Comment: artillery can go 26 miles (Score 2) 392
Unassisted shells have pretty decent range (26 miles or so), and specialty weapons can go even further.
Comment: Dell is fine (Score 1) 688
I've got a vostro at home and a latitude at work. Both "just work" out of the box. The vostro switches hdmi properly with no tweaking under Win7, and the latitude runs linux well including triple monitor support when using the dock.
Comment: Re:Also good news for... (Score 1) 192
I don't think it's greed that motivates two people who've both lost limbs due to someone else's reckless driving to sue whomever their lawyer says they should name in the suit.
The job of the lawyer is to suggest all possible avenues of recourse. The job of the people in the accident is to realize that the person sending the text is in no way responsible and telling the lawyer not to submit them to a frivolous lawsuit.
If someone doesn't have a lawyer on retainer, it's going to cost them hundreds of dollars to deal with being sued, even if they're completely innocent.
Comment: Re:At first... (Score 1) 192
suing is not "causing bad things to others". it is simply asking a judge "don't you think this person owes me money because of his behavour?". The judge said no, case closed. explain to me the harm they have caused to anyone aside from the inconvenience to walk to court?
Sorry, no. Suing someone is saying, "I think this person has done me harm enough that I will take the court's time and incur legal fees to get what I think is coming to me."
For someone who doesn't have a lawyer on retainer, being sued will generally cost a minimum of several hundred dollars.
Comment: move, maybe? (Score 3, Insightful) 981
I lived in equatorial Africa with no air conditioning for years. I don't buy the excuse that it's too hot to go outside.
Besides, if it's that bad then why not move somewhere better?
Comment: what kind of women do you deal with? (Score 2) 981
I've been working for 12 years and married for 8.
I sure hope to be married for life. Sex is better than ever, though the kids tend to cramp our style. I don't know of any cases at work or in my circle of friends where a woman has accused a man of sexual misconduct as an act of revenge/regret.
Comment: Re:Ya well there's some new evidence (Score 1) 262
Few people actually need 2TB of storage, the idea that SSDs have to be dead equal to HDDs is silly.
Multiple backups, digital photos and videos, etc. I've got over a TB of data in my backup NAS and I'm not trying hard.
Comment: Re:New solid state storage (Score 1) 262
Very few people need 4TB, the current largest hard drive. I'd argue most people are happy with 500gb.
And how do you back up a couple of 500GB machines? Simplest is a NAS with a couple multi-TB drives in it and a couple more in external cases for offsite backup.
Comment: not necessarily infringing (Score 1) 46
I'm allowed to make a copy in my own home, with my equipment, for my personal use.
Assuming I'm still paying for my subscription, can I pay someone else to make a copy for me using _my_ equipment in _my_ home?
Can I pay someone else to make a copy for me using _their_ equipment in _my_ home?
Can I pay someone else to make a copy for me using _their_ equipment in _their_ building?
If any of these are acceptable, it's hard to see why they aren't all acceptable.
Around here it's like making your own wine. I'm allowed to make wine in my own home. I can rent space and make wine in a commercial facility. Technically I can't hire someone else to make wine for me, but I can pay them to do everything else for me and I just sprinkle in the yeast.
Comment: or a computer (Score 1) 575
or a bought-outright DVR. Many options.
Comment: make it an option, default to off (Score 1) 575
The consumer is then directing the device to behave in a certain way. Any responsibility is therefore the consumer's rather than the manufacturer of the device.
Comment: can't tell if you're serious (Score 1) 139
A digital sprinker box is still going to have mechanical parts in it.
Putting lights on a simple timer would be messed up around here--depending on time of year the length of the day varies from 5 hrs to 17 hrs. The proper solution for lights is a photosensor with averaging and hysteresis.
Comment: early blocks were allocated under different rules (Score 1) 328
In the early days the blocks were allocated with different expectations. It would be legally problematic for ARIN to try and take them back.
Comment: Re:As opposed to patents that cover algorithms? (Score 1) 167
Find me a patent that includes a mathematical algorithm, the phrase "used in a computer", and nothing else. I'll wait.
Second, even if you could, then you wouldn't be patenting the math. It could still be freely used outside of a computer.
How about Apple's "slide to unlock" patent?
"...detecting contact with the touch-sensitive display while the device is in a user-interface lock state; moving an unlock image along a predefined displayed path on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with the contact, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; transitioning the device to a user-interface unlock state if the detected contact corresponds to a predefined gesture; and maintaining the device in the user-interface lock state if the detected contact does not correspond to the predefined gesture."
Basically you touch an unlock image and slide it along the path shown on the screen to unlock. Yes, there is a physical device involved, but this is fundamentally a concept rather than an implementation of the concept.