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  1. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... on Ask Slashdot: How/Where To Start Watching Dr. Who? · · Score: 1

    The show really kicks off with the fourth doctor (Tom Baker), often heralded as the most popular doctor. For a certain generation (such as myself, being around thirty years old), Tom Baker is "the" doctor

    I agree wholeheartedly. Tom Baker is "The" "Doctor", all of the rest are just wanna-be interns.

  2. Keepers or Pitchers? on New FBI System IDs People By Voice, Iris, More · · Score: 1

    'It's a quick scan to let police officers know if they should let the person go, or take him into custody,' Morris said.

    And they spend money on this? This might have been hard in the old days, but now it's absurdly simple:

    10 PRINT "Enter Citizens Name: "
    20 INPUT X$
    30 PRINT "TAKE INTO CUSTODY IMMEDIATELY."
    40 GOTO 10

  3. Re:So... what? on University Switches To DC Workstations · · Score: 1

    I've never said this before, but I will now: do NOT view the movie attached to this linkif you're easily upset. Seriously.

    http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104

    Article background:
    1903: Thomas Edison stages his highly publicized electrocution of an elephant in order to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, which, if it posed any immediate danger at all, was to Edison's own direct current.

    Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current.

    Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

  4. Re:Ringworld... on Potentially Great Sci-fi Films Still Due In 2011 · · Score: 1

    I fear the movie is going to suck something fierce.

    Sorry, but that's a entirely different genre. ;-)

    Really, the absolute best movie screen can only be viewed with your eye --- your mind's eye, that is.

  5. Re:Why not port to C on Futureproofing Artifacts: Spacewar! 1962 In HTML5 · · Score: 1

    Those noisy gray teletypes, with the yellow paper tape and chad bucket and all?

    Bah -- youngsters. We use to have our porn chiseled on rock tablets and then tossed at us. If you missed catching it: well, no porn for YOU today.

    But my GOD it was hard for the participants to hold their pose for hours on end while the "photographer" feverishly hammered away. They didn't have microfilter dust masks for the dust particles, of course. Viagra, either. And far be it that he breaks the stone and has to start over. That's just a bad day for all involved.

  6. Re:They tried this before ... on Arkansas Earthquakes Could Be Man-Made · · Score: 1
  7. Re:Everyone just move to Year.Month model on Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla · · Score: 1

    No no, just recode the app to show a version number of: ..

    That way you're always current and "updating things" even while doing absolutely nothing. Works great on PHBs.

    And then if you *do* want to be one better, easy enough: <year>.<month>+1.

  8. Re:Yup. on Braid Creator on 'Evil' Social Games · · Score: 1

    Displayed in a What-a-Burger store from years and years ago:

    Love people, use things. Not love things, use people.

  9. Re:Keep it simple on Facebook Private Info Increasingly Used In Court · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure that's actually such a good idea. Because now you, I mean *I*, do ....

    And just because you have one doesn't mean you have to populate everything, never mind populate it correctly.

  10. Re:torrent on Atari Loses Copyright Suit Against RapidShare · · Score: 1

    Would you consider ... ISPs evil for providing their customers upstream bandwidth?

    If you're the MPAA or RIAA, why _yes_. What part of that argument do you not understand?

    ----

    Stop it -- you're interfering with my profit margins! What, you want me to adapt to changing conditions?! Who do you think I am, the government?

  11. Advantages? on George Lucas to Resurrect Dead Movie Stars? · · Score: 1

    So let's list some advantages to the producer here:

    A) Salaries. We now literally own the dead, so we don't have to pay them.
    B) Special divas and temper tantrums? Only if it's in the script.
    C) Vacations? Sick weeks? Lost scripts, can't hit your mark, flubbed script lines? Gone.
    D) Want to remake an old script with new actors? Replace only the losers from last time and redo / re-relase / re-profit!

    and saving the best for last:
    E) Copyrights. Lasting only 10, 20, 50, 90 years past death? Pshaw -- amateurs. They're not dead, see -- they're still making profits^H^H^H^H movies! Forever!

  12. Re:Wrong headline on Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School · · Score: 1

    Only pencils? But what about paintbrushes?

    Paintbrush injury pupil set to receive pay-out: he fell on a paintbrush which pierced his eye. ... ruled that North Lanarkshire Council failed to prevent a foreseeable risk of harm.

    A horrible event, and at least they're not banning brushes -- YET -- but I'm sure someone somewhere is now thinking about it.

  13. Re:Meaning of "Solved" on Boltzmann Equation Solved, the New Way · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... the flutter of a butterfly's wings is not significant...

    It all depends on the size of the butterfly. Haven't you ever heard of Miracle-Gro, or seen the movie: Monsters vs. Aliens??

  14. My, my, my; where do I start? on Unpredictability in Future Microprocessors · · Score: 1

    I guess I'm become an old fogie and hadn't noticed it. "...leads to varying degrees of unpredictability, which used to be a no-no word in the microprocessor world."

    Sounds like they're breaking the "Principle of Least Astonishment" - the result of performing an operation should be obvious, consistant, and predicatable. (Or for GUIs, the most usable system is the one that least often leaves users astonished.) They're equivalent.

    "unpredictability becomes a great asset leading to energy conservation and increased computation speeds."

    Why yes, if you don't have to be right, you can greatly increase the computation speed and save power at the same time -

    10 PRINT "PI=3"
    20 END

    Who needs sites like:
    www.ualr.edu/~lasmoller/pi.html
    www.cecm.sfu.ca/pi/pi.html
    www.bath.ac.uk/~mfws20/having_fun_with_pi.html
    with my better program above?

    Want it more unpredictable? Use: 10 PRINT "PI=";RND()
    Want it even faster? How about: 10 END
    That program is so fast and unpredictable it didn't bother to print out the answer.

    And hey, energy conservation? That's easy, just examine the power-on bit a few times until it changes state. You'll then have all of the power you want, since your server just unpredicatably powered itself off.

    (I'm ignoring the obvious Pentium math coprocessor jokes, that's much too easy.)

    " excessive heat is now a major obstacle for speed-demon chips.... A lot of this heat stems from today's deterministic approach to chip design, Palem notes. The chip gobbles large amounts of energy to be absolutely certain that each data bit is either a 0 or 1 at every step of a calculation."

    Hey, I can't wait for my bank to get hold of one of these --
    1) deposit a dollar,
    2) withdraw a dollar,
    3) check my account for a unpredictable event - like my account balance got stored with the leading bits flipped (NO not the sign bit!)
    4) If balance is 0.00, GOTO 1 (http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/)
    5) PROFIT!!!