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User: Logic+Bomb

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  1. Re:Personalised on Personalized Learning: the Best Education Or the Worst? · · Score: 1

    Each student's parents just need to hire an individual full-time tutor for their kid, who can then teach them in whatever way best suits that individual kid.

    This ignores the huge benefits in some situations of working together in small groups. Nothing in education is so simple.

  2. Re:Lutz also said design is the difference on Former GM and BMW Executive Warns Apple: Your Car Will Be a "Gigantic Money Pit" · · Score: 1

    If you look at car ownership from a demographic perspective, car makers are getting pretty panicked about the US market. Young Americans simply do not care about cars the way prior generations have. The aspects of "good car design" that won sales in the past are likely to be less important in the future.

    Established companies/industries can be disrupted when customer needs change and the companies don't change accordingly. Lutz might be correct that Apple won't just show up after a few years' work with a better car as we know them today. But it's unlikely they're even trying to play quite the same game.

  3. A TV show where nothing happens? on HBO Developing Asimov's Foundation Series As TV Show · · Score: 1

    Asimov's own introduction to the books talks about how little action there is. I don't have it in front of me, but here's roughly what I remember reading: There had been a long gap between when he wrote the first book and when his publisher tried to get him to write more material. He needed a refresher, so he re-read the original stories. And as he read, he kept waiting for something to happen but nothing ever did!

    Despite that, it was a compelling story and he obviously wrote a bunch more. But why would you make a TV show or movie out of it? There's almost nothing in it that's more compelling if you see it instead of reading it.

  4. A chance to work for doing it right on Ask Slashdot: Should I Fight Against Online Voting In Our Municipality? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You have an opportunity to help make your town a case study for doing it rightâ"which might result in a decision to avoid online voting. You can advocate on security/vote integrity issues by raising awareness of the complexities. Make a strong push for requiring vendors that don't hide their products' inner workings from their customers. Talk about the importance of being able to audit the vote.

    The big questions everyone should answer before making a decision are "what do we gain?" and "what do we lose?" I think people often forget the latter.

  5. Re:In addition to rolling out... on Cox Promises National Gigabit Rollout; Starting With Phoenix, Las Vegas, Omaha · · Score: 1

    I've had Cox, probably in the same city as you (given your reference to CenturyLink), for over a decade. Performance has always been as advertised, often better. Service interruptions have been rareâ"less than one per year. I've never heard different from anyone else.

    They recently replaced my modem with one meeting a newer DOCSIS standard, presumably anticipating the upcoming service upgrades.

  6. Re:Not necessarily hate on OKCupid Warns Off Mozilla Firefox Users Over Gay Rights · · Score: 1

    Based on that set of axioms, it can be completely loving to encourage someone to repent of his sins and choose to follow Jesus. Practicing homosexuality is a sign that someone isn't doing that. It would therefore be unloving or even hateful to affirm homosexual relations.

    He didn't "encourage someone to repent". He contributed money to an effort to institutionalize oppression in the law. His actions affected others, so those who disagree are entitled to do the same.

  7. Re:Are people not allowed to have opinions? on OKCupid Warns Off Mozilla Firefox Users Over Gay Rights · · Score: 1

    But in no way do I support the demonization or boycott of people just because they have a different opinion of something than I do.

    This isn't about someone's opinion of wheat bread. This is about oppression based on a common genetic characteristic, and one that isn't anyone else's problem (as opposed to something like psychopathy). The struggle for gay rights absolutely, unquestionably, is analogous to the struggle for civil rights for african americans. You would have been against the Montgomery bus boycott?

  8. Re:Is this the 90s!? She's been trolling for years on Critic Cites Revenge of the Sith As "Generation's Greatest Work of Art · · Score: 2

    The brilliant and hilarious political writer Molly Ivins wrote the ultimate takedown of Camille Paglia's absurd intellectual methods (20 years ago!). Archive.org has a PDF of the original article from Mother Jones magazine.

    If you plan to read it, ignore the rest of this comment, but if you're not going to follow the link, here's the final paragraph of the article:

    There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole.

  9. Whatever Apple uses with iPhoto on Ask Slashdot: Best Option For Printing Digital Photos? · · Score: 1

    Every time I've done prints at local store, the color has been awful. Sometimes the image itself turns grainy. The prints I order through iPhoto are wonderful, though I haven't ordered in a few months. I believe they were using Kodak's service, which is getting handed over to Shutterfly?

  10. Of course it'll happen on Will Apple Let Siri and Apps Connect? · · Score: 2

    Apple is pretty predictable -- once they've started showing their hand. They consistently take successful ideas used in one place and expand them as far as possible. Successful user interface paradigms developed for one application later appear in others. The iOS App Store begat the Mac App Store. So it seems pretty obvious that Apple, having introduced Siri, will expand it.

    Except for major OS releases to paid developer program members, Apple almost never releases anything with a "beta" label. Siri is labeled a beta, which surely is meant to indicate that more functionality is planned.

  11. Oh, please. It's an obvious shape. on Was the iPod Accessory Port Inspired By a 40-Year-Old Camera? · · Score: 1

    Let's say you have to design a connector for a device which is relatively thin, and is expected to get thinner in the future. Existing common connection standards like USB don't provide the functionality you want. What's the most obvious shape? How about a flat line?

    Wow, amazing work. I don't think there's much inspiration required.

  12. Apple isn't a software company on Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil · · Score: 1

    Apple's products are hardware-software bundles. Apple sometimes sells updated software to use on hardware you already bought from them. They also are a vendor of content -- none of which they create -- with the goal of making their hardware-software bundles even more appealing.

    Stupid exceptions that don't change my argument:
      FileMaker (a mostly-ignored Apple subsidiary)
      You can use iTunes on Windows to purchase music & video and never put them on an Apple device. This wasn't the goal of the iTunes Music Store, and doesn't make much money for Apple.
      The legions of 3rd-party products Apple sells online and at their stores have nothing to do with this.

  13. Are they counting free subscriptions? on NYTimes.com Reports 100k Subscribers · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've had a nytimes.com login pretty much since they started requiring registration to view stories -- late 90s some time? Right after the paywall was announced, I got an email thanking me for being a long-time account holder and offering me a free year's subscription. I took their offer, of course. How many of those 100,000 subscribers are actually paying?

  14. This is affecting lots of companies on Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List · · Score: 1

    My wife got an email from TiVo, and I got an email from some branch of Disney vacation sales (no surprise -- we took a trip to DisneyWorld like 5 years ago and they still have my email address).

    This is affecting a lot of companies.

  15. Re:They aren't doing this to snub the little guys. on iBook Store Features Leave Indie Publishers Behind · · Score: 1

    That works if and only if Apple tells everyone that's what they're doing. While it may be likely based on past experience, you cannot safely assume a company will do anything in particular.

    Innovation often doesn't come from the big guys. Experience so far with the App Store has certainly shown that. There's no good reason for Apple to only look at large publishing operations for input.

  16. Charge for tethering is a complete rip-off now on Mixed Reception To AT&T's New Data Pricing Scheme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ridiculous part is that they're still charging a fee to enable tethering. That sort of makes sense with an "unlimited" plan. Presumably, the plan price was based on an estimate of how much data you'd use. Since tethering will obviously drive up usage, that assumption is no longer valid. (This highlights the absurdity of so-called "unlimited" plans that aren't really.)

    But now that you are paying for actual use, there's no excuse to charge anything for tethering. You've paid for 2 GB (or whatever), and it shouldn't matter how it gets used. If you use more, you pay more.

    I'd really like to see a regulatory authority question that charge.

  17. Changes affect all AT&T customers on iPad Bait and Switch — No More Unlimited Data Plan · · Score: 1

    If you actually read the AT&T press release you'll find that this applies to all smartphone data plans. It's not just about iPhones. They're basically changing the iPad plans to match.

    As of right now, Apple's iPad product page still refers to unlimited data plans. It's hard to imagine AT&T didn't notify Apple that this is coming, but it almost looks like they don't know.

  18. Asimov himself said nothing happens in Foundation on Emmerich Plans Foundation As a 3D Epic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These are absolutely some of my very favorite books. But as I recall, Asimov's own foreword to the original trilogy makes the idea of a movie series seem pretty stupid. He started Foundation as a series of short stories. Years later, when a publisher was trying to persuade him to make a longer Foundation work, Asimov had to go back and re-read the material. He reports that, as he sat there reading, he kept waiting for something to happen in the story. He was right (of course): Foundation is mostly people have discussions. What kind of movie can you make out of that?

  19. Re:Maybe it's just me on TSA Changes Its Rules, ACLU Lawsuit Dropped · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that one of the primary issues in a civil case is whether there's even an issue that the court can decide. I believe one can ask a court to make a preemptive ruling. However, most of the time if there isn't actually a dispute the court won't hear the case. And since the TSA changed its policies, there's no longer a dispute.

    Now, if the detained individual wants to file his own lawsuits for damages and that sort of thing, that's a different issue.

  20. Re:Large scale Apple managed LAN? on Large-Scale Mac Deployment? · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are many huge Mac deployments: universities, school districts with 1-to-1 laptop programs where every student gets a laptop, Google (thousands of Macs), the Fountainbleau hotel in Miami, and more. Apple gear isn't always used to manage everything: most of these sites are probably using Active Directory or some UNIX-based LDAP service for account management. But there are plenty of large Mac deployments out there.

  21. Why ask on /.? Plenty of info elsewhere... on Large-Scale Mac Deployment? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why on earth is this being asked on Slashdot? Head to afp548.com and macenterprise.org (particularly its mailing list). You'll find info on InstaDMG, DeployStudio, even Radmind.

  22. It's called a DAM system. Do some research. on How To Manage Hundreds of Thousands of Documents? · · Score: 1
  23. Re:Punch your customers in the face, selectively on How Microsoft Degrades Their Users (In a Good Cause) · · Score: 1

    Just last night I got a phone survey that was obviously commissioned by my cable TV/Internet company. Among the questions asked was, "if your monthly bill went up by $3, how likely would you be to cancel your service?" They asked a variation of that question about a competitor's telephone service.

    Your example is funny, but don't you think McDonald's has done research on how long they can let a drive-through line get before customers go elsewhere?

  24. Re:Article text on Going Deep Inside Xserve Apple Drive Modules · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, it's incredibly informative for people who run Apple systems but never get hard information from Apple about these drive modules. Since Apple started selling rack-mount servers, they insisted that only Apple-supplied drive modules could be used. Server admins have always wanted to know exactly why. Is it mostly because Apple's trying to make money, or are there a good technical reasons why one must pay 4x the consumer-market rate for disks?

    AFAIK, this is the first time anyone has managed to pry this level of detail out of Apple on the subject.

  25. Re:Gun Point? on Feds Demand Prison For Guns N' Roses Uploader · · Score: 1

    ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense. I hate this country's legal system.

    Bernard Madoff, the people who ran Enron, and other perpetrators of massive fraud shouldn't go to jail? Someone who runs an oil tanker aground, destroying wilderness, shouldn't go to jail? Someone who launches massive DOS attacks shouldn't go to jail?

    Wow, you're an idiot.