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User: jedidiah

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  1. Re:Meh. on New Virus Means Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible · · Score: 0

    Yes, but bleeding hearts that insist that quarantine in "anti-scientific" may well kill me personally. The threat level of Ebola is proportional to how close you are to it. It's not just some random thing.

    Most of the rest of the country can get on their high horse and pretend how they are smarter than those of us for which this stuff isn't a news entertainment product.

  2. Re:Meh. on New Virus Means Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible · · Score: 0

    > Right-- so why is everyone pushing flu vaccines to non-old, non-young people?

    Money. There is money to be made. This is Ayn Rand infected consumer culture we're talking about here. It's all about the money.

  3. Re:Meh. on New Virus Means Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible · · Score: 1

    Yes. Lack of infastructure seems to be more of a problem than the disease itself. This is a disease that has no cure but can be managed through treatment of the symptoms. Except those are dire enough in the early stages that they require considerable resources.

    Plus all of the fluids that have to be replaced are highly infectious and a great danger to healthcare workers.

  4. Re:HDD endurance? on Consumer-Grade SSDs Survive Two Petabytes of Writes · · Score: 2

    A PVR drive could easily see 17TB of writes during a year and that's just a very conservative estimate based on a small number of tuners and broadcast content.

  5. Re:5th Admendment? on 18th Century Law Dredged Up To Force Decryption of Devices · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This just goes to show that "shredding the Constitution" has been going on for a very long time. The feds pretty much started as soon as they possibly could.

    There's always some idiot that thinks a small dose of tyranny will be OK.

  6. Re:General applicability on Want To Work For a Cool Tech Company? Hone Your Social Skills · · Score: 1

    I really have no desire to do nothing but sit in meetings all day.

    That's what's meant by a position that's not a "dead end". You get promoted up into management where you no longer do technical work anymore. You need those "social skills" because those are the only skills you end up using.

    My first tech manager quit his manager position in order to move on to a purely tech position.

  7. Re:Skilled Introverted programmers need not apply on Want To Work For a Cool Tech Company? Hone Your Social Skills · · Score: 1

    There are so many candidates that have such an obvious lack of any technical skill or talent, that companies really can't turn away people that are actually able to do the work. Perhaps this is part of the perception that there is some sort of "shortage". They want an ideal perfect fit but that simply doesn't exist.

    If I could "do it all" I would not let someone else exploit my labor. I would work for myself and keep most of the value of my skill for myself instead of letting someone else take it.

  8. Re:I'll never be employed on Want To Work For a Cool Tech Company? Hone Your Social Skills · · Score: 1

    As a freak, I have always found it much easier to fit in with the small companies. It's the larger companies with all of the political nonsense and high degree of specialization that push your tech skills to the back burner.

    Smaller companies have fewer of the kind of people that require better social skills to deal with.

  9. Re: Cheers for Mint on Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon and MATE Editions Released · · Score: 1

    There's no need to re-invent anything.

    We just need to prevent bored children from ripping apart what's already working perfectly well. They can even be free to create something that's a more primitive sort of throwback.

    Sabotaging what already works really isn't necessary.

  10. Re:Cinnamon and MATE on Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon and MATE Editions Released · · Score: 1

    Some features are all about usability.

    This is how Macs in 2014 trying to mock features of X window managers manage to screw things up relative to a 20 year old copy of twm.

    They confuse eye candy (or even crippling) with usability.

  11. Re:Knee-jerk... on UK Police To Publicly Shame Drunk Drivers On Twitter This Christmas · · Score: 1

    My local PD publishes incident numbers and a vague description of what the incident was about. There is no identifiable information disclosed. If you want identifiable information, you have to go through the whole rigamarole of a "freedom of information" request.

    They don't just "let it all hang out" or anything remotely close to that.

  12. Re:Cheers for Mint on Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon and MATE Editions Released · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Age has nothing to do with being unable to deal with technology. Some people are just idiots or choose to be helpless. This cuts across all age groups. So you can have some ancient person pushing 100 that's better able to adapt to new tech than one of her children or even one of her grandchildren.

    A lot of the people that can handle new things could always handle new things and will be able to handle new things when they're past 90.

  13. Re:No clue? on Google Should Be Broken Up, Say European MPs · · Score: 1

    Regulating in this case is stupid. There is no natural physical monopoly in search to make it comparable to a railroad. There isn't any vendor lock problem to make it comparable to Windows or IE.

    Search is a commodity like orange juice concentrate. Anyone can do it and the cost to switch from one provider to another is ZERO.

    The question of "why can't the OS monopoly get ahead in search" is an interesting one but not one that by default justifies the kind of breakup that should have happened to Microsoft but no one had the balls for.

    "Crimes" usually have "elements" that you have to prove.

  14. Re:Shyeah, right. on Is LTO Tape On Its Way Out? · · Score: 1

    70G is less space than I have on my phone.

    A 70G tape seems silly in an age of cheap 64G thumb drives.

  15. Re:Spinning storage is king... on How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive · · Score: 1

    > For $150 you can get a SSD with plenty of space for the vast majority of desktop roles,

    Bullshit.

    A $150 SSD will only be good enough for a machine you are using like a terminal. Anything beyond that and you will need more space.

    I want more storage in my PHONE than that.

  16. Re:What about long-term data integrity? on How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive · · Score: 1

    Exactly. RAID prevents a drive failure from being an immediate data loss.

    Plus, RAID allows me to keep all of my bulk storage online while I am replacing a drive. That portion of my data hoard is not completely unavailable to me while I am copying data to the replacement drive.

    Of course you want at least 2 copies of your data.

    This is where the relative cheapness of HDD wins the day. You don't just need 1x of what you think you need but at least 2x.

    Yes. Take that large number associated with SSD tech and DOUBLE it.

  17. Re:Really? on How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not disingenuous at all. It merely demonstrates the primary problem here, namely the price gap. Larger SSD drives are low capacity and expensive. They are priced outside the range of most consumers while also being inferior in terms of bulk storage. A larger SSD is less able to justify it's price premium than a larger HDD.

    Even if SSD prices get less ridiculous, chances are that HDD prices/capacity will keep pace and continue to keep HDDs relevant.

  18. Re:Sure, but speed... on How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive · · Score: 1

    So you would pay $1200 for a hard drive "without hesitation"?

    REALLY?

    I find it hard to buy a mere 1G SSD and it's not quite as expensive as the thing you seem eager to treat as chump change.

  19. Re:The Same Game on Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist · · Score: 1

    Most of the kinds of people that immigrate to the US illegally have a total 3rd world worldview and aren't scofflaws in the conventional sense. The idea that they have to comply with the rules of some central government while going out their daily lives is an alien concept to them. They see things completely differently. They don't even understand things like borders, or national citizenship, or something as basic as a marriage license.

    A lot of people will take advantage of them because of this too (not just employers).

  20. Re:Number of interviews... on Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist · · Score: 1

    100K is only a high degree above the poverty line if you avoid popular high density urban areas.

    Furthermore, ANY professional position SHOULD be "far above the poverty line" as such jobs require a high degree of costly preparation. They require more than a pulse. Their price should reflect that.

    The price of labor should reflect the financial overhead of being eligible for the job in question.

    This sort of "You should expect whatever crumbs your betters offer you" kind of attitude is sick and depraved and economically unsustainable.

  21. Re:Number of interviews... on Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist · · Score: 1

    I think a question like this should be more about the applicants ability to "do something" as opposed to just being overwhelmed by the situation. The answer need not be perfect, it just needs to work.

    It's really just a low bar to see how helpless a person is.

    Can you take care of business?

  22. Re:Well Duh on Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist · · Score: 1

    Alternatively, we could just stop actively encouraging the exporting of jobs.

    What we have going on right now is the opposite of "protectionism". We could solve a lot of the problem by simply not doing anything. Doing nothing is not a form of "Protectionism".

  23. Kids playing doctor. on "Advanced Life Support" Ambulances May Lead To More Deaths · · Score: 2

    You have lesser trained individuals using more interesting medical equipment.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  24. Re:Eggs = Good on Interviews: Ask the Hampton Creek Team About the Science and Future of Food · · Score: 1

    ...except most of the pea plant is completely inedible to a human.

  25. Re:Eggs = Good on Interviews: Ask the Hampton Creek Team About the Science and Future of Food · · Score: 1

    An egg is a food capsule for a baby animal. That means that everything that is required for the development of a small animal is in there. That sounds like something that is obviously going to be some kind of super food.

    The same goes for milk.

    Plant equivalents will likely be less impressive because they are designed with the end result of creating a plant rather than a mammal or a bird.

    The usual hatchet job studies against eggs typically find against lack of moderation. If you simply follow the nutritional guidelines that predate the guerilla vegan politics at the USDA, you should not have any troubles.