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User: Sockatume

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Comments · 5,843

  1. Re:Demand to see them on Real-LIfe Distributed-Snooping Web Game To Launch In Britain · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Presumably it's only a matter of time before someone reverse-engineers the back-end to do exactly that. It's not like our government has a great record on data security.

  2. Re:But on Hyperdrive Propulsion Could Be Tested At the LHC · · Score: 1, Troll

    Somebody hasn't read much Larry Niven. Why take starlight as-is when you can use solar collectors to gather it up and power a laser to drive your sail?

    I'm not sure that the maximum velocity is as much a limit as you think, either. Given the time and proper course, so long as you can get above the local escape velocity (which is easier done by stealing momentum from other celestial bodies than by carrying around fuel) you can go somewhere else.

  3. Re:Duh! on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 1

    He's also telling it to readers who innocently carry that misconception in their heads.

  4. Re:Wrong Question on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Per hundred billion, not per proton. Hence "still ain't a lot".

    (I started at about 10^9 eV per proton, times 10^11, converted to joules.)

  5. Re:The proof is in the pudding... on Decoding Adobe's Big Device Push · · Score: 1

    The G1 isn't Android, and it's not a platform. Android is the platform. The G1 is the device. Android has Flash. The version of Android with Flash hasn't been ported to the G1.

  6. Re:Four in a million, huh? on NASA Downgrades Asteroid-Earth Collision Risk · · Score: 1

    Quite possibly, the author's editor.

  7. Re:Duh! on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 1

    Nice explaination, but don't tell your readers they "suck" for not understanding quantum chromodynamics, smartass.

  8. Re:Wrong Question on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 1

    It's not obvious that the total energy density when you factor in the containment etc. will actually be all that great. Certainly you'd have to have a project which needed some absolutely mind-blowing energy density requirements to justify the cost.

  9. Re:Wrong Question on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 1

    So, can 225 microcents get you 3.9 micrograms of TNT then, or is this uneconomical?

  10. Re:Matter / anti matter reactor is not enough on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 1

    This isn't a reactor, it's a research collider. As you point out, antimatter engines are way off and warp drive itself is, in practical terms, still a load of bollocks. It's not even clear that an Alcubierre drive could operate at FTL: certainly naturally-existing warpings of space and time (gravity) have never been seen to break relativity.

  11. Re:Wrong Question on Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hundreds of billions still ain't a lot when you're talking about nucleons for use as a fuel. When you annihilate it you should get about ten joules, or enough to raise the temperature of a tiny drop of water by a couple of degrees.

  12. Re:AT&T sets developer guidelines? on AT&T To Allow VoIP On iPhone · · Score: 1

    I didn't realise that the app store was regional, so you're probably right that it's driven by carrier rules in specific regions. I wonder, in regions with multiple carriers or unlocks, do they need a unanimous "OK" from each carrier, or will they approve a rule change as long as one carrier supports it?

  13. AT&T sets developer guidelines? on AT&T To Allow VoIP On iPhone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're revising the guidelines now AT&T's approved it. Does that mean that every iPhone developer in the world is limited by the guidelines set by one American network?

  14. Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... on FBI Investigates Liberator of Court Records · · Score: 1

    I imagine the public domain nature of the works is why the FBI investigated him but he's never been charged with anything, non?

  15. Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... on FBI Investigates Liberator of Court Records · · Score: 1

    I imagine that PACER fees also pay for archiving of the physical documents, digitisation, etc. It's not just digital storage and retreival (which for the sake of argument we'll say could be done essentially for free; it's not obvious whether that's the case). Either people using those documents get to pay for their upkeep through a retreival fee, or everyone gets to pay it through taxes.

  16. Re:UMD transfer the what what? on Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go" · · Score: 1

    That's a way of pirating games, not copying or loading pirated games.

  17. UMD transfer the what what? on Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go" · · Score: 4, Informative

    They cited "legal and technical issues" for not supporting the transfer of UMD games onto the PSP Go; undoubtedly they couldn't find a way to keep pirated games from being copied.

    I'm not sure how UMD-to-flash transfer helps people copy pirated games. I mean, the pirated games are disk images on flash memory. An actual physical UMD isn't involved.

  18. Re:Capitalists? on Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech? · · Score: 1

    Obviously. However I'm not sure why the article pointed out that those practicing vendor lock-in are trying to make money. It's kind of implicit in "vendor".

  19. Re:Ballmer: "We're not saints" on Ballmer: Don't Expect Simpler Licensing Soon · · Score: 1

    Retail gives you one computer and one "mobile" computer, which means one desktop and one laptop or two laptops, provided they're used by the same people. The home versions used to appear in "Home and Student" editions with three-computer licences, with no restriction on who the users were or (IIRC) where the computers were, but I'm not sure they still do that.

  20. Capitalists? on Is Cloud Computing the Hotel California of Tech? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "For the capitalists, it's just like Software 1.0 all over again, with fat profits waiting to be had."

    At the risk of stating the obvious, isn't the whole idea of the straw-man capitalist (as opposed to an individual in a capitalist society) that he/she treats everything as a profit opportunity? I mean, for the greedy, there are fat profits in rubber band manufacture or book binding or air fresheners, to choose three items I can see from my chair. It's necessarily not some intrinsic aspect of cloud computing/web 2.0/web 1.0/whatever.

  21. Re:Ballmer: "We're not saints" on Ballmer: Don't Expect Simpler Licensing Soon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hate to say it but your post is an example of fanboyish ranting distracting people from the true nature of the problem. A recent "last time" in most of those cases is actually trivial to find. Microsoft's badness isn't a consistent history of doing everything exactly wrong, it's that they do almost everything right up to the point where it affects their bottom line. Then they'll make decisions which protect their market dominance, decisions which have nasty consequences for everyone else. It's easy to think of a time when Microsoft acted nice, because they need that to shift units. It's the times when they act bad that are worth bringing up.

    For completeness:

    When was the last time Microsoft did something the customers wanted, instead of forcing them to "take it or leave it".

    Probably the Xbox Live software updates consistently dealing with bugs and improving functionality. Pick one.

    When was the last time any Office application didn't brake file compatibility with previous versions.

    2007 allows you to default to the old Office file formats. They work about the same as in Office 2003.

    When was the last time you felt like you actually own a Microsoft software product, and don't have to rent it AND justify yourself every time you need to install it on a new computer?

    Office 2007, again. I took advantage of the multi-PC licencing in the EULA which nobody reads.

    Last time some Microsoft protocol didn't break compatibility with competing, or even older own protocols?

    How can somebody's new protocol break an unrelated other protocol? Or do you mean their implimentation of an existing protocol? I can't answer a query this ill-phrased.

  22. Re:babylon 5 on Stargate Universe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This whole thread is off-topic, but I'll bite. B5 has had several straight-to-DVD feature films, trying to tie events in the mythology together into an entertaining story. The trouble is that they have to be moments away from the main mythology, or which were overlooked in the main story for presumably very good reasons, and are generally not as satisfying as the series itself was. You could re-do the main plot as a film, but it wouldn't be an epic any more.

  23. Re:WTF? on Ballmer: Don't Expect Simpler Licensing Soon · · Score: 4, Informative

    He's talking about bulk-licencing customers. Corporations and educational institutions.

  24. Re:Obligatory Open Source comment on Ballmer: Don't Expect Simpler Licensing Soon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why the "Format C:" bit? Is the previous step in your money-saving plan "buy a computer with Windows on it"?

  25. Re:Digital distribution has been needed for a whil on Hidden Fees Discovered For "Free" Windows 7 Upgrade · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's actually how MS does its student offers, at least in the UK. They sell you a licence key for £30, disks for about £10 if you want them, and give you a link to a .iso file or an installer.