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User: Keeper+Of+Keys

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  1. Re:the fine didn't fit the crime on Juror From RIAA Trial Speaks · · Score: 1

    Unless they believed that the copyright law is an ass. Didn't anyone on the jury find it odd that, out of 2 million people (according to TFA) they had been told were using Kazaa at the time, she alone should be sent to trial?

  2. Re:the fine didn't fit the crime on Juror From RIAA Trial Speaks · · Score: 1

    the jury was instructed told they didn't need to consider that there was no evidence that people had actually downloaded the files from her. That may be true to the letter of the law, but those instructions may have been inappropriate to give. I think the reason people are so upset about that direction is because there is no "letter of the law" about making files available. It was just the Judge's opinion and it went against existing case law.
  3. Re:Translation on Is the Internet Bad For Professional Writers · · Score: 1

    If I had tried that in 6th grade English, I would have been sent to a torture chamber. (figuratively, of course, although by this point it's "correct" to say "literally") Although it is literally correct that you should start a parenthetical new sentence with a capital letter.
  4. Re:counterpoint on Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included · · Score: 1

    This argument makes sense, but will MS be back-porting IE7 to W2k? If it doesn't, and at this late stage it seems unlikely, IE6 will be with us for a long time yet.

  5. Re:This shows that Microsoft is a great company. on Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included · · Score: 1

    What is your price to use Windows Vista with Office 2007? This is a genuine question. I just wiped Vista off my laptop and went back to XP. Couldn't be happier. Would I switch back to Vista for £500? No. £1000? Hmm, maybe. Can I defer my answer until after SP1 comes out?
  6. Re:IE7 on Linux? on Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included · · Score: 2, Informative

    The table on that page is rather misleading. While in theory IE6 'supports' almost as much CSS as IE7 (notwithstanding that IE7 massively increased the amount of selectors and pseudo-selectors available), much of this supposed support is broken. IE7 still has its problems, mainly to do with the mysterious layout property, but is a far better implementation of CSS 2.1 than IE6.

  7. Re:Proof on A Mathematical Answer To the Parallel Universe Question · · Score: 1

    Does a parallel world theory help explain why the bullet's particles all simultaneously leapt one foot to the left?

  8. Re:Interesting... on EU Think Tank Urges Full Windows Unbundling · · Score: 1

    Or a Marxist. AFAIK Karl Marx was the first person to describe the state as "an armed body of men". Or perhaps a Libertarian - I believe they see the state in a similar way.

    And all are correct about this. Why else, other than to prolong inequality, would there be a need for a privileged group of *armed* people to uphold the law?

  9. Re:What are we actually saying? on Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista? · · Score: 1

    unless it's in a usable state, it's not up. My desktop behaves quite well with S3 standby mode. It's up and running in about 3-5s (the screen takes that long to come alive, the system's almost always ready to go when the screen comes up). My Vista laptop is the same, perhpas a little faster. The point is it's easy to resume from standby, as everything's still functioning. With hibernation the computer has to do a cold boot (which you said "takes roughly 15-20s" on a mac), then put the RAM back as it was. In other words, I was right to call out the OP on whether OSX can resume faster than Windows. Having said that, XP was really solid on this, but Vista makes a right pig's ear of it. Another reason why I will be downgrading to XP when it's convenient.

    As for hibernation, Macs transparently hibernate (at least the latest versions of the OS) meaning that they'll sleep and while entering sleep, they prep the hibernation file just in case they lose power because you're slow swapping batteries or the battery runs out. Again, this is what Vista does as its default behaviour (so-called Hybrid Sleep), but IMO this is not a great idea on a laptop. I don't want to put my computer to sleep only to find out when I try to wake it that the battery's flat - unless I'm on power, I always hibernate.
  10. They've Pretty Much Lost The War on Has RIAA Abandoned the 'Making Available' Defense? · · Score: 1

    There might have been a window for the same corporations monetizing p2p and resting on their laurels a few years back, but it's shutting rapidly. People are getting used to the idea of user-generated content, long-tail artists, music discovery sites, etc - all of which spells the end for Big Media as we know it. Old-style p2p is losing its allure to many becuause there are now so many places you can hear that song/watch that movie RIGHT NOW.

  11. What are we actually saying? on Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista? · · Score: 1

    Like I said - even Windows wakes pretty instantly from standby, because it's not really off, just in a low power state. I suspect we're not comparing like with like. Do macs give you a choice whether to sleep with power completely off (hibernate)? This is essential for laptops; otherwise your battery power is slowly trickling away. 'Cause I challenge the assertion that a mac can boot from hibernation or even, as some seem to believe, from cold in two seconds.

  12. Re:service pack on Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista? · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see a Windows or Linux-powered laptop go into and wake from standby in 2 seconds flat. Hm, even Vista can manage this unimpressive feat. I think you mean "wake from hibernation in 2 seconds flat". I don't know about OSX, but Ubuntu's wakeup time is certainly better than Vista's at around 10s on my laptop, and it manages it without adjusting the screen resolution several times.
  13. Re:Demand will be met on Online Video Popularity Still Climbing · · Score: 1

    The low quality is one of the reasons I don't use YouTube
    http://stage6.divx.com/videos/
  14. ... erm, and AdBlock on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    If you're talking about this site I can see the main video but just an empty column on the right (headed "Payin' The Bills", ha). I enabled www.comedycentral.com in NoScript and not google-analytics.com or doubleclick.net, but I think AdBlock (with Filterset G) is doing its sterling work in the background and keeping the ads at bay.

  15. Boy, do you need NoScript... on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    http://noscript.net/

    Allows you to turn scripting off (including most flash) on a per-domain basis. Kill the ads, keep the content.

  16. Re:More than one side to this one... on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    Until technologies like Flash are made reliable and secure across all platforms

    While I agree that developers must provide fallbacks, I can't think of any recent serious security issues with Flash, and it's the most cross-platform browser plugin there is (especially if you trail a couple of versions behind the bleeding edge), so I'm not sure what your problem is. And I've gotta question that 'until'. Lynx will never support flash, and nor will Googlebot, so the main 'reliability' issue with Flash is that you can't rely on it being present - though it will almost certainly work as intended if it is.
  17. Re:More than one side to this one... on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up.

  18. Re:More than one side to this one... on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    I have to take issue with a few things here:

    First, Javascript and Actionscript are both essentially the same core language with different extensions, so it makes no sense to choose one over the other on the basis of which is the best language.

    Second, the core language, Ecmascript, is not a mess. In fact, I find it the most elegant and intuitive language I have used (including Ruby, though I'd put that a close second). There are specific problems with its implementations both as a browser scripting language and within Flash. Actionscript suffers from its relationship with the Flash IDE which - to a programmer - is less than intuitive, though the larger your flash app the more you get away from this. Javascript's burden is differences in implementaion of a few features, which unfortunately are key ones. The solution to this is to use a framework. I use jQuery, which does such a good job of hiding these differences I'd have to rack my brains to remember what they are and how to work around them in regular js.

    Thirdly, I agree that animated nav bars can enhance a site but they can also detract, especially if the user has a slow PC. This is a matter of good taste and judgement, but I'd suggest thinking at least three times before doing a site's navigation in flash. As you point out, it can be built to degrade in such a way that the NoScript user (and we're on the increase) doesn't even know they're missing something. CSS can accomplish an enormous amount in making a well marked up nav look the business.

    Fourthly, if you really must have them, you'd be surprised what kind of animation effects can be achieved quite easily using a framework like jQuery.

  19. ppk on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    I don't know Jeremy Keith's book, but the ppk book is an excellent exposition of unobtrusive scripting. His philosophy is that js should aid usability - no more, no less. So if you have an enormous form, most of which won't be relevant to to any particular user, you put the whole thing into the HTML - so it's all there for js-off users - then hide most of it in script, revealing only the parts that become relevant as the user makes their way through the form.

    The book is a good balance of theory and practise, pragmatic when necessary (eg he explains the few occasions when browser-sniffing is the best solution), with highly liftable example scripts. Recommended.

  20. Unobtrusive Flash on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 1

    Graceful degradation is quite possible with flash, once you discard those annoying scripts that try to auto-install it (nope. I have already have it thanks, but it's disabled by default - hello NoScript). Content inside the tag will be displayed if the plugin is not available - it's just that most developers can't be bothered to put in anything more useful than a message telling them to get flash.

    This is an example of a flash site I worked on that passed WAI level 2. Try navigating it with javascript off.

  21. Re:More than one side to this one... on Best Programming Practices For Web Developers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Completely agree. Yes, unobtrusive srcipting does mean providing the same resource in two different ways, but that needn't be too much of a chore. The backend part is more than just an insurance policy against your javascript failing for some reason: it's the only way the Googlebot will see your content at all - it doesn't run page scripts. I'd say: develop a standard call-and-response website first, then unobtrusively ajaxify the parts where a full page refresh is too costly.

  22. Re:hmmm on Doom and Gloom for Web Radio · · Score: 1

    Maybe they realise their business has no future.

  23. Re:Can't RTFA... on Linus on Subversion, GPL3, Microsoft and More · · Score: 1

    There are two main drawbacks, its slow, slow and slow, and to automate things one always has to work around their built-in features.
    That's four drawbacks...
  24. Re:What does F-O-R-K spell? on BitTorrent Closes Source Code · · Score: 1

    Fuck off to rtorrent or ktorrent?

  25. Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0 on KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released · · Score: 1

    The problem with all computer software is that it's *never* finished. Microsoft has the exact attitue you just expressed. They can't afford to do incremental releases, of course, because they have to offer enough goodies in one hit to get paid. And of course after 5 years in development Vista still has major functionality holes (IME multi-monitor support is abominable; far worse than XP's; networking is ropey). OSS on the other hand can drip feed us a continuous stream of 'good enough' releases.

    Anyways, I can't believe you're complaining about the quality of an *alpha* release. I hope you're submitting bug reports, rather than just bitching about it on /.