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User: zippthorne

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  1. Re:Double standards on New Linux Kernel Flaw Allows Null Pointer Exploits · · Score: 1

    Good call, because one thing you shouldn't ever expect from programmers is to be vigilant about syntax and spelling; using the proper word in the proper place.

  2. Re:RTFA - misleading summary on UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook · · Score: 1

    Um.. what book by Orwell?

  3. Re:This is what you get... on UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, every time oppressive regimes get overthrown, many of the overthrowers are killed, and the apathetic are not so killed. This is the natural course of things, of course, but the problem is that it is often the young who have the guts and physical ability to participate, and so when they are killed, there is a good chance that that ends their line. No babies.

    So, evolution in action here, the meek really will inherit the earth.

  4. That's a good point on Spyware In BlackBerry Updates For Users in the UAE · · Score: 1

    Now.. the President owns a Blackberry. Does he know about this? Foreigners could be spying on our President's texting. That would not be helpful in treaty negotiation.

  5. Re:Great advertising for new versions! on Why Game Developers Should Shut Up About Used Games · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because at $30, people might just keep the games, rather than get rid of them. Then the available used units is lower, driving the used price up.

    Or more people will buy at launch, killing the used games demand, driving the price down, but discouraging reselling because of the low price.

    There is a sweet spot price where noticeable economic activity occurs in the used market. You can destroy this by properly pricing your product (or not worrying about the used market, as it props up your initial pricing. Auto manufacturers, for instance, take advantage of this.)

  6. Re:But Sir on RIAA Loses Bid To Keep Revenues Secret · · Score: 1

    No, mostly it just means that they wanted to throw rocks at them.

  7. Re:OOh on Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe · · Score: 1

    The only problem I can see is that windows (XP, at least) stores directory binding information in the user directory. So, you can't (or it's risky to attempt) move your user directory to another partition, the way you would on a Unix box.

  8. Re:Dishonest lawyer on Lawyer Offers $1M For Proof His Client Could Have Done It; Oops · · Score: 1

    It was birdshot, on a boutique hunting range. It definitely wasn't deer (you shoot a deer with birdshot, that's beyond unnecessarily cruel). It was probably quail.

  9. Re:I thought they.. on Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship · · Score: 1

    ...but then I also know actual M.D.s who prescribe homeopathics.

    No, you don't. You know MDs who prescribe placebos. They just pick whatever they think will sound the most convincing to their patients.

    It says something about you (or at least, what they think about you) that in your case it's provably useless, extreme dilutions of questionably effective treatments. It definitely says something about you that you buy it.

  10. Re:local power - yes, carbon capture - no ? on Expanding the Electricity Grid May Be a Mistake · · Score: 1

    Actually, the NE corridor is one of those places where wind could be a "local source of power." But we're still not going to bring the grid up to 2009 or build anything but coal plants*. (nukes aren't green enough and windmills aren't not-pretty enough, and happen to tend to be located within ten miles of properties that our wealthy betters use three weeks out of the year.)

    *We might build natural gas plants for peaking, but we're going to prevent the port facilities for natural gas delivery, and eventually convert them to run on oil instead. Which we'll also prevent the building of the proper port facilities, but we'll allow it to be transferred on an offshore platform from multi-hulled super-tankers to rickety, aging river barges.

  11. Re:Talk about a misleading title on Most Companies Won't Deploy Windows 7 — Survey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OS X? Ubuntu? FreeDOS? FreeBSD? MS Vista? Linspire? Xandros? Solaris?

  12. Re:Rip-off on IronKey Unveils Self-Destructing USB Flash Drive · · Score: 1

    No, the message should read, "no gold inside."

  13. Re:Wrong on Beware the Airport Wireless · · Score: 1

    That other post is not me. I genuinely wanted to know what you were looking for.

      But my sentiment is similar, minus the anonymous potty mouth syndrome: I really don't know enough to be sifting through signing chains (or even what they look like compared to just a signed cert.) At the very least, no better than my browser is, anyway. And I still don't after reading your post. (through no fault of yours, though. I just don't know enough to be able to do what you are doing)

    The best I can hope to do is read the name on the cert and hope it's not one of those unicode dealys.

  14. Re:Barney 10^100 on Rosetta Stone Sues Google For Trademark Violation · · Score: 1

    Uh.. staples is a word for "commonly used/needed goods." Which makes it an excellent name for a store. The pun makes it an even better name for an office supply store.

  15. Re:Well... yeh. on Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately · · Score: 1

    Actually, weight training might help you quite a bit. Muscle burns food energy even when resting, so weight training to "bulk up" may very well result in some extra calories burned (and therefore fat loss) each day.

    Now, the down side is that your biggest muscles that you can affect with weight training are in your legs, very near to where your arthritis is bothering you.

    As for aerobic activity, a bum foot suggest time in the pool. And with a lot of fat, you're going to enjoy the pool: if you have to slow down, you're not going to just sink right away.

    Anyway, the unpleasant fact is that if you're fat, then you have an m-dot problem. You need to find a way to eat less and poop more. It's possible, even likely, that your personal situation makes the things you would have to do to accomplish that unpleasant. Others might say it's "lack of self control" when it's easy for them to do. What they mean without realizing it is that you simply need more self control to do it than a "normal" person. But just because it's harder, doesn't mean you should give up on it.

    But you can't do it for a month, or six, or a year, and then "switch to a reasonable diet." That so-called reasonable diet, you've claimed, caused you to put on even more pounds than before. It's patently UN-reasonable, by definition. Your new diet, whatever it is, needs to become your "reasonable" diet. If that means shoveling a bunch of low-calorie foods until you feel full, because your "full-meter" isn't working right, then whip out the extra glasses of water and the garden full of iceberg lettuce and go to town.

    On the food side, though, I have a suspicion that your diet is, in fact, part of the problem. I've found personally that when I have to eat less flavorful food, I tend to compensate by eating more of it to become satisfied (except really flavorless food, like plantains.). Maybe the solution isn't to avoid rich, flavorful foods at all (except of course those which contain the spices your beloved cannot tolerate), but to go ahead and find rich foods and spices that you can eat without endangering your wife.

  16. Re:religion is not where the truth is on Study Highlights Gap Between Views of Scientists and the Public · · Score: 1

    Recently, some evolutionary scientists came before God and said to him, "We don't need you any more. We can explain everything with natural processes and do anything you could do."

    And so God challenged the scientists to a contest to create life. Of course, they would have to do it the old way that God had done, and if they exceeded Him, He would go.

    So, the lead scientist was gathering up some dirt when God noticed and said, "Woah, woah.. You make your own dirt."

    --- Plagiarized from some of the many email forwards I recieve.

    Anyway, the point is, did you get involved in research to learn more about the way things work, or so that you would have some kind of "i'm smarter than you" cudgel you could use to beat the dweebs with who have religious views? Because really, it seems to me, that without the "we're trying to disprove God" mission you've attached to biological research, a lot more people would buy-in on the costs of performing that research, and we'd all learn a lot more.

    But.. go ahead and "be smarter than everyone" if it makes you happy. Just don't go around complaining if you don't get invited to the sorts of parties that Christians also don't get invited to.

  17. Re:Wrong on Beware the Airport Wireless · · Score: 1

    What exactly are you looking for?

  18. Re:Remote X servers? on Moblin Will Run X Server As Logged-In User, Not Root · · Score: 1

    It depends on what you're doing with matlab. If you're just futzing around with things, then you're not writing scripts, you're using the command line and checking what the equations look like every three or four lines of code. I'd say this covers at least 60% of undergrad student usage of matlab, which is likely the most common version, since the student version comes in at under $100 and the real version could be up in the thousands depending on what toolboxes you get. Otherwise octave would be a lot more popular.

  19. Re:Two questions: on Moblin Will Run X Server As Logged-In User, Not Root · · Score: 1

    security will always require a replication of effort beyond the otherwise economically efficient level. But the cost buys you piece-of-mind, so it's still worth it. And may be partly mitigated by copy-on-write.

    Also, there's no reason that the login has to be a terminal. It could just run as nobody.

  20. Re:Graphics drivers on Moblin Will Run X Server As Logged-In User, Not Root · · Score: 1

    Well, that certainly begs the question; How do you know he's telling the truth?

  21. Re:Dimmer Savior! on Incandescent Bulbs Return To the Cutting Edge · · Score: 1

    Ugh. I just can't understand you "warm light lovers." I'd much rather just get smaller bulbs and run them at the proper level than too-big bulbs and run them at "dying sun" levels. And besides that, for equivalent light levels, the smaller bulbs solution is even more energy efficient.

    In the extreme case, if you want a really dim room, you could just get a string of christmas lights and run them around the ceiling.

  22. Re:Killing desk space? on Small, High-Resolution LCD Monitors? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe that's why they need glasses....

  23. Re:Why bother -- won't change the (un)logic on Pickens Calls Off Massive Wind Farm In Texas · · Score: 1

    You don't have to knock nuclear when some moonbat is using it to knock wind.

    The fact is that as a distributed source, wind will take a lot of manpower to install and get right, while nuclear plants are a drop-in replacement for what we've got now. ish. It's simply not economically viable to switch entirely over to wind right now, even if the fabrication ability was already in place. If carbon is evil, then nuclear needs some cheerleading because it's the only thing that we can do right now in sufficient quantity to make a real difference.

    That said, the anti-wind luddites need to realize the important, salient fact about wind: there is energy there. It is fairly easy to extract and techniques are developing to make it even more economically feasible to extract that energy. It's not a question of IF any more. It's only a question of when and who benefits from it. You can't stop the windmills any more than you can stop nature from filling a niche. and why would you want to?.

  24. Re:New waste recycle plants? on Can Urine Rescue Hydrogen-Powered Cars? · · Score: 1

    Why bother? They'll just get mad at you, not sleep with you, and ignore the whole thing the next day. Same as with diamonds.

  25. Re:Existing lines on US Finalizes Stem Cell Research Guidelines · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You absolutely should not. They only age it so that you rubes can't tell what it's supposed to taste like. Then they pump it full of carbon monoxide so you don't know what it's supposed to look like either.

    But who am I... I'm just a guy who thinks Cabernet is an atrocious joke of a wine, mozzarella tastes better than cheddar, yoghurt is gross, olives should be eaten off the vine, and pheasant shouldn't be eaten at all. You go chow down on your road kill like a good little garbage processor if you want.