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User: Lendrick

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  1. Re:Not convinced this is a good idea on J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars: Episode IX; Premiere Date Pushed To December 2019 (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    I think the real problem with his work is that he's completely willing to sacrifice almost everything in favor of whatever scene in the movie he currently wants to happen even if it ruins other aspects of the movie. For example, in The Force Awakens I was generally okay with the story up until the attack on the Death Star (or whatever it was called, but it's the new Death Star so whatever) begins and it fires its huge burst of energy across the galaxy that is somehow going to hit the target in a small amount of time and the rebel forces are also able to almost immediately travel across the entire galaxy while being on comms in real time.

    He did something very similar in the first movie of the Star Trek reboot, when Nero destroyed Vulcan. Given how long the Enterprise was in warp before they dumped Kirk off on that ice planet, Vulcan should have been significantly farther away, but instead it was in the same relative neighborhood as the distance from the earth to the moon, because it was more than just a dot in the sky.

    I choose to believe that these particular scenes aren't strictly canon, but are dumbed-down, flashier versions of what actually happened (for instance, Spock could have been carrying a portable subspace radio and heard of Vulcan's destruction that way). Starkiller base could have had a way of firing a weapon through hyperspace, but in the movie scene it was more flashy and dramatic to have it look like it must all be happening in the same solar system.

    As long as I can come up with a plausible version of what happened that works in universe and still makes sense in the context of the story, I try to just let this stuff slide.

  2. If google stops preferring free content... on Wall Street Journal's Google Traffic Drops 44% After Pulling Out of First Click Free (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    ...then google's customers will stop preferring google. They may be the dominant market force right now, but things can change pretty fast in the tech industry.

    Part of the reason that people use google is that they have policies stating that when a user clicks on a link, they see the same stuff that google sees. In other words, google provides the kind of search results that people tend to want. If they start favoring paywall sites over users, then upstart search engines like DuckDuckGo or whatever would be more than happy to snap those users up.

  3. Re:Good. Standing up for what America is. on Senate Republicans Introduce Anti-Net Neutrality Legislation (thehill.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, it's high time the FCC restored my right to have my local monopoly ISP block whatever traffic it wants, because nothing says freedom like not being able to access the content I want to access.

    Your guys in congress don't give two shits about a free market. They care about their corporate lobbyists.

  4. Re:It ain't pretty, unless you're the consumer. on Amazon and Walmart Are In An All-Out Price War That Is Terrifying Big Brands (recode.net) · · Score: 1

    It's not always pretty as the consumer either. If these companies close to taking a loss on each sale of their products, the only thing they can really do is reduce product quality, so as consumers we'll have more previously trustworthy brands start selling garbage products, which in the long term can be more expensive, because you have to replace your stuff more often.

  5. Disabled by default, then enabled by default, then mandatory, then not able to be worked around. Give it time.

  6. Sub that bans dissent gets mad about being banned on Reddit Bans Far-Right Groups Altright and Alternativeright (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    So a subreddit that bans people for having dissenting views is bitching that a private company banned their subreddit, ostensibly for their dissenting views? I wouldn't have any sympathy for them even if they weren't a bunch of fucking nazis.

    Someone, please come up with a rationalization for how the subreddit's banning of dissent doesn't count because it's different when reddit does it.

  7. Re:Hey, cable companies: on Virginia 'Broadband Deployment Act' Would Kill Municipal Broadband Deployment (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly. Government is bad. Any idea that involves government is bad. In cases where the government consistently does something better and cheaper than private industry (like health care in every other first world country), government is still bad because government is bad.

    What's important is that you conclude that government is bad first, and then figure out how you'll reach that conclusion. Otherwise, you may actually come to a different conclusion in some cases, which would be wrong, because government is bad.

  8. And the headline two years from now: on Microsoft Exec Urges Linux Developers To Try Windows 10 (softpedia.com) · · Score: 1

    Microsoft Exec Urges Windows 10 Linux Compatibility Layer Developers To Try Native Windows 10 Code

    I mean, after all, you've switched to Windows. Why go through all the extra trouble of writing code that would run on Linux? We've got some wonderful vendor lock-in for you.

  9. It really depends on whether the Justice Department is run by someone who will decide to prosecute (hint: in a month, they won't be).

  10. I'd love for my daughters to go into IT... on Women in Computing To Decline To 22% by 2025, Study Warns (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    ...but it's difficult when the rest of the world (including the people who are ostensibly trying to solve the problem) is busy conspiring to convince them that IT isn't for them.

    Girls tend to as much of an interest in math and science as boys until fairly early on in grade school (I feel like it was 3rd grade or so). It seems to me that there's a lot of cultural pressure -- much of it from women -- pushing young girls away from STEM fields and into other areas of study. The aforementioned people who are ostensibly trying to solve the problem are blaming the IT industry, when in fact this happens much too early for the supposed culture of IT to have much of anything to do with it. Get girls and young women interested in IT and get people used to seeing them interested in IT, and the cultural issues will age out of the population as young IT professionals grow up used to being surrounded by both men and women.

    The trouble is that the primary group of people looking into this issue is that they start out with the conclusion that men are uniquely at fault for the gender gap in IT and then go looking for evidence to support that,

  11. Re:Treating the symptom on Police Complaints Drop 93 Percent After Deploying Body Cameras (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    You're not wrong, but sometimes in the short term you have to treat the symptom.

  12. Re:Surprised I'm still alive! on Sugar Industry Bought Off Scientists, Skewed Dietary Guidelines For Decades (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    We were made to eat unprocessed (or less processed) foods, meat included. Before we started processing everything, we used to get a lot of our sugar from fruit, which doesn't cause your blood sugar to spike as much as processed sugar (particularly high fructose corn syrup). When it comes to starch, we're a lot better off getting it from sources where they haven't removed all of the fiber, like whole grain bread.

    A lot of the processed foods we eat have had all the fiber taken out, presumably because people find the texture more pleasant, but we really need fiber with our sugar and starch.

  13. Or just respect peoples' intelligence... on Microsoft Swaps Toy Gun Emoji For Revolver -- Days After Apple Does the Opposite (arstechnica.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    ...and let them choose their own damn emojis.

  14. What's important is that you've found a way to be judgmental no matter what.

  15. Why do they even seek comment? on Microsoft Faces Two New Lawsuits Over Aggressive Windows 10 Upgrade Tactics · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean, what's MS going to say? 'We believe this case has a lot of merit and we're probably going to lose'?

  16. Re:This can only be a good thing. on Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water (washingtontimes.com) · · Score: 1

    It's sad when I can say something like that, and there are other people out there who are such raging asshats that there's some question as to whether I'm actually one of them.

    But yes, I'm being sarcastic.

  17. This can only be a good thing. on Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water (washingtontimes.com) · · Score: 2

    We'll get an economic boost from this. I mean, yes, it'll increase the incidence of cancer, but with something like cancer, there's no real way to trace back exactly why any one individual got cancer, and even if that could be done, there's no way of knowing which company released the particular chemical that caused the cancer, because a lot of different companies will be doing it. And if everyone's responsible, no one is.

    To parahrase Nelson from the Simpsons, it's a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark!

  18. Something tells me... on Microsoft: Windows 10 Won't Hit 1 Billion Devices By Mid-2018 (zdnet.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...that the people who want Windows 10 or can easily be tricked into installing it have already done so. If you're still running windows 7 now, it's for a reason.

  19. Re:First they came for my desktop ... on The Great Tablet Gold Rush Is Over (mashable.com) · · Score: 2

    Didn't you know? PC Gaming is dead.

    I know this because the gaming media has been *insisting* that it's dead for the past fifteen years.

  20. Laying waste to a planet... on Why Did The Stars Wars and Star Trek Worlds Turn Out So Differently? (marginalrevolution.com) · · Score: 1

    ...is different from literally destroying the entire planet.

    A starship from Star Trek can't *blow up* a planet the way the Death Star can. Presumably a single Star Destroyer could lay waste to a planet as easily as a starship. All you would need to do is carpet-bomb it with nuclear weapons, which are pretty primitive by Star Wars standards.

  21. Re:Performance and Robustness on Mozilla Releases First Build of Servo, Its Next-Generation Browser Engine (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    It was faster and more robust than IE and Netscape by leaps and bounds.

  22. Re:stop choking on flash on Mozilla Releases First Build of Servo, Its Next-Generation Browser Engine (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 2

    Go into your browser settings and set flash to "ask to activate".

    Holy fuck does it make the web browsing experience better.

  23. Re:Futue KDE... on KDE Bug Fixed After 13 Years (kate-editor.org) · · Score: 1, Troll

    Funny, I can think of a lot of things GNOME 2 had that GNOME 3 doesn't.

  24. Not a surprise coming from Apple on Trent Reznor: YouTube Is Built On the Back Of Stolen Content (theguardian.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apple thrives on the top-down "you are the consumer, we are the producer" business model. I can't say I'm particularly shocked to see an apple exec whining about youtube (although I must say, I'm disappointed that it the exec in question is Trent Reznor). To say that Youtube is "built" on content piracy is extremely disingenuous. Yes, it obviously happens there, but if someone were to remove all of the pirated content from Youtube, only a very small percentage of users would even care.

    These are the words of a company that would like to see user-generated content made illegal, on the basis that a small percentage of users occasionally use it for piracy. Youtube is a tremendous example of "substantial non-infringing use".

  25. Re:Innovation on Tom Wheeler Defeats the Broadband Industry: Net Neutrality Wins In Court (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Furthermore, I can't imagine any "innovations" that are good for the consumer coming out of all this. All Comcast and Time Warner are doing is "innovating" ways to force people to spend more money even though they're already paying ten times what the service is actually worth.

    What we really need is a national law that outlaws local internet franchise agreements and prevents states and localities from outlawing municipal broadband. I'm lucky enough to live an in area with multiple ISPs, and (surprise surprise) nobody here has implemented data caps. I don't think capitalism is a perfect solution to all of our problems, but it does seem to work reasonably well for keeping internet prices under control.