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User: Dhraakellian

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Comments · 35

  1. Re:You'll miss them in a disaster on King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    Voice-mode message passing is indeed a slow fallback (I think 5wpm was the number given at a recent RACES drill locally), which is why various digital/packet modes are coming into use.

    Granted, it's still probably a good idea to have those skills in case your TNC fails, and voice is the only mode you have available.

  2. Re:You'll miss them in a disaster on King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    Except radio is nearly 100% allocated

    The obvious solution is to migrate to RFv6

  3. Re:No on Is Console Gaming Dying? · · Score: 2, Funny

    OffTopic?

    Okay, bsdgames is dying.

  4. Bittorrent is not the enemy on Hulu May Begin Charging For Content Next Year · · Score: 1

    The TV studios need to realize that the internet and bittorrent are not going away. They need to adapt and learn to use these technologies to their advantage.

    They should release directly and officially to bittorrent with tastefully inserted ads. If the ads aren't overly obnoxious, people will be more likely to stay with the official, legitimate version and less likely to remove them or grab copies with the ads already removed.

    Bittorrent also has the practical advantage of providing ratings with an enormous sample size. Even if the viewer to downloader ratio isn't exactly 1:1, bittorrent tracker stats would still be a good indicator of popularity.

    I would suggest replacing the station ID watermark with a static "Sponsored by..." notice that changes at the points when there would otherwise be a commercial break. These would be better than banners because they'd be harder to remove without destroying part of the picture and would be far less annoying and offputting than the animated [unprintable] found in some OTA broadcasts.

    If advertisers are unwilling to pay as much for such watermarks tucked away in the corner of the screen, classic-style commercials interspersed at certain intervals, but these would be easier to remove or just fast-forward through. These are more annoying and disruptive if not skipped, but customers (and advertisers) are used to them. DVR and VHS have had fast-forwarding for ages with time-shifted watching. Perhaps torrent streaming could be the answer to this for those who want their shows *right now*, before the download finishes all the way.

    Hulu is a step in the right direction, but Flash is annoying, restrictive, and has performance issues for non-Windows users.

  5. Re:No duh on You, Too, Can Learn Echolocation · · Score: 2, Funny

    the internet isn't even real. You can't hug an internet. We're fucked.

    Or, more to the point, you aren't.

  6. Re:Market Share on Chrome On the Way For Mac and Linux · · Score: 1

    Ah, I forgot about something. Not just the JavaScript engine is probably win32 specific, but Chrome also relies heavily on inter-process communication (since each tab in each window has its own process).
    I'm betting good money that this is very hard to do properly cross-platform.

    What about dbus? Would that meet the requirements of what they'd need?

  7. Re:Good omens on Terry Pratchett Knighted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sir Terry, Sir Terence, Sir Terry Pratchett, but never 'Sir Pratchett' - this form is not correct.

    Sir Pterry?

  8. Re:There is only One True Doctor! on Joss Whedon's "Doctor Horrible" Set To Launch · · Score: 1

    Which doctor?

    No, he's perfectly qualified.

  9. Re:Native QT look for GTK programs? on QGtkStyle Offers Native Gtk Look For Qt Programs · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's wrong with Trolling? The Trolls are wonderful people, as demonstrated by this project!

  10. Re:Shatner is out? on Paramount Casts New James T. Kirk · · Score: 1

    There is one true James TIBERIUS Kirk! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk
    Is Paramount trying to do with Kirk what has been done with the various flavors of "007" or "Batman"?
    Well, we already know that James Bond is a Time Lord. Are you saying that the same is true of Kirk?
  11. !lossless = !buying on Amazon MP3 Vs. iTunes Music Store · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let me guess: You buy overpriced $100 gold tipped cables, don't you?
    Don't get me wrong. My ears probably don't care, really, and I'd be transcoding to Ogg Vorbis as soon as I got it.

    But I still don't want to be locked into a single lossy format forever, even if I was buying it in today's best codec.

    This is one reason I plan to start buying and burning off FLACs from Magnatune in the near future. Their full-length mp3 samples are fine for previewing/freeloading, but if I'm going to actually pay money for the music, I'd like the freedom to change to tomorrow's super-high-compression/quality format when it comes out. (Plus, supporting indie artists on labels with cool business models is nifty too...)
  12. So Cable TV gets replaced by Cable Internet? on HD Video Could 'Choke the Internet'? · · Score: 1

    Don't cable companies already send out tons of TV content out over their fibre in the form of Cable TV? If TV over IP replaces conventional cable TV, won't the bandwidth previously used for cable TV be freed up for internet use?

    Am I right or just naively mistaken?

  13. Hartnell's Doctor was a scientist. on Favorite Film Scientists? · · Score: 1

    I haven't watched many episodes with the later Doctors. I have, however, made it most of the way through the first, including reconstructions.

    The first Doctor did indeed consider himself a scientist, and many of his excursions outside the TARDIS were due to scientific curiosity.

    I shall have to watch the other regenerations after I finish with the Hartnell Era and see how they turned out.

  14. Re:KOffice also supports the ODF format on ODF Plugins and a Microsoft Promise of Cooperation · · Score: 3, Informative

    It doesn't run on Windows yet. But QT is being ported, and it seems that the next version of it will already run.

    Qt has pretty much always had a Windows version. The problem with Qt3, which is what KOffice 1.x uses, is that the Windows version isn't available under a F/OSS license. Qt4, however, is F/OSS-friendly on all three major platforms instead of just Mac and *nix/X11.

    KDE4 and KOffice 2 will use Qt4 (this is probably the porting that you were thinking of). With KDE and KOffice using a toolkit that is available Freely on Windows, it's only a matter of time before someone ports them over.

  15. Re: Keeping the OS/2 Flame Alive on Keeping the OS/2 Flame Alive · · Score: 1

    OS/2 is the crappiest OS ever!

    And BSD is dying. Your point is...?

  16. Re:still no invisible login for yahoo?! on Gaim 2.0.0beta1 Released · · Score: 1

    in Kopete 0.11 (the version that ships with KDE 3.5.0), the "login as invisible" feature does indeed appear to be present for Y!M.

  17. Re:catch-up has slowed down in my opinion on Firefox - The Platform · · Score: 1

    Going forward, I would say that Firefox has more of a fight on its hands, now that Microsoft is starting to listen to the browser crowds.

    As much as I may dislike Microsoft, it could be argued that this is a good thing for all. If MS feels the pressure of Firefox, notices a slipping market share, and improves IE accordingly, Windows users then have a choice between two excellent browsers instead of a choice between a crappy, swiss cheese browser and a single good browser (ignoring opera et al. for the moment.) Also, a better IE means that alternative browsers have to keep improving, since they won't be able to rest on their laurels and still hold on to their recent gains.

    Sure, MS will try to use FUD to reclaim its marketshare, but at the same time, in this case at least, they also appear to be making an attempt to win back some of that marketshare on technical merit. Will they manage to improve IE sufficiently before it's too late? We'll see.

  18. Re:At what point... on 4 New "Extremely Critical" IE Vulnerabilities · · Score: 1

    Well, I do recall seeing an old Mozilla splash screen (the red background one with the lizard mascot spewing forth flame) edited to show the IE icon being torched.

    I probably still have it somewhere. 'Tis almost a pity that I avoid using splash screens most of the time.

  19. Re:This is new? on FourHead: One PC, Four Users · · Score: 1

    It looks like they have four sets of controls connected directly to a single computer, not a mainframe with a bunch of dumb terminals.

  20. Re:Wil Wheaton is very excited about this on Babylon 5 Creator Pitches Trek · · Score: 1

    As the series centers around Wesley's travels around the galaxy as a higher being.

    and then an intrepid hero of the Dominion War comes along and tells the god-like Wesley to "Get the hell out of our Galaxy!"

  21. Re:Release Candidate? on Mozilla 1.7, Firefox 0.9 Release Candidates Out · · Score: 1

    from what I've seen of other projects, .9RC is probably just shorthand for .8.9.x

  22. Re:Non-profits are permitted to make money on Gentoo Officially Not-For-Profit · · Score: 1

    "We made money on occasion and when we had excess we had this nifty idea called: giving it to the poor. Problem is: that makes you a hell-bound commie in Merika."

    Either that or a philanthropist who wants the freedom to donate where he/she chooses instead of where the guys in Washington, D.C. choose.

  23. shift+delete, ctrl+insert, shift+insert on Dealing with the Unix Copy and Paste Paradigm? · · Score: 1

    - Ctrl+C already means something very common and specific (send a SIGINT) in console windows, so the standard Windows-style keybindings cannot be used in console windows. This is a historical clash between the Unix/DOS "Ctrl+C interrupts" and the Windows/OS2 "Ctrl+C copies" (on the Mac the convention is actually Command-C, so Ctrl is still available, and OS X's Terminal uses it as you'd expect) - Windows' MS-DOS-derived command prompt has the same conflict and a similar solution.

    this is one of the reasons I use the combos listed in subject line instead of ^C, ^X, and ^V when I'm not using auto copy and middle mouse. (the other reason being that ^C,^X, and ^V don't make that much sense on a dvorak layout, where they're spread all around the keyboard)

    ^X = shift+delete (it's the only one with del; it cuts)
    ^C = ctrl+insert (you're controlling what will later be inserted. copy)
    ^V = shift+insert (paste)

    I've used these since way back when I was running OS/2, before I was aquainted with *nix's autocopy. I still use them now when I run into problems with Gnome and KDE apps not wanting to play nice with each other's (or their own) clipboards with autocopy (or when I'm using windows with it's annoying lack of automatic copying.)

    (having said all that, I still agree with others who say that klipper and its ilk are awesome and much needed tools)

  24. So, basically, what you're saying is... on McBride At A Loss For Words · · Score: 1

    "Do not feed the Troll."

  25. Win/win? on Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't GNU/Linux be better? ;)