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User: dreemernj

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  1. Re:Expensive on The eBook Backlash · · Score: 3, Informative

    Baen seems to be bringing me over to the ebook side. I glanced at their site once before for a book. It was $4, came in 6 or 7 different DRM free formats, and the sample of the book was the first 4 chapters. I can deal with that sort of ebook store.

  2. Re:Speech jamming can't stop me! on Speech-Jamming Gun Silences From 30 Meters · · Score: 1

    A covert form of communication employed to circumvent the speech inhibitors used by government forces. If they weren't evil, they wouldn't need to hide anything!

  3. Re:Not really a speech jammer on Speech-Jamming Gun Silences From 30 Meters · · Score: 1

    I want a slashdot story about this more than about the gun itself.

  4. Re:Slow news day? on Torvalds Calls OpenSUSE Security 'Too Intrusive' · · Score: 1

    I haven't done much configuration of desktop distros. Would OpenSUSE have a policy option like Windows does where you can grant install privileges to non-admin users for different types of device drivers?

  5. Re:Smartphone, Data off. on Ask Slashdot: Best Mobile Phone Solution With No Data Plan? · · Score: 1

    There are smartphones that I wouldn't refer to as "quality" that would work as well. I have a Huawei made Android phone. It was $100 new without contract. I don't have a dataplan and I find it delightful to use. I still find myself using it on Wifi pretty regularly. More than I ever expected.

  6. Re:Remind me again how Facebook is beneficial on Man Ordered To Apologize To Wife On Facebook · · Score: 1

    1) I wrote that in the middle of a work day so, obviously, I was drunk.

    2) Users don't program Facebook. It definitely programs them. It programs them to click like buttons, to "friend" people, to share as much as possible, to tag as much as possible, to share their location data, to check in at places, Not because it actually wants people to perform those actions. It's programming at a higher level. It programs users to perform those actions so that the users can then collect and return the desired information. It's basically a RDBMS for the human race.

  7. Re:NoSQL 2.0 on Is It Time For NoSQL 2.0? · · Score: 1

    Why would you say that? That's actually going to be a thing now.

  8. Re:I don't believe this for a second on Playbook OS 2.0 Released · · Score: 1

    They based this on a marketing survey conducted in the parking lot of RIM headquarters. Still only 15% :-(

  9. Re:Remind me again how Facebook is beneficial on Man Ordered To Apologize To Wife On Facebook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is beneficial the same way The Matrix was beneficial to the machines. You plug into it. You accept the programming because you do have a choice. But, since so many of your friends and family are on it and they are planning their events and spreading information through it, you might only be aware of the choice at a subconscious level since, in the right situation, choosing to disconnect can feel like giving up the world you know and the people you've met in it.

    Once you are plugged into it, Facebook begins harvesting demographics and interaction data the way the Machines harvested BTUs and processing power.

    And, much like Agent Smith assimilated the virus-like behavior that he had once disdained in humanity, Facebook has assimilated human behavior into its process for expansion, ensuring an ever growing net of data capture.

  10. Re:Defaults still insane? on Apache 2.4 Takes Direct Aim At Nginx · · Score: 1

    I think configuring Apache well requires enough understanding that automating it could lead to big issues. That's just my gut reaction though. I have only configured Apache for a few different use cases. Nothing creative or even all that complex.

    I think if they got to the point of adding auto-configure it would be like admitting they have a problem but not actually addressing the problem. Firefox can make a lot of assumptions about how it is going to be used. I don't think there's a realistic way to do the same thing in Apache's case. Even with looking at the installed mods. I think it would end up creating more headaches than if they expected the person managing it to be able to configure it for his or her use cases.

  11. Re:Yes, I RTFA (sue me) on Oracle Claims Dramatic MySQL Performance Improvements · · Score: 1

    Yep, that's exactly what I said. But thank you for reiterating.

  12. Re:Yes, I RTFA (sue me) on Oracle Claims Dramatic MySQL Performance Improvements · · Score: 1

    It sounds like the RAM isn't actually the real boost. This is MySQL Cluster. The last time I used it, it kept everything in RAM already. I think since then they let you store non-indexed tables onto disk, but that's it. The speed boost sounds like it is for NDB, not InnoDB. NDB doesn't support foreign keys and removing that constraint probably helps its performance too.

    In this case, the actual boost is from AQL, which allows for a query to be split up by JOINs and sent out to different servers to run against their local tables in parallel.

  13. Re:That's the point on Xbox 360 Game Patching Costs $40,000 · · Score: 1

    I wonder when it became an issue to patch games? I remember seeing arcade games change as updates were released for them in the arcade. They couldn't push out patches to N64 and PSX games, but they still did different versions of them. They'd produce a batch. Update the game to fix issues. Then the next batch would have a slightly different version.

    It's how games have tended to work for a while. I guess it's probably online play (which I would guess tends to require matching versions to work well) and the fact that people see the download happen vs going to the arcade and finding a game had been updated to use version 1.1 rom chips instead of 1.0.

  14. Re:21st century--The era of perpetual war on "Cyberwar" As a Carrot For Those Selling the Stick · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't care about what wars we're fighting. I'm just enjoying my 20 grammes of chocolate.

  15. Only $5,000,000? on Superpoke Players Sue Google · · Score: 1

    Somewhere a TF2 player sporting a $1500 Unusual hat is chuckling about how cute this is.

  16. Re:Matt Dayyyymon!!! on Is the Earth Gaining Or Losing Mass? · · Score: 2

    The energy is stored in the state of the matter, not in its mass.

    So, nature is more complex than we credit it for and, as a result of that, we should dumb down our understanding of modern physics to ignore mass-energy equivalence and binding force. Got it.

  17. Re:Matt Dayyyymon!!! on Is the Earth Gaining Or Losing Mass? · · Score: 1

    If you have that much of a problem with them describing the mass being added, just convert the mass to energy. 160 tonnes of mass is equivalent to 1.438 x 10^22 Joules of energy. Just pretend the article is saying that energy is being added to the system so the energy of the system must go up by this many Joules.

  18. Re:no, they *stayed* a monopoly by taking advantag on Microsoft Releases Kinect For Windows · · Score: 1

    That makes sense, but I was asking about the comment trschober made where he says they got the monopoly through antitrust violations associated with already being a monopoly.

    And, considering the case in question, he is really saying that bundling IE is what got them their monopoly. Which, doesn't seem historically accurate or physically possible.

  19. Re:MS always late to the party on Microsoft Releases Kinect For Windows · · Score: 3, Funny

    That, and the monumental monopoly that they got on the desktop thanks to their antitrust violations during the 90's.

    They achieved a monopoly by being a monopoly?

  20. Re:Embedded devices? on Microsoft Releases Kinect For Windows · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think so. You would still need the Kinect since there is specialized hardware in it that allows all this to work. When they talk about embedded devices, I seriously doubt they are talking about phones, or any other consumer electronics. This sort of support is most likely targeted at point-of-sale embedded devices or kiosks or something else along those lines.

  21. Re:Electric Charging Stations on The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video) · · Score: 1

    Perhaps instead of having "no manners whatsoever" they simply don't agree with such ridiculousness?

    I think that applies to this conversation if your local Cracker Barrel is publicly funded.

  22. Re:Electric Charging Stations on The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video) · · Score: 1

    You meant in the US and other Big Oil dominated countries, right?

    He probably did, but you can't overlook the time he mentioned as well. I don't know who backed light rail in Europe. I'd be interested to know and now that I'm writing this comment I think I'll go look into it later. In the US, light rail was often backed by land developers and power companies. Light rail is one of the things that facilitated power lines spreading out from city centers into suburban areas in the US. And suburbs would spread out as far as light rail could take people in some cases. A mogul could buy up big chunks of land outside a city, run a light rail out to it, and advertise how quick and easy it would be to get from there to the city. Having a cheap light rail while you are selling the land is great. It's worth having. Once the land is sold and developed and the mogul is moving on to another area, how much value does that light rail system have?

    A lot of things contributed to the decline of light rail in the US. Big Oil, I am sure, was part of that. But other forces were at work as well. Which one contributed most to it, I couldn't say. But if you focus on just one part of it, you are sure to find enough evidence to convince yourself that part is the most important part.

  23. Re:Electric Charging Stations on The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video) · · Score: 1

    But is there a reason why he doesn't know anything about ducks? I WANT TO KNOW THE ILLUMINATI SECRETS!

  24. Stealing passwords on Teens Share Passwords As a Form of Intimacy · · Score: 0

    As a result of this story, stealing passwords is now considered rape,

  25. Why? on Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger · · Score: 1

    I am curious what Samsung could get out of this. bada has C++, Flash and Web App development models already. Would they ditch the C++ and Flash approaches and switch to the Tizen model, or use Tizen to build out the Web App model more?

    Or could this be mostly a business move? Are there partners associated with Tizen that would look upon this happily and be more keen to partner with Samsung on things in the future?