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User: lurker1997

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Comments · 83

  1. Re:Slavery? on The Man Who Sold Shares of Himself · · Score: 1

    Didn't read the article but basically it is the same as taking a loan from a bank. You have to give some of your future earnings to someone else.

  2. Re:Neat, but Why? on Capcom Remastering DuckTales Game · · Score: 2

    I have great memories of the game. Would have last played it in 1991 though when I was still a pre-teen. What I remember appealing to me was that there were lots of hidden places to go and items to get (it was coins right ? diamonds as well, I think different sizes if them?), and you could break stuff by jumping on it with your cane. The hidden areas were easy enough that I could find them without trouble as a young kid, but there were enough of them that you were always finding more stuff and it made the game appealing to come back to.

  3. Re:The definition of PC on Apple Yanks "Sweatshop Themed" Game From App Store · · Score: 1

    Black is associated with evil because it is black out at night. It has nothing to do with skin color.

  4. Re:Don't try to deter piracy on Ask Slashdot: What Is a Reasonable Way To Deter Piracy? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It bothers me a bit to see you propose the idea of asking people to pay what is reasonable, and then calling them freeloaders if they don't pay. Maybe it actually wasn't worth anything to them. In the case of the submitter, the application was something to do with graphic design. It's easy to imagine someone downloading a copy of this program if it were offered "by donation", playing with it for a bit, and abandoning it never having used it for any real commercial or hobby purpose. It is worth nothing to them, like much of the internet, they had a look at it because it was there.

    If you walk by a street performer and don't pay them, are you a freeloader? What if you look at them for a minute and walk on? I would say no, you might look at them because they were there, but you didn't ask them to come there.

    Asking people to pay what they want is a lot like being a street performer. You are offering something, but essentially appealing to people's sense of charity to try and get paid, rather than providing goods or services in exchange for money. It devalues the work you are doing (necessarily because people can legally get what you are offering for free) and it's hard to see this as a viable business model in most cases

  5. Countermeasures on Seattle Bar Owner Bans Google Glass, In Advance · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but wouldn't it be cool to make a Infra-red led array that shines brightly on your face or away from your head in a way that saturates the photosensors in a camera and makes it impossible to see your face in an image / recording? I am going to try to make one of these I think.

  6. Re:What really sucks on Shooting Yourself In the Foot, 21st Century Style · · Score: 1

    Just in case anybody is reading the above, it is partisan drivel and a great example of the american style politics in which we are now immersed.

  7. This is what I came here to see or post. I like to read spy novels from the 60s-80s. Within the last year I read one (no idea now which one now, maybe something by Frederick Forsyth) with this used as a plot device. Something about operators trained to purposefully change from their usual rhythm to indicate duress I think.

  8. Re:Regardless of what you think of smartphones... on Sergey Brin Says Using a Smartphone Is 'Emasculating' · · Score: 1

    There was a telescreen behind a picture in the 'hideout' room he rented above the prole shop. He had thought he was not being monitored there; it turned out he was being monitored, but my take on it was that this was just for sound because the picture blocked the telescreen's camera. Of course as you say, there were various people on to him the whole time, and the prole from whom he was renting the shop, Mr. Chillington (or something like that) was actually a thought police agent.

    I have read 1984 a number of times and didn't find anything incongruous with the book in your original post

  9. Re:I'll say. They need to on RIM's BB10 Campaign Requires Some Serious Work · · Score: 1

    Just want to say that I think the playbook UI is garbage too. There are few specific comments I have, any maybe all tablets are like it, but it just feels awkward and poorly tested to me. I am always accidentally closing applications, fighting with the autocorrect / word chooser or whatever its called, constantly switching between keyboard layouts to enter data, can't get the cursor into the correct position when typing in text fields, etc. Everything feels like a fight with the machine. Another example, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when entering a url in the the browser, slashdot.org, it will never suggest the top level site but instead will give me three choices like http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/01/29/1944232/rims-bb10-campaign-requires-some-serious-work, in the address bar. This ensures I have to type the whole domain name every time.

    I got the playbook as part of the developer challenge when it first came out and was really excited about it. I have been consistently disappointed with it (remember how version 2 of the software was going to make it so much greater, then it was delayed for months and finally did almost nothing). Right now it is collecting dust somewhere

  10. Re:6 seconds? on Twitter's Vine App Ready To Bomb Internet With GIF-Like Videos · · Score: 1

    It's OK to ask (although you probably could have looked it up) and I understand that younger people might not know this, but it's pretty sad to me that his has been modded up. I think it says something about the way the userbase of slashdot has changed.

  11. I believe it on Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct · · Score: 1

    I believe it. And I don't care. I would also not be surprised that a higher percentage of male athletes use steroids. Cheating is an unfortunate byproduct of being competitive (although maybe an evolutionarily advantageous one).

    It does piss me off though to see garbage like

    They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case

    in the summary.

  12. Re:Can't America get its acts together ? on Congressman Introduces Bill To Ban Minting of Trillion-Dollar Coin · · Score: 2

    I agree with what you say about raising tax

    But complaining about having to be frugal while you go to school. Really?

    You are making an investment. Of course you should have to pay for it. You already spend four years of your life not working and going to school, presumably so you could get a better paying job, now you are doing it again. Under a government funded loan system, you were able to borrow money to make an investment. Another government program is giving you free food. You have nothing to complain about.

  13. Re:Think grandchildren. on Can Fotobar Make Polaroid Relevant Again? · · Score: 1

    Someone please mod this funny.

  14. Re:Start your own business on Ask Slashdot: Advice For Getting Tech Career Back On Track · · Score: 5, Funny

    I often joke that if I ever have to apply for a (non-academic) job, my chances will be better if I just put 'prison' for the four years I was doing my Ph.D. in order to explain the time gap.

  15. Re:Pretty remarkable how many there are on Earth Avoids Collisions With Pair of Asteroids · · Score: 1

    There's not much chance of gravity pulling something into us in that way. Think about how long it would take for a ball dropped a few hundred thousand km above the earth to fall to the ground. Any object moving fast enough that it has passed the earth by during that time will not be pulled into us.

  16. Re:What's the pay for peer reviewers? on Hacked Review System Leads To Fake Reviews and Retraction of Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    As you imply, reviewing articles is a part of academic life. The 'pay' is part of a faculty member's salary if you want to think of it that way. When applying for tenure or promotion, faculty routinely include reviewing work in their cv.

  17. Re:Elsevier needs to go away on Hacked Review System Leads To Fake Reviews and Retraction of Scientific Papers · · Score: 1

    What Elsevier journal are you paying to publish in? I have published in multiple Elsevier journals and have never been asked to pay a fee. I think this may be the policy of your particular journal?

  18. Re:There they go again! on DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years · · Score: 1

    The biggest problem I see with this is that the research funding will end up going to those with the best grant writing skills and not necessarily the best scientists. I have no idea how to solve this problem, and get the actual best people working on it, but this is as important as any other aspect of the project.

  19. Re:Look to the military on Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage · · Score: 1

    The problem is the unions. I don't think that needs any explanation.

  20. Re:How about you pay them? on Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage · · Score: 1

    Thank you, I'm not sure how the AC got modded. You would think that seeing a 747 cost $1,000,000 per 1000 km to fly would have raised a flag for someone.

  21. Re:Why did they change the requirements? on Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for airlines and how they treat customers like trash, as well as their employees.

    This is easy to say, but not many people are going to pay 5X the price or more to fly with an airline that pays their employees extra and is nice to their customers. Unfortunately, consumers are getting what they want from the air travel industry, a race to the bottom.

  22. Re:90% as efficent as a plug is good enough? on Canadian Researchers Create Wireless Charger For Electric Cars · · Score: 1

    Look up eddy currents and inductive heating

  23. Re:What they were doing in Canada? on Pakastani Politician Detained By US Customs Over Opposition To Drone Strikes · · Score: 1

    Quebec City is not a major Canadian airport. All major airports have pre-clearance, little regional airports do not. I used to fly to Boston from Fredericton and had to clear customs in Boston, but Fredericton Airport is basically a shed with one international flight a day (usually with about five people on it).

    Toronto, Montreal, even Ottawa which is a tiny airport, Vancouver, Calgary etc, all have pre-clearance

  24. Re:Worthless on Rare Photos: Gnu Crashing a Windows 8 Launch Event · · Score: 1

    She was cute. The GP has likely never been near a real woman to has no point for comparison.

  25. Re:More to it than that on Inside Social Media's Fake Fan Industry · · Score: 1

    Way to provide a well supported counter argument. I there a fancy Latin term for the logical fallacy of refuting an argument by saying "no they don't"?