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Comments · 492

  1. Re:Not Sure I Understand the Post-PC Concept on Alan Kay Says iPad Betrays Xerox PARC Vision · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...because it's a hot, power hungry, big, buggy, malware ridden, unreliable, overcomplicated, expensive, time consuming pain in the ass for almost everyone who isn't a computer geek (and that's nearly everybody).

  2. Re:Fanboy attack on Alan Kay Says iPad Betrays Xerox PARC Vision · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think what keeps being over looked here is what Apple brought to the scene with the iPad; an actual tablet computer. Prior to the iPad tablets were laptops without keyboards: heavy, buggy, hot, slow, clumsy, kludges that kept trying to force a desktop UI into a pseudo-touch/stylus interface.

    Apple broke away from that and their success in being the first to understand what a tablet needed to be and _finally_ getting the rest of the world to understand what tablet computing _should be_ can be seen not only in their sales but also in their imitators. Every other single tablet on the market now is merely a variation on Apple's success without any additional innovation in the concept.

  3. Re:Harmonising the tax standard ... on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I guess I didn't read #3 closely enough. I left with the gist that it inflates the the overall price to the end user but obviously missed the inefficiencies due to the dead weight loss. Mea Culpa.

  4. Re:Harmonising the tax standard ... on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    You forgot:

    4. VAT imposes a dead weight loss in terms of record keeping and reporting that's >> than a sales tax.

  5. Re:The difference between science and religion on Study Finds Universe Is 100 Million Years Older Than Previously Thought · · Score: 2

    Pffft...you guys are wasting your time.

    Those features were all deprecated in the last build. See the patch notes.

  6. Re:Goodness! Did sanity just prevail?! on Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine · · Score: 1

    "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

    A peaceful assembly of the people is a reasonable way to define a corporation.

  7. Re:Total BS on How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech · · Score: 1

    Which, painful as it may be, was the correct choice. Given the future state of SS's finances it was a populist mistake to ever lower the rate in the first place.

  8. Re:Total BS on How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech · · Score: 1

    You'd have to get rid of more than just the politicians. You'd have to get rid of the bureaucrats too. Plugging shiny new politicians in to the same old bureaucracy will result in the exact same outcome in a year or so.

  9. Re:I say cut the F-35 on There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon · · Score: 1

    You won't get an argument from me about the WSJ; it's really gone downhill since Murdoch got involved. Also try:

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/

    You'll not likely agree with him but he's worth a read.

  10. Re:I say cut the F-35 on There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon · · Score: 1

    Because the money to pay for that debt has to come from somewhere, and somewhere basically breaks down to: taxes and/or inflation. The government's ability to continue to play a shell game with the money it's taking in is quickly coming to an end because the SS 'surplus' has now turned into a deficit. Someone (read: taxpayers and/or people whose assets are in US currency) are going to have to foot the bill.

  11. Re:I say cut the F-35 on There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon · · Score: 1

    Listen, you have got to get your economic information from someone other than Krugman or at the very least someone in addition to Krugman. The man is a political hack. Based on your posts, here's are some sites that are probably aligned with you politically but are actually written by people who know something about finance and economics:

    The Big Picture
    Interfluidity

  12. Re:I say cut the F-35 on There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon · · Score: 1

    And the Supreme Court has confirmed this. Congress can stop paying any or all of your SS; you are not entitled to it.

  13. Re:False Takedown Notice? on NASCAR Tries To Squelch Video of Spectators Injured By Crash · · Score: 1

    I would expect that NASCAR works the same way as any other major public sporting event. You bought a ticket and the ticket came with terms and conditions (usually printed on the back) in which you agreed they own the copyright for the performance.

  14. Re:further reason for a popular vote on The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States · · Score: 1

    Let me focus on just the incentive to cheat aspect. As you noted, in 2012 nineteen states were totally uncompetitive. In those states under the current system there is zero incentive to cheat because the outcome is binary: either you manage to successfully flip a previously uncompetitive state without getting caught or you fail completely. The risk of any kind of cheating at the presidential level in these states simply isn't worth it. This all changes in a National Popular Vote (NPV). Now cheating in uncompetitive states can be very rewarding.

    Let's look at a close election: 2000 Bush v. Gore. Under an NPV, Gore's margin of victory in 2000 would have been about 544K votes, or 0.52% of the total popular vote. If you look at just two uncompetitive states, NY and TX*, you need only swing the vote in those states by about 4% to reverse the results of the NPV election (NY: 4%, TX:4.2%), and that's just in two uncompetitive states. Throw California into the mix^ and you now only need to swing the vote by about 2.5% in each state to flip the election. Spread out to all 50 states, you only need to come up with 10K votes in each state to completely reverse the election.

    You don't even have to cheat to make this happen. Consider the voter ID laws that are proposed or on the books in many states. There's a reasonable argument to be made that voter ID laws protect the election process by mitigating vote fraud. However, some studies # estimate that voter ID laws depress turn out of lower socio-economic voters, who typically vote for Democrats, by as much as 10%**. If we can assume this is true, and the recently rejected TX voter ID laws were in place in the 2000 election, Democratic voter turn out there may have been lower by about 640K votes; more than enough to flip the election.

    Under NPV, all 50 states have a powerful incentive to monkey with their voting laws because with just a little nudge they can affect the outcome of the entire national election. Hence, the eventual outcry for a national system of standards for elections.

    * New York: 6.8M votes, 25% margin of victory for Gore; Texas 6.4M votes, 21% marge of victory for Bush
    ^ California: 10.5M votes, 12% margin of victory for Gore
    ** State of Texas v Holder http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/415387/texasopinion.pdf
    # 2011 paper by Dr. Michael Alvarez of the California Institute of Technology http://vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/vtp_wp57.pdf

  15. Re:WInner-take-all == dumb on The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States · · Score: 1

    +1 for demonlapin, AC simply has no idea what rural poverty and racism look like and it's not pretty.

  16. Re:further reason for a popular vote on The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States · · Score: 1

    Sounds great in theory; isn't going to work.

    First, it's going get get dumped the first time the "wrong" candidate wins the popular vote by 0.001% and some blue state has to vote all red or vice versa. Imagine all whining about the 'stolen' election in Florida, but an order of magnitude more annoying.

    Secondly, it's a huge incentive to cheat wildly in counting the votes. In order to prevent rampant cheating, you'd have to get all the States to agree on a single voting procedure and/or control of their election systems by the Federal government. If the latter's the case, you're right back to needing to amend the Constitution.

    Finally, there are plenty of States that aren't going to want this. If urbanization continues then a small number of urban centers will be setting policy for vast areas of the US about which they know little and care less. How many bitter gun-clinging, religious, 'fly over' states want to give over their power of self-determination to LA or NY?

  17. Re:Place names on The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States · · Score: 2

    On balance, today's retirees are going to withdraw more from SS than they put in. Won't be true for our cohort, we're going to get less (if anything), but the scare quotes are deserved.

  18. Re:Buy local honey on Laser Intended For Mars Used To Detect "Honey Laundering" · · Score: 3, Informative

    +1 and wiki link to foul brood.

  19. Re:Boring! on Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change · · Score: 1

    Oh for mod points! Way to start my day off the right way! LOL!

  20. Re:Circular Reference on Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change · · Score: 1

    Raising the minimum wage has been repeatedly demonstrated to raise the unemployment rate of the people most likely to receive it and it's also reasonable to assume it's a contributor to inflation. Couple that with import tariffs and what you've accomplished is to throw some minimum wage earners out of work and raise the cost of living for everyone, effectively negating any benefit you hoped to achieve by raising the minimum wage.

    Tariffs impoverish everyone for the marginal (and debatable) benefit of some politically connected minority. You need to look no further than the sugar market to see a case study in how populist tariffs make almost everyone worse off and in ways that are hard to predict and control.

  21. Re:I agree. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    First off: thank you for a serious answer. I appreciate when people invest the time to make /.'s comments useful and thought provoking.

    My point is that it shouldn't have to be settled through the legislative or judicial process. When we're talking something as serious as killing a US citizen (or really anyone) our policies should have originated in the legislative process, not be an afterthought that we hope reigns in an executive power grab. It's as much a comment on how the process for developing the policies of the US should work as it is about the morality of using deadly force without due process.

    As I mentioned in another thread, and as I think the Wired article covered, this stretches the definition of immediacy to absurdity and practically speaking it means that the position of the Executive is: we can kill anyone, anywhere, so long as we think they might be plotting against the US. To take someone's life, I think you need to raise the bar higher than that.

  22. Re:Oh, the surprise. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Deadly force without due process is justifiable only when the threat of harm is immediate and otherwise unavoidable. It is stretching the definition of immediacy to the point of absurdity to argue that some dude in a hut in the middle of nowhere Africa represents an immediate and unavoidable danger to the US.

  23. Re:incorrect leftist BS on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    You left out an important bit:

    "... if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.
    (b) Whenever the loss of United States nationality is put in issue in any action or proceeding commenced on or after September 26, 1961 under, or by virtue of, the provisions of this chapter or any other Act, the burden shall be upon the person or party claiming that such loss occurred, to establish such claim by a preponderance of the evidence."

  24. Re:clear and present danger on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Look, who needs a Congressional declaration? We've got ample precedent of of declaring war on things with no Congressional action necessary! Have you never heard of the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty? Look at how well those two wars are going!

  25. Re:Oh, the surprise. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Yep, that's right, when Obama took office he completely replaced the entire US Intelligence apparatus! The people feeding him his daily intelligence briefings are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the people who were telling Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction! *whew* Bush and Obama both had access to intelligence that we do not, fortunately Obama has access to the RIGHT intelligence whereas Bush just had some shit they randomly pulled off the Internet. Hooray for Hope and Change!

    I, for one, welcome our new warrant-less wire-tapping remote control drone executing won't someone think of the children overlords!