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User: Stonehand

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Comments · 3,211

  1. Re:Not an incentive on University Sponsored Music Services? · · Score: 1

    Generally, tuition and fees does NOT cover the expenses incurred to a university by a student. That's a big reason why universities strive so hard to get grants and donations.

  2. Re:Would it help any if... on Cheating in Multiplayer Games · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For Netrek, there used to be (dunno if there still are -- I haven't played for years, although I think I still have my .netrekrc somewhere...) at least one or two servers which had turned off RSA authentication. This way, you could use any Netrek client to connect, not just one of the precompiled binaries "blessed" as legitimate.

    Therefore you could take, say, the BRMH client and add features such as a torpedo data computer, automatic updates of army counts on all known planets, keys to turn... you were still restricted to the limited information and abilities the server gave you, but you could work around the interface limitations if you chose.

  3. Re:1 accident in 62.5 flights IS acceptable on Shuttle Politics · · Score: 1

    Is delivering crews and parts to the IIS "exploring the frontier"? Is putting some grade-school experiment in space actually doing exploration? Is sending John Glenn back into space somehow a valuable scientific endeavor?

    Hell, when was the last time the shuttle left the solar system, which would probably be about the minimum it could do and still be considered exploring?

  4. Re:Long Term Benefits on Shuttle Politics · · Score: 1

    The Shuttle is neither an exploratory vehicle or a colonization vehicle. It's an expensive, accident-prone, maintenance-heavy bus.

  5. Re:Big Surprise! on Using the DMCA Against License Violations? · · Score: 1

    Said "information" is probably a packet from one of the shady redistributors running a promotion that's basically a linearized version of a pyramid scheme.

    - Take expensive product X. Let its total price be P.
    - Sell booklets at lower cost p. Purchasers enter a FIFO queue.
    - Every P/p purchases (or more, depending on how much pure profit one wants), the head of the line gets popped off and receives item X.

    The vendor receives at least P for every X shipped, plus -- if enough dupes sign up -- a probable P/2 or so.

  6. Ooh, perhaps it's time for... on Assorted Video Game Movies in Development · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...Lopez and Affleck to remake "Mortal Kombat".

  7. Re:offtopic on Nuke-Lobbing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did I claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was one-sided? No. Did I claim that only the Palestinians were at fault? No. Of course, you apparently chose to assume that I did...

    As for Palestinian "warfare", if they were actually fighting with even a modicum of intelligence and resourcefulness you'd see far more Israeli military casualties. Instead, the Palestinians rarely even bother to go after even isolated checkpoints -- there's the occasional sniper attack, but not even once a month, apparenlty... According to their tactics, one might suspect that the Israeli threat consisted of cabbies, bus drivers, and the occasional random sleeping settlers.

  8. Re:Hmmm... on Nuke-Lobbing · · Score: 1

    If the aircraft were masquerading as innocent civilian aircraft in the middle of vast amounts of innocent civilian air traffic (which strikes me as unlikely in a war zone), you MIGHT have a point. Since it wouldn't, you don't.

  9. Re:offtopic on Nuke-Lobbing · · Score: 0

    No links to terror?

    Do a search for the "Arab Liberation Front", which is an openly Iraq-backed group that itself claims to have funneled over $25M from the former Iraqi regime to the next-of-kin of Palestinian martyrs and any other Palestinians affected by the intifada.

    Also, do a search for "Iraq" and "Philippines" -- where an Iraqi agent was involved in a plot to attack American interests (not too uncommon; simply do a search...) that actually succeeded in doing some damage (extremely rare).

  10. Re:eh on AOL Sues Five Spam Companies · · Score: 1

    If it's anything like ordinary spam, that "customer activity" is probably blatant fraud. I'd say that most of the spam which gets through my filters is insultingly obvious fraud or otherwise illegal -- Nigerian bank scams, cross-border pharmacies, herbal cure-all quackery, and pyramid schemes, "free"-but-CC-still-required porn, et al. Occasionally it may be possibly legitimate, if bizarre -- such as somebody trying to spam for some kind of Canadian Healthcare Directory (?!) -- but generally no.

    And if there are privacy concerns, one could always set up a system in which the identity is known only to a judge or similar intermediary until, say, enough evidence is gathered for an indictment.

  11. Re:Overseas spammers? on AOL Sues Five Spam Companies · · Score: 1

    Er, and accomplish what exactly? Bear in mind that without any asset in US jurisdiction, an overseas spammer won't have anything to confiscate, and need not feel compelled to cooperate. And his host government may not give a damn, since it probably has more important things to look at. The ISP may well not care, given how many overseas ISPs have been spamhauses for months on end, if not years.

    Without either ISP or government cooperation, you won't even know if there's a genuine connection between the spammer and the service that's being offered! If, for instance, it were automatic to bar Visa and MasterCard from approving transactions to thusly marketed merchants, you could therefore be targeting an uninvolved company, such as a business rival of whoever commissioned the spamming.

  12. Re:Interesting to note... on Stupid Censorship, Stupid Security · · Score: 1

    Embedded journalists were present during firefights and other combat situations, as you might know if you'd actually paid attention to any.

  13. Re:Win32 users on Duke3d in Linux · · Score: 1

    Well, I'd rather run around tagging enemy mechs with ER PPCs, X-Pulse lasers, and the occasional LRM barrage, actually. With, gosh, missions that involve more than running around, picking up powerups, and blasting enemies that magically teleport behind you when you past certain points.

  14. Re:Yeah but on Too Much Free Software · · Score: 1

    Well, if it lacks the features, it's not exactly a "full-featured alternative", is it?

  15. Re:Yeah but on Too Much Free Software · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does the Gimp support adjustment layers; provide compatibility with the scads of available Photoshop plugins (or existing equivalents); 16-bits/channel processing; histogram adjustments, including automatic color balancing and adjustment based on photograph "temperature"; color calibration based on monitor and printer; unsharp mask; automated noise reduction... ?

  16. Re:We do it for fun, don't we? on Too Much Free Software · · Score: 1

    Bingo. Of course, for most users wading through multiple screens' worth of projects abandoned in practice or in name is neither fun nor productive...

  17. Re:Apple's business model on Beige Box Apple Clone? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apple's profit margins for hardware might be a bit higher than usual precisely because there AREN'T any Mac cloners out in force. If you want to use Mac OS X, you need to deal with Apple.

    In addition, there are probably more Apple loyalists than there are loyalists to any particular PC brand, given how commoditized and cutthroat the PC platform is (well, for desktops anyway).

  18. Re:Everyone knows the Plasma Rifle is better on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    Eh, use the Gauss Pistol. It takes few AP to shoot, does extreme damage due to its armor-piercing capabilities, and has excellent range and accuracy. You don't NEED to do 1200+ points of damage in a turn, normally...

  19. Re:Advantages? on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    He wouldn't have to. ;)

  20. Re:Advantages? on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Inaccuracy due to low muzzle velocity comes from multiple factors such as gravity-induced drop, wind-induced deviations, and difficulty leading a target.

    If your target is a BMP 1km away moving laterally with respect to shooter-target axis you WILL need to adjust for this when firing with an ordinary projectile weapon. You can't count on your targets standing still for you, on calm days.

  21. Re:I'm curious... on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    You're quite wrong about the nuclear weapons policies. Look up Pakistan -- hell, if memory serves, Russia also dropped its "no first strike" policy as well.

  22. Re:self-destruction on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    Long-range shooting would be more accurate, compared to relatively slow bullets suffering under that 9.8m/s^{2} pull. Leading a moving target also would become practically a non-issue.

    In addition, beams don't have projectiles to ricochet or fragment, so there's a better chance that you damage ONLY what you directly hit. This matters, unless you like to pretend that everybody will refrain from using human shields.

    It might also be very, very quiet, if it could be cooled silently.

  23. Re:Actually... on Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military · · Score: 1

    Would that be the OICW (Objective Infantry Combat Weapon, or something like that. Made by H&K and others.)?

    IIRC, the "rifle" part of that is still an ordinary rifle, and shouldn't be affected by EMP any more than, say, an M16.

    Mind you, even the US military's only developed battlefield-ready non-nuclear EMP weapons fairly recently, if memory serves.

  24. Re:Uh, guys... on IPv4 Headers Investigated · · Score: 1

    Or, alternately, they simply didn't get enough other submissions and don't feel like writing their own.

    It may be an ATTEMPT at being funny, but...

  25. Re:Because for us it would be a derogatory label on Are Programmers Engineers? · · Score: 1

    Not always.

    For instance, you can probably take a novice C programmer who's familiar with matrix algebra, give him a detailed step-by-step description of Strassen's matrix multiplication algorithm and an API to adhere to, and he could probably do it.

    It wouldn't require much artistry or creativity, since unless you're putting additional constraints regarding time or space efficiency you've already made basically all the decisions for him; all that he has to do is translate the steps into code, implement it, and debug it.

    Now, if you ask a programmer to implement something more complicated, while leaving substantial design decisions to him, then he may be doing more than mere coding. I would suggest that this is not a given.