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Comment You have to make the best with what you have left. (Score 1) 527

There is little time left. Fortunately it is August and those in North America have the beach. For many, there is something surreal about watching a sunset over the water. It is an experience that crosses many personal divides. Spend what time you have left smiling my friend, you will thank yourself later.

Comment Re:It's not "trade" (Score 1) 973

Yes, the copyright laws need to change, I admit it. They need to change back much closer to what they were originally, about seven years. That would give artists time enough to make a living off their inventions. The perverse indefinite extension of copyright has enabled the masses to rationalize their actions. They are right, as are you. The artists must concede that they are not the new nobility, due to be rich for the actions of their grandparents. Resistance is of course futile.

Comment Re:plenty of crimes aren't crimes (Score 2) 249

the reason i'm sick of this line is that other countries aren't going "oh my gosh, what is wrong with the usa! so many people are in prison there!"

yes we are.

what those other people in other countries are saying is "man i'm thick of these thieves and murderers running around free. we need to crack down in these elements ruining our society"

no we're not.

in other words, other countries aren't bemoaning our high prison rates, they're bemoaning the thieves getting away scott free in their own country.

no we're not.

other people in other countries are actually envying the usa's high incarceration rate

no we're not.

cheers from europe.

Comment Summary needs remedial science. (Score 1) 243

Blowing it up in the area of geo-stationary orbit would be the most stupid thing to do.
"Have a nice new dark-age!"

We need a crash course:
make a probe with arms and an engine to get sent up, grab onto it, and take it down into the drink.

Yeah, harvesting this stuff would be better, but that ain't gonna happen.
Sure, you could have it bring dead sats to a landing vehicle to do reclamation,
but old owners who had written them off as dead would bitch for their bit,
and add in astro-preservationists... "it's a bit of space history, it HAS to stay up there".
(OK, for some early sats, fine; most of what's gone up in the last 30-40 years, probably not).

Comment Re:Sony is a terrorist organization (Score 1) 349

>>>Yeah, millions of dollars in fines vs. billions of dollars in profit really dissuades those naughty contractors

It does actually. My company was fined ~700 million about three years ago, and now they come down hard on the employees to charge time precisely. Even if we take a barthroom break, we're supposed to subtract that 0.1 or 0.2 from the government project and put it in an overhead account. My company doesn't want to be fined again.

Comment Re:Whatever it taks! (Score 1) 911

I have run Linux on my desktop since RH 4.2 and have not used Windows seriously since NT4. I program in a dozen languages well enough to have a significant patch in the Postgres optimizer. My phone is four years old, I've replaced the screen once and the battery twice. I'm about as geeky as they get, but certainly not a gadget or Apple freak, and yet I bought an iPad yesterday.

Why? Because my wife's ancient iBook G4 is on it's last leg, and we have really come to love casual browsing in the living room. The iPad is not a computer, it is not terribly useful for general computing tasks. Anyone who has used one would understand this. It is however a gorgeous device that is braindead simple to use for its intended purpose. So much so that my 72 year old aunt, who refuses to touch a keyboard, actually surfed the web for the first time yesterday, and enjoyed the experience.

Hate on it all you want, but in ten years the only people with clunky old computers with keyboards will be those who write for a living (code or otherwise).

Comment Re:ain't broke, don't fix it (Score 2, Insightful) 589

I watched the Lynch movie as a teenager back in the late 80s long before I read the book. Therefore I did and do not have the book snob attitude to pre-judge the movie by. I only read the book because of the captivating feel of the movie and the intriguing storyline. The made-for-TV remake was closer to the book, but far from enthralling.

I think Lynch is a lot like Kuberick. You either love his stuff or hate hate it, there is little in between.

Comment Re:Google (Score 2, Informative) 460

Mr. Albanach Surly should also mention that both the programs he linked are basically dead, unmaintained relics. One of the wikipedia pages he linked even mentioned this. He did actually read what he linked, right?

The OP has asked a very interesting question though. If you could take something like xmove or Xpra and make an awesome window manager aware/compatible, it would be very interesting software indeed.

Mozilla

Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final 145

CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."

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