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User: dakameleon

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  1. Re:Terrible on US Supreme Court Upholds Removal of Works From Public Domain · · Score: 1

    In Australia, our recently introduced carbon tax / emissions trading scheme ties the taxation to stuff that can't be "taken elsewhere": electricity and resource extraction. Power companies can't generate off-shore, and resources can't be extracted elsewhere. Of course, the increased tax will be passed through to the end-user, but that's where the feedback loop of capitalism is supposed to kick in and eventually move to lower cost options.

  2. Re:Olympics on London Installing Largest Free Wifi Network · · Score: 1

    Wait, you thought Olympics earnt cities money?

    Hahahahahahahaha. haha. ha!

    (speaking as a resident of Sydney, host of the 2000 "Best Olympics Ever", after which Sydney seems to have entered a malaise of government inactivity & decline)

  3. Re:North Korean State television Says... on North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il Dead at 70 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The true report is even funnier, that he died from mental and physical exhaustion from his dedication to improving the country. Can't make that stuff up.

  4. Re:Why would this be a surprise? on Fish Evolve Immunity To Toxic Sludge · · Score: 1

    This is not a biological evolution. We aren't born pacifists; quite the opposite, actually. A society certainly can evolve, and so does the "Life" game in a computer. This has nothing to do with biological evolution as people understand it. The rules of the enlightened society are not living in genes. At best our genetic tendency to form societies is not much different from the desire of dogs to form packs. Both are in genes because they are advantageous.

    Society is a meme, not a gene. (and not a meme in the cat-picture sense). Humans have evolved the genetic ability to communicate and apply memes on top of genes; another plus is that memetic evolution is faster than genetic evolution.

    So yes, you would fail a strict gene-only-evolution test, but that's not the only story going on here.

  5. Re:No iPhone 5, just iPhone 4s on News From Apple's iPhone Event · · Score: 1

    3G -> 4S is a bigger upgrade than many considering this who are on 3GS or 4 - the 3GS upgrade path is reasonable one, the upgrade from 4 much less distinct, but one that's hedged by those who didn't like the current design (like me). The design might be selling like hotcakes, but that doesn't mean everyone likes it - and some of us got our hopes up with rumors of a redesign.

    Yes, yes, Apple didn't promise anything, but nonetheless it left this presentation a little underwhelming.

  6. Re:Live? on News From Apple's iPhone Event · · Score: 1

    With a camera using the volume controls for shutter, how do you zoom?

    Pinch, or an on-screen zoom bar with touch controls. iPhone 4 has demonstrated this for a while now.

  7. Re:The Dock sorely lacks on Microsoft Killed the Start Menu Because No One Uses It · · Score: 1

    ...to me the Dock is nothing more than the Windows taskbar "quick launch" area with some nice intuitive activity behaviors.

    Where do you think Windows 7 got the idea from?

  8. Re:You can't trust code ... on Outlining a World Where Software Makers Are Liable For Flaws · · Score: 1

    +1

  9. Re:Sure on Outlining a World Where Software Makers Are Liable For Flaws · · Score: 1

    Nah, even with more-or-less universal healthcare in Australia, personal injury & workers comp lawyers exist. They just sue for damages, irrespective of actual costs incurred. They're rather unpopular, even when taking into account the fact that they're lawyers to begin with.

  10. Re:Old news: UK already tracks plates on Global Mall Operator Starts Reading License Plates · · Score: 2

    This, and the fact that toll roads and petrol pumps ("gas stations") have had this kind of technology for years means this should be a total non-story. The only innovation is that they're admitting the police might use the data.

  11. Re:Westfield not just in Australia on Global Mall Operator Starts Reading License Plates · · Score: 1

    Hence the title "Global Mall Operator..."

  12. Re:Oh no! on Global Mall Operator Starts Reading License Plates · · Score: 1

    Just because there's a technology which winds back the ability to be "lost in the crowd" doesn't mean that you have/had an automatic assumption to privacy. It's like saying that the police shouldn't be able to track a fugitive on the run logging in to his facebook account because that technology to find someone 2 states away didn't exist when we first established the FBI.

  13. Re:Slippery slope? on Global Mall Operator Starts Reading License Plates · · Score: 1

    a) now.
    b) never.

  14. Re:Slippery slope? on Global Mall Operator Starts Reading License Plates · · Score: 1

    What's a parking attendant?

    (haven't seen one in a Westfield mall in Australia since early 2000s)

  15. Re:ROM Marketplace? on Ask Slashdot: Where Can I Buy Legal Game ROMs? · · Score: 1

    The DMCA would only be relevant if you're routing around copy prevention measures. I don't know for a first-hand fact, but I wouldn't think that an emulator running a ROM from the 80s or early 90s is going to be dealing with much by way of copy prevention, software or hardware.

    Patents would relate to the method of rendering the game; it is likely the patent would refer to hardware and specific hardware-based techniques, so a pure software emulator may be able to route around that.

  16. Re:Full Kernel without C* on 'Cosmo' — a C#-Based Operating System · · Score: 2

    Too bad Visual Studio 6 was the last VS before .NET.

  17. Just imagine... on Tanks Test Infrared Camouflage Cloak · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Uh sir, I can see through my night vision a line of cows coming towards us at 40mph..."

  18. Re:Bad name? on Sony Attacks Microsoft's Publishing Policies · · Score: 1

    I think the classic was the Windows Add New Font dialog in Vista. That was a freaking zombie from 1991.

  19. Re:Bah! Pretenders! on What Is the Most Influential Programming Book? · · Score: 1

    Goto is bad because of the bad code it enables - even though fundamentally, assembler is all about goto (jmp, etc). A useful technique that enables code to be hacked to death and made unmaintainable deserves to lie in its shallow grave.

  20. Re:wow, think of the impact this will have on Making Fuel With Newspapers and Bacteria · · Score: 1

    So many good ideas run afowl of orders of magnitude.

    Well, at least you've got lots of chickens.

  21. Re:Why not Chinese prisoners? Even cheaper! on Crowdsourcing Makes an API For Human Intelligence · · Score: 1

    AC was replying to the implication that crowdsourcing is analogous to slavery, or that this involves child labor, without any evidence or data to substantiate the claim. AC's point was that these guys are getting paid for a job they signed up for - Blair1q seemed to imply this was not the case.

  22. Re:Actually.... on Mac OS X Lion LDAP Vulnerability Emerges · · Score: 1

    ...because I dont even think the new macs come with bonjour.

    Say wha...? If anything, Apple's increasing its use of bonjour. It's baked into iOS and certainly still being pushed in the latest OS X.

  23. Re:Interesting. on Gut Bacteria Exert Mind Control · · Score: 1
  24. Re:Why not Chinese prisoners? Even cheaper! on Crowdsourcing Makes an API For Human Intelligence · · Score: 2

    Interestingly, there's quite a lot in the UN Declaration of Human Rights but food only comes under Article 25, talking about maintaining an adequate standard of living. None the less, it's still in there.

  25. Re:Why not Chinese prisoners? Even cheaper! on Crowdsourcing Makes an API For Human Intelligence · · Score: 2

    You would have to assume the kind of workers being hired for this work have literacy and numeracy skills that mark them out as being above the physical-labor-sweatshop conditions that you're referring to there. The most likely employees for this work are middle-class mothers with some education background - at least high school - and with some free time while raising the kids. Who are you to begrudge someone to earn a little money for their time?