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User: F452

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  1. Re:It's not the broken mods that piss people off.. on New Q3A Patch And Mods · · Score: 3

    With all the money available I can see why people take it so seriously, but maybe they shouldn't practice and obsess about it so much. It's just a game. And then this newbie wouldn't get slaughtered so much at CTF :-)

  2. Re:so its a relay race of sorts? on Quake Done Quick - With A Vengance · · Score: 1
    I agree. It's as if you took all the lowest golf scores for each hole by professionals on a given course over thousands of rounds. Wow! They shot -32! 40 strokes!

    I still think this is cool however. As soon as I get home and away from the firewall that prevents "Access to fun & games" I'm going to take a look at it :-)

  3. Re:With absolute power comes absolute corruption. on United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope · · Score: 1
    Your flippant attitude just gives away the fact that this seemingly innocent factual faux pas is indeed part of a deliberate slander campaign against the organizations like the UN, that oppose, albeit timidly, the arrogant, merciless power of today's world: the military-industrial-media complex of the inadequately named United States of America.

    Whenever I hear things like military-industrial-media complex it just makes me smile. For some reason it makes me think of a quote I enjoyed in a recent suck.com article: "With all the sweaty assurance of a faculty-lounge communist..."

  4. Re:How Pay Pal Makes $$$ on Micropayment Wars Are Over... PayPal Wins? · · Score: 1
    Just to let everyone know. The reason PayPal is giving away $5 to each new user is because they make more than $5 on the balance left in your PayPal account.

    And how is it that they make more than the $5?

  5. "Lite" index pages on Google, History, Profitability · · Score: 1
    It seems a lot of people here don't like the crowded, slow-loading index pages of some search engines. I agree with this sentiment and that's one of the reasons I like Google. It's so clean.

    As far as other engines, I haven't checked lately, but don't these places always encourage you to put their search box on your web page? Why not just create your own page with the search boxes for all your favorite engines? It would load fast and be as clean as you want it.

  6. Re:hahaha on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal · · Score: 2

    The analogy doesn't seem that ridiculous. Clicking on a link does in fact take you to the site. Providing the link could be seen as something like providing the vehicle to get you there.

  7. Great column about Contentville at byte.com on 95 (thousand) Theses (for sale) · · Score: 1
    (Note: If you use this link, please send me $1 for performing the valuable service of directing you to the article.)

    Jon Udell wrote this column at byte: Selling Ice Cubes To Eskimos

    excerpt: "Contentville isn't selling ease of access or convenience, so much as an editorial process that selects and (one would hope) contextualizes items of interest. Is that valuable? Hugely so. In an era of crushing information overload, we depend on editorial services to draw important matters to our attention, and frame them in a useful context. What bothers me about Contentville is the way it misrepresents the nature of its service. If there's real editorial effort involved (and you can, of course, judge for yourself the quality of Contentville's editorial process), then isn't that the product I should be asked to pay for? Or as in the case of byte.com, that advertisers should be asked to pay for?"

  8. Re:To start my own CD-R piracy op... on The Death Of Intellectual Property · · Score: 1

    It's not so much about the cost of producing the CDs as it is the cost of developing/promoting the artists, most of which don't succeed. They recoup their investments on the few that do succeed.

  9. Re:Xing Encoder Beta Had Symbol Information on Examples Of Questionable EULAs? · · Score: 1
    (And I'll kill anyone who suggest blade is better in response to this - get it through your head)

    Wouldn't blade be better yet even?

    Wait a second. What is blade?

  10. Re:Easy way around it on Examples Of Questionable EULAs? · · Score: 1
    Still, it's cheaper than Oracle. By their weird licensing a two-year license of 8i on our dual 550mhz sql server would be $289,000... i'll take the less than $4,000 for SQL, thanks.

    Except then you're using SQL Server instead of Oracle :-)

    I agree that Oracle's licensing fees for web-based access are outrageous, but SQL Server... <shudder>

  11. Re:it is our fault heres why... on Copyrant · · Score: 1

    My point remains that they still need our votes :-)

  12. Re:it is our fault heres why... on Copyrant · · Score: 1
    Why would governments want our votes when they can have MegaCorps money?

    They need our votes so they can keep getting the money.

  13. Re:M$ in Space? on Microsoft Enticed To Move To British Columbia · · Score: 1
    hey, this is FUNNY. score it up!

    I agree. (My first ever lobby for a higher mod!)

    ah.. damn trekkies don't get it...

    :-)

  14. Re:Gauntlet firewall Troll on Slashback: Juveniles, Sand, Trickery, MoBos · · Score: 1
    Try http://www.acronymfinder.com/

    You won't find "YHBT HAND", but look up "YHBT" and all will be revealed...

  15. Re:I don't like Java on IBM JDK 1.3 For Linux · · Score: 1
    What were you hoping to accomplish, if not to launch a holy war? :-)

    Would you feel better if everyone said: "Me too!!!! Java sucks!!!

  16. Re:All of slashdot insulted by Roblimo AGAIN? on Thus Spake Stallman · · Score: 1

    Now that you point it out, it does sound a little patronizing. (Not as bad as your high school example - that would have been irritating!) Still, I didn't take any offense at all when I read the interview intro. I knew it didn't apply to me, and I further knew it did apply to a lot of slashdot readers.

  17. Re:All things considered... on Solving Chess? · · Score: 1
    I'm sorry, but that's just blasphemy. Comparing the clickfest that is your average RTS to the intellectual exercise of chess?

    Actually, you're better off using shortcut keys extensively, turning it into more of a pressfest :-)

    It is an interesting comparison. I suppose we could call chess a "pushfest". By using terms like clickfest and pushfest, we're focusing on the means of the exercise instead of the content. The implication seems to be that RTS games like War2 involve a lot of mindless clicking and little "intellectual exercise".

    With War2 specifically, I think there is a lot of intellect involved. Video games are very coordination/reflex driven, however, and it is difficult to compare them to a more "pure" intellectual exercise like chess.

  18. Re:Puh-leeze on Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil · · Score: 1
    VB is usefull for some small projects or interfaces but that is all.

    Thanks for your civil post! :-) I started out in VB and have been learning Java over the past year. My company uses VB for a large scale client server program that is used in the USA and Europe by hundreds of users (maybe between one and two thousand).

    I would argue that VB can be a great language for database programming (Oracle, in our case). And this is what many people use VB for.

    The fact that VB ties you to MS for development and platform is of course a major downer. That's why I'm happily learning Java.

  19. Re:I don't think this is a film about scientology. on Battlefield Earth · · Score: 1

    Good point! It did save a lot of time though :)

  20. Re:I don't think this is a film about scientology. on Battlefield Earth · · Score: 1

    I've been reading science fiction for almost 20 years. Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth are among my favorite books. I haven't read any of Hubbard's other SF so I can't comment on that. I don't know much about Dianetics/Scientology and don't want to.

    Two great parts about Battlefield Earth: Psychlo culture - what a bizarre race! I loved all the politics at the base. Another part of the book I liked was the interplanetary politics at the end.

    Mission Earth was even better. I've read it twice (skipping most of the lurid sexual stuff the second time through). I think this is great satire, but have found few people who liked (or even tried reading) the series. Soltan Gris is such a pathetic creature - I can't help laughing as I read his narrative. I loved all the technology and the adventures of Heller on earth. I simply let pass the things that sounded like Scientology screeds.

    I'll probably rent the movie someday even though I know it will suck. (You can't fit a thousand pages into a 2-3 hour flick.)

  21. Re:Not very realistic? on X-Files FPS Episode · · Score: 1
    However massive virtual reality?

    I think we'll have this someday, but it won't be the way it was portrayed in FPS or on Trek's holodeck. Seems to me it will be done with electrodes or actual implants (something like the droud in Niven's Ringworld or the "plugs" in The Matrix). Great topic for SF/X-Files. Poorly done in this episode.

    being able to "upload" your conciousness on the internet

    I like this idea. There was an interview in a recent MIT Technology Review with a guy about this idea of translating ourselves into a computer. My first encounter with this concept came from the Gateway novels by Fred Pohl. Another excellent topic and I thought that X-Files episode was much better (William Gibson wrote or cowrote on that one I believe - someone mentioned in this discussion that he cowrote FPS.)

    cracking government and industrial databases with impunity? These ideas are cracked at best and dangerous at worst.

    Why not? (Not "why not do it/try it?", but "why not" use this as a SF topic.) I don't see the ideas as cracked so much as the way they are portrayed on episodes like FPS. Dangerous? Why? Because people might try these things?

    This was a terrible X-Files. The worst part for me was all the phony tension and conflict at the end. "We can't shut down the program, we'll lose everything!" It also looked like a boring game - mostly all you do is stand there shooting at things that come down the road at you.

  22. Re:Is command line vs. GUI a false dichotomy? on Middle Media · · Score: 1
    I think that those of us who are used to taking control of our computers through a CLI, who are so used to data being a live thing and building filters to put it in whatever form we want, are also likely to want our text that way.

    I used to clip articles from the local newspaper. After a short stint on the desk, they would end up in a box with all of the other "filed" articles, never to be heard from or thought of again. Now when I find an interesting article in the paper I look for it on-line and save it to file, where it is much more likely to find future use. I still like the experience of reading the "paper" newspaper, but it is clearly far more useful to save its content in a text file.

  23. Re:Congratulations.. on Slashdot's 10,000th Story · · Score: 1
    Seriously, if there is ever an nntp gateway (and I can't see any valid reasons for needing one), it should be read-only.

    I can think of one reason: it would be easier to read and follow threads with a good newsreader. Read-only would be fine.

  24. Re:It was a softball interview on Salon Interview With Head Of MPAA · · Score: 1
    I disagree. I think it was mostly a softball interview, especially where DeCSS was concerned. Valenti was asked what he thought constituted fair use of DVDs, and replied "Any use by which you buy it at a price." At this point, the interviewer could have pointed out that CSS made many such fair uses of DVDs difficult or impossible, and that DeCSS re-enabled consumers to make those fair uses. (The example of the person who wants to copy a movie to his laptop hard drive so that he can watch it on an airplane without having to spin the DVD drive would be good.)

    I think the fair use that Valenti is thinking of is "however the movie industry wants you to watch the DVD" - so that the price you pay is for watching that movie on the approved player.

    Of course, IMO, this is complete BS. You should be paying for content that you can then view/consume however you like. When you buy a book, no one tells you how you should read it. The same goes for a DVD. I thought Valenti's movie theater analogy was weak. Sneaking in to watch a movie has nothing to do with choosing the way you want to watch a DVD that you paid for.

    I didn't get the impression that it was a softball interview. Seems like the Salon guy pressed him, but I'll bet this Valenti is as hard as nails and there was only so much pressing he could do. I just wished he would've argued from a content standpoint.

  25. Re:Starcrap best RTS ever ? on Loki may port Starcraft and Diablo II · · Score: 1

    This is why you need to play _people_. I played through one of the campaigns back in 1996 when I first played War2 - it was ok, but nothing even remotely approaching multiplayer. I'm glad to see there are some posts here where the age of a game doesn't disqualify it as a good game. I don't think I could ever get sick of War2.