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User: mad_minstrel

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  1. Re:Actually it's UI is still quite quirky on Blender 2.57 Released — and It's Easy To Use! · · Score: 1

    As you have yourself pointed out, it's easily changed. But the default is kind of logical too - you do important, destructive stuff with your left button and less critical, non-destructive stuff with your right button. Just like in Windows, Gnome, KDE, etc.

  2. Re:wouldn't 90 degrees be straight up/down? on Blender 2.57 Released — and It's Easy To Use! · · Score: 1

    That's the point. You either know your Blender or you don't. There is nothing in between.

  3. Re:You're A Newbie on Blender 2.57 Released — and It's Easy To Use! · · Score: 1

    You must be joking. The old interface had no future. There's only so many buttons you can stuff into a fixed size panel. In 2.49 buttons were being added not where they were logically supposed to be but where there was space. There's no way you could backport the new ui to that because it just plain wouldn't fit. My only gripe with 2.5 is that they STILL haven't ported the bevel tool. They're waiting for bmesh (a new polygon-based modelling system), but that seems to have stalled.

  4. Re:Steam is actually fine on GameStop Buys Impulse From Stardock · · Score: 1

    Actually, I have over a hundred games on Steam and I'm reasonably happy with it. It's just that you said the problem is minor, but it has affected me at least a couple of times now. And I don't believe it's at all unreasonable to ask that my backups work without an internet connection. Steam could encrypt the backup with a key tied to my account upon creation and, yes, if it later decrypts, just believe it's mine and let me run it. Such backups would be useless to anybody else, and the verification you speak of would still take place - just not on first run, but on installation of the Steam client.

  5. Re:Steam is actually fine on GameStop Buys Impulse From Stardock · · Score: 1

    What if internet is unavailable and you want to reinstall that game you've made a nifty Steam backup of explicitly for this purpose? No gaming for you!

  6. Re:Use cases? on Apple's Secret Weapon To Win the Tablet Wars · · Score: 1

    When you're annotating a paper, you don't want a keyboard. You want to scribble, cross out, underline, circle, and write IMPORTANT in huge red capitals all over the page. You want to draw charts and add formulae. The virtual keyboards on smartphones and tablets are good enough for typing a short url or a quick email, but not much more. Despite the immense technological progress of the last half century, the only difference between how I work and how my grandfather used to is that my pencil is mechanical. I'm eagerly awaiting a B5 paper-sized tablet with a stylus (the revolving-screen-laptop style is just too heavy and the battery far too short lived). You'd think Google or Microsoft would have the clout to address the iPad's biggest failing.

  7. Re:Was Microsoft Riight? on Apple's Secret Weapon To Win the Tablet Wars · · Score: 1

    There are very few things we actually need. Air. Water. Food. Clothing. Shelter. Medicine. Transport. Security. Communications. There was never a real need for portable music players, or television sets for that matter, and yet most everybody in developed countries has one or more unless they choose not to. If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet it just means there is no demand for good tablets; there's a demand for iPads.

  8. Re:We all have different limits on Google's Driverless Car and the Logic of Safety · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, considering that there's too many of us on our little ball of sand and iron already, the Greater Good &trade might be better served if we keep driving like we're used to. Reconcile that with "Do no evil", Google!

  9. Re:No offline copy? on 'Zodiac Island' Makers Say ISP Worker Wiped an Entire Season · · Score: 1

    I can't imagine how they managed to squeeze (and lose) a season's worth of data into 300GB. Sintel, which is just 15 minutes long, has 650GB of raw frames, excluding any work files.

  10. Re:implausible on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1

    Perhaps they have specialized printers for handling things like ID cards, where falsifiability is an issue. Perhaps he meant retina scanners. Who knows! A "scanner" and a "printer" can mean a lot of different things.

  11. Re:Putin and freedom !!?? on Putin Orders Russian Move To GNU/Linux · · Score: 1

    Oh I believe he cares about the freedom part a great deal. Freedom from the CIA's backdoors that is. If you remove that non-monetary cost, Windows essentially costs pennies for an entity such as the Russian Federation.

  12. Re:And next week... on iBook Store Features Leave Indie Publishers Behind · · Score: 1

    Actually, if you had bothered to properly migrate your data as you stepped away from media formats throughout the years, all of those would still be perfectly readable. In fact, keeping a closet with old media is a ridiculous waste of space considering all of the data inside would probably fit nicely on a small home NAS. Leaving media formats behind is like moving to a new home. If you don't take your stuff with you, don't expect it to magically show up when you want it. I've already archived all of the data I ever originally had on CDs. Have you?

  13. Re:All look the same to me... on Opera Goes To 11, With Extensions and Tab Stacks · · Score: 1

    Yeah, most don't. But if Uematsu wanted to, I bet he could make FF4 into a pretty nice one!

  14. Re:Congrats! on HDCP Encryption/Decryption Code Released · · Score: 1

    While that is true, the data transmitted over HDMI is indeed not compressed. You'd need a drive solution that could store data at almost 5 Gbit/s for 1080p, including sound.

  15. Re:What's with this app horsedookie? on UK's Two Biggest ISPs Rip Up Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    Supposed to? Says who? Linguistics is not a prescriptive science. I've been using the term to describe all kinds of small, specialized utilities since something like 1993.

  16. No more PSN for me... on PS3 Hacked Using Official Controller · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to regularly buy stuff from PSN. Then they removed linux. I thought I wouldn't miss it much, so I updated anyway. But I do. So now that there's a hack and a hope for getting linux back, I'm not updating. Sadly, that means I can no longer buy anything from PSN. Too bad. I was hoping to get the new Lara Croft and the guardian of light game and maybe the deathspank expansion. Hey Sony! I have money right here! You can have it if you let me back into your store and/or put linux back in!

  17. Re:"Avatar has great graphics, but the story sucke on James Cameron Commissions Submarine To Visit Challenger Deep · · Score: 1

    I'd like to point out that box office returns are not a measure of how much the people liked the story after they have watched the film. In my part of the world, people generally pay before they get to watch the film. The decision to pay, and therefore increment the box office return value, hangs upon factors such as word of mouth, critic reviews, marketing, exposure, curiosity about new technology, graphics fidelity (as seen in marketing materials), admission price and affinity for popcorn. The story is just a sub-factor of word of mouth and critic reviews.

  18. Re:Who would have thought on Brazil Considering Legalizing File Sharing · · Score: 1

    I believe being paid hundreds of million dollars for art is indeed insane. I don't think anybody really deserves to be paid that much, no matter what they do. Especially artists, since their work, unlike that of doctors, engineers, scientists or farmers, is of little benefit for humanity.

  19. Re:Censorship? on GameStop Pulls Medal of Honor From Military Bases · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'd say it's almost as polite as not selling hamburgers to fat people. If you were fat, would you really consider that polite? If you were a soldier, would you really consider it immensely polite on the part of GameStop if they made a product unavailable to you strictly based on your occupation? Would you consider that any better that racism?

  20. Re:Faux Portal on Persistent Home Videoconferencing Solution? · · Score: 1

    Overkill? Are you kidding? It wouldn't work well at all. Firstly, most kitchens don't have a huge empty wall to project to. Secondly, they require darkness to work well. Thirdly, the person standing in front of the projection area would cast a shadow, ruining the illusion (you can usually only change the angle by about 15-25 degrees in either direction optically). Finally, there's no place to put the camera - it would have to be placed outside the projection area, which would mean the other side would see you at a sharp angle - which is not what you want. There's also the small matter of having an extremely bright light shining in your kids' eyes whenever they turn away from the picture. Projectors are nice, I use one instead of a TV, but in this case, they're the wrong tool for the job.

  21. Re:Or do not have variable delays at all on OAuth, OpenID Password Crack Could Affect Millions · · Score: 1

    Security trumps a few CPU cycles. End of story.

  22. Re:Non-issue on Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading? · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't worry. In modern society, every time you open your eyes, there's a very strong chance you'll see some text somewhere, be it an advertisement, a book cover, some text on a screen, your cell phone. There's so much text around that children haven't the slightest chance of not learning how to read unless they have some kind of rare medical condition that prevents them. Of course I'm not talking about poor children in Africa here - I'm sure the iPad version of Alice is not much of a problem for them. And as far as interactivity replacing text is concerned, I wouldn't worry about that either - it's just an evolution of the medium. If interactivity is readily available and easy to implement, there's no reason authors shouldn't embrace it to enhance their works. If they, or their publishers misuse it, I'm certain the readers will set them straight with their wallets.

  23. Re:Watch the messenger on iPad Isn't "Killing" Netbook Sales, According To Paul Thurrott · · Score: 1

    When you wrote touchscreen, I thought you meant a capacitive touchscreen, like the iPad has. Those don't work with pens since they can't distinguish between the tip and your hand. If it's anything like Penabled screens, great. I'll look into the U820. Thanks for the tip.

  24. Re:Doing it wrong on iPad Isn't "Killing" Netbook Sales, According To Paul Thurrott · · Score: 1

    Oh, I see you're one of those people who know exactly when you're leaving at least a day in advance and know exactly what media files you want to take with you. Or you simply never use your media outside your home network. Glad it works for you. That doesn't mean it works for everybody.

  25. Re:Watch the messenger on iPad Isn't "Killing" Netbook Sales, According To Paul Thurrott · · Score: 1

    Problems with your pet toy:
    - Screen resolution. Very many UIs just won't fit. They may be badly designed UIs, but I need them nonetheless.
    - No pen. Seriously. I want to take notes and make drawings on the thing. A finger just doesn't cut it and has no pressure sensitivity.
    - No 3G modem. Wifi is nice, when you're in range. Netbooks are mobile devices to be used where no WiFi has gone before.
    - 1 USB port. That means I can have either my mouse or my pendrive. But not both. I often need both.

    If some company solves these problems, I'll buy one.