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User: the_mad_poster

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  1. Re:Showing my ignorance on Hydrogen Vehicle Generates Its Own Fuel · · Score: 1

    The sun produces vast amounts of energy.... and then our stupid atmosphere goes and blocks it or it dissipates before it can be collected.

    The energy that makes it down to earth isn't really all that much when all is said and done. On top of that, consider that the conversion process loses even more energy. Sun power, while a nice way of adding to your total available power and thus upping the overall efficiency, can't really be used as a single source of fuel for a high consumption application like a motor vehicle.

  2. Re:Now might be the time for ANts on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: 1

    You're either trying to out-bait me or you're an idiot, perhaps both. 90% of what you just said is completely off the topic at hand, the rest is just made up nonsense (software development is unethical because it costs money to develop software? WTF? So CDs just grow on trees now fully recorded? ... ?) I'm sensing... yes... sensing... significant cognitive impairment coming from the direction of your response.

  3. Re:just to throw in a few on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: 1

    Here's a trick you can use to know when you're holding a position you can't support: you try to justify your own misbehavior and/or illegal activity by pointing out the misbehavior and illegal activity of others.

    Bribing congress is an entirely different problem which will not be solved by dirty hippie communists ripping off the music industry. Please try to stay on the subject.

  4. Re:Now might be the time for ANts on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's OK to download music until you decide to sell it.

    Even if that were clearly true, it would be totally offtopic seeing as how we're talking about UPLOADING music.

    Tell me, does socialism make you stupid, or does being stupid make you socialist?

  5. Re:Now might be the time for ANts on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: 0

    Here goes a concept to blow your mind. I support stronger copyright law, but lesser enforcement of penalties for non-commercial infringement.

    That's great. In fact, it's so great, that it will even be relevant when we start talking about reforming copyright laws. Since we're talking about people infringing current copyright laws, however, well... your position on how they should be changed is only superficially relevant. -1, Offtopic for that whole first paragraph.

    I personally have no problems with mass file sharing.

    That's great. I personally think there should be no limit to the amount of money that can be claimed as damages in illegal file sharing cases. My personal opinion on the matter is just as relevant as yours, so thanks for sharing, and let's get back to the point.

    Go read about the topic before you think it's needed to waste your time with illogical and misthought tripe.

    Hmmm... illogical and misthought. It's illegal. It's legitimate grounds for a lawsuit. People who do it get sued.

    How, exactly, is that illogical or misthought? Hmm? Care to explain? Or, are your vague emotional arguments about not being able to find music in your local music store logical and well thought out? I suppose, then, that you've thought about the fact that the plaintiff would have no way of knowing that you weren't just trying to rip them off, your activities indicate that's what was happening, and you can't prove that it's NOT what was happening. Have you thought THAT out? Hmm?

    Oh, wait. My bad. I forgot that companies should just give you everything you want for free because you're one of the special elite of modern america.

    Stupid socialists.

  6. Re:Now might be the time for ANts on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: -1, Troll

    The difference is that GPL-infringing people want to make money out of GPL'ed software. File sharers don't want to make a buck out of the files they share. If they do, they should be punished.

    Soooo.... you're the moral and legal arbiter of when copyright infringement is okay and when it's not, just because you say so?

    Call me crazy, but I don't think the copyright laws make any such distinction. In fact, the only distinction, which the law STILL doesn't make, is that the GPL code author loses ego points while the industry loses potential income. Are you suggesting that the company's business model being potentially underminded by illegal activity is less important than a greasy hippie's bragging rights?

    You fail it. You failt it miserably. If you continue to argue with me, your failure will only be compounded.

  7. Re:Now might be the time for ANts on UK Record Industry Sues 'Major Filesharers' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd like to clarify the Slashbot stance on things:

    It's is okay for people to illegally download music, movies, and software as long as they're made by a big studio or artist. Even though this goes against the wishes of the creators and owners of the content in question, it is acceptable.

    It is not okay for you to use a GPL'ed piece of code without GPL'ing it because this goes against the wishes of the creators and owners of the content in question.

    It is okay to sue or threaten to sue people for the above mentioned infringement of the GPL license because it is important to protect the coder's rights and not set a precedent of ignoring violations.

    It is not okay for the RIAA, MPAA, or BSA to sue people for illegally infringing on their copyrights or the copyrights of their members because the content in question falls under one or more of the following abstract, personal objections:

    • The content costs too much.
    • The content is of poor quality.
    • Nobody can own an idea (unless it's GPL'ed).
    • The lesser artists that rarely get pirated signed lousy contract deals that leave them getting the short end of the RIAA stick.

    Despite the fact that any of the above arguments could easily be eliminated simply by telling people not to purchase the content in question, they're the basis for the argument here on Slashdot.

    I just thought I would clear this up, because the babbling of all the braindead asswipes that frequent this place can sometimes confuse newcomers who don't understand what's so hard about "don't take things that aren't yours to take".

    This story is a non-issue, nobody outside Slashdot cares because you deserve to get sued if you're infringing on their copyrights, go soak your head in a bucket of cold water, shave the damn beard off, tuck in your shirt, and join the rest of modern society you whiny, communist jackasses.

  8. Re:Tell me it ain't so ! on Two Women Found With HIV-Immune Mutant Gene · · Score: 1

    If you're trying to say that starvation will grow in a roughly linear fashion with the population but HIV infection will grow on an upward curve, then don't you want to assign the static percent to the starvation number and the variable N to the HIV infected populace?

  9. Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    Or insane... you could well be that as well...

  10. Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    You're either a troll or stupendously ignorant... I haven't figured out which one yet.

    Kimmy Chimmy Chonga is CRAZY, not STUPID. There's a difference. He's not going to risk losing his comfortable little throne by starting a full scale war because no matter how much damage he could do, there's no way he could win. However, he's well aware that he can use the presence of nukes, or at least the perception of the presence of nukes, as extra leverage at the bargaining table.

    I was going to say it was a good thing psychotic people like you don't get into office... but then I remembered Bush and Cheney... my bad.

  11. Re:And it will still suck on Via Will Join The 64-Bit Fray · · Score: 1

    I'm living in a world where people know that the 845GE chipset can be used to run the FSB at 800/533/400.

    And, I repeat: At the time I made my purchase the slowest clocked P4 running at 800FSB was the 2.6C processor. Actually, the 2.4C might have been the slowest clock (and, afaik, still is) but, IIRC, I bought the 2.6 on sale so that it was only 5 or 6 bucks more than the 2.4

  12. Re:And it will still suck on Via Will Join The 64-Bit Fray · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Problemo: even with gaming, I don't want a blistering fast processor. However, when I built my PC, the slowest proc available with an 800MHz FSB was 2.6 GHz. I don't NEED a 2.6GHz system to satisfy my addiction to GTA: Vice City, but that 800 FSB and the DDR 3200 ram was pretty sweet. Of course, now I'm finding that my 845 Intel chipset could quite readily be replaced by a mobo with an 865PE, but whatever.

    The problem is that in the midrange the chips offer a lot more than just their raw processing speed. Honestly, if you need a low end system, just buy an old Intel or AMD on the cheap . If you want a midrange system and you're looking at a 64 Bit VIA, the problem isn't necessarily the speed of the processor as much as it's the feature set on it. So, even though you may not need the speed it offers, you may need some of the other features.

  13. Re:You sir, are getting tiresome. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    Okay, blog-boy. Let's be pendantic about my spelling.

    Incidentally, how's that rechargable wet-dry vac working out for you?

  14. Re:Can you explain more clearly what happens? on A Car With A Mind Of Its Own · · Score: 1

    ..solid metal behind the pads comes in contact with the drum/disk and they overheat. But there's no wire in contact with tire outcome.

    That's what I'm talking about - the bare metal behind the pads can rip a tire to shreds. I don't mean the cable itself, I mean that some brakes have a wire mesh on the backplate. Admittedly, I haven't seen this on a non-commercial vehicle newer than the last decade or more, so perhaps it's not like this anymore, but on semi-older cars, the pads would be worn away to the point beyond burn in that the metal can come in contact with the tire if you slam on the brakes and that just tears the tire to ribbons.

  15. Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    Do you also carry a shotgun with you in your car so that you can shoot the driver of any vehicle that appears as though it may come within an unsafe distance of your vehicle?

    I'll bet you like Bush. Point the gun and pull the trigger. No thought required! Of course, it's funny how that can cause a lot more problems for you than it solves... isn't it?

    It's not a matter of being civilized, it's a matter of being smart enough to know when you should use force and when using force will cause bigger problems than it solves. After that, it's being smart enough to use force wisely and not just go blundering forward like a mentally retarded caveman who just discovered the first club.

    We could solve a lot of problems just shooting all of our real and perceived enemies dead, but just remember, somebody out there can say that about you, whether it's justified or not, and as long as they have the bigger gun, it doesn't matter if using it is right when you take that philosophy.

  16. Re:Can you explain more clearly what happens? on A Car With A Mind Of Its Own · · Score: 1

    Heh.. you've obviously never seen what happens to a tire snagged by bared metal wires from the brakes. The tire doesn't so much blow as it shreds. The result can actually cause the wheel(s) to stop spinning which will at best throw the car out of control and at worst send it flipping end over end.

    I imagine that if he's telling the truth he probably didn't pull the hand brake and stomp the regular brakes because he DID panic or didn't realize what was happening fast enough.

  17. Re:Can you explain more clearly what happens? on A Car With A Mind Of Its Own · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can't safely pull the hand brake at 120 mph. Brakes have metal wiring in them that can snag the tires if it's bared, and pulling the hand brake at that speed would probably rip away the pad pretty quick. Not only that, but there's no way the brake could've stopped the car before it burned up unless it caused the cruise control to finally stop as well. If you don't believe me, you've gotten a half mile up the road and suddenly realize you left the emergency brake on. It's only meant to hold the car in place on an incline and to add some extra power to your real brakes, it's not meant to actually stop the car on its own.

  18. Re: Tethers... on Space Tourism is Off and Running · · Score: 3, Funny

    ..Space Tethers ... lunar cargo is going to be a snap.

    Boy, I hope not....

  19. Re:You sir, are getting tiresome. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    You, sir, are posting anonymously, which gives us a clue about how much creedence to give you.

  20. Re:Can you explain more clearly what happens? on A Car With A Mind Of Its Own · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you downshift from, say, 4th to 3rd in an AOD transmission, the lever may go into the 3rd slot but the system will not actually shift down until it's "safe" to do so. It's the same premise that the system uses to shift up. You can hold the car in 2nd gear and it won't go over, but it also won't shift up to 3rd immediately if you push the lever into third gear. In an AOD, you more or less have to look at your gear lever as a nice suggestion that the car USUALLY follows.

    I don't really know how you could safely stop a modern AOD if you lose control of the throttle unless you've removed the rev limiter. The car will not shift down or into neutral if doing so would throw you over the rev limit and you can't gun the engine further to try and blow it either.

    As a sidenote, you can get a shift kit that will let you shift up and down in an AOD at your command. If you had something like that and you were going that fast, you MIGHT be able to override the rev limiter simply by throwing the lever back into first gear as hard as you can. Rev limiters aren't perfect and you can rev the engine to explosion if you do something stupid enough.

  21. Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy! on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    The public has both a need and desire for convenient access to its medical records. It has neither the need nor the desire for convenient access to business-specific information about the auto industry. In addition, there is no reason that the systems that we have now could not be properly secured with a much, much lower investment than the network privatization of entire sectors. On top of that, if you privatize your sector, you just need to invest that much more money into physically securing your systems because you now have much less capability to do damage control and routing, and smaller, more targeted attacks can more easily bring down your systems.

  22. Re:Get a clue, Junior. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 1

    You, sir, are quite insane and entirely incapable of viewing things from a proper business perspective.

    From your example above, financial networks isolated such that they are one huge private network would be a massively expensive undertaking. The return? A terribly small increase in network security due to the fact that ins to the system are now physically isolated? This is more than offset by the fact that you now must focus that much more effort on physically securing all of your systems lest an errant ATM machine become a perfect attack vector on a closed system. In addition, you lose much of the routing and damage control capabilities of an enormous shared network. Whereas no attack on a single group of routers on the Internet could be used to destroy the entire thing, there would almost certianly have to be critical weak point in a large, closed system that could be physically destroyed the render the entire system inoperable.

    The business concerns regarding the privitization of entire sectors are enormous. Given that these systems can, most certainly, be protected against a direct attack on the conveneniently shared network they're on now, there is no conceivably good reason to run around privatizing everything. The phone system can be attacked, do you think that the only way financial institutions should contact each other on the phone is through one enormous network run by and for the industry? Roadways can be attacked. Should the banking industry create it's own private road system for transportation?

    Don't be an idiot. The cost and risk of doing something like that outwieghs the benefit of just properly securing the system we use now in the extreme.

  23. Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed... on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Assuming you're talking about the statements from the debate, and assuming you're implying that Dubya and Kerry don't share views on that point, I might note that niether one of the candidates suggested that China shouldn't be a crucial part of the talks. They differ on whether or not China can be kept in the talks if bi-lateral talks are opened.

    Dubya, being a divisive numbskull who actively sought to destroy what little political relations exist between N. Korea and the U.S. knows that he could never keep China onboard by opening bilateral talks. In addition, since he basically labeled N. Korea as a potential U.S. target of military interest, he knows that Kimmy Chimmy Chonga will just walk away from him in bilateral talks.

    Kerry, taking the position that it's not in the best interest of the U.S. to run around the neighborhood childishly insulting all the creepy loner kids and putting gum in their hair, thinks he can keep N. Korea at the table with China if bilateral talks are opened.

    Whether you or the other voters think he can do it or not is an entirely different story.

  24. Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy! on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're joking, right? What do you expect hospitals to do, isolate a bunch of servers in miscellaneous locations and force people to print and walk medical records from one place to another? Do you expect air traffic control to build it's own cutoff communications medium that only interoperates with other towers and facilities? Do you expect banks to force people to perform all of their transactions in isolated physical locations?

    That is probably the dumbest piece of technical input I've ever heard in my entire life, and I'm not the least bit surprised that it came from a clueless /bot. The logistics and cost behind isolating ever single institution would be staggering and would go against the core promise of the worldwide communication capabilities of the internet anyway. The solution isn't to isolate every damn thing, it's to make sure that those things are sufficiently locked down. From a technical perspective, in fact, much of the banking industry IS well protected. The human attack vectors may not be very solid, but the technical ones, largely, are.

  25. Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. on S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    That's because your brain is roughly the size of a withered peanut.

    You should probably consider running for president.