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Comment Re:Terrorists are not scapegoats ... (Score 1) 319

I have a feeling that the politcos have a secret pact with the terrorists, or whoever is/are behind the terrorist movement, just so that they can get a terrorist or two carrying out a really despicable terrorist act, in the middle of a major Western city, something that generates MAXIMUM IMPACT, and the sheeples be of course be scared shitless

Occam would disagree. It is far more likely that some egomaniac fuck wants to immortalise himself by attacking a cartoon magazine, on his own. Your conspiracy theory, while not impossible, seems much less likely and unneeded. At least, if I was "in control", I would prefer other, more reliable methods. Or just wait. Terrorist attacks have been happening regularly, so why stage on of your own?

Comment Re:Cool, but why? (Score 1) 114

When I am laying on my death bed and someone says "you did all these useless things -- you could have directed your talent towards really useful stuff and made lots of money", I will honestly be able to say "They were not useless; they made me happy. And that is what gave my life meaning."

That is indeed the most important and hope I will be able to say the same (though probalbly I'll have regrets). Everyone should do as they please, and usefullness in itself is not a good measure of activity. That being said, I somewhat understand the original poster who was modded troll: why not do something -possibly equally useless- in the real world instead of this minecraft thing? Instead of simulating the Tour de France on a home-trainer, why not go out and cycle? Both are equally useful or useless, but one has more appeal than the other.

Comment Re:floppy disks don't contain silicon ICs (Score 3, Insightful) 252

Back in the day, floppies were amazing [...] they basically worked and retained data very reliably.

Not by today's standards they didn't. Anything remotely important, I would put on at least two floppies. I still need to experience the first USB stick failure.

(Okay, okay, USB sticks may fail too, I know, but not nearly as often as floppies).

Comment Re:And that's still too long (Score 3, Insightful) 328

For lack of mod points I'll answer, because I agree with this post and don't think it is fair to label this troll.
(In the below "you" refers to the critics)

1) if you appreciate a creative work, why not pay for it? Buy the DVD, buy the CD, buy whatever medium and you can view or listen as many times as you want. If you don't want to pay, you don't get to see the result of the creative process. If you don't want to pay, why would the creator of Pulp fiction let you to see the movie? What obligation does he have in the world to allow you to see it? I never understood, and most likely never will understand this typical /. logic of piracy vs theft etc. Thanks for sharing the fruits of YOUR labour through open software, but please allow other creative people to differ.

2) Why should an author's heirs not be entitled to the fruits of the labour of their ancestors? Why should they be entitled to his house, savings, but not future profits? Why would it be that, because coincidentally, someone dies, you get to see the movie for free? Why would you rank higher than the creator's children? Let's hope Stephen King dies just after writing a masterpiece, because now we are entitled to read it for free. What sense does that make???

Comment Re:A Pox on Both Your Houses (Score 2) 339

A agree. How is this different from making "bomb" jokes at the airport. Everyone knows "bomb"-jokes are not taken lightly by serucity personnel. Same holds for using such stupid SSID. I *also* know this does no actual harm and, most likely, real terrorists would not use this name etc, but broadcasting such an SSID in an airport is just not a very smart thing to do because it can be expected to trigger security folks. Note that I am not defending them, just saying that their reaction is not completely unpredicatable. If you value such a joke more than your time, go ahead, but I don't.

Comment Why is it necessary to reverse engineer this? (Score 1) 167

I think all first year computer science / programming / engineering students should be introduced to this and learn how to write programs for this environment first before moving on to modern systems. True power is being able to write useful stuff with only 64kb of ram and 1mhz of processor, and have it run in an acceptable time frame, and taking those skills and scaling up today's multi-core/ multi-gigahertz/multi-gigabyte address spaces.

While I agree, I wonder if this is actually true. To what extend does knowledge about efficient coding on an 8 bit machine with limited memory teach us anything about programming these heftier CPUs? Maybe the only people that should really have chewed the bits are the writers of compilers. For all others it might not matter so much how the compiler and the OS handle memory allocations and the like, and it may be more useful to focus on the program structure instead of the implementation on the CPU.

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