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Dan

Member since: Jan 3rd, 2006

Dan's Latest Comments

Blog Activity
Blog# of Comments
Engadget1 Comment
Switched2 Comments
Politics Daily2 Comments
Urlesque1 Comment
Fanhouse NFL Blog1 Comment
Fanhouse Backporch1 Comment
Housingwatch1 Comment

Recent Comments:

Eric Metcalf's Heisman Promo Video Might Make You Uncomfortable (Fanhouse Backporch)

Jan 9th 2011 7:41PM I don't get it. What's the "inexplicably weird" part?

'Cheating' University of Central Florida Students Defend Themselves (Urlesque)

Dec 11th 2010 10:47PM What a transparent and utterly juvenile attempt at misdirection.

> "So, assuming the students believed the prof wrote his own exams, were they still cheating? Or were they just studying?"

That anyone would even think to ask this question with even the slightest degree of seriousness speaks more to the truly depressing challenges America’s educators face when dealing with pampered brats like these UCF children than to anything about cheating.

The students bragged after the exam about not only having the test answers but also scamming the test. So any claims that they were innocently seeking out study material to prepare for the test are insincere. Which means we can now add “liar” to these kids’ résumés. Besides, possessing a publisher’s test bank data for anyone aside from an instructor is still an ethics violation, regardless of how one intends to use it. Nice try, but no dice.

And it doesn’t matter whether the test was made by a publishing company (which is common practice at ALL levels of education, Mr. Critical High School Teacher), or whether Professor Quinn wrote the entire test himself. Had the students stolen the test data bank from either source, it would still be cheating.

It’s just astounding that some of these cheaters would seek to compound the inherent selfishness, laziness, and abject cowardice that defines a cheater by dragging a woefully childish defense over to YouTube. Again, nice try, but it would only work if the professors and administration at the UCF were at least as dumb as the cheaters themselves.

So, to answer the article's question, yes, these students were still cheating. And should be counting their lucky stars the university didn’t punish them more harshly.

Terry Bradshaw Bashes Ben Roethlisberger, Other NFL Stars (Fanhouse NFL Blog)

Sep 3rd 2010 6:16AM Amen, Terry Bradshaw. Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm sad to say I've given up on most professional sports, with the NFL being the latest victim of its own excesses. I can no longer stand watching these obnoxious children that now dominate the headlines, both on and off the field.

No Jobs, No Housing, No Bull (Housingwatch)

Dec 13th 2009 7:43PM I'm not sure how great an article this is when it goes out of its way to discredit Obama's efforts through hearsay and third-party observations, while hiding behind the claim that supposed actual attendees "spoke to me anonymously because they want to be invited back." For as miserable and pointless as the writer would have us believe this event was for the attendees, he doesn’t seem to see anything contradictory about his “sources” wanting to be invited back. Apparently, it wasn’t all that useless, was it? But still, not a single name to go with a single complaint. Odd and convenient that, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, here I was thinking that getting the economy back on its feet was the responsibility of all enterprising Americans with the grit and willpower to get out there and get their hands dirty.

Here I thought that relying on the government to prop up the economy and hand out jobs to Americans was anathema the very spirit of laissez faire economics that fuels conservative ire with Obama’s so-called “socialist agenda.”

Here I thought going to the government and asking for handouts in the form of jobs was something only “lazy idiot” liberals did.

It must be deeply disturbing to discover that at the end of the day, after all the rhetoric and vitriol in opposition to Obama’s efforts to bring America -- kicking and screaming -- from the brink of an all-pervasive, unmitigated selfishness that led us to this economic fiasco, that conservatives apparently like help (handouts) and government assistance (interference) just as much as liberals do.

Here’s a suggestion for you real estate folks: You rode high in the 90s and the better part of the 00s by peddling vastly overpriced, grossly overvalued properties in a climate that can best be described as a drunken speculation-driven frat party. And as the real estate market is wont to be, it came back around to bite you on the behinds. That’s the risk of real estate. Quit your whining and get back to work -- but try to be a little more honest this time around, would ya’?

Tiger's Tale, Day 10: How Gothic Can It Get? (Politics Daily)

Dec 8th 2009 9:02PM It's as if the entire nation, including supposed professional, educated, news columnists, have devolved to the level high school gossip mongers.

Tom Brokaw is absolutely right: This is not news.

Letterman Owes Palin, Flight Attendants, Women in General an Apology (Politics Daily)

Jun 11th 2009 11:13PM Please, Ms. Hannenberger, make at least a token effort at disguising the entirely contrived and political nature of your, ahem, “outrage” with David Letterman.

“Which means he thinks rape jokes about an 18-year-old are funny?”

So, now Letterman finds rape amusing?

As Editor-in-Chief of Politics Daily, I would expect that you would have the professional – and intellectual – wherewithal to recognize that that little shot across the bow has less substance or basis in fact than Letterman’s (in)famous satire-laced Top-Ten lists.

Such gratuitous and indeed fanciful re-interpretation of the facts serves little interest other than reducing the level of discourse to the same petty name calling you are taking Letterman to task for. He’s an entertainer and comedian with a long history of being bluntly disrespectful of public figures. What’s your excuse?

Windows 7 Barred from Georgetown Campus (Switched)

Feb 3rd 2009 2:05AM 1) Cindy: We can all just say it: Vista sucked massively. For you to be disgusted with it is perfectly understandable. With that said:

Windows 7 has been independently confirmed by a number of reliable sources to be infinitely better than Vista, and in some ways better than XP. But if you aren't doing a lot of data transfer over Local Area Networks, then stick with XP. XP is just fine for databases like the genealogy one you're working with. If speed is an issue, upgrade the hardware on your actual computer, like memory and the motherboard, and you'll be humming along just fine with XP.

2) Gregory Dittmer: You already know why new versions are always popping up. It's the same reason new cars, televisions, and clothes are constantly being made and brought to market; to capture the imagination of consumers who want something different and better. Of course, as you say, newer isn't always better, but for a company to survive in this capitalist system, they have to keep trying to improve upon the old model. Newer, better, faster, more: That's capitalism.

Continuing with that theme, releasing new products isn’t so much to make Bill richer as it is to make stockholders in Microsoft happy. They want their stock to increase in value. The only way to do that is to increase the value of the company. And the best way to do that is to continue selling products that people want. Curse Microsoft all we want, but the fact remains that it’s on 90% of all computers in the world. Even Mac users have the option of emulating Windows on their machines in order to access software written specifically for the vastly more popular Windows.

Furthermore, there are often breakthroughs in computer hardware technology that require new ways of thinking with regard to programming. The first ever PC processor ran at a mind-numbingly slow 2 MHz. That’s pretty darned slow and probably wouldn’t even run Minesweeper, much less a simple Notepad document, at least not efficiently. Computers now? 2 GHz. That’s a thousand-fold increase in speed. Would you want to use the 1979 Altair PC OS, such as it was, on a computer that can run at 2 GHz? I sure wouldn’t. This means new versions are necessary to take advantage of technological leaps. Newer, in the case of computer software and hardware, actually is better – for the most part.

3) Craig: Putting out a Beta version is actually a service to you. Beta versions are put out there for free so that regular folks like you and I can run the software and find the bugs that even the most dedicated testers at Microsoft can't find. Keep in mind that operating systems like Windows involve millions of lines of code. No, not thousands. *Millions.* Windows XP has 40 million lines of code, for example. With that much code, there are bound to be a few mistakes. After all, humans write the code. And humans aren’t perfect.

Add to that the near-infinite number of ways people use their computers on a day-to-day basis, and there’s really no way Microsoft (or any software company) can anticipate each and every possible flaw that might arise.

Enter Beta testing. As of January 24 this year, at least 2.5 million copies of Window 7 Beta were downloaded and are presumably in use right now. That means 2.5 million people are troubleshooting the software for you and me before it gets released in late-2009 with what will probably be a hefty price tag. 2.5 million people are making sure that you and I don’t get junk when it comes time to actually pay for the product, and for that, I’m pretty happy. How often do you really get a chance to “Try Before You Buy?” And how often do you get to hear from everyone who’s using it exactly what they think before you plop down cash for the final version? That’s why Microsoft is releasing a Beta version. It’s a good thing for the consumer.

Is MySpace's "Tom" Lying About His Age? (Switched)

Oct 23rd 2007 10:08PM "What do you think? If Tom Anderson is lying about his age, is it a big deal?"

How kind of staff writer Tim Stevens to allow us to think we have a choice in the matter, considering he's already gone to such painfully obvious lengths to hint at something much more sinister in the minds of readers with his wholly unsubstantiated, "[I]t is kind of creepy, especially when you've got a bunch of kids wanting to be your friend."

So Anderson may be lying about his age. Big deal. People do it all the time, a fact Stevens was no doubt aware of when faced with the challenge of making his next journalistic contribution somehow relevant in the lives of his readers. What better way to do so than to dredge up an amateurish and very thinly veiled accusation of sexual impropriety? Come on, Stevens. Surely you could do better than to suggest Tom Anderson is trolling for youngsters on MySpace by claiming his age is…wait for it… a mind-staggering 32?! Were Anderson truly an Internet predator, as Stevens insinuates, then he must not be a very bright one. After all, were he looking to score with the young'uns, he probably should have claimed his age at the time he started MySpace as being, say, 21, 18, or even 16, casting himself as a young computer programming extraordinaire, rather than an innocuous 27.

Perhaps I missed something in my formative years, but I don't recall looking to be enchanted by a 27-year old when I was a minor, much less a 32-year old. I tended to hang out with kids closer to my own age. But apparently Stevens, licensed professional in adolescent development and Internet sexual predator behavior that he is, knows better and has thus declared Anderson's harmless fib to be "creepy."

Way to go, Stevens. Can't write something that holds the reader's interest on the merit of simple facts? Then accuse someone of being a child-molesting Internet scumbag. Thanks for pandering to the lowest common denominator in your quest for readership and justification of your paychecks. Of course, in addition to your expertise on the Internet, journalism, child psychology, and recently Internet child predators, you must also be well versed in all things law-related and understand that shabby tabloid garbage like your "report" are where libel and defamation lawsuits are born.

Sony NW-A1000/1200/3000 get WMA support (Engadget)

Jan 3rd 2006 8:40PM A few words on Sonys line of Network MP3 players and Sony in general.

Ive been a Sony customer for many years now, and can honestly say Ive not had a lot of trouble with their product line, be it their portable CD players, headphones, or any number of electronic gadgets theyve released over the years. In particular, Ive always been pleased with the products that came out of Sonys R&D Aiwa division, primarily because the engineers there were encouraged to push the envelope on new and unusual features. Yes, Sony tends to be a bit pricier, especially their personal computers (and for no real reason that I can tell), but by-and-large, I like the companys electronics. But. . . (Theres always a but)

The Sony Connect/Sound Stage software that is required to upload media to Sony Network players barely deserves the title of software. The software is clunky, unintuitive, quirky, and unstable, crashing again and again, not to mention sucking memory and processor resources from other applications in ways that my best 3-D graphic-laden games never have. But what is probably the most maddening problem that in all likelihood will result in me returning my just-bought Sony NW-A1000 is that the software is painfully, ridiculously, inexcusably, hair-pullingly sloooooooow.

I kid you not, folks, when I tell you that this software bundle bites. I can scarcely put into words how poor this software is, but let me try. Im not joking when I say it took me the better part of 12 hours to upload perhaps 500 songs in mp3 and WMA format. A majority of that time was spent actually waiting for the file transfers to complete. 500 songs 12 hours. No joke. Im not running a bad machine either. 2.41 gHz, 1.2 gigs of RAM. And then I had to go through and clean up after the mess the software made of my player. It uploaded some songs up to 4 times, so the multiple copies were eating up my disc space. Also, the software supposedly uses the GraceNote music-recognition service to identify your files, but I suspect Sony may have opted in for the cheaper Error Prone database service that GraceNote, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, offers on the sly, because every 10 or 12 songs, there would be odd typographical mistakes in the media information, be in the artists name, or the song title. Rather than New Order, Id see NEw O rde on my players display. Or instead of When the Saints Go Marching In, Id get wHHen t o RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Music Match Ive never had this kind of problem with these other media management programs.

Theres simply no excuse in this day and age for software that, well, quite frankly, sucks this much, and Sony should be ashamed for rushing a product to market that was so full of flaws.

Its unfortunate, really, because the actual player itself is beautiful and very easy to use (despite some very odd icon choices that dont seem to mean what you would think they would). If you can hold out a day or two to actually get you music onto the player, its great. But its during that period of actually wanting to upload anything that you want to just chuck the software disc out the frickin window, return the player, and jump ship over to an i-pod.