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User: opec

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  1. Re:Missing topic: when browsers weren't free on A History of Firefox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since no copies of IE were ever 'sold', Spyglass never got paid. Microsoft never miss a trick, do they?

    They later sued Microsoft for contractual shenanigans and settled for $8 million.

  2. Re:That's a pretty bold statement... on Dark Energy May Be Changing · · Score: 1

    Dark matter is required by...

    Please. Aether was also required to explain how photons could travel through seemingly empty space with wave-like properties... Whole lotta good that theory came out to be...

  3. Re:Is MySQL really the right choice? on Gov't GSA Office goes MySQL · · Score: 1

    Not to mention SLASHDOT, LiveJournal and Wikipedia.

  4. Re:We can't even imagine the uses this will be put on DARPA Grand Challenge Finalists Announced · · Score: 1

    I suspect that some will even be used to scour the galaxy to search for hidden rebel bases.

  5. Re:And people wonder why you should be against on FEC Deciding Future of Political Blogs · · Score: 1

    Seat belt laws have an economic basis -- namely an accident that you might have walked away from could wind up costing some insurance company a shitload of money.

    Wearing your seat belt is the law because in some accidents, the belt keeps you from sliding out of the driver's seat and keeps you relatively in control of the vehicle. For example, you may need to veer right to avoid a pedestrian after getting struck hard on the side, an impact that probably would push a beltless driver out of their seat.

  6. Re:Retribution on Vigilante Hackers use Old West Tactics for Justice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A bunch of places get really annoyed if you supply false CC information (or so they say).
    Just becareful that the generating false CC numbers don't get you in trouble


    Huh? Are you saying he should be careful to not annoy the scammers? That's the entire point of the exercise.

  7. Re:Vulcan, from "Baron Munchausen" on The Feasibility of Star Wars Tech · · Score: 2, Informative

    The fearsome thing about the neutron bomb was that it would make nuclear war practical again, which was why Jimmy Carter cancelled it.

    Not true. From Wikipedia's Neutron bomb article...

    These same authorities say that the common perception of the neutron bomb as a "landlord bomb" that would kill people but leave buildings undamaged is greatly overstated. At the conventional effective combat range (690 m), the blast from a 1 kt neutron bomb will destroy or damage to the point of inutility almost any civilian building. Thus the use of neutron bombs to stop an enemy attack, which requires exploding large numbers of them to blanket the enemy forces, would also destroy all buildings in the area.

  8. Re:Lets compare windows to linux on The Future of Windows Graphic Technology · · Score: 1

    Open Up Synaptic -> type in your password -> click "Search" -> type in "nvidia" -> click "nvidia-glx" -> in the submenu click "install" -> log out of your computer -> log back in.
    The thing is, we are typing all of this - it's much easier to give a few command line commands to copy-paste in than it is to describe the GUI.


    ...The GUI process doesn't have to be explained as the command-line circus does. It's rather self-explanatory...

    The fact is, I wouldn't feel very comfortable typing commands that I don't understand in like that. There used to be a comical prank-call recording floating around the 'net in which these tricksters called some AOL-subscribing family's house, claimed that they had disgusting porno on their computer which AOL (the prank callers) found, and guided them through the process of doing deltree on their PC in the command prompt to "get rid of the porn". It wiped everything out. It was hilarious.

    But the thing is, average-Joe wouldn't know the difference between malicious commands and harmless install commands.

  9. Re:We are information processing machines on Broadband Life and Internet Anxiety Disorder · · Score: 1

    Addiction is NOT the *need* for something. It is the *inability to function without* that something.

    Wait a minute... So I'm addicted to food?... water?... shelter?...

    Is there a waterholics anonymous group in my area?

  10. Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... on Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Fossil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As much as I trust TV and the essentially random guesses made by people about something that has been dead for millions of years,

    The detail about T-Rex's having the inability to see moving objects was thrown in by Michael Crichton to support his belief that scientists' filling in the ancient dinosaur DNA gaps with modern-day amphibian DNA would lead to various "features" being transposed across the species. Some amphibians of today truly cannot see inanimate objects.

    This was a necessary plot point in the story... Jurassic Park was designed to continue only with Human support (no natural breeding), but "nature found a way" when the abilities of some amphibians to spontaneously change sexes was found in the JP dinosaurs.

    To recap, it wasn't a random guess... Just a plot twist by a clever author. There's no evidence to suggest that ancient dinosaurs couldn't see inanimate objects. Predators like T-Rex's probably couldn't survive like that.

  11. Something's missing on NASA Prepares for Space Rescues · · Score: 1

    Another rescue shuttle prepared in case the rescue shuttle needs rescuing.

  12. Re:Cisco on Tsunami Satellite Images · · Score: 2

    What a shame. You people have turned even simple donations into a competition.

  13. Re:Obligatory grammar pedantry... on The Media in 2014 · · Score: 1

    'Media' is the plural of 'medium'. Hence, 'medias' is nonsense.

    Welcome to the Internets.

  14. The real explanation for our "low" results... on Math Skills Survey Shows U.S. Lags Behind · · Score: 1

    In America, EVERY kid is tested. We have UNIVERSAL, public education. In the Czech Republic, you only get to be educated at age 15 and beyond if you're of a wealthy family and/or a child genius.

    The American education system is not as bad as people are making it out to be... We just have the slackers (that every country has, mind you) being tested as well.

  15. Re:What's my lat and alt? on Weather Data Available in XML · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't get it. I've been using this service for MONTHS now.

    Mine: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/KBWG.rss

  16. Woah on The Internet Meets the Neural Net · · Score: 1

    I know Kung Fu.

  17. Re:A map without a key... on Atomic Veterans Speak Out · · Score: 1

    That map is interesting but this one is even more interesting.

    The map is misleading. The radiation doses are affected much more so by elevation than fallout, for most of the country.
    Just look at the whole coastline and southern border. Low doses because of low elevation.
    Montana and Idaho are high obviously due to the Rocky Mountains.

  18. Re:Ethical questions on Cassini Shatters Titan Theories · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem with Titan is that it's probably lacking the energy necessary to sustain life.

    Do you realize how much radiation is being pumped out of Saturn and onto its moons at every moment of every day?

  19. How the Internet treats censorship on EU Pushes to Limit Internet Speech · · Score: 1

    The Internet treats censorship as an error and automatically routes around it.

  20. Cost on New Digital Audio Formats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No doubt we'll be paying for these new audio mediums in a direct proportion to CD capacity and cost (holds 2x audio, we pay 2x much).

  21. site:localhost search on Google Experiments With Local Filesystem Search · · Score: 2, Funny
  22. Re:Imagine... on Semacode - Hyperlinks For The Real World · · Score: 1

    I think it has a pretty amazing potential, but only if it's adopted widescale.

    I'm guessing it'll be adopted widescale only if we, the content producers, make it a standard to use. If we make it popular, people will begin gravitating towards Nokia. Other companies will notice and adopt it.

    I'm going to be using it this fall. I advertise my site with flyers and program ads at marching band contests. My site has a mobile news section, and putting this semacode on my ads, for those who own these Nokia phones (a few no doubt) will be helpful and good for both the people and me.

  23. There is no solution to this problem. on Making Science and Math Kid Friendly? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fact: The real numbers can be extended with the addition of the imaginary number i, equal to sqr-rt(-1). Numbers of the form x+iy, where x and y are both real, are called complex numbers, which also form a field.
    Child: That is soo cool!

    Never gonna happen.

  24. You knew this was coming... on Russian Group Plans Manned Mars Mission By 2011 · · Score: 3, Funny

    In Soviet Russia... The project funds you.

  25. Re:Drop in the bucket on Microsoft To Be Fined E500M By European Union? · · Score: 1

    Where does the money of this 'traffic ticket' go to? The EU government? That really helps anyone who was trod upon by Microsoft's alleged illegal actions.