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Comments · 1,259

  1. Re:Not Less Capable on A Sleeping Driver's Tesla Led Police On A 7-Minute Chase (sfchronicle.com) · · Score: 1

    Good reason to adopt the "detect if driver is paying attention" technology. Which Tesla supposedly has, because it's, you know, required by law.

  2. The problem is that as soon as more bandwidth is added at a cell tower, it is almost instantly consumed. There is way more appetite for bandwidth than carriers can add, and any order-of-magnitude increases in bandwidth are usually quickly met with new, more bandwidth-hungry apps. There were online radio stations, then grainy YouTube videos, then Netflix, and now 4K streaming over the internet is coming as soon as more bandwidth is commonly available. Net Neutrality can't do anything about this, because carriers won't add more bandwidth if it won't pay for itself before the equipment has to be replaced for the new hotness. They'll add as much as they need to to stay competitive with comparable carriers.

  3. Re:A win for me on Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Judging by the deficit... I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you.

  4. Re:News at elleven on HTC Does What Google Wouldn't: Sell an LTE Phone That Sidesteps AT&T · · Score: 1

    Right, and gold plated HDMI cables sound better.

  5. 40 Months? on Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years · · Score: 1

    "public-to-forget-about-it-within-40-months"

    40 months? How about 40 weeks. When is the last time you heard anything of substance about Fukushima?

  6. No Surprise on Hands-Free Or Voice-Activated Texting Not Safer · · Score: 1

    Distracted driving is distracted driving. It is a pet peeve of mine that hand-held cellphones and texting is singled out, vilified and viciously punished, while other forms of distractions are entirely passed over. Talking on the phone, whether holding it up to your ear or not, is still talking on the phone, and equally distracting done either way.

  7. Re:Meanwhile... on U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Receives $2 Billion From Japanese Banks · · Score: 1

    "It would be pretty clear that the subsidies were stupid."

    Now you're using your noggin!

    But they both got subsidies, so they are both happy, no? It's all about the votes.

  8. Re:Faith healing needs to stop on Interviews: James Randi Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    Modern medical science isn't terribly far ahead of the placebo effect when it comes to many chronic diseases including advanced pancreatic cancer.

    It's not a chronic disease or headache or nutritional deficiency, it's fucking cancer. Stick to curing warts.

  9. Re:HUD on Lawmakers Seek To Ban Google Glass On the Road · · Score: 1

    It is because politicians need a constant stream of menaces to show the people "they are working to do something about it". Why such viciousness and vitriol against talking on the cellphone and driving? Is it any more distracting than fiddling with the radio, tapping the GPS, arguing with your girlfriend, yelling at the kids in the back, drinking coffee, disciplining your lapdog, or putting on your makeup? Texting will get you into hot water, but even if you have an accident while doing any of the other distracting things, it's just an unfortunate accident that could have happened to anyone.

    Distracted driving is distracted driving. We don't need a slate of new laws for every new technological advance or activity people manage to do behind the wheel.

    The same holds for impaired driving. Drunk driving is vilified, but if you wrap your car around a telephone pole because you were too tired, or sleepy, or drowsy, or emotionally distraught, again, just an unfortunate accident.

  10. Re:Email is designed for this. on Massive Email Crash Hits Canadian ISP Shaw · · Score: 3, Informative

    The emails were received and accepted, but then deleted. There is nothing your MTA is going to do about this.

  11. Re:I thought MY US ISP sucked donkey schlongs... on Massive Email Crash Hits Canadian ISP Shaw · · Score: 1

    Shaw actually has pretty crappy caps, and they DO enforce them. My Telus internet usage has recently, in the last 4-6 months, been removed from their services page, so even if they measure it, they can't enforce caps, because users can't check their own usage. Also, Shaw fairly strictly throttles P2P, and is happy to serve copyright infringement warnings.

    That's not to say either one is particularly great.

    I used to have ETTS from Novus, and that was very nice for a residential service, but it is only offered in multi-unit buildings pre-wired for it.

  12. Pretty dumb... on The Accidental Betrayal of Aaron Swartz · · Score: 1

    ...for a supposed journalist. NOTHING you say to police can possibly help you, or anyone else, EVER. Period.

  13. Re:Does Broder not know how to fill'er up????? on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    Again, it's not about money, it's about time. It takes many hours to charge an electric fully at a regular power outlet. You'd only charge it up enough to get to a proper charging station, or to get home and plug it in overnight.

  14. Re:Does Broder not know how to fill'er up????? on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    The point about the charge levels is exactly that an electric car is not like a regular car. You can fill up a regular car in seconds, so going only 1/4 full is dumb, unless you're having money problems. Spend the extra 30 seconds and fill it up. With an electric, it isn't like that. Charging at a regular power outlet takes HOURS. So you only charge it up enough to get you to a supercharge station. Further complicating matters was the fact that a cold battery will read lower, and go up as it warms up. So it seems like a very difficult problem to estimate range, or how much charging you need to get to where you're going. Again, charging = time. According to the story, the Tesla rep told him the range would increase as the battery warmed up, so after charging for an hour as advised, he left even though the range estimator still showed him short. (*)

    Also, the charging speed is not linear. The first 50% goes quickly, but to go above 90% would take a long time even at a superstation.

    (*) This is where the story breaks down. Instead of "following orders" blindly, he should have stayed where he was, and kept charging as the battery warmed up, until the range reading allowed him to get to the charging station. Had he done this, there would be no story.

    Tesla is just being dumb here. They are hyping up this car as the vehicle for Joe Everyday, when it's clearly not ready for prime time, and is nowhere close to being a replacement for all common use cases. For example, as much as I think electric cars are sexy, it would be pointless for me to get one. I barely drive around the city (I work from home), and regularly take long trips (600-1000km each way), so a 200-300km range electric car is teh fail for me. Call me when battery technology makes the next leap to power a vehicle 1000km+ on a single charge.

  15. Re:fuck you iceland. on Iceland Considers Internet Porn Ban · · Score: 1

    That's not a very convincing argument. Child slave labour is bad too, but we don't make factories illegal, we make child slave labour illegal.

  16. Re:Racism is a cause, on Racism In Online Ad Targeting · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "What's racist is the "black identifying names" in TFA. Now that's racist. What? Because I'm a Caucasoid I can't be named a "black" name? Dark skinned folk can't be named "white" names? Fuck that."

    Again, not racist, just numbers, statistics. A person named "Lakisha" is far far more likely to be black than white. Why are people getting angry at numbers? Is an expert or heuristic system "racist" when it determines this to be the case?

  17. Expected? on Hard Drive Revenue About To Take a Double-Digit Dip · · Score: 1

    This seems to be the expected result of SSD technology spreading and becoming cheaper. Your everyday user can now buy a reasonably-sized PC with only an SSD for storage. Additional storage needs can be easily addressed with memory sticks, external drives, and cheap and easy to configure and use network storage.

    Optical is a bit of an odd one, but not totally unexpected. Online software delivery (no need for CDs/DVDs), downloadable music and movies, online and networked data storage, pretty much eliminate the need to burn a disc, and the lack of an out-of-the-box Blu Ray player in Windows probably puts the final nail in that coffin.

  18. Re:[citation needed] on BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This study says A, that study says B.

    Seriously, there are literally hundreds of climate models littering the back issues of science journals. Coming up with data and a model that fits some historical context is one thing, but we're still no closer to knowing what 10, 50 or 100 years from now will look like. When was the last time someone showed you the famous Al Gore hockey stick graph, without hastily and profusely making excuses about it?

  19. Re:Typical bad summary on BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes · · Score: 1

    Fortunately for humankind, this is not how we do science. It's not a democracy or a popularity contest.

  20. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... on BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes · · Score: 0

    The promotion of an idea is very single-minded: just stay on message. (Although even here warmists have shifted from "global warming" to the more ambiguous and all-encompassing "climate change".) While the disproving or discrediting of an idea is by its very nature multi-faceted. There are dozens of ways to approach it. Like with any movement or -ism, there are always the poseurs, hangers on, extremists, and assorted other rif raf who keep confusing things. To say (or imply like you have) that there hasn't been "progression" and dissension in the ideas and theories in the anthropogenic CO2 global warming movement is rather disingenuous.

  21. Re:httpS on Nokia Redirecting Traffic On Some of Its Phones, Including HTTPS · · Score: 1

    Whether they cache by default is irrelevant. Just because their system doesn't do it by design doesn't mean a hacker/insider couldn't modify it to do so.

    Except they almost certainly log the access information (URL, date, etc), and cache the rendered images, at least _sometimes_, you know, for debugging purposes.

    This is tailor made for a man in the middle attack. An insider can spy on any user at will, and most likely without leaving a trace.

  22. Re:Wouldn't it be better... on Colleges Help Students Fix Their Online Indiscretions · · Score: 1

    You are just a number. A face in the crowd. The company knows nothing about you, and has no previous relationship. One qualified person is as good as another. There is usually more than one qualified person applying for a position. As long as their system does not weed out ALL of them, they still have a few qualified people filter down to the next stage. That's all they care about.

    It's a lot like love. Because we all know /. is the home of analogies. There is more than one person that is a fitting partner for you. Most of us will stop at the first one, which may not necessarily even be the best one (and rarely is), but we stop looking all the same. The effort (and more importantly the time) to find a better one, or the ideal one, is not worth it.

  23. Re:Wouldn't it be better... on Colleges Help Students Fix Their Online Indiscretions · · Score: 1

    That's not how insurance works. It's all about segmentation. People with similar risk profiles go into the same bucket and are charged the same rates. The more buckets you have, the more flexibility in pricing (and consequently marketing and customer acquisition) you have. Customers demand it (I want to lower my insurance premiums) and eventually insurance companies respond (create a more stringent profile that allows them to charge smaller premiums).

  24. Re:Facebook has crappy policies on Colleges Help Students Fix Their Online Indiscretions · · Score: 1

    As Randi wrote in a tweet: “Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly. It’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency."

    To Facebook, it's about profits. FB privacy settings are purposely complicated, obscure and obtuse.

  25. Re:Sigh... on EFnet Paralyzed By Vulnerability · · Score: 1

    blammo - you should have checked if s was null first... Oh, and use that fancy try/catch stuff, all the cool kids do!

    The solution is *obvious* (duh), but the problem is not. You can't be putting an exception handler around every function call.

    What most likely happened, is by the time the string got to the strlen function, it was either assumed to have been security checked and data validated, or, the set of validations run was not complete.

    Shit happens.