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User: mounthood

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Comments · 655

  1. Re:The C definition, same token on both sides. on Judge Invalidates Software Patent, Citing Bilski · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mapping does not make them the same. If we map hopscotch to some variation of algebra, does that make the kids game math? Software is not a rose by any other name. The numerical representation of painting is just a big number in the realm of math.

  2. Re:Marketing..... on Google Reveals Chrome Hardware Partners · · Score: 1

    Google is redefining the rules: by doing less they're competing with Windows, even though ChromeOS and Windows don't have the same objectives or standards [insert joke]. Stability, security and hardware support are the only objectives for ChromeOS, not running a million legacy applications like Windows try's to do. Both will still be judged as operating systems, but only Windows will be carrying the legacy baggage. Either Windows 7 will be so cut down that it doesn't do legacy, or it'll be much larger and have more issues, need more patches, etc...

  3. Re:S2 Games deserve special attention by us on New RTS Based on DotA Offers Native Linux Client · · Score: 1

    Savage was awesome. I'd buy a remake from S2 in a heartbeat.

  4. Re:A bad trend on Jim Zemlin Pitches Linux App Stores For Telcos · · Score: 1

    This is exactly the opposite of what would be good for consumers. Mobile providers should get out of the hardware business entirely. They should be selling a service, and providing something like a SIM card which consumers could put into whatever phone or netbook they like.

    Would the cell phone market have taken off like it did if we didn't have companies that subsidized hardware and were responsible for making both their network and your phone work reasonably? It's easy to say now, with a thriving market in hardware and network service, that it should be open for people to buy phones separately.

    But he's advocating that a *new* Netbook market can be grown in the same way the cell phone market was. The SIM card you ask for will only appear after companies have tried things out; and they'll only do that if they can make a something more then just a chance at profit. Tying the hardware to service is only bad when the standards are not established, but the market hasn't decided what the standards will be for a "SIM card which consumers could put into whatever phone or netbook they like."

  5. Good article on Of Catty Rants and Copyrights · · Score: 1

    Really interesting and well explained.

    The idea of using the cheap legal service is great. I never signed up at work, but I'm going to now.

  6. Re:The newspaper did sell copies, yes? on Of Catty Rants and Copyrights · · Score: 1

    IANAL, but it seems fairly clear to me that damages include not compensating her for printing her work in whole (in order to sell papers) without her permission. I'd say she's owed something on those grounds.

    If Google indexes the newspaper article and/or includes it in their "Google News" pages, the newspaper would definitely say that Google is making a profit and they owe the newspaper money for using "their" content. Of course, pointing out the hypocrisy of big media is just shooting fish in a barrel.

  7. Old media needs to die, and boomers don't get it on India To Put All Citizen Info In a Central Database · · Score: 1

    Their faith and acceptance of the old media is astounding. I could care less what AP/Routers/NY Times has to say: they've consistently biased the news to fit the establishment, promoted trivia over news (fark,) and stagnated with the aging baby boomers.

    Opinion aside, they don't even acknowledge that newspapers could *not* post their material online. If they don't want it linked to, they don't have to make it available.

    Imagine if the New York Times migrated entirely to the World Wide Web. Could it support, out of advertising and subscriber revenues, as large a news-gathering apparatus as it does today?

    All they care about is the existing news gathering revenue levels remaining the same, so the "quality" can remain the same.

    Old Media is dead. It just doesn't know it yet. New generations, with new technology, will create new ways to learn about the world, and it'll center around a "web of trust" (or social graph) not the old media establishment tell you the "truth."

  8. Re:Electronic Health Records is very hard on IT and Health Care · · Score: 1

    It's idiotic statements like that which make the non-experts in the technology field shy away from technology. The odds of a human error is many orders of magnitude greater than the odds of a stray neutrino causing a wrong Rx.

    Radiation Hardened chips for space are made by tripling the transistors and taking the best 2 of 3 results. They do that because radiation *can* change the state of transistors. This doesn't just happen in space, but obviously it happens much more rarely. We don't work on abstract tape machines.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Radiation-hardening_techniques

  9. Re:stop crying on FTC To Monitor Blogs For Paid Claims & Reviews · · Score: 1

    You wanted to replace the "old media", now stop crying. With power comes responsibility.

    So when actors endorsed $PRODUCT it was old media and OK, but now that it's bloggers we need to apply the same "old media" rules? Blogging is different then advertising and should have different rules -- or NO rules.

    Free Speach is much more important then some FTC fear of everybody being confused on the internet.

  10. Re:The Line Goes here on Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening · · Score: 1

    And gender? Is that one of the trivial differences or an issue of critical import?

    Most people think it's a very fundamental and important part of who they are. I'm not saying it's right or justified. When people think a choice is non-important, they are willing to criticize those involved. I think it's just as telling that those people usually don't have good arguments and aren't willing to address the hard issues involving "important" distinctions.

  11. Re:The Line Goes here on Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening · · Score: 1

    Animal cruelty doesn't serve an important goal, but slaughter houses do. Disease resistance matters; hair color doesn't. Yes it's all culturally myopic, but it's explainable why the trivial would make people so upset.

  12. Re:Hate to be a spoilsport but on Google vs. Microsoft On the Desktop · · Score: 1

    Microsoft actually contributed lots to HTML 5, at least according to Chris Wilson (Software Architect for IE)

    Someone had to introduce problems, incompatibilities, and inconsistency or it wouldn't be a proper standard.

    When you say "HAD TO" what exactly do you mean?

  13. Re:What about spam? on A Curmudgeonly Look At Google Wave · · Score: 1

    If you send SPAM the message is transmitted to the remote server (your server gets a copy of the content), but in the video they specifically said that a person in a 2nd company excluded from a sub-conversation would never be able to access the content... which I took to mean that the content sits on the originators server, and maybe cached on the remote server if accessed.

    This is really different then the current challenge of SPAM. If you're invited to a Wave, the spammers need to have a quasi-permanent Wave server running (like having a web server running to server content) and your Wave server would only recieve the invitation.

  14. Re:Lag. on On the Feasibility of Single-Server MMOs · · Score: 1

    ...unfortunately centralized systems usually take either large centralized shared storage, RDBMS, schedulers, resource allocation management, etc; or the proper development of a distributed data server farm. This ends up costing a lot of money and a decent amount of development & operations manpower...in the MMO world your profits are not that high to begin with.

    Check out http://projectdarkstar.com/. It's a FOSS, J2EE style application server, and nearing 1-point-oh.

  15. Re:first on Originality Vs. Established IP In Games · · Score: 1

    As a longtime fan of the "First post" universe, I'm extremely disappointed with this version. All my favorite characters, specifically "post" got cut. Totally butchered it.

    Usually you can find a whole bunch of versions if you can look past the positioning.

  16. Re:And now for the cloud on The History of Microsoft's Anti-Competitive Behavior · · Score: 1

    Clearly Microsoft's agenda is to use their existing desktop monopoly to grab a monopoly in the cloud.

    Exchange and SQL Server aren't monopoly products, but they'll be the main pull for SMB's to enter the cloud. Cheap hosting that lets an SMB drop just one IT staff member will justify the change.

  17. Re:Well... on Microsoft Family Safety Filter Blocks Google · · Score: 0, Troll

    It probably wasn't intentional...

    Sure, and Senator Ted Kennedy being added to the No-Fly list was also an accident.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

  18. Re:I love Eve Online on The State of Sci-Fi MMOs · · Score: 1

    My problem with it is that I'm a tourist...

    Tourism* is what EVE needs: people invited to roam through player owned territory. EVE is out to kill you; everything and everyone in the game might kill you just for sport, other then your own corp.

    Corporations with territory need a reason to invite and protect tourists. Maybe a contracting system where only outsiders can provide some service. Newbies would find players welcoming them and helping them. Even the corporation drama could be increased simply by having lots of semi-trusted players in your territory.

    *I know you meant you don't play much, but a tourist system would help you too.

  19. Re:The Only Change You Can Believe In on Obama Administration Defends Warrantless Wiretapping · · Score: 1

    Option 3: You vote for the lesser evil AND YOU LOSE.

    How did this get left off the list? Almost nobody is voting for what they want, and nobody is getting what they want; even the "winners." Democracy is supposed to be the voice of the people, not the pre-compromised cop-out that people are stuck with.

  20. Re:Shooting self in foot on Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News? · · Score: 1

    You've made their argument well, but it applies to any content that Google shows including news. If Google has ad's on search results for bicycle, balloon or Baltimore, they didn't make the content, or pay for the content. Reductio ad absurdum: Slashdot has advertisements and doesn't create or pay for any of the content. This is one more instance of "we put it on the web, but we're still in control" that we've seen repeated.

  21. Re:This is a Tax on Cities View Red Light Cameras As Profit Centers · · Score: 1

    It drives me nuts when traffic violations are used as tax rather then for public safety, and these things typically get passed under the guise of safety.

    Why is money involved at all? Since when does being rich or poor determine safety?

    And if you want argue that we have "points" or other means of balancing tickets, first answer why those aren't the only methods.

  22. Google on "Bridge To Microsoft" Gets Federal Stimulus Funds · · Score: 1

    The space elevator that Google is getting puts this little bridge to shame.

  23. Re:Depends, really on Hope For Multi-Language Programming? · · Score: 1

    Was Scala considered? Did .NET win because of tools, existing code, developer opinion? Not trolling, I would really like to know.

  24. Re:Clever play on Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech · · Score: 1

    They just "saved" their own market. Amazon is the largest seller of audio books. They established the (social/political) precedent that any device which reads text is breaking IP rights. I say "IP rights" because neither side really make a legal argument, but both wanted to sound like it was about the law.

    Amazon showed this threat for what it was: extortion.

    The both won; they both wanted this outcome.

  25. Re:The Ammendment on US District Ct. Says Defendant Must Provide Decrypted Data · · Score: 1

    Either way, this guy waived his 5th, with regard to this evidence, when he showed the police the incriminating evidence.

    Uh, he didn't show them the evidence. That's the whole point. That's why they want him to turn over a copy.