Comment Re:Because they can be bullied (Score 2, Insightful) 938
Nonsense. Their initially preferred targets are almost always smaller/weaker than they are.
Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video 266
longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."
Comment Re:Are nerds not aware (Score 1) 844
Sorry, I've never carved out a month to read that book; is that what it preaches?
While I certainly think there's a lot of parasites out there who want to live off the hard work of others (e.g., just about everyone on welfare, and many people on disability), a lot of the people at "the top" aren't exactly hard workers, they're also parasites (e.g., almost all politicians) who don't produce anything of real value, and are mostly sociopaths to boot.
The problem with unions is that they foster corruption and laziness, and mostly serve to enrich and empower the union bosses, who again are just parasites who do nothing of real value.
Actually, it preaches almost exactly what you just said you think. You'd probably like it a lot.
Comment Re:Are nerds not aware (Score 1) 844
Guess it's time to stop reading Atlas Shrugged, pretending that those above us in the hierarchy are looking out for us, and start forming a union, eh?
Because those above you in the Union hierarchy have your best interests at heart. Right?
The only person who would say something like that is someone who has never read Atlas Shrugged or who has a complete lack of reading comprehension. If you think the message of Atlas Shrugged is, in any way, that those above you in the hierarchy are looking out for you and have your best interests at heart then you need to read it again. Remember, the main villains in the book are BIG BUSINESS.
Italy Floats Official Permission Requirement for Web Video Uploads 131
An anonymous reader writes with some bad news from Italy, noting that new rules proposed there would "require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web." Understandably, some say such controls represent a conflict of interest for Silvio Berlusconi, "who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset."
Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 vs. Early Fedora 13 Benchmarks 157
Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both positive and negative performance changes for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures."
Comment Re:Memeory Leaks (Score 1) 145
Quite true. I love FF on Windows, but on my Linux box at work I have to reboot it fairly often due to its memory consumption being > 1GB
Comment Re:Pointless (Score 1) 152
If it prevents you from putting certain other things in that spot, it may very well be even worse than a charger plug.
Comment Re:Staples (Score 1) 504
I wish I had some mod points for you. If this is fraud (which it probably isn't) then the correct action is to take Best Buy to court. If it is just a bad deal, then educate yourself and your family/friends and don't buy it. Simple as that.
In fact, the best (meaning fastest, easiest, and most efficient) way to motivate people to do/learn something is by having it impact their wallet.
Comment Re:Fedora 11 and Flash works here... (Score 1) 223
Didn't Ubuntu 9.10 ship with a but that causes AAAA queries to be sent even if you don't have any IPv6 addresses? I believe the workaround of disabling IPv6 in Firefox was much simpler than disabling IPv6 system wide. F11 might have a similar issue. Cut the guy a little slack.
Comment Re:"Contributing" is impossible (Score 0) 332
You are so wrong that I think you might be a Troll, but I'll bite anyway.
where of course you assume that the person who had the money in the first place really deserved to have it.
Whether or not the person deserved the money, the government forcibly takes the money away. Whether or not the person deserved the money is up to the person who gave him the money, not to the government or you (thank god).
but a lot of persons today earn money without doing any useful work (e.g. they work for advertisment - creating artificial needs)
It's useful to the people paying them. Advertising can also inform people of solutions to their "real" needs. I'm not quite sure what an "artificial" need is.
or by doing harmful work (creating weapons, destroying the environment, etc...) or doing no work at all (just cashing in on their portfolio).
Weapons for self defense, no one runs a "destroy the environment" business, investing provides capital for people who produce things. These are terrible examples and are what make me think you're a troll.
the reason why some can earn a lot of money for nothing is in our system of society. this is an artificial system of laws and rules and it allows some to take the money from other persons without giving them anything useful in return.
Actually, the government is pretty much the only group that can force you to give them something without getting anything useful in return. You don't have to pay money to advertisers, weapon makers, or any other individual business unless you choose to.
so taking the money from people that have that money because of some artificial rules by an other rule (the tax system) is just one way to try to compensate the many faults of the capitalist system.....
You are implying that a fault of the capitalist system is that it is "artificial". That is silly. There are many faults of the capitalist (or at least the pure free market) system, but the fact that it is "artificial" is not one of them.
mond
Your name is attached to your post. You don't need to add it again.
Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398
plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."
Pirates as a Marketplace 214
John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, made some revealing comments in an interview with Kotaku about how the company's attitudes are shifting with regard to software piracy. Quoting:
"Some of the people buying this DLC are not people who bought the game in a new shrink-wrapped box. That could be seen as a dark cloud, a mass of gamers who play a game without contributing a penny to EA. But around that cloud Riccitiello identified a silver lining: 'There's a sizable pirate market and a sizable second sale market and we want to try to generate revenue in that marketplace,' he said, pointing to DLC as a way to do it. The EA boss would prefer people bought their games, of course. 'I don't think anybody should pirate anything,' he said. 'I believe in the artistry of the people who build [the games industry.] I profoundly believe that. And when you steal from us, you steal from them. Having said that, there's a lot of people who do.' So encourage those pirates to pay for something, he figures. Riccitiello explained that EA's download services aren't perfect at distinguishing between used copies of games and pirated copies. As a result, he suggested, EA sells DLC to both communities of gamers. And that's how a pirate can turn into a paying customer."
DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201
MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle."
Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
Comment Re:Simple solution (Score 1) 619
If you want people to use less electricity charge more for it and use the tax to fund something good like the huge budget deficit
Fixed that for you. You can't spend your way out of a deficit.
