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Comment: Somewhat Meta... (Score 2) 249

by Jaryn (#37859842) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Are You Haunting Your House This Hallowe'en?

Instructions:
Purchase at least a half dozen children's full body Halloween costumes (ie spiderman, darth vader, princess, tigger, ladybug, robot, etc).
Set a small table on your front step, porch, or main sidewalk.
On table, place bowl of candy, and large visible sign reading "CANDY"
Take costumes above, stuff them realistically with pillows/towels/other clothing, lay them strategically on ground around table, and douse area with lots of (fake?) blood.
Hide around corner with large (fake?) axe.

You can figure out the rest.

Comment: Atlas companies have used copyright traps (Score 3, Insightful) 433

by Jaryn (#37630074) Attached to: Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database

Atlas companies have used copyright traps before.. Just add a couple fake towns on your map, and if you find another company selling a map with those towns, you know you can sue them for copying your map.

Could a company add a fake time zone to a list of time zones, name it something funny (creative), and claim copyright infringement when it appears in a database? Since really, it's not a fact at all, the made up entry was... art?

Comment: Don't Panic (Score 1) 499

by Jaryn (#37559388) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Long-Term Video/Picture Storage?

Personally, I keep my primary backup in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'

This works quite well.

However, in the event of the destruction of the Earth, this solution seems somewhat.. inadequate. So I believe you would be well served to set up an auxiliary backup system on an interplanetary satellite, or on the moon, and probably also on another not-too-conspicuous planet within our solar system, and just to be safe, one more in another solar system in this (or another) galaxy. (I recommend Ursa Minor Beta.) You don't want a localized catastrophe to eliminate all your files and backups in one fell swoop.

And every few days just swing by the backup sites to be sure there hasn't been any data degradation.

Comment: Unprecedented? (Score 5, Insightful) 78

by Jaryn (#37363172) Attached to: Kepler Discovers 'Phantom' Exoplanet

Unprecedented? Isn't this pretty well the way we discover all extra-solar planets? Through star wobble? Unless we're lucky enough to line up for a full on occlusion?

I mean, I guess in this case it's "planet wobble". But FTFA: "Interestingly, planets in our solar system have been detected through a similar method."

So uh... unprecedented?

Comment: Feature's OK - But personalized filtering better (Score 1) 252

by Jaryn (#34178402) Attached to: Google Give Searchers 'Instant Previews' of Result Pages

Rather than bringing up a small screenshot of each site, Google, just give me some personalized filtering options, please.

And it doesn't need to be complicated, it just need a single checkbox/radio button set like this:

[_] Do not filter my results
[X] Delete all results from domain experts-exchange.com

Comment: Actually, MUDs could and did do that (Score 1) 232

by Jaryn (#29470169) Attached to: Major MMO Publishers Sued For Patent Infringement
I once programmed for and was an admin on a mud that actually had some functions / mini-games which used 'aggregation over an interval' and 'sending the status periodically' (ansiblemoo.org) The code was written this way partly to save bandwidth, but also to just keep that part of the game orderly and fair for all players, regardless of connection speed. It meant not spamming the players every second with soon out-dated information, and the delay also meant that players couldn't simply hammer their keyboard into victory. I think this effectively covers the patent... The code in question was first completed in 1995... or something like that - before my time (and the patent's) - and other similar code was written from 1996 through 2002/2003.

Comment: exponential punishment (Score 2, Insightful) 492

by Jaryn (#28906237) Attached to: RIAA Awarded $675,000 In Tenenbaum Trial

Is it just a coincidence that 675,000 == 22,500 * 30 == 750 * 30 * 30? or was it a mistake, or was it intentional?

If we assume that the judge told them that the minimum penalty per song was $750, and there were 30 songs infringed, bringing us to minimum damages of $22,500... what happened next:

a) they coincidentally decided to punish him by awarding 30x the minimum judgment -- a nice round number (bigger than 10 but less than 50)

b) or they misunderstood the judge's instructions -- they thought that $22,500 was the minimum per song, and so actually awarded the minimum they thought possible -- 30 * 22,500 = $675,000

c) or lastly, they intentionally chose that since he pirated n=30 songs, they would punish him at n^2 * 750... In other words, they chose to punish him exponentially in relation to his crime(s).

As far as I see it, if it's a) that seems a rather arbitrary number, and arbitrarily wide range of punishment for a simple act which harms no one. If it was b) then this sounds like some kind of mistrial or jury reboot.. and if it was c) well... exponential damages sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me. How does $675,000 fit the crime?

Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous".

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