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User: doctor_nation

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  1. Re:Nintendo Treading On Thin Ice on Miyamoto on Wiimakes, Dead-End Design · · Score: 1

    I'm not a huge skeptic of the Wiimote, but to be fair, it isn't innovative. It's a rehash of all those horrible motion-activated peripherals made in the 80's and 90's. They just made it the main feature of the system instead of an add-on. Nothing really new or novel about it, except maybe that it works better or is more precise (sort of like adding more polygons or buttons). Innovation isn't all its cracked up to be anyway- usually the first iteration of something innovative sucks, even though it may be praised for its novelness. That's why there's hope for the Wiimote- it's not the first iteration, and hopefully all those power glove game designers have been spending the last 15 years or so figuring out how they'd do better this time.

  2. Not bad as an alternative... on Biometric Terrorist Detector · · Score: 1

    If I have a choice between carry-on luggage and this, I'll take this. Will it catch everyone (terrorists, drug smugglers, etc)? No. But our current system doesn't either. 8% false positive? What percent of people are currently searched randomly? Maybe not that many, but it wouldn't necessarily be prohibitive to hit that number. After all, the UK is currently screening 50% of all passengers, down from 100%. It's hard to say what the actual rate of success and false positives are without putting it into a real-world situation. I'm sure it doesn't go off if you're just nervous about going through security- I'm guessing there's more to it than simple nervousness. After all, I imagine everyone is nervous when strapped into a polygraph, yet they still work. Plus, anyone who is planning on killing themselves and a bunch of other people is probably a ball of nerves (unless they're on drugs of some sort). Also, consider that most of these plots involve several people- three or four. So all of them would have to get through without setting anything off.

  3. Re:Not even close to the world's fastest on Making the World's Fastest Kayak · · Score: 1

    As someone else said, not all kayaks are built for whitewater. Those are shorter and more maneuverable. And before you go saying that sea kayaks aren't "real" kayaks, I believe that the origin of the word is from the Inuit and I think they were probably more interested in fishing in the ocean than going over rapids.

  4. Re:Send it to all the judges !! on The RIAA vs. John Doe, a Layperson's Guide · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Part of the point of the article is that the judges can't do anything if you don't show up. And the RIAA makes it very hard for you to show up. But when you do show up, the judges seem to be in the favor of John Doe.

  5. Re:Except on County-Wide Wireless To Be Deployed in Michigan · · Score: 1

    However, considering that you're moving at a few hundred miles per hour, you'll be past the county very quickly, too quickly to get a connection, let alone to a single tower. I would assume that you actually have to disconnect and reconnect when moving between towers, on the ground even.

  6. Money is always an issue. on Industrial Labs that Still Do Fundamental Research · · Score: 1

    It sounds like you're looking for a place where you can do whatever you want and not have to worry about where the money will come from to do it. Sorry, but those places don't exist anymore, even if they ever did. I'm in the same boat as you are, one year down the road. I'm currently doing a postdoc at the Applied Physics Lab (part of Johns Hopkins), and I plan to re-join academia at some point.

    Any place you go to, you will probably have to find funding. Some places may have in-house funding to start looking at something until you can find external funding for it. APL is such a place, and it seems to work pretty well here. I recommend looking at national labs for sure- maybe you had a bad experience, or were in a group that had a different focus than many places. Also check out government labs (air force, army, navy: whatever fits your discipline). And having been at APL for a year now, I can tell you that it is a VERY nice place to work. Employees are treated very well here and the management doesn't seem to be at all overbearing (at least in my experience). Plus the nearby town of Columbia is apparently the fourth-nicest place to live in America

    At the very least, apply to all of these places, see where you get interviews, and go check them out. Talk about your concerns with the people you meet at the interview and see if that works it out for you. That's the best way to end up in a good place.

  7. Re:Another example of lazy user syndrome on Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux? · · Score: 2, Informative

    I hope you're talking in a purely user-based sense, because being a Linux admin is not remotely simple. Learning how to use a nice stable Linux system that has been set up for you is pretty easy. Learning how to go through the agony of setting up a new system is much, much harder. I'm a programmer and I'm not afraid of poking around in config files, but in my recent setup of my first Linux system (an Ubuntu/MythTV box) I had many points where I was ready to break my keyboard in two over my knee. And I still do whenever I try to get the thing to do what I want. As soon as I leave it alone and accept it as-is, there are no problems. But if I want to fix an annoyance or add a feature, it's no end of trouble. And believe it or not, but there are a lot of people in the world who would rather be doing things other than searching the web for the magic script to fix their problem or fiddling with config files to get something working.

  8. Re:Please no more cartoon news on 10 Years of Neon Genesis Evangelion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not truth so much as close-mindedness on your part. A lot of anime has plotlines and characters that put things like 24 or Lost to shame. Watch before you judge- just because you grew up with Walt Disney doesn't mean that all things animated are for kids.

  9. Re:Summarized Plot on 10 Years of Neon Genesis Evangelion · · Score: 1

    Hey, if you're going to summarize from Toastyfrog, at least give your reference!

  10. Re:Space is the Place on Slashback: OpenSSH, Falwell, OpenDRM · · Score: 1

    I think we're probably a LOT closer to fusion than anti-matter propulsion. For one thing, fusion produces more energy, rather than expending it, so it's actually useful for things other than bombs and space propulsion. So it makes more sense from a funding perspective. Also, as you say, antimatter is hideously expensive to create (in money and energy), and you have to keep it perfectly contained or else your trip to Mars will be VERY short.

  11. Re:It'll be the same story as always on Anti-malware Vendors Stare Down Microsoft Threat · · Score: 1

    Well, you can certainly catch MOST spyware with just a single program. Ad-Aware has a free version that works pretty well. But the last study I saw showed that none of the programs, paid or free, was able to clean a machine of all kinds of spyware. So if you want to be completely clean, you need at least a couple different programs. Some companies, like McAfee and Norton, include the anti-spyware with their virus-scanners (I believe), so it's "added value" that they can charge you more for.

  12. It'll be the same story as always on Anti-malware Vendors Stare Down Microsoft Threat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since everyone will be running MS's anti-spyware program, the spyware folks will concentrate on defeating it, just like virus writers concentrate on beating Windows "security". So there will still be a market for other vendors, since they would hopefully be better at stopping spyware than MS' default option. And since there's lots of them, it's harder to defeat them all. Even now, it's pretty well accepted that you need at least two anti-spyware programs to catch everything.

  13. Re:Out of 131 games... on 86 games for the 360, 45 for the PS3 · · Score: 1

    And the remaining 10 will be direct ports.

  14. Maybe... on Russia to Mine on the Moon by 2020 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the energy companies (i.e. oil) can be convinced that fusion is the next big energy source, I can see them ponying up the dollars to make this happen. Big investment up front for an even bigger possible return later on. It would certainly be easier to generate funds for doing this for business that it will be/is for scientific purposes.

  15. Re:Continuity in Zelda games on Is Link About to Die? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, there are exceptions (1&2, and OoT&MM), but most of the games are separate- that was my main point. Although I hadn't RTFA before I posted that, and now that I have I see that the point of the article was a bit more interesting that just having Link die.

  16. Huh? on Is Link About to Die? · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not like there's any real continuity of character here. I mean, there's no specific Link character who is in all of the games. I always interpreted Link to be a sort of genetic/time-less hero born again and again. It's basically implied that each one dies at some point after his game ends. So explicitly having him die in game wouldn't really matter that much, since we know there will be another one at some point. And honestly, I wouldn't be that upset if he died anyway. It's not like there's any personality there.

  17. Re:What a scam! on Video Games Live National Tour Canceled · · Score: 1

    "Better to keep customers happy, otherwise they'll just end up using another service." Hahaha...yeah right. Another service? What other service? Ticketmaster is all there is! I think the last time any band tried not to use them was Pearl Jam, and I seem to remember hearing that it didn't work out so well.

  18. Re:What a scam! on Video Games Live National Tour Canceled · · Score: 1

    It is a scam, but it's not the concert organizers making the money - it's Ticketmaster. If you buy tickets online, you pay something like $10 in fees for the privilege. And the monopoly that is Ticketmaster sure as heck won't give that back. Oh well, I can't stand Tommy Tallarico anyway, so that right there is one reason I wouldn't buy a ticket.