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User: Maximum+Prophet

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  1. Re:Cars??? on Penny-Sized Nuclear Batteries Developed · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yep, I'm old enough to remember when an MRI scan was a NMR (Nuclear magnetic resonance) scan. The marketroids changed that as soon as the scans were out of the lab.

  2. Re:Corporations have more rights than individuals on Artist Not Allowed To Stream His Own Music · · Score: 1

    I'm fed up with people complaining about both corporations and unions. It's the equivalent of blaming the the car that just cut you off instead of the driver.

    Not really. Mobs have a different psychology than regular people. It's similar to the way people can be more rude when they think they are anonymous. Remember - "No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible".

  3. Re:Reaching Out To Sue Anyone You Can on CBS Interactive Sued For Distributing Green Dam · · Score: 1

    Yes, you do. Sometimes the copy is a blatant binary copy. Even if the code was copied from source, and complied with different compilers, you can look for things like all the string texts being exactly the same.

    Sometimes you can find an unused string in the copied code that looks like "Copyright 2009, The Original Authors (tm)" That's a dead giveaway.

  4. Radiation Effects on Google Finds DRAM Errors More Common Than Believed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At Purdue, many years ago, one of the engineers mapped the ECC RAM errors in a room with hundreds of sparc stations and found that it was mostly in a cone shape pointed toward the window. That window looked out to a pile of coal, so the culprit was assumed to be low level alpha radiation.

  5. Re:More An Issue of Censorship Than Copyright on Professor Wins $240K In Fair Use Dispute · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Would you think less of him if it was confirmed that he had contracted syphilis

    nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac.

    Hard to think less of him... He couldn't even type. His friends transcribed what he wrote by hand, and there isn't even agreement among scholars about exactly what he wrote, much less what the basic plot of the book is. That he had syphilis is entirely believable.

  6. Re:Tagged 'digitalartisnotfineart' on Archiving Digital Artwork For Museum Purchase? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    (Fine) Art is anything you can get away with. - Andy Warhol

  7. Re:digitalartisnotfineart? on Archiving Digital Artwork For Museum Purchase? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's the same reason that when an art museum pays N million dollars for a piece, then years later finds out it was a forgery, the museum doesn't just say, "Oh, well, it was good enough".

    Art is not about beauty or aesthetics. Original art has warmth, depth and soul, similar to the way monster cables appeal to audiophiles. (Not that a *real* audiophile would be caught dead with anything as pedestrian as a monster cable, but I digress)

    If you can't see the warmth, taste the depth, or perceive the soul of a piece of fine art, well, you are just a philistine and should just stay the f*** out of the museum.

    Anyway people put mystical value on things all the time. The original Declaration of Independence or Constitution aren't really any more useful than the copies, and weren't even originally archived, but we still keep them better protected than most people's bank accounts.

  8. Re:Digital archives must be live... on Archiving Digital Artwork For Museum Purchase? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    lest the source material become unusable, like a wire recorder is today.

    Why would a wire recorder be unusable? (I had a friend who had one in high school) It's a lot easier to repair a wire recorder than a CD or DVD player. (Simple vacuum tubes, capacitors and resistors) When the wire breaks, you can just tie it back together. Try that with a broken DVD.

  9. Re:1960's technology Revisited on Hardware Hackers Create a Cheaper Bedazzler · · Score: 1

    We did our testing at night and the lights could be seen from a nearby highway. This resulted in multiple auto accidents.

    And how many UFO reports?

  10. Re:HOLY CRAP!! on Hardware Hackers Create a Cheaper Bedazzler · · Score: 1

    Ought to be as effective as Vogon poetry...

  11. Re:Except that... on Hardware Hackers Create a Cheaper Bedazzler · · Score: 1

    there's no guarantee that hers won't cause permanent blindness

    Since it outputs less than 35 watts of incoherent light, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't cause permanent blindness in anything short of a Ludovico treatment. I'd be like being blinded by a 100 watt lightbulb.

  12. Re:It's true on How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source · · Score: 1

    Where I work, we are transitioning from BMC Remedy 5 to BMC Remedy 7. None of the code written for 5 will work on 7, so we are just giving up on customizations.

    I know people who were working in VB 4.x. They ran into a memory leak, and Microsoft said, "It's fixed in VB 5.x" But their code wouldn't even compile in VB 5.x without major rework.

    Closed source code has all the problems that you've mentioned with Open Source and more.

    I think the problem you have is more with the leaky abstraction problem. When you have a wiz-bang tool and library, you can run circles around the guy that builds everything from scratch. However, when the wiz-bang tool breaks, you are left with nothing and no way to fix it. With open source, the maintainers might give up or die. With closed source the company that owns the product might just stop support, or go bankrupt.

    The key with open and closed source is to always have a fall back.

  13. Re:containment theory... on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions · · Score: 1

    So what you are saying is that we should invade with Madonna and Lady Gaga, and leave the tanks at home...

  14. Re:containment theory... on Iran's Nuclear Ambitions · · Score: 1

    During the height of the cold war, China had about 11 nuclear weapons. They're said to have more now, but France dwarfs them in terms of firepower. China never subscribed to the MAD proposal.

  15. Re:On open source on How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do doctors or lawyers or engineers ever argue that their service should be free?

    They should be paid for their services but the knowledge they use shouldn't be secret, especially in Medicine or Law. (Imagine you doctor wanted to give you a new drug, but wouldn't tell you the name or what was in it. or you were charged with violating a secret law)

  16. Re:It's true on How To Save $1 Trillion a Year With Open Source · · Score: 1

    How did a critical library go away? (I'm not familiar with whythelucky stiff)

    My experience has been just the opposite. Many closed source packages not are supported on newer versions of the OS, but when I needed a grep feature that my vendor didn't provide, I was able to find 10 year old GNU grep sources. They compiled the first time right out of the box.

    Since you have sources, why don't you just port the old library to the new OS?

  17. Re:Doomsday Machine on Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive · · Score: 1

    The US did build versions of these technologies, deploying command missiles in what was called the Emergency Rocket Communications System. It also developed seismic and radiation sensors to monitor for nuclear tests or explosions the world over. But the US never combined it all into a system of zombie retaliation. It feared accidents and the one mistake that could end it all.

    Also submarine crews could launch if contact was lost for a significant amount of time.

    However, there were rumors that the US did develop weapons that would launch as long as two weeks after nuclear annihilation. That was enough time to disable them if there was a glitch.

    And in keeping with the principles of Cold War game theory, the US told the Soviets all about it.

    Given that all this is top secret, there's no need to actually build any such system. Just tell your adversary that you've built the ultra-super bomb, install a dummy and wait.

  18. Re:But it's never the software... on Are Data Center "Tiers" Still Relevant? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Code scales, hardware doesn't. If you have one machine, yes, it cheaper to get a bigger, better machine, or to wait for one to be released.

    If you have 20,000 machines, even a 10% increase in efficiency is important.

  19. Re:But it's never the software... on Are Data Center "Tiers" Still Relevant? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That works if you have one program that you have to run every so often to produce a report. If your datacenter is more like Google, where you have 100,000+ servers, a 10% increase in efficiency could eliminate 10,000 servers. Figure $1,000 per server and it would make sense to offer a $1,000,000 prize to a programmer that can increase the efficiency of the Linux kernel by > 10%.

    B.t.w Adding one stick of RAM might increase the efficiency of a machine, but in the case above, the machines are probably maxed out w.r.t. RAM. Adding more might not be an option without an expensive retrofit.

  20. Re:Folklore on Universal "Death Stench" Repels Bugs of All Types · · Score: 1

    For aphids, just use the water and soap. I use that all the time. (Sometimes I put in a little canola oil to, but soap works fine)

  21. Re:The D.A.R.E. effect... on RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum · · Score: 1

    RIAA: Don't download music
    Elementary School Kid: You mean I can get free music over the internet? Cool!
    RIAA: Don't copy your friend's music
    E.S. Kid: Friend! Can I copy your music?

    Rock and Roll is all about rebellion and thumbing your nose at the establishment. This will go over like a Lead Zeppelin.

  22. Re:What's wrong with teaching? on RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What's wrong with teaching kids about respecting copyright?

    Nothing, as long as you are teaching them actual law.

    Back in the day, when plain paper copy machine began to pop up in places like public libraries, people had an understanding of copyright that was simple and wrong. Most people thought that you could copy anything you wanted in any amount if it was for personal use. No-one was prosecuted for copying too many pages out of a book. Now, with the Internet, things are more complicated, but people haven't kept up.

    A good teacher would make a passing reference to the RIAA's literature, then ask the class, "What do you think copyright *should* be?", and then go into a discussion about the history of copyright, how laws are created, and how to get them changed.

  23. Is anyone listening? on RIAA's Elementary School Copyright Curriculum · · Score: 1

    So the RIAA has created this literature, is there any evidence that a significant number of schools are taking time away from the SOL test preparation in order to teach this stuff. (School payola, perhaps the RIAA will be caught bribing teachers to present this stuff, wouldn't that be a hoot?)

  24. Re:Talk is cheap on Lawmakers Voice Support For NASA Moon Program · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Emphasize the danger.

    Right on. The American public really isn't anti-danger, look at NASCAR.

    It's good for society to have dangerous hobbies and send their bravest souls into danger. That way the rest of the population can live vicariously through them. It's either that, or start a war or two every now and then. Imagine the resource of the latest war were spent on space exploration. We'd have a space elevator by now.

  25. Folklore on Universal "Death Stench" Repels Bugs of All Types · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Several gardening experts claimed that grinding up bugs and spraying them on crops would repel bugs, but field tests have shown no special results. Perhaps this only works in confined spaces like were cockroaches live.