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User: brantondaveperson

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Comments · 1,666

  1. Re:Do It, it worked in AZ on Gen Con Threatens To Leave Indianapolis Over Religious Freedom Bill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think you're free to not serve gays if you don't want to.

    I literally cannot believe that anybody would seriously hold that opinion. It's certainly not freedom for those being denied service, is it? Oh, they're free to go somewhere else, are they? Sorry - that's not freedom. Freedom itself is a woefully under-examined notion in the good old United States of America.

  2. Re:Double Standard? on Online "Swatting" Becomes a Hazard For Gamers Who Play Live On the Internet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The cops showing up at your "target's" door because you rang the cops and claimed they were waving a gun around, or whatever, is not an "indirect" result of your statement.

    It's a direct, predictable, and intended result. This is why the appropriate punishment would be attempted murder.

    That the police in the US are a dangerous force that may be abused in this manner is an entirely orthogonal issue.

  3. Re:The problem is the fuzz, not the swatters on Online "Swatting" Becomes a Hazard For Gamers Who Play Live On the Internet · · Score: 1

    Some time around the same time that normal* police activity became referred to as a "war", I suspect.

    * Not that I consider the current attitude towards drugs 'normal', but that's another story.

  4. Re:Was SCO really that bad? on Not Quite Dead: SCO Linux Suit Against IBM Stirs In Utah · · Score: 1

    I'm a very experienced sysadmin

    Not anymore. Things change.

    terse, bloated

    Terse _and_ bloated?

  5. Re: Hello, Talky Tina on "Hello Barbie" Listens To Children Via Cloud · · Score: 1

    Buying a soldering iron and some comics is somehow not going shopping? Or it's a better kind of shopping because it's a tool and a comic book? Geek elitism strikes again girls! You're nothing if you're not soldering and reading about super-heroes!

    Mattel shouldn't be listening in to children's playtime conversations for any reason - but this doesn't mean that there's something wrong with playing with barbie and talking about nice shoes. This does not make you a "brainless bimbo". It makes you a child.

  6. Re:adult v child on "Hello Barbie" Listens To Children Via Cloud · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're creepy too. It's worse when you're bugging children's playtimes, but we shouldn't accept any of those things in our lives.

  7. Re:HOWTO on How To Execute People In the 21st Century · · Score: 1

    So the State, having decided that murder is illegal, resorts to murder as "punishment". That is hypocrisy of the highest order.

    That's a weak argument, and I even agree with you. The State is sanctioned to exact forms of punishment that individuals may not - imprisonment is illegal too you know.

  8. Re:Maybe it's for the same reason on Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard · · Score: 2

    Those are some pretty reasonable points, and the cables do seem to be more fragile than I would like. That said, micro USB cables are a bit worse, and the lightning socket is a great deal more robust than micro USB.

    The circuitry in the charging cable isn't the problem anyway - the problem is Apple's business practice of charging companies a licensing fee to use it. This is something that should probably be prohibited by law, but since it's not you can certainly see Apple's point of view (more $$$, yes please...). The IC probably costs about 10 cents.

    So where are these circuits in USB, FireWire,or typical display port cables?

    Well, USB has all the smarts at the other end of course. Display port cables do contain circuitry - or at least some do. USB to serial, or VGA, or audio, or whatever most certainly do contain circuitry. I don't disagree that it seems unnecessary to put an IC in the charging cable, but if you don't abuse the thing they do last.

  9. Re:Maybe it's for the same reason on Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard · · Score: 2

    Explain why they need multiple circuit boards in the cable? Dynamic redefining of the pins on the lightning?

    Er, yes? It makes engineering sense too, put some smarts in the cable and then you don't need to include (for instance) line out amplifiers, or HDMI output, or whatever, in the device itself. Seems reasonable enough to me.

  10. Re:Maybe it's for the same reason on Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard · · Score: 2

    the ability to just grab files from my local NAS, work with them, move them, that's something sorely missing on the iPad.

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remote-file-manager/id608738784?mt=8

  11. Re:Maybe it's for the same reason on Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard · · Score: 2

    The average Joe wants to avoid thinking

    This bears examination. Leaving aside the geek-elitism in this statement, could it not be the case that the average Joe wants to avoid thinking about his computer? The average Joe probably doesn't especially want to think too hard about his microwave oven, or his car, or his TV either. Perhaps the average Joe would instead prefer to think about something else? Something he actually wants to do, instead?

  12. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 1

    There are any number of stories of people walking again or regaining their eyesight when given a placebo.

    Really? Any number?

  13. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 1

    I guess that you would consider therapeutic foot massage establishments unethical as well.

    This seems like a pretty silly straw man to me. If the foot massage outfit is claiming to cure disease by rubbing your feet, then yes they should be shut down. If the foot massage outfit is just claiming to make your feet feel nice, then everyone's happy.

  14. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 1

    testing positive for X with a 90% accurate test does NOT mean you have a 90% chance of having X, unless X is so common that most people have it.

    Yes thanks, we all know that. Doctors know that too. I believe that it would be covered in medical school. The average incidence of X is important too. If one out of ten people have X, then your 90% hit-rate test means that you have a 50/50 chance of having the deadly X. I think.

    We've known dogs and rats can readily detect lung and many other cancers just by smelling a person's breath since at least the 50s (or was it 20s),- there's no profit in it.

    What rubbish. There would be plenty of money in it, training dogs isn't cheap you know. Might be more difficult to train the rats though.

  15. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 2

    What I really don't get is why people reject the idea that the mind can heal.

    They don't. The role of a healthy mind in the maintenance of a healthy body is fairly well understood by the medical community - which isn't to say that anyone really knows how it works, but doctors understand that happier people get better faster.

    Why is it then that the role of the mind in healing is always denigrated as "placebo" (must be bad) instead of acknowledged as perfectly valid and important?

    No-one, anywhere, is saying that the placebo effect is bad. What they are saying is that homeopathic remedies are no more effective than sugar pills. Which is perfectly true. It is, therefore, dishonest to sell homeopathic remedies and claim that they cure people.

    You seem to be arguing against a position that does not exist.

  16. Re:Enlighten me please on Reactions to the New MacBook and Apple Watch · · Score: 1

    The problem seems to be MKVs to me - I have endless playback problems with them over the WiFi, whereas mp4 containers of comparable quality and size run without issue.

  17. Bad review. Bad book. on Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things · · Score: 1

    In the book Lauren first learns how to draw a line and then that she can then draw and connect four of these to make a square.

    Christ. Who writes this rubbish?

    I read some of the book using Amazon's 'look inside' feature. It's deeply un-engaging, and highly unlikely to hold a child's attention for very long at all. Compare the writing in it to something that's actually good, and you'll hopefully understand what I mean.

  18. Re:Yes, I agree on Why We Should Stop Hiding File-Name Extensions · · Score: 1

    Also, 'Program Files' has a space in it.

    I KNOW - this is the most irritating thing ever. It's almost as if microsoft did this to deliberately make the command line harder to use.

  19. Re:If you hate Change so much...... on Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Don't worry. They will.

  20. Re:If you hate Change so much...... on Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Yes you do - the tail lights of the car in front of you are a pretty integral part of driving (I would hope).

  21. Re:If you hate Change so much...... on Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10 · · Score: 2

    If there's one thing we can agree on about icon design, it's that no-one agrees about it....

  22. Data point of one... on The Case Against E-readers -- Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading On Paper · · Score: 1

    A couple of years ago when I flew through the US everyone had an e-reader. The last time I flew, which was late last year, everyone had paper books. I notice that the bookstores in US airports still seem to be going strong - Amazon is still selling books hand over fist.

    Sure, e-readers are great for storing millions of books (that you can't lend to your friends... dang it), but they just suck.

  23. Re:Not what it sounds like on Researchers: Alcohol Health Risks Underestimated, Marijuana Relatively Safe · · Score: 1

    I don't believe that's true. Quite a few people down a bottle of spirits and pass out and never wake up. It's probably next to impossible to kill yourself with beer purely through the acute toxicity of alcohol, but the same is not true of (say) vodka.

    It's normally kids without sufficient experience to understand that although it's physically possible to drink an entire bottle of vodka in a few minutes, it's quite likely to end your life. The LD50 of ethanol translates to a little under half a litre of vodka (or gin, or whatever). That's not very much.

  24. Re:Take your space on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    But that doesn't matter.

  25. Re:griping about historical accuracy in this case on The Imitation Game Fails Test of Inspiring the Next Turings · · Score: 1

    I know e e cumming's work well - possibly my favourite poet - and I can't help but think that he has earned his specific usage of capitalisation through his (often rather underrated) work. Can't speak about k.d lang, but this made me smile.

    I don't think that circletimessquare has earned his pissyness though - though he doubtless believes that he has.