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User: line.at.infinity

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Comments · 397

  1. Re:Why can't Appleites hold Apple to a high standa on iPod nano Owners In Screen Scratch Trauma · · Score: 1

    I have never figured out why owners of Apple products refuse to hold Apple to a high standard across the board.

    On the contrary, you can usually find a link to some kind of replacement program or another from Apple as a result of another class action lawsuit at the bottom of the page at http://www.apple.com/

  2. Japanese and Korean on Grammar Traces Language Roots · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It has long been known that Japanese and Korean have had similarities in grammar, but both have been classified as language isolates as a result of not being able to find strong vocabulary links as nice as Indo-European languages. Some consider the two languages to be a part of the larger Altaic language group. Maybe this new method of investigation will turn up more useful results than the vocab link which is increasingly becoming a dead end.

  3. Re:Paradigm Shift on Jobs Resists Music Industry Pressure · · Score: 1

    They can make profit. For one, a higher quality version would increase the number of people interested in buying rights to the song. Costs are minimal, since the cost of electronic distribution is next to nothing these days.

    Or they can give discounts to customers who have already purchased rights. The initial price of a song then would actually include soemthing like rights + distribution cost. Pay rights once, and after that pay only the distribution cost for each download or something.

  4. Re:Now ... on Trigonometry Redefined without Sines And Cosines · · Score: 1

    Let's express this under "rational geometry":

    e^ (i theta) = cos(theta) + i sin(theta)
    = sqrt (1 - spread) + sqrt(-spread)

    ok, that was kinda cool and simple. Now let's try to describe the LHS:

    = e ^ (i arcsin (sqrt(spread)))

    Woah, that sucks! I guess not measuring angles is good for problems that you don't need to use angles. In other words, we need to learn angles anyway. "Rational geometry" is really only about dealing with distance and sine. That covers a subset of traditional geometry, but doesn't cover all.

  5. Re:European Water on Floating Nuclear Power Station · · Score: 1

    When it first starts the melt down though, as soon as it hits water I think there's going to be enormous amounts of radioactive steam that will spread to the rest of the world via the atmosphere.

  6. Re:Missing acidolphilis and other friendly bacteri on Researchers Say Human Brain is Still Evolving · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would bacteria have anything to do with the human production of lactase enzymes or lack thereof?

  7. Re:Sports? Features? Has? on iPod nano, iTunes 5, iTunes Phone · · Score: 1

    This is shorter:

    CTRL+L (location bar)
    dict tout
    CTRL+ENTER (new tab w/ keyword)

    Haven't used Windows in a while so the ctrl-enter trick may have changed to something like alt-enter or shift-enter. Feel free to experiment.

  8. Re:This door sucks. on Super Door of the Future · · Score: 1

    Since it moves less mass, it should be more energy efficient than traditional doors. And air barriers are not at all energy efficient.

  9. Dupe? on Largest US Anime Distributor Goes BitTorrent · · Score: 1

    First of all, how is this news? ADV films going BitTorrent was already covered. Second of all, what's the significance? Promo clips in general are freely downloadable anyway, just like linux ISO torrents.

  10. Re:Global Climate Change on Climatologists Wager on Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen any movies that touch this subject. I guess you're not psychic.

  11. Global Climate Change on Climatologists Wager on Global Warming · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC were designed to prevent global climate change. If the climate gets warm enough, ocean currents can be forced to "switch" in a way that can trigger a mini ice age.

  12. Re:Awful, awful idea on RSS Version 3 Specs Up for Review · · Score: 1

    Nice job pointing that out. RSS already has a history of forking so I was wondering which group did 3.0. Apparently someone independent. The previous forking was by an external party was not successful. RSS 3.0 will probably follow the same path to failure. I remember the Gnutella protocol also had an unsuccessful hijacking attempt of the name previously...

  13. Far less?? on Spammer Scott Levine Convicted · · Score: 1

    He faces a maximum of 640 years in prison under the law, though he will likely be sentenced to far less.

    250 years?

  14. Re:The purpose of the DMCA... on Real Worried About Apple Lawsuits · · Score: 1

    That's what I was thinking too.

    If Real circumvented measures taken to protect copyrighted content, then they are probably violating the DMCA. If what they were circumventing wasn't really there for protecting copyright in the first place but to prevent interoperability, then Real might not be guilty.

  15. Not Exactly! on World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine · · Score: 1

    The solar power plant is not exactly being built on the Amazon rainforest. Why you even bother to make such a weak argument is beyond me.

  16. Re:Environmental loop... on World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine · · Score: 1

    You're kidding me when you say that you think a tiny amount of additional shade in a desert hurts the fragile desert ecosystem. That's unsubstantiated bullshit.

    Opposition to nuclear power mostly has to do with safety issues. Nuclear power plants are becoming safer but not safer than non-nuclear power plants. Mismanagement that inevitably occurs in one of these nuclear power plants makes them less safer than in theory. Accidents happen - just browse the recent news archives. Handling radioactive waste safely is expensive as well. Environmentalists are primarily concerned about humans, such as our health and reducing the risks from radiation. You are misguided to think that environmentalists are only concerned about saving the wilderness.

  17. Re:Environmental loop... on World's Largest Solar Array to use Stirling Engine · · Score: 1

    And 4500 acres of solar plant has some serious environmental impact.

    Like what

  18. Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... on Apple to Refund iPod Levy for Canadian Customers · · Score: 1

    No word, however, on whether Apple return the iTunes Store fees for any Celine Dion tracks purchased in an alcohol-and-tranquilizer-induced fit of misguided patriotism.

    Yeah about that... you should give up on it.

  19. Re:Why just Google? on Google Urged to Drop Images · · Score: 1
    I was under the impression that the images Google used were not copyrighted.

    There's a copyright notice at the bottom right corner of the map:
    © 2005 Google - © 2005 EarthSat - Terms of Use


    The Terms of Use page says:

    Photographic Imagery

    The photographic imagery made available for display through Google maps is provided under a nonexclusive, non-transferable license for use only by you. You may not use the imagery in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.

    You may not copy, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, translate, modify or make derivative works of the imagery, in whole or in part. You also may not rent, disclose, publish, sell, assign, lease, sublicense, market, or transfer the imagery or any part thereof or use it in any manner not expressly authorized by this agreement.

    By using Google Maps, you do not receive any, and Google and/or its licensors (if any) retain all ownership rights in the imagery. The imagery is copyrighted and may not be copied, even if modified or merged with other data or software.

  20. Re:Maybe I'm just oldschool... on Apple Releases Multi-Button "Mighty Mouse" · · Score: 1

    According to a review by a user who visited an Apple Store, there is tactile feedback.

  21. Re:Acid2 test looks fine in IE7 on Windows Guru Calls For IE7 Boycott · · Score: 1

    I get that too. Apparently it's supposed to look like this:

    http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/reference.ht ml

    Here's the Acid2 test page:

    http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/

    (Safari 1.3)

  22. Podcasting, RSS, and SHA-1 on The Commercial Future of Torrrents · · Score: 1

    Not much details in the article. It just says Bram Cohen is having meetings with businessmen. It doesn't say how it will become a more restrictive technoloyg. In either case, non-commercial, non-restrictive use of BitTorrent will never die. For example, the idea of combining BitTorrent with RSS has been brought up before. With podcasting currently rapidlly growing in popularity, bandwidth is quickly becoming an issue. Amazingly, the podcasting community haven't embraced P2P technology yet. So BitTorrent might be a reasonable solution. However, one of the concerns with BitTorrent is peer sending corrupt data in a way undetectable by SHA-1 checking.

    BitTorrent automatically does SHA-1 checking for you, so it's very difficult for corrupt data to be distributed, but not impossible. Many security-related protocols use SHA-1. The next step would be to go with SHA-256, which makes it harder to create corrupt data that produces the same digest.

  23. Re:Apple Innovates Again on Apple Releases Multi-Button "Mighty Mouse" · · Score: 1

    Instead of optical on the bottom, make the entire surface of the keyboard a seamless touch-sensitive top shell with LCD built in to boot.

  24. WMV... on Xbox 360 to have HD-DVD, Eventually · · Score: 1

    Does anyone else think MS might be trying to use Xbox 360 to try to get WMV accepted over H.264 as the standard HD-DVD codec?

  25. More reason not to use Microsoft on Microsoft To Begin Checking For Piracy · · Score: 1

    The main reason I stopped using MS Office was after it "detected" that I was using an illegitimate copy and refused to run when in fact it was a legitimate non-demo version and came with my Dell PC. I thought I wasn't going to put up with this crap anymore.