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User: hab136

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  1. Re:Occam wanna sell you a razor on Ask Slashdot: Should Employers Ban Smartphones? · · Score: 1

    >Would you allow people to bring a laptop into your datacenter?

    First, "people" would be the employees authorized to work there, not the entire company and certainly not guests. These are your trusted administrators, not random idiots off the street.

    And yes, I've brought a laptop into a data center more than once to connect to a serial console, or to verify that some change I'm making is fixing the problem at the other end.

  2. Re:Reusable... on CES: IN WIN Displays Costly but Beautiful Computer Cases (Video) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wood is terrible for heat dissipation and blocking electromagnetic interference. There's a reason we use aluminum.

  3. Re:what a surprise on Man Charged With HIPAA Violations For Video Taping Police · · Score: 2

    >Really? Taxi drivers have a more dangerous job than being a cop?

    Taxi drivers are attacked, and killed, more often than cops. "Cab driving riskier than police work"

    They basically spend all day, every day, picking up strange people, and letting them sit behind them. They get robbed and murdered a lot.

  4. Re:Occam wanna sell you a razor on Ask Slashdot: Should Employers Ban Smartphones? · · Score: 1

    >It has since been limited to our datacenters (where it makes sense to have such a policy),

    It does? How are pics of racks of servers in any way sensitive?

  5. Re:leap year on Adobe and Apple Didn't Unit Test For "Forward Date" Bugs. Do You? · · Score: 1

    >Why handle DST when the network can tell you what the local time adjusted for all recent legislation and leap seconds is

    Because some networks either don't send the time or are just plain wrong? I always have to switch to manual time setting when traveling through certain countries.

  6. Re:Legality? on Ask Slashdot: Easiest Way To Consolidate Household Media? · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Innocent until proven guilty" and "reasonable doubt" is for criminal cases.

    "Preponderance of evidence" is the standard in civil cases (lawsuits), which basically means whichever story is more likely.

  7. Re:Title is misleading on Automation Is Making Unions Irrelevant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >No, and I mean NO! because central wealth distribution has been shown time and again to disincentivise people from actually doing something useful with their lives. If you earn enough from benefits, and your benefits reduce if you work/produce value, then why do anything useful? And Benefit Dependency is a really nasty pernicious place to be in.

    The thinking is that there isn't enough useful work to be done. Machines will do most of the grunt work, and you only need x engineers/electricians/other useful jobs per 100,000 people, so what should everyone else do? There's only so much room for artists/writers/musicians. So, since there is no work to be done, yet the person still needs to live, they need to be supported somehow.

    The alternative is: there's no work for you to do, please starve to death.

    The ratio of employed people to the total population has been slowly shrinking in the US. Currently 58.7% of the US population is working; the rest are not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment-to-population_ratio

    What happens when that ratio dwindles lower, to 40%, or 25%, or 10%?

  8. Re:Low tech solution on Would You Put a Tracking Device On Your Child? · · Score: 1

    Three year olds can run under and around things that adults cannot, due to their size.

  9. Re:If real, the hidden benefits are... on Scientists Turn Air Into Petrol · · Score: 1

    Just picking up oil that already exists in the ground is quite cheap, but that's using up existing portable containers of energy, not storing energy in a portable energy container. Think of it as using up already-existing buckets of paint, as opposed to producing new paint and putting it in a bucket.

    Actually producing oil from energy plus other basic components is actually quite energy-expensive.

  10. Re:republicans on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    >Some of us cannot use CFLs. The pulse is visible and causes eye strain and headaches.

    Normal florescent bulbs have the same issue, if they have cheap ballasts. Get bulbs with high-frequency ballasts.

    >Slight exaggeration here, however it seems that you need to put small children in a hazmat suit when playing near the bulbs, you know, just in case they break. :)

    More than a slight exaggeration. Just get a paper towel and a broom. The glass itself is actually more hazardous to small children.

    > marriage, which has a biblical definition to many in the states.

    The concept of marriage existed before Christianity, and exists outside of it today.

  11. Re:Fuck Green on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    >I have about 100 light bulbs. Almost all 40W ones.

    A large house with 4 bedroom, 4 bath, dining room, breakfast room, living room, theater room, family room, garage = 14 rooms. Do you have 7 bulbs per room?!?

    >They do not turn on very fast.
    >The color temperature is wrong.

    Both of these are solved by not buying the absolute cheapest CFL you can find. Spend $2 per bulb instead of $1 and they turn on fast and have their color corrected. They even make CFLs with the sickening yellow color of incandescent if that's what you want.

    >They cannot be fully dimmed.

    Again, spend more money - $8 bulbs can be fully dimmed. Of course, if you have 7 bulbs per room, just turn some of them off!

    >They are not a point light source.

    ?????

    I've had CFL floodlight lamps, if that's what you mean.

  12. Re:Huge increase in total travel time on Tesla Reveals Charging Station Sites In 3 US States · · Score: 2

    The stations will actually make a little bit of money - they're basically solar power-generation stations that sell electricity to the grid, and also happen to have charging stations.

    When the sun is down, they use grid power. It's much cheaper to sell to the grid during the day and buy it back at night, than it is to set up an electric storage system (battery/flywheel/pumped storage/etc).

    The waiting in line strawman is also silly - they're not going to have one spot for one car. Like gas stations, each station will have a few spots. If it gets to the point where the charging station is always packed, well, that's great! Build another one, and also celebrate, because there's tons of electric cars on the road.

    Anyways, this network is to kickstart the electric filling station network. If you're just going from home to work and back, you can charge overnight at home and during the day at work (my work has charging stations in the parking lot). These stations are for long trips, not the daily grind.

  13. Re:DUI, collision, no jail time? on Can a Court Order You To Delete a Facebook Account? · · Score: 1

    If you click through to the article that makes the 70% claim, you realize that it says "An analysis of data from 371 transit providers in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas reveals that: Nearly 70 percent of large metropolitan residents live in neighborhoods with access to transit service of some kind."

    So, it's not that 70% of Americans have access to public transportation; it's 70% of the people that live in the top 100 largest metro areas. What is the percentage overall, and what is the percentage of people that don't live in the top 100 metro areas? It's probably pretty low.

  14. Re:LTE? How about Android and IPhone on RIM CEO On What Went Wrong · · Score: 1

    Good already does that, today.

  15. Re:I'm still looking for a ... on SSD Prices Down 46% Since 2011 · · Score: 1

    You can look at Fusion I/O PCI cards. Not cheap at all, but certainly fast.

  16. Re:that guy should play poker on Steve Jobs, Before the iPad, On Why Tablets Suck · · Score: 1

    Who's going to buy a $1300+ Apple when they can get a Presario for under a grand?

    Lots of people do that now. Not most people, just lots of people. The price difference has really shrunk anyways, especially if you care about things like size, weight, battery, material/build quality, and noise - all the environmental factors people forget when they try to do price comparisons.

    Anyways, Apple still less than 20% of the smartphone marketshare, but their profits are through the roof while everyone else is just getting by (or not).

    Let 80-90% of the people buy cheap clones; Apple is quite happy to sell to the other 10-20% and make tons of money, whether that's phones, tablets, computers, or anything else.

    They've had this strategy for years. I'm not sure why people still don't understand that they're not shooting for dominant marketshare; they're just trying to make boatloads of cash, and they're doing that well.

  17. Re:How it should work on Tesla CEO Wrong About Model S Timeline? $1,000,000 Says Yes · · Score: 1

    Toyota isn't one of the big 3 (Ford, GM, Chrysler), and there's a big difference between "would still love to" and "are actively trying to" squish them.

  18. Re:Wrong, repeating myth on Why PCs Trump iPads For User Innovation · · Score: 1

    or run via a web page. But that's unlikely in most businesses.

    The trend I've seen is to move EVERYTHING to a web page that could possibly be moved to a web page. No client deployments, client upgrades, no worries about locally stored information (lost laptops, broken hardware), and the desktops can be lightweight.

    Even random in-house custom apps can now just be dumped on to App Engine or EC2, rather than finding local resources to deploy - resources that need to be managed and supported.

  19. Re:Too true on The View From the Ground At an Indian Call Center · · Score: 1

    I had a similar problem but in the opposite direction. As a transplant Yankee in the South, I had picked up a slight Southern accent, but certainly understandable (and could still do a respectable Northeast accent if I tried). I also worked with Indians day-to-day and traveled a lot, so I was used to varying accents. However on a business trip to California, I talked to the most stereotypical surfer dude you could ever imagine (he was valeting cars). Surfer dude understood me fine, but I couldn't understand a word he said, which was a problem because he had my car. Luckily, my co-worker was able to translate between surfer dude and English.

  20. Re:So then. on Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US · · Score: 1

    I guess that's why they've already rolled it out? 19.9 MW plant that can run 15 hours without sun. more info

  21. Re:Um, excuse me? on RIM Responds To an Employee's Open Letter · · Score: 1

    With Apple, I have to purchase their XCode bullshit, and then code in an obscure user-unfriendly language - and only on a Mac. After this, I get to wait several months for them to say "Ok, you can put this on the App Store, but you have to charge $___ for it and we're keeping 75%

    Feel free to criticize, but please criticize actual facts and not inventions of your mind.

    * Xcode is free with the required $99/year developer license; it only costs money if you're not an App Store developer (and it only costs $5 then). Feel free to complain about having to register as a developer and obtain a paid license, but Xcode is free for App Store developers.
    * Objective C is not really obscure, unless you consider C obscure. User-unfriendly is subjective. In any event they have lifted the language requirements, so you're free to cross-compile from any language now.
    * Android development requires Linux, which while free, still forces you to a specific system.
    * The app approval process is arguably slow and restrictive, but they keep 30% and do not care what you charge.
    * For apps you intend to distribute internally (i.e. only to yourself and/or your organization), no approval process is required. You can be running your app the same day.

  22. Re:Gone in 10 years. on RIM Responds To an Employee's Open Letter · · Score: 1

    Use Google Voice (or some other VoIP system) for your "work" phone, and then you only have to carry one device.

  23. Re:Balls on RIM Responds To an Employee's Open Letter · · Score: 1

    Even better, you're given the responsibility to fix it, but not the authority. So in a few months when it isn't fixed, it's your fault.

  24. Re:5.0 is much better on Skype Forcing Mac Users To Upgrade Client · · Score: 1

    Dialing conference calls and punching in numbers via touch tone is 3000% more annoying in the new version. They disable the numbers on your keyboard unless you have the "dial pad" window open *and focused*. Completely dumb.

  25. Re:China, India on Apple Store Employee Attempts To Form Union · · Score: 1

    Instead of arguing with the cashier, you go to the next supermarket over that sells bananas for 10% less. Nobody's willing to sell you bananas for less? Then they wouldn't haggle down, either.

    >The people in the western world don't know how to haggle any more.

    We've decided that each individual trying to haggle prices is inefficient and basically only leads to 10% inflated prices which then need to be haggled down to the "real" price.