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User: Blakey+Rat

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  1. Re:Anyone ever use on Sony Reveals More PS4 and Dual Shock 4 Details · · Score: 1

    The Xbox 360 controller also has analog face buttons. And no, I don't know of any games that actually use them.

    I guess the controller makers figure "better more data than less, even if the data is practically useless." Or something.

  2. Re:Doesn't work on Cliff Bleszinski: Vote With Your Dollars · · Score: 1

    They also don't work (in gaming specifically) because 80% of gamers who claim they're boycotting something are hypocrites who end up buying it anyway. (See this oft-linked image.)

    As long as those hypocrites exist and in such huge numbers, there's no way people boycotting the game will make a difference.

  3. Without knowing what you're actually doing... on Ask Slashdot: Spreadsheet With Decent Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Without knowing what you're actually doing it's kind of hard to make any recommendation.

    Where I work, we find Tableau to be a good middle-ground between Excel and full SQL environments. It's not really a spreadsheet perse though.

  4. Re:potentially worth... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 2

    Cite?

    I've never seen Microsoft talk about piracy at all. At least not since they added the activation system.

  5. Re:I'm Sofa King We Tod Did on Google Redesigns Image Search, Raises Copyright and Hosting Concerns · · Score: 1

    In a lot of cases you don't have permission to post "the original" without a corresponding copyright notice on the page. In that case, linking directly to the image without displaying the copyright notice is a copyright violation on Google's part. Even most Creative Common licenses have that particular term.

    Google's doing this because they know they can get away with it. But until copyright reform is enacted, however, they're violating the copyright of thousands of artists at this very moment.

    That's not right.

  6. I know this is Slashdot and so I probably won't get a satisfying answer to this question, but I have to ask...

    What right of yours, exactly, is being taken away?

    What law was purchased, exactly? This program is being implemented voluntarily by the ISPs involved, as far as I'm aware there's no legal framework backing it.

  7. Re:They're taking the right approach on RIM's BB10 Campaign Requires Some Serious Work · · Score: 1

    How's the weather up there in Waterloo?

  8. Re:They're taking the right approach on RIM's BB10 Campaign Requires Some Serious Work · · Score: 1

    Selling it as a phone that combines the security and safety of an enterprise phone with the features an fun of a "home" phone is the right approach.

    It was the right approach 3 years ago when everybody else did it, too: iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 & 8 have that already.

    They need to move beyond "enterprise", because what was previously their selling point is now just another bulletpoint feature all smartphones have.

  9. Re:Not a "DROPBOX" Alternative - File Sync Yes on BitTorrent Launches Dropbox Alternative · · Score: 1

    Cubby is awful though, it polls your disk instead of registering with the OS for change notifications-- meaning if your Cubby is on an external HD, it never goes to sleep.

    The "gold master" in this space is Windows Live Mesh. Microsoft is (stupidly) closing that down, and there's no replacement anywhere of equivalent ease and quality.

    Hopefully Bittorrent's new product will become that replacement. Or Microsoft will pull their head out of their ass and turn the servers back on.

  10. Re:Yes, unfortunately TIOBE is bollocks. on C Beats Java As Number One Language According To TIOBE Index · · Score: 2

    But they don't seem to follow their own rules. PowerShell has a Wikipedia page, why isn't it listed?

    More confusingly, if you code in VBScript are you included in the classic VB bucket? What about JScript and JavaScript? If so, fine. But if not, than there's two other languages they're excluding despite their own rules.

    Since VBScript and JScript aren't listed individually, I assume that JScript queries are all counted as JavaScript. Ok fine. But wait... ActionScript does not! What's the difference between JScript and ActionScript? Both are based on the ECMAScript standard, but use their own unique API (not DOM, like JS in the browser world). Why does one have its own ranking when the other does not?

  11. Re:...Bash? on C Beats Java As Number One Language According To TIOBE Index · · Score: 1

    How come BATCH (.BAT) isn't on there, then?

    Presumably because it's been deprecated for like 15 years.

    VB comes in at number 7, and JavaScript comes in at number 10. Since this index doesn't list VBScript and JScript separately, you can assume that VBScript queries are some proportion of those VB queries, and JScript queries are some proportion of those JavaScript queries. But it's hard to be sure with the way the list is presented.

    Also they don't seem to be counting PowerShell at all.

  12. Re:How about weeding out infringing material? on YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views · · Score: 1

    it would take me all of one day at most to find over 1000 movies just with the search "full movie", each of which has a view count of 10,000+.

    You own the copyright of 1000+ movies? You must be the most powerful man in Hollywood.

    Google could too, but they have no interest in this.

    Seriously? Google will pull that in a heartbeat if the copyright owner complained. Their system is freakin' militant. It's actually MORE aggressive than the legal DMCA process calls for, with less room for reprieve.

    The problem you're having is that you're not the copyright holder, so you really have no right to ask for a video to be taken down and You Tube has no reason to listen to you.

    Hell, for all you know, all those movies are on YouTube on purpose with full knowledge of the copyright holder. Prove they aren't.

  13. Re:also known for the UFO TV series on Gerry Anderson, Co-Creator of Thunderbirds, Dies · · Score: 1

    Space: 1999 had a tendency to come up with great ideas for episodes, then screw up the execution.

    One of my favorites was the episode where they entered orbit around a planet whose technically-advanced occupants didn't want them to land. To prevent them from landing, they decided to give the Alpha crew "what they wanted" and terraform the moon to be like the Earth...

    Of course what happens is, first the Eagles can't fly in the dust-filled atmosphere, stranding some of the crew on the surface. Even worse, once they start adding water, the moonbase begins to flood because it was build on the bottom of a crater (soon to be a lake). The Alpha crew has to contact the aliens and explain that their good intentions are going to kill the entire colony.

    That was a great premise for a episode!

    The problem was, they then had to add this stupid sub-plot about how the food crops the aliens sent made people crazy for no reason. That subplot took up a large portion of the runtime and basically ruined the other, much better, plot of Moonbase Alpha suddenly having to deal with the changes. I'm sure the entire point of that subplot was to give Barbara Bain her contractually-obligated number of lines of dialog.

    Oh well.

  14. Re:A Mature Local Machine Product vs Immature Clou on Google Docs Vs. Microsoft Word: an Even Matchup? · · Score: 1

    With Google docs, it is integrated with gmail and Google Talk, which provides a complete infrastructure to accomplish the needed collaboration.

    And Office comes with Lync so your point is...?

    Oh yeah: most people bitching about Office have no clue what Office is or what features it offers. Cripes. Seriously man, it's ok to say, "well I guess I don't really know what Office offers". It's ok. We won't think less of you.

    And to top it all, every 3 years, some jerk at Microsoft would introduce a clippy, ribbons, hair-bands, necklaces and what not.

    Is that supposed to be a humorous dig at the new UI for Office being called the Ribbon? What a brilliant bon mot!

    Cripes. The UI changed once in over 20 years. Once. Get over it already.

    No thanks, I will stick to Google docs.

    Fair enough. But if you're completely ignorant of Office, please refrain from comparisons.

  15. Re:A Mature Local Machine Product vs Immature Clou on Google Docs Vs. Microsoft Word: an Even Matchup? · · Score: 0

    Have you ever seen someone actually use the Word Version tracking? 95% of business, version tracking for word files is to use "Save As" Document_new.doc, Document_newer.doc, or even Document_today.doc, cluttering a shared network drive.

    You work with idiots. That's not typical at all.

  16. Re:A Mature Local Machine Product vs Immature Clou on Google Docs Vs. Microsoft Word: an Even Matchup? · · Score: 0

    Notepad++ can't even render drop-down menus correctly. You know the menus that have been perfected since 1984? Notepad++, some-fucking-how, gets them wrong.

    SublimeText is a good text editor. It costs money, but hey you have to pay money to get software that isn't written by morons who don't even know how drop-down menus are supposed to work.

  17. Re:I always thought this was a feature. on IE Flaw Lets Sites Track Your Mouse Cursor, Even When You Aren't Browsing · · Score: 1

    On-screen keyboards, when used on touch or pen displays, don't have a "mouseX" or "mouseY". Right? Those variables would be filled-in only for the one click event being sent to the application receiving it, presumably when generating a "nothing" event they are blank.

    So I don't see how this can be used to exploit it. Or maybe there's something I'm missing.

  18. Re:Uh, nice try on Stay Home When You're Sick! · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's a culture or geographical thing, but I've never worked at a company that counted sick days against PTO days. (Mostly internet companies with 500-ish employees in the Seattle area.)

    The sick policy is always, "if you're sick stay home, if you're sick a lot you let's talk about it".

  19. Re:Games list on Ask Slashdot: What Video Games Keep You From Using Linux? · · Score: 1

    - PKR

    Photorefractive Keratotomy?

    Maybe... define your acronyms?

  20. Re:Surprised? on Microsoft Escapes Kaspersky's Top 10 Vulnerabilities List · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll at least say that Adobe is getting it. All of their newest versions of reader and Flash have the option to automatically update without prompting.

    It claims to. I've never seen it actually successfully pull it off.

    Even worse, it only seems to even *check* for updates when I reboot-- so like maybe twice a month, max.

  21. The summary is incomplete on Boxee TV's Unlimited Cloud-based DVR Holds Users Hostage To Monthly Fees · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It forgets to mention why I'm supposed to be outraged, or upset, or concerned, or... feel anything at all about this.

    Ok, so Boxee deletes your recording if you stop paying. So what? Who cares? Don't sign up if that bothers you.

  22. Re:official takedown notice? on YouTube Alters Copyright Algorithms, Will 'Manually' Review Some Claims · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They could only look at ContentID providers who frequently have their claims successfully disputed. To be generous, YouTube could then help re-jigger their source videos to produce fewer false positives (for example, removing the stock Nasa footage from news service source videos). In reality, YouTube would find that something like 30% of them are simply frauds who uploaded source videos they don't actually have any rights to.

    Similarly, if someone has been a successful YouTube member for several years with a clean copyright record, YouTube could manually review claims made against their account, and maybe even create a way to say "ok we trust this user, disable ContentID for their uploads".

    Right now, as far as I can tell, they don't do any of this basic housekeeping-type work for the average Joe user. This announcement just says they'll maybe start looking into it for the high-traffic users. (Translation: not you. Only millionaires.)

    We're not talking about needing an army of 50,000 employees to do this, we're talking about pulling 10-15 guys off click fraud duty (if only Google treated YouTube copyright fraud 1/100th as seriously as they treated click fraud!)

  23. Zune was around in 2006 on Did Metro UX Elements Come From a 2009 Demo? · · Score: 1, Informative

    Zune was around in 2006, and Metro is obviously just an evolution of the ideas in Zune. So no, Microsoft didn't steal anything from a 2009 video, and Slashdot editors are idiots for posting this without even doing the most cursory examination of the claim.

  24. Re:How Much Would What Cost? on Ask Slashdot: Explaining Version Control To Non-Technical People? · · Score: 1

    Or just pay Codesion the damned $50. How cheap are you?

  25. The gun doesn't explode on Game Review: Borderlands 2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The empty clip explodes, not the gun. WTF? Why would the gun explode and then teleport back into your hand? Even by Borderlands standards that would be goofy as hell.