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User: martas

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  1. Re:So....far more than guns on CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking · · Score: 1

    Being suicidal is not always a persistent state. Suicide is often impulsive, so your claim is not completely valid.

  2. Re:Immediate change in the ball shape. on Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Buys the LA Clippers For $2 Billion · · Score: 1

    No no no, it has to be a large white cube, with "BASKETBALL" written in the middle of every side in all caps. Orange spheres are sooo win95.

  3. Re:One of the classic blunders on Valve's Steam Machines Delayed, Won't Be Coming In 2014 · · Score: 1

    didn't know EA middle management read /.

  4. Re:Right. on With the Surface Pro, Microsoft Is Trying To Recreate the PC Market · · Score: 1

    It seems like you're paying a premium to get less hardware.

    Otherwise known as portability, otherwise known as the reason why there are computing devices on the market that aren't desktop towers. There is a power vs portability vs cost tradeoff, and the Surface is somewhere between iPads and laptops. That's all. I personally don't have a need for something like that, but I can imagine users who would.

  5. Re:Wayland is nothing until on Wayland 1.5 Released · · Score: 0

    And how often do you need remote display support while using a machine?

  6. Re:Wayland is nothing until on Wayland 1.5 Released · · Score: 1

    Huh, that's actually pretty interesting. Thanks for the link.

  7. Re:Wayland is nothing until on Wayland 1.5 Released · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, I mean, X forwarding is one of those things that you very rarely need, and when you do, it either doesn't work at all because [inexplicable reasons that can't be fixed without admin on a machine you don't own or having to restart a machine that's 200 miles away], or it sort of works but makes you wish it didn't because it's too slow/glitchy. Typically ssh does the trick, sometimes combined with forwarding gnome-open to view images/pdfs/whatever (which is terrible due to the aforementioned reasons), because scp'ing every time is even more painful. All my needs would be perfectly satisfied with something that combined ssh for some cli, and some kind of automated easy to set up and disable file updating utility (like dropbox without the third party server). Since I only ever need this stuff once in a blue moon ad hoc, setting up svn or something like that is just overkill. Example -- I want to run some code on a remote machine that plots a figure or pdflatex's some file and quickly view the output, without downloading a copy of all the code/data. I have yet to find a way to do this that isn't extremely awkward...

  8. Re:Wayland is nothing until on Wayland 1.5 Released · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're right. That's why nobody uses Windows or OSX.

  9. Re:Just Tack on a Fee on Driverless Cars Could Cripple Law Enforcement Budgets · · Score: 1
  10. Re:My concern is far less esoteric on The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence · · Score: 1

    What percent of drivers today do you think could respond to an "interesting" situation in non-catastrophic ways? If you're a professional driver who has undergone training in responding to extreme scenarios properly and without making things worse by overreacting, sure, keep driving manual. But most people, I think, are so far from that level of competence that the reduced number of "interesting" situations due to the conservatism and consistency of self-driving cars would far outweigh the potential slight increase in bad human handling of said situations.

  11. Re:That's causal inference on The Limits of Big Data For Social Engineering · · Score: 2

    Cool, you keep giving her sacks of potatoes and understanding why she's angry. I'd rather give her a box of chocolates, and not understand why I got laid.

  12. That's causal inference on The Limits of Big Data For Social Engineering · · Score: 1

    Judea Pearl and others have done a lot to work that out. It's the science of answering "what if". It's not impossible.

  13. Re:This article is Antisemitic, please delete on Declassified Papers Hint US Uranium May Have Ended Up In Israeli Arms · · Score: 0

    When is the last time a large population of Jews had their belongings confiscated, were required to register with the government, and were confined to special neighborhoods?

  14. Re:As long as the Republicans... on San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained · · Score: 1

    Considering all that old housing, I'd say probably.

  15. Re:BS on San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained · · Score: 1

    It's kind of funny that you can be walking around here in a normal neighborhood, turn a corner, and suddenly see a house or row of houses that you're sure must cost a million $$ or more. And most of them are so breathtakingly beautiful....

  16. Re:BS on San Francisco's Housing Crisis Explained · · Score: 1

    Eh, living in Pittsburgh currently I promise you there's still a lot of very cheap housing here within a bus ride of Pitt/CMU/Google. Hell, I know PhD students who bought houses/apartments. Sure, if you want to live within a few blocks of those places it can get a bit pricey, but that's true anywhere.

  17. Re:I May Not Agree on Mozilla CEO Firestorm Likely Violated California Law · · Score: 1

    But haven't you heard? Since there is no commonly accepted definition for what constitutes a "right", we can use it to mean whatever we want. Basically, if you really really want something, call it a right. Then your opposition will be left in the awkward position of either admitting that they're denying you "your rights", or trying to explain why what you're claiming to be a right really isn't (and those explanations typically don't fit in the 30 second intervals between commercials).

  18. Re:trees have branches on How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion · · Score: 1

    "Even science itself rests upon articles of faith." Only if you regard science as a search for Truth (with a capital T). I don't. I think most scientists don't, either. To me, science is a tool. A tool with a staggeringly good track record of getting things done. That's why I find it expedient to regard scientific consensus as truth (with a lower case t) for all practical intents and purposes. Similarly, I am not an atheist because I believe god doesn't exist. I am an atheist because there are no useful guiding principles which imply belief in god to be sane (let alone belief in a particular god).

  19. Re:Something From Nothing. on Why Are We Made of Matter? · · Score: 1

    "An object stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force" I find it amusing that you use pseudo-scientific language to "disprove" scientific claims.

  20. Re:Most Transparent Ever! on Obama Administration Transparency Getting Worse · · Score: 2

    its not politically useful to impeach a president unless you have a Senate willing to follow through with a conviction and removal from office.

    That, or it's not politically useful to [try to] impeach a president for shit they know they're going to do themselves in 4, 8, 12, or 16 years

  21. Re:Test Also Measures Confidence on Men And Women Think Women Are Bad At Basic Math · · Score: 1

    I was just thinking that. Perhaps part of the reason for the perceived difference in mathematical ability is that women are more willing to be honest about not understanding something? And being a PhD student in a highly mathematical field, let me assure you, most of the time none of us know what the fuck is going on, so pretending would make a big difference...

  22. Re:Permenant Beta on Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs · · Score: 1

    Oh, well, it sounds like your experience is much more representative of things than mine. I've only had two PCs since 2006. Good to know that my impression was overly pessimistic.

  23. Re:Permenant Beta on Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs · · Score: 1

    Well I'm not surprised that you can configure a machine so that under linux you get good performance, but if you pick some decent and otherwise random hardware, chances are much higher that you will have slow/broken 3d performance if you slap on some reasonably popular distro, than if you go with windows. It is irrelevant to most of us that there exists at least 1 person on the planet who has managed to run minecraft well under linux, as long as most of us have a great sense of trepidation every time we run, well, virtually any graphics intensive application.

    And before you accuse me of being a windows fanboy or something, I'm posting this from ubuntu.

  24. Re:Wrong, study shows disfavor with science. on Pro-Vaccination Efforts May Be Scaring Wary Parents From Shots · · Score: 1

    Oh gee, I wonder who this anonymous commenter might be??

  25. Re:Permenant Beta on Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs · · Score: 0

    Yeah but none of them work well in linux. Half crash, the other half are slow or glitchy. Let's face it, we're not going to get good 3D on linux until a) someone makes some decent drivers, and b) X dies.