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User: MPAB

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Comments · 277

  1. Screen and OS on On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware (rogueamoeba.com) · · Score: 1

    I think Apple has little to no interest in upgrading their laptops as long as the vast majority of PC laptops keep having the same crappy displays with narrow viewing angles and low contrast. It doesn't matter if they're 2x as powerful for half the price if I can't trust them for even adjusting the brightness and contrast of photos on the road.
    The only laptops with decent displays cost not much less than a MacBook. And without Mac OS, which is still more appealing than Windows.

  2. Re: wrong conclusion on Digital and Analog Audio's Curious Coexistence (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Same thing happens to me. I'm hearing my tinnitus right now and it reminds me of back when I was a child and noticed there was a TV on in the house.

    I'm 41 now and I cannot hear the high pitched tone at the end of The Beatles' "A day in the life". I hadn't noticed till my kids asked me what was that noise. I heard nothing, then I remembered, then I felt really old.

  3. Three words on Man Deletes His Entire Company With One Line of Bad Code (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Offsite, offline BACKUPS

  4. Re: Not just names on Names That Break Computers (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Before someone beats me to it: It's "payroll and..." not "payroll ant..."

  5. Not just names on Names That Break Computers (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    It happened to me in Spain. Foreigners get IDs that start with an X, while natives' IDs start with a 0. There was this system to get the payroll ant it wouldn't accept an ID if it didn't start with a 0. The IT zombies tried to convince me once and again that I was inserting my password incorrectly as the illiterate "sudaka" I obviously was. It wasn't till I used technical jargon and told them to log on using the VNC that they took me seriously and fixed it.

  6. Yes on Is $699 Too Much For a 13.3-inch Android E-ink Reader? · · Score: 2

    It's a shame e-reader development suffered death by tablet. Paperback sized ones are extremely cheap but seldom work as readers for anything else. I got myself a a Samsung Galaxy Pro 8 inch in order to read technical and medical books, but I know an e-ink version would be lighter, with more battery time and easier on the eyes.

  7. Re:Anonymous became a tool of establishment on Anonymous Hacker Gets Lost At Sea, Rescued, Then Arrested (softpedia.com) · · Score: 1

    Now it encompasses those who want a lesser government, so that they can freely steal... (from their clients!), those who think they are blessed when they make money and poor people are scum, those who want to lobby the government to put its machinery at their service ...

    So, these "western liberals" want at the same time a lesser government but a bigger government???

    It's funny how many people push so much for an all-powerful government but only if it agrees with their ideas, then complain when the tide shifts.

  8. Re:Gotta move into a post-scarcity economy. on Would You Bet Against Sex Robots? AI 'Could Leave Half Of World Unemployed' · · Score: 1

    Still a lot isn't automated. I'm talking about self-replicating robots building and installing solar panels in the Sahara, doing the mining for the raw materials, doing the whole farm labor on their own instead of having africans picking olives in Spain and spaniards picking strawberries in France. Robots cleaning the streets, the toilets, building houses starting from the quarry and iron mines, transporting goods and people, making our food, clothing, appliances, etc. That's what I mean by "harvesting the resources".
    As long as one person is essential in each of those processes, we'll have to think about work: How we manage it and how we pay the ones that do it.

  9. Re:Its always been like this on Would You Bet Against Sex Robots? AI 'Could Leave Half Of World Unemployed' · · Score: 2

    Most of these poeples' wealth is not a salary per se, but a fraction of the enterprise's worth that they are in charge of making bigger.

  10. Gotta move into a post-scarcity economy. on Would You Bet Against Sex Robots? AI 'Could Leave Half Of World Unemployed' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Society has to take work out of the equation. Right now it's both a right and an obligation. Most of us must work every day to keep ourselves and our offspring alive, without time or energy left to pursue our goals during our half a century of really usable lifespan. In a few decades the machines will harvest the resources and produce what's needed to keep everyone on earth alive. And perhaps AI will stampede in, solving most of our ideological differences with the most efficient strategies. The military robots will be able to neautralize every human on earth if needed.

    The question is: WHO WILL BE IN CHARGE? Will the current richest people enforce their property rights, will it be the governments by wiping away all of them (property rights)?
    Will it be Star Trek or Elysium?

  11. String theory? on Dark Matter Grows Hair Around Stars and Planets (forbes.com) · · Score: 1

    Does this have something to do with string theory?

  12. Re:I would sell it on Ask Slashdot: If Public Transport Was Free, Would You Leave Your Car At Home? · · Score: 1

    I work at two places. One of them has only 4 buses a day and it's a 35-min drive which I always do. The other one means taking the car to the train station (5-7 min), riding an hourly train for an hour and walking 15 min afterwards. It takes me 20 minutes more than by car, costs half and lets me rest and read. The only problem is: On some months the trains come less often and there's been days when I've finished at 13h and arrived home at 16h. Nevertheless, I take the train for this one as often as possible.

  13. Re:Someone gave them the wrong email address on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Ongoing Suspected Identity Theft? · · Score: 1

    I get credit card reports for a guy in South America. The return address is a non-read account and the only way to contact the company is by making a phone call there. So I just delete the emails.

  14. Re:Subsidized tin foil hats: Only in Sweden. on The Town That Banned Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Thank you for the comment. It's very difficult not to believe news that say Sweden makes it too easy for people to live off the state.

  15. Re:My Samsung Laptop on Samsung Cripples Windows Update To Prevent Incompatible Drivers · · Score: 1

    I mean, making the controls non standard so that it has to load a huge program whenever I press the brightness keys.
    HDD cadies for CD bay are available.

  16. Re:My Samsung Laptop on Samsung Cripples Windows Update To Prevent Incompatible Drivers · · Score: 1

    I've been thinking about installing a small SDD and putting the big, slow one into a CD-bay caddy. But the problem comes from Samsung making it non standard.

  17. My Samsung Laptop on Samsung Cripples Windows Update To Prevent Incompatible Drivers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bought a Samsung laptop. i5, 6gb ram, Hybrid NVIDIA and Intel graphics, 750gb HDD, DVD burner. It is light, well powered and cost efficient back in 2011. Windows 7-64 bit. Problem is: Even the keyboard hotkeys such as screen brightness, WiFi, etc. work only through a "Control panel" that takes ages to load. Volume keys don't work within a game and sometimes the trackpad stops working after sleeping. And also I don't dare installing Linux on it because I read about severe cases of linux bricking the UEFI and rendering the laptop completerly useless.

    Alas, after you start it up (either from off or sleeping) and wait the 10-15 minutes for the HDD to calm down (after stripping down the startup, defragmenting, ccleaner and the such) it runs really well.

  18. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid on The Town That Banned Wi-Fi · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA:

    “I encourage scientists to go to where we are and measure the environment,” she replied. “Don’t try to pretend that you’re God and expose us to different frequencies in a lab. That’s like taking someone and breaking their legs and asking how much it hurts.”
    “Conventional government-funded science isn’t a reliable indicator of health defects,” she told me. “There’s a vested interest in keeping the truth out of circulation. But the independent science isn’t sceptical about it at all.”
    And "Eventually I established that I was reacting to a buried cellphone tower. US Cellular was the brand – I didn’t react to AT&T, Spring or Cellular One towers.” She reeled off the names as if it would be the most normal thing in the world to have a brand-specific allergy."

    Many of them are not willing to take part on experiments. And if they do, they can always say science is flawed, the symptoms are frequency- or even brand-specific and if all else fails, you know: "It's a conspiration and I felt bad throughout the whole experiment because chemtrails."

  19. Subsidized tin foil hats: Only in Sweden. on The Town That Banned Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    From TFA: "Sweden is one of the few places to recognise electrosensitivity as a disability and the government will help sufferers insulate their homes."
    I suppose they can also apply for full disability and a pension because they cannot work in any modern environment.

  20. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid on The Town That Banned Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Because mental disorders are taboo and nobody dares messing with those wackos.

  21. It's dangerous to go alone on Facebook's Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory · · Score: 1

    Most news sites use Facebook for posting comments. The country I live in is into a lot of political turmoil right now and not only is my name unique but muy workplace lists me very fondly, so anyone wishing to find me and break my face could do it.
    We all know about the teams whose job is to swing political opinion by means of fake accounts with real sounding names. It would seem like nothing is being done against those. On the other hand, many of my friends have fiddled with their screen names and pictures to the point of becoming irecognizable by their contacts out of fear of being harrassed or tagged in a defamatory post.

  22. As a neurologist... on Paramedics Use Google Translate While Delivering Baby · · Score: 1

    I use google translate pretty often with my foreign patients. My practice is located in the coast of Spain and even though I also speak french and german, sometimes I must deal with scandinavians, russians and eastern europeans.

  23. The Selfish Gene on Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Favors Cooperation's Collapse · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is explained in Dawkins' book. It's an evolutionary stable strategy.

  24. Re:Not in Spain... on Utilities Should Worry; Rooftop Solar Could Soon Cut Their Profit · · Score: 1

    I don't know why you've been downmodded. This is for real.

  25. 419 on New Nigerian ID Card Includes Prepay MasterCard Wallet · · Score: 1, Funny

    'nuff said!