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User: zippthorne

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Comments · 9,687

  1. Re:Really, is it that bad? on Shuttleworth Announces Karmic Koala · · Score: 1

    It's because every coffee shop, up scale sandwich shop, and even some grocery chains are picking orange/brown palettes, so it feels disgustingly trendy, and there aren't any other palettes to choose from unless you roll your own.

  2. Re:Will it run on Linux? on New Conficker Variant Increases Its Flexibility · · Score: 1

    Yes. Download the Ubuntu Alternate Install CD.

    It's not really any different once you've installed everything, but it's a text based installer with a lot more options. (full disk encryption, for one)

    If you really want to impress the zealots, though, forget Ubuntu, and skip right past Gentoo and try your hand at LFS. (linux from scratch)

  3. Re:The article explains it on Atlantis Seekers Given Thrill by Google Ocean · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure the track lines are the long roughly parallel lines surrounding it. The square in the picture doesn't look like them.

    Perhaps it is the result of a single boat in a grid pattern. I wonder if google still has any info on the boats that the data came from. It'd be interesting to know what it or they were doing when gathering the data. Maybe it was a treasure hunter.

  4. Re:The problem is with the trusting user, and can on Black Hat Presentation Highlights SSL Encryption Flaws · · Score: 1

    But where do you use your smart card? I don't think i've ever seen an actual reader in person.

  5. Re:only 13 screws TOTAL on MacBook's "Unremovable" Battery Easy To Remove · · Score: 1

    Ordinary people.. who bought the most expensive macbook pro....

  6. Re:Cost Cutting over-engineered devices on Is the Bar of Soap Tomorrow's Smarterphone? · · Score: 1

    Most people I know don't put the phone to their ear until after they've dialed.

  7. Re:Great on Is the Bar of Soap Tomorrow's Smarterphone? · · Score: 2, Funny

    And net profit!

  8. Re:oh-so-special? on Handset Vendors Plug Micro-USB Charge Ports · · Score: 1

    And they'll be first to push Bluray when they finally get around to it, too.

  9. Re:That kind of language doesn't say much on Stimulus Could Kickstart US Battery Industry · · Score: 1

    It will be successful at what the congressmen are trying to get, but it won't be successful at anything else.

    The reason is obvious. If it was an efficient distribution of economic effort, the market would already settled or been moving towards it without the implied threat of violence inherent in the robin-hood style scheme.

    It will increase jobs where they matter: on the "jobs created" sheets of the politicians who voted for it, but it will drain the same or more jobs silently from elsewhere in the economy, and it gets worse:

    If it was as efficient an allocation as the free market would tend towards, then it would be a net wash. Bad for civil liberties, but mostly harmless economically. It is unlikely to be anywhere near that good, however, for the reasons stated above. Four million jobs "created" will cost far more than four million jobs.

    It's a good thing they rushed to pass this bill. If they'd waited too long, the first signs of recovery would already be poking through and the damage would be much more obvious.

  10. Re:Blacklist on Casinos Warn iPhone Card-Counting App is Illegal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hah, no, casinos love card counters. They even sell how-to books in the gift shop.

    They don't want everyone to be a successful card counter of course, but they're perfectly happy to let you think you've got the chops to do it successfully. And to do that, they have to let a few successful ones slip through the cracks for a while.

  11. Re:Making Money in Casinos is Illegal on Casinos Warn iPhone Card-Counting App is Illegal · · Score: 1

    Except in a casino. Then, the casino profits substantially from your bets, without risking any of it's own capital.

  12. Re:A DRM ban clause should be added as a constitut on Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It especially doesn't make sense as MS's yearly net profits exceed the entire gross revenues of either the recording or movie industries.

    What's with the tail wagging the dog here?

  13. Re:The Plan on Drug Giant Pledges Cheap Medicine For World's Poor · · Score: 1

    Here, I've simplified it for you:

    steps [1-5]: arbitrage.

  14. Re:Public research on Drug Giant Pledges Cheap Medicine For World's Poor · · Score: 1

    Uh.. if you're talking about the pfizer drug advertized by Bob Dole, almost no R&D was spent developing it. They were looking for heart medication. Would you expect them to squander the obvious opportunity to garner billions in cash just to satisfy your prudish sensibility?

    Further, considering its popularity, one can only conclude that it solves a problem a lot of people had, improving their quality of life dramatically. Isn't that the whole goal of medicine and economics?

  15. Re:Apple prices on Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees · · Score: 1

    So to cut a long story short, tell me again how Apple isn't overpriced.

    As a package. The iMacs and some of the macbooks.*

    *IFF you are specifically interested in the exact hardware they're offering in those packages. And you need *all* of it. Including the built-in webcam, bluetooth, and wireless internet. (Have I missed any other price-justifying gimmicks?)

  16. Re:I think Ill trust Benjamin Franklin on Do We Need a New Internet? · · Score: 1

    Actually, I think it was an English parliamentarian a century or two before Ben Franklin.

    But the quote itself is meaningless. It's filled with enough weasel words to justify pretty much any level of that trade. In fact, I would venture to suggest that not a single percent of people proposing plans which trade liberty for safety believe that the liberty they're proposing to give up is essential, or that the safety they're buying will be only temporary.

  17. Re:the biggest threat to Canon profits on Canon Tries To Shut Down "Fake" Canon Blog · · Score: 1

    Actually PIXMA was the start down the dark road of proprietary inks. Before that, the inks were just a plastic box with a sponge, they had a separate tank for each color, and the inks and print heads were separately removable.

    I really couldn't guess what they're doing now, though. I haven't bothered with color inkjet printers since my i550 died and I noticed that CVS had decent photo prints for a fraction of the cost per m^2 I'd have paid for printer ink.

    I'm all about the cheap black laser printers now. The only thing I miss about not having color is printing google maps, which lose something, I think due to being rasters with "just enough" dpi.

  18. Phew. on Automation May Make Toll Roads More Common · · Score: 1

    Makes me glad I only put the required registration tags on my car, and keep my license "plate" in my wallet. Still, if I had mounted it, That's one hell of a camera if it can read that tiny text from a safe distance.

  19. Re:Just giver her Windows 7 on Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees · · Score: 1

    Q6600 is kind of a sweet spot though, price wise. Or at least it was in December. Not a stupidly small amount of L2, and decent clock for the price. Seriously. Even a 3.0 GHz proc is only 25% faster. Frankly, I'm unimpressed by any improvement much smaller than 1 f-stop. Especially if said improvement corresponds to a price difference of more than 3dB$.

  20. Re:Next stop. on 1,234,567,890 Seconds Since Unix Time Began · · Score: 1

    That's Bodging 101. Engineering 101 is almost, but not quite, completely unrelated.

    ~$ date -ud "December 21, 2012 11:11:30" +%s
    1356088290

    So, 1356088290 +/- 30(ish)

  21. Re:67 computers walked off? on US Nuclear Weapons Lab Loses 67 Computers · · Score: 1

    The same Los Alamos where everyone had the same crappy 3-number combo safes and didn't bother to change the default combo?

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=surely+you're+joking%2C+mr.+feynman&btnG=Google+Search

  22. Re:Quackery on Court Rules Autism Not Caused By Childhood Vaccine · · Score: 1

    Autism rates went UP after the mercury containing compound (you didn't think it was metallic mercury, did you?) usage in vaccines was reduced.

    Furthermore, Autism itself has no objective test. It's a "spectrum disorder" and diagnosis is based on symptoms. Historical numbers may not be comparable.

  23. Re:I don't invest in amoral companies on Vodafone Hands Data To Egyptian Police · · Score: 1

    What *do* you invest in, then?

    Are you saying you seriously have the time to research enough companies to have a well-balanced portfolio of non-amoral companies?

    Or are you saying you've got your money in the bank, where their investments in amoral companies pay your interest, but it's ok because you only get a tiny pittance of the spoils.

  24. Re:This is Government's Job, Not Corporations on Vodafone Hands Data To Egyptian Police · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think he's saying that Bob middle manager doesn't really fancy the possibility of being included in the list of dissidents to be tortured or disappeared, so to expect him not to comply is unreasonable.

    The only way for Vodaphone to avoid having their hands dirty is not to have any employees in country with enough authority to be able to comply, which basically means they would have to get out entirely.

    Similarly, the only way to avoid captains turning over cargoes to pirates when boarded would be to avoid the situation entirely. It's unreasonable to expect anyone on any crew to be willing to lay down their life for a box of stuffed animals or TVs, no matter how numerous.

  25. Re:Free guide to shell scripting on Beginning Portable Shell Scripting · · Score: 1

    Not so much a guide, but "man bash"* or "info coreutils" are incredible resources for those common bits you routinely forget. If you stick to what's in coreutils, I think you've got a pretty good chance of portability.

    *for systems that use bash as the shell, of course. Frankly, I think there might be too much in there, though and some of the builtins should have their own man pages.