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User: vaporland

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Comments · 553

  1. Re:Out there on Ballmer Slams Android As Cheap and Overcomplicated · · Score: 1

    An inexpensive Android phone is perfectly adequate for these functions, and costs a lot less than an iPhone.

    AT&T is giving away the iPhone 3GS, so unless someone is paying customers to take Android phones, it doesn't get any cheaper than "free" (as in beer you pay to rent every month).

  2. Re:Lameness on Steve Jobs Dead At 56 · · Score: 1

    It's better to be a pirate than join the... Army.

  3. Re:Frankly, that's cool on A Few Million Virtual Monkeys Randomly Recreate Shakespeare · · Score: 1

    They need to pipe the output from this system into IBM's WATSON. Instant random knowledge! We'll have time travel figured out in a week!

  4. It happens in America too on Smartphones Becoming Computer of Choice in Developing Countries · · Score: 2

    A company you never heard of does web apps for government. In a meeting recently with some folks who administer public health for the disadvantaged, the company was told that increasing numbers of their public assistance clients are using smartphones exclusively for Internet access because a monthly mobile package is cheaper than a laptop / desktop and broadband Internet.

  5. Re:Keynesian? on Krugman On Bitcoin and the Gold Standard · · Score: 1

    "real psychics" don't bullshit, and they do exist. Real economists? They don't exist and they do bullshit.

  6. Re:Huh? on Obama Admin Wants Hackers Charged As Mobsters · · Score: 1

    Spraypaint graffiti on a Chase Bank branch, the most you might get is $1000 fine for a first offense. MAYBE a weekend in jail, but probably just public service cleaning it up.

    Post digital graffiti on the Chase Bank website, they want you to go to the PMITA prison for five or ten years.

    Disproportionate response.

  7. 10 years MTBF on 3TB Hard Drive Round Up · · Score: 1

    When i was doing IT support work I had a client with an Apple 120MB hard drive that had run continuously (been in active use) for over ten years. I doubt it was ever turned off during that time.

    It was a seagate as I recall... they don't make 'em like that anymore.

  8. Re:Whoot: there it is! on "Woot" Becomes an Official Word · · Score: 1

    They don't look like geeks to me. This predates leetspeak by at least a decade.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBwvFBxf_Eg

  9. Whoot: there it is! on "Woot" Becomes an Official Word · · Score: 1
  10. They visit the movie theater more on Suppressed Report Shows Pirates Are Good Customers · · Score: 1

    they visit the movie theater more, especially for opening weekend releases

    So that they can record the movie & torrent it?

  11. Re:Well, that's one way to advertise.... on Facebook Bans Google+ Ads · · Score: 1

    1. corporations have better rights than individuals
    2. form an LLC
    3. claim corporate rights were violated
    4. litigate
    5. profit!

  12. & the world's 2ND oldest profession is... on Judge Says You Can't Know If Google Spies For NSA · · Score: 1

    ...marketing. not much different from the world's oldest profession.

    when you have a scorpion on your back, don't be shocked when it stings you.

    you knew it was a scorpion before it took you for a ride...

  13. Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode on First Thunderbolt Peripherals Arrive To Market · · Score: 1

    Target disk mode is one of the best innovations Apple's come up with.

    Now with Thunderbolt target disk mode, I'll be able to have an external boot device on my Mac Book Air that's worth a damn, or update/transfer data from/to the MBA at lightning speed.

    I'd buy that for a fifty...

  14. Re:I feel... on Apple Has Stopped iOS Downgrading · · Score: 1

    My wife had a 3G - worked great at first, then got slower & slower.

    Went to the Geniurd Bar, did a wipe, not much help. "iOS 4 will make it better, coming out soon".

    Waited, made no difference. All kinds of weirdness, laggy taps, no response, etc etc etc.

    We must have gone back and forth between AT&T & the Geniurds seven or eight times. Apple offered a replacement 3G for $150 when they were selling new for $49 - no thanks.

    Finally, when her contract was three months from running out and she was actually looking at Androids (and HATING them - "cheap and flimsy") we tried apple once more.

    They listened patiently and this time offered us a replacement 3G for free. Seems our particular serial number was (finally) known defective.

    Got the replacement and it worked like a charm. I think a lot of 3Gs were defective and Apple did not want to admit it.

    No more dropped calls. They really threw AT&T under the bus for that one...

  15. Re:Walled Garden on Apple Has Stopped iOS Downgrading · · Score: 1

    Plays For Sure. Windows Mobile. Zune hardware. Kin. None of these are migrating anywhere but the trash can.

    There's lots of others. Who left behind whom? It's the nature of tech. Apple didn't invent obsolescence, they just made people feel better about it.

    I had an iPhone 3GS. When I got the "4" all of my apps downloaded and installed automatically.

    Again, who left whom?

  16. Re:Nothing to worry about, move along on Flood Berm Collapses At Nebraska Nuclear Plant · · Score: 1

    Thank you for your post. The casks are now partially submerged. Google "dry cask submersion".

    You will eventually come to some NRC reports stating that, while casks have been dropped from 20 feet and hit by trains going 80MPH, the longest water submersion test was for only eight hours.

    Read further and you will see comments to the effect that the odds of dry fuel cask submersion are infinitesimal.

    Also note that dry casks have vents at the top and bottom to allow air to circulate and keep them cool.

    No mention anywhere of what happens when water enters a dry cask for an extended period of time. Nothing about what mud blocking the intake vents will do, especially when the cask cannot be inspected or moved for weeks or maybe a month or more.

    Apparently these unlikely scenarios have never been considered a possibility.

    We're about to find out...

  17. Re:Europe's own fault on WIPO Talks May Portend Sweeping Broacast-Based Copyright · · Score: 1

    (Yes, corporations have no inherent morals. Yes, that's a problem.)

    When corporations were given the rights of individuals in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, we started down the road of corporate psychopathic oligarchy.

    An entity with fascist self interest and no concern for the individual can't really be blamed for pursuing it's goals to the exclusion of society's needs...

  18. Re:Typical Cop on Off-Duty Police Officer Steals iPad From TSA Checkpoint · · Score: 1

    That's interesting if only because NCIC does nor list 'hispanic' as a race. Black, Caucasian, Asian, Native American, yes, but Hispanic is officially a characteristic, not a race.

    I know this because our company did a web app for tracking unsolved cold cases, and the investigators we worked with were quite explicit in making this distinction.

  19. You don't know what you're talking about. . . on Learning Programming In a Post-BASIC World · · Score: 1

    Because it's crap. Seriously, it was really poorly designed both as a teaching language and as a software development language.

    You don't know what you're talking about. Its all about context. Where i learned programming in the 70s, there was batch FORTRAN / PL/1 & COBOL, and time-shared BASIC. It was the first time the computer talked back to you in real time.

    Hewlett-Packard made a fortune off of their HP2000 series. Those $250k minicomputers were replacing million dollar mainframes and giving the users power and control. There was a free library with thousands of programs. You could modify them yourself. They were used in research, education and business and everyone was happy. It was fun!

    In my high school, the BASIC programming classes were filled and the terminals were occupied from 7AM until after dark. You could get up to speed quickly and make some really cool stuff. I wrote an instant messaging program in 1975 that was not even supposed to be technically possible. There was an intense sense of competition between the students to learn the entire language, and it gave a focus to kids who weren't playing football or taking drama classes.

    With the HP2000, it wasn't just the BASIC language, it was the operating system. You could do things on your terminal that would goof up the other guy. You could share data between users. You could execute operating system commands form within your programs. You got to learn about security and infrastructure, at a very basic level, which stood you well for future endeavors.

    The HP2000 evolved into the HP3000 which was widely used from the mid-70s until 2000 when HP discontinued support. There were still a lot of BASIC programs being written up until the end.

    Other contemporaries were programming BASIC on DEC PDP hardware. There was another entire infrastructure there that was vibrant and thriving, and BASIC was an integral part of it. Data General was another minicomputer vendor with an entire ecosystem of which BASIC was a part.

    I taught the BASIC class in my senior year. When I went to college, my instructors let me skip introduction to structured programming - I had self-taught myself this concept without even realizing it was the most logical way to write code.

    A lot of us kids went on to very successful careers in DP as it evolved into IT and learned new languages and operating systems and did quite well, thank you. We started with basic and evolved to cross-platform integrated development environments. I was lucky to meet the guy who decommissioned our school's computer and sold it for scrap in the 80's. he had an image of the last backup taken before disassembling the system. Through the use of SIMH, I have that system running in full on my MBP. I can run the Star Trek and Blackjack games from my high school days.

    So it follows that if you start learning to program in BASIC, you will have to at some point ditch it and start using something better.

    BASIC taught you the basics, and laid a basic framework to learn everything else that came after. It was also a useful tool for writing your own programs in an era when most computer users did that instead of buying software. Nobody I know uses the same stuff at work that they learned in high-school/college. Go find something else to rant about.

    It's wasn't crap and you don't know what you're talking about.

  20. Re:I don't care who you are on Weird Al Says "Twitter Saved My Album" · · Score: 1

    His career and new music is still just as relevant (whatever level you deem that to be) after 30 years. Not too many artists performing today can say that.

    This. I'd add DEVO to that category, and Al's paid tribute to them too, back in the 80's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ

  21. Re:The rise of the cyber assassins. on LulzSec Offers to Take Revenge On Sega Hackers · · Score: 1

    Or, LulzSec is an agent provocateur designed to justify a hacker crackdown like you are describing, and send a warning to those who would follow them.

    Remember that in "1984", Winston Smith was betrayed by O'Brien, who Smith believed was an ally...

    That certainly changed when the caged rat was strapped to Smith's head.

  22. Re:The terrors of globalization on The End of Cheap Labor In China · · Score: 1

    See my earlier post in this thread re lead poisoning. If indeed 40% or more of children have it, that's going to be a huge burden to Chinese society on many levels.

    We had Upton Sinclair and "The Jungle" to spur creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Who's going to do this in China?

  23. Re:Small sample size? on The End of Cheap Labor In China · · Score: 1

    It's unlikely this workforce will be soon exhausted...

    Except for the ones suffering from lead poisoning.

    I read one statistic stating that up to 40% of children in China are suffering from this.

    I imagine that they feel very exhausted...

  24. Chinese students paying high tuitions on The End of Cheap Labor In China · · Score: 1

    Until DHS reduces their heavy-handed border / visa policies, don't bet on a flood of foreign students arriving on US shores...

  25. Re:Gambling should be illegal in all states. on Online Poker Legalization Bill Coming Next Week · · Score: 1

    So then crime rates will shoot up around free wifi if we make internet poker legal?

    The big crime increase will come from all the noobs being scammed by the folks who play dirty by rigging or hacking online poker systems.

    When I was in high school (1976) I wrote a poker program that cheated. I used to challenge the stupid rednecks who hated my geekiness to play the computer for real money. My program would let them win for a little while, and then take them to the cleaners.

    It was pretty amusing, so I never ever play video poker or other electronic games of chance for real money.