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User: janimal

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  1. Not that uncommon at all on The New and Improved MacBook Keyboards Have the Same Old Problems (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    I own and use a 12" MacBook and a 15" MacBook Pro. Both have intermittent sticky key issues. On the 12" the comma stayed down for a couple of months and Apple refused to recognize this, because when they inspected it the key magically went back up. Not sure I have the patience to go fix it if they replace the keyboard and the same problem repeats. Will wait for a better fix.
    Using external keyboards for now.

  2. Re: It's just a get rich quick scheme on As Value of Cryptocurrencies Falls, a Lot of New and Risk-Taking Investors Are Suffering Immensely (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Blockchain is a hash chain with a balance ledger and an incentive scheme to make it very expensive to tamper with.
    In the same way, investment gold is nothing but an element that is easy to divide and move around, but very inert and hard to tamper with. People like to hoard these tokens, because theyâ(TM)re durable.
    The value of gold isnâ(TM)t due to the fact that you can build electronics and gold teeth with. Itâ(TM)s expensive, because people like to hoard it and itâ(TM)s durable.

  3. Re:The Cloud is your enemy. on Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Hard Truths IT Must Learn To Accept? (cio.com) · · Score: 1

    Mod up.
    Kudos for comments backed up with life.

  4. Re:well quite a failure, chain is not dead, but on Bitcoin Is Forking. Again. (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Blockchains seem to split every time there is a contentious upgrade. The blockchain cryptocurrency that wins out will be the one that is most widely accepted. The best way to think about it is that it is a fair inflation. It's (almost) instantaneous and fairly distributed to all those, who hold the legacy coin. Fears of too much dilution are pure FUD. Dilution is only bad, when it robs savers of their money. If savers have double the coins after the inflationary event (fork), then they were not robbed.

    There are other effects, of course, like (possible) splintering of acceptability and therefore utility, but classic inflation is not what is happening.

  5. Re: It makes me a little sad. on Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of COBOL, Dies at 89 (nytimes.com) · · Score: 2

    It's comments like these that keep me reading slashdot after all these years.

    The reason women need to be mentioned more is to motivate them to join in. I once read that it used to be easier for women to become software engineers, because you didn't need to know anything about it to start formal studies (you still can for other engineering disciplines). Now, you already need to be in a club to belong in first year. Never mind the biological burden of childbearing. I used to resent the extra help women seem to get in the popular culture, but after living with one brilliant woman for 17 years, I don't any more. They really do have it hard, when it comes to professional commitment.

  6. Re:Why does the ESA have a worse record of landing on "Splat" of Schiaparelli Mars Lander Likely Found (spaceflightnow.com) · · Score: 2

    It's probably, because ESA uses the metric system.

  7. Next, they will ban the carpet beater.

  8. And the radical right had Hitler

    I'd be tempted to put Stalin on the right

    Hitler rose on the foundations built by socialists. If you think Stalin rose on the foundations laid by Lenin then that would put him in the same category with Hitler. Check out "The Road to Serfdom" for an informed account.

    Socialists break down social order and bring poverty. It all goes downhill from there.

  9. Re: Faithfully? on Scientists Have Discovered How To 'Delete' Unwanted Memories (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Worse. There really is no fundamental difference between hypnosis and being 'awake'. Chew on that!

  10. Your riposte tells me you might not be aware of just how much the commies spied on their own.

    The Stasi are just one example of a practice that is/was a hallmark of all communist states.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

    These guys didn't abuse their power, their entire purpose was to take snitching and spying on your own to an industrial level.

    Comparing current US security institutions' spying to commie spying can be rightfully construed as insulting to the employees of said institutions.

    The woman is spot on.

  11. Re: If you can't open it, do you really own it? on Apple vs. the Right To Repair (bloombergview.com) · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Screw my mod points; had to answer.

    "Just Works*" that Apple provide over being able to fix something that is broken.

    I have had many laptops, tablets and phones over the years, including: Toshiba laptop, Dell XPS, Dell Latitude x4 over the years, Lenovo Thinkpad x2, Mac Book Pro and Air, Nokia phones galore, iPhones galore, iPad, Samsung Tab, Sony Netbook, Asus Eee, early Samsung smartphone.

    Of all these, by far and away the Apple, Thinkpad, and Asus products have been problem free in terms of reliability. The rest have had different components and/or software die on them, sometimes this could be fixed and sometimes not. Overall, some of the worst offenders were Sony, Toshiba, and some of the early and the later Nokias.

    The only Apple product failures I have had were due to physical damage. The Mac Air took a swim in champagne (yes), several iPhones shattered/drowned. I have mostly been able to fix these devices on my own, but I would not be angry if I couldn't as long as I could take them in to get fixed somewhere. They have still proved to be more robust than most competition.

    While I appreciate that other manufacturers make things that can be fixed, I have to admit that I prefer stuff that doesn't break in the first place. Say what you will, I have lately opted to buy only Apple stuff and make sure I buy Apple Care or other insurance for the accidents that I know can happen. I'm not worried about them breaking on me. Even without serviceability, they still beat the competition on reliability.

  12. Re:icehouse earth on Last January Was the Hottest Global Temperature Anomaly In Recorded History · · Score: 2

    The tricky part is-- we've sort of built our civilization around the climate we currently have. Flooding the seacoast, turning farmland into desert (and tundra into farmland) all these would disrupt our civilization abruptly.

    Thinking that this is any different than in prehistoric times is naive. As it turns out, much of Middle East's cities were erected around waterways that no longer exist. They didn't disappear because of man-made climate change. This is not a new problem, only this time around we can influence the rate of change to a small degree. What is debatable is whether the degree of control that we do have is enough to matter, and even if it is, is it good value for money and good use of our limited science/engineering resources relative to bigger problems, like pollution and garbage.

  13. Re:Faithfully? on Scientists Have Discovered How To 'Delete' Unwanted Memories (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mod this up. Any lawyer will have had this in their first class on witnesses. Memories are known to be very unreliable.

    Years ago, I taught myself hypnosis, based on reading a book about it. One thing that struck me in that book was the statement that on a subconscious level, our brain cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. It is only our consciousness (the linear reasoning part) that filters the fantasy bits and supplies appropriate metadata. As any beginner hyptnotist will learn, consciousness is off much more often than we realize.

    From my own experiments, erasing someones memory of something while they are under is one of the best working mechanisms that become available to the hypnotist. When I told folks to forget my name and planted a different name in its place, the information persisted even past the session. I had to show my ID to convince the person that their memory of my name has been manipulated.

    The ethical implications of this mechanism are obvious. In fact, I haven't been able to proceed in my "studies" of the phenomenon precisely because I wasn't able to deal with using the mechanism without the subject's knowledge.

  14. Re:obvious results are obvious on Why Winners Become Cheaters (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    I believe the study controlled for losers by letting the subjects imagine winning in the past. ;)

  15. Surprisingly few corpo types are capable of comitting on such a scale.

  16. Re:Dead People? on Researchers Isolate the "Smell of Human Death" · · Score: 1

    This is gold :)

  17. Postal drones will be made to go postal anyway on Musk, Woz, Hawking, and Robotics/AI Experts Urge Ban On Autonomous Weapons · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't see how it won't be easy for anyone to retrofit a postal drone to.. go postal.

  18. Re:shut down your apps on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    She habitually closes all her apps. This being after owning a Nokia N97, which required the exercise to even run.

  19. Re:Easy fix on The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues · · Score: 2

    I also had this in business ethics class. Apparently this particular case was singled out in analysis within Ford. They were actually dumb enough to calculate, whether putting in that wall was going to be more or less expensive than paying the families for the loss of life, which they pinned at around $300k. It's the $300k that made everyone go batshit. The lesson learned in business class: when you have to make your trade off on human life, make sure that the value you put on it doesn't offend anyone.

  20. So, the world is flat after all? on Holographic Principle Could Apply To Our Universe · · Score: 5, Funny

    It would seem that ancient wisdom triumphs and we live in a 2D world.

  21. Re:Not the typical iPhone experience. on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    It may not be typical iPhone experience, but judging by some comments here, it's not rare either. And, yes, I'm annoyed after buying 5 iPhones and a bunch of other gear from the company in question. After ditching Dell for PCs and Nokia for phones I was hoping for a long and beautiful friendship. Meh..

  22. Re:Poster is an Idiot on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    No Apple Store where I live you tool. Also, not too keen on having iTunes reapply every app and every song ever deleted from the phone. That's hundreds of clicks and neither me or my wife have the patience.

  23. Re:IPhones on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    Yes, AirDrop also sucks. Works only sometimes between the phones. :(

  24. Re: Is it the phone or the stupid stuff installed on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    That.
    DOS or Win 95 had the same issue.

  25. Re:N900 on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    I would still use it if not for the fact that the USB port fell off and the absolutely dismal battery life.
    It was a nice experiment that Nokia abandoned too early.