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User: Chris+Mattern

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Comments · 7,102

  1. Re:Don't be a Twit! on Why No One Trusts Facebook To Power the Future · · Score: 1

    Surely, you can't be serious?

    It's a large building with lots of doctors, but that's not important right now.

  2. Re:Getting blocked? on Why No One Trusts Facebook To Power the Future · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Your account may be blocked, but your info on Facebook servers? That's forever. Every day I'm more and more glad that I have never had an account, and never will.

  3. Re:Simple.... Odds are even on A Rock Paper Scissors Brainteaser · · Score: 1

    But you can adapt to that by playing rock 50% and paper 50%. You will win 50%, lose 25%, and tie 25%.

    But then he adapts by always playing paper when he doesn't have to play rock. Now you win 25%, tie 50%, lose 25%, and you're back to even up.

  4. You haven't read the previous posts all the way through. The scenario under discussion is that Microsoft restricts their OS to their own hardware, the way Apple. Which vendors which switch? All of them. Under this scenario, they wouldn't have a choice--MS would no longer be selling to them.

  5. Re:Always do rock. on A Rock Paper Scissors Brainteaser · · Score: 1

    You tie 50% of the time, win 25% of the time, and lose 25% of the time. Pay? Nothing.

    Come again? It is specified that the player forced to play 50% rock (as mandated by a fair coin flip you don't get to see) plays intelligently and will adapt to your play. When he figures out you're always playing rock, he'll always play paper when he doesn't have to play rock. You tie 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time. That's lousy strategy.

    You're guaranteed to break even by always playing paper. When the opponent adapts, he'll always play scissors when he doesn't have to play rock, and you win 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time. The question is, can you do better than that?

  6. Re:Why not use GNU/Linux? on UK Government Pays Microsoft £5.5M For Extended Support of Windows XP · · Score: 1

    Linux doesn't have to look and feel different in major and minor ways every time you upgrade it,

    Well, sometimes. Hello, Ubuntu!

  7. Re:Sounds Prudent on Nest Halts Sales of Smart Fire Alarm After Discovering Dangerous Flaw · · Score: 2

    Just goes to show, there's no such thing as enough SQA...

    Sometimes I wonder if there such a thing as *any* SQA...

  8. Re:Please, find a better name. on Microsoft To Allow Code Contributions To F# · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I got in trouble for discussing porting a co-worker's code when I said, "We should F# her C#".

  9. Re:Wood IS fuel on Cheaper Fuel From Self-Destructing Trees · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But not a very good one. The energy to weight ratio sucks, it leaves large amounts of ash, and, being solid, can't be used in any of the myriad applications that require liquid or gaseous fuel. The problems with energy to weight and ash are large enough that as soon as coal mining was developed, coal almost completely replaced wood in people's fireplaces and stoves (until coal itself was replaced by gas and electricty and fireplaces by central heating). It's also quite polluting, as a matter of fact.

  10. Re:WTF? on NYU Group Says Its Scheme Makes Cracking Individual Passwords Impossible · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So if someone has a 6 character password (which is dumb) you can just try all possible passwords (there isn't that many possible 6 realistic character passwords).

    No, it doesn't work that way; that's the whole point. If you have the hash and are trying to compare against it, you can't just try all the possible passwords because if haven't cracked the other passwords you don't know how to produce the hash that corresponds to a given password. If you're just trying passwords at a login prompt, brute force is trivial to defeat (best method will most likely be simply imposing an increasing login delay with each wrong attempt).

  11. Re:De-facto reality on Ad Tracking: Is Anything Being Done? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whatever happened to designing for accessibility?

    It got replaced by designing for profitability.

  12. Re:Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra on Indie Game Jam Show Collapses Due To Interference From "Pepsi Consultant" · · Score: 2

    It means what it says. They put down their tools. In other words, they stopped working.

  13. Re:I don't need this on Department of Transportation Makes Rear View Cameras Mandatory · · Score: 1

    I've got eyes in the back of my head, you insensitive clod!

    But don't you find it hard to drive without any thumbs?

  14. Re:Projections on UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming · · Score: 2

    1. Proof is for liquor and mathematics

    You shouldn't put those two together. Remember, don't drink and derive!

  15. Re:Public service announcement on An Engineer's Eureka Moment With a GM Flaw · · Score: 1

    Not unless you take the key out of the ignition lock.

  16. Re:Obligatory Fight Club on An Engineer's Eureka Moment With a GM Flaw · · Score: 1

    Part of the reason for a corporation is that you dissociate financial liability between the corporation itself and its employees.

    No, a corporation doesn't do that at all. A corporation dissociates liability between the corporation itself and its *owners* (aka shareholders). A bankrupt corporation does not cost its shareholders more than their shares becoming worthless.

  17. Re:One nerds opinion on Why Darmok Is a Good Star Trek: TNG Episode · · Score: 2

    Measure of Man? Eh. It had noble intentions, but it snapped my suspension of disbelief cleanly in two. First of all, the central conflict driving the plot made no sense. "Data is a toaster, and toasters have no rights." Uh, yeah. Toasters aren't granted commissions in Starfleet, either. Surely Data's status as a sentient being had to have been definitively settled when he was admitted to Starfleet Academy. And then the secondary complications were so contrived as to be ludicrous. The Starfleet legal system seems to have been meticulously designed to provide for maximum melodrama. The case has to be prosecuted by the first officer, no one else? Or else the defendant is automatically convicted? Really? Anybody who enjoys Star Trek can't examine the hand-waving too closely, granted. But in this case, the absurdity piled on absurdity was too much for me to take.

  18. Re:FISA...transparency.... on CISPA's Author Has Another Privacy-Killing Bill To Pass Before He Retires · · Score: 1

    ....makes me giggle.

    Why? The bill is all about transparency.

    Just not transparency for the government.

  19. Re:The Founding Fathers are crying.. on U.S. Court: Chinese Search Engine's Censorship Is 'Free Speech' · · Score: 1

    Yes, but that was considered the state's business, not subject to regulation by the US Constitution. In fact, when the Constitution was written, one of the main reasons the Bill of Rights prohibited Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of a religion was that the states wanted to be sure that the new Federal government didn't interfere with *their* establishment of a relgigion; there was state funding of the Anglican Church in some southern states, and of the Congregational Church in New England. The Supreme Court did not rule against state and local funding of churches on US Constitutional grounds until 1947.

  20. Re:The Founding Fathers are crying.. on U.S. Court: Chinese Search Engine's Censorship Is 'Free Speech' · · Score: 1

    Baidu claims to have the "mission of providing the best way for people to find what they're looking for online" which is blatant false advertising.

    Well, no, it's not, because it's totally meaningless. What's "best"? "Best" is meaningless until it is associated with some set of standards. It can mean the way that's best for the Chinese government, in which case it's totally true.

  21. Re:14th Amendment on U.S. Court: Chinese Search Engine's Censorship Is 'Free Speech' · · Score: 2

    Baidu is forced on people by the Chinese government.

    In China, yes. The US Constitution and US law do not, of course, apply in China. Who in the US is being *forced* to use Baidu? I'm not--in fact, I never use it. Nobody I know is forced to use it. Who in the US is being forced to use it?

  22. Re:Sarcasm on Homeopathic Remedies Recalled For Containing Real Medicine · · Score: 1

    This stuff isn't at a high enough concentration to alter the population dynamics of any bacteria in the gut (the most likely target, there should be few bacteria anywhere else but on the skin). But the concern it the dosage would be high enough to trigger an anaphylactoid response as that system comes with a nice group of biological amplifiers as standard equipment.

    Homeopathic concentrations are so dilute that the odds are you won't get a *single molecule* of whatever the active ingredient was supposed to be. That's why homeopathy is regarded as quackery by anybody with an understanding of high-school chemistry.

  23. Re:Fuck the haters... on Diablo 3 Expansion Reaper of Souls Launches · · Score: 1

    Diablo II? Bah. The original, accept no imitations:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  24. Re:England != UK on UK Bans Sending Books To Prisoners · · Score: 1

    If Alabama does something completely ridiculous in its penal system no-one says that 'the US is doing this...'

    Outside the US? Yeah, they do, actually.

  25. Re:"What?" yelled Occulus founders on Minecraft Creator Halts Plans For Oculus Version Following Facebook Acquisition · · Score: 2

    "Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!"