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User: Hatta

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Comments · 19,722

  1. Re:Power steering isn't a safety feature. on $3,000 Tata Nano Car Coming To US · · Score: 2

    Hear, hear. Driving safely is not difficult. You just have to give up the idea that everyone in front of you has somehow wronged you.

  2. Re:Good on $3,000 Tata Nano Car Coming To US · · Score: 1

    200 million passenger cars on the road. 35 million used car sales per year. 700,000 is 2% of that. Demand for used vehicles was going to go up anyway because of the recession. Taking an extra 2% off the market is going to make those prices even higher.

    Was Cash for Clunkers designed to fuck over the working poor? No. Was it callously indifferent to the working poor? Hell yes.

  3. Re:Good on $3,000 Tata Nano Car Coming To US · · Score: 1

    Your unsupportable political opinion aside, there are still more than enough used cars out there.

    Your unsupportable factual opinion aside, used car prices have gone up by a factor of 1.5 since 2008. How can you argue that there are still plenty of used cars out there?

    the problem is a consumption-driven culture that goes out of its way to teach people who most need to be responsible with their money to be irresponsible with their money.

    And how exactly is destroying perfectly usable vehicles being responsible with our money?

  4. Re:Good on $3,000 Tata Nano Car Coming To US · · Score: 1

    Who said anything about conservative talk radio? The fact is, used car prices are about 50% higher today than they were in 2008. A lot of that is due to the recession, but in a tight market taking even 2% of the volume off the market is going to have a disproportionate effect.

    Also consider that that when you factor in the energy it takes to produce a vehicle, it's greener to run an old car into the ground than it is to replace it with a brand new high milage model. These were not clunkers, these were usable vehicles that should have been given to someone who could use them. If you're going to pay people to do useless work (and make no mistake, manufacturing cars to replace the cars they destroyed is useless work), then use tax money to pay people to dig holes and fill them back up. At least that's not bad for the planet. As it is, Cash for Clunkers was nothing more than a hidden tax on vehicles, paid by those who could afford it the least.

    Cash for Clunkers was bad for everyone except car dealers. You don't have to be a conservative to see that.

  5. Re:Well, that was your mistake. on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 2

    You don't have to raise Big Money, you just have to raise some money, because without a little money you can't afford the most basic tools a campaign needs to win. There's nothing un-democratic about giving your supporters yard signs. If you can't rouse yourself to gather the resources needed to do even that, it shouldn't come as a shock when people start assuming you're not a serious candidate.

    Why isn't being on the ballot sufficient?

  6. Re:Why bother? on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 1

    While many libertarians do blather insanely (e.g. any of those gold standard loons), you're more likely to get a sane response from a libertarian than either major party when you ask about issues like:

    Warrantless wiretapping
    Transportation security
    Foreign wars
    Drug policy
    Intellectual property

    Glad I could help you with that.

  7. Re:Not new on Prefab Greenhouse + Ardunio Controls = Automated Agriculture (Video) · · Score: 1

    That sounds like a worst of both worlds approach. If you go soil, might as well use earthworm castings that are full of probiotics. And fertilizers in soil tend to salt out becoming unavailable to the plants. But I haven't witnessed it so I don't know.

  8. Re:Why bother? on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nonsense. The differences between our two parties are so narrow, that it's a waste of time having a debate between them. The debates don't matter, hell the election itself doesn't even matter. Crony capitalists will win and civil libertarians will lose.

    Does a third party candidate have a chance to win? No, but he will raise important issues, and that's what really matters.

  9. Re:Well, that was your mistake. on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 2

    I suspect that a significant proportion of his 7% support would not support him if he had accepted corporate donations.

  10. Re:Not new on Prefab Greenhouse + Ardunio Controls = Automated Agriculture (Video) · · Score: 1

    But from my understanding one of the problems with purely hydroponic systems is that balancing the nutrients and byproducts in the water can be very challenging and that the system needs to be purged and started fresh from time to time.

    Nute balance can be monitored by sensors and automatically adjusted. Flushing the whole system needs to happen, but less often than you'd have to visit the site to prune. The upside to hydro is a faster growing time and more yield per plant than soil.

    A solution that people have found is to use composted dirt at least in part as the growing medium to help balance the nutrients and toxicity of the water.

    That sounds like a recipe for getting all sorts of things growing in your hydro system clogging things up and potentially infecting your plants. I guess you could autoclave and filter the compost, but I'm not sure I believe that would be any better than hydro.

  11. Re:Not new on Prefab Greenhouse + Ardunio Controls = Automated Agriculture (Video) · · Score: 1

    I've never been able to detect a difference between indoor hydro and indoor organic herb. I expect people who claim to are falling for their own confirmation biases. Just like advocates of organic produce, people who believe in terroir, etc. People will swear up and down that they can taste a difference between two bottles of water filled from the same tap. If you slap an "organic" label on a bag of herb you'll see the same effect.

  12. Hydroponic Cannabis growers have been doing this for years. Automatic lighting systems, hydration, nutrients, ventilation, etc.

  13. Re:For newbies on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 1

    You must mean Google, who uses Linux throughout the company. I'd say Google has quite a bit of clout.

    Sure, if you can buy a thousand workstations at a time on contract secure boot won't be a problem for you. What about the rest of us?

    And desktops are not the largest market for motherboards - servers are.

    So I'm going to need to buy a server motherboard to run my Linux based HTPC in the future? How is that not a problem?

  14. Re:For newbies on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 2

    we'll stop buying their boards

    And just how much market clout do you think Linux desktop users have?

    If and when it happens, we can complain and vote with our wallets

    Yes, by buying specialty hardware that's likely to cost several times what mass market hardware does. The days of buying COTS hardware and just throwing Linux on it will be over.

    until then you're just spreading unjustified FUD.

    FUD, yes. Unjustified, no. There's plenty of reason to fear what Microsoft will do with secure boot. A lot of uncertainty as to how open source will continue to thrive. And there's a lot of doubt as to whether there's any satisfactory solution.

  15. Re:EFF is stretching it on EFF To Ask Judge To Rule That Universal Abused the DMCA · · Score: 1

    You're right, it fails many of the tests for fair use, and is yet still clearly fair use. What we should conclude for this is that rightfully fair use is broader than has been traditionally considered.

  16. Re:Srsly, what is wrong with you people? on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Secure boot is a good thing when the owner of the PC has ultimate control over which signatures are valid. But Microsoft has tipped its hand with Windows 8 ARM tablets, and I see no reason not to expect them to lock down secure boot on x86 PCs in the future.

    If this was a vendor neutral initiative, I can see how it would be useful. But this is being done by Microsoft, for Microsoft. This will not end well for open source.

  17. Re:For newbies on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, that works great until Microsoft deprecates the option for Windows 9 or 10. They've already done so on Windows 8 ARM tablets, why wouldn't they do it on x86 PCs?

  18. Re:just let microsoft die on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple's policies only affect Apple hardware. Microsoft is pushing this on everyone.

  19. Re:So why even bother with secure boot on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And I'd be really fucking pissed off if my Linux PC required a user present at the console to reboot. Seriously, how is this a fix?

  20. Re:Does anybody really think it matters? on 19,000 Emails Against and 0 In Favor of UK Draft Communications Bill · · Score: 2

    That is the exception that proves the rule. Public opposition got major corporations to change their stance, which preceeded legislators changing their stances. And they're just going to push the same provisions through other means, e.g. trade agreements. Not a particularly inspiring example of the responsiveness of the US government to petitions from citizens.

  21. Re:Yeah, but will the government care? on 19,000 Emails Against and 0 In Favor of UK Draft Communications Bill · · Score: 1

    This particular insight goes all the way back to Plato in The Republic, and probably further.

  22. So on Linux Foundation Offers Solution for UEFI Secure Boot · · Score: 4, Funny

    When I turn on my PC, it will boot the pre-boot loader, which will then boot grub, which will then boot my initrd which will finally boot Linux. Can we put any more steps in there?

  23. Re:This guy is dumb on Why Eric Schmidt Is Wrong About Microsoft Not Mattering Anymore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He does not get it. No it will not run and work. Tablet software runs and works well because it basically does very little, or is very heavily optimized.

    We did real work on computers slower than current low end smartphones less than 20 years ago.

  24. Re:sadly funny on Linus Torvalds Answers Your Questions · · Score: 2, Informative

    What, that like minded people might enjoy getting together and discussing topics of common interest? If that's all it takes to be a religion, hell /. itself qualifies as a religion.

    You've effectively made the term "religion" meaningless with that argument. "Are you religious?" "Well I meet a bunch of guys at the local sports bar and discuss the issues of the day, so yes." That's nonsense. One thing and one thing only identifies a religion. Magical thinking.

    BTW, there was a lot more disagreement among the atheists at the atheist conference than there was agreement. Atheists can and do disagree with each other as strongly as they disagree with religious people.

  25. Re:Can we cut the cr*p ?!?!? on Linus Torvalds Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    In what way does an asterisk avert personal attacks? "Fuck you" and "F*ck you" are exactly the same. If you don't mean "Fuck" you wouldn't say "F*ck".