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User: iMoron

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  1. Re:hmm... on NSI Botches Domain Transfer, Says 'Not Our Problem' · · Score: 2

    Well, there is the small matter of the 4 grand or so he shelled out to buy races.com...

    And the fact that the name races.com described the site very well. NSI's suggestion, racesnow.com, isn't very good. I don't understand why the site would be named "Race Snow" :)

  2. Re:What if it only has USB ports??? on Wearables From IBM Japan · · Score: 2

    My iMac only has USB ports and it can run Linux. USB support for LinuxPPC was developed because it was necessary to make it work on an iMac. If PCs or wearable computers come out with only USB ports, I'm sure Linux will eventually be able to work with them.

  3. Habitable Zone? on Five Possible Life-Bearing Planets Found · · Score: 3

    According to the article, the habitable zone is where the temperature is right for liquid water to form. But how can they tell the temperature there? If Earth had no atmosphere, it would almost always be either too hot or too cold for liquid water. If Venus had a much thinner atmosphere, it could possibly be the right temperature to support liquid water. If they're unsure of the composition of the atmosphere, how can they know liquid water could form on these recently discovered planets?

  4. Re:Release Candidate on What constitutes an Alpha-version? · · Score: 2

    A release candidate is when all the code is finished and all known bugs are gone. It's another round in the testing cycle to catch a few minor bugs that probably appear on only a few configurations. A release candidate may become the finished product if no fixable bugs are found (which is why it's called a release candidate).

    But for Microsoft products, release candidate == pre-alpha. :-)

  5. Re:digits, or whole year? on Happy Odd Day! · · Score: 2

    The original poster might have been confusing even/odd with prime/composite. While 0 is even, it is neither prime nor composite (this holds true for 1 too, except it's odd).

  6. Re:SETI@Home Wants Clients to Run Slow on SETI@Home Says Client 'Upgrades' Are a Bad Idea · · Score: 2

    SETI has always had trouble creating enough work units to keep up with user demand. The project is more popular than anyone had ever dreamed.

    Look at the date of the data you're processing. The date of a work unit I just downloaded right now is July 20. Analyzing this data isn't supposed to be fast. It's supposed to be accurate. It's better to do something slowly and do it correctly than to hurry through it and find out you did it wrong. I'm not saying that SETI couldn't make their client faster, but the idea of it going too fast is ludicrous. They're still sending 4-month old work units. IIRC, when I first started SETI@Home, I was also getting 4-month old work units.

    SETI just can't generate that much data to munch. If they did speed up all the clients and they ran out of blocks, users would be very upset. Solution... SETI would start sending out the same blocks to be rechecked while waiting for new blocks to be created. And users would be upset because they were doing the same blocks twice.

    This is science, not a game. Scientific data needs to be checked and rechecked many times. The problem (from the article) isn't because of SETI. The problem is because of people who believe that distributed computing is a race instead of a way for organizations to effectively speed up processing of data. If results aren't accurate, the entire process is useless.

  7. Re:Lightning show on Lightning On Demand · · Score: 1

    Coincidentally, I saw that show for the first time yesterday. I also recommend seeing it, unless you really hate loud noises. The Van de Graaff generator can be very loud, although the guy showing it will usually warn you before something loud happens. I wouldn't want to be sitting inside one of the Lightning on Demand devices mainly because of the noise.

  8. Re:[Question] backend system? on Amazon.com switches to Apache · · Score: 2

    They're running their patented one-click technology. Nobody knows how it works.

  9. Re:What About Mac Users? on Are You Ready For Burn All GIFs Day? · · Score: 2

    IE (4.5) doesn't support it *at all*

    This is only partially correct. IE can't view PNG's by itself, but you can set the preferences to view them with the Quicktime plug-in. However, this won't work for PNG's on a web page. The Quicktime plug-in can only display PNG's by themselves, which is useless for most things. Visiting a web site that uses PNG's will just display broken images in IE 4.5 no matter how the preferences are set.

  10. Re:min. specs on Watching DVDs in Linux HOWTO · · Score: 2

    The DV iMacs (the ones with DVD drives) are 400 MHz G3's and from what I've heard, the audio and video often get out of sync. For smooth decoding, either a hardware decoder or a really fast CPU is required.

  11. Re:Not the first time. on Microsoft Cracked · · Score: 1

    Several months ago on the Register they had captured a crack where someone had replaced the text: 'Please help us find bugs in Windows 2000' with 'Please help us find bugs in Bill Gates Ass 2000' on their beta page.

    Don't they mean the same thing? I think it was just the webmaster trying to clarify the sentence.

  12. Wow on iBook boots Linux · · Score: 1

    If Rhapsody can do SETI@home data sets 6 hours faster than the Mac OS, a G4's could complete data sets in 0 hours running Rhapsody.

  13. I'm Glad I'm not Under 13 on FTC Regulates Kids' Privacy Online · · Score: 3

    This article reminded me of something that happened earlier this year. Many years ago, I created a web page on Geocities (this was back when Geocities didn't suck). After the creation of the COPPA (last year), Geocities made a parent's permission required to create a web page on it for children under 13. I didn't really care, because I was over 13 at the time they made the announcement. Then, in February (I think), Geocities sent me an email saying that because I was under 13 at the time I had started my web page, they would require information from my parents or my page would be deleted. They wanted things like my address, my phone number, and other things that weren't required to sign up initially. I wrote Geocities an angry letter, knowing very well that nobody actually reads the email that gets sent to them. Not that I actually cared. My web page was fairly popular, but I was fed up with Geocities anyway (the slow speed, the lack of support, the pop-up banners, etc.) So I let them delete my page.

    I believe that the COPPA is not neccesary. If parents don't want their children visiting particular web sites, they should be monitoring their children's Internet usage. Parents shouldn't be required to give web sites a lot of information just to let their children visit the sites.

  14. I'm Skeptical on Simulating Human Musical Performance · · Score: 1

    I don't believe a computer program will ever be able to create music that sounds like a human wrote it until we create artificial intelligence. There are just too many things that go into making music. I've tried programs that are supposed to create music in the style of various composers (Bach, Beethoven, etc.). The music they create may be in the style of a composer, but it doesn't have any of the feelings that the original composer meant to convey. I haven't heard any of the music this new program creates, but I'm sure it won't be as good as music created by a human.

  15. Re:Q3Demo - Ibaibaibaibaiba... on No Next Q3Test · · Score: 1

    It plays fine for me on a 233 Mhz iMac w/Voodoo2. It's even playable at the highest quality settings. Maybe the G3 actually is faster than the PII.

  16. Re:Sounds neat, but I dunno on Donate Spare Cycles for Climate Prediction · · Score: 1

    I agree. Even though finding extraterrestrial intelligence is highly unlikely, SETI@Home is based on factual data, not predictions. If analyzing SETI@Home data shows a pattern that would probably indicate the existance of extraterrestrial intelligence, you've probably found intelligence. But with an ecological model, the results could be completely wrong if the model is wrong.

  17. The Specs on 50" Flat Screens from Pioneer · · Score: 1

    The specs on Pioneer's page look good. The pixels are big, but the screen wasn't meant to be viewed up close.

  18. Re:humorous... on G4 Bug Keeps Them at 500MHz · · Score: 1

    Doesn't the fact that they caught the bug before the G4/500 was released show that they were doing a lot of testing?