raises Swine Flu Threat Level · · Score: 5, Funny
  15. Soylent GREEN for plants! on New Food-Growth Product a Bit Hairy · · Score: 1

    Who knew the stuff was good for flora, too?

  16. Sprint depiction of Twitter pretty much nailed it on Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Have you seen the first of Sprint's current snarky commercials about its 3G network, in which it visually depicts the Twitter network as a mob of little blue birds all chirping "me!"...?

    I'd say that pretty much nails the whole narcissistic utility of Twitter.

  17. Re:Perfect for the computer lab: recipe for FAIL on USB-Based NIC Torrents While Your PC Sleeps · · Score: 1

    If you were so certain that what you said was true, you wouldn't be hiding behind the veil of AC and giving up the karma bonus your wit and genius would bring you, would you?

    You're right that the impersonation is what makes it work, but not "work" in the way you claim. Do you actually think you can make it "impersonate" a completely different IP on your ISP's network than the one assigned to the host system? I doubt that's possible. Nope, instead it will be stuck interacting on the same outward-facing IP address that the host (and the rest of the internal network) is using, connected to the same cable/ADSL modem that asked for that IP in the first place. How do you expect to hide your activities when you're using the same IP address?

    Enjoy the taste of that cheap cotton-poly blend with a subtle hint of fungal bloom.

  18. Re:Perfect for the computer lab: recipe for FAIL on USB-Based NIC Torrents While Your PC Sleeps · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the article:

    When the host PC initiates sleep, the Somniloquy detects this and transfers network state to the secondary processor, including ARP table entries, IP address, DHCP lease details, and wireless SSID, thereafter becoming capable of "impersonating" the host.

    Sorry... still no anonymity. Did you actually think the same developer responsible for DRM-enforcing Windows Vista would actually help produce a device that might make you immune to it?

  19. Re:Stallman's worried about the wrong aspect.... on RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free · · Score: 1

    I did say "anemic facade of ownership", didn't I? Wasn't I thinking that out loud?

  20. Same longevity issues as other optical media? on GE Introduces 500GB Holographic Disks · · Score: 1

    If this technology suffers from the same longevity and data integrity issues that other rewritable optical media always has, then I don't want it to begin replacing magnetic media. The Next Big Thing in storage should be a step closer to the data longevity we enjoyed with cuniform tablets, not a step farther away. Speed and capacity aren't the only criteria for judging storage media. Media is, after all, supposed to store data... how well it does that is a big deal.

  21. Stallman's worried about the wrong aspect.... on RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While I agree in principle with Stallman's concerns, there is in my mind a bigger economic concern that doesn't seem to bother him:

    • Adoption of software-as-a-service will inevitably lead to subscription charges for use of software.

    When that happens, we will have lost even the anemic facade of "ownership" of the software we use. Big Software salivates over the arrival of that day.

    The further economic abuses and concentration of wealth that software-as-a-service will bring is, to me, a far bigger loss of freedom than what worries Stallman.

  22. So when I turn out the lights... on New Material For Fast-Change Sunglasses, Data Storage · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... I'm simultaneously deleting my entire terabyte of porn!? Noooooo!

  23. Re:Thanks, but... on Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant · · Score: 1

    You seem to be able to read, but you can't read objectively. It's interesting that you seem seem to be quite a bit more worked-up than I am, when according to you I'm the one who is bitter, having a hard time, and desperate for validation. Who's wearing his heart on his sleeve now? That's called transference.

  24. Thanks, but... on Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant · · Score: 1

    Thanks, I guess, but my point (so far as I can tell from deep sustained self-analysis) wasn't to preach to the choir and get a standing ovation, rather it was to goad people not in the choir into giving the notion a moment's reflection once they calmed down from the insult of my blunt delivery. Being "tactful" might serve my goal better, I know, but tact is tantamount to emotional manipulation of others for my perceived benefit and I don't condone it.

    If that happens to mean that I rock, it's incidental to the purpose. It might mean I'll be more inclined to further repeat the words and behavior that rock, which might be your intended purpose for saying it, but I probably would have done so anyway... the supporting evidence is inclination enough for me. :-)

  25. Re:And yet... on Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry you're delusional and blissfully ignorant. Does that make us even now?