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Comments · 34,276

  1. Or you just don't hear about it because they don't tell you. Younger teens are neurologically incapable of making good decisions about future consequences. That part of the brain is literally not wired up yet.

  2. Re:Embarrassment on UK Campaign Wants 18-Year-Olds To Be Able To Delete Embarrassing Online Past · · Score: 1

    You'll have to wait a little longer. Gen X grew up without the internet as well.

  3. Re:Embarrassment on UK Campaign Wants 18-Year-Olds To Be Able To Delete Embarrassing Online Past · · Score: 1

    Unless what you did in public was done as an employee, it really shouldn't impact your professional life. Unless, of course, you care to count that cookie you snitched when you were 5 as a crime for the purposes of that little checkbox on your application. And do we really want to hire you when we see that you once got into a slap fight over who had cooties?

  4. Re:The real benefit to this system on A Computer Umpires Its First Pro Baseball Game · · Score: 1

    You might be surprised how much more you enjoy the game if you learn more about the subtitles of it.

    Meanwhile, there's something to be said for the ability of kids on a sandlot to play a fully regulation game, or at least feel that they did.

    Finally, don't underestimate how much some fans enjoy booing the ump.

  5. Re:What is patentable? on MPEG LA Announces Call For DASH Patents · · Score: 1

    In other words, it's just the evergreened version of playlists and RSS.

  6. Re:How does the _market_ benefit on MPEG LA Announces Call For DASH Patents · · Score: 2

    The patent lawyers mad that impossible a long time ago. Given something you want to do, it is nearly impossible to search for a patent that does it in less time than it takes to implement it from scratch. Beyond that, if you actually do search patents you open yourself up to treble damages to every idiot with an obvious patent out there wanting to claim the rights to something that took you all of 30 seconds to think of and another 5 minutes to write the code. The current advice is to NEVER read patents.

    Beyond that, even if you find a patent that does exactly what you want and saves you months of development, nothing at all prevents the patent holder from demanding more than you expect your project to bring in for the first 5 years. And then, even if you implement something else you will have painted a big target on your back that practically guarantees that you will be eaten alive by court costs before you can even make a dime on your own work.

    So no. Until the USPTO and other offices rais the bar for patents a LOT, AND court costs are cut by a factor of a thousand or so, they will remain nothing but an impediment to progress.

  7. Re:The real benefit to this system on A Computer Umpires Its First Pro Baseball Game · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The thing is, I'm not so sure that I, as a fan, want to see the human element removed. Expanding the strike zone is a skill and a part of the sport. It's also a skill when the batsman shrinks or crowds the strike zone. The ability to adjust to a slightly different strike zone every night is also part of it.

    Of course, none of this gets the ump out from behind the plate. There's still the swinging strike to consider. I don't know of any machine that can make that call automatically. For that matter, there isn't even an unambiguous rule for what counts as a swing, so there would have to be a rule change to even allow a machine to make the call unofficially. Even if that is taken over, there's still the foul tip and hit by pitch that the umpire will need to call. Not to mention plays at the plate.

  8. Re: Seriously! on Hacker Set To Demonstrate 60 Second Brinks Safe Hack At DEFCON · · Score: 1

    Part of the issue is that the software that comes standard with Linux dwarfs what comes with Windows. For example, Linux distros typically come with and office suite (or 2), multiple mail servers and clients, a full development suite and many many more things that you must buy separately for Windows.

    Of course, you can easily do a minimal (base) install of Linux that includes no GUI at all.

    So, at best it's a matter of picking and choosing a kinda sorta apples to apples installation of Windows and Linux. Where there's picking and choosing, there's cherry picking...

  9. Re:Got e-mail this morning from mail.whitehouse.go on Two Years Later, White House Responds To 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition · · Score: 1

    There is a reason we don't call them kings.

  10. Re:Blimey on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    Perhaps more importantly, a good theory comes from further building and testing. Denying that it does anything and shelving it means no theory is likely ever happen.

  11. I sure wish we could get back to having dozens to hundreds of smallish ISPs to choose from. They did actually care and got things fixed fast.

  12. Re:Ironic on Police Shut Down Anti-Violence Fundraiser Over Rapper's Hologram · · Score: 1

    By shutting down the event where his video stream was (almost) shown.

    No, as long as they don't restrict the content of the bills and they do permit them somewhere reasonably where the public will see them. No dodges like letting them post them on the inside of dumpsters only.

  13. Re:ah, Tajmar eh? on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 0

    I was primarily reacting to rubycodez post being the 4th or 5th time he said exactly the same thing in this article.

    As for Tajmar, he is not the first or the last experimenter who has been in error, it's the nature of science. Remember the FTL neutrinos? As for warp drive, I can find no reference to him making such a claim. I can't even find a wild media claim of that for him.

  14. Re:What benefit to announcing it? on 'Stagefright' Flaw: Compromise Android With Just a Text · · Score: 1

    Agreed.

  15. Re: The argument is "leaky" at best too on Study: Certain Vaccines Could Make Diseases More Deadly · · Score: 1

    That OP is silly to call out the use of the term 'learn' for a non-sentient thing.

  16. Re:Blimey on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    If it is a parlor trick, it will be more accidental than clever I suspect. Even that would teach us something new.

  17. Re:Blimey on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 2

    It's one thing to question the very preliminary theory of operation for the thing, it's quite another to demand that it is doing nothing just because it would be inconvenient.

    My gut feeling is that whatever it is, it won't violate conservation of momentum.

  18. Re:The argument is "leaky" at best too on Study: Certain Vaccines Could Make Diseases More Deadly · · Score: 1

    Machines are said to learn, but are not sentient and do not think. Memory plastic isn't sentient either.

  19. Re: Looking more and more likely all the time... on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    They push against the propellant they throw away. You should spend more time understanding what was said and less figuring out a lame excuse to say someone is wrong.

  20. Re:ah, Tajmar eh? on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    We get it, we get it. You're the god of science and he's a doodie head.

  21. Re:Believe it when I see it on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    No, healthy skepticism allowed us to realize that the mass of an object won't affect it's acceleration due to gravity in a vacuum and yet not be on repeated expeditions looking for a unicorn nest. Cynicism would have us still believing that an object set into motion remains in motion until it gets tired, then it falls.

  22. Re: Looking more and more likely all the time... on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not necessarily. Leading WAGs include that it is thrusting against dark matter or space itself. In those scenarios, momentum is still conserved.

  23. Re: Looking more and more likely all the time... on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    But it's not generating thrust by microwave emission. If the thrust is of the form of action-reaction, we have yet to detect what it is pushing against. Hence the wild speculation about virtual particles or the fabric of space. Even those seem more likely than it being truly reactionless but it wouldn't be any less useful if one of those proves to be the case.

  24. Re:Blimey on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 0

    So the reproduction of the reproduction of the reproduction of the experiment still leaves you disbelieving?

    I agree, a scale-up is in order so we can get a better look, but surely by now, it's clear we are looking at something new even if it's not what we think it is.

  25. Have you used broadband at all lately? The only thing they care about is prompt payment.