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  1. Re:Already gone on Technology Heats Up the Adultery Arms Race · · Score: 1

    I don't know how much the amounts were exactly, but kitches are extremely expensive.

    And these people were notoriously cheap, so whatever could be done for less I'm real sure they did. When we did more extensive remodling my neighbor was replacing a lot of damaged wood in his deck and kept slipping his debris into our remodleling rubbish so he could avoid paying to have it disposed.

  2. Re:Already gone on Technology Heats Up the Adultery Arms Race · · Score: 1

    Yeah, they both had lawyers, and I'm sure most all of it was his ex-wife's attorney's idea. I'd guess he maybe could have tried to fight it but felt that the anomosity and weakness of chances to win would have just cost money.

    His wife only worked part time at a lot of low-end administrative jobs and I'm sure she had a lot of economic security fears, and I would imagine that a good divorce attorney recognizes when a spouse is at risk economically.

  3. Re:Already gone on Technology Heats Up the Adultery Arms Race · · Score: 2

    No shit is family court weird.

    My neighbor got a divorce. As divorces go, it was pretty amicable -- neither one had a substance abuse problem, was cheating, no domestic violence, etc. She became more and more religious and he grew disaffected with religion and wanted "more" out of life than her religious-centric world would allow. (This was his take, but since he was at the house a lot to fix stuff and waited on the divorce process so she could get a hip replacement, I'm inclined to believe he was honest).

    Anyway, one of the biggest snafus was that she received a $50,000 inheritance when her dad about 6 years before the divorce. They spent most of the money remodeling their kitchen, within about a year of getting the money.

    However, during the divorce settlement it turns out that inheritance money wasn't considered community property and he became somehow liable on coming up with a big chunk of it when they split the assets. In spite of the fact the money was inherited years before the divorce and she willingly agreed to spend it on the remodeling soon after receiving the money.

    I didn't understand the finer points of this, but it sure seemed crazy that the legal system somehow treated this money as if he hadn't been spent. It's not clear to me, either, whether she got a double benefit from the increased sale price of the house or if they negotiated down her share of the house since the dollars spent on the house somehow apparently weren't hers, even though the actual dollars spent came from her inheritance. Or maybe she was able to claim some larger share of the house price by retaining some kind of non-community ownership of it since the kitchen was paid via her inheritance.

    Bottom line? Don't get divorced, I guess. Or plan the financial end of it years in advance to shield yourself from it.

  4. Re:incremental backups on If Your Cloud Vendor Goes Out of Business, Are You Ready? · · Score: 1

    I can't imagine a cloud storage vendor allocating a LUN per customer. Cloud storage is likely highly abstracted in a way that makes "your" LUN not just some SAN LUN.

      Maybe in a data center where you buy storage on their SAN. Even then, they are unlikely to be interested in LUN replication to another provider even if you could find another provider running the same SAN at the same software level where it would be compatible.

  5. If we can't rely on procedures with ONE patient.. on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    ...what gives us any reason to believe that these procedures will work with more than one patient or even significantly more?

    If containment requires much more stringent procedures, facilities and protection than what was used in Dallas, it somehow seems even less reassuring because the more complex the protocol the harder it is to scale.

    I've never been worried about the disease so much as I have this kind mindset that seems to be promoted about how "hard" the disease is to spread "if you follow procedures". While true on paper, the reality seems to be different and I think a mindset trying to downplay risk, panic, etc has led to a dangerously lax attitude.

  6. They just want to regain authority on Flight Attendants Want Stricter Gadget Rules Reinstated · · Score: 1

    I can't say there's much good about being a flight attendant.

    It doesn't have that 1960s "Coffee, tea, or me?" glamour anymore. The airlines want to fuck them over on wages, work rules and pensions. The passengers aren't upper middle class people in suits and dresses, they're filled with slobs in flip-flops. Unless the flight goes extremely well without delays and problems, the coach section is a little like prison cell block, on the verge of riot at any moment.

    Many passengers are openly spiteful of the airlines and their hidden fee pricing and boxcars-to-camp attitude towards passengers and they aren't afraid to take this out on flight attendants. With smartphones everywhere, they know they're only a few taps of a keyboard away from public humiliation via Twitter or Facebook, something the media LOVES to pile on with.

    The whole constitution-free zone structure of airports doesn't help, either.

    I would imagine they want these regulations restored not because their tired and half-hearted safety speech is ignored but because they want to regain leverage over passengers who are openly contemptible towards them.

  7. Re:I can vouch ... on Navy Tests Unpowered Exoskeleton · · Score: 2, Funny

    You should tell him you need a rest.

  8. Re:Questiona re a bit sexists on Statisticians Uncover What Makes For a Stable Marriage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would argue that larger weddings are evidence of a larger social support network of family and friends. More social support likely leads to improved psychology for both partners and perhaps better support when the marriage may encounter trying circumstances.

    Cost in and of itself seems to be a function of narcissism and expectations that diverge from reality. Plus a lot of couples who spend freely on a wedding may burden themselves financially and face economic challenges early in a marriage when they may be younger and less capable of weathering them. Or it may indicate a lack of financial discipline which just repeats itself when married.

  9. Re:If you dare... on Oxytocin Regulates Sociosexual Behavior In Female Mice · · Score: 2

    There's an expectation of bad faith there that means that anything I say that's not overtly stating that women are an oppressed slave-like underclass with no rights is seen as a misogynistic attack.

    You're not acknowledging their victim status. They want to claim victim status because it exempts them from responsibility for their status.

    There are a lot of thoughtful women who have claimed to be feminists and even some who would claim the title radical feminists, but in my experience those that hold tightest to radical ideology often are the least personally secure. By embracing a victim mindset they are able to find excuses and people to blame for their status in life.

    You seldom find successful women who claim to be feminists, let alone radical feminists. They make take extra offense at boorish behavior by men which seems fair, I think a lot of men aren't aware of how boorish they can be, but the victim ideology doesn't resonate with them because they don't feel like victims.

    I'd like to see Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Sheryl Sandberg or Marissa Mayer engage with a radical feminist. You may disagree with these womens' ultimate success or skill as corporate leaders (ie, Carly killed HP, or other memes) but I doubt any of them would cast their failures as the result of gender bias.

  10. Re:I realize we're not supposed to panic.. on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    I think there's a big push from somewhere to "stay calm" and focus on how "hard" it is to get infected. Plus the CDC has a lot invested in their own credibility over procedures and safeguards they probably designed and recommended. Admitting it's easier to spread damages their credibility, and hubris and ego are dangerous in this situation.

    I think it would probably make sense to have some kind of special facility with segmented, on-site housing for medical personnel with mandatory isolated quarantines before being able to leave. Basically anyone who goes in has to stay in until a quarantine period and testing clean.

    Of course more intensive procedures won't scale if the outbreak does, which is the crux of what worries me. If we can't do it right with one patient, how could we possibly do it with thousands? This could very easily spiral out of control like a movie.

  11. I realize we're not supposed to panic.. on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 2

    I know, if "you only follow procedure" this isn't supposed to be a big deal.

    But what's scary is that with a very small number of patients (one) and likely a lot of attention to procedure, a healthcare worker got infected. Sure, we can blame sloppy procedure, but it happened anyway.

    What would it look like though if we had a dozen patients or a hundred or a thousand? It's real easy to blame bad procedure, but what makes us think a wider outbreak would have *better* procedures and more attention to detail? We might get better at it (lack of practice may be an issue) and we might make incremental improvements to the kinds of procedures we follow but we might also get worse, lack facilities or the inevitible stress of a larger outbreak might impede vigilance, not improve it.

    What scares me about Ebola is how apparently difficult it can be to contain even under ideal conditions.

  12. Re:Steve Jobs' products changed the world? on The Cult of Elon Musk Shines With Steve Jobs' Aura · · Score: 2

    I'll agree that Apple is a very heavily marketed brand and set of products, but I can't help but give Jobs credit for taking ideas and making technology accesable and usable to wide variety of people.

    And it's not like Musk invented cars or even electric cars, he had a vision of a better electric car and made it. And even if you argue the Tesla is a more visionary car than the iPhone was a smartphone or the Macintosh a computer, there would still be people arguing about its technology, limits, cost, etc.

    If Musk is the Jobs of the electric car, it'll be interesting to see if a "Wintel" or "Android" class of electric cars gets developed and how Musk's vision stacks up. Maybe Musk will be seen with some of the negatives Jobs is now, as a marketer of elitist products no better than their competitors.

  13. Re:More information: on Z Machine Makes Progress Toward Nuclear Fusion · · Score: 4, Informative

    Can you imagine if we put the war on drugs budget against fusion power instead? If we had started 40 years ago we might already have it.

  14. I can just hear Jennifer Lawrence... on Snapchat Says Users Were Victimized By Their Use of Third-Party Apps · · Score: 3, Funny

    Boyfriend: "Wow, that's a great picture....but after the recent photo problem, are you sure you should be sending these kinds of pictures?"

    Jennifer: "No, it's OK. I'm using this App called SnapChat and it deletes them automatically! They can't be saved or end up in the stupid cloud anymore."

  15. "Proper behavior" is always the solution on The CDC Is Carefully Controlling How Scared You Are About Ebola · · Score: 1

    Too bad so many people deviate from proper behavior.

    The challenge with these things is never the specifics of the disease so much as it is when the "proper behavior" gets borked.

    And that always seem to happen, otherwise nuke plants wouldn't melt down and other sundry disasters with a human component wouldn't happen.

  16. Re:Awesome on Tesla Announces Dual Motors, 'Autopilot' For the Model S · · Score: 2

    This must be the kind of thinking that generates votes for Republican tax cuts for the rich.

    The top 20% of HOUSEHOLD income starts at $101k. A five year loan for a Tesla with $10k down results in a monthly payment of $2,055 @ 4.59%.

    There's no way a household with $101k income could afford to make house payments and drive a Tesla at $2k a month. That's 25% of their income for a highly depreciable asset.

    Depending on their life choices (live in small, shitty efficiency, no kids, no vacations, buy everything used or Wal-Mart) they might be able to do it but realistically it's just nuts to assume a $100k household income can manage a $2k car payment.

  17. A recurring theme on "EconTalk" and this week on London Unveils New Driverless Subway Trains · · Score: 2

    One thing brought up this week was something they called Polanyi's Paradox -- the ability to do things without actually knowing exactly how they're done, what Polanyi I think called tacit knowledge. Riding a bicycle was an example -- you can try to codify it and tell someone how to ride a bicycle, but they won't actually be able to ride a bicycle until they learn.

    It plays a role in trying to figure out what things can be automated there are categories of tasks that despite their apparent simplicity defy automation.

    I'm less concerned about the gains to automation than I am in the way that displaced workers (and future) workers are treated in the economy. I don't think it's reasonable that the current "system" of brief unemployment insurance followed by basically spiraling unemployment and poverty is tenable. It seems to be just another way of privatizing the gains for business while socializing the losses, whether through cash payments or paying for the effects of poverty.

    Nor is just saying "well, new technologies will create new kinds of jobs" -- that's true, but saying "some new and different jobs will be created" seems to be a kind of a reliance on magical thinking.

  18. Re:Why send humans now on Proposed Hab Module For Asteroid Redirect Mission Could Support a Lunar Return · · Score: 2

    I think great reasons for manned space exploration have little to do with space exploration. It provides a sense of wonder and imagination that transcends all of humanity and it's earthly divisions. And manned space travel is human centric, so we end up learning a lot about humans that's valuable to living here, not just space travel. I think it also generates a ton of useful engineering -- materials, systems, technologies -- that also have use here and now.

    Arguing its less good science or not practical seems to miss the bigger picture.

  19. Re:VPS on Ask Slashdot: An Accurate Broadband Speed Test? · · Score: 1

    I usually like to build the file with random data and then run it through gzip to make sure the data is in no way compressible.

  20. Re:Orcas, Dolphins, and Whales on Killer Whales Caught On Tape Speaking Dolphin · · Score: 2

    Isn't the limitation physiological? Something to do with an inability to precisely control their vocal cords like humans?

    I thought they had taught a few to use sign language.

  21. Re:Miles to empty can vary on Fuel Efficiency Numbers Overstate MPG More For Cars With Small Engines · · Score: 1

    Don't most gas powered things have a "reserve" amount that's technically beyond empty?

    When I had a motorcycle the gas petcock had an "ON" and a "RESERVE" setting which could be changed to get at a half-gallon or so of gas not reachable by the "ON" setting. AFAIK you could drive with it on RESERVE all the time if you wanted.

    I would assume cars with a "distance until empty" display don't include whatever they consider the reserve range in that figure and probably the gas gauge is calibrated so that it shows totally empty without including the reserve amount since some people will drive to totally empty before filling up.

  22. Re:The vendor seems to be Watchguard on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With an Unresponsive Manufacturer Who Doesn't Fix Bugs? · · Score: 2

    That was my guess just based on my experience. Their IPSec client was from a third party and it sucked and then they switched to another third party client.

    The SSL vpn client seems to be less problematic but I've seen some people insist on using PPTP just to avoid dealing with any WG client.

  23. Re:Government involvement on Why America Won't Match Sweden's Cheap, Fast, Competitive Internet Services · · Score: 1

    And it could be setup to be compatible with capitalism.

    If the municipal fiber only provides the layer 2 component with layer 3 and up provided by people who buy access so they can sell services, it's hard to see how it would kill whatever passes for innovation in the ISP space. You could even pass a law barring the government from selling services on the municipal network, only providing local layer 2 connectivity to the hub.

    It doesn't seem like it would be all that different from roads. Tax dollars build the roads, but if you want to get anywhere you have to pay a provider -- taxi, Uber, ride the bus. Businesses pay a license fee to use the roads to provide for-profit services (ie, cabs pay for medallions, trucks might pay some kind of excise tax, etc).

    I don't hear UPS decrying socialism because the government builds roads that Fedex can drive on as well.

    Of course Cable and Telco hates it because it voids their monopoly even though they would be in a position to grab a lot of customers early on because they're already setup that way (ie, they have the billing systems, etc) and would probably retain a lot just out of inertia.

  24. Miles to empty can vary on Fuel Efficiency Numbers Overstate MPG More For Cars With Small Engines · · Score: 1

    I get miles remaining until empty on the trip computer park of my Volvo, but it can vary dynamically.

    For example, if I've just driven a whole tank of fuel on a long highway trip and I stop to refill, the miles remaining indicator goes up to reflect using the tank at basically highway MPG. If I start driving around town, that number starts to drop off with my MPG dropping off due to stop and start driving.

    It can go up, too, if somehow I drive the first fraction of a tank at stop and go speeds but then get on the highway (but I rarely see this because I'd generally fill up before a long trip).

    It would be helpful if the miles-remaining-until-empty value would also display the MPG value the figure is based on so you'd have some idea on what to base it on.

    Mostly it just doesn't matter, though, since gas is so easy to get and I never drive through some kind of barren wasteland where 20 miles makes a difference.

  25. Re:NO. This is not about "foreigners." on US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants · · Score: 1

    This is the most informative post.

    It seems like the key issue is whether property owned or controlled by American offshore is entitled to 4th Amendment protection from the Federal government.

    I would be surprised if there wasn't any precedents for this, although in past years with physical property the government likely relied on foreign law enforcement to perform searches or did so under the authority of a foreign government.

    But even so, it would be interesting to know how the courts handled an American tried in an American court using evidence obtained from that American's overseas property in a way that violated the defendant's Constitutional rights in America.

    If the incriminating evidence was obtained in a country where the police need no search warrant. is it legal to use such evidence to try someone in an American court where such evidence would be excluded? Does it matter who obtained the evidence, ie, the secret police in a dictatorship where their actions were legal? Could the FBI obtain the evidence in that same country (with or without the support of that government) by the same means?