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User: Lemmy+Caution

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Comments · 4,040

  1. Re:Nobody cares. on Should Apple Open Source the iPhone? · · Score: 1

    The insurance that the iPhone has against being eclipsed by Android is Apple's patent on multi-touch. I'm choosing Android over the iPhone, but I can already see how much better the user experience is with multi-touch.

  2. Re:Except Deep Space 9 had Babylon 5 to compete wi on Battlestar Galactica Gets Spinoff Prequel Series · · Score: 1

    I actually liked DS9, and consider it generally the best of the ST series. Not that it wasn't guilty of some heinous violations (like Vic Fontaine), but some of the episodes were among the best written and performed of any ST series, and could even get me to tear up. (I'm thinking of the show, "The Visitor." A very moving episode.)

  3. Re:Late in the game on Battlestar Galactica Gets Spinoff Prequel Series · · Score: 1

    To keep standards reasonably high.

  4. Re:All the more reason not to buy an ipod/phone on Apple DMCAs iPodHash Project · · Score: 1

    Doesn't Songbird work with the Nano? It doesn't solve the main poster's problem, but it solves yours, doesn't it?

  5. Re:All the more reason not to buy an ipod/phone on Apple DMCAs iPodHash Project · · Score: 1

    I own an iPod, I own a MacBook, and I listen to NBR. And I criticize Apple all the time, I think they are nearly as bad as Microsoft - sometimes, in some ways, worse - and I dislike being trapped in a vendor's ecosystem.

    I'm planning on getting an Android phone, rather than an iPhone. So yes, it is very possible to do all those things and be very far from being a fan boy.

  6. Re:Would that include getting the free copy? on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 3, Funny

    You think Congress will help? Who do you think passed the DMCA in the first place? Fairies?

    That's it. I'm not clapping for Tinkerbell ever again.

  7. Re:Obligatory Apple reality check on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 1

    And, increasingly, the manufacturing itself, and sometimes even the design, occurs elsewhere. It is to Apple's credit that they do hold the discipline of industrial design in high esteem, and keep it in-house. I forgive them much simply because I admire excellent design, and fear that it is a dying art in America.

  8. Re:Questions? Answers. on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Dear Pottymouth:

    Apple's number one motivating factor, and the number one motivating factor of all publicly traded companies, is to increase stock value. If a clean user experience - or at least the perception of it - is one way to do it, then that's what it's going to be.

    But one theme rings true throughout the Apple way of doing things: a tightly controlled branded ecosystem, which is what underlies the clean user experience. DRM can fit quite tidily with that principle.

  9. Re:Questions? Answers. on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this is true, why do Amazon an eMusic have such huge collections of DRM-free music? Is the difference between their catalogs and the iTunes catalog that big?

  10. Re:old on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 3, Funny

    File this under "depressing but true."

  11. Re:To Steve on Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection · · Score: 1

    Like someone pointed out upstream: in about 3 years, you probably will not want to be using a 2007 system. Then what?

    I'm using a MacBook now. If this sort of thing goes on, it may be my last MacBook. And I don't want to climb back onto the Windows train - as painful as linux-on-the-desktop is to me, I may actually venture back into those waters: zotero is making that possible.

  12. Re:Polgamy and Christian values - technical correc on Ender in Exile · · Score: 1

    You actually have it reversed a little bit: the Romans were strictly monogamous, and introduced monogamy (and ritual virginity for the priesthood) to early Christianity.

  13. Re:known troll, mod down. on Ender in Exile · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm an unabashed snob and severe critic. I think the ridiculous idea that all things are of equal value needs to be rebutted early and often. But I'm not a troll. And I've been on Slashdot posting on a wide variety of issues for a long time.

  14. Re:don't remember anything of the sort on Ender in Exile · · Score: 1

    If "Ernest Goes To Camp" won an Oscar, I would, indeed, start to doubt the sanity of the Academy members. While I don't think Ender's Game is that bad - I think it's close.

  15. Re:Not the same joke on Dead Parrot Sketch Is 1,600 Years Old · · Score: 1

    your=you're, to save you the trouble.

  16. Re:Not the same joke on Dead Parrot Sketch Is 1,600 Years Old · · Score: 1

    I bet your a snob about other things, aren't you? You're anti-elitist if anyone looks down their snoot at you, but you're quite happy to make fun of people who like the Ernest films.

    And if you don't make fun of people who like the Ernest films, then you're just an idiot.

  17. Re:Not the same joke on Dead Parrot Sketch Is 1,600 Years Old · · Score: 2, Funny

    Some humor needs killin'.

  18. Re:Not the same joke on Dead Parrot Sketch Is 1,600 Years Old · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Monty Python is treated as more absurdist than they really were by American audiences. A lot of the objects of their humor were aspects of British life, politics and culture that would be recognizable to viewers in the UK, particularly at the time. Which is why British comedy moved on decades ago (The League of Gentlemen, Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show, and the brilliant That Mitchell and Webb Look.)

    When an American geeks constantly recycle the same handful of Monty Python routines, it's depressing. It's humor-by-algorithm: if it was funny once, the memory of the experience of that humor displaces the actual spontaneity and discovery of new sources of humor in a kind of compulsive repetition, which I think is meant more to reassure geeks than to amuse them.

  19. Re:third-person singular simple present? on Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet · · Score: 1

    The use of the term "to disappear" as a transitive verb, in both English and Spanish, picked up considerable momentum during the period of the Argentine junta, and evokes memories of the military dictatorships of Latin American in the 1970's.

    It's very apt usage here. The grammar police in this case are missing the point.

  20. Re:So how much did they make? on 3 Firms Confess To Fixing LCD Prices, Agree To Pay $585M Fine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because the people who need it might not be able to afford it.

    I understand that a little bit of deprivation is necessary to goad people to participate in the labor market. But the insurance model just won't fly as a true safety-net.

  21. Re:It is doomed on Richard Garriott Quits NCSoft · · Score: 1

    Oh God, no. PVP in MMOs goes back to Diablo, Ultima and Everquest, and even the AOL version of Neverwinter Nights. DAoC is a latecomer to that party.

  22. Re:Centuries ago, Internet time on Richard Garriott Quits NCSoft · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Whoa, Paul McCartney used to be in a band?"

  23. Re:Surprise, surprise! on The Gene Is Having an Identity Crisis · · Score: 1

    There are plenty of very good scientists who actually are blindly arrogant, but still able to produce important work. And there are some modest people with a realistic understanding of the limitations of human kowledge who nonetheless have very little to contribute in terms of significant research.

    Crick, for example, really believed that he had pretty much covered it all. He was arrogant beyond belief. Yet he is still a real scientist.

  24. Re:Apples and Oranges, people... on OpenOffice Vs. Google Apps · · Score: 1

    Apples are usually red or green, make good pies, and are harvested in temperate climes. Oranges are yellowish to orange citruses, make poor pies but good juice and flavoring, and are more common in semi-tropical climes. Apples are better for your teeth than oranges, but oranges have more vitamin C.

    See? I compared them!

  25. Re:This makes more sense than I expected on Obama's Election Means a Return of Vampire Flicks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Absolutely not: the idea that the world of the senses was an illusion, and that the true lay behind a veil of lies is central to gnosticism. Gnosticism is more a religious version of neo-Platonism (after all, Cartesian doubt has its origins in Plato's cave.) There were Christian and non-Christian versions of Gnosticism as well: Gnosticism developed independently of Christianity in other parts of the Roman Empire and its vicinity, though it was soon blended with various Christian practices and beliefs.

    I think the political situation in which Gnosticism flourished in some ways echoed that of Gnostic Cinema at the end of the 20th century: a hegemonic force looked like it was "the end of history," Rome was unrivaled in its power and an uneasy sense of totality dominated the cultural scene, as if the Empire seemed to envelop reality - like the Matrix.