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User: SillyNickName4me

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  1. Re:WAR WAR WAR on U.S. Plan To Fight The Internet Revealed · · Score: 1

    You damned well don't see people on the right making phony claims that they are "frightened" of the left.

    No, they usually don't state it directly, rather, they tend to call those on the left side of the political spectrum 'socialist' and 'commie', thereby directly implying that those people are a danger of American society. It is a matter of wording, but it really comes down to the same thing.

    You missed that? then look better, it happens all the time.

  2. Re:Good on Search Companies Questioned About Chinese Policy · · Score: 1

    Nixon opened our markets and diplomats to China, and we're talking about them 40 years later the same way we were in the 60's

    If so that is because of being blind to what happened in those 40 years. No, China is far from perfect, and it still has an oppressive government, but to say little changed for the people living there is extremely ignorant.

    It is of course much easier to see China in the role of the enemy when ignoring reality.

  3. Re:Ok I admit on Hopes Rise for RIM · · Score: 1

    In other words, nothing that can't be done with any 'cell' that connects to a 2.5 or 3g network and has the abbility to run local apps.

    The power of the blackberry is in the integration they have, not in the features they provide.

  4. Re:ndiswrapper on State of WLAN Support on Linux? · · Score: 1

    Ralink 2400 and 2500 based hardware is quite well supported on about any Linux distribution and recent OpenBSD and FreeBSD versions (no idea about NetBSD in this). They seem to have had a clue and published GPLed source quite some time ago.. There is an alternative driver hanging out somewhere for Linux, but I haven't used such a card with Linux for over a year now. Using 2 of them with FreeBSD (a cardbus and a pci one) and am quite happy with them. Used them in the past with Debian and FC3 and that worked quite well as well.

  5. Re:Unlike you, so much the same... on Cringely on Domestic Eavesdropping · · Score: 1

    So.. the answer is not to create a 'clearing house' in which such information can be shared in a controlled way, but to duplicate the work and information?

    Interesting kind of 'solution' for sure, and it is really amazing that those same civil liberties are being brought up again...

  6. Re:Unlike you, so much the same... on Cringely on Domestic Eavesdropping · · Score: 1

    You're willing to sacrifice the Brooklyn Bridge (spared from attack because of spying)

    From that statement, it sounds like you value the Brooklyn Bridge more than you value the Bill of Rights. Is that correct? An interesting choice but I would disagree with you. A thousand Brooklyn Bridges don't come close to the value of the Bill of Rights. Bridges are way easier to rebuild/restore than civil rights.


    Right, I get a +5 insightfull for basicly flaming the grantparent, and this actually insightfull bit is left unmoderated?

  7. Re:Unlike you, so much the same... on Cringely on Domestic Eavesdropping · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Your logic skills are amazing.

    Did it ever occur to you that wiretaps can also be done in a legal way?

    Did it ever register with you that prevention of the 9/11 attacks did not happen because of information not ending up at the right people, and misinterpretation of information, not because the information was not there?

    It never occured to you that adding more and more information is just going to make that problem bigger and as a result makes things less safe?

    Ah well, please go back to your fox induced reality, hope you are happy there, but please don't claim to be a sentient beign untill you learned something about logic and reasoning.

  8. Re:HP-UX userland? on Intel Dumps Iitanium's x86 Hardware Compatibility · · Score: 1

    Dealing with a mixed address space is a software developer's nightmare.

    A small comfort maybe, its no better with IRIX, while 64bit MIPS cpus have been around for 'some time' now as well, the last version I used (6.5.something) still had 32 and 64bit libraries, and a whole bunch of 32bit binaries (but then, it did also run on the older r4000 and the like still)

  9. Re:why not Alpha on Intel Dumps Iitanium's x86 Hardware Compatibility · · Score: 1

    they'd have a platform that would whomp all over everything currently in the marketplace.

    And that is exactly why it isn't happening, everything currently in the marketplace is for a substantial part comming from... Intel.

  10. Re:Way to Stand up for us all on Google Won't Pay Bell South · · Score: 3, Interesting

    choosing between the least bad of two candidates reminds me entirely too much of politics.

    Heh, and you can blame politics for that situation actually... kinda sad.

    2 decades ago, I used to look at what the typical consumer could get from their telco in the USA with some envy. Things like local calls being effectively free (which made hanging out on a BBS all day long and such an option...), being able to go into a shop and buy yourself some random phone and connect it and the like..

    Those things were virtually unheard of overhere in Europe. Local calls were and in cases still are charged per minute or per second even. Being able to connect my own equipment (legally that is) is also something that is 'relatively' recent.

    Nowadays there seems to be little reason for envy. I have a wide choice in local providers now, even for the last mile (former national telco is forced to sell them off when the customer wants another provider), a wide choice of dsl providers, and with that amount of competition, also very decent prices (currently around the equivalent of $50 for 24mbit downstream, 1mbit upstream) and conditions (things like fixed IP, being allowed to run servers from your home connection etc are pretty standard), and, part of the cause of this, a local government that seems pretty much convinced that they should never again allow for a monopoly on a specific form of communications infrastructure.

  11. Re:Way to Stand up for us all on Google Won't Pay Bell South · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Chargign the subscriber for enhanced service (QOS) is not bad, actually, I believe that is the 'right' way to do this.

    It becomes bad when service for those who don't pay the extra fee gets degraded on purpose.

    That was however not what the article is about, this is about charging content providers for prefered handling. I can see why this is attractive at first glance to both telcos and cable companies (for different reasons somewhat), but is it attractive for subscribers?

    Both telcos and cable companies should realize that the biggest asset they have is their subscribers, not their infrastructure. 15 years from now, happy subscribers will very likely still be around, your infrastructure will as likely be outdated. Content providers? WHo knows which one is 'hot' a year from now, let alone 15 years from now, so a strategy based on their payment is at least not a good way for achieving longterm viability of either telcos or cable companies, rather, its the well known strategy of favoring their own services and using their local monopolies for forcing others into their model. Instead of one big mama bell theres a couple of them aroud now, but nothing else changed really.

  12. Re:A few things.. on Safe Options for Surfing While on the Road? · · Score: 1

    Running Windows as guest may be the smarter way to do this indeed, provided Linux runs well on that laptop (depends.. at times it works really well, at times it is a real pain)

    Sure, you'll loose all bookmarks and stuff as with a real reinstall.
    But the reinstall process itself will be a blink (just a file copy).


    THe 'technically advanced' solution would be to run samba on Linux and use a roaming profile to store those things outside of the 'Windows world'.

    Maybe a bit overkill for the situation, but also nicely makes for sharing a possible printer and the like between the 2 enviroments.

  13. A few things.. on Safe Options for Surfing While on the Road? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, this should be little different from securing any other Windows machine connected directly to a public network..

    Indeed a router might help here, provided it also has some decent firewall functionality. I would myself go for a WRT54GL with OpenWRT, setup as a wireless client and with its wireless connection firewalled and doing address translation.

    It would be very nice if you could get around the authentication problem by directly posting the authentication info with some script, woudl also remove the need for IE, but will probably take a bit of scripting in perl or the like, might even be able to solve this one with just some bash script and tools like wget. You'll have to figure out what the authentication page expects from the client. Makes you wonder of course why they aren't supporting WPA and 'enterprise authentication' so that clients get authenticated at the wireless network level and get to use proper encryption. Sould not be difficult to support considerig that many ISPs use some radius server for authentication already anyway and that is all they really need.

    When using a router/firewall, the connection will stay up regardless of you rebooting the laptop, so you should be able to switch OS or whatever else you want to do.

    But in the end, reinstalling Windows every few months should not be needed provided the WIndows machine has some important tools installed, such as a decent personal firewall, anti-virus tools and some adware/spyware blocker/remover.

    Also, you can authenticate using IE, and then use Firefox for browsing I'd say, so unless there are other compelling reasons, I see no reason why running another browser would mean running another OS.

    Of course, you could also use something liek vmware or such and run a live linux distro on top of Windows. Refer to the many 'which live CD to use' discussions of the last years for info on that, or just try a few.

  14. Re:Facts? on Who Owns Baseball Statistics? · · Score: 1

    It's a rule of thumb that if you make reasonable contributions you'll soon accumulate enough karma to do so.

    Just as it is very easy to troll and still gather excelent karma, it is esp. easy when doing this on purpose, and many 'effective' trolls do just that.

    No, I don't. Yes, you can mod down to below zero for troll, off topic, etc. But OVERRATED when it hasn't been rated at all?

    By posting with karma bonus you 'shout', or make yourself heard louder, thereby rating yourself. You may not like that, disagree with it or whatever, but thats how it is treated at times.

  15. Re:Facts? on Who Owns Baseball Statistics? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I didn't "use" my bonus. It's the default, I would have to choose to not "use" it. At least that's how I see it.

    We can argue about how it should be, or how you believe it should be or whatever.

    I merely pointed you why this might have happened, it happened, live with it, it is bound to happen again at times.

    Oh, and don't take my posts as a sign of me agreeing or disagreeing with this specific moderation or any such moderations, as said, I merely pointed you at why it probably happaned. That has nothign to do with either your or my agreement.

  16. Re:There goes on BellSouth Will Charge Providers For Performance · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is bandwidth so much cheaper in Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia?

    Because many countries in those regions have some active policy to promote internet availability, and at least in case of Europe, have regulations to level the playing field for competitors of their former state monopoly telcos.

    Breaking up AT&T years ago bought the system time, but didn't solve the actual problem, having created a 'monster' that does not need to care about its customers.

    It did not solve the actual problem because it failed to seperate service and infrastructure, your typical local telco still provides both, and few people have a choice between multiple local providers. Sure, you can drop the telephny network alltogether, go cable and use VOIP, and let someone else interface you with the telephony network, but there we just move to another kind of infrastructure dominated by companies with an even bigger problem, not only do they do infrastructure and service, they strongly believe they are also doing content (filtering and management that is)

    This problem might be solvable by forcing slightly different rules on those active in the telco market, you either sell infrastructure and everything related to that, or you sell end-user services. You can't do both, or when you do, you have to make your infrastructure available to the competition for a fair price (ah.. seem to remember that for a while such a condition existed in the USA..)

    Bottomline, the solution is in forcing both telcos and cable companies to stop abusing the effective local monopolies that they currently hold.

  17. Re:Facts? on Who Owns Baseball Statistics? · · Score: 1

    Except the karma has been earned as the sum of previous contributions; it just means that anyone who participates and is not a troll posts at 2.

    It is the result of previous contributions, but that nowhere means that anyone who is not a troll gets to post at +2. Just look around in discussions shortly after they start and you will see that a substantial amount of usefull content comes from ACs, peopel posting at +1 (either because they do not post often enough, or because their overall contributions are mediacore but this one just happens to be good etc).

    The slashdot FAQ has this to say about using your Karma bonus and getting modded down.

    Oh, and read the part about moderation in general, besides the 'logic' of it, you seem to have the idea that posts should not get moderated below their starting point, while that is definitely one of the points of the moderation system.

    And as you may notice, I am not using my karma bonus for posting this, since this is all off-topic, and there is no reason to make it stand out.

  18. Re:Facts? on Who Owns Baseball Statistics? · · Score: 1

    Explain how something which has not been rated at all can be over or underrated.

    See the Slashdot FAQ, supposedly you 'modded yourself up' by using your Karma bonus.

  19. Re:Facts? on Who Owns Baseball Statistics? · · Score: 1

    When you post using karma bonus, and someone (with mod points) thinks it does not deserve the karma bonus, overrated is the correct way to moderate it, so overrated as only moderation is in no way a sign of abuse, rather, it may be proper moderation.

    It probably was not in this specific case, but that has to do with moderators who don't understand that moderation has little to do with them agreeing with the point of view expressed in a post.

  20. Re:The other white meat on New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate · · Score: 1

    both stone and copper/bronze age people would have to find a nice quary to get good flint or rocks. But my vote would still be copper or bronze age..

    Well, I understand your point of view, but generally spoken, those who depend less on advanced technology have a better chance to survive without it.

    I agree that in both cases they could find the materials to make flint tools probably, but the stone age person would know a lot better what to do with it.

  21. Re:The other white meat on New Evidence in Historical Cannibalism Debate · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People had tools and also hunting weapons way before the bronze age. Those were made of stone and wood, but quite effective.

    The two main advantages of metal tools are weight and durability.

    Stone tools however can be made easily by a single person, while you more or less need 2 people in order to refine ore and melt metal and forge a metal tool using pre-historic technology (try to get the fire hot enough alone, it can be done probably, but it is going to be pretty difficult, and this assumes that the right ore is available to begin with)

    It is pretty easy to make a flint blade that is sharp enough for shaving, while it is pretty difficult to do the same with metal when using pre-historic technology, so effectiveness of stone tools is really not a problem when compared to primitive metal tools.

    if an outcast would be provided with some basic weapon and tools, he might initially be off better during the bronze age, but as soon as his blade gets damaged he'll have to fall back on stone tools anyway, and may well lack the experience to make them efficiently.

    So, in the end I would say that a stone age human may actually have a slightly better chance on survival as an outcast.

  22. Re:It was always dead on If DVD Is Dead, What's Next? · · Score: 1

    DVD was crap from the start, an unrecordable,

    DVD-R and DVD+R are unrecordable?

    region encoded,

    Get yourself a cheaper and more functional player from China, it usually wont't care much about this.

    Ah, you can't? Blame the people makign and implementing laws in your country.

    over-priced

    I can have a player for around $30, a movie for around $10-$15... How do you mean over-priced?

    pile of shit and im amazed it caught on.

    Your amazement most likely has to do with being quite uninformed (see above)

    I guess the only good thing about it was the brilliant marketing.

    I guess that was the only sentence in your post that has something to do with reality still.

  23. Re:How much definition do you need? on If DVD Is Dead, What's Next? · · Score: 1

    Normal DVD is slightly lower resolution than TV (if i remember right)

    You don't remeber that correctly.

    Analog broadcast TV is effectively limited to just over 400 pixels of horizontal resolution, DVD (when used with component video) is limited to 720 pixels of horizontal resolution.

    In vertical resolution, there is no real difference.

    Hence, DVD is capable of approx 1.5x the resolution of analog broadcast TV.

    The fact that the screen it is displayed on is usually capable of around 640 (ntsc) or 768 (pal/secam) pixels horizontally makes that the better resolution of DVD is quite visible (given a proper connection) but it in no way implies that broadcast TV actually uses resolutions like 640x480 or 768x576

    and analogue broadcast TV shouldn't have any mpeg compression artifacts (which are quite visible if you look at DVDs especially around titles overlaid on picture)

    Eh? you sure that what you are seeing there is not a matter of a crappy DVD player that just doesn't do overlay of things like closed captions or subtitiles very well? Realize that it is your player doing such overlays, and that this has nothing whatsoever to do with mpeg compression and its artifacts.

  24. Re:is that HD Upconversion worth a hoot? on If DVD Is Dead, What's Next? · · Score: 1

    Go learn something about high-quality interpolating scaling algorithms and you might get to know why it does not have to look blocky at all.

    No amount of upscaling will add details that are not there, but it is actually fairly easy to make it look good abeit slightly "unsharp"

  25. Re:Unlikely on If DVD Is Dead, What's Next? · · Score: 1

    I don't know what specific equipment he has, but assuming what is being sold to consumers usually...

    Start with getting rid of that crappy "de-interlacer" that effectively leaves you with half of the vertical resolution maybe?