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User: Tony+Isaac

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Comments · 1,552

  1. Google's apps are less annoying on Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter) · · Score: 1

    Third party apps tend to be loaded with adware. Google may not make the best apps, but at least they don't constantly spam you with blinking, dancing ads!

  2. He wants Google to do WHAT??? on Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter) · · Score: 1

    "using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

    Huh? And they would do this by what, a mind meld? Maybe they should do this by creating...apps!

  3. Re:Yahoo spam filter works well on Ask Slashdot: How Effective Is Your ISP's Spam Filter? · · Score: 1

    I have a very old Yahoo email address, it's my name @ yahoo.com. I've never used it for actual email, I only got it because I used another Yahoo service, and it came with the package. So I've never received a "legitimate" email at that address, but I've received many thousands of spam messages. I started getting spam in my Yahoo inbox within seconds of creating it. I can only wonder if you've ever tried GMail...if you had, I don't think you'd be saying that Yahoo has a good spam filter!

  4. Re:Placebo Effect on Is the End of Government Acceptance of Homeopathy In Sight? · · Score: 1

    That's all true, but maybe we should let people buy their own snake oil with their own money, rather than the rest of us having to buy it for them via insurance or taxes.

  5. Re:Coming next ... Office desk telephones on So Long Voicemail, Give My Regards To the Fax Machine · · Score: 1

    My company of 80 employees has already done this, nobody has a phone on their desk except for the customer service reps.

  6. Insurance isn't going anywhere on Self-Driving Cars To Transform Insurance and Other Industries · · Score: 1

    Self-driving cars might lower accident rates, but they won't do away with them completely. Equipment, especially complex equipment, does malfunction, and there are limits to what equipment can do. There will still be unexpected icy spots that the computer can't compensate for, and blowouts, and road debris, and so on.

    And then there are the drivers of the OTHER cards on the road. Even if self-driving cars became a reality in 5 years, it will take years, maybe decades, for the cars to become economically priced. And then there are all the existing cars on the road. The average car on US roads is 10 years old, so we have to add at least another 15-20 years before the number of human-driven cars drops to negligible numbers.

    Self-driving cars will do nothing to change the need for comprehensive coverage, such as hail damage, or theft.

    Insurance coverage and pricing will change, but it won't be going away.

  7. Meanwhile, HIPAA fines will skyrocket on Report: Evidence of Healthcare Breaches Lurks On Infected Medical Devices · · Score: 5, Informative

    HIPAA imposes fines for each patient's record lost through security breaches, even if the medical provider "did not know (and by exercising reasonable diligence would not have known)" https://kb.iu.edu/d/ayzf that there was a breach. These kinds of punitive rules have scared the entire industry to death, and yet the open secret is that nobody is safe from breaches, or these fines. This story illustrates how the law has done little, if anything, to actually protect privacy.

    Most providers react to HIPAA in one of two ways:
    1) They over-react, creating stupid policies like refusing to tell even a patient's own spouse the details of a patient's medical condition, unless the proper paperwork has been filed, or
    2) They under-react, blissfully ignoring any privacy concerns.

    If we're going to try to regulate privacy in the medical industry, how about let's focus on the device and software makers with certification programs, and let hospitals and physicians get back to doing what they do best: treating illnesses.

  8. Re:Yep. I'd pay money. on Report: Internet Users Feel Powerless To Protect Their Privacy From Corporations · · Score: 1

    The problem with this idea is, they would take your money and and give you privacy...for a while. But eventually, the lure of big bucks would make them cave, and they would sell your data anyway. All this would be allowed by unannounced changes to the TOS document, which would be hidden away on the site somewhere.

  9. 32 x 32 = 1024 pixels, not just one on 1-Pixel Pac-Man · · Score: 1

    A pixel is just one dot, or as Wikipedia puts it, the "smallest addressable element" of a digital display. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... If each of the 32x32 elements can be turned on or off, then they each constitute a pixel.

  10. Back to the future on How Tesla Batteries Will Force Home Wiring To Go Low Voltage · · Score: 1

    In the 1940's, my grandfather ran his rural house and dairy farm on 12 volts DC, because utility power hadn't yet reached his location. Now we have utility power everywhere, but we don't like it any more, so we're going back to batteries. Funny how things go in cycles.

  11. Following Microsoft's Every Other Version pattern on Android M Arrives In Q3: Native Fingerprint Support, Android Pay, 'Doze' Mode · · Score: 1

    Lollipop is to Android what Windows Vista was to Windows: Nice looking, but slow and buggy. It lags a lot, sometimes to the point of entirely freezing up. If they speed it up and clean it up, I'll be very happy.

  12. Interest rates on Tech Bubble? What Tech Bubble? · · Score: 2

    Interest rates have been so low that nobody wants to invest in bonds or other interest-bearing funds. Where else are people with money going to invest? Once interest rates start coming up, the picture is going to change dramatically.

    It doesn't seem as bad as it was in the late 90's, when investors were throwing money at anyone who could do something "on a computer." At least this time around, most of the companies with high valuations actually do something valuable, even if they don't yet know how to make money. Still, there are a lot of crazy stock prices out there.

  13. Waterfall in agile clothing on Is Agile Development a Failing Concept? · · Score: 1

    In my first encounter with Agile back in 2001, our management decided to follow Scrum.

    We did the daily meetings, of course. Then we divided our project into sprints:

    Sprint 1: Design
    Sprint 2: Coding
    Sprint 3: Debug
    Sprint 4: QA
    Sprint 5: Release

    Needless to say, it didn't work out too well. Since then, I've seen agile done a lot of ways, some worked, some did not. Frankly, most waterfall proponents simply don't get Agile. Managers who DO get agile are able to deliver far better quality, in far less time, than any waterfall model.

  14. Of course it's secure! on Microsoft Is Confident In Security of Edge Browser · · Score: 1

    Nobody is using it yet!

  15. Old programming languages never die on Criticizing the Rust Language, and Why C/C++ Will Never Die · · Score: 1

    C++ isn't the only one. COBOL is still around, and even has object-oriented extensions these days. Fortran, RPGII...I can't think of a single outdated but widely-used language that has every gone away.

  16. Tablet sales aren't doing so hot either on Ask Slashdot: What's the Future of Desktop Applications? · · Score: 1

    Tablet sales have slumped this year. Why? I'd guess that it's because everybody who wants one, already has one...and new versions of tablets aren't that much different from the previous versions.

    Desktop sales are down too, but that's in large part because they last longer these days. We used to replace them every three years, now a computer can last 5-7 years or more. The desktop certainly isn't dead!

  17. It depends on your goal on Is It Worth Learning a Little-Known Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    If you simply have intellectual curiosity, why not? But if you want to use your knowledge commercially, you might want to focus on languages that businesses actually use. A language is much more than a set of syntax, it's an ecosystem. Try finding code snips on StackOverflow for your new language...good luck with that! The majority of the benefit of using a particular language is not the syntax, but the community support.

  18. Scientifically driven politics on House Panel Holds Hearing On "Politically Driven Science" - Without Scientists · · Score: 4, Funny

    This gives me an idea...

    Let's hold a hearing on scientifically driven politics, and don't invite the politicians!

    Better still, let's just leave out the politicians altogether. Only problem is, then suddenly scientists would become politicians.

  19. When ONE student fails a class... on University Overrules Professor Who Failed Entire Management Class · · Score: 1

    ...it's probably the student's fault. When the whole class fails, it's probably the teacher's fault.

  20. Re:The median age of McDonald's employees on Median Age At Google Is 29, Says Age Discrimination Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Neither does Google. It's more that older people no longer want to put up with the stuff Google wants from its workers.

  21. The median age of McDonald's employees on Median Age At Google Is 29, Says Age Discrimination Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    ...has to be pretty low too. They hire any teenager who will show up and punch a clock. But who is complaining? Should we sue McDonald's because they create opportunities for people who need that very first job? (Wait, somebody probably IS suing them for this.)

    This isn't about hiring integrity, it's pure and simple, about extorting some money out of deep pockets.

  22. Biometric honesty on Swallowing Your Password · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Biometrics are only good so long as the device that reads your pattern is "honest." If you have to inject a device to read your biometric patterns, you could just as easily inject a device that pretends to read your biometrics, but actually copies someone else's.

  23. Inevitable on Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism · · Score: 1

    According to the CDC, about 1.5% of children in the US have autism. Of those, about 90% have had normal vaccinations. If you're one of the unlucky parents, you're going to be looking for a cause. Of course, it MUST be the vaccinations, what else could it be??? There is probably no way to convince these parents otherwise.

  24. Re:Graphing the data would help a lot of the time on Social Science Journal 'Bans' Use of p-values · · Score: 1

    Graphs can lie just as easily as statistics themselves.

  25. Much of this is already being done on Ask Slashdot: What Would a Constructed Language Have To Be To Replace English? · · Score: 4, Informative

    SIL (http://www.sil.org/language-development) is an organization devoted to language development in remote populations with little or no education or language definition. Although they don't create languages entirely from scratch, they do clarify the boundaries of tribal languages, create alphabets for them, and teach them to read. Because of this, many of your questions are well-researched; SIL is considered something of an authority on linguistics around the world.