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User: mini+me

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Comments · 1,828

  1. Re:Why is this a surprise? on New Research Shows Cognitive Decline Begins At 45 · · Score: 1

    Either way, the point is that no school at all would make them pretty much useless to modern society.

    Where does this come from? Education is important, but schooling is a completely different concept, of which the benefits are questionable (compared to the alternatives).

  2. Re:A lot younger on New Research Shows Cognitive Decline Begins At 45 · · Score: 1

    I just turned 30, so it may be too soon to see the effects. However, I feel I'm in a better cognitive state now than ever before. I try to pick at least one day a week to learn something new, and that learning seems to get easier and easier. ...or maybe that is just distortion caused by cognitive decline.

  3. Re:Why is this a surprise? on New Research Shows Cognitive Decline Begins At 45 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's why people go to school when they're young and malleable

    If we lived in a world where the brain had no such limitations, would we send the kids to work as soon as they are able to and then worry about schooling later in their adult life?

  4. Re:Oversupply *and* higher wages? on IT Salaries Edge Up Back To 2008 Levels · · Score: 2

    I've written about this before. There is no incentive for companies to hire anyone except the very best. If the best are too busy, the companies can just wait it out until they become available. Unlike sectors that have been major employers in the past, like agriculture and manufacturing, where the is a physical demand to get the job done now, information-based jobs have no such limitations.

  5. Re:http://xkcd.com/936/ on Ask Slashdot: Changing Passwords For the New Year? · · Score: 3, Funny

    My bank has the same requirement. However, it is only enforced in Javascript. Disable the JS check, and you can use any password you want.

  6. Re:Good Android, Bad Android on Ask Slashdot: Best Android Tablet For Travel? · · Score: 1

    I just don't understand why a LACK of options is a good thing.

    Logically that makes sense. However the irrational human does not deal well with choice. Studies show that more choices leads to greater unhappiness. The additional options make room for additional regret.

    With that said, I would say we are pretty lucky with our current marketplace in both mobile and desktop computers. The primary choice is operating system, of which the choices are few. If you select iOS/OS X you can be confident in knowing your choices end there. If you are more adventurous, you can select Android/Linux/Windows and go on to have a multitude of additional options to work with. It's the best of both worlds, accommodating people with all kinds of personalities.

  7. Re:Hmmmmm.... on Ask Slashdot: Best Android Tablet For Travel? · · Score: 1

    He was referring to the kernel.

  8. Re:already got em on Civilian Use of Drone Aircraft May Soon Fly In the US · · Score: 1

    I don't know of any farmers spraying with drones yet, but some farms already using them for crop surveying too. http://www.oneearthfarms.net/operations/

  9. Re:First self-driving crash - who to blame, or sue on Toyota To Let People Ride In Self-Driving Prius · · Score: 5, Funny

    The driver. It is the one that made the wrong choice. Its sentence will be served by forcing it to mine for bitcoins on behalf of the victim until the sentence has been carried out.

  10. Re:Anti-Trust on MS To Build Antivirus Into Win8: Boon Or Monopoly? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why do applications need access to all of the user's data?

  11. Re:NoSQL = Lotus Notes database on First Look: Oracle NoSQL Database · · Score: 1

    CouchDB, yes. It took a lot of its design ideas from Lotus Notes.

    NoSQL databases in general, however, follow all different kinds of paradigms and designs. You can't make any blanket statements about them because they all were born out of the need to solve completely different problems.

  12. Re:Which would have worked... on Steve Jobs Wanted an iPhone-Only Wireless Network · · Score: 1

    For a pendant, he is not even right. If you read the marketing materials, Apple makes it very clear that it is iPod touch, and that iPod Touch (capital T) should never be used to refer to the device.

  13. Re:The rewards are too low too on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    It is not about appreciation, the problem is that science doesn't scale. You spend four or more years becoming an expert, but then that information is trapped inside your head, sitting there valueless. You can apply that knowledge for a given entity for a nominal fee, but you can't reasonably apply that knowledge for a million entities simultaneously. To get there, you need to manage a million scientists/engineers yourself, at which point you will be too busy to do any science-based work.

  14. Re:Dropping out saved me tens of thousands of doll on Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out? · · Score: 1

    I apparently wasn't smart enough to be accepted into college in the first place. So, I too went off to industry. Now I get to play lead on some pretty amazing projects and am paid quite well to do it.

  15. Re:the way to go on Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates · · Score: 1

    Why do you want to do that? They're never going to be in that environment.

    They're never going to be in an environment where they can't look up the solution to fizzbuzz either.

  16. Re:Everyone said it would ruin tennis... on Ask Slashdot: Project Scope For MLB Robot Umpires? · · Score: 1

    I imagine the next step is to replace the players with robots. Who wants to watch quirky humans swing strikeouts when a robot can hit a home run every single time?

  17. Re:This is nuts on VeriSign Wants Ability To Suspend Domains Without Court Order · · Score: 1

    The root of each TLD is centralized.

    Yes, but there's nothing stopping us as a collective from changing who controls those roots. If we want to give com to Joe Bob, it is just a matter of having everyone update their DNS server settings.

  18. Re:And how was society harmed? on iPhone 4 Prototype Finder Gets Probation · · Score: 1

    I found a nice car on the street. Looks like a never seen before Ferrari. Want to buy it? I'll take $5,000.

  19. Re:This is nuts on VeriSign Wants Ability To Suspend Domains Without Court Order · · Score: 1

    Build the distributed replacement for DNS.

    So... DNS? DNS is already distributed. You are, however, faced with the age old problem of how to convince everyone else to switch. A few takedowns by Verisign isn't going to do anything.

  20. Re:Justice is served on iPhone 4 Prototype Finder Gets Probation · · Score: 1

    IANAL but it seems the penalty for selling stolen goods should be proportional to the value of those goods.

    How do you determine the worth of the goods? It was worth $5,000 to a press agency. To Apple, it could have been worth millions of dollars to keep it under wraps. To me, maybe a few hundred dollars; I was able to buy the exact same thing about a month later for no more than that.

  21. Re:first comment! on Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright · · Score: 1

    How then does Amazon Silk play into this then? It downloads, renders, and caches remote pages in Amazon's infrastructure, sending only the modified and optimized results to the client. just like the service in question. Will web browsing on the Kindle Fire be illegal in Canada?

  22. Re:first comment! on Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright · · Score: 1

    A browser is a browser is a browser. The browser in this case was built on the platform of the web. If it were a native software package would you hold a different view?

  23. Re:first comment! on Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright · · Score: 1

    How then does one interpret the intent of a website owner with respect to user agents? Last time I checked there is no user agent verification service.

    If the owner made their site for Internet Explorer, am I opening myself up for a lawsuit if I visit using any other browser? My browser of choice will not display the website in the same way the owner intended me to see it. Logic would say that I am quite vulnerable as my intent is to circumvent the original software requirements held by the author.

    If you want to use the door analogy, am I breaking the law by visiting Slashdot? I didn't get explicit permission from this website's owners to access their site. I walked in on my own accord and I suspect you did as well.

  24. Re:first comment! on Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright · · Score: 1

    Where is this "Take Me" sign?

    HTTP, HTML, etc. are written as open standards so anyone can write their own implementation. Users might visit using Chrome, Firefox, Lynx, or a custom web browser that makes browsing real estate listings easier. You understand and accept that by using an open standard to deliver your content.

    Nobody wants a web that is legally limited to just Internet Explorer, we want people to use open standards as open standards. Developers choose HTML and HTTP because it means anyone can use their content using their software of choice, otherwise developers would just develop native software where they have much more control of use restrictions.

    When you put the content out there using defined open standards, you are saying "anyone who supports this protocol may access and use this content." It, again, is the reason why someone chooses an open standard over a proprietary solution. If you want to protect your content, put it somewhere that is not designed to be open for use by anyone.

  25. Re:first comment! on Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright · · Score: 1

    Making it publicly readable, even by automated agents, doesn't imply that you can use what you've just read in any way you like

    I have visited sites whose Terms of Service required you use Internet Explorer or Netscape. Under the precedence set here, I could just as easily be sued for using Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or even Lynx. None of those user agents preset the website as the owner intended either.

    If you don't allow any user agent to use your content, the whole purpose of the web is lost. Use proprietary non-standard protocols if you want protection from use beyond your control; simple as that. Standard protocols come with the assumption that anyone can implement their own implementation of the standard, just like Rogers did here.