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User: sg_oneill

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  1. Re:Let's look at the data on Ozone Layer Recovering But Remains Threatened · · Score: -1

    The new inhalers that don't use CFCs are 10x the cost... $30 to $80 an inhaler, up from $5 to $10. There might not be new hospitalizations from people using the new inhalers, but there may be more deaths from people not buying the inhaler they need.

    ..... or $0 if you live in a country with a healthcare system thats evolved past the 1800s "fuck the poor" model.

    Seriously speaking though, I just googled the price of a Ventolin puffer in the US. $23!!!! What the hell america? Thats over half an hour pay for most people!

  2. Re:Let's look at the data on Ozone Layer Recovering But Remains Threatened · · Score: 1

    How many asthma patients have died as a result of this plan, because they can't use CFC propellants for their medication?

    The precise number is --> Zero.

    The change in propellants is completely transparent to the puffers efficacy.

  3. Re:football can cause brain damage on Microsoft Paid NFL $400 Million To Use Surface, But Announcers Call Them iPads · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Speak for yourself. If its someone elses kit, I really couldn't give a damn. Whatever works for yo.

    Some folks love their surfaces. Some folks love their droids, and I kinda like my iPad. And we're all right, they are all the best device for whoever has it and thinks its right for them.

  4. Re:hmmmm on California Tells Businesses: Stop Trying To Ban Consumer Reviews · · Score: 1

    while the intent of this law is good, it might have unintended consequences for contracts requiring NDA's that now allows customers to review secret details of products or company practices on public forums.

    If it ends oppressive NDAs I'll pop a cork. Any gain in freedoms should be celebrated. Protecting corporate secrets just isn't as important as protecting free speech.

  5. Re:No. on Report: Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Studio For $2bn+ · · Score: 1

    Go's an awesome game, but try convincing an 11 year old to pick up a board game.

  6. Re:Trust us with your payments on Apple Announces Smartwatch, Bigger iPhones, Mobile Payments · · Score: 1

    Right - so if hackers can just sniff this protocol, and with NFC cards being quite common nowadays here in Europe, why aren't we hearing about the widespread abuses? I know there haven't been any erroneous payments on my NFC-enabled card for the ~2 years I've had mine (unless the hackers have also managed to hack my bank statements, those bastards).

    Its happening all over the place dude. Theres a damn good reason I hacked the rfid chip thingo out of my card.

  7. Re:No. on Report: Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Studio For $2bn+ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To some degree it has already happened. With no further updates to bukkit my 6yo is in hell. He has been playing Minecraft since he wasn't even 2yo, his entire youth has been focused on it.

    If it was any other game I'd say "...and thats a good thing", but minecraft is a phenomena not like any other. A friend of mine has a deeply autistic son who's never had friends due to the toll autism takes, and he's had deep troubles with school and the like. Until minecraft. On minecraft he's just another kid on a server making castles with his buddies and being part of a gang of kids creating and playing. Its really brought him out of his shell and if I come over to visit his mom he'll even come out and say hello and want to talk (about minecraft... always about minecraft. Its a hobby), and thats a fucking achievement.

    He's now interested in school and maths finally because he wants to be jeb (the main 9-5 developer on minecraft these days) one day. He's got a hero.

    Basically minecraft is turning him into a normal kid, and I'd hate to see anything ruin that.

  8. Re:Sub Reddits that still aren't banned... on Responding to Celeb Photo Leaks, Reddit Scotches "Fappening" Subreddit · · Score: 2

    SRS is awesome, and making fun of racists and sexist knuckledraggers is a pretty important service to the community. If we cant make klansman womenbeaters leave of their own voltiion, then maybe reddit isn't actually banning enough.

    Heres a better proposal: Give SRS mods global admin rights.

  9. Re:fucking google should adopt posix on Carmack On Mobile VR Development · · Score: 2

    I think your misunderstanding the scope of POSIX. Posix handles a number of unix type contingencies but its somewhat mute on a lot of I/O. For instance there isn't any standard for Audio. There ALSA, AudioKit (on macs, its a unix too!) , Jack, OSS, FFADO, Pulse, GStreamer and so on.

    Then for graphics you've got framebuffers, GL, X windows, Mir and so on.

    And pretty much no standards for driving Phone hardware, and no your favorite open source "One day a phone will use this" impleentation doesnt count.

    Most of which are somewhat unsuitable and overbloated anyway.

    You are right in some sense in that Androids weak point has been traditionally situating drivers in the davlik core making C/C++ coding have to loop back into java to access it , although as time goes on Google has gotten wise to this. I worked on a project maybe 4-5 years ago porting SIP software to the android and it was nearly impossible to get any sensible latency due to the fact there was no native audio driver we could find and the JNI davlik ones where just terrible. Apparently this isn't the case anymore, and newer android doesnt really have this problem.

    The problem for App developers though, is that unlike iPhone where apple has tight control over loadout and has made it silky smooth to upgrade (Well compared to reflashing most droid models) Androids tend to end up stuck on the OS revision it shipped with meaning theres a hell of a lot of Android 2.x phones out there that are next to useless for cutting edge development.

  10. Re:Going off my ex and other females I know... on Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys · · Score: 1

    "The real question is: Is this just going to fuck up the genres of games males prefer by the gaming companies 'overly feminizing' "

    You know if the gaming community had actually listened to Sarsekian instead of a loud vocal campaign of "We dont understand just how ridiculously expensive broadcast film is, but we sure do have opinions on it for some weird reason", they might have learned that "feminizing" characters is precisely NOT what girl gamers want!!!!!

    They want plausible female heroes that succeed on wit and strength, just like guys do. Ever wondered why female sheppard was such a popular character? The complaint was that female game characters tended to be princess peach, generic helpless maidens in distress or big boobed maidens in inexplicably skimpy armor. Who the hell wants to play that?

    Theres a LOT of research out there on this topic and adult female gamers tend to want much of what male gamers want, they just want the games to show them a bit of respect. Thats all!

  11. Re:How to make any programming language seem cool on If Java Wasn't Cool 10 Years Ago, What About Now? · · Score: 1

    Hah. Remember the "Fuck Perl" cheerleader image for PHP. Sure was an enticing image, but holy schmoly was PHP3 a disaster of a language.

  12. Re:LOL realclimate.org on Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic · · Score: 2

    Asking them for an unbiased scientific opinion is about as credible as asking foxes for an unbiased opinion on whether chickens are tasty.

    Give me an example of a "biased" opinion on that site. Just one. But to be sure we are speaking clearly here, lets lay down some ground rules.
    1) By "biased" I assume you mean "claim not from the scientific literature
    2) And is contradicted by a claim from the scientific literature.

    Keep in mind here that *all* the staff of realclimate (that I'm aware of) are working climate scientists with unchallenged scientific reputations in the actual field (ie not "cranky undergrad geologist" or "television weatherman") , so if your going to make big claims about this site, be sure to use big evidence!

    The site gives proper scientists a bad name. Their only concern is looking after Hansen's reputation,

    Why does hanson's reputation need to be protected. The man hasn't done anything wrong! Having lots of spiral-eyed pseudoscience bloggers yelling at you isn't a personality fault dude!

    and they gang up and abuse anyone who dares raise proper scientific questions, or who opens discussion about counter-evidence, or suggests that there is something we do not know about the subject. They think the planet works as trivially as a test tube.

    They report on the science. If you think theres counter-evidence, the correct forum is to write a paper and submit it to any one of the hundreds of journals that operate in the field. Remember though, big claims require big evidence, and to overturn human driven climate change would likely require junking about a century of physics progress. Theres a Nobel prize in this one if anyone ever did find such evidence!

    And then they affirm their lack of scientific integrity with a site ban. Really, the site is best classified as comedy. They don't understand the basis of scientific inquiry nor the scientific method, and think that science is decided by unshakeable opinion and shouting people down.

    Whats wrong with a site ban? Having people going on there spouting pseudo-science and then demanding scientists go over the same damn points over and over refuting it gets tiring when theres a perfectly good index on the site for people to educate themselves as to why the pseudo science they are spouting is wrong.

    Remember boys and girls, science is not a democracy, it actively silences incorrect opinions becuase they are wrong and don't need to be listened to. The politics forums are elsewhere.

  13. Re:Well, that's bad news... on Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic · · Score: 2

    Why is this marked insightful? The whole "realcliate.org is biased!" thing is no more "insightful" than shouting about how snopes.org is biased because it claims that obama isn't a kenyan homo-muslim atheist.

    Unless someone can actually point out claims on there that aren't in the scientific literature, theres nothing "+1 Insightful" about it.

  14. Re:Nobody else seems to want it on Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' · · Score: 1

    Uh, DOS most certainly did have drivers. I know for fact you weren't plugging an SB16 into a DOS machine and expecting it t work just by modifying your autoexec.bat and config.sys files. You had to install the drivers for it, first.

    Wrong. DOS did NOT have *any* support for audio drivers. Instead *applications* had the support. An application would have to select the 2 or 3 most common types and then write code to interface with the different drivers separately. At no point did DOS interact with this process at all because DOS simply had no concept of audio outside of the BEEP command for honking the inbuilt speaker.

  15. Re:Easy, India or China on Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical · · Score: 1

    Both the Dems and Republicans are as bad as each other on this point. To their credit the Dems haven't bowed to the denialism PR campaign by going full retard on the pseudoscience, but instead seem to be just doing as little as possible to seem like they are doing something and practically doing fuck all.

    Is it any wonder its the states that are really taking the lead on carbon reduction. I grant thats partly due to how US federalism works, but staunch action from the whitehouse would certainly send a message that no its not OK to shit in the commons without consequence.

  16. Re:Actually... on No, a Huge Asteroid Is Not "Set To Wipe Out Life On Earth In 2880" · · Score: 1

    If a doctor recommended surgery, and the mortality rate was 1 in 4000, I'd make damn sure the benefits outweighed the risk. And I'd update my will.

    Boy are you in for a rude shock. Even a common place apendectomy has a mortality rate of about 2% last time I checked.

    Have fun never having surgery for anything!!

  17. Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... on Is Dolby Atmos a Flop For Home Theater Like 3DTV Was? · · Score: 2, Informative

    What I'd like to hear is an orchestra recording which mics each instrument and gives each of them a channel. It'd be interesting to see how well Atmos can recreate the sound stage of a full orchestra.

    Before he died, Frank Zappa was exploring this very idea. His performances with the Ensemble Modern where usually mic'ed with one mic per instrument, then he'd have a surround sound desk where all the instruments could be panned around the room and so he'd incorporate motion into his compositions. Apparently he either did or was going to (death has an unfortunate way of interfering with ambitions) do this in a live setting so the audience could hear the instruments "flying" around over their heads. It would have been pretty spectacular, even if most people where mystified by his avant garde serialist classical music.

  18. Re:California At It Again on How California's Carbon Market Actually Works · · Score: 1

    The answer to that is a simple flat carbon tax.

    Unless your in australia and the denialist conspiracy theorists get into power howling about the "big new tax" and just scrap it with no replacement.

  19. Re: Pinch of salt needed on Posting Soccer Goals On Vine Is Illegal, Say England's Premier League · · Score: 1

    Jumping over a fence, using whatever equipment you want (drones or whatever), doesn't suddenly turn an enclosed, walled off and guarded space into a public space. So I wouldn't use that argument.

    My point refers to an "expectation of privacy" in the sense that regulation around photography and journalism applies. If you hold an open event or even a ticketed event, nobody in there has an expectation of privacy that they can act in a way that would not be available to scrutiny. For people *entering it* they might waive their right to film each other, but keep in mind here the drone operator is not agreeing to that so he can't be held to it. As long as his drone doesnt enter the property he's free to point the camera on it wherever he wants, except , of course , in your bedroom window , so to speak (re "expectation of privacy" as judges see it)

  20. Re: Pinch of salt needed on Posting Soccer Goals On Vine Is Illegal, Say England's Premier League · · Score: 2

    To add to this, if you got a drone or helicopter with a *really* good telescopic lens, or perhaps a window with a view at a local skyscraper, sports games are not copyrightable, only a specific recording. But since you havent entered the grounds, its *clearly* a public space and you havent agreed to the ticket conditions, you can stream the whole damn event and theres not a god damn thing that can be done about it by a parasitic rightsholder.

  21. Re: Pinch of salt needed on Posting Soccer Goals On Vine Is Illegal, Say England's Premier League · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is something called a "fair dealing" excemption that is recognized for british copyright.

    Theres a case that pretty much specifically shows the premier league hasn't a leg to stand on.

    Back in 1991 the BBC sued British Satelite broadcasting for showing clips of between 14 seconds to 30 seconds of goals , sometimes in slow motion, and the like from the 1990 world cup taken from BBC footage. The BBC said it had exclusive rights from FIFA therefore the BSB had no rights to rebroadcast the clips.

    The court disagreed and found that the short clips where covered under fair dealing provisions and that it was ok to take the small clips and rebroadcast it.

    Further under the Restricted Practice Act its possible to show that such exclusivity deals can *sometimes* be considered invalid as anti-trust , particularly if the exclusivity is for pay-to-view events covered under scheduled Listed Events.

    In a nutshell, I suspect this is an empty threat and the premier league would have trouble convincing a court that a contract between it and the exclusive broadcaster somehow binds a third party who never agreed to it and thus has recourse to normal rights associated with copyright fair dealing.

  22. Re:This is really cool technology! on World's Fastest Camera Captures 4.4 Trillion Frames Per Second · · Score: 1

    Hahaha if I had mod points ,they'd be all your sir! Classic comment (as opposed to shitty beta comment)

  23. Re:So, such rules are bad for keeping people worki on California May Waive Environmental Rules For Tesla · · Score: 1

    On the other hand they are rather useful for making life not suck in almost every other respect.

    Whats the point of working a smog ridden hole when you can get a job somewhere else.

    There is an irony in tesla, the great white hope of putting a serious dent in the US's appaling carbon outputs needing this however. Oh well.

  24. Re:begs FFS on Entire South Korean Space Programme Shuts Down As Sole Astronaut Quits · · Score: 1

    Prescriptivists always lose. Use defines the language.
    Sad to say. :-(

    Not really sad at all. Thats how languages grow. And without language evolution we'd all be grunting and hitting each other with rocks and shit.

  25. Re:It's more than the tie on Getting IT Talent In Government Will Take Culture Change, Says Google Engineer · · Score: 1

    Selfish question: how do you get a gig like this? I'm absolutely sick of working for corporations and startups!

    It was offered to me by a recruiting company. I thought it was a pretty sweet score especially since I was bones of my arse poor after the previous startup I was at had collapsed leaving me ridiculously in debt.