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User: TaoPhoenix

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Comments · 4,352

  1. Re:Backwards compatibility on The Fruit Fly Drosophila Gets a New Name · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Drosophilia melanogaster nomenclature 1.0 was conceived in the 1930's by Johann Wilhelm Meigen.

    Drosophilia melanogaster 2.0, for use in genetic science, was developed by Charles W. Woodworth and Thomas Hunt Morgan.

    Fruit Fly 3.0, Sophophora melanogaster, (note the summary is missing an o, a syntax error), is a major and backwards-incompatible release after a long period of testing.

    Some features have been backported to Fruit Fly 2.6, which is a different fly from the Tephritidae family that poses economic crop problems in Australia.

    Works Cited:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/04/10/0519202

  2. Re: 3 years!? on The Economist Weighs In For Shorter Copyright Terms · · Score: 1

    I'd say that's too aggressive. Because of the explosion of new everything, you may not even know something existed before that time period is up.

    All the tl;dr TFA stuff we see here means that something wasn't yet appreciated. We know the best response to comments comes within the first 2 days of an article, so people race to post to get quality replies.

    There's no easy answer, but I think commerciality is involved. I wish more artists would voluntarily offer stuff under CC attribute - noncommercial, and save the big-gun protection for their magnum opus.

    Different types of works feel different too. Songs are quick. Listen to them 12 times, remix it, and forget about it in 6 months. Software is becoming ponderously cumulative, so even "8 year old software" is still a reference implementation. (Hello XP, and Win2000 before that.)

    28 years for software would be interesting. In 2012 the very first public versions of MAC OS from 1984 would be up, aka the foundational underpinnings of today's computing. But the "modern foundation of Windows" aka Win 3.11 from about 1993 wouldn't be up until 2021.

  3. Re: Saw it coming on Firefox Search In Ubuntu 10.04 Changed To Google · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did you see it coming enough to make a couple of good stock calls? In hindsight it would have only taken about 4:
    Buy MS in 1994 just before Win95.
    Buy Yahoo and Google in 1995.
    Buy Apple around 1999.
    Sell Yahoo in 2001 just before the crash.
    Sell MS around 2002 just after Win XP
    Sell Apple = pending TBD.

  4. Re:YoctoGoatse!! on Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record · · Score: 1

    Did you know that if you horozontal-mirror that SI chart it looks strangely like an ASCII Goatse?

  5. Re: 100 Mio! on Foursquare Turns Down $100M · · Score: 1

    Hey he's fixed the typo in the article!

    "I sold my location-based service I started in my basement for 100 GPS units!"

  6. Capitalism on Russia Doubles Price For Launching US Astronauts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "You wanted us to adopt market pricing, yes Comrade?"

  7. Re: Cents on Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing · · Score: 1

    It might have something to do with the next evil trick in the marketing book.

    If your Fast Food Chain offers "Burgers for 99c" as a consumer it's easy to see that. But once it becomes "Burgers for $1.00" it's like a glass barrier broken. Then after some hand wringing, it will be "$1.25" and then "$1.35" and then it takes off like a bottle rocket.

    It's harder for a consumer to price compare $1.35 at Ye Olde Tourist Trappe vs $1.25 Strip Plaza.

  8. Re: Whoosh on Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whoosh is no longer allowed now that J J Abrams copyrighted for Lost.

  9. Re:Proof of Concept on Google Gets Quake II Running In HTML5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So does this mean the folks whining about "flash is needed for cheap space invader games" can go away now?

  10. Re:Bad news on Slashdot Discussions Now Include Roulette Video Chat · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Brown vs. the Board of Education of Google Kansas was an important civil rights case.

  11. Re:Client-side / Server Side on The State of the Internet Operating System · · Score: 1

    I like a hybrid approach.

    Our Enterprise accounting system is on the server, but office apps are local. Daily workflow seems to produce a lot of "debris", which conveniently forms little digital compost heaps on people's local machines. (With a little nudging) if there's a document that's usefully finalized, post that version to the server folder.

    MS Office Basic is "essentially almost-free" for OEM hardware purchases, so why put Word and Excel on a server?

  12. Re: Move! on Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job? · · Score: 1

    Lots of solid replies here, but yours provides the half of the problem I want to reply to.

    There may be a way out, but it probably involves parts of about 5 posts on here.

    1. Post above said Austin was starved for applicants. Submitter should then verify this and if true, move to Austin!
    2. "Bypass HR" - but just calling the manager directly *pisses off HR*! You wouldn't like HR when they're angry.
    3. Temp Agencies DO bypass HR! The manager calls in the temp, not HR, so he can cobble a few ultra-short little assignments. And you know what? Temp work tends to be easier, which I found as the perfect chance to shake off the Ivory Tower dust from college. Then in 6 months, he can fairly say experience > 0.

  13. Re:info on Facebook's Plan To Automatically Share Your Data · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's interesting.

    Your address is in CA and your phone number is from Tennessee?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_code_901

    Yahoo maps says there is no Maple Ave in San Diego.

    So you are demonstrating the point of how easy it is to frame someone?

  14. Re:KiBbles & Bits on Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release · · Score: 1

    Set the 6th bit of the Byte to "Yes" for Bacon.

  15. Re:Kittens on Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity · · Score: 1

    He works for the FBI. You know how they have to work strange words into conversation to signal the A-OK for the SWAT assault? Someone creating the code word had a sense of humor.

  16. Re: Lottery on How To Evade URL Filters With (Not-So) Fancy Math · · Score: 1

    Where do Hurley's numbers from Lost go?

  17. Re: ____phobe on Does This Headline Know You're Reading It? · · Score: 1

    We like tech. What we don't like is the increasing aggression used to cause as much pain as possible with tech. Possibly wore is the snarky "Disney" presentation of tech whose next immediate application is more State control.

    News: India holds the Guinness Record for the spiciest pepper.
    Phobe-News: The US miliary has announced plans to "weaponize it".

    It's like an instinct gone awry:

    I'll make you a deal. Name any nifty new piece of tech and I'll churn out a way to make you miserable with it. Fair?

    It's like a social meta-virus. "Big Brother" and friends is almost a social drug.

  18. Re: Bus on Later School Start For Teenagers Brings Drop In Absenteeism · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The school bus is a brand of semi-necessary evil. The system was forced to provide an option so that a parent who couldn't take their kids to school didn't wreck the kids' education.

    The savings are not about fuel, they're about *saving parental time/money*. Say 15 kids on a route * 20 min parental time saved each way *2 times per day - 600 min aka 10 hours total parental time saved/day. Because of staggered distances, parent returns home, etc etc, prob as high as 15 Parental hours per day per route.

    At 12 bus routes per day * # days/year, that adds up!

    You're right about the first kid on the stop getting wrecked. And I assumed a "rich" system with only 15 stops per route! When a school struggles they cut bus routes, and some systems have as many as 30 stops on a route.

  19. Re:Pr0n on Germany Warns Against Using Firefox · · Score: 2, Funny

    Rule 34a (or similar numbering).

    No such system exists whereby Pr0n cannot be discerned. Bertrand Russell and and Alfred North Whitehead became very upset when Kurt Godel figured that out.

  20. offtopic - sig on Canada's Top Court Quashes Child Porn Warrant · · Score: 1

    Why does your sig go to one of the low-end placeholder websites?

  21. Re:So XP users will be stuck with IE8 forever.. on Internet Explorer 9 Will Not Support Windows XP · · Score: 1

    It's way different.

    At the very least, count the years. Win98 (Aka Win95 Version2) Was only out for 2 years. WinMe was that legendary disaster. Win2000 was only out for some 13 months! It lived a few years because it took MS 2 more years to get a grip on XP.

    But XP was different. Despite some bumps, it became the gold standard of Windows computing. This was made doubly worse when the Vista fiasco went on. Arguably only in 2010 is it remotely sensibly replaceable with Win7. XP really is "Good Enough" for a ton of stuff.

    HTML5 is just a rendering spec. I'm sure there will be browsers supporting it. You wanna see the long tail of XP usage? I'll gander it will be around for TEN MORE years!!

  22. Re:Day on Pirate Bay Legal Action Dropped In Norway · · Score: 1

    All together now!

    A terrorist a day keeps pesky liberties at bay!

  23. Re:Traumatize on New Phone Allows Bosses To Snoop On Staff · · Score: 1
  24. Re:powerful tech on Newborns' Blood Used To Build Secret DNA Database · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know the Rule Number for "For every powerful tech, there exists a wrongful implementation in the wild"?

  25. Re: Left & Right Brain etc on Triumph of the Cyborg Composer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, but it's not "New Age Nonsense", and therefore it should not die. Your Insightful mod-up came from the rest of your post.

    It started with a few famous cases of people with damaged connective nerves being shown pictures in a scope that only projects an image to one eye at a time. In these cases, the patient seeing it in RightEye-LeftBrain could name it, but when switched over, they could not, but could perhaps draw it.

    However, it may not be that the Right Brain is "creative" so much as involved in new learning, that then gets solidifed by the left brain. Source - Joseph Chilton Pierce in Biology of Transcendence.