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User: mcgrew

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Comments · 21,844

  1. Re:Costs much? on Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services · · Score: 1

    I guess we have some holdover moderators from yesterday's clusterfuck (which amazingly hit everyone but me).

    Whoever modded that, he was replying to himself. Pay attention! Now please comment and undo your mod, it was funny. It would only be flamebait if he was replying to someone else.

  2. Re:Error My Ass on NBC Apologizes For Editing Zimmerman 911 Call · · Score: 1

    Your idea of self-defense is you can stalk someone even when 911 tells you not to, then attack them, and then shoot them when you slip on the wet grass and fall on your back?

    WTF?

  3. Re:mistake #1 on Toronto Police Use Facebook Picture in Online Lineup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The trouble is that this attitude perpetuates the us-versus-them state of affairs that has been growing.

    And who is responsible for the "us vs them?" That's right, the cops. If the cops don't want an us vs them attitude they should start acting professionally.

    Illinois outlawed the death penalty and set half of its death row free when it was revealed that half of death row inmates were there on trumped up charges. And people wonder why folks are leery of cops?

    John Burge, now in prison for lying under oath, presided over a Chicago police department that routinely tortured false confessions out of people who had been arrested, and you wonder why there's an us vs them?

    Wake up, apologists like you are a big part of the problem.

  4. Re:Haven't watched them. on On Slashdot Video, We Hear You Loud and Clear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Agreed, unless there is some demonstration, like this. talking heads are for illiterates.

  5. Re:Worst thing that ever happened to music. on RIP, Electric Amplifier Inventor Jim Marshall, 'Father of Loud' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Dad? Is that you? I didn't know you had a computer! Gees, I'm 60 and have been listening to rock and roll since the '60s. If it ain't loud, it ain't rock. If it's too loud, you're too old.

    Have you ever been to a Mozart concert? Have you ever heard Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, with cannons? have you never in your life been to a parade? Loud music has been around for centuries. GOOD loud music. A live acoustic guitar playing with a live drumset is subaudible. Most non-amplified musical instruments, especially horns and drums, are DAMNED loud.

    Hell, try listening to Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" at low volume, it's like drinking watered down beer. You've been listening to WAY too much canned music and WAY too little live music.

  6. Re:Costs much? on Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services · · Score: 1

    Comcast is iirc $40 per month here, with 80 channels. I'll go back to Comcast when they let me choose which channels to watch and charge fifty cents each for them -- out of 80 channels, there were half a dozen I might watch occasionally. Why in the hell would I want to pay for BET or the Golf channel or any of the women's channels? Let alone the god damned shopping channels.

  7. Re:mistake #1 on Toronto Police Use Facebook Picture in Online Lineup · · Score: 1

    I'm curious to know where everyone grew up that they have such a negative view on all police officers.

    With me, it's Illinois, where graft and corruption reign. When I was a teenager working at a drive-in theater my boss had the cops paid off. We kids who worked there could do no wrong. One of the Sergents chewed me out once for paying a speeding ticket! They would confiscate liquor from underage drinkers, then drink it with us when the drive-in closed. Two of the cops then are now sherrifs in different counties, close to retiring.

    Fifteen years later my home was broken into, and I later found out that they found the burglar, and let him go and even let him keep my belongings for turning in a dope dealer.

    Cops are like lawyers -- the bad ones give the good one a bad name. Your old man isn't telling you everything.

  8. You know, there are few things I don't like about the 21st century, but the overuse of acronyms is one of them. Is that a Disk Operating System or a Denial of Service attack?

    They should fucking SPELL IT OUT. To not do so is just laziness.

  9. Re:More Evidence... on Researchers Unearth Largest Feathered Dinosaur · · Score: 1

    Posting as AC because I'm sure some of the whackjobs on here will be unhinged by this...

    You mean "posting AC because my Reverend Jake trolls have me at horrible karma?" Ok, I'll bite, troll, only because assholes like you you give Christians a bad name and piss me off.

    Earth was created somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

    And there's the first insult. I don't know of a single Christian who believes that bullshit, which is NOT in your bible anywhere.

    It's ridiculous to think that a 1.4 ton animal would have had feathers. Feathers exist for the purpose of flying.

    Then why do ostriches and penguins have feathers?

    How do you reconcile that feathers would have come about BEFORE the creature was even close to capable of flying?

    As another commenter noted, feathers aren't for flying. Bats have no feathers and ostriches can't fly. Flying creatures (bats, some birds, some insects) can fly because their weight is low enough and the aerodynamics of their wings overcome that low weight.

    TFA states that this creature is supposed to be 125 million years old. Do you have any idea how long ago that was?

    Yes, about 1/32 of the age of the Earth and about 1/128th the age of the universe, unless I missed a decimal place in my math. Nowhere near as long as eternity!

    Because of radiocarbon dating or some similar technique? How do we have any idea how accurate that is?

    Do you have wikipedia? You can't tell the age of a fossil by carbon dating, as the carbon's long gone. Carbon dating is accurate to 58,000 to 62,000 years. There are other ways of determining the age of fossils, such as the rock strata it's buried in. See here.

    Some of you will probably say that this is all faith, not science.

    Science and theology are not at odds. If one seems to contradict the other, it's because your understanding of one, the other, or both is faulty.

    I believe John 8:44 pertains to you, troll. Now shoo. Grownups are talking science here, and religion is offtopic.

    And mods... good job on that one. Much better than yesterday's moderations.

  10. Re:Anti-Gay? on EA Defends Itself Against Thousands of Anti-Gay Letters · · Score: 1

    I wish I had mod points to counteract at least one of the "flamebait" mods you're probably going to get. Sad when an honest opinion gets modded down.

    You might have added that gays' sins are no worse than yours or mine. We're all sinners. One needs to remove the plank from one's own eye before trying to remove the speck from his brother's. I'm completely against many of the so-called "Christian" preachers who encourage hatefulness; that's the opposite of what Jesus taught. Rather than encouraging their congregations to write letters, they should have simply discouraged them from buying the game.

    And Jesus H. Christ, games with blood and gore and these people are complaining about there being gays in them? What the hell is wrong with these people, anyway?

  11. Re:mistake #1 on Toronto Police Use Facebook Picture in Online Lineup · · Score: 1

    And look, to those good LEOs who actually do care about justice

    This is slashdot. We're nerds, not cops. To us, LEO stands for "Low Earth Orbit". "Cops" is easier to type, too, since it has the same number of letters and you don't have to use the shift key.

    If you're talking about rockets, LEO is a perfectly good acronym here. If you're talking about cops, LEO leaves most of us non law enforcement personnel scratching our heads.

    They have wi-fi at the donut shops now, officer?

  12. Re:Error My Ass on NBC Apologizes For Editing Zimmerman 911 Call · · Score: 1

    Mirrian-Webster gives "c : a person not yet of age" as one definition of the word "child". "Minor" and "child" are synonyms.

    And at age 60, to me there's not much difference between a ten year old and a twenty year old, both act childish. Sometimes the ten year olds act more responsibly than the 20 year old kids.

    And you have a skinny little kid and a burky 30 year old, the thirty year od must have been one hell of a wimp to feel threatened by a skinny teenaged kid. Hell, I could have probably kicked Travon's ass.

    Zimmerman was a cowardly pussy who should have never owned a gun.

  13. Re:Chrome vs IE on Chrome Beats Internet Explorer On Any Given Sunday · · Score: 1

    I've been computing for 30 years and have seen very few hardware failures. My PC at work is over ten years old, and so is everyone else's here.

    Printers and photocopiers, otoh...

  14. Re:now on Flashback Trojan Hits 600,000 Macs and Counting · · Score: 1

    If you're on slashdot you should know the difference between a virus and a trojan. Any computer can get a trojan, only Windows gets (got? Maybe they do better these days) viruses. No Linux or Mac computer was ever infected by a "drive by". That takes either a virus or worm.

    And the fact that non-nerds think "malware=virus", when you truthfully say "mac and Linux don't get viruses" the average muggles thinks "Macs are immune from malware", which is just plain wrong. Any computer can get a trojan, provided the user is ignorant enough to install untrusted apps. I say "ignorant" because from what the average non-geek knows, it's OK to install anything on a Mac because they don't get viruses.

    Guys, we need to start educating people about the differences between variants of malware. Hell, even some slashdotters seem to think "malware=virus". Never install ANYTHING from a source you're not positive is trustworthy.

  15. Re:Error My Ass on NBC Apologizes For Editing Zimmerman 911 Call · · Score: 1

    First, there's no proof Zimmerman is a racist and everything points to the contrary. Second, the dispatcher specifically told Zimmerman NOT to follow the kid but he did anyway.

    What nobody has mentioned is you have Zimmerman, a burly 30 year old, being threatened by a skiiny teenager? Does not compute.

  16. Re:Costs much? on Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services · · Score: 1

    Even cheaper still to get over the air, Hulu, and the networks' own web sites for free. That's what I've been doing for half a decade now. With all the free programming, whay would I want to pay? I get movies from WalMart for five to ten bucks and I get to KEEP them.

    Of course, I'm from the generation before cable existed, and when I was a kid we only had 3 channels, no computers, no VCRs (no flat screens, hi-def or even color). So the free offerings are like a smorgasbord to me, but if you're younger it might seem like cable is necessary.

  17. Re:Chrome vs IE on Chrome Beats Internet Explorer On Any Given Sunday · · Score: 2

    If only that were possible. We had Novell's email client for over ten years, and then they decided to go MS-only. Christ but I HATE Outlook. PDFs sent as attachments often are delivered broken and have to be resent, emails to someone down the hall can take an hour to be delivered, you have stupid limits on mailbox size, you have to enter a password for Outlook even though you had to log into the network itself, and you have to log in to a damned web page to change that password.

    Novell connected the email client on network login, I never had broken attachments, or limits on file sizes or number of files, emails got there RIGHT NOW, when you changed your network password it changed automatically in the email client. And from what I've read, you can't use any other client with an Exchange server.

    IMO Outlook is a clusterfuck and a piece of shit. Going from Novell to Outlook was like going from a brand new Lexis to a twenty year old beater Yugo. God but I'll be glad when I can retire...

  18. Re:merge them with bionic eye implants? on Google Glasses Announced · · Score: 1

    I never had LASIK so I don't know, but the implant really isn't that bad. They drug you up pretty good, what they call "twilight sleep"; you're aware but stoned out of your mind. In fact, after the surgery they tell you not to drive for 24 hours because of the drugs in your system.

  19. Re:Macs don't get hacked on Flashback Trojan Hits 600,000 Macs and Counting · · Score: 1

    I hope you're joking, but "display in there [sic] offices" suggests you're not, so I'll give you a link: Apple computer sales grow faster than PC sales for five years - but why?" and a number: Q4 2010 Unit Shipments by Product
    Desktops: 1.24 million units, up 58 percent from 787,000 units a year earlier. That's five million computers a year.

    I'd buy a mac if I could afford one.

  20. Re:merge them with bionic eye implants? on Google Glasses Announced · · Score: 1

    I had an iPad in 2006. The iDoctor made me wear it overnight after my iSurgery.

  21. Re:Chrome vs IE on Chrome Beats Internet Explorer On Any Given Sunday · · Score: 1

    Flamebait? Redmond has lots of mod points, it seems. However, I certainly wouldn't have modded you up and might have modded you "overrated" because you're missing it completely.

    IE is king of the browsers in the enterprise workplace for many reasons (none of which have to do with quality or useability). I'd say this story is from the "well DUH" dept. Nearly everybody uses IE at work, relatively few do at home.

    Most workplaces have policies specifially forbidding anyone but IT from installing anything on work PCs, and I agree with those policies, even though I'll be glad when I retire in 2 years and will no longer have to put up with Microsoft products.

  22. Re:Error My Ass on NBC Apologizes For Editing Zimmerman 911 Call · · Score: 1

    EVERY time they talk about something in my area of expertise they get it wrong.

    That's been my experience as well.

    My favorite is the Bill O'Reilly one where he says nobody knows how the tides work they just go in and out. This jackass went to HARVARD. So much for an Ivy League education.

    I've found that education !=intelligence; one of the dumbest people I know holds a PhD. I also found out how you can tell a PhD is an idiot -- If he insists on being called "doctor" and adds the PhD to his name in letterhead, he's probably a moron. All the other PhDs I've known were highly intelligent, and I knew them for years before I knew they held doctorates.

    I suspect the moron PhD I know cheated or bought his way to the degree (this is Illinois, after all), and that may be the case for O'Riley as well. I don't know if he's just a BA or what, but he's proof you don;t need brains to get a degree.

  23. Re:Why Ask Them To Vote On What To Archive? on Tensions Between Archivists and 'Occupy' Protesters Over Preserving the Movement · · Score: 1

    The Vietnam war was stopped? Yeah and how many wars have there been since that?

    The protests were against that particular war and against the draft. And we weren't in any more wars until Bush Sr. almost a quarter century later, and the last soldier to be drafted went to Vietnam.

    The 60s movement caused the war on drugs

    No, they've been fighting a "war on drugs" since the thirties. It's just that the Vietnam war introduced thousands of draftees to pot, who came home and introduced it to friends and family. The phrase "war on drugs" was coined by Nixon to bolster more Republican support. Reagan reintroduced the phrase in the early eighties.

    The EPA? How effective is the EPA?

    Very effective. I grew up in Cahokia, IL, 5 miles from downtown St Louis. To get to St Louis you had to go through Sauget, IL, past the Cerro Copper and Monsanto plants. Vegetation was scarce and what was there was sickly. Driving through Sauget in the '50s and '60s you had to have the windows rolled up, even in 95 degree heat, and this was before many cars had AC, because the air would literally burn your lungs and make your eyes water. When I got home from the USAF in 1975 there was seldom any odor at all, once in a while a whiff of bleach, and the vegetation had turned form a sickly brownish to a healthy green.

    Factories dumped hazardous wastes directly into rivers. Before the EPA, rivers and creeks actually caught fire!

    The 60s radicals of the left served to legitimize the anti-communists of the right.

    The anti-commies were never illegitimate. We were in a "cold war" with the USSR at the time. We had "duck and cover" atom bomn drills in schools, and everyone was terrifies of the communists.

    And we still have millions of people in prison on drug offenses.

    Too bad the protests against the drug laws were so weak. They were nothing like the antiwar and civil rights movements.

    So if the 60s radicals really accomplished so much why hasn't anything gotten better?

    They did. Rivers don't catch fire any more, we no longer draft people into the army, and there are laws against racial discrimination. The protester's goals were met. Things didn't start getting terrible until Bush Jr came into office and did the worst job of it than any president in my lifetime, maybe in history. I never thought I'd see a worst President than Carter, but Bush proved me wrong. He took office in a booming economy with $1.05 gasoline, before he left office we were in the worst economy since the depression and gas was $4.50. Bush and friends were exactly like Coolige and Hoover. Here's a book about the 1920s that was required reading in an undergraduate general studies history class I took in the late '70s at SIU. History does indeed repeat itself if one doesn't pay attention.

    Ending the war in Vietnam and bringing the war to American soil is still fucked up.

    I don't know what you mean by "bringing the war to American soil." The last time there was war on American soil was the Civil War, discounting Pearl harbor and 911.

  24. Re:merge them with bionic eye implants? on Google Glasses Announced · · Score: 1

    No, I think he had a cancer in his liver; he's not an alcoholic that I know of. I've never seen him drunk, unlike almost everybody else in the bar. He had to stop drinking completely for a year before they'd do the transplant, and for a couple years afterwards to keep from ruining the new one.

  25. Re:merge them with bionic eye implants? on Google Glasses Announced · · Score: 1

    Welp. I guess they've already taken control of my brain.

    They don't need to connect wires to your brain to take control. Look how good Apple is at mind control!

    Yeah, my youngest daughter is an Apple freak, fully enmeshed in the reality distortion field.