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  1. Re:Stupid design, appalling on Facebook Blamed For Driving Up Cellphone Bills, But It's Not Alone · · Score: 2

    Too many companies continue to take their product, fiddle / fuck with it for the sake of change (keeping UI designers in a job I suspect) and then antagonise their users. Google maps is a prime example, the new google maps is AWFUL compared to the existing one, lacking several key features. Please, stop fiddling and changing things.

    I agree with you completely (in particular about the new god-awful Google Maps interface, hell, it makes Beta almost look like a role-model of useability by comparison), but I think you, and the FP, and TFA, and countless others complaining about this issue may have missed the glaringly obvious solution...

    "There's an app for that". Goes by the name of "any modern browser", just enable its version of click-to-play (or for slightly older browsers - Lookin' at you, no-Chrome-before-Honeycomb, just run your favorite version of noscript/flashblock/etc.)

    You don't need to give every website you visit its own little chunk of your phone just because it asks for one. "Have you tried our app yet?" - No. No, I haven't, and won't until your marketing department stops treating my phone as just one more way to track me (ie, never).

  2. Re:Habeas corpus on In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist · · Score: 1

    and thus you are not guilty of a crime!

    ...Which will really make your next of kin feel better about the whole situation.

    No mistake, I agree with you, but they call what you describe "suicide by cop", and legal vs illegal won't really much matter when they squeegee your remains off the pavement.

  3. Re:Question 1 on Interview: Ask Christopher "moot" Poole About 4chan and Social Media · · Score: 5, Funny

    no, thats a question for ICP, in 2009...

    Thus making it...

    (puts on sunglasses)

    ... A "Moot" question!

    YEEEAAAAAHHHHH!

  4. Re:Good way to make yourself ill on Coffee Naps Better For Alertness Than Coffee Or Naps Alone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe people should just sleep 8 hours a night like they're supposed to.

    We don't naturally sleep 8 hours a night. We naturally sleep for two blocks of 3-4 hours per day, which the lifestyle requirements of the modern world have forced to occur in a more-or-less continuous 7-8 hour block.

    Pre-industrially, those two blocks would have an hour or two of waking time between them; modern research (mostly military) has found that splitting them apart further allows people to go with as little as 4-5 hours of sleep per 24 hour period with only minimal impact on performance.

  5. Re:America on US Government Fights To Not Explain No-Fly List Selection Process · · Score: 1

    It's my pet theory that this is the mechanism by which we get so many libertarians.

    Strange, you just keep tossing out random completely off-topic straw-man attacks against Libertarians... And in a context where they would agree with you completely.

    Libertarians hate big-government, and in general consider the patriot act nothing short of an abomination. Bringing up your personal demons at every opportunity really doesn't look any better than the morons who blame Obama for everything.

  6. Re:Bad business practice on Australian Consumer Watchdog Takes Valve To Court · · Score: 1

    With a bit of luck, the person running Steam AU will see time in court.

    Congrats, that $10 down the drain plus a few hours of time spend arguing just turned into a day of lost work to testify. You really showed them! Attaboy!


    If you don't like the law of the land, fuck off back to America.

    In principle, I agree with you. Honestly, I fucking hate corporations thinking they can get away with anything, and I hate even more that they usually do simply because of the cost of fighting them even when in the right. But you have a practical issue to consider here as well - Do you want to play Day Z? Hawken? Starbound? Zero Gear? Shattered Horizon? Anything on this list? Then you need to use Steam. And at the risk of commiting a 3rd party tu quoque, do you consider Sony any better? Microsoft? Ubisoft?

    If you want what the devil has, you get to deal with the devil, like it or not.

  7. Re:Send in the drones! on Russian Military Forces Have Now Invaded Ukraine · · Score: 1

    That fucker on the island almost wiped out DC. The most terrifying moment in human history was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    I have to presume you meant "almost wiped out civilization", because the erasure of DC could only serve to improve both the effectiveness of the US government, and the human gene pool as a whole. ;)

  8. Re:Send in the drones! on Russian Military Forces Have Now Invaded Ukraine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean, how'd you feel if Russia took over Mexico?

    About the same way we'd feel when they tried to put nukes in Cuba?

    But at least that one went well...

  9. Re:Irreversible? on Climate Damage 'Irreversible' According Leaked Climate Report · · Score: 1

    The 'impossible' is just something that hasn't been done yet.

    Quoting a work of fiction doesn't make your point unless your point applies only within that world.

    Unless, of course, you think we can solve global warming by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (or perhaps Gandalf can just not let any IR photons pass, if you prefer fantasy solutions over scifi ones).

  10. Ripe for abuse on Uber Has a Playbook For Sabotaging Lyft, Says Report · · Score: 1

    So what stops me from just picking up one of these "burner" phones and (presumably prepaid) credit cards to actually use for legitimate purposes?

    Hell, even if they just send me a bottom-of-the-barrel tracphone, hey, free $30 flip-phone to keep in the car for emergencies (911 will work on any activated US cell phone, regardless of its in-service status)!

  11. Re:Only fair on Early Bitcoin User Interviewed By Federal Officers · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    When you participate in a pyramid scheme

    Funny how you dumb fucks never get tired of showing off your ignorance regarding that term every time Bitcoin comes up.

    You'd think after having your betters correct you a few hundred times over the past three years, you might have learned a bit.

    Then again, that presumes an AC actually means to stand behind their post rather than just see who bites. Oh well.

    / Pull the hook out of his mouth.

  12. Re:Every US based bitcoin user is going to ... on Early Bitcoin User Interviewed By Federal Officers · · Score: 1

    Seriously, this is no joke. As an asset you will be expected to declare a gain or loss on the coins you used to purchase that cup of coffee. The gain or loss with respect to the change of value between the day you received those coins and the day you used them in the purchase.

    Very true, no joke at all! That ruling makes Bitcoins far better from a tax standpoint than than USD, although slightly less convenient. Instead of paying your normal income tax rate on BTC, you pay your capital gains rate. Hold them for more than a year, and you have capped your tax rate at half-or-less of your normal income tax rate - 20% max, 15% for all but the 1%, and a whopping 0% for anyone making under $82k. Woo hoo, can I start getting paid in BTC today???

    However, in their typical dickish fashion, the IRS has decide to only allow gains, not losses. So if their value goes down, TFB.

    That said, you can expect that to change if ever more than a laughably small number of people start filing 400+ page schedule D1s. Make no mistake, the rules for gains on foreign currency (treated specially as something other than assets) exist more for the IRS's convenience than for yours.

  13. Re:Display server on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 1

    I believe X.org versus Wayland would be another pair bridging the old and new Linux world.

    The very fact that you would equate the battle over a display server with the battle over the granddaddy of all running processes puts you so far into the "new Linux" camp that you can't even see the border. I don't mean that insultingly, just a statement of fact.

    CLI FTW.

  14. We need this why? on Major Delays, Revamped Beta For Credit-Card Consolidating Gadget Coin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The premise behind Coin is attractive: consolidate credit cards onto a single card-sized gadget

    First, calling this thing "credit card sized" amounts to nothing short of a lie - More like a PCMCIA-card sized, or about four credit cards thick. It wouldn't fit in my current wallet, which doesn't even like holding the older embossed-number style cards because of the extra thickness.

    Second, my credit/debit/gift cards already come on credit card-sized devices. And they don't need batteries.

    Third, how many cards do people have that they need this? One credit card, one ATM card, and on the rare occasion I get a gift card for something, I use it ASAP to avoid some crazy terms of service eating the balance away. As the only possible audience I see for this, the sort of crazy coupon ladies who have two dozen store-specific cards just so they can play games with juggling discounts and no-payments-for-x-months - And even in that case, Coin only holds eight cards total, making it still useless.

    And finally, NFC has made the entire concept pointless. Coin has built dedicated hardware to do something that every smartphone (except the iPhone, because fuck you that's why) on the planet can do much, much better.

    So someone explain to me what I've missed here... What killer use have I failed to consider for the Coin?

  15. Re:Do the math on New EU Rules Will Limit Vacuum Cleaners To 1600W · · Score: 1

    Why do you actually care how much time your washing machine uses?

    Because although you can do other things while it runs, you really can't just take off and go about your day (Ever had an unbalanced washer shake itself loose of the drain hookup? Not a pretty sight). So if you have four or five loads to do on a typical Saturday, at one hour per load it means getting out of the house by noon to enjoy the day; at 2.5 hours per load, it effectively kills your entire day.

  16. Hey, great idea here, guys... on Apple CarPlay Rollout Delayed By Some Carmakers · · Score: 1, Redundant

    "USB mass storage".

    I know, mind-blowing, eh? Instead of supporting fifteen different incompatible protocols to get people's phones to talk to your massively sub-par onboard electronics, you just treat everything like a dumb ol' external HDD, and they all just work like magic. Who'da thunk it?

  17. Re:Must be an alternate earth. on Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers · · Score: 1

    Oh, I just graduated top of my class from Calcutta University.

    Fair or not, quality of education correlates highly with median income. Poor areas have poor education systems, plain and simple.

    Particularly in any tech-related field, good luck in the modern world after graduating at the top of your class with all that experience you have working on 486 PCs, 20khz scopes, and textbooks that still refer to transistors as an exciting new technology.

    Now I want to work for $0.40 an hour and live in a shanty because a college education is about coming home to dirt floors and non-insulated tin roofs!


    What you "want" has no relevance here.

  18. Re:Must be an alternate earth. on Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've worked in tech (SE) for 15+ years now, and I don't know of a single colleague that would agree with the sentiment expressed in that quote.

    Ditto, this!

    He clearly means "I have talked with CTOs" and doesn't grasp that that title just means yet-another-stuffed-shirt, not any sort of actual engineer.

    Because, while I have no doubt that good engineers exist outside the US - They don't need to come here to work as indentured servants. Thus we have exactly the wrong sort of selection bias in who applies for H1Bs in the first place.


    "Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers"? No. Real tech (as opposed to "pointy-haired cat herders") wants Obama to clamp down on importing "Just Sort of OK" foreign workers to displace equally qualified American workers. Simple as that.

  19. Re:Jurisdiction 101 on UK Police Warn Sharing James Foley Killing Video Is a Crime · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny thing about banning something like this - It creates an audience that didn't previously exist.

    I had zero interest in this whole situation, but now that some repressive backwater dipshits have banned it? Into the collection it goes!

    'Course, I live in the US, not the UK, and we consider that sort of footage "Primetime TV", but the principle still stands. You ban it, I will find a copy.

    / No, that doesn't apply to CP, Mr. Hansen, move along ya old perv.

  20. Re:Quite simply... on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer? · · Score: 1

    That people who use spaces for indentation are just WRONG. :)

    Don't make me come over there and physically remove your "tab" key, heathen!

  21. Re:Goddammit! on The First Particle Physics Evidence of Physics Beyond the Standard Model? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    so without reading the article, the answer is going to be no, there's no evidence

    ...Except for that pesky 4+ sigma deviation between the expected and measured value of g for a muon (and a brief mention of a new Fermilab experiment to push that to 7 sigma). Other than that, nope, no evidence at all.

    Nothing to see here (if you have no soul whatsoever), move along (and let the real scientists do their thing so you can have your hoverboards and replicators 50 years from now). ;)


    I do have a question for the serious participants in this discussion, however... Since the Muon counts as 40,000 (200^2) times more sensitive to unexpected effects than the electron, why not work with the Tau instead, which should have a whopping 1.2e7 times more sensitivity?

  22. Re:Easy, India or China on Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical · · Score: 2

    They probably rigged their SUVs to actually manufacture CCl4 and immediately release it into the atmosphere just because.

    Oh c'mon now, no one (over the age of 2) would behave that petulantly, right?

  23. Re:A limit is a limit on Google's Driverless Cars Capable of Exceeding Speed Limit · · Score: 1

    Realistically, what are your chances of actually keeping pace with the thing or out-running it without losing control of your own vehicle?

    Pretty damned good, actually - Unless talking about an intentionally homicidal driver in an unencumbered tractor, even the wimpiest piece of crap passenger car on the road can blow the doors off a loaded semi.

    Now, against that trailer-less tractor, good luck. 400-600HP with no load and tires the size of your entire car means you can kiss your Fortwo, aka that shiny metal smear on the pavement, goodbye.

  24. Re:Much ado about nothing on News Aggregator Fark Adds Misogyny Ban · · Score: 1

    constant use of feminine pronouns

    Good catch, but I wouldn't really call one slip "constant".


    You are wearing a tower of twelve fedoras.

    Damnit, why do people keep insisting on calling a trilby a fedora?

  25. Much ado about nothing on News Aggregator Fark Adds Misogyny Ban · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Basically Fark has one particular mod, of a gender I don't need to mention, who gets upset every time she greenlights another trashy Jezebel link and the Fark regulars (rightly) rip it to shreds. Admittedly, some posters cross the lines of good taste in doing so, but most just point out that Jezebel itself does more to advance misogyny than any forum trolls could ever do.

    The official announcement thread for the new policy pretty much says it all. Fark regulars openly mocked this new policy, much like anti-beta posts here... All while shown prominent links to Foobies (along with plenty of other not exactly "wymyn friendly" advertisements) in the sidebar. This policy will last a whole week, unless Drew goes nuclear and literally bans half the userbase. But hey, we need another MetaFilter since Google has starved off the original, right?

    For those seriously debating the "need" for websites to take actions like this, look at Slashdot as a role-model. Put bluntly, sites that feel the need to censor their comments simply have inadequate moderation systems. As much as Slashdot's doesn't always work to bring the best to the top, it does do an amazing job of pushing the complete garbage to the bottom. Browse at -1, and Slashdot looks much like Gorgor-era Fark; browse at 2+, and threads look like a coherent discussion of the issues broached in TFA.