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User: pmarini

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  1. in an unrelated post on Estonian Economist Suggests Abandoning Cash · · Score: 1

    Estonian men and women are now lighting their cigars with worthless €100 notes... after their value was digitilised and stored in a bank for future use...

  2. Re:Definitively 0.3 per cent on Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal · · Score: 1

    I would definitely want to know how they determined this... I could be making a legal backup copy to the cloud by using BitTorrent...
    on a more serious side... "manually verified"? wtf does that mean? how can they possibly know whether the person/organisation/computer seeding or leeching the file has a propere license to do so? I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't have such information so are they assuming that everything that wasn't in public domain or free was actually infringing?
    stupid studies...

  3. Re:Apple versus Microsoft on iPad Bait and Switch — No More Unlimited Data Plan · · Score: 1

    isn't the whole point of tethering to allow other devices, possibly laptops or other, that will actually use full-fledged websites with flash video and whatnot, therefore increasing the amount of data transfer, which is now being much limited with the new plan?? what were they thinking??

  4. Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow.... on H.264 and VP8 Compared · · Score: 1

    Creating a new object or technology costs a lot of money

    You probably haven't heard of F/OSS yet... you kmow, community development where everyone does what they can and no one pays a dime?
    you should research your statement a little longer bfore posting such insane ones...

  5. Re:play it like golf on NASA To Try Powering Mars Rover "Spirit" Out of Sand Trap · · Score: 1

    (this is serious) ask Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus what to do... my suggestion is to send some kind of impulse from an orbiting probe that would lift the whole "rover" - be it a mini-storm kind of thing or simply a wind-type blow, much like a golf player would do with a driver club from a sandpit...

    maybe a disused concorde ?

  6. too bad on Microsoft Takes Responsibility For GPL Violation · · Score: 1

    too bad that the IP stack or Mosaic were not released under GPL by BSD and NCSA... could you imagine Microsoft publishing the whole Windows XP code... "Internet Explorer cannot be disabled because it's an integral part of the operating system..."

  7. Re:"Edge of Space" is 100 km on HD Video From the Edge of Space, On the Cheap · · Score: 1

    in any case, a non-pressurised, non-heated box like that one would not make the instruments that it contains work above 3 km (10,000 ft), so that's a moot point as the experiment or its video is a fake one...

  8. Re:nothing lie the real thing on HD Video From the Edge of Space, On the Cheap · · Score: 1

    on top of that, was the box heated in some way? because I don't see how an off-the-shelf camcorder can still work at sub-zero temperature like those above 3km (10,000 ft) of altitude - see chart, good luck with proving me wrong !!

    air temperature

    this experiment is utter rubbish, or at least so are the claims

  9. nothing lie the real thing on HD Video From the Edge of Space, On the Cheap · · Score: 1

    it looks like a fake film to me... you can notice the horizon curvature even at 100 feet and when it's at the top you can't make a single continent out of the image... is that supposed to be how it looks from 32km heights ? I highly doubt it: if you've ever been on an airplane, you'll notice how big a river or a town looks from 3 or 4 km above the surface and that's how this film looks like, a good miscalculation factor of 10, in my opinion... so the maximum altitude would be 10,714 ft, not 107,145 ft !!

  10. why a "physical" time machine? on Thanks For the ... Eight-Track, Uncle Alex · · Score: 1

    you can avoid the "physical" issue by storing the media onto an online account:
    - web space hosting these days is rather inexpensive, you will easily find something for less than $50/year
    - this way you will only have to make sure that the file format is still readable in 16 years time (she's already 1yo)

  11. Re:My experiences on Linux-Friendly, Internet-Enabled HDTVs? · · Score: 1

    just a quickie on the wireless range.
    i identified a few different technologies (?) which will give a varied range of control, as in:
    - plain 27 MHz wireless devices can go up to 1.8 m (6 ft) - this frequency is reserved for "general use" in both the USA and Europe;
    - then the 40 MHz ones that can go up to 3 m (10 ft), but it's a reserved frequency in Europe - for civilian radio-controlled (toy?) airplanes - so it's being slowly deprecated;
    - and finally there are the 2.4 GHz ones for either 10 m (33 ft), 15 m (50 ft) or 30 m (100 ft) - not sure why the difference;

    all of the above do not require line of sight (can work through walls), which is not true for IR (infrared) devices...

    there is also a new generation of bluetooth devices that have various ranges, but a typical one is 10 m (33 ft), and sometime you'll find RF devices (for instance, audio headsets) that can really work from across the street sometime...

    to conclude, my personal experience with a set of wireless mouse+keyboard connected to the same receiver: the mouse only works from 1 m (3 ft) away while the keyboard works well even from 4 m (13 ft) away... go figure!

  12. Re:Xtend, Mbrace, Litigate? on Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents · · Score: 1

    so they've patented the extention, fine by me, that seems doable or at least is copyrightable (as improvements).
    now, the issue that I have is that they've been granted a patent on their specific method to store/abuse a text-processing document in XML, but what about other methods that do similar things?
    the Patent Office should stop granting patents that it doesn't understand...

  13. Re:All on Large Hadron Collider Struggling · · Score: 1

    this one too, unless someone from outer space is trying to keep us away from making a hole in their universe...

  14. Look, you have 6 fingers! on Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality · · Score: 1

    therefore you must be a thief, as the control group only has 5 fingers...
    evidence in trials? no, thanks!

  15. Re:A slightly different way to resolve this on First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft · · Score: 2, Insightful

    it's funny to notice that it's exactly like this that the Mafia started... providing state-like "services" from "alternate" sources... and then the people became "addicted" to them... and now it lives on... from within :-)

  16. Re:Rebuttal on First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft · · Score: 1

    it's the Pentium @ 90MHz with the floating point error in the firmware... :-)

  17. Re:Come on... on First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft · · Score: 1

    more like misappropriation than theft then...

  18. Re:Oh, Those Dumb Police Officers! on First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft · · Score: 1

    except that sometime they arrest you instead of the one who broke-in... (like Obama's friend...)

  19. Where's the FBI? on First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How is a local enforcement officer involved in a case of trademark/licensing/brand/virtualspace?

    Isn't this something that would have FBI jurisdiction, if anything - unless the "crime" requires the help of the Interpol/Europol...

    Questions:
    - How is this a theft? (I'm sure that Cisco didn't accuse Apple of "theft" for the iPhone name...)
    - How is this relevant in the XXI century? Surely it would take another couple of centuries before judges and juries would know anything about digital technologies... (no offence, but while I can understand the crime of falsifying financial transactions, I don't see a "theft" here... more like a joyride instead...)

    Have fun, the night is still joung!

  20. Re:revisionist crap on Bill Gates Remembers 1979 · · Score: 1

    peeking at your wisdom, what's your estimate for the number of microcomputers in the USA at the time (1979) ?
    somehow I feel that Microsoft didn't have any branch or customer abroad on that year, and in any case I don't think that there were those many [mini|micro|main] computers back then... so how does Gizmodo explain so many BASIC sold?

  21. Re:The original bit Bill was going to lead with- on Bill Gates Remembers 1979 · · Score: 1


    women would enjoy the use of a time machine to go back at each "loss" of that...
    </offtopic>

  22. Are you sure? on Bill Gates Remembers 1979 · · Score: 1

    Why is that I hear Ballmer chanting: statistics, statistics, statistics...

    200,000 microcomputers in 1979 and all Microsoft customers? I highly doubt that... where did this Bill guy get the numbers from?

    Microsoft was founded only 4 years earlier and even though Bill had a $1 million fund from his grandpa, I don't see how he could market his software to 200,000 customers within just 4 years... maybe he was using the Traf-O-Data algorithm to count them...

    anyhow, those weren't the .com bubble years... c'mon Bill, a little sanity check before you spread FUD on your bread...

  23. Re:It will be a very difficult project on Copyright Status of Thermodynamic Properties? · · Score: 1

    maybe your eyes bled because of the green/amber screen you were looking at...

  24. Better yet... on Copyright Status of Thermodynamic Properties? · · Score: 1

    I would simply change your last step
    - and publish the package as free software
    with
    - and give back the restructured database to the copyright owner for them to publish just the data free from copyright

    If that doesn't sound right to them, then suggest that you will put it on a web page only accessible to yourself, leak the web link to Google and after it's indexed say "sorry for the mistake"...

    Most quality assurance processes also are "measurements" (with possibly a following remedy if non-conformant) but do you think that consulting companies would consider that their "measurements" should be available for free to amyone? (I do...)

  25. Re:It's easy! on How To Vet Clever Ideas Without Giving Them Away? · · Score: 1

    what's Slashdot? I thought this was a blog...