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User: countach74

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  1. That's definitely an issue, but the point is that the system should not make it so easy for an app to compromise the system like that. Allowing an app to install a root certificate is like giving the app the keys to the kingdom, but in a very subvert sort of way. It shouldn't happen. That is the real problem.

  2. Re:Speaking as a man... on Scientists Create Healthy Mice With Same-Sex Parents (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    If you're comparing female to male couch potatoes, sure that may well be. And of course someone who's been doing a physical activity regular for some time will have an advantage over someone who does not, regardless of gender. But if both male and females spend the same amount of time working at a given activity, *in general*, the differences are absolutely staggering. This can easily be seen in sports, both professional and amateur. I'm about 5'5", 135 lbs and play basketball... not really the greatest sport for my stature, but hey I love the game. Anyways, my point is I'm more like the size of female players than male. But the difference in athleticism is readily apparent. Small sample size and anecdotal, I know, but it's also backed up conclusively by professional sports.

    (Of course, there are the exceptional female athletes who are more athletic than most male athletes. But even they are unable, at the top levels of competition, to compete with the exceptional male athletes, at least in terms of pure athleticism.)

  3. Re:Why would you want to do nothing? on The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They'll fire you for being dishonest. Unless it's a contract gig, you're almost certainly being paid for your time in a given job description. A CONTRACT pays you $X amount of money to receive Y in return. Employment literally assumes a certain amount of time worked per week; by not working even a small fraction of that time, a person is clearly violating good faith. Rather than trying to do nothing and get paid for it, why not inform your employer, receive praise, ask for a raise and move on to automating more tasks?

  4. Re:Yes. Yes it is. on Is Finland's Universal Basic Income Trial Too Good To Be True? (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    If the jobs that people work are static, then this would be the case. It is better to think in terms of "what could society do with the added labor force, if it didn't have to spend so much of it on police and lawyers?" Historically in the United States, there doesn't appear to be any correlation between crime rates and unemployment rates. And thank goodness for that. Could you imagine how unfortunate it would be if, in order to maintain good employment rates, we had to accept a certain level of crime, as a society?

  5. Re:Same bullshit as other modern companies UIs... on Google Is Really Good At Design · · Score: 1

    Material design calls for a colorful experience, has very clearly defined buttons, and an "elevation"-based shadow system to communicate depth in the apps. I don't know which apps use light color text on a white background... I can't imagine that's something that material design calls for. The reality is, given any design language, you can make apps look bad. But material design makes it pretty easy to make an app look decent. What's more important, though, is that these days most all of the apps on my Android phone all navigate in predictable ways. I don't have to guess if something's a button or not, I don't have to guess what will happen if I click something because the system is all pretty consistent now. Of course there's always room for improvement and there are a lot of bad apps, some of which are Google's, but material design is an effort to combat the problems you speak of. (Unfortunately, the triangle/square/circle soft keys on Android are what they are... and are not part of material design, for better or worse. I do wish they'd pick something more meaningful. I preferred the icons they used for those buttons in KitKat.)

  6. Body fat percentages below 18% for men are also a problem. Athletes (who have lower body fat percentages) also have reproductive problems due to, among other things, lower sperm counts.

    Citation needed. It's true that female athletes are effected this way, but I am unaware and cannot find anything indicating the same is true for men, OTHER than the study mentioned earlier which talked about BMI, which is a poor measure of anything. I feel like we're going in circles here, as it seems that you keep referencing the study that studied the effects of BMI, yet now we're talking about body fat. Or I'm missing something, which is entirely possible.

  7. BMI of 15 is certainly too low. But I don't see where that was ever mentioned. The OP said 15% body fat.

  8. Definitely. Many factors at play, for sure. And yes, body fat is a better indicator, I would assume. But because the study used BMI, we don't really know at what body fat percentage it's a problem, unless I'm missing something, which is entirely possible. Either way, 15% body fat is solidly in the range of healthy and is normal for a fit man.

  9. 15% body fat isn't particularly skinny. Your reference talks about men with a BMI less than 20. I hover at around 10-11% body fat and have > 20 BMI. Honestly, BMI is such a poor measure of anything at all that I doubt that study is very useful. Also relevant: having less body fat than the OP, I apparently have a very high sperm count (or something) as my wife and I have barely been able to stop having children. It may be that being very skinny has an effect on fertility, but it's one of many factors and my guess is neither me nor the OP are skinny enough to matter.

  10. Re: this is stupid on Ask Slashdot: Are We Living In the Golden Age of Bailing? (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Couldn't agree more. Although my wife and I (technically millennials) are bucking that trend, having thrown a number of cocktail parties as of late. The success of the whole event basically boils down to how many people bail.

  11. Re: Doesn't belong here on Seeking YouTube Fame, A Teenager Kills Her Boyfriend (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    A thick book is pretty good at stopping handgun rounds. There are plenty of videos on YouTube demonstrating this. Not sure if anyone has tested it with a .50AE round though... At least not without a person behind the book.

  12. Re:THose two things aren't exclusive on 'Coding Is Not Fun, It's Technically and Ethically Complex' (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    I suppose people play music for different reasons, but I would venture that most people don't play music because it's challenging, but because they like music and like making it. For me, music has become more fun each time I reach a new level of mastery, as it means that my ability to express myself expands.

  13. Re:a little late to the party on Microsoft Will Support Python In SQL Server 2017 (infoworld.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Postgres has always supported transactions, as far as I'm aware. And in fact, what you can do with transactions is pretty incredible and beyond what most databases offer. For instance, you can actually put most database migrations in a transaction. Something not go as expected? Roll back and your schema's all as it was. I'm wondering if perhaps you are thinking of MySQL?

  14. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising on Despite Well Known Risks, Survey Finds Most People Use Smartphones While Driving (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 1

    Sure, but that doesn't necessarily conflict with what I said, which was that laws are often quite ineffective. Clearly they are effective sometimes. But really my greater point was that sometimes laws change behavior for the worse. I know where I live, the likelihood of getting pulled over and ticketed for mobile device usage is very slim and when perception is "that won't happen to me" people don't take it seriously. Instead they change their behavior (for the worse) but trying to conceal what they're doing, to help ensure it won't happen to them. One might argue that the penalty isn't severe enough: that perhaps it should be in line with drunk driving, and that would solve the "not taking it seriously" bit. And that may reduce the instances of mobile device usage, but we still need to ask yourselves if the punishment is fitting of the crime and of that, I have my doubts.

  15. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising on Despite Well Known Risks, Survey Finds Most People Use Smartphones While Driving (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah, I misunderstood. You can definitely use your bluetooth system.

  16. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising on Despite Well Known Risks, Survey Finds Most People Use Smartphones While Driving (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes. I just double checked: https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors...

  17. Re:I find this thoroughly unsurprising on Despite Well Known Risks, Survey Finds Most People Use Smartphones While Driving (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We also need to consider what happens when those laws are passed. In my state, it's illegal to use your phone while driving. Calls are permitted with a headset only. So do people stop using their phones? Not at all. They just keep their phone out of sight to try to avoid a ticket, which is even worse. Now, rather than bringing the phone up where one can see the phone and the road at the same time, people are looking down in their laps, taking their eyes off the road.

    People will, for the most part, do what they want to do. Changing behavior is very difficult and laws are often quite ineffective at affecting the change desired. I'm not saying we should just accept that people will always use phones or that it's OK to do so, but a lot of times the "solutions" are worse than the problems they intend to solve. Also I'd love to see safety data regarding cell phones in regions that have strict laws vs. those that don't. Everything I've outlined has just been from personal observations and anecdotes.

  18. Re:bah on How To Close the Gender Pay Gap By 2044 (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 1

    And how does the tribunal determine wages? It is arbitrary at that point because a crucial price has been divorced from the market. I don't mean to say that the market is perfect or anything like that, but without *any* relation to it, you're flying blind.

  19. Re:Why they are slow? on Slashdot Asks: Why Are Browsers So Slow? (ilyabirman.net) · · Score: 1

    Browsers serve from cache based on what the caching headers say they should do. But there's a paradox between keeping content fresh vs caching content. Ultimately how much caching is done will be determined by the individual websites you visit. Also, reloading a page from your browser tells it to bypass cache for resources required for the page to load (follow up asynchronous requests generally will still use cached responses if available).

  20. Re:Who would have guessed? Tragedy of the commons on Google-Funded Free Wi-Fi Kiosks Are Scrapping Web Browsing Because Too Many People Were Using it For Porn (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    It seems that anymore, we're taught that doesn't really exist. Which is a shame. Because it obviously does. =]

  21. Re:Good! on Millennials Set To Earn Less Than Generation X (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    My response was specifically targeted to industries with labor shortages. Your original message made a claim that labor shortage != salary increase, so I tried to address it. To bring in aggregates of the entire economy is a red herring.

  22. Re:Good! on Millennials Set To Earn Less Than Generation X (bbc.com) · · Score: 0

    Sure, but only to an extent, since labor also compete with capital. I'm not sure what all of the complaining about salaries is about. In industries where there is a high demand for labor, the salaries seem fine to me--enough so to sway me away from my entitled millennial mentality + career choice into something actually useful and prosperous.

  23. Re:You missed it by a mile on Facebook Is Using Your Phone's Location To Suggest New Friends (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    Do not expect a reply. As in, he may or may not reply. I wonder what happens if an authenticated user replies? Should we expect a reply then? =]

  24. Re:I don't on Ask Slashdot: Why Do You Want a 'Smart TV'? · · Score: 1

    The last time I checked, that's only a feature on Android.

  25. Re: Apparently JC laws were against Business Inter on All-Female Ridesharing To Debut In Boston (qz.com) · · Score: 3

    While I agree with you that businesses are there to make money, and are generally willing to forego personal prejudices in order to undercut the competition, there is a flaw in your argument. It can be financial suicide to go against what the surrounding culture wants. For example, if a region is racist, it may be a competitive advantage in the short term to go against the grain by expanding your hiring pool or clientele base by hiring and serving the minority group. However, this is likely to upset the majority, as they generally dislike the minority. A boycott or two later and you're bankrupt. Now all of that said, I tend to agree with what I think your overall point is, which is that private enterprise generally does a better job of being inclusive of different people groups than governments.