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User: oblivion95

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Comments · 47

  1. xbox360 on What's the Best Game Console of All Time? · · Score: 1

    Rock Band, w/ 4 players going wild at once, is not like any other gaming experience I've had. And being able to download songs for Rock Band is pretty amazing. Rock Band + Xbox-Live is the greatest combination of game and complete system ever.

  2. Dismal on How to Deal With Stolen Code? · · Score: 1

    If Economics is "The Dismal Science," copyright law should be called "The Dismal Jurisprudence." It is the most inexact, illogical, philosophically unfounded, and inevitably abused subject of law.

    No one here is really sure what's legal, although everyone has an inkling that torts are pending. And this is despite the likelihood that there is nothing in the code which a typical coder could not come up with himself. On top of that, there is the morally repugnant proposition that my own work is somehow compromised by the fact that I might have noticed some code published errantly in a public forum.

    Copyright law has veered far from its original intention: To encourage the useful Arts.

  3. Wow! Combo of D and Python on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 1

    Very nice language!

    * Iterator protocol (including StopIteration exception)
    * Generators (via yield statement)!
    * List comprehensions!!
    * String slicing
    * Native datatypes (Vector, Map, ...)
    * Generic function templates
    * Classes!!!
    * Control over initialization
    * Type-reflection
    * Clear module and namepsace systems.
    * Interfaces
    * ... much, much more!

    What's missing:

    * contract programming (pre/post-conditions and invariants)
    * built-in unit-testing
    * literate (in-code) documentation
    * keyword arguments (but they've added var-args at least)

    On thing I don't like:
    * dropping "return" at the end of short functions. That does not improve clarity at all.

    I'm not sure it's so smart to put all this in a browser language, but it's really a great language definition.

  4. Only if it leads to nuclear war... on Does Hacking Grades Warrant 20 Years in Jail? · · Score: 1

    unless it also involves tic-tac-toe on government computers.

  5. 9 cores? on Eight PS3 'Supercomputer' Ponders Gravity Waves · · Score: 5, Funny
    They should have used 9 cores on the Cell. Then, they'd be using Seven of Nine.

    It's only six cores available to Linux per Cell processor on a PS3. One is reserved for the Game OS, and one is disabled to achieve a higher yield on fabrication.
  6. I have a patent too! on Google and Others Sued For Automating Email · · Score: 1

    I have a patent on automatically filing lawsuits.

  7. Could be used for a glider on Mars on New Carbon-based Paper Stronger Than Nanotubes · · Score: 1

    Since there is (practically) no water on Mars, it would last longer there.

  8. Re:two points on Memory Checker Tools For C++? · · Score: 1

    Does anyone have experience with SWIG and shared_ptr? I'm wondering how difficult it is to get SWIG to parse a boost header file. And of course, all the shared_ptrs would have to be instantiated explicitly in the SWIG definition file.

  9. insects on Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better? · · Score: 1

    One big problem from global warming will be insect populations. Already, in far northern areas the shorter winters are allowing some bugs to survive and thus attack the arboreal forests.

    In time, more bugs will survive in more areas. Bugs can dramatically alter the populations of local flora. They also carry diseases. Combined with the destruction of many animal species, we may not enjoy living with all insects.

  10. Coalescence of matter on Dark Matter Stars in the Early Universe? · · Score: 1

    that isn't right at all. what makes normal matter collapse is gravity. this 'friction or interaction' you speak of is what keeps charged particles from collapsing into each other.


    Gravity? Not quite. A bunch of tiny, non-interacting point masses would not coalesce at all. They would just buzz around each other forever, maintaining their original net kinetic energy, momentum, and angular momentum.

    In order for dark matter to coalesce, it must do more than just "annihilate". There must be a mechanism for individual particles to lose kinetic energy. Ordinary matter does this through electromagnetic radiation and chemical bonding. The paper does not really explain how dark matter could do this.

    However, a concentration of dark matter could, via annihilation, produce an outflux of radiation which prevents the normal collapse of ordinary matter for awhile. I think that's really the point of the authors. It's not accurate to call that a "star". It would not be localized, except to the extent that the dark matter happens to be concentrated in some areas. It would be more like a vast, glowing soup.
  11. The trick on Turbo Tax Melts Down on Tax Day · · Score: 1

    Whenever the TurboTax website got slow, the browser would hang. The trick was to open a new browser window, log back in, and continue. I did that about every 5 minutes last night, each time forcibly killing the hung window. It worked every time. Microsoft got several dozen bug reports from me last night.

  12. Re:/. story about spinning water? on Cassini Probes the Hexagon On Saturn · · Score: 1

    ...though how the hell we'll test it I have no idea.

    Which is why such speculation is somewhat useless. We just need a large enough particle accelerator....
  13. Parasites on Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace · · Score: 1

    Y'all are missing the whole point. Monsanto has genetically engineered corn to prevent parasites from eating it. We're the parasites!

  14. See the front page on Avoiding the Word "Evolution" · · Score: 1

    Appropriately, on the front-page of that web site, http://biology.plosjournals.org/ , there is an article entitled "Splicing and protein evolution".

  15. Re:Cryptic? on Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People · · Score: 1

    Things that make perl cryptic:

    * "use Foo;" can cause symbols to enter your package. The reader of your code may wonder where the symbols came from. He will have to examine every loaded module to find them.

    * A different module can add symbols directly into your module's package before you module's code even begins to execute.

    * Code does not execute in order; the reader must find all BEGIN blocks.

    * There is a difference between an ARRAY and an ARRAY reference.

    * It is impossible to alias a package.

    I could go on and on. In a nutshell, Perl literally encourages unmaintainable code.

  16. Re:Patentless? on Cheap, Safe, Patentless Cancer Drug Discovered · · Score: 1

    For three years, I made about $15K a year as a Soldier protecting you. You're welcome. Much appreciate. Seriously.
  17. Re:The only sure way I know of: Lambda calculus on How Do You Know Your Code is Secure? · · Score: 1

    Thanks. I was having trouble following his "proof".

    I hope someone mods this up.

  18. Re:Primer on What Movies Got Computers Right? · · Score: 1

    Is there a website where people have discussed their ideas on Primer?

  19. Re:Here we go again... on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 1

    I implicitly conceded that piracy is a crime. The italics showed the emphasis, which is that it is a fundamentally different crime than GPL-violation, which typically goes unpunished.

    I certainly don't mind your inference, since the truth of it is common sense. If you want proof, look at these two statements:

    X steals from the poor and *gives* to the rich.
    Y steals from the rich and *sells* to the poor.

    In this case, with rich and poor reversed, have I suddenly made the opposite implication? If not, then you must concede that you in your heart tacitly agree that stealing from the poor is in fact less wrong than stealing from the rich. It is an assumption, rather than an implication. I'm surprised that anyone would refute it. Would you at least concede that letting a man die is less wrong than letting a woman or a child die (as on a sinking ship)? If so, I am ready to concede that letting a rich man die is not better than letting a poor man die. Death is final and absolute while loss is relative.

  20. Re:This makes me very sad. on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 1

    The real problem with this debate is the moralistic tone.

    First, a copyright is not a "right", as the Supreme Court has consistently pointed out. It is a monopoly granted by the government, and rescindable by the government. From the cited decision, "Congress could reasonably conclude that the best way to promote creativity is not to impose any governmental restrictions on the subject matter of copyrightable works."

    Second, no one is losing actual property. They are losing potential profits (the exact value of which is debatable) but as mentioned in point #1, they never had a "right" to those profits. They were guaranteed those profits only in order to encourage the progress of useful arts.

    The only valid question is whether piracy actually discourages useful arts. Some claim that it does. Maybe so, but that is seldom the topic of debate.

  21. Re:This makes me very sad. on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 1

    > unless i've missed something nobody forces you to buy that CD at all.

    You've missed the point. When someone receives pirated music, the loss to the legal seller is not the sale price. The loss is only what the potential buyer was willing to pay, minus the costs that would have been incurred in providing the material. If producing and distributing the CD costs $3, and if I was never willing to pay more than $2.50, then there was NO LOSS WHATSOEVER!

    I am not willing to pay $14 for a CD. I do not steal. Therefore, I do not have the CD.

  22. Re:Here we go again... on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 1

    > Your comment implies that you believe that harm to the rich to benefit the poor is justified

    I imply only that "giving" is not equivalent to "selling".

  23. Re:This makes me very sad. on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 1
    > Sure you're not depriving them of their copy

    Thank you. That's exactly the point. The punishment should fit the crime.

    For many years I bought no CDs except a few via a BMG deal. When mp3s became readily available, I downloaded some. Did anybody actually lose any money?

    And how about this: I had several CDs stolen on an airplane. Later, I replaced them by downloading from allofmp3. Did I steal anything then? I had already paid for the intellectual property. Think about that one for awhile...

  24. Re:Here we go again... on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The music pirate steals from the rich and gives to the poor.

    The GPL violator steals from the poor and sells to the rich.

    Do you really see no difference?

  25. This makes me very sad. on BitTorrent Site Admin Sent To Prison · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the U.S. Constitution: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.articlei.html#section8
    • To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

    In order to imprison someone for violating the temporarily granted monopoly, the government should have to prove that he discouraged "the progress of science and useful arts". For that, they would have to prove that the people who obtained his pirated material would otherwise have paid for it. That is the problem with the arguments of strict copyright proponents: They fail to recognize that the absence of piracy does not imply equivalently higher sales. Some of us are simply not willing to pay $20 for one decent song on a CD.

    The fine might be appropriate, but prison time is completely unjustified.