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User: goofyheadedpunk

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Comments · 163

  1. Reliable service on Computer Services for Students? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nifty bells and whistles are great, but it does suck to read "Oh, sorry. The network will be up in a little bit." or "CMail is down now. Come back soon." every couple of days. Make it stable, then add stuff. (But I'm sure you already knew that, the fine sys admin that you seem to be.)

    Also, you could ask the students and staff what they want. One of those vote and, potentially, win an iPod -- or some such other electronic gadget -- things often has a pretty high turn out. If that doesn't work, hell, you store their mail. Just parse that for ideas!

  2. Re:But.... on Up-coming MMORPG Based on Shakespeare's Works · · Score: 2, Informative

    ghobe'! Hab SoSlI' Quch!

  3. Despite the marketing speak... on Boot Linux, BSD, and OS X from Vista · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > It (BCD) is one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence...

    I'm curious if this statement is more than marketing speak. What's so great about BCD?

  4. A whole encyclopedia? on Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales · · Score: 3, Funny

    >'Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its
    > encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing
    > in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the 'buy this
    > book' Google link.'

    Can someone provide a link to this book? I would, oddly enough, like to buy it.

  5. Re:Still Depressing on Answers From Lawyers Who Defend Against RIAA Suits · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > but I am just frustrated at the entire site's apparent lack of patriotism

    Patriotism is a tricky things really. Is partriotism sticking a little flag over your SUV radio antena, or is it standing on street corners protesting? Dissention isn't necissarily a lack of love for one's nation, nor is blind acceptance of whatever happens love. In any event trying to lable people as patriotic or not is usually a really silly idea as it distracts from the issue at hand, whatever that may be. Whether or not I Love America is irrelevant if I bring up a valid point.

    Example: I just moved from Chicago, where I had lived for slightly over a year, to Portland Oregon. I hated Chicago, absolutely despised it. I thought it was dirtly, loud and overall very depressing. I hate Chicago. Now, I also thought that the minority populations there, especially the blacks on the South Side, where getting a raw deal. The schools, for example, were poorly funded and even more poorly maintained. If I were to say to you in conversation, "Chicago's South Side schools are terrible!" and you were to reply, "Why do you hate Chicago?!" then you've entirely missed my point. True, I do hate Chicago but I wasn't saying anything about the quality of the city. My feelings on the city are, at that point, irrelevant. Much the same is true in situations where the discussion boils down to "Wait, are you saying you don't love America?"

    > If all this ranting were true, then we certainly wouldn't be the country that EVERYBODY
    > on the outside wants to come into.

    Forgive me for making this assumption, but you've not travled much outside of the US, have you? This statement simply isn't true. Demonstratiably our complacense born of not having our infastructure destroyed in WWII has resulted in the US losing it's thunder in recent years. Alan Cox, for example, has no desire to come to the US. To say that everybody does this, or everybody does that, or indeed to say that most people do this or that, is almost certainly wrong. The hopes and desires of everyone on the planet are remarkably diverse.

    > I'm defintely in the minority here...

    Unless you've taken a survey don't make assumptions as to the viewpoint of groups of people. One tends to read in what one wants to see.

    > when I say that religion and christianity in particular is not just important,
    > but critical to the survial of this country that was built on those principals
    > in the first place.

    The US was not, in fact, built on Christian principles, or any other religious principles. The founding father's were mostly deists, which was the main intellectual "religious" preference at the time. The US's seperation of church and state was placed to make it much more difficult for a single religion to govern the US's politics, though that tends to happen anyway when most of the US population is of a certain religion. The US government was, quite opposite to your assertion, designed to keep religion out of the affairs of the state. We no more need Christianity to have a functioning government than we need Jainism, say.

    > With out the christian mindset (knowing clear cut what is right & what is wrong)

    Though I am agnostic I have had extensive Christian religious training. I'm a confirmed Lutheran (Missouri Lutheran Synod which is, curiously, the One True branch of Lutheranism according to some) have nearly a minor in theological studies and am quite familiar with the theological works of ancient and present Christianity. It is, then, exceedingly false to say that a Christian knows, clear cut, what is right and what is wrong. Right and Wrong has been debated amongst Christians since Jesus first started talking, which a consensus rarely being formed. Christianity is so splintered for exactly that reason, ala Martin Luther and the Reformation.

    Though an absolute morality would be handy, it certainly doesn't exist in the confines of Christianity, though some would prefer that it did. However, none of those people ar

  6. Re:Still Depressing on Answers From Lawyers Who Defend Against RIAA Suits · · Score: 1

    > You, and the others like you, [are] destroying our country.

    Though you stopped short of calling him a Commie, I don't see how any of what you said follows. His complaints, while perhaps a bit defeatist depending on who you talk to of course, do raise legitimate concerns. Did you take issue with his lack of patriotism and can-do spirit, or was it the concerns?

    Depending on your personality and current disposition you may think I'm flaming you. I assure you, however, that I am not but am, instead, simply curious.

  7. Re:What about... on Could a Reputation System Improve Wikipedia? · · Score: 1

    It's an interesting idea, to be certain, but how would this be helpful?

  8. Re:technology, video games, military hardware on Breaking Gender Cliques at Work? · · Score: 1

    I agree. I started a new job today at a smallish shop. Just now at lunch we had a rousing conversation involving incest, shit eating and ice cream trucks blasting Slayer while spraying blood.

    It's the best place I've ever worked.

  9. Re:I agree.... on It's OK to keep AIMing · · Score: 1

    Given that you parsed his sentence easily enough to correct him, I'd say that his assertion still stands (you asshole).

  10. Why follow the rules? on How are 'Secret Questions' Secure? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Who says you have to answer that silly secret question with what it's actually asking for? You could think up a non-public answer ahead of time to the question, "What High School did you go to?" and give that non-public answer. Seems to be a bit more secure than giving an answer which is actually true.

    For example:

    Question: "What's your mother's maden name?"
    Answer: "Sheatemybrotherssoul"

  11. Re:"Soon" ... on Astronomers Awaiting 1a Supernova · · Score: 1

    What is why?

  12. Re:Not surprising, actually on Apollo 11 TV Tapes Go Missing · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...the extreme difficulty of digitizing some parts of the collection (like a 16-ton statue, for example)...

    Actually, at the University of Chicago we've been doing this sort of thing for about four years now, though with a bit more than statues. It's time consuming given the current state of scanner hardware, the shear amount of data to be collected and stored and the absolutly shitty software availiable, but it's certainly not extremely difficult. Unless, of course, you count something that's time consuming as difficult.

  13. The Mr. Scott approach on How can a Developer Estimate Times? · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Why not take the Mr. Scott approach to software engineering? When your asks you how long something will take figure out the time you're going to quote him, multiply that by four and then tell him that. If you get it done in the time you'd thought originally you'll look like a mircle worker, if not you've got lots of extra time to finish the project.

  14. Re:Was this article written by the Chinese? on The Making of a Motherboard at ECS · · Score: 4, Funny

    So you didn't have to be a janitor?

  15. Re:FlashBlock on Malware Installed by LiveJournal Ad · · Score: 1

    Meh, FlashBlock is for wimps. Real men use Linux on a PPC machine. No native flash binaries, no worries. Score one for me!

    Also, what is the YouTube thing people keep linking to? I guess the grey boxes are nice, but they don't really add much to webpages. Besides that, what's up with Google Video? It's not even video really, just images. You have to download the goddamn avi's to watch anything. I don't see what makes it so useful.

    Oh well.

  16. Tag suggestions on SCO to Unix developers, We want you back · · Score: 1

    While it's kind of cheap to suggest tags for stories I would like to suggest a few: fuckoff and no. The SCO people may never see them, but it just feels so good.

  17. Re:Static Typing? on Python-to-C++ Compiler · · Score: 1

    No, not really. A large number of people, including myself, just use python as a nicer C. Futzing with pointers and other such things can be ingnored while making a prototype and, after finishing the prototype, the bits that need to be faster can then be rewritten.

    I recently wrote a largish simulation in python for a Biology course. The goal was to watch how a species spread over a planet given other competing species, natural disasters and the like. It took four in deep hack mode to write the whole thing, all of it implicitely typed due to the equations at the base of the simulation. Implicite static typing is used a lot in large applications. So much so that in fact, if I recall, python 2.5 is supposed to have optional type declaration.

  18. Only if I didn't love anyone. on Two Jobs and Retire Early? · · Score: 1

    Would I sacrifice ten whole years of my life in order to 'save' ten others a decade from now? In this situation, no. What kind of a family life would you have working two jobs? What's the point of retiring early if there's no one to retire with?

    Right now I'm only at University, and as a result have a reasonably flexible schedule, but I still have a very difficult time balancing my time between my partner, a part-time job, my desire to learn on my own, my need for quiet time and studies. I don't see my partner enough as it is, nor do I get to tinker as much as I would like. I can't imagine how much my quality of life would drop were I to work two jobs.

    Shit, I can't imagine how much I'd shorten my own life. My grandpa did pretty much this in the 50's (World War II fucked him pretty badly in the head, so he ignored his emotional trauma by burying himself in work) and was dead at 45 from heart attack. He had a rotten relationship with the majority of his children, Grandma went a little bonkers and my own father had a difficult time connecting with me until I was old enough to actively join in his hobbies, having never learned how fathers play with small children.

    Sometimes a thing looks pretty great until you think about it a little. Ten years extra of semi-retirement sounds pretty sweet until you realize that you're going to have to work twenty years in only a decade. Frankly, that just sounds dumb.

  19. Re:The Future? on Rockstar Plays it Safe · · Score: 1
    I guess only the future holds the answer.


    Actually, strangely enough, no. Due to a time travel feature of an upcoming toaster the answer was slipped entirley back in time to an 1843 San Francisco cave, only to be recovered by those who are brave enough to stuff themselves into the time travel equipped toaster.

    Time travel makes things weird sometimes.
  20. Re:They may have a winner on Wii Graphics 'Better Than At E3' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My goodness, aren't you a nasty twit?

    But you aren't something so what do we care if you WOULD do something that you would never end up doing...

    See, that's the rub. Nintendo has stated very clearly that they care what this guy would do. He's the sort of guy that composes most of the non-hardcore gaming market, which, in turn, is most of the potential market. He won't go out and buy every game console, just one. Nintentdo is hoping to be that one. As such he has a very valid point. The full-blown-computer-crammed-in-a-box consoles, as he points out, are far too expensive for most people. Moreover, they don't really offer all that much of a PC, which, again, the GP points out.

    There's no reason to be a jerk about things, especially when you really don't have a point at all.

  21. Re:ati drivers suck!! on Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    First off, as you'll be more effective if you can at least rant about what's bugging you, your problems aren't Linux specific. While you're likely using a Linux distribution--you'd have much the same problems on any of the BSDs or some other Free or Open system--the problem lies with xorg. More correctly, the problem lies with ATI. The card you and I are using is proprietary and, as such, the specs to properly implement a driver for the bloody thing are closed. That means bugs.

    The reason that you cannot use GL or tv-out properly is not due to 'sheer amount of Linux bugs' (which, again, the problem is X's) but because the ATI people have not given us the tools we need to use their hardware. If you care so much write ATI a letter asking them to release the specs to their card. Posting partially coherent paragraphs to /. certainly won't help.

    My wife complains that linux is total crap!

    If you'd like to run a Free or Open system while being able to pipe out video to one terminal and work on another you're going to have to use different hardware. A Linux distro just isn't going to suit your needs due to the proprietary nature of your hardware. Besides, you seem to be pretty pleased with XP, given that this post and posts made previous tend to hold XP up as the example Linux should function toward, so why make the switch? The *nix world is pretty different from the Windows world and approaching things with the mentality of "XP works this way, and so should $FOO!" is limiting.

    Linux, it would seem in this case, is the wrong tool for the job.

    The difficulty in the post is caused from the sheer amount of linux bugs and deficiencies and not so much from my command of the Engligh language.

    I'm not actually sure how a software bug would affect your wet-ware, so perhaps you're trying to say that having to fiddle with things is making you angry and, thus, removing your command of higher discourse? Perhaps this might help.

    Anyway, good luch and happy hacking!

  22. Re:ati drivers suck!! on Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    I am unsure as to exactly what you were trying to say; the post was a bit jumbled. However, it did seem that you were talking about ATI's proprietary drivers. The bug mentioned in my post occurs in the xorg ATI driver.

    And yes, so I've heard, the proprietary driver is total crap.

    Also, one is more likely to be understood and responded to on a more regular basis if one takes a moment to post coherently in at least semi-proper English.

  23. Re:Good for desktops, bad for certain laptops. on Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed · · Score: -1, Troll

    Dear Troll,

    The most trollish of trolls are often clever, subtle and biting. You, dear sir, a simply a twit with no insight, poorly developed independant thought and a knack for being blindingly uninsulting. I said nothing about losing data, in fact it's all quite safe as it's versioned and distributed not only throughout my home but also throughout my geographically diverse friend's homes. In addition, I'm quite well aware that apt will allow me to downgrade. How do you think I've been quite active in bitching about this bug? However, having a stable laptop isn't the point. Fixing a _serious_ bug in the first 'stable' release of Ubuntu's flagship is. A stable laptop would be merely a lovely side-effect.

    In short, and to be quite blunt about it, you are the worst troll I have ever read. I hope that sometime very soon you find yourself cornered in a dark alley way by a man named Bitsy who intends to sodomize you with a rake. I hope that rake is rusty. I hope that rake has also been used far too many times for this purpose, infecting you with all sorts of vicious diseases.

    After the sodomy it is my sincere hope that you'll look back on your life, gape in terror at the shortness of your future and realize that your time here on earth could have been much better spent.

    Grow the fuck up and learn how to structure an insult.

    Hoping you get ass-raped with a rake,
    goofyheadedpunk

  24. Good for desktops, bad for certain laptops. on Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed · · Score: 5, Informative

    On May 29th, two days before release, an ATI bug was introduced via the xorg driver that makes Dapper unstable on certain ATI based systems. In my own case this means that my G4 is now unusable. Just as a reminder, if you think you might be affected, don't upgrade.

    Just for reference, the forum post and the bug report.

  25. Re:What a waste. on Ubuntu 6.06 'Dapper Drake' Released · · Score: 1

    Dear Troll,

    The most trollish of trolls are often clever, subtle and biting. You, dear sir, a simply a twit with no skill and too many commas. To be quite blunt about it, you are the worst troll I have ever read. I hope that sometime very soon you find yourself cornered in a dark alley way by a man named Bitsy who intends to sodomize you with a rake. I hope that rake is rusty. I hope that rake has also been used far too many times for this purpose, infecting you with all sorts of vicious diseases.

    After the sodomy it is my sincere hope that you'll look back on your life, gape in terror at the shortness of your future and realize that your time here on earth could have been much better spent.

    Grow the fuck up and learn how to structure an insult.

    Hoping you get ass-raped with a rake,
    goofyheadedpunk