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User: Actually,+I+do+RTFA

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  1. Re:cross compatability on Revisiting Open Source Social Networking Alternatives · · Score: 1

    Before FB there was MySpace, widely used and nobody could possibly compete with them. Then FB came along with a BETTER product.

    MySpace didn't have much penetration in college students. FB started there. Now FB has penetration throughtout all demos. There is no thin-edge to exploit.

    Being unable to attract customers is not a barrier to entry. Having to build your own railroad in order to sell oil is a barrier to entry.

    The "product" FB sells its users is its other users. By definition, no other service provider can provide that.

    You mean that if you stop using FB you have absolutely no means to communicate with your friends?

    Yes. If I don't use FB, I don't get invited to events. There are other means of inviting me, but other people don't think of them.

    Now, on raw communication, you are correct. I can be phoned, emailed, etc. And do.

  2. Re:There's a Fine Line.. on The Schizophrenic Programmer Who Built an OS To Talk To God · · Score: 2

    Here are a list of his demands in order to make god happy: http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc... . These include MS ... VMware implementing PC speaker beeps.

    And on that we can all agree.

  3. Re:If it helps: on Revisiting Open Source Social Networking Alternatives · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but they have the corpus, so in N years, when the algorithm improves, overnight revolution.

  4. Re:Diaspora appliance on Revisiting Open Source Social Networking Alternatives · · Score: 1

    Now obviously they do lots of complicated analysis which is where a lot of the value added

    Yeah, but a lot of that analysis is to figure out things about you, things you already know.

    monetize their own information... I think that we need to fundamentally change the web so that Google and Facebook share their profits with us. They are after all making profits by selling your data

    The problem is Facebook and Google already have sufficient amounts of information on sufficient numbers of people that your own higher quality data on your preferences isn't worth much. And FB/Google have scaling in their favor.

    So, other than competing on cost (ick) what can you offer the marketer about you that FB/Google cannot?

  5. Re:cross compatability on Revisiting Open Source Social Networking Alternatives · · Score: 1

    Trusts always form by offering a deal that many people take voluntarily. That doesn't mean that it has to be allowed to use its monopoly position to keep the gains it has achieved.

    Trust-breaking won the war of ideas like 100 years ago, and proved to be able to do little things like "prevent Standard Oil from running the world".

  6. Re:Wouldn't it suffer eminent heat death? on What Would Have Happened If Philae Were Nuclear Powered? · · Score: 1

    Dude, I thought that the heat couldn't dissipate through the vacuum of space. There's no "fear" about it. It's a technical question.

    And, as has been said before, the best solution to incorrect facts is correct facts.

  7. Re:Which 6? on Google Chrome Will Block All NPAPI Plugins By Default In January · · Score: 1

    Just six plugins are used by more than 5% of users doesn't seem to be that significant. After all, 1000 plugins used by 1% of users will have far more impact than that.

    Also, I do wonder if there is a correlation between people who use more plugins, and those who opt not to send anonymous data in.

  8. Re:Wouldn't it suffer eminent heat death? on What Would Have Happened If Philae Were Nuclear Powered? · · Score: 1

    If my admittedly weak knowledge of nuclear engineering is what's holding up our space program, methinks we have bigger issues..

  9. Wouldn't it suffer eminent heat death? on What Would Have Happened If Philae Were Nuclear Powered? · · Score: -1

    Doesn't nuclear power work by boiling water? Doesn't it require that steam then turning back to water?

    On the asteroid, I suppose you could use it as a giant heat sink (yay, destroying the thing we happen to be studying. That turns out well). But during the 12 years it took to get there, how would the heat bleed off? Emitting via radiation requires high temperatures that seem to make getting power via temperautre difference impossible.

  10. Re:Wow ... on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    See that word "assuming"? I thought people would be able to figure out that my meaning was: [omitted for obviousness]

    You said that the OPs points were only valid if they were reasonable. You then explained why they are likely not reasonable. This is both what you really obviously said and what you just reiterated. This is a case you are making, as you recognize later.

    . Seeing not much of anybody taking the Uber side, I suggested some reasoning to explain their actions and circumstances which might serve to justify them from an ethical standpoint.

    So I'm confused as to why you are so upset that I thought you were in favor of that position. I quite clearly disagree with your position. Going three rounds of "that's not what I said" followed by "well, that is what I said, but only for the sake of argument" is being a troll, not a devil's advocate. For instance, if you do want to be an advocate, you have to, you know, advocate, not kinda retreat/claim you were misunderstood.

    Or to make things blatantly clear:

    What did I say that gave you the impression I was advocating extrajudicial resolution?

    I suggested some reasoning to explain their actions and circumstances which might serve to justify them from an ethical standpoint. It's called "being a devil's advocate

  11. Re:Wow ... on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    From your original post:

    I've seen some of the news coverage about them trying to move into a couple of cities. The cities are saying "OK, you need a license, the proper insurance, and you must do these things". Uber says "Yarg, we're not a taxi company, we're teh interweb company, we won't play by the rules". At which point you think, "wow, so these guys figure they're exempt from regulations". And then you don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

    Assuming the regulations are actually halfway reasonable. People were saying they were obviously set up to protect the existing taxi system which has already "bought into" the exorbitant fees.

    Here you were contended that the quoted parent was incorrect. You said one ought not feel antipathy towards Uber for ignoring the regulations. Given that the antipathy was moral in nature, you are implicitly making a case that Uber was in the right. This interpretation is reinforced by your explanation of why you thing the regulations are immoral and ignorable.

    Further, you say:

    As an engineer-type mindset, if there's an easy way to do something more efficiently and regulations are standing in the way, I blame the regulations, not the new solution for sufficiently stupid values of regulation (obviously safety regs are a different matter).

    Here, you are clearly assigning blame for Uber violating the regulation to the regulation itself, not Uber.

    It's possible I inferred incorrectly. I think it more likely you wrote hastily in an exaggerated way for effect and do not hold such an extreme position. Which is both something that happens and something that people mistake on the internet for non-exaggerated points.

    Hopefully this answers " What did I say that gave you the impression I was advocating extrajudicial resolution?"

  12. Re:Wow on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    Nope, they just have enough money that they don't care what someone says about them. What's the worst that happens, they have to vacation on their yacht til the media forgets about it?

  13. Re:Wow ... on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    Assuming the regulations are actually halfway reasonable. People were saying they were obviously set up to protect the existing taxi system which has already "bought into" the exorbitant fees.

    Which does not make them unreasonable on face. Having a robust taxi system is a good thing. Generating revenue for the city by selling licenses is a good thing. Whether the assurance of having taxis survive without a race to the bottom is worth interfering in the free market is outside the scope of conversation.

    As an engineer-type mindset, if there's an easy way to do something more efficiently and regulations are standing in the way, I blame the regulations, not the new solution for sufficiently stupid values of regulation

    And as an engineer, you are clearly able to determine the far reaching implications of policy changes, know which regulations are "stupid" and therefore ignorable, but unable to communicate that to your fellow citizens in order to get the regulations modified?

    Look, you want to change the law, we have a process for that.

    Or is changing regulations via democracy one of those "regulations" you feel exempt from?

  14. Re:It's a straightforward proportions test! on Big Talk About Small Samples · · Score: 2

    Dude, it's not even that. Bennett is saying that ethnicity has a significant impact on whether people find breastfeeding inappropriate. Run a fucking t-test.

    Here: http://www.graphpad.com/quickc...

  15. Re:Last Train Home on How Baidu Tracked the Largest Seasonal Migration of People On Earth · · Score: 1

    For anybody who thought the overcrowded dystopian future feared in the 1970's failed to occur, China is one place where it already did.

    Sheesh, another thing we outsourced to China

  16. Re:Or just practicing for an actual job on Duke: No Mercy For CS 201 Cheaters Who Don't Turn Selves In By Wednesday · · Score: 1

    For example, about 20 minutes ago I needed a function to measure password strength.

    Does it merely require sufficient inclusion of characters to make the estimated size of the character set above a threshold, and then do the same for length independently? Does it use(estimated size of the set of characters used) ^ (length)? Does it reference commonly used passwords to ensure things like "password" are weaker than "merhgqtrc"? Or reference the keyboard layout? How does it handle repeated letters? Does it deal with your N previous passwords to prevent password reuse? Does it allow for "horse battery staple correct"?

    And, by the way, coming up with all those questions took under a minute. And coding a solution that implements the first couple of options would take (in my estimation) five minutes or so.

  17. Re:Use the money you save on Denmark Faces a Tricky Transition To 100 Percent Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    Just pray that you don't have any jerk-off "power traders" holding energy back from you until the price goes up. Remember what happened to California?

    Well, with the guys who taught Enron how to "power trade", as well as how to hide distressed assets offbook, recently buying the largest power producer/distributor in Denmark, what are the odds of them doing that?

    I speak of course of Goldman Sachs

  18. Re:Bull Shite on Study: Body Weight Heavily Influenced By Heritable Gut Microbes · · Score: 1

    Your body does not contain tiny furnaces into which magical goblins heave small pieces of the food you've eaten.

    Hey, I'm fat because my inner goblins work so hard. If you're skinny, it's because your inner goblins are themselves fat and lazy. This is the origin of the saying "beauty is only skin deep"... because your insides are made of fat goblins.

  19. Re:To those who want $7/gal tax on Americans Rejoice At Lower Gas Prices · · Score: 1

    Do you think that taxes are supposed to be penalties, as opposed to funding things?

    BEcause, what you're saying is "why aren't people willing to pay for things that they aren't getting."

    I think a nice park is worth X, and I am willing to pay my share of X. That doesn't mean I'm willing to set my share on fire if I don't get the park.

  20. There is to another way to distinguish "shitty driver guy" from non-shitty driver guy. Shitty driver guy gets traffic citations and has accidents.

    But it's less accurate than tracking driving. Insurance companies respect that now because they don't have a better solution. But they actually use practically the same algorithims. They won't respect that anymore once they have the actual information it is a proxy for.

    Because why would they want to use a poor proxy? Its not like the privacy market is that big. And then they have the risk that the person is a bad driver (or becomes one) that their metrics didn't catch. Which just slows the death spiral, doesn't prevent it.

  21. Re:To those who want $7/gal tax on Americans Rejoice At Lower Gas Prices · · Score: 1

    Every time you fill your gas, please write a check for twice as much and make it payable to the U.S. Treasury.

    Is this just a lame rhetorical device, or are you not aware of the difference that scale makes?

    That is, it's probably worth destroying 99.99% of the salmonella on that chicken, but not 0.01%

  22. Re:Pot, meet the Fat Kettle on Americans Rejoice At Lower Gas Prices · · Score: 1

    You don't think that maybe Global Cooling has anything to do with it?

    Just because it's colder where you are, doesn't mean the difference is not more than made up somewhere else. By which I mean, the earth is warming, even if from your limited perspective you don't see it.

  23. Confirmation Bias on When We Don't Like the Solution, We Deny the Problem · · Score: 1

    It's well established that people distort recall of facts, weighing of evidence, etc. to prove their ideas correct. This study seems to just say "what if the facts being distorted came from a scientific paper" and "what if the ideas were political (free market solves everything, we could get rid of all guns by making them illegal)."

    It's such an unsurprising result that I'm amazed they ran the study.

  24. Re:Buttle or Tuttle? on Big Data Knows When You Are About To Quit Your Job · · Score: 1

    How else can we ensure that the algorithms actually do what their vendors claim?

    Well, it's predictive, so the only way would be to match predictions with final outcomes. No need to open the box. In fact, it would probably distract people to do so.

  25. Re:Taking the Human out of Human Resources on Big Data Knows When You Are About To Quit Your Job · · Score: 1

    It's more complicated than that. Poor or middle class people who worked really hard for what little they have hate the idea of someone who "did nothing" catching up with them. After all, they did do a lot of work. And they were promised a reward for it.

    So, in a way, the paying shit wages saved the rich twice over, once in not having to pay their employees, and again in lower taxes cause "screw the lazy bums.

    Whereas if middle class people felt like thy had extra, they wouldn't mind programs that saved money overall, by, I dunno, feeding the homeless and giving them preventative care.

    But I do find your point of view of how this attitude originated to be a really interesting take on things. Is there a book or something you can recommend that expands upon it?