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Comment Re:Not at the computer (Score 4, Insightful) 286

The point? Fear.

If the computer does not fear you it will fuck up all over the place. You must let it know, firmly and forcefully, that you are quite capable of bashing it to microscopic bits. I walk into a god damned room at my work and the computers just start fucking working. Because they know... THEY KNOW that it is I, Baron Randolph Rackovitz, who encompasses their doom!

Wikipedia

Wikipedia and the History of Gaming 240

Wired is running a story about Wikipedia's tremendous contribution to documenting the history of video games, and why it shouldn't necessarily be relied upon. Quoting: "Wikipedia requires reliable, third-party sources for content to stick, and most of the sites that covered MUDs throughout the ’80s were user-generated, heavily specialized or buried deep within forums, user groups and newsletters. Despite their mammoth influence on the current gaming landscape, their insular communities were rarely explored by a nascent games journalist crowd. ... while cataloging gaming history is a vitally important move for this culture or art form, and Wikipedia makes a very valiant contribution, the site can’t be held accountable as the singular destination for gaming archeology. But as it’s often treated as one, due care must be paid to the site to ensure that its recollection doesn’t become clouded or irresponsible, and to ensure its coalition of editors and administrators are not using its stringent rule set to sweep anything as vitally relevant as MUDS under the rug of history."
Image

IT Worker's Revenge Lands Her In Jail 347

aesoteric writes "A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking, and then locking, her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff."

Comment Re:Verizon's Network Was So Terrible in 1928 (Score 1) 685

Yes, time travelers will almost certainly be limited to early 21st century communications technology.

Why? Because time travelers are probably pretty stupid. I mean, aside from inventing TIME TRAVEL!!!!!!!!!

Methinks the Occam's razor argument against this drivel is a wee bit stronger than the "where are the cell towers?" argument here. I can imagine a man from 1928 seeing a picture of what looks like a man holding a phone from, say, 1840 wondering "if he's a time traveler, where's the wire?". Well, if he's traveling from 2010 instead of 1928 ...

Media

1928 Time Traveler Caught On Film? 685

Many of you have submitted a story about Irish filmmaker George Clarke, who claims to have found a person using a cellphone in the "unused footage" section of the DVD The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. To me the bigger mystery is how someone who appears to be the offspring of Ram-Man and The Penguin got into a movie in the first place, especially if they were talking to a little metal box on set. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Comment Re:Maybe the numbering system is the problem... (Score 1) 284

I believe he's talking about positional notation rather than base. Roman numerals could be considered Base10 but they can not be considered positional. They use sign-value notation instead.

I don't see the point however. As mentioned above, physicists derive their own math all the time.

Are you sure about 11 and 12? The French continue using discreet words for numbers up to 16, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they developed that from some hexadecimal system of the past. Especially since Italian goes strait to "Ten and One" (undici) without discreet words for 11 or 12 much less 13-16. Spanish has 1-15 discreet but not 16. 1-12 being discreet seems to be a purely Germanic thing; English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian all do it, but neither the Slavic languages nor the Romance languages that border the Germanic group do so. In fact, the only non-germanic language that uses words like "eleven" and "twelve" (which mean "one left (over ten)" and "two left (over ten)") is Lithuanian and it uses them all the way to 19 (devyni-olika "nine left (over ten)").

Comment Re:"Negative Effects" (Score 1) 317

1. Go to Miata.net.
2. Search for "icehawk alignment"
3. Victory

You'll get a lot of argument over wether a rally-type setup (soft springs, hard dampers, lots of travel) or a track-type setup (hard lowering springs, hard dampers, on the bumpstops all the time*) is superior for auto-x. Personally I prefer the rally-style setup, especially for a dual-use car.

My CSP 1st gen Miata runs the icehawk alignment on stock springs with re-valved Koni yellows on the lowest perch, 63 mm FatCat bumpstops, 2nd gen rear hats for more travel, biggest front sway-bar I could find and no rear sway. It's fairly quick in class. Much quicker than the STS cars, but that's down to tires, diff and power more than suspension.

* Miatas are designed to use the bump-stops under load so that's not as bad as it would be for most other cars.

Comment Re:was there a court order? (Score 4, Insightful) 536

Yea. The 1st Amendment violations here pale in comparison to the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment violations. No warrant? Check. Deprived of property without due process? Check. Specifically NOT informed of the accusations levied against them? Check.

Hell, they just need to quarter some troops in this guy's house and they'll have shitcanned half the Bill Of Rights in one case.

Comment Re:Steve Jobs = Emmanuel Goldstein? (Score 1) 186

Really? All I can figure out is that you are a pretentious wannabe pedant who can't fathom the meaning of "certain respects" because that would get in the way of your headlong rush to attempt to stun us all with your mighty intellect.

The analogy was apt as far as it went, your attempt to extend its relevance into something never intended is... well, moronic.

Comment Re:That was a close call (Score 1) 186

We know Apple is not as vulnerable because they have not had any malware through 2 years of a billion downloads and over 200,000 apps...

OS X hasn't had any major malware in the wild for a decade now, yet a hefty percentage of the people you're preaching to have a near-religious belief in the immanence of such.

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