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User: Flentil

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Comments · 165

  1. Re:Doesn't matter on Origin of Neil Armstrong's 'One Small Step' Line Revealed · · Score: 1

    It matters because one brother is clearly lying. Neil insists that he thought of the phrase spontaneously on the moon and that he was humble and said "for a man", but his brother says he's lying on both counts, that he had the phrase pre-planned months earlier, and didn't intend it to be quite as humble. So there is meaning here. Either the brother is lying, or Neil was more dishonest than he'd have us believe.

  2. Re:Disappointed on John McAfee Tells World How He Fooled Cops and Escaped Belize · · Score: 1

    Seriously? You'd lock him up based on some sketchy details you read about online. I think the world would be a much safer place without that kind of gross injustice.

  3. Re:There would be no need... on How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car? · · Score: 2

    I'm wondering, in what country do drivers get issued a ticket for not having a first-aid kit in the car? Serious question, did you just make that up, or is that actually a law somewhere?

  4. Re:WTF!!! on Hunters Shoot Down Drone of Animal Rights Group · · Score: 2

    It's an article about two private groups fighting over the use of high tech surveillance drones, and it's perfectly appropriate. What do you come here for, dinner recipes and makeup tips? I think you're on the wrong website.

  5. I'm a PC gamer on What's Keeping You On Windows? · · Score: 1

    Consoles don't come close to what I have on my PC and have never been an option. I loathe all things made by Apple, so that's also never an option. Linux, as far as I know, still required you to use a command-line-interface sometimes, (no thanks, I had enough in the 90's) or mess with klunky configuration files. If I could switch to Linux with full software compatibility, I might, but that'll probably never happen.

  6. Re:I love my Kindle on Book Piracy — Less DRM, More Data · · Score: 1

    If an author wants to upload a book to Apple's iBookstore, they can only do it from a mac. Furthermore, you can't even link to books in the ibookstore from the world wide web, unlike books for Kindle or Nook, whose bookstores are easily accessed from the web. When it comes to ebooks, Apple is a private system, segregated from the web. I wouldn't be surprised it they tried to take this further in the future and have their own private Apple-branded Internet for Apple fanboys alone where they'll never have to read a message like this one.

  7. Class clowns on Former Military Personnel Claim Aliens Are Monitoring Our Nukes · · Score: 1

    I wish there was filter on slashdot that would let me skip past the initial flurry of posts on every article made by clowns trying too hard to be funny.

  8. For me, it's a 27:1 ratio of digital vs paper on eBook Sales Outpace Hardbacks · · Score: 1

    I published a geeky sci-fi novel a few months ago and so far the vast majority of sales have been for the Kindle edition. It might be because the paper version costs 5x what the digital version costs. I don't know if it's the added convenience or the lower price, but to me, digital books seem to be the future, and the change is happening faster than most people expected.

  9. DLC gets pirated too on DRM vs. Unfinished Games · · Score: 1

    I can see by his picture that he's an old dude and by his statements he seems pretty out of touch with this century. Someone who works for the old dude should inform him that every bit of DLC ever released, like any software, is made available by pirates immediately, so that people with pirated copies of games can easily 'complete' them with the missing DLC bits. Horse armor for Oblivion, Dragon Age expansion areas, new towns and dress-up clothes for The Sims3...these are just some examples. All DLC gets pirated, What this man plans to do, really, is just annoy the paying customers who expect to get a full game when they pay for it. If he really wanted to improve gamers experience and build goodwill, he should go the opposite route and abolish DLC for his games, releasing new content at intervals for free, like they did last century before DLC-for-money caught on. As usual, he should look at what Valve is doing. They are doing it (mostly) right, and always have.

  10. Re:Please... on NASA Launches Moonbase Alpha · · Score: 1

    You mean no American politicians want to spend money on the space program. Personally, I'd like to see our military and NASA budgets switched. I would have said the same thing 30 years ago, and had it been done, we'd have anti-gravity and flying cars by now.

  11. Re:Video card manufacturers mislead consumers on Is PC Gaming Set For a Comeback? · · Score: 1

    That's a really weak analogy. That's all I have to say.

  12. Video card manufacturers mislead consumers on Is PC Gaming Set For a Comeback? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love PC gaming, but I think it's biggest weakness right now is the confusion created by video card manufacturers that makes it a major research project to decipher which codename/model number is actually good. If they would adopt a simple system of making their cards according to their actual capabilities, like CPUs do, for the most part, they could eliminate the confusion. But I think they actually like the confusion they create. The latest nvidia cards have a wide range, with numbers and names ending in GT, GTX, GTS...the biggest sellers now are in the 200 series, but there are also 300, and 400 series cards out, with GT and GTX versions, and some other random letter codes. They've been doing this a long long time. They should get their act together and stop trying to mislead consumers with confusing model names before some regulatory agency forces them to do it.

  13. Re:Child Exploitation for an Almighty Dollar on "David After Dentist" Made $150k For Family · · Score: 1

    I saw about 10 seconds of this video before realizing it was just some obnoxious kid acting stupid and turned it off. Thanks, internets, for making this kid a sensation. Get ready for a tsunami of copycat obnoxious kid videos as parents encourage their kids to act stupid for the camera, so they can buy a new house with the money youtube pays them.

  14. Bebo linked with puppy killing on AOL Dumps $1.2 Billion Worth of Acquisitions · · Score: 1

    I had never heard of Bebo until that video surfaces of the US Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff. He had linked to the video he posted on his Bebo page. I've heard of Bebo a few times since then, and it always reminds me of that puppy killing video. They should sue him for hurting their reputation even more than being owned by AOL did, at least in my mind. I can't be the only one.

  15. Re:The future is now on What Is the Future of Firewalls? · · Score: 1

    The users have it right though. Why should anyone want to care what a router switch is, or how a network works? Why should anyone care about ports and protocols? Remember figuring out modem initialization strings? Putting together a dozen abbreviated codes in a string to make your modem work with your hardware. It was a real pain in the ass, and one day it simply disappeared, becoming fully plug and play. I like to think that all the complicated things about computers will become automatic in time. It's what we should all be working towards. But you are one of the elitists who make us all look bad, continuing the stereotype of the obnoxious computer nerd who thinks he's better than the average user because you know the minutia of how computers work. I do too, but I'd be happy to see it all just work automatically. I resent having wasted time learning about modem init strings, and see virtually everything connected with network administration as more of that. A problem of overcomplexity waiting to be fixed. It's just a matter of time, really.

  16. Did you type this on a manual typewriter? on Toyota Accelerator Data Skewed Toward Elderly · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I hear some people swear by those old things. Nothing like the feel of pressing the keys and having your keypress transferred to strike the paper through an inked ribbon. It's highly tactile. Of course, you'd have to scan the text and digitize it before posting on the internet, but that's just a small price for you to pay to keep that old-school tactile feeling at your fingertips. Manual transmissions? Exactly like this.

  17. I hope this fails spectacularly on The Times Erects a Paywall, Plays Double Or Quits · · Score: 1

    It should be a lesson to others not to do the same thing. Advertising based web publishing works fine. This is just greed rearing it's ugly head, driven by one of the greediest and richest men on earth. He can easily take the fall, and put the terrible idea of a web divided by hundreds of individual paywalls back to bed. The only people wh want a change like that are publishers, and there are plenty of others willing to do it under the current system even if they jerks do go hide behind these paywalls while they wither and die. Good riddance to any websites that think they're so special that people should pay to read what they post.

  18. This is why we need the on-live service to succeed on Nvidia's GF100 Turns Into GeForce GTX 480 and 470 · · Score: 1

    These new cards, as usual, are way too expensive. I had the best video card when Doom3 came out. Since then I've upgraded once, and need a whole new motherboard, CPU, and RAM before I can upgrade to a newer card. This is why people turn to consoles. This is what's killing PC gaming. I really hope on-live works out, as I see it as the ultimate solution to this problem without having to resort to an xbox/ps3.

  19. Doctors don't even listen in person on N.Y. Health Insurers To Offer Virtual Doc Visits · · Score: 1

    Many doctors I've gone to only listen to about half of what I say, so I have to repeat myself repeatedly to get the points across. Moving doctors to a chat room is a pretty silly idea. Anything a doctor can tell you in a chat room you can already find on WebMD or by googling.

  20. This is doomed to failure on NYTimes Confirms It Will Start Charging For Online News In 2011 · · Score: 1

    What's funny is how many people here are saying that this is a good move for NYT. They'll probably get a few thousand subscribers, keep it going for a year or maybe two tops, then either backpedal to a free model to avoid going bankrupt, or just go bankrupt and ask for a bailout. I don't see this being a success as even a remote possibility. Not on the free internet.

  21. Re:So? on Airport Scanners Can Store and Transmit Images · · Score: 1

    I have already chosen to boycott the airlines for just this reason, a couple years ago when it seemed like this would become a reality. I'd rather rent a car and have an increased risk of dying in a car crash than have any part of this draconian practice. I wish that everyone would join me, but my pessimism says nobody cares enough to actually make a stand and choose an alternative way to travel. I don't expect be on a plane for the next 10 years at least, and nothing would change my mind until they got rid of these scanners.

  22. Re:We don't need e-ink on New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance · · Score: 1

    Don't think I don't know and understand all about e-ink and it's low power, looks like real printed text selling points. What I'm saying is that there is no lower priced alternative for people who don't mind recharging a battery more often, and don't care if it looks like printed text in the least bit. e-ink is to book readers what monster cables are to cables, if monster cables were the only cables you could buy anywhere with no lower priced competition. I also know that a paperback book sized LCD device could be mass manufactured and sold for $19.99 if they didn't abruptly decide to charge $199.99 at the last minute because that's close to what the competition is selling for. That's what I'm getting at. This is price fixing. Just like simm-chips near the turn of the century. Once someone starts selling a fairly priced LCD alternative, it's all over for the e-ink people as their overpriced gadgets will only be bought by hardcore textophiles.

  23. We don't need e-ink on New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance · · Score: 1

    This e-ink stuff is a marketing gimmick to justify charging outrageous prices. If someone would just release a very basic LCD book reader for $19.99 it would probably sell 100,000 units faster than e-ink sellers could sell 100 units. It would probably put the e-ink people out of business, almost overnight.

  24. Re:more to the point, is this really necessary? on How Europe's Mandated Browser Ballot Screen Works · · Score: 1

    This is ridiculous. You see no reason why a browser should be installed during installation. Fine, that's a valid point, but it also applies to many many other little programs like media player, notepad, defrag, etc. Following your reasoning all of those are optional, and probably 2 dozen more little bits that make up windows. You could remove them all and have an absolutely unusable piece of crap for a computer until someone who knows what they are doing ads all those little programs that make a computer useful. Microsoft realized this from the beginning and put all those things into the OS for customer convenience. I understand that there were some companies who tried to cash in on the holes and cried foul when MS put them in for free. Buggy whips come to mind if get my drift. As I said in the beginning, this is ridiculous, and is only hurting the people who want to buy a computer and use it out of the box. All this BS will drive those people to use macs. This isn't helping anyone but apple.

  25. Re:How do people pay eachother? on UK Wants To Phase Out Checks By 2018 · · Score: 0

    There are usually some unreasonably high fees associated with bank transfers like that. Checks are virtually free. Should it cost $20-$30 to make every transaction in the future when you could have wrote a check for free?