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User: I8TheWorm

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  1. Re:one way ticket to mars on One-Way Ticket to Mars? · · Score: 1

    That's because, as a former quantitative analyst for a large mutual fund corporation, I can tell you there is a 2-4 year delay on presidential policy vs. effect on economy.

  2. Expensive for the RIAA? on RIAA Takes the Fight to the Streets · · Score: 1

    Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on people making and selling illegal CDs in the hood.

    I wonder how many members they've added to their staff in this fashion, and at what cost? Are they spending more than they're "recovering"... all in the name of I want to be Friday on Dragnet?

  3. Re:Please Think Before Exposing Paranoia on Feds Thwart Extortion Plot Against Best Buy · · Score: 1

    Oops.. I researched further, and $5000 is felony theft in Texas. Other states may differ... for instance, it's $1000 in Montana, where it was raised from $500 in 1999. And no, felony does not mean federal crime, but the FBI doesn't bother with anything less than a felony.

  4. Re:Please Think Before Exposing Paranoia on Feds Thwart Extortion Plot Against Best Buy · · Score: 5, Informative

    $5000 is still the low cutoff for felony theft... anything below is a misdimeanor and gets handled at the local level.

  5. Great news on Caffeine vs Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Add to that the idea that folks who work with their brain are less likely to contract Altzheimer's, and that I don't eat entire large pizza's in one setting anymore, I might live to a ripe old age after all.

  6. Re:IF... on Transmeta's New Smaller, Faster Chips Announced · · Score: 1

    Doh! That was me with the T(C)-1000 typo... sorry. The reason I asked about it was I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I'm pretty sick of only getting about an hour or so of real battery use out of my lattitude. One hour of coding on a 3 hour flight leaves me with 2 hours to hear about someone elses sales job that I'd rather ignore. So the Transmeta intrigued me mostly because of it's battery life. But if that means pulling my hair out while waiting for simple tasks to complete, then forget it.

  7. Re:IF... on Transmeta's New Smaller, Faster Chips Announced · · Score: 1

    I'd seen ads and thought it would be handy to take to meetings at work, etc... but hadn't come across anyone who'd used one before. Do you suppose it's sluggish because of the proc or because of the standard 256MB ram, which XP eats up pretty quickly? Did you guys wind up expanding at all?

  8. Re:IF... on Transmeta's New Smaller, Faster Chips Announced · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Compaq T-1000 tablet/laptop, Sharp and NEC at least had one at one time.

  9. Re: Dreams of the Moon on Dreams of the Moon · · Score: 1

    You're kidding. You didn't think the suit Neil Armstrong wore was bulky? He was like the kid in "A Christmas Story" that fell in the snow and couldn't get up.

    p.s. there is some gravity on the moon... much more, in fact, than found on MIR or the ISS. And the astronauts that landed on the moon were there for a much shorter time than some of the astro/cosmonauts on the space stations.

    Take off the tin foil hat and stop listening to Coast to Coast.

  10. Re:it's about time some one did this on California Bans Front-Seat Computer Use · · Score: 1

    Putting on makeup

    I testified in Nashville a few years back against a woman who was late for church and putting on makeup using the driver side vanity mirror (why in the world do they make those?). I'm sure she thought she had everything under control. One turn, slight overcompensation, and she went across Briley Parkway, got airborne, and landed on a minivan, killing 2 of the 7 people in the van on their way to a Titans game. Those two happened to be the grandparents, while the grandchildren were in the back seat and got to see the whole thing.

    That woman first testified she'd fallen asleep at the wheel (I and one other witness said it wasn't so... this driver came close to hitting both of us at one time), then that she had diabetes (a doctor said it wasn't so), then fessed up and took a plea.

    Not only did she think she was capable of driving while distracted, she wouldn't (at first) even own up when she was proven wrong.

    I think she's out of jail now, by the way.

  11. Re:I vote Orwellian! on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 1

    I think it's less (though not completely) likely someone would remove another person's body part to commit a crime. Not because of the deterrant of the charges escalating, but because some people just don't have the stomach for that kind of thing.

    But I agree that making the vehicle more difficult to steal by a preventative method rather than a postemptive method is a much better idea.

  12. Re:Eas of getting caught on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let me correct you, in that nothing has anywhere near a 100% chance of getting caught. While in the short term all a car jacker has to do is avoid the few spots with sensors, someone will devise a way to send a signal showing the system is still active. All you'd need to know is the proper ACK response.

    On top of that, it might induce more violence. If the cops are threatening to stop me after stealing this car, maybe if I keep the passenger and threaten to kill them, the police will reconsider.

    It's a nice thought to give the police officers another tool to prevent crime/accidents/unnecessary deaths, but it's a short sighted implementation, and one that I think would easily be thwarted by the criminals.

    No law has ever deterred crime, nor any punishment, nor has any technological implementation. OnStar has been around for a few years in the States, and vehicles with it are still stolen quite often. Chance of getting caught, extremely high, but that doesn't stop the crooks.

  13. Re:what, me worry? on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 1

    Keyless entry systems also use RKE, while the typical garage door opener has no encryption. Why bother with cracking RKE when all you need is a slim jim or a rock?

  14. Re:Yawn! on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 1

    Of course it happens! Didn't you see Gone in 60 Seconds?!?!?!?!?

  15. Re:Ahhh... the opportunities! on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 1

    Barring a technology so intimately interwoven into your cars ignition system that your car actually comes apart if you try to remove it, criminals and pranksters will hack the system making the authorities look a lot like keystone cops in situations where it really counts.

    And to aid your arguement, no auto manufacturer would produce cars in that fashion because it wouldn't be cost effective. And no politician would force them to, because the automobile industries PAC money (at least in the US) is a large incentive for politicians to vote in favor of the auto manufacturers.

  16. Re:Felony to disable on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 1

    Its called interfering with the law.. and would get you jail time.

    Are you suggesting that jail time is a deterrant for car jackers?

  17. Re:I vote Orwellian! on UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So cars would get this mod added to allow remote control of the vehicle. In that case, the criminals either 1) learn how to remove the mode, or 2) drive cars that don't have the mod in the first place. What this might prevent is certain cars being stolen as often (there will still be uneducated or risk taking criminals that will steal those cars). In reality, all that happens is what gun control advocates are pushing (if you make guns illegal, then only criminals will have them). Laws don't prevent crime, and there will be those that get around it.

  18. Re:Healthy future ... on Measuring Pollution In Humans · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Noted, but the main reason life expectancy in developed nations has exploded over the past 100 years is due to our treatment of the process of birth and immunizations shortly after. Since deaths at birth were counted against the life expectancy average, one person living to 100 and one dying at birth give an average of only 50 years. The infant mortality rate has dropped considerably, and is the largest contributor to the increase in life expectancy.

  19. Re:Timex Sinclair on First Computers · · Score: 1

    You've left me with the "fax machine in the field" visualization from Office Space ;)

  20. Re:Kaypro 10 on First Computers · · Score: 1

    I still miss Z-80's. I just missed out on a c++ contract recently that would have included some robotics programming in Z-80 ASM, which would have been cool. I keep thinking about finding an old Z-80 / CP/M machine on eBay or something.

  21. Re:Duh! on MySQL & Open Source Code Quality · · Score: 1

    True. I'll say this though, any RDBMS offering is better than ISAM (which I still have to report off of here.. paged databases in 2003, wow!). I just got my Cache disk in the mail this past week, so I'm going to spend some time playing with the OODBMS model, see what all the hoopla is.

  22. Re:Timex Sinclair on First Computers · · Score: 1

    My cousin had one of those! If you were actually trying to write any code on it, and got down to below half of the page, each character typed refreshed the screen. It was painful to write on that thing!

  23. My first... on First Computers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... was a Toshiba T-100 with two, count 'em two, 5 1/4" floppy drives, running C/PM on an 8bit Z-80 processor, with a whopping 64k of RAM. It didn't take long for them to discontinue it, since MS-DOS was taking over the world at the time.

    I blame that computer for my being a professional developer today. I had to write software if I wanted any, being discontinued, and local shops only carrying DOS and Apple programs.

    This line from the article cracked me up...
    Next one was a Toshiba laptop, secondhand from my brother, running OS/2. How's that for dating myself? Barely opened Web pages. I remember looking forward to OS/2. Hell, I remember looking forward to the Lisa and __ducking__ to Windows 1.0. Web pages? What were those?

  24. Re:dude, where'd you get your facts? on MySQL & Open Source Code Quality · · Score: 1

    From here, although again, now that 10g is included in the benchmarks, Oracle wins again. Here's an article that described SQL Server beating Oracle before 10g's release though. MS SQL Server had the top spots for almost a year on tpc.org, if I remember correctly. And that was in TPC-C, TPC-H, and TPC-W, although I think Oracle still won on the TPC-R. Admittedly, I think some of that was due to their porting to 64 bit using an unreleased-at-the-time 64 bit Windows 2003.

  25. Re:arcade cabinets on Linux Toys · · Score: 1

    It's not cheap, but Frye's has a completely built cabinet for the low low price of .