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Comment It's all part of the Sontarans' plans! (Score 4, Funny) 298

The Sontarans are going to get Atmos installed everywhere and use it to kill off people who get in their way and then, finally, use the large number of installed systems to poison our atmosphere so they can use the Earth as a cloning facility! ...See, it's a Doctor Who reference. I like that show.

Comment Re:It is not your computer (Score 1) 393

MS has not thought of it as your computer for quite some time. Vista took away your control further in order to please the movie industry which does not trust anybody (if they could, they'd require a memory zapper so we couldn't remember films we've seen without paying a fee.)

That would actually be kind of cool...

I mean, there's the obvious jokes to be made ("zap my memory so I don't remember the Matrix sequels", etc.) - but apart from that fun nonsense, there are times when I find myself wishing that I could approach a familiar movie with a totally fresh perspective.

The original Star Wars trilogy comes to mind. I saw those movies when I was very young, and repeatedly (on TV) - I wonder what I would have thought of Yoda's introduction if I didn't already know who he was, or the various revelations about the Skywalker family in the second and third films. It would be neat to see that stuff with a fresh perspective. Of course there's the possibility that I would be extremely disappointed with the experience, too. *shrug* But sometimes a story can be so familiar, either because I already know it or because of various forms of incidental exposure (like movie trailers) that I wish I could just go in without any preconceptions.

Comment Re:The rootkit would just infect the kernel (Score 1) 393

You can do this in linux. we boot workstations from a read only partition and most software runs from there. even a master virus cant infect anything but the user partition.

If the malware is able to exploit a kernel bug to gain root access, then "read-only partition" ceases to have any meaning.

Comment Re:Starbucks! Disney World! Porno! Valium! (Score 2) 155

It has already been mentioned that the tune is rather similar to the actual Kazakhstan anthem, but with "nonstandard" lyrics.

It might be especially fun if the anthem-trolling did the same, using the basic national-anthem medley, but with more "interesting" lyrings.

In the case of the US, I can hear a choir singing the well-known (among American school-kids) lyrics: "Oh, say, can you see / any bedbugs on me ...".

While it lacks the juvenile fun of a crude mockery of the "Star Spangled Banner" lyrics, I think I would lean toward the anthem's built-in parody potential, the lyrics of "To Anacreon in Heaven", whose tune was used for the anthem. Though reaching that far back for trolling material means a lot of people won't necessarily even understand the joke...

Comment Re:I hate to say it... (Score 1) 255

And yet humans annihilating 10% of their ancestor humanity required a piece of complex equipment based on a time machine to achieve.

10% was just the initial attack. The paradox being held at bay was that humanity's future was being drastically changed, and future humanity (whose history did not include those events) was the instrument of that change.

With the Doctor's little trick, the only paradox is how he got out of the Pandorica in the first place. But the resulting events don't contradict themselves. There's nothing he did when going back in time to get himself out of the Pandorica that prevents him from getting out of the Pandorica. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Doctor Who was never exactly consistent with regard to specific rules of time travel, anyway...

Comment Re:007087 (Score 1) 510

Because he has all that free time with which to do so, having completed his programming assignments much faster than his C/C++ counterparts.

And since he now has to wait for his program to run, he has even more time to kill!

Comment Re:007087 (Score 1) 510

You're missing something here. Python compiles to PYC files ("Python Compiled"). File timestamps are used to see if .PY code has been updated since the last compile to .PYC.

It doesn't do a huge degree of "compiling" as I understand it, in large part because of the extremely dynamic nature of Python.

Comment Re:Not much skill (Score 1) 294

Also the article states that in the last casino, his $100,000 a hand bets were authorized by a high ranking employee meaning those large bets are not normally allowed.

Well, it's not so much that they're "not allowed", I think. Seems like they're happy to have people come and drop that kind of cash. They just like to pick and choose, try to find the marks who will lose more than they win.

Comment Re:I Can't Help But Feel (Score 3, Funny) 294

Only if it ends with a guy trying to sell just such a "system". The only sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme is selling get-rich-quick schemes.

Well, there's always opening a brown envelope and briefcase store in Washington DC during lobbying season.

Hey, I used to know a great place like that. It was right next to the place that sold signs with catchy, grossly one-sided messages to protesters.

Comment Re:Too Bad (Score 2) 255

No, you're not alone. Tennant and Smith both seem more like self-parody (although there's some precedent for that in Doctor Who).

Personally I feel like the 2005 series started out with a heavy dose of self-parody (the initial Auton story, then the Earth's destruction story right after were both loaded with this - "New Earth" and the space station from "The Long Game" were pretty heavily loaded with this as well), and it's mostly just in the Matt Smith years that it's emerged from that. Some of that in the Tennant years was just holdovers from Eccleston (like "New Earth", Cassandra as the ultimate expression of plastic surgery gone too far, the Slitheen and Captain Jack, etc.) but there was a lot of "wow that's a goofy alien name"-type stuff and "veiled commentary on a contemporary thing" stuff (Adipose, for instance)

For sure there's a lot of the Eccleston and Tennant years that I enjoyed quite a lot, but to me season 5-6 with Smith is the best the new show's been. I think the show grew up a bit at that point, and developed into a better show with less reliance upon parody.

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