Albatrosses - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Play time? (Score 1) 571

by Albatrosses on Monday July 12, 2010 @03:27PM (#32877696) Attached to: The Creativity Crisis

Right, and how do we teach social conventions like underlining to a nine-year-old? Maybe some kind of scheme where we quantitatively judge work based on some criteria, like how well the convention was understood...

It's not like grades are important at that age either. At least here in Canada, grades don't count for anything unless you're in the last few years of high school and applying to a university. And yes, the university will care about proper underlining :)

Comment Re:I don't really understand (Score 1) 150

by Albatrosses on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:51AM (#32827256) Attached to: MeeGo, Zero To VT320 In Seventeen Seconds

Yup!

I run my car on Pirelli tires, and it's nigh impossible to drive a car properly without tires (just like you can't have a kernel without GNU). Therefore, I should really be referring to my car as a Pirelli/Mazda.

Comment Re:I'd just like to interject. (Score 1) 150

by Albatrosses on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:48AM (#32827202) Attached to: MeeGo, Zero To VT320 In Seventeen Seconds

I think everytime we refer to Linux, we should really be calling it GNU/Linux/XOrg/KDE (or GNU/Linux/XOrg/Gnome if you prefer). I mean it's not a terribly useful desktop OS to the great unwashed without KDE or Gnome (or XFCE or Fluxbox or whatever).

And anybody who calls it "GNU/Linux" without the XOrg and desktop environment hates freedom!

Comment Re:Algorithms cannot be creative, eh? (Score 1) 371

by Albatrosses on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:24AM (#32826842) Attached to: AU Band Men At Work Owes Royalties On 'Kookaburra'

Okay, so I publish the raw database online (in non-copyrightable form), then let people individually "sample" the database to build their own "creative" sequences to publish under CC. Crowdsource'd.

Would that work?

Comment Re:Owned by Warner Music Group now though (Score 1) 371

by Albatrosses on Wednesday July 07, 2010 @11:15AM (#32826706) Attached to: AU Band Men At Work Owes Royalties On 'Kookaburra'

Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Anybody else find this just a little bit ironic, given the OP?

Comment Re:PICNIC Problem (Score 1) 144

by Albatrosses on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @04:28PM (#32816820) Attached to: Users Report Foul Play In App Store Rankings, Purchases

You'll never get mine, now matter how hunter2-ing hard you try

Comment Re:Hrm (Score 1) 144

by Albatrosses on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @04:22PM (#32816726) Attached to: Users Report Foul Play In App Store Rankings, Purchases

And how well does your combination lock work against me reading the combo through a pair of binoculars as you enter it? Or a blowtorch up close? Or smashing your windows and bypassing the lock entirely?

It's all relative.

Comment Re:I don't get it... (Score 1) 833

by Albatrosses on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @03:33PM (#32815766) Attached to: Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums

Can't they just use the name on the credit card you used to pay?

Comment Re:I actually like this trend... (Score 1) 833

by Albatrosses on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @03:30PM (#32815688) Attached to: Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums

people such as myself with a name that is not so unique

Y'know, I can't say I've ever heard of anybody else named || Xion ||... maybe it's a regional thing ;)

Comment Re:more importantly (Score 2, Informative) 366

by Albatrosses on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @04:07PM (#32735808) Attached to: Firefox 4.0 Beta Candidate Available

Flash also has a retarded garbage collector that's incapable of cleaning up large objects. Oh, and you can't force it to do a cleanup, so if it decides your object is too big, it's stuck in memory forever. Good luck optimizing that.

Linkey: http://www.andymoore.ca/2010/03/motherfucking-as3-garbage-collection/

Comment Re:iOS4 = Windows 3.0? (Score 1) 568

by Albatrosses on Thursday June 24, 2010 @01:23PM (#32680272) Attached to: iPhone 4 News Roundup

1995 just called. They want their joke back.

Comment Re:Here's your roundup (Score 1, Informative) 568

by Albatrosses on Thursday June 24, 2010 @01:19PM (#32680182) Attached to: iPhone 4 News Roundup

preserving "performance" and "security".

And the computer you get will be fast and secure, and there will be people who will quite happily pay Apple's price for it. And if you don't like it, you can always buy a copy of Google Windows(tm) down the street for less money which is more "open", but slower, less secure, and clunkier.

As much as Linux zealots like to rant about Choice(tm), very few of them seem to understand that it's my choice to surrender unsigned code in exchange for performance, stability, ease of use, functionality, and my own sanity. And believe me, as an IT professional dealing with vendors' crap all day, my sanity is worth a lot to me.

Australia Gets Its First Female Prime Minister 419

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 24, 2010 @12:27AM from the sheila-in-chief dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Julia Gillard has been elected unopposed to the Labor leadership, seizing power in a bloodless Parliament House coup after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided not to contest this morning's leadership ballot. Ms. Gillard will now be sworn in as Australia's first female prime minister. Emerging from this morning's meeting, she said she felt 'very honored' and said she would be making a statement shortly. Treasurer Wayne Swan now steps up as deputy prime minister. He was also elected unopposed."

Comment Re:Operative words (Score 1) 286

by Albatrosses on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @12:32PM (#32666552) Attached to: Fifth of Android Apps Expose Private Data

This may seem like a stupid question, but why exactly does Google Maps need to "read phone state and identity" (i.e. not just dialing phone numbers), "record audio", and "modify/delete SD card contents"?

UK Police To Allow Gun Users To Renew Licenses With iPhone App 271

Posted by samzenpus on Friday June 18, 2010 @02:00PM from the there's-a-gun-for-that dept.

Sussex police are creating a number of iPhone apps for the public, including one to renew your gun license. Unsurprisingly, the plan has some anti-gun groups upset. Lyn Costello, of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (MAMAA), said, "This isn't suitable, especially in light of what happened in Cumbria. We've got to be extra careful giving gun licenses. We have this attitude that gun murders don't happen very often so it's OK to be lax, but it is not OK and we've got to do everything in our power to stop it happening again. We can't put money before life and if you start to do that we are losing our humanity. It is a really stupid idea.''

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