visigoth - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Processed food is NOT the same (Score 1) 926

by visigoth on Thursday August 22, 2013 @12:50PM (#44644415) Attached to: What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything.

Yep. Also, because it's so heavily "processed", much of its nutritional value (vitamins, minerals, other trace nutrients we may not even know about yet) are destroyed, and when manufacturers even care to correct this they "fortify" the end product to try to replace the missing/destroyed nutrients, resulting in a completely different composition than the original raw food materials had, further contributing to the mess, and probably contributing to 'binge eating' in many cases as the body craves something that is missing from the processed foods being consumed, triggering further consumption.

ESA Sent Takedown Notices For 45 Million Infringements In Fiscal 2009 81

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday August 29, 2009 @12:24PM from the can't-say-they-aren't-trying dept.

eldavojohn writes "The Entertainment Software Association has released this year's fiscal report (PDF), putting out their numbers to level the finger at new targets. Following up on last year's published report, this one has a whole bunch of new numbers to ponder. The top five P2P game piracy countries this year are: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland. The ESA's anti-piracy program notes, 'Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.' But don't worry, they've expanded to other countries. 'The ESA sent takedown notices to ISPs covering more than 45 million instances of infringement of member company games in more than 100 countries worldwide.' They also strive to show they are actually doing things, like endorsing 43 bills aimed at regulating content or controlling access to video games — with not a single one of them making it into law. They did put some into effect at the state level; mostly making it a crime to sell mature games to minors. You can also find their activities localized to you, as this report has sections arranged by state and country. Conspicuously absent this year are any global numbers of what piracy cost the entertainment industry, so unfortunately Ars Technica will have to find someone else to audit, although Venture Beat has a good breakdown."

Comment Re:Its been done for years already (Score 1) 711

by visigoth on Saturday August 29, 2009 @12:18PM (#29243761) Attached to: Apple Kicks HDD Marketing Debate Into High Gear

Meh, since the fundamental file block size is based on 1K == 1024 bytes, all multiples should use the same consistent multiplier, so that 1M == 1024^2, 1G == 1024^3 and so on. Anything else is, well, inconsistent and illogical.

Or are we now going to change disk formats so that the fundamental block sizes are multiples of 1000? That'd be way efficient... there are programmatic (and hardware) reasons why disk blocks have sizes that are multiples of 2, not 10.

Comment Re:First post flag! (Score 3, Insightful) 630

by visigoth on Thursday May 14, 2009 @12:43PM (#27952677) Attached to: Remote Kill Flags Surface In Kindle

Unfortunately they won't go out of business over stuff like this. Most consumers don't care about consequences of their purchasing choices, the reasons for which are numerous -- too dumb, busy, or simply apathetic. "The customer is (almost) always right" only applies if the available customer pool is small enough for that to matter; once a market grows beyond a certain size, companies only have to make X % of their customers happy, and marginalize or ignore the rest.

I'd love for things to be different, for for a completely DRM-free eBook to be available, but I'm also too cynical to believe this could ever happen.

Comment Re:Hemi's with MDS (Score 1) 1114

by visigoth on Monday October 13, 2008 @04:38PM (#25360949) Attached to: Fuel Efficiency and Slow Driving?

I have a '07 Charger R/T with perf. pkg, and am lucky to get 14-15 mpg around town (lots of short trips, stop-n-go doesn't help.)

During a recent long distance trip, first leg I cruised 80mph and noticed MDS didn't kick in much; I got 19 mpg. Later on I kept speed to 70-75 and averaged about 23 mpg the rest of the way. I don't doubt I could get the EPA rated 25mpg if I had the patience to drive 60-65...

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