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User: jmactacular

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  1. Re:The most fundamental problem is not the cost.. on Peter Thiel: We Need a New Atomic Age · · Score: 1

    Just reprocess and reuse it. France has been doing it for over 40 years.

  2. So Many Ideas on Ask Slashdot: What Single Change Would You Make To a Tech Product? · · Score: 1

    Here are a few...

    1) Tailor TV commercials to my likes and profile. I don't need nor want to see commercials for Depends, Viagra, Tampons, etc. And it's a waste of the advertisers marketing dollars. I'm willing to give the cable company or whoever my gender and age in exchange for this, that should be sufficient.

    2) Make digital TV tuners support PiP again like our old analog CRT TVs did. Right now I can only get 1 PiP of a coax input, which is far less channels. In fact, add support for say 12 PiPs at once with live channel previews.

    3) Also, as with old CRT TVs, make the channel change response time instant again, instead of the ~1 sec delay with each Up/Down channel change click on the remote. Don't understand why this slowed down with newer digital technology!

  3. Root Cause Analysis on Vancouver Area Teen Sentenced To 16 Months For Swatting · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, this kid was wrong. But we should examine the root cause of how a kid can pick up a phone that essentially deploys a military unit. How is that response valid? Shouldn't they vet the situation more before deploying a military force?

    Examine the content and credibility of the phone call first. Maybe just knock on the door for a first check with conventional police officers. Only if they confirm a valid threat, with an active hostage situation, then you deploy a negotiator, and then if that fails, you consider deploying a force unit response.

    The ridiculous disproportionate response, from phone call right to military force, is what should be punished and the leaders who making these decisions are enabling and creating this problem.

  4. No more plugins on Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates · · Score: 1

    I never cared for Java, or Silverlight, or any other language that requires plug-ins.

    It's turning into a nightmare at our enterprise. Some teams have projects that are only compatible with older versions of Java, and the GPO keeps pushing out new versions of Java to keep up with the security updates, and then it breaks the older projects.

    So it's a scramble for the support team to figure out all which versions you can use for which project.

    And then on top of that, we can't use Chrome because for some reason it disables Java if it's not the newest version, and even after downloading and installing the latest Java, Chrome still doesn't recognize it. I think it has something to do with 32-bit vs. 64-bit. So basically my app that runs amazing on Chrome, can't be used because I have to link out to these other older projects that still use Java.

    Such a PITA.

  5. Re:I work at Google... on Google Loves The Internship; Critics Not So Much · · Score: 1

    haha :)

    Maybe Google X should mine more movies for ideas. Nixon asked his science advisers what to do after putting a man on the moon, and they all pointed to the film 2001 and said we want to do that... speaking to the shuttle program and space station. He said pick one.

    Seriously, self driving cars will be a revolution, keep that going. Just from a guys perspective alone, and especially an introvert, that 20-30 minutes of decompress time relaxing in your car, taking a nap, or reading Slashdot while your car takes you home, before you get home to the family with the todo list... More than just safety... you'll be saving marriages! lol

    But really, how are we not doing the stuff in Minority Report yet? Not only the cars. Remember those FOLED like newspapers on the subway? Why the h are we still fiddling with these thick form factors? Why are we fiddling with screens and devices at all?

    I think you guys should do more than have people write code. Maybe you should also ask them to dream up the future. So we can build it! That would be a fun interview. Certainly more fun than running and stuff.

  6. What is Good? on Ask Slashdot: How To React To Coworker Who Says My Code Is Bad? · · Score: 2

    My top 3 practical criteria to judge whether code is "good" or not.

    1) Performance. How fast does the application actually run.

    2) Complexity. How many layers and levels and do you have to trace down into to debug something.

    3) Flexibility. Can it be modified easily as new change requests come in.

  7. Re:...likely end up tossed away? on The Billion Dollar Startup: Inside Obama's Campaign Tech · · Score: 1

    They should open source the whole thing. Let others fork this massive R&D project in new ways.

  8. Re:An Idea on Schmidt On Why Tax Avoidance is Good, Robot Workers, and Google Fiber · · Score: 1

    What is the virtue of a "legislative personnel layer"? When they vote without even reading bills, or regulate the internet without even allowing experts to testify much less understand it themselves.

    Sometimes it's hard for people to imagine the possibilities of the future when only considering from the context of today.

    I imagine if we as citizens saw the cost, our tax dollars that we are paying for these policies, more would take the time and interest to become educated on policy. And even if not, if it doesn't gain enough support, chances are it's not a necessary law or policy to begin with.

    We should operate our democracy in the manner that only laws that are absolutely necessary are those that we as tax payers fund. Anything more, is simply undemocratic. I'm astonished how many laws we pass restricting our freedom, given how many Americans have literally died to provide. Bottom line, I never voted to waste over $1 Trillion dollars to for police to pull up weeds and arrest my citizens over plants. Just for starters.

  9. Individuals select a bullet list of policies (i.e. drug war), they support on their tax return and are willing to pay their share to support the policy. To put their money where their mouth is so to speak, by way of paying taxes per policy by a percentage calc. The law is written that if not enough citizens support the policy, and therefore don't provide enough funding, the policy expires and the law is repealed.

    I'm tired of paying for taxes on policies I don't support and never had a say in. And I'm tired of politicians passing laws I never asked for.

  10. Re:Question on Schmidt On Why Tax Avoidance is Good, Robot Workers, and Google Fiber · · Score: 1

    One tax employers can't avoid, and don't avoid, is paying the other half of payroll taxes that fund medicare and social security. Many employees don't even realize their employers pay this on their behalf. For those of us who are self employed, we have to pay both sides.

  11. A well, actually. on Flexible Phones 'Out By 2013' · · Score: 2

    I felt it important to point out the correct acronym for flexible organic light emitting diode is FOLED.

    We have to keep our acronyms straight, we're geeks! hahaha

  12. Re:DOA.. on Apple CEO Likens Surface To Car That Flies, Floats · · Score: 2

    Why can't people think past today? Think forward. Yesterday, as I was doing some iPad app development, I accidentally touched my laptop screen to scroll, thinking it was a touch screen for a second.

    Why not enable touch on that screen as well to simply supplement current input methods? Let people use either depending on the moment and context of what they are working on.

    All day vertical touch screen use would be tiring, of course, but there are plenty of plausible short term use cases, including the one I just reached for the other day. I would also love a digital marker white board in conference rooms that I didn't have to erase, and could email as a screenshot when we're done. Right now, we take a picture of the whiteboard with our phones!

  13. Re:It will have a certain cool factor at first on Cutting the Power Cable: How Advantageous Is Wireless Charging? · · Score: 1

    "No thanks?" Do you sleep with your phone in your pocket? =) Gotta put it down sometime. Why not on a mat. Saves the plug in step, that's something. Innovation is always incremental. It'll get better.

  14. Re:It is abused but I think this sets too high a b on Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business? · · Score: 1

    All innovation is small incremental steps. You never go from horses directly to a Tesla Roadster.

  15. Re:Begs the Question on Study Finds Unvaccinated Students Putting Other Students At Risk · · Score: 1

    Right, but as a geek, aren't you curious what the numbers look like?

  16. Begs the Question on Study Finds Unvaccinated Students Putting Other Students At Risk · · Score: 1

    "In 2008, a measles outbreak spread in California. It was traced to a child whose parents had decided not to vaccinate him. He brought the disease back from Europe, infecting other children at his doctor's office and his classmates."

    This begs the question, were the other children and classmates that got infected, vaccinated but still got sick anyhow? Or were all of the people who got sick not vaccinated?

    While vaccinations are essential, miracles of modern science, I would still like to know what the data is on effectiveness per vaccine formulation variation and so on. For example, I've read the current whooping cough vaccine is weaker and therefore less effective than its predecessor that had some minor side effects in some people.

  17. Re:duh - his name on Booted From Airplane For Wearing Anti-TSA T-shirt · · Score: 1

    nga nga not gonna fly here any more. haha =P

  18. Re:Let the consumer choose on Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Should Be Shared · · Score: 1

    This is the classic designer first vs. sales/engineer first debate to designing software.

    Typically in PC land, the sales team says, we need something new to sell. The engineers say sure we can do anything, but we don't know what people want, so we're just going to make it "customizable" and let users figure it out. We geek out on making it so flexible. More to do in the product often leaves less time to perfect the code which then ships with more bugs, we just patch in a service pack. It also leads to usability issues like stuffing more and more "features" into menus, eventually overstuffing the product with so much, users can't find anything to get the job done.

    Apple takes the opposite approach, they battle it out in boardrooms for whether or not a feature deserves to be in the product in the first place. The designer first approach leads to a lower quantity of features, which provides them more time to get those fewer features perfected and polished to a shine.

    FWIW, more and more people are giving the designer first approach a try in Silicon Valley. Top designers are being snatched up left and right.

  19. Shoulders of Giants on Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Should Be Shared · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Others can embrace and extend when the patent expires."

    The problem with that line of thinking, is not realizing that all that is created is evolutionary. Everything we build is done in small incremental steps, building on what was just built. No one goes from a horse and buggy to a Ferrari. You go from a horse, to a horse and buggy, to a motorized carriage and so on. Everything that Apple or anyone else has built, was done standing on the shoulders of giants.

  20. Re:Show me vs a real DB engine on MemSQL Makers Say They've Created the Fastest Database On the Planet · · Score: 1

    Just wish we could easily re-order columns with FKs. =)

  21. Another analogy on Hollywood Agent Ari Emanuel Wants a Magic 'Stop Piracy' Button · · Score: 2

    Another analogy that fits better is this.

    Is it Verizon or AT&T's responsibility to police phone lines for someone who might be planning a robbery with another robber over the telephone? Is it the phone company's responsibility to do a criminal background check before handing out a phone book full of address information? Google is just a 411 service for the internet. And internet service providers just provide the pipes.

    Really wish Josh would have thought it through more, it was an important televised moment to speak truth to power, in this whole piracy debate.

  22. Must Love Dogs on The Shortage of Women In IT · · Score: 1

    I've observed on dating websites, I see a lot of women who say "you must love animals" or that they love animals. Think there was even a movie called "Must love dogs". And there's that crazy ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan. Or the ladies getting naked for PETA.

    Maybe it's because I'm a dude, but I've never felt any moments of affection or empathy towards animals like I do with people. Just an awe and general admiration for nature from watching the Discovery channel.

    But many women seem to be wired differently in this regard.

  23. Re:do as I say, not as I do. on UK "No Tracking Law" Now In Effect · · Score: 1

    This is key, making the distinction for what the *purpose* of the cookie is. I hope they got that right in the legislation. Tracking cookies are probably fine to regulate. But they need to make sure they're not interfering with the stateless nature of the protocol we have to work around by using cookies, for keeping people logged in, shopping carts, or knowing this person has consented in the first place.

  24. Re:Evidence? on The Shortage of Women In IT · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Every stupid law like this tries to force an outcome by attempting to manufacture it, rather than carefully examining the underlying cause and dealing with whatever can actually be dealt with at the root level. Drives me crazy.

  25. Re:Does this mean Java really is free? on No Patent Infringement Found In Oracle vs. Google · · Score: 1

    The Judge said he will rule on this issue next week. Also, to update the summary, they cancelled the Damages phase of the trial.