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User: ch-chuck

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  1. Re:Guess what? Religion funds Terrorism. on MPAA, Microsoft Testify Piracy Funds Terrorism · · Score: 1

    How about get rid of television? In the olde days, people would gather in impressive stone buildings, enter a receptive trance-like state and the cleric would tell them what and how to think. Today, the masses come home from work, pop open a beer, plop down in an easy chair, suspend disbelief and Dan Blather or Tom Brokjaw tells then what and how to think.

  2. Re:Linux won't take off whilst Windows is free. on SuSE 8.2 Announced · · Score: 1

    Yep - every Msft product should be sold with an activation process, either by making a voice call or activating over the Internet with a clearly labled text box saying so. Why? Because, technically it is the property of the Msft corp. Let them manage their own property. Msft asking customers to maintain license databases and keep it current with all the upgrades and changes that happen in normal business is yet another cost they foist on consumers. The way it is, Msft and their jackbooted thugs at the BSA want YOU to manage THEIR property, and threaten you with fines if you can't produce the invoices and proof of purchase. Screw that. Msft should manage their own damn property with their own database of licenses legally procured - that is, every license purchase should be registered and get an activation key or it stops running. That way they won't have to play the threatening license audit game. Will Msft do that? Probably not, since they know tolerating a high piracy rate helps keep them #1. The current payoff strategy, which is working, is "let them use it for free for a while, and when they're good and hooked, and can't switch w/o extensive, expensive retraining, then we scare the hell out of them with lawers and rake it in!".

  3. Re:What about the DMCA?? on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 1

    whaha - I beat you to the obvious DMCA joke by one minute, 4:24PM.

  4. Re:Record your life? on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 3, Funny

    Would it then be possible to record every moment of your life and store it away?

    Only if you sign a document giving the hospital exclusive copyrights, including movies, books, broadway plays, performance rights and derivitives. Any attempt to circumvent your brain prosthesis would then been construed as a voilation of the DMCA.

  5. Plutonium based economy on A Hydrogen-Based Economy · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's with the fixation on minimalist atomic structures? Your puny electron and single proton are no match for my Plutonium based economy! Not only can I generate power so cheaply that it's not worth measuring, but can blow us both to bits if anybody messes with it!

    Well, I guess a hydrogen based economy is better than an information based one. Just be prepared to pay the inventor of cheap, plentiful hydrogen the same or more than you're paying for oil, even if it is nearly zero cost to produce, if our experience with the info biz is any example to go by. If someone can get filthy rich off pc software, imagine what this future hydrogen baron is going to make off something we really need like personal transportation!

  6. Re:What will it do? on Peace Corps to Wire Senegal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    perhaps this cash should be going towards helping the little Muslim boys that run around the streets,

    Anything's better than the upbringing they currently get: hating jews and americans (altho it's worse in other more fundamentalist Islam countries). What kills me is how many people via pop media actually fall for the line that the problem actually is their objects of hate, instead of their enslaving masters, mullahs, ayatollahs and other desperate hate mongering cleric authorities and war lords.

  7. Business Opportunity on Peace Corps to Wire Senegal · · Score: 3, Funny

    they will leverage nearly 200 cybercafes and 10,000 telecenters to provide opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

    Great. Now AOL will be intercepting 2 billion spams / month, from a new country tld.

  8. Next thing you know on Pancake Physics to Cut Batter Splatter · · Score: 1

    we'll be reading a PhD* dissertation on the physics of flipping hamburgers.

    *piled higher and deeper

    ObJoke! "I'll bet you guys are excited" said the cabbie as he drove the students to their graduation ceremony. "I know I was when I got my PhD".

  9. Re:What is it... on The Future That Hasn't Arrived · · Score: 1

    good question. maybe it has to do with the amount of energy required? Technological innovation itself seems to be abundant, but the results are limited by a constant choke point of energy requirements. There was a time in early nukular research when they were promising us 'energy so cheap it wouldn't be worth metering' but that dream also got canceled, and we live in a world still worrying about petroleum and fossil fuels. PC's, cell phones, satellite tv and world wide bandwidth all use relatively small amounts of energy compared with the BTU's it would take to hover and accelerate about a family of 4 in a safe vehicle.

  10. Lottery & ATM's on CT Lottery to Offer PC Game · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, states would do well to partner with banks to put the lottery in bank ATM machines. When you go to withdraw cash, you have the option to buy so many lottery tickets, using funds from your account. If you lose, too bad. But if you win, instant payout.

  11. Re:What's next? on The Space Shuttle Program: What Next? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NASA having vast budgets and no accountability is the problem.

    Which planet is that on? The NASA contractor I worked for was characterised by micromanagement, bureaucratic strangulation of the creative spirit and ever shrinking budgets. I swear the job was 10% actual engineering and 90% government paperwork.

  12. Hard disk firecracker on Your Most Damage-Resistant Hardware? · · Score: 1

    A friend sold me a cheap 200Mb scsi disk (he had been installing some diskless Sun workstns) and it worked fine. One day tho, while connecting it up to a system all spread out on a table, applying power it went BANG! just like someone had set off a firecracker, w/ puff of smoke. Naturally I though "Well, THAT one's toast" but tried it again and it came right up like nothing happened! Did a little tracing and it turned out to be a reverse biased surface mount diode right at the power connector - must have been some protective device against reversed power leads I guess and it just blew dramatically, but wasn't essential.

  13. Re:I call bullshit! on Accidental Privacy Spills · · Score: 1

    Yeah - after reading it looks like a thinly vailed anti-US hatchet job.

    Meanwhile, here's my 'leaked' latest jokes:

    How many French commando's does it take to change a light bulb?
    None - they surrender to the darkness.

    How many US Prostant Christians does it take to change a light bulb?
    Two. One to preach eternal darkness and damnation if the bulb isn't changed, and one to pass the collection plate to raise funds for materials and labor.

    How many Islamic extreamists does it take to change a light bulb?
    Two. One to promise everlasting paradise with The Profit to do the job and one to rush the bulb with bombs straped to his waist.

  14. Maybe Now on Accidental Privacy Spills · · Score: 1

    the worlds most powerful will start to take personal encryption products (pgp etc) seriously. If you don't want to spill the beans, crypt it with a public key you trust (i.e., that you're sure only the recepient can decrypt). Once the fashion leaders start doing it, everyone will.

  15. Re:Not sure this is the wrong decision on Lexmark Wins Injunction in Toner Cartridge Suit · · Score: 1

    Whatever printer I get now, it won't be a Lexmark.

    Not only this but they're big on 'host based printing', that is offloading the print processing onto your cpu, like Winmodems.

  16. Here's my PDA on Five Years Later, Newton Still Going Strong · · Score: 2, Funny

    right here Bought it in 1972 and it does everything I need, everything since then has just been 'more and more' of the same thing. Pfft.

  17. Re:give it a rest..... on Windows vs. Unix Revisited · · Score: 1

    TCO studies are useless. It all breaks down to what is the right tool for the job.

    I like to differentiate questions into the 1) cosmic open ended religious wars sense (that is simply asking which is better, or what is the right thing(TM) to do kind of ethical questions for which there is usually no universal answer) OR 2) specific instances, that is basically what you said. "Which is better" is form 1, and "Which is better to accomplish task A" is form 2. Religious nuts like to make absolute declaratives "A is better!" w/o referance to any situation or specific details, and they decry 'situational ethics' etc. But practical system engineers always have to answer form 1 questions with "that depends - what are you trying to do?".

    FWIW I have an over 10 yo issue of Byte magazine with the same question as the cover page article (Unix or NT?) - at least unix has kept the debate going in the face of powerfully funded opponents this long ;))

  18. Re:Oh come on on IsoNews Ostensibly Shut Down By The DOJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So please, keep your ideas to yourself.

    [don't be afraid to say what you want


    I look at the two lines above, one right after the other, shake head, blink eyes and conclude: it's just, utterly bizarre.

  19. See on Los Alamos Security Infiltrated By Reporter · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anybody can come over and inspect the US weapons of mass destruction. We'll leave the light on for you, just let yourself in. If you want to phone in a report, there's a few pay phones over there.

  20. Re:Chips for linux? on The Linux Uprising · · Score: 1

    Great - Now the Intel mktng dept is going to make the fab plant labling and packing dept put about 15% of output in specially labled boxes "Optimized for the Linux Operating System!", then hordes of phb's will be queueing up at CompUSA and being told, "There's a shortage of the Linux chips at the moment, so they're a bit expensive", "Ok, Ok, whatever, I just need one now".

    Kinda like the 487 'math co-processor' scam.

  21. Your wish is granted on Blizzard Births BBS · · Score: 1

    I just googled for "atari bbs telnet" and found this, clicked the link and was logging into BBS Express! It is part of a 'telnet bbs' webring so there's bound to be lots more. this one looks good, ten nodes, cable. Enjoy.

  22. Re:Reliability of its predictions on Nerd Vacation to the Earth Simulator · · Score: 1

    Isn't there something in chaos theory about snychronicity between dynamical systems - it may be the case that they can get an earth simulator to run in close sync with the real thing with enough real time inputs and then be able to 'fast forward' in time enough to do some useful predictions, altho, of course, without the synchronizing inputs the simulated future and the real one will diverge to varying degrees, depending on the state of the earth modeling art...

  23. Death Jockey's on The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect · · Score: 1

    sounds like this

  24. Maybe "the Register" will buy it and on Shift Calls it Quits · · Score: 1

    nevermind.

  25. Re:An age not lost ... on The 25th Anniversary of the BBS · · Score: 1

    which could certainly contribute to at least the feeling of out-typing your modem.

    You sure it wasn't out-typing an echo back from a busy host? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and we're going to need certified high speed video of someone tapping on over 30 keys a second.

    Here's a lady in the book or records who can hit a top speed of 212 wpm - by the above figures of 6 characters per word comes to 21.2 keystrokes per second, and allowing 10 bits / character (8 data, 1 start and 1 stop) - is also 212 baud - using, interestingly, a dvorak keyboard!