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User: Actually,+I+do+RTFA

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  1. Re:I'm shocked... shocked I say... on Netflix Reduces Physical-Disc Processing, Keeps Prices the Same · · Score: 1

    I pray every night that god will smite the physical disk huggers... so that Netflix can shift their business to all streaming and actually improve the availability of streaming titles. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep praying.

    You have the horse and cart backwards. Because of the first-sale doctrine, Netflix can offer a lot more movies on DVD than via Streaming. They would probably kill the DVD service if they could offer their full collection over Streaming. But the Movie Industry refuses to grant them sufficent rights (which makes sense... they want to sell DVDs too). And the OP probably would prefer to stream movies if he could.

    Just another example on why it's better to buy then rent your media.

  2. Re:Good for them on Canadian ISP On Disclosing Subscriber Info: Come Back With a Warrant · · Score: 1

    Err... not to the extent the law permits... to the minimum the law requires

    But the two are related closely. In the US, metadata is considered the corporations, which obviously has no privacy right to the data. The idea is that the person has already disclosed that data. Hence, the government has a much lower, well non-existent, burden on law enforcement because they are asking for business records, not for personal information.

    In Canada, it seems that just got inverted, so now it's private information vouchsafed to a company.

    Bottom line, neither case seems to offer corporations a choice in the matter.

  3. Re:Finally! on Pseudonyms Now Allowed On Google+ · · Score: 1

    New accounts seem to require a phone number. Is there a way around that?

  4. Re:This is the problem with having a two party sys on Rand Paul and Silicon Valley's Shifting Political Climate · · Score: 1

    Someone who supports conservative economic policy but liberal social policies, in any other country, has a mainstream party to get behind.

    I wonder why you would chose those two examples for this story. Rand Paul is socially conservative and economically regressive.

    And at any rate, it's a bad choice for one reason: So do Americans. The Democrats gave up on any liberal economic policy back in the 80's

  5. Re:Where? on Harvesting Energy From Humidity · · Score: 1

    At ~1pW/cm^2, a 50x50cm verision of this will provide about 30mWh in 12 hours. Tiny cell phone battery. Heck, a tiny lithium coin cell will provide ~150mWh.

    50x50x50 cm cube. Presumably they were able to fit (by your math) 5 plates in the cube.

  6. Re:Garbage In on Avast Buys 20 Used Phones, Recovers 40,000 Deleted Photos · · Score: 1

    That seems like a non-sequitur. The GGP was saying it's not Android's fault that bundling was abused - I was saying that it was because it was the predictable way, in fact the only predictable way, it would be used. The feature was added to be abused.

    That's not saying Android is never to be used, or that there are not better and worse implementations. But it is calling them out that this one feature has no redeeming (to the customer) use.

  7. Re:Garbage In on Avast Buys 20 Used Phones, Recovers 40,000 Deleted Photos · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    but it's not Android's fault that someone got greedy.

    Yes, it is.

    Or rather, it's Google's fault because it let them.

    Look, if this was an unforeseen action by a third-party, I would agree with you. But it was obvious that this was going to happen if Google enabled bundling software. They did, so they are just as much at fault as the assholes who do it.

    In fact, Google intentionally enabled bundling as a service to those assholes, to encourage them to get Android phones out there.

  8. Re:real vs pretend on Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies · · Score: 2

    "The government scares me less because they don't want to maximize the money they get from me."

    What country do you live in, I want to move where you live because here in the USA the government thinks all money is theirs unless deemed otherwise.

    In the US.

    There's a fairly trivial proof that I am correct. See, the government has an army, a police force, the ability to have banks reassign/lock my accounts, and the ability to just print quintiillion dollar bills* and inflate my cash to nothing. They can have everything I own right now if they decide to, and I could not stop them.

    But wait, I have stuff!

    On the other hand, a publicly held company, given similar power over me, would take everything I have, and then brag about how they were increasing shareholder value. Hell, they may even claim that it was their ethical obligation to leave me with nothing.

    And the historical record reflects that.

  9. Re:real vs pretend on Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies · · Score: 1

    i>In theory, I have far more control over my government than my insurers.

    You can change Insurers, but not really your Government.

    So, you're one of those people who believes you can jump straight to a "free market solves all problems" in insurance? A field that both has incredible scale effects leading to a natural oligarchy and, by necessity, is highly regulated? Both of which lead to incredible barriers to entry.

    Further, there is little reason for any insurance company to deny themselves this information. First, they seek an advertising, not informational advantage: they all use similar/identical algorithms from the same consultants already. Secondly, in addition to whatever you can gain from serving low-risk individuals who object to monitoring in the pool, would be more than offset by the adverse selection pressure that pushes all high risk candidates into that pool.

    Lastly, while I questioned the free market claims, that was a precursor to saying that you are free to emigrate. But unlike a company, where your only choice is to patronize them or not (or there is no choice if you want to drive a car/survive an illness/etc. except for among near identical actors), in the case of a democracy, you can actively work to change things. I'd be hard pressed to find a boycott that worked "well", where I will define "well" as achieving a tangential goal in a timely way through the loss of income to the company. I distinguish this from modifying policies to avoid bad press by a boycott being published, to boost shareholder value by increasing intangible assets, etc. However, I can indeed point to many changes made to a democratic country because some group decided they cared about it.

  10. Re:real vs pretend on Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies · · Score: 2

    It's OK when the government actually does this, but it's BAD when slashdot pretends the private sector is doing it.

    I tend to agree with your statement, absent the sarcasm.

    The government scares me less because they don't want to maximize the money they get from me. In theory, I have far more control over my government than my insurers. Certainly I have more oversight, and there are laws governing what the government can do with my information. Private companies don't have the same restrictions, and even if they did they have limited liability, an army of lawyers, and my only recourse will be to get $1.28 in a class action lawsuit. And if the government wants to trump up charges against me, I cannot believe that would be aided much by knowing more about me. But the private sector wants to ring every penny they can from my wallet.

    Bottom line, hell yes the

  11. Re:A win for freedom on U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Religious Objections To Contraception · · Score: 1

    The larger companies tend to be paternalistic.

    The larger companies tend to make giant all-employees deals. That's why they didn't let you opt out. It would ruin their bulk-discount terms. It also benefits their employees because they get insurance much cheaper .

    That said, I've always had the option of cash instead of benefits.

  12. Re:Political/Moral on How Often Do Economists Commit Misconduct? · · Score: 1

    students get back their right to go bankrupt.

    Problem: A bankruptcy at 21 is worth 200k, unless you are coming from a wealthy family.

    Problem: Tuition costs 200k

    Problem: Bankers will not make a loan where the likely end result is bankruptcy.

    Easiest solution, eliminate the possibility

  13. Re:Detroit calls Google arrogant? on Google, Detroit Split On Autonomous Cars · · Score: 1

    Ah, sorry. Enjoy your vacation.

  14. Re:Detroit calls Google arrogant? on Google, Detroit Split On Autonomous Cars · · Score: 1

    Okay, so having not bothered to answer why Google's search was less revolutionary than you think, I still took the time to write a fairly long and woefully incomplete list of other companies that meet your criteria. And I didn't get a response.

  15. Re:REST + pure HTML5/JS frontend on Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Web Language That's Long-Lived, and Not Too Buzzy? · · Score: 1

    Google Analytics lets the websites you use...

    And Google do the same. Don't get me wrong, we use Google Analytics on our site as well. But I still don't get the benefit to me.

    Ads pay for the websites

    That may be true. But if so, companies need to start running QA on the ads they serve. I don't like animation, sounds or drive-by installers.

    . If no-one used Google Analytics or viewed ads, they would have fewer sites to use, and the sites they could use wouldn't be improved based on their users' habits. They would have confusing navigation, and the users' flow between pages of interest would be convoluted, making the sites harder to use.

    I would contend they would have better navigation - at least for me. So many people who think like me turned off any extraneous connection to Google - including Analytics - years ago, so that the people now "voting" are not representative of me or my use habits. Hence, among other things, the new /. Beta.

    Nor would my singular action produce enough of an effect to warrant the cost to me of Google developing a more complete profile.

    If you want to go back to the internet of the late 90s, fine - but to be ignorant of the benefits is just being lazy.

    Still, haven't heard any benefits for me to participate.

    But yeah, speed aside, I'm not sure why people hate on the early 00's internet. It had great things like a separation of form and function.

    But the things you're thinking about definately came later.

  16. Re:REST + pure HTML5/JS frontend on Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Web Language That's Long-Lived, and Not Too Buzzy? · · Score: 1

    I'm confused. Your suggestion to "what web language should I use" is to tell him to choose any JS framework (without helping him) because it's uncool for the server to actually do server work? Expecting my computer to do the work you should be doing... well, that's a non-starter.

    Bottom line, I don't trust JS blindly, and don't understand why other people do. But then again, I never get why people let google-analytics track them, or ads display either.

  17. Re:Surgeon General's warning. on NYC Loses Appeal To Ban Large Sugary Drinks · · Score: 1

    Ultimately, smoking restrictions came about due to the extreme discourtesy of some smokers.

    Added that. But of course, we have anti-beating laws because of the extreme discourtesy of some stronger people; anti-embezzling laws because of the extreme discourtesy of some accountants; etc.

  18. Re:Detroit calls Google arrogant? on Google, Detroit Split On Autonomous Cars · · Score: 1

    let me just ask if you can name another company that went from nothing to hundreds of millions of daily users in little more than a decade.

    Well, first, I'd contend that its an unfair challenge. Absolute numbers ignores population growth. And "daily users" as well as rapid spread both ignore the advantages that software have in unit cost and usage patterns. But even given that, it's kinda trivial to find enough companies that meet your challenge that I have to cull them to get around Slashdot's lameness filter.

    • What's App
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • Snapchat
    • Facebook
    • Mozilla
    • Opera

    Break included for lameness filter.

    • Macromedia
    • Microsoft
    • Dell
    • Apple
    • Amazon

    Break included for lameness filter.

    • Wikipedia
    • Reddit
    • Skype

    And that's just new companies. If we count what happens once a company decides to start a new division or pivot to a new space... well..

  19. Re:Let them drink! on NYC Loses Appeal To Ban Large Sugary Drinks · · Score: 1

    Well, I think that corn syrup is less sweet than sugar, on a per calorie basis. So soda companies use more. And that's when it's being used as a sweetener.

  20. Re:Let them drink! on NYC Loses Appeal To Ban Large Sugary Drinks · · Score: 1

    burden on the system is an excuse. They see smoking as detrimental to their health, so they want to tax people to discourage them from engaging in the activity.

    Good, I'm glad its an incentivization because if it was some lame ass attempt to remove the concept of pooled risk, that would suck.

    That is, I think discouraging people from smoking, for their own benefit, treating them as valuable, that works. But trying to recoup costs doesn't make sense for a government to try to do.

  21. Re:Detroit calls Google arrogant? on Google, Detroit Split On Autonomous Cars · · Score: 1

    encouraging its people to look for revolutionary rather than incremental changes, to bring 10X or 100X improvements... built products used on a daily basis by hundreds of millions of people... "we've literally changed the world in a little over a decade"

    I find that an astounding set of points. When I think of Google, I have trouble thinking of anything both successful (used by hundreds of millions) and revolutionary. Everything that achieved widespread acceptance either was acquired, or was a fairly minor improvement over an existing solution.

    Not that there are not interesting projects that Google does. Not that the back end of Google's infrastructure is not impressive. But nothing customer-facing.

    For the record, I'm thinking of the major Google products as

    • YouTube(acquired)
    • Search (improvement over Yahoo!)
    • Android (competitor with iOS, maybe better, maybe not, but not revolutionary.)
    • GMail (fairly standard antispam measures, just applied to a large scale of incoming data; increased mailbox size)

    Everything else seems to be a research project (Glass, Dart) or a failure (Wave, Go). Note, I may have Dart and Go backwards.

  22. Re:Diplomatic immunity? on Julian Assange Plans Modeling Debut At London Fashion Show · · Score: 1

    Diplomatic immunity is not retroactive.

    Sweden and the UK would have to accept him as a diplomat.

    Diplomatic immunity does not cover rape.

    None of which even touches on there is a huge difference between giving refuge at an embassy, and allowing him to escape scot free. I mean, hell, they could put him in a diplomatic pouch and get him to Ecuador if they wanted, but it would be pretty poor form.

  23. Re:The REAL value of the transit system on Cracking Atlanta Subway's Poorly-Encrypted RFID Smart Cards Is a Breeze, Part II · · Score: 1

    then why do you subsidize unemployment?.

    Well, that's a completely unsubstantiated statement, except for the "Emperor's New Clothes" statement that smart enough people will see it as self-evident.

    Just keep the population subsidizing it to the population that actually uses it

    There's no reason why that would be necessary at all. You just seem to be shifting from a subsidy, to forced government accounting/purchases. Whats the difference between someone a thousand miles away and someone who never uses transit?

  24. Re:Shitfaced drivers on Facial Recognition Might Be Coming To Your Car · · Score: 1

    It's not going to keep them off the roads. It's going to notify the local law enforcement, so they can pick up the driver for a DUI.

    After all, preventing someone from driving doesn't have the revenue^H^H^H^H^H^H^H deterrence effects of thousands of dollars of fines.

  25. Re:This thread... on Google Is Offering Free Coding Lessons To Women and Minorities · · Score: 1

    I don't see why we should single out groups that have historically faced hurdles - at least not crass groups like gender or race. Those "helping hands" invariably go to those who already have huge advantages - the fortunate few within those groups. Meanwhile, those left behind in other groups are further marginalized because of the race; receiving the message "White males shouldn't need any extra help"

    I'm all for helping people who need it. And, if it turns out that 90% of the people who need it are minorities (or female, or whatever), I have no beef with that. But I oppose that as the test for who needs it.

    Of all companies, surely the number-one big data company - Google - can find a better metric for helping people.