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User: Belseth

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  1. What's the big deal? on Video iPod Screen Test · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The joke is I can already do this on my palm Zaire only better. If it wasn't for battery life I could hold two movies on a 1 gig memory card. I already have trailers to the movies I shot and my CG reel on it. Not to mention my portfolio and several hundred stills and I haven't begun to fill the one gig memory card. The screen is larger than a video Ipod and has a good quality image. I wish they'd come up with an add on battery pack for them. The sound isn't bad through head phones. I'd love to be able to load a couple of films on a memory card for plane flights. Ipods are convienent but I like Palms for flexsibility. I even find myself using the built in camera quiter often. Handy devices.

  2. Good and bad on IMDB on IMDb Turns 15 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use IMDB but I'm not a big fan. I have over 300 films under my belt and yet I have maybe a dozen listings. They demand verification of credits so I gave up on them years ago. They had two glaring errors in my listing so I contacted them both times and both times they refused to correct the mistakes until I threatened legal action. I nearly lost a job because a Producer believed the credits on IMDB were accurate and questioned my resume. I was forced to verify some of my biggest credits before he'd accept the bulk of my resume. Most put too much faith in IMDB which makes it dangerous to the working people in the industry. A friend has an academy award and to this day they refuse to acknowledge it in his bio. It's a handy but over used service given how wildly inaccurate the information can be in the listings and they aren't inclined to correct errors.

  3. Improve mileage on Toyota Develops New Plant Species · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They'd accompish more simply improving mileage. The fact that an electrical engineer on his own with a few grand worth of batteries and adding a recharging feature improved gas mileage to 200mpg just proves that there is resistence to improving mileage. Not to sound star chamber but the only thing that makes sense is the car and gas companies are working together on this one. The hybrides all originally came out of Japan because american oil companies have less influence there. With the amount of driving I do a 200 mpg hybride would mean I could get by on filling up about 3X a year. Considering most of my driving is less than 5 or 10 miles a trip I might actually do much better. Would I pay an extra $5,000 for a 200mpg car, absolutely. In case of emergency, gas shortages, I could run a long time on a five gallon can of gas.

  4. Re:Goodnight on Pillows Dangerous for Your Health · · Score: 1

    Used to be Timmy just had to worry about what was under the bed. Now he has to worry about what's in the bed. No wonder kids aren't sleeping as well as they used to.

  5. Bird/Dinosaur on Dinosaur Forces Rethink Of Flight's Evolution · · Score: 2, Informative

    One massive problem with the theory of birds evolving from dinosaurs is the date for birds keeps going backward and very early feathered reptiles have been found. The solution seems obvious. Birds, Mammals and dinosaurs evolved at roughly the same time. The mammals of the time were more reptile like but so were the birds. If birds came from dinosaurs birds should have evolved at the end of the Cretaceous not at the begining of the Triassic as the earliest bird accestors seem to show up. The similarities appear to be more from a common ancestor and parallel development.

  6. Re:You can't be serious!? on The Princess Bride Musical · · Score: 2, Funny
    Can anyone explain what the connection is between the "Princess Bride," and something a typical Slashdot reader would be interested in?

    Maybe the play is open source?

  7. Re:Won't somebody think of the children? on Yahoo Closes Chat Rooms to Anyone Under 18 · · Score: 1
    The solution is "easy", even if it is a bit authoritarian. Mandatory sterilization.

    Ro V Wade doesn't need to be overturned it needs to be expanded to include unfit parents. Impossible to pass though since most of Congress would face retro active abortion. Given some of the people successfully breeding one has to question whether Darwin was right.

  8. Re:How will the religious establishment react? on Distant Planet Imaging Project Gets More Funding · · Score: 1

    It's not Biblical Dogma it's medeval dogma that is still pervasive. It's the same beliefs that used to include the earth is the center of the Universe. Remember Europe is still called a contenient strictly for ego reasons. Disbelief in life on other planets isn't religous it comes out of fear and nothing else. The joke is the open minded fear that we are the only life in the Universe. I find that idea far more frightening than life on other planets.

  9. Re:What's wrong with Tivo? on Software PVRs Becoming Tivo Killers · · Score: 1

    I just cancelled my TiVo service because it kept switching me to Infomercials. At first it did it at 1 am but it started doing it during primetime. I called up to complain and find out how to stop it. They went as far as to offer me three months free for the inconvience. I said keep the three months just tell me how to block the channel switching, that they couldn't do. I cancelled my service. I got a lot of excuses from them and they denied that their system was switching me. TiVo is trying to find new revenue streams and I take it that's why they are now quietly offering Infomercials whether you want them or not. I'm not paying $12 or $13 a month for infomercials. They lost a customer and they won't get me back. It's a lot to pay a month for what amounts to a TV guide service so if they can't make money offering just that service without commercials I'd restructure my business since it's obviously badly run. There are free websites that largely do what they are charging for. The company is very badly mismanaged and will eventually fail. They are loosing customers for a reason and these types of stunts will cost them most of their cutomer base.

  10. Re:Flat earthers on More Evidence For Hobbit Sized Species · · Score: 1

    I was referring to skull features not brain size in the Homo Erectus comparison. As to the 500,000 years ago not bringing up the species issue the point was that there wouldn't be the debate about whether it was Homo Sapien or not. Yes the brain size would be remarkable but they wouldn't be claiming it was a Homo Sapien 300,000 years earlier than believed possible. The brain size reduction was probably due to an adaption for a restrictive diet. A radical reduction like this probably didn't happen over night and possibly took hundreds of thousands of years. I'm sure you are aware of the earlier Erectus migration. The Hobbits probably were part of this first migration and were the last survivors. That would give them plenty of time to evolve the new adaptations. I think it was far less disagreements than misunderstandings about what I intended. I just get annoyed with the dogma that requires a mundane explaination and seeks to discredit or ignore evidence than forces a change in established fact. The standard should be what fits the evidence best. The brain size issue is secondary to shape and structure. Even a brain with Microencephaly will be modern in structure. The Hobbit brains exactly matched Homo Erectus but didn't match modern humans. That's ignoring all the other primative structures. I think we are dealing with two seperate issues, brain size and species. I doubt it was a desease since all the indidivuals found so far have exactly the same condition. What is most likely is that it was a surviving group of Erectus that adapted to the poor diet by reducing brain size. An impressive amount of our food goes to maintaining our brains. The great apes brain size seems to be more based on diet than evolution. Most of the latest studies have pointed to a diet change as being the main reason for a change in brain size.

  11. Flat earthers on More Evidence For Hobbit Sized Species · · Score: 1

    Amazing the scientific dogma involved. Apparently if you believe the naysayers there was a plague of identical birth defects on Flores. The problem is it's more than size alone. The "hobbits" have quite a number of primative features and if you look at the general shape of the skull it looks far more like Homo Erectus than a modern human. It the skeletons were dated at 500,000 years instead of 12,000 years there would have been no debate which in of itself should end the debate. The flat earthers won't accept the new species because it doesn't fit into their narrow view of history. It has nothing to do with the facts. Even if DNA is found that is not from a modern human it won't end the debate. I doubt finding a live one would completely end the issue.

  12. Reliability is a big issue on Why Do-It-Yourself Photo Printing Doesn't Add Up · · Score: 1

    A few years ago I had clogged heads in an Epson printer. Cartridges were running around $55 a set. I blew through a complete set trying to clear the heads. I tried solvents and everything I could think of. That was the last straw and I gave up on ink jets. Sorry but paying $25 for $1 worth of ink is obscene. Ink is fairly cheap to manufacture. By the gallon it would seem expensive but there is only an ounce or two of ink in a cartridge. It isn't made of bloody silver folks. The pigments need to be ground fine but that's about it. I'd rather pay twice as much for a printer and get my ink for $10 a cartridge. They'd still make a killing and I wouldn't have to decide between rent and a new set of cartridges for the printer. The buy in is expensive on lasers but the prints are a fraction of the cost and don't require special paper. Also they are radically faster. The ink is a scam and I hope sales drop like a rock. If they priced gas and cars like ink and printers cars would only cost $5,000 but gas would cost $30 a gallon. You might be able to aford a nice car but you couldn't aford to drive it.

  13. Helpful on my end on USB FlashDrives The New PC? · · Score: 1

    I like the idea of loading software onto a flashdrive. Most of my primamry software is locked onto a dongle anyway, might as well have the software on the dongle as well. It would make it easier to work both at home and the office. I use my person software at work, company is too cheap to buy their own set. I'd love to be able to keep all my setup and plug-ins already installed on a USB drive then plug it in to use. Hopefully they can also end the DLL hell we all go through on windows systems. Things have gotten better but in years past I have had endless nightmares with missing or incompatible DLLs that every software wanted to cram into windows. Always gave me the willies when it wanted to "update" the DLL file. Gee I wonder what this is going to kill? I already store my working files on a flashdrive. Not a big step including software. It won't be long till they hit 10 gig. The one no one seems to be pointing out is once flash drives get large enough and fast enough why have a hard drive in the first place? Microsoft will definately be caught off guard by that little innovation. I'm guessing Linux will be the first to allow an operating system to be loaded strictly onto a flashdrive and not require a "C" drive. Microsft will take years to embrace that little innovation. They really won't like the idea of easy migration of one operating system between multiple machines. I wonder collectively how many operating systems we each have? I personally have dozens going back to I believe DOS 2.5. Some of them I'd still use if I could simply plug a USB drive in to use them. Could change computing forever.

  14. Re:I work for Alias and I think that this is GREAT on Autodesk Acquires Alias · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope you're right because I was planning to switch from Lightwave to Maya before the end of the year and it definately gave me pause. My hope was to start switching to Mac and Linux around that time so it was a double hit since I considered them dropping support a definate possibility. Most of the movement over the years has been towards limiting options rather than expanding them inorder to try to trap customers. Really is a pain to the users given compatibility issues. Everyone wants you using their format so you can't easily migrate. Folks just write a good software and we'll stick around. I find Lightwave is falling behind other packages in support and that's a big reason for the move.

  15. Re:I WANT a loud power supply on Silent 500W Power Supply · · Score: 1

    Better yet get a nice big server with redundant power supplies. Just back that puppy up against a wall and annoy the hell out of your neighbors. "Revenge is a dish best served loud".

  16. Re:How long? on Giant Squid Caught on Film · · Score: 1

    Doubt it's even possible. Pressure isn't the issue, temperature and range would be the main issues. They can't breath in warm water and they have massive ranges. No one knows how far they range but in a single day they could go easily tens of if not hundreds of miles. I don't think one would ever survive capture for any real period of time let alone in an aquirum. Kind of like trying to keep a Blue Whale in a tank only much worse. Large sharks have proven to be nearly impossible to keep. I'd love to see a living one it's not going to happen.

  17. Re:Decisions, decisions... on Tivo Institutes 1 Year Service Contracts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm considering going the other direction. I see a gradual errosion of TiVo and it's services. The whole thing is rediculous because if you want to use the box you have to have the service. I don't like contracts and would rather pay full price to avoid them. I went with a Virgin phone for that reason. Not the most cost effective but it's flexsible. Everyone wants to lock you into their service. My TiVo is already recording commercials passively, as I found out the other night when it force fed me an infomercial. It's only a matter of time before it starts showing you commercials whether you like it or not. I'm waiting on the day when they start PIP commercials while your recorded program runs. It will happen.

  18. pointless list on Top 50 Science Fiction TV Shows · · Score: 1

    It was just a cross section of genre shows a good share were either a stretch to call scifi or were outright fantasy. Alot of actual good shows were ignored where as some of the worst shows ever made it well up into the list. The list order also seemed random other than maybe the top ten and even then some ranked higher than they should have. Very bad, like I say pointless, list.

  19. No matches please on Acetylene Based Life on Titan? · · Score: 1

    The one place in the solar system that saying some one has an explosive personally is a compliment.

  20. Re:By mass & composition on How Would You Define a Planet? · · Score: 1

    Got to consider orbit as well or several of Jupiter's moons would probably qualify.

  21. Re:Shape and orbit on How Would You Define a Planet? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A baseball isn't a naturally occuring object. There obviously would have to be some limitations set as to what defines a round body since perfectly round is impossible. The round shape more defines a given mass. Low mass objects can be fairly large and still not be round but above a certain mass the gravity tends to form round shapes. It has to be a definition of mass and orbit since even composition brings up issues. Half the planets in our system aren't rocky and everyone seems to agree gas giants are planets. Are large gas clouds planets? There needs to be a mass range given as a ceiling for gas giants as you enter brown dwarf territory at a certain point. Exact definitions are subjective but general ones should be easy enough. After mass and orbits are definated simply live with the result. scientifically splitting hairs is pointless. Condensed objects vary from asteroids and comets to suns and everything in between. Size, shape, composition and orbit are the defining factors but there will always be close but no cigar objects. The line between will always be arbitary. Say it's .25 earth mass but a new object is found that is .2499999999 earth mass, is it a planet? No based on the definition. The line between a large object orbiting the sun and a planet will always be arbitary.

  22. Shape and orbit on How Would You Define a Planet? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The obvious conditions are round shape and orbits the sun. Size is somewhat subjective although to have a round shape it would have to be above a certain mass.

  23. Ball lightning on Lightning Fusion And Other Hot News · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For decades now there's been talk that the secret to cheap fusion might be ball lightning. This recent finding would seem to bear that out.

  24. Not all bad on Record Labels Release Software To Combat Piracy · · Score: 1

    For a small company like ours it's not nessaccarilly a bad thing. I'd rather use a passive system to stop people from downloading at work that using more invasive methods. It's strictly a productivity issue. Bandwidth and hard drive space are a limited commodity and most important of all is their time spent doing it. Whatever they do at home is fine but at work it'd be nice to have them work. It's either big brother software to prevent it or looking over their shoulder which I don't personally like. I can set the policy but some will ignore it when every machine is tied to a high speed line. If you want downloaded music at work it's called a CD player or Ipod.

  25. Re:And then... on London Tube Dangerous for Technophiles? · · Score: 1

    Shortly there after you are remanded to the Ministry of Peaceful Passing for execution.