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  1. Re: He's a *LOUSY* president. on Tech Leaders Push Back Against Obama's Efforts To Divert Discussion From NSA · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You give consent by not voting in elections. Not voting is a decision that gives consent to whatever happens as a result of your apathy.

    Not making a decision is still making a decision.

  2. Re:Rule #1 on How the Lessons of Columbine Saved Lives At Arapahoe High School · · Score: 1

    Anyway, insofar as gun is a tool of self-defense, its appropriate time and place is wherever you go, since you do not know when you need to defend yourself.

    And that attitude is one of the problems. I'm more likely to run into a loose screw than I am to be shot. Yet I don't carry a screwdriver everywhere with me.

    True, that is not life threatening, so let's change it up a bit. Statistically (and if you ask I can cite), one is more likely to die of food poisoning than to be shot in a crime. Do gun owners carry ipecac syrup on them to guard themselves against a poisoning? Yet they carry a gun, which is statistically less likely to happen. It's that sort of illogical emphasis on guns is part of the problem. America has taken a problem that is statically unlikely and blown it out or proportion.

    So we get a bunch of scared people carrying guns around, and every so often they get frightened and shoot someone. Or, even worse, they don't know how to handle or store a gun and leave it in a place where it is either stolen, or someone has access to it who shouldn't.

    The societal problem again boils down to: We have made something that is almost statistical noise seem like a huge threat to society, illogically over things that are more likely to harm us. We convince people the world is a lot more dangerous than it statistically is. We tell them they all need guns. And then people go around shooting other people and our response is "Gee! How did that happen?"

    Meantime the Swiss keep guns around only for national defense. They don't get their panties in a wad over statistically possible but unlikely scenarios and overcompensate, causing societal drama along the way.

    If guns are okay to defend yourself at home, why aren't they okay to defend yourself elsewhere? I fail to see the logic behind the difference.

    Because:
    1) As someone else noted, if guns are used to prevent government tyranny, this is an easy one. The next revolution is not starting at the Froyo stand in the food court.
    2) For self defense beyond defending one's home, the ability to distinguish friend vs. foe seems to be broken, and honestly, people aren't trained to shoot in public. How many gun owners have had training on how to handle firing a weapon in crowds? I haven't met one. Even police need specialized training for that, and they screw up pretty often. And as I noted above, this scenario isn't very likely either.

  3. Re:Rule #1 on How the Lessons of Columbine Saved Lives At Arapahoe High School · · Score: 1

    Legally carried handguns are very, very rarely used in crimes.

    While that's true, the behavior that sort of thing is encouraging leads to this sort of thing. If you want to look at the emotional/mental/person component of gun crimes (which most people against gun control insist they want to do), we live in a society where a gun is a condoned method of solving a problem. Self defense? Gun. Feeling unsafe? Gun. Black kid walking around in a hoodie? Gun.

    By making guns so accessible, they've been trivialized. Guns are tools? Maybe. But no one walks around the general public with a hammer or chainsaw on their belts. Other tools in society have an appropriate time and place, and we're communicating to our society that the appropriate time and place for a gun is every time and place.

    The point that the Swiss accept guns in households but not in public makes this point to their society very clear: Guns are for defending your home, not for shooting people out in public.

  4. Re:Not to rain anybody's party, but.... on Google's Dart Becomes ECMA's Dart · · Score: 1

    Google is gaining way too much power over what you over the internet.

    I remember when the internet was pretty open, until Microsoft got their grubby hands on it with IE. At first everyone was happy because Microsoft was giving away a decent web browser for free. But then they got greedy... What did they do again? Ah right, they created their own "standard" language that was only adopted by their web browser.

    How quickly people forget the past.

    A web monopoly is never good, even if people think Google is friendly. Remember, Microsoft was once held in as high-ish regard is Google was. But they changed from progressing internet standards to impeding them as soon as their game changed from an offensive one to a defensive one.

  5. From an Oregonian... on Oregon Signs Up Just 44 People For Obamacare Despite Spending $300 Million · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you want the real scoop, check out what our local newspaper wrote:
    http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/12/oregons_health_exchange_woes_s_1.html

    TL;DR: Someone thought control should be handed over to private industry, Oracle was signed up to create the website, they totally screwed it up, and now the website is basically useless and for a long while wasn't even able to sign people up.

    So while the public/Democrat finger pointing is good and all (and I don't know who wrote up this summary, they're totally ill informed, outside of Portland Oregon is mostly conversative, in fact here is a map http://bluebook.state.or.us/facts/almanac/almanac10.htm ), it's really that Oracle screwed everyone over. That's the real story, and the state is looking for a way to get their money back.

  6. Re:Demand for Microsoft Skills Declining? on Ask Slashdot: Why So Hard Landing Interviews In Seattle Versus SoCal? · · Score: 1

    85% of the PC market on Windows still means there is an active need for Windows software. I could see that the Windows development sphere might be saturated with developers (Windows or .Net developers are honestly the most common type of developers I run into, and I'm on the Apple stack side of the fence), but I don't think we're in a climate where most devices are running Linux. And Android is really a Java platform, not a Linux development platform for most.

    You might have 2 Linux workstations, but as of right now, that's not the market. It could be in the future with Windows 8 the way it is, but there is still a lot to be seen if Linux will take the desktop or phone (and again, I'm not really counting Android in since Android development != Linux development generally.)

  7. Re:One of the few times on Patent Troll Bill Clears House With Huge Majority · · Score: 2

    The House has got it spot on. Now for the Senate and President.

    It's pretty much a fact that the Dems (of which I have been a lifelong member) both own the Senate, and are owned by many of the people (universities, high tech, and so on) that value patents.

    The Senate will not pass this, and what a shame.

    The White House supports, and 130 Dems voted for the bill. True, more Dems voted against than Republicans, but 27 Republicans voted against and 64 Dems voted against.

    My guess is that voting against this is going to be more aligned with who's getting the most money in the Senate, regardless of party lines. I could imagine both corporations and education throwing money at this, which means Republicans and Democrats will support and oppose in nearly equal measure.

  8. Re:there's got to be a catch on Patent Troll Bill Clears House With Huge Majority · · Score: 3, Informative

    Anything with Chrome gets a "half truth" from me. Chrome is based on WebKit, and as such had a lot of stuff that was copied from Apple. I would say collaborated on, but Google put an end to that, so I'll use the word copied, even though it was a legally allowed copy.

    V8 is Google's original contribution to WebKit, yes, but it was very similar to WebKit's JavaScript engine (which leapfrogged V8 within public release in months, so V8 didn't really even bring anything unique to the table), and if you'll notice from the V8 license...

    https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/trunk/LICENSE

    "Strongtalk assembler, the basis of the files assembler-arm-inl.h,
            assembler-arm.cc, assembler-arm.h, assembler-ia32-inl.h,
            assembler-ia32.cc, assembler-ia32.h, assembler-x64-inl.h,
            assembler-x64.cc, assembler-x64.h, assembler-mips-inl.h,
            assembler-mips.cc, assembler-mips.h, assembler.cc and assembler.h.
            This code is copyrighted by Sun Microsystems Inc. and released
            under a 3-clause BSD license."

    They didn't even write the assembler, it's Suns.

    So their contribution to V8 was to bring a lot of things together, but it wouldn't have been possible with, again, outside companies and acquisitions.

    I don't have much sympathy for Google in the patents arms race. Google was aware what the rules of the game were, they were aware Apple had patented the wazoo out of the iPhone ("And BOY have we patented it!" - Steve Jobs, iPhone Introduction), and yet they copied anyway. You can complain about the rules, but Google can't say they were ignorant about the rules, and boy, these patents were unexpected. They very directly released something in conflict of patents, that's on them. I don't have much sympathy for companies that go out of their way to incur legal wraith and then complain they get sued. There is no "not playing the patent game." That's like playing soccer but saying you're "not playing the no hands on the ball game." It is what is it. Ignorance isn't a legal defense, nor is it a sound corporate strategy.

  9. Re:And why do you think they are? on Futuremark Delists Samsung and HTC Android Devices for Cheating 3DMark · · Score: 1

    Because under iOS, all binaries are encrypted and cannot be changed without creating a non executable.

    The name is irrelavant

    The combination of DRM key and code identifies to the OS the precise application and whether or not it's allowed to run, not the mere executable's name. While samsung have been caught with their pants down by listing using executable/task names, Apple need only boost applications according to a mathematical model that surprise surprise only includes benchmark apps.

    Oh boy...
    - The name and the DRM key are linked. New name = new DRM key.
    - As a developer, you can also assign multiple DRM keys to the same name.

    And neither one changes the outcome of benchmarks. Even if you change the DRM key, nothing changes. And, in case you don't remember, developers don't have to go through the iOS store to run apps. Non-app store benchmark matches app store benchmark matches entirely unsigned un-DRMed benchmark on a jailbroken phone. Which implies no cheating.

    And just in case that's not good enough for you, I happen to get beers with the guy who wrote Geekbench, and he says Apple isn't cheating either.

  10. Re: Close up and personal on The Art of Apple, In Pictures · · Score: 1

    Wasn't it Apple-Control-Reset required to reset? I seem to remember learning that in school, and Macs definitely still used that combo.

  11. Re:Huh? on Should the US Copy Switzerland and Consider a 'Maximum Wage' Ratio? · · Score: 2

    I'm the sort who prefers a more socialist state but I don't see how a wage disparity causes democracy to unravel. Bad education and information are what causes democracy to unravel. Not high pay.

    I'm not quite sure yet if I support what the article is talking about... but this one seems like an easy one to answer. Education isn't free. Those with money can get a better education. Those with little money get less or no education. It's all the same thing.

  12. Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... on Venezuela: Cheap Television Sets For All! · · Score: 0

    Have you even read Atlas Shrugged? Venezuela might not have been mentioned, but Mexico was nationalizing everything in the story, later followed by America passing the "Fair Share Directive" leading to "Directive 10-289" which locks the entire workforce into their current jobs and at their current pay, and demands that they consume exactly as much as they did the previous year. Thats a government takeover of everything.

    You want to give Ayn Rand credit because all she did was describe Communism in a country in a continent next to the continent Venezuela is in? I'm not seeing the insight here. Ayn Rand neither invented Communism or alternate history.

  13. Re:And people called Atlas Shrugged Fiction.... on Venezuela: Cheap Television Sets For All! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People said that the characters in Atlas Shrugged were two-dimensional cardboard cutouts and that real life is totally not like that... I guess they never went to Venezuela.

    To be fair, I'm pretty sure Venezuela is a parody of real life.

    I also don't think Ayn Rand was talking about Venezuela, or that most of her detractors would support a government take over of Best Buy, but you know, shades of grey and all that.

  14. Re:Which company bought this 'new' rule? on EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal · · Score: 1

    oh wait, no they don't, it's average for the USA.

    Well THAT's certainly a ringing endorsement.

  15. Re:surprised, yet not surprised. on Google Starts Tracking Retail Store Visits On Android and iOS · · Score: 3, Funny

    Google search has been added to Waze, and Waze alerts are now showing on Google Maps. That's it.

    If Waze ever starts "calling home" to Google, I'll stop using it. It's that simple.

    The Waze servers already belong to Google. It's already calling home. And the call is coming from inside the house.

  16. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone on Nexus 5 With Android 4.4 and Snapdragon 800 Challenges Apple A7 In Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    The NEON registers are 128-bits wide and there are 32 of them. If you have 32 bit data, you can process 128 chunks at a time!

    I don't think you understand how SIMD is used. NEON instructions only apply to 1 register, so it only processes 4x 32 bit at a time.

    You're right, I misspoke. The number of registers is great for pipelining and loading vectors of data, but you can only do an operation on one register at a time. Still a nice gain.

  17. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone on Nexus 5 With Android 4.4 and Snapdragon 800 Challenges Apple A7 In Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    cool explanation bro, but if so why isn't the i5s already crazy stupid faster than nexus 5?

    A few reasons. The A7 is a dual core chip at 1.3 ghz. The Nexus 5 is a 2.3 ghz quad core chip. So basically Apple is fighting with brains and LG/Google are fighting with brawn.

    There are a few reasons Apple's approach is probably smarter. First, the more you increase a chip's clock speed, the more power it's going to consume. Apple is taking the strategy of basically keeping the clock speed constant but making the chip more efficient, hopefully keeping energy usage in check. The Nexus 5's fast clock speed doesn't pan out so badly because it's a larger device with a larger battery, but in the long term it's probably not sustainable.

    The other thing Apple has going in it's favor is that in order to get the power out of the Nexus 5 processor, you've really got to get your app optimized for quad core, which isn't very common. Most apps are single or dual core, both of which the iPhone 5S's A7 is much stronger at. Sure, 64 bit requires optimization too, but for most developers, that just means a recompile in Xcode instead of implementing the trouble more threading (and Android's threading APIs are not at all easy compared to iOS's.) So more likely in real world situations, with single core and dual core apps, you're going to see far better performance from the A7.

    Google/LG do have a few things going in their favor. If they ever moved to 64 bit but kept the same 2.3 ghz frequency with quad cores, they'd have a monster on their hands. And with all their apps running under a virtual machine/JIT, they could recompile all their applications to run under 64 bit without the developer having to do anything at all.

    But, on the other hand, there is nothing to stop Apple from building a larger device with a bigger battery and doing the exact same thing, and they're already done the hard part. Moving a chip to 64 bit is not easy, but adding a few extra cores and bumping up the clock speed is easy by comparison. And there have been constant rumors Apple is building a larger device. Apple could also forgo doubling their cores and upping their clock speed and just pocket the power savings. It might make them look bad in future benchmarks compared to "Hummer" phones, but if they could extend their battery life dramatically people might not care.

  18. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone on Nexus 5 With Android 4.4 and Snapdragon 800 Challenges Apple A7 In Benchmarks · · Score: 3, Informative

    The main advantage of 64 bitness is access to a far larger memory address space. Yes there can be a few minor performance improvements with proper use of larger registers, but it's really not that big an advantage. Until smartphones and tablets start exceeding 4 gigabytes of RAM there is really not much point other than marketing to use 64 bit code on such devices.

    Oh c'mon. Slashdot is supposed to be the smart nerds.

    One advantage of a 64 bit architecture (such as x86_64 or the A7) is that in order to hold 64 bit data. But if you're still working with 32 bit data (and most of us are), you can simply load each register with two 32 bit chunks, basically doubling the amount of data you can hold on chip, and the processor has functions to support this.

    And if you look at what Apple did with the A7, not only does their 64 bit chip do this, but the new ARM64 specifications double the number of registers in general:
    "The ARMv8-A instruction set doubles the number of registers of the A7 compared to the ARMv7 used in A6.[13] It now has 31 general purpose registers that are each 64-bits wide and 32 floating-point/NEON registers that are each 128-bits wide."
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A7

    So basically you now have an crazy amount of registers, and an insane amount of registers if you are dealing with 32 bit data still. The NEON registers are 128-bits wide and there are 32 of them. If you have 32 bit data, you can process 128 chunks at a time! If you're working in float_16 with NEON, you can work through 256 chunks at a time. That's crazy good compared to ARM32. That would really speed up anything that works with media, images, video, animations, etc, most of which a modern window server does.

    But that's not really the end of optimizations. If your registers are large enough, why bother using pointers? And that's what Apple did with the Objective-C runtime on ARM64.
    http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2012-07-27-lets-build-tagged-pointers.html

    Basically, if you've got a small enough object type, like an object that holds an 32 bit type, you can skip the allocation of extra memory to hold this data, and just store it in the pointer itself. A lot of the low level and frequently hit methods in Obj-C (like the entire memory allocation tracking system) have been optimized for this, so you should see a speedup in even basic applications.

  19. Re:Walled Garden: One brick at a time.... on Google To Block Local Chrome Extensions On Windows Starting In January · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did Google recently buy a brick factory because they seem to be trying to slowly build a wall around their not-quite-as-open-as-it-once-was garden. Between this and some of the stuff they are pulling with Android (Play Store, API lock-ins) and Chromecast they seem to be all about turning down the openness lately. Come to think of it, that seems to be a trend (Skype, Twitter APIs off the top of my head, then of course that fruit company) lately.

    I saw this coming from a long ways away from Google. It's classic embrace, extend, and extinguish, Microsoft style.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

    "The strategy's three phases are:[11]
    Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
    Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the 'simple' standard.
    Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions."

    Google was only committed to open source for the "extend" portion. Now that they've got more market share than Apple on mobile, and they're dominant in the browser market, they're moving on to extinguish.

  20. Re:yum on Android KitKat Released · · Score: 1

    In not-unrelated news: You can get a Nexus 5 for half the price of an equivalent iPhone.

    Does nobody apart from me see that as newsworthy?

    Depends. The Nexus 5 has not been benching as well as the iPhone 5S. The Nexus 5 also is missing a few things the iPhone has. One of which is the ability to run on Verizon.

    That's not to say that's not a nice price. But it's not necessarily equivalent, especially if you're on Verizon.

  21. Re:All hail Apple's new storage technology! on Mac OS 10.9's Mail App — Infinity Times Your Spam · · Score: 1

    "The actual emails added up to about 2MB of actual disk usage,"

    So the 1,2, or 3 million emails occupied just 2MB of storage?
    Wow, Apple should be widely lauded for being able to store each email, including its header, in just one byte!

    It's 71 messages. The 1, 2, 3 million being mentioned is the UID being incremented, not more space being eaten.

  22. Re:What an absurd headline on Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life? · · Score: 1

    - UI: I'm not sure just how much hardware acceleration OS X uses, but Windows Vista/7 with Aero and Windows 8 at all times have hardware accelerated graphics for their UIs - eye candy in exchange for power consumption.

    That's a pretty difficult assessment to make. OS X uses hardware accelerated graphics, but if we're on the topic... Hardware accelerated graphics could take less power than CPU driven graphics. There is a lot of fuzziness here.

  23. Re:They Just Can't Catch a Break on Windows RT 8.1 Update Pulled From Windows Store · · Score: 1

    Yeah, especially since MS *DID* in fact release 8.1 RTM to developers early. So the question posed in the article is based on a false premise.

    Did that include 8.1 RT, or just 8.1 x86?

  24. Re:The reason why you're a moron on The Cost of the US Government Shutdown To Science · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least half the fucking country wants to see Obamacare go. Even many idiot liberals who have been Obama cheerleaders for years, are starting to change their minds after getting their (greatly increased) Obamacare quote.

    Ooooo, an easily testable claim! Let's get the latest poll numbers.
    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/327937-poll-obamacare-gains-popularity-amid-shutdown

    "The survey released Thursday found 38 percent of people believe ObamaCare is a good idea"
    "A plurality of people, however, continue to have a negative view of the law. Forty-three percent think it is a bad idea, including 38 percent who feel strongly about their decision. And 17 percent have no opinion. "

    43% is less than "At least half the fucking country", but it's more than the people who support, so I'll kind of give you that one, cause the real key number is next...

    "Only 23 percent of people would continue a government shutdown in order to strip funding from the law."

    If you're going to pretend to be doing things on behalf of the people, at least pay attention to what they're saying.

  25. Re: actual "platform" on A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy? · · Score: 1

    I am not a member of the Tea Party. But your understanding of Constitutional law is fundamentally flawed. Officially, the federal government is granted a very specific list of powers, known as "enumerated powers," which are listed explicitly in the Constitution. The Founders were suspicious of a powerful central government and thus severely limited powers to those explicitly authorized.

    From the first paragraph:
    "In summary, Congress may exercise the powers that the Constitution grants it, subject to explicit restrictions in the Bill of Rights and other protections in the Constitution."

    "subject to explicit restrictions" are the key words. Past the initial text creating the framework of the government, the constitution is a document of restrictions, not grants.

    The Constitution does not have to grant something like social security for it to be legal, but if the Constitution forbid it then it would be illegal. This is what the above poster was trying to in-elegantly get at when he said the Constitution allowed for "new technology." An air force isn't Constitutional because there is some understanding that the air force is a technological upgrade over the army allowed by the constitution, but because the constitution doesn't forbid the government to maintain an air force.

    If we as a people developed a problem with the government having an air force, or any other power, then we could amend the constitution to restrict the government's power.

    Of course, it hasn't really been that way since about 1937, when FDR threatened to enlarge the Supreme Court and pack it with his cronies if the Supremes didn't agree to allow the federal government to do anything it wanted (including Social Security) rather than sticking to the enumerated powers that were the only things allowed for the first 150 years or so of the US.

    The first line of the enumerated powers clause is this:
    "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

    There's a lot up for interpretation there, but it's fairly easy to see a lot of people could consider Social Security to fall under the general Welfare of the United States.

    Perhaps you don't, but without a more verbose clause, it's more of an opinion than rigid fact.

    Need proof that there was a fundamental shift? Ask yourself: why did we require a Constitutional amendment to ban alcohol during Prohibition (and another to allow it again)? There's nothing in the Constitution about alcohol or why such a ban would be illegal -- but a ban would have been illegal since it is not an enumerated power of Congress.

    General welfare of the United States.

    (Not saying it was a good law, but the Constitution doesn't filter all bad law anyway. Some of the initial Constitution was bad law itself.)

    Fast forward a couple decades and suddenly Congress can easily ban marijuana and other drugs. Why? Shouldn't we need a new Prohibition amendment for those bans? Not any more. Though the words of Constitution stayed the same, the post-1937 SCOTUS has only rarely held Congress to the original limitations that used to be enforced.

    General welfare of the United States. (Again, see above.)

    The Constitutional amendment may have been useful for reasons we're seeing now. A federal law can come into conflict with state law, like with what's happening now with legalized weed in places like Colorado and Washington. But because of the Constitution's nature as a prohibitive document, any state attempting to pass a law making alcohol legal could have had that law dragged to court and found unconstitutional.

    Another good example of this was civil rights. The states and the federal government existed in conflict until a Constitut