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User: ppanon

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  1. Re:Poor poor bigot on Mozilla CEO Firestorm Likely Violated California Law · · Score: 1

    That's because standing is paramount in pursuing cases. The state and the individuals being married are the main parties affected in a marriage contract. The Supreme Court properly identified that everyone else who wanted to intervene to prevent gay marriage were self-important busybodies who would not actually be personally affected in any significant way (compared to the requested imposition on equality rights of the prospective spouses) if Joe marries John Doe or June marries Julia, and who should therefore butt out.

  2. Re:Top Gear was worse. on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    Apparently it was due to Fox News-style "we don't actually have to portray reality" type of ruling.

  3. Re:But we WANT people to buy into that lane. No? on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    All laws are about behaviour modification, whether it be deterring/reducing murder, theft, or jaywalking. You just happen to think your preferred behaviour should be exempt from legal limitations. Not a big surprise considering your post seems to peg you into the "Libertarian - the free market solves everything" bucket.

  4. Re:tldr on Are DVDs Inconvenient On Purpose? · · Score: 1

    Probably has to do with residuals paid to actors. Don't forget that kerfuffle a few years back where writers wanted to be paid more for digital distribution because the previous agreement was just for physical media. You can bet that there are similar issues with actors and directors. So the studios/distributors make more profit on digital distribution (because they don't need to pay as much on residuals) and provide deals to Netflix et al. to encourage digital distribution over DVD rentals

  5. Re:One thing's for sure... on Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate · · Score: 0

    Bingo!

  6. Re:You Will Be Surprised on Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate · · Score: 2

    The problem is, with all the naysayers and luddites, their combined negative outlook slows everything down instead of speeding it up by poisoning popular sentiment which is why it takes an Elon Musk to make electric cars and space companies. It's not that Ford could not have done it, it's that Ford and similar companies are staffed by people terrified to make a decision and try anything new unless it's 100% obvious that the time for a thing has come, which is usually when a competitor starts doing it.

    No, in the case of electric cars it's that Ford and the other makers of ICE cars realize that they stand to make a bigger profit with ICE-based cars than with electric cars because maintenance cost of the ICEs is higher and they get a big cut of that pie. Because the barriers to entry in the vehicle production market are so high, it's better for the established players to continue business as usual until either legislation or new successful competitors force them to change.

  7. Re:They Both Fudge on Intel Announced 8-Core CPUs And Iris Pro Graphics for Desktop Chips · · Score: 1
  8. Re:Good for Linux on Linux May Succeed Windows XP As OS of Choice For ATMs · · Score: 1

    That laptop has a mobile consumer Pentium III. I'm pretty sure it didn't have PAE. Even so, it booted from USB, which used the standard DVD image, dd'd to the USB key. Not the same release admittedly ... but I didn't see anything indicating they had relaxed the PAE reqt. for Mint 13 Maya.

  9. Re:Good for Linux on Linux May Succeed Windows XP As OS of Choice For ATMs · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I recently installed the most recent Linux Mint LTS (13 Maya) on a 12 year old laptop. It wouldn't boot from the CDs of older releases (presumably because it couldn't handle overburned CDs with more than 640MB). But I was able to use a Plop boot CD to boot from an old 1GB flash drive using the laptop's lone USB 1.1 port. So even without a PXEBoot server setup, there are still some options.

  10. Re:They Both Fudge on Intel Announced 8-Core CPUs And Iris Pro Graphics for Desktop Chips · · Score: 1

    It was true for the first generation or two of Intel chips that supported AMD's 64-bit extensions. It hasn't been true for quite a while though.

  11. Re:In Soviet Russia, on The Brief Rise and Long Fall of Russia's Robot Tank · · Score: 1

    Maybe he meant as on "order of magnitude" difference. But yeah, it's not an obvious thing.

  12. Re:Mischaracterization of problem on Teaching Calculus To 5-Year-Olds · · Score: 1

    Estimation usually involves combining a lot of rough guesses/factors together, using addition, multiplication, and other arithmetic operations. It's use as a process/data entry check is seriously limited if it also requires manual entry into a calculator.

  13. Re:lol, what? on Firefox OS Will Become the Mobile OS To Beat · · Score: 1

    Yep. There are lots of people with no running water and no electricity who have a phone.They charge them up using solar panels, car batteries, or get them charged at stores.

  14. Re:Mischaracterization of problem on Teaching Calculus To 5-Year-Olds · · Score: 1

    Interfaces between the human brain and tools are prone to human error like typing mistakes. 20th century physicists used to practice exercises in estimation trying to get answers within an order of magnitude. They usually didn't bother putting pen to paper for that check but did it mentally. It was a useful technique to double check that the real, accurate calculation wasn't subject to a processing/entry error. Yes, you would still find the mistake eventually without that check, but you would waste lots of time and effort before you did so. I don't see that calculating instruments have significantly changed that.

  15. Re:Sinking ship on Bitcoin Exchange Flexcoin Wiped Out By Theft · · Score: 1

    Apparently you can get charged with money laundering though.

  16. Re:Feynman tutored me in QM at Caltech on Physicists Test Symmetry Principle With an Antimatter Beam · · Score: 1

    Seriously, you expect us to believe that you got tutored by Feynman in quantum mechanics for the double slit experiment, but that you can't figure out that the orientation of mirror reversal is due to the horizontal alignment of binocular vision (a trivial optics problem)? Bad troll.

  17. Re:Culture Dogma on Physicists Test Symmetry Principle With an Antimatter Beam · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it sure does sound like somebody with an agenda trying to establish an unsupported equivalence between religious dogma based on belief and scientific theories developed to explain a diverse body of factual observations. Cue "evolution is just a theory" wilful ignoramuses.

  18. Re:Shovel vs. backhoe isn't the best analogy on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    You've deviated from the original point of your GGGP post. My reply is that you should use tools optimized for the tasks you perform, and with computers, the operating system's HCI model is very much a functional part of the system. Screwdrivers can be used to hammer in nails, and hammers can drive in screws (very poorly), but it's better to use the appropriate tools for the job. You shouldn't expect to use the tools and skills optimized for content consumption to carry over for content creation. Portions of the hardware may be general purpose (although even that's debatable as mobile processors are optimized for low power consumption whereas desktop components don't have the same power constraints and tend to be optimized for performance), but the O/S HCI shouldn't be. You don't use a shovel to dig a swimming pool, and a backhoe is overkill for tilling a vegetable garden.

    But the difference between the UI of a tablet and the UI of a desktop PC is a matter of software, not hardware.

    So touchscreens are a common and primary form of input for desktops? Never mind. However I see your (new) point regarding adding a keyboard and mouse to a tablet (presumably via Bluetooth, although I suppose you might be able to use a powered USB hub with some tablets). Yes, Windows is proprietary system created by a for-profit corporation which chooses to enforce market segmentation to maximize profits. They've been doing it, and been publicly lambasted for it for at least 20 years, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. If you want to use your tablet as a desktop for content creation, you could always wipe Windows 8.1 from your tablet and switch to a Linux distribution, or perhaps re-size/re-partition storage and dual boot. Ideally Windows would present a Metro interface in tablet mode, and detect when you are plugged in to a keyboard/mouse/screen dock and automatically switch to a desktop UI. Microsoft have chosen to not do what is best for their users (provide flexibility) to make up for the fact that they are years behind competing mobile O/S solutions in developing mobile apps by artificially pumping up the market for Metro apps for developers. Caveat Emptor.

  19. Re:Shovel vs. backhoe isn't the best analogy on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    The analogy works very well. Shovels and backhoes have very different user interfaces, even though they both shovel dirt. But you use them for qualitatively different things. You use the shovel to do some gardening in your backyard. But if you decide to put in a swimming pool in, you're quickly going to find out that the shovel isn't going to cut it. And if you realize you need a backhoe, you're either going to need someone skilled to drive it, or you're going to need to pick up a whole new set of skills to control it than the ones you learned for gardening with the shovel.

    Tablets, smartphones, and desktops all are general purpose computers that process electronic data. Tablets and phones are devices primarily optimized for media/content consumption. In terms of functional complexity and data entry volume, that is a qualitatively different task than that of the typical uses of content creation/manipulation for business desktops/users. The simplified UI that is a boon for the former, is a dragging anchor for the latter.

  20. Re:Needs grow on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    The thing is of course that MS doesn't want to maintain two UIs and developers don't want to have to support/develop two GUIs for their apps. MS wants everybody to move to managed code in Metro ASAP so that they can sunset and kill the classic desktop yesterday.

  21. Re:Needs grow on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    Clearly we need to replace all backhoes with Aliens-style power loaders that can handle giant shovels. Open pit mining? Really big power loaders and really big shovels.

  22. Re:Needs grow on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    So what should someone use when his digging needs grow from a shovel to a backhoe?

  23. Re:Guarantee on Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Fix Bugs They Cause On Their Own Time? · · Score: 1

    How is it then that we can afford so much better medical services, so much better air transportation, so much better everything else, but if we want reliable code its going to cost extreme amounts of money?

    Most medical practice is based on a limited set of diseases. It's a large set, but it's not the medical equivalent of Turing complete. When patients get sick and no known treatment is known for that disease, they sometimes die. Sometimes the treatments are only partially effective. Many times, patients are given the wrong drugs or doses in hospitals with harmful or even deadly results. Patients get mixed up and have the wrong operations performed on them (to the point that it's getting more common for the area scheduled to be operated on to get marked up with ink while the patient is still conscious). Such are the bugs in the medical field that many lawyers get rich from litigation over those bugs.

  24. Re:Guarantee on Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Fix Bugs They Cause On Their Own Time? · · Score: 1

    So when the employer mandates an inappropriate tool for the job (because they believe it will be cheaper/easier to find people to maintain the system), then who's on the hook for the repairs? I mean, do you expect the mechanic to pay for a problem that arises because the car owner decided he didn't want to pay for someone with access to a service bay with a hoist?

  25. Re:Why? on Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds! · · Score: 1

    It reminds me of the scene in Rising Sun where, after spending most of the movie up to that point haranging his blunt co-investigator to follow his lead and respect Japanese customs so that he doesn't get dismissed as a gaijin, Sean Connery's character has been infallibly polite, patient, and following Japanese customs to a T in trying to obtain some answers - but succeeds in getting nowhere, at best a polite brush-off. Sean Connery's character then proceeds to deliberately pitch a major scene with yelling and rudeness... and finally gets a response with the information he was looking for.