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User: bill_mcgonigle

bill_mcgonigle's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 18,097

  1. Re:So that's unlimited data with limits on Verizon Now Offers 'Unlimited' Data On All Plans, Without $5 Fee (dslreports.com) · · Score: 1

    The speed becomes limited, but the amount is not.

    "Rate-limited, uncapped" would be something most people could understand.

  2. Project Ara is dead - long live Moto Z? on Google Cancels Project Ara Modular Smartphone Plans, Says Report (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Seriously, I thought the Moto Z was the fruit of the Google Project, what with Moto Mobile being a Google property until recently. It's not? Oh, well, modular smartphones are here if the market wants them.

  3. Re:Video of the accident on First Satellite in Facebook's Plan For Global Internet Access Exploded With Falcon 9 (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    Ouch, looks like a second stage failure - seems very odd!

    Does it fuel from the top? If you stop at 1:11 and single-frame through ( , and . ) there's is an X of light (lens flare?) that seems to cross right where a hose-like thing enters the second stage of the rocket in the previous frame.

    There was another lens flare around 1:08 which seemed odd, but maybe that was just out-of-focus bugs.

  4. Re:Why the heck on Tiny Particle Blows Hole In European Satellite's Solar Panel (go.com) · · Score: 1

    does it need a flash video (of all things) to show a before and after image of the panel?

    Maybe they're set up to sometimes run an ad before their content? I dunno, I don't have Flash on this computer.

  5. Re:Pay taxes? Seriously? But...we're leftists! on Apple CEO Tim Cook on EU Apple Tax Case: 'Total Political Crap' (arstechnica.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    So in what country are the "liberals" not into heavy taxation and the re-distribution of wealth? It may be a relative term but I am not sure there's anywhere it doesn't fit.

    Socialists always want free things with *other* people's money. Not theirs.

    Perhaps you've never heard a Bernie Sanders speech.

  6. Re:That didn't take long. on SETI's 'Strong Signal' Came From Earth (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Not long at all.

    It's odd. From May 2015 (detection) to yesterday the standard SETI algorithms didn't quickly rule out terrestrial origin. Today they did, after it hit the news.

    That's not what one would expect of any actual scientists.

  7. Re:This is news? on Fedora 25 Alpha Linux Distro Now Available (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    (and even includes popular proprietary software, like the nvidia driver), it's a pretty silly choice for a default.

    Fedora's not going to sacrifice its users' security for some proprietary software. Talk to the vendor about supporting nouveau better.

  8. 300,000,000Ã0.027
    =11,111,111,111.111

    Curious.

  9. Re: What about the rest of us? on Facebook Says Humans Won't Write Its Trending Topic Descriptions Anymore (recode.net) · · Score: 1

    The cost of living on the Vinyard is insane - cheap housing would just be a cruel market distortion.

    Let the grocery stores all go bare and then see if the employers really can't pay much above minimum-wage. I suspect the customers will pay what it costs. Your plan of taking money from working-class people in Worchester to subsidize the grocery prices on the Vineyard is classic elitist abuse.

  10. Have you ever used a Dyson product? They suck (except the ones that are supposed to).

    Good news that this little battery company had its own R&D staff, perhaps some of them who've had some life experience. If they just need a billion dollars to succeed, then I'm all for it and hope Dyson profits handsomely.

  11. Re:Not until the laws are changed on Amazon Is Testing a 30-Hour, 75% Salary Workweek (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Any employee taking this option is a fool. They would be voluntarily giving up the (sometimes meager) benefits of being defined as a full time employee under US law. Great for Amazon, terrible for the employee.

    Under 32 hours and the law would say no benefits are required. Amazon is actually giving them a straight ratio of benefits instead of dropping them to part-time. It's the opposite of a dickish move, as far as the law is concerned (and Amazon is showing that the law need not dictate when businesses are competing for employees).

    There are probably many parents who will jump at this kind of opportunity (plus others who want to start a business, do more volunteering, or just have more leisure time).

  12. Re:And so it begins on Alphabet's Nest Wants to Build a 'Citizen-Fueled' Power Plant (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Expect scheduled brownouts when the Great Computer gets hungry

    Well, that *is* interesting. Will Alphabet* be reducing the capacity of its services in response to high grid utilization?

  13. Or cheaper. We've been hearing about SSD under 30 cents a GB "real soon now" for, what, five years now? At ten cents it replaces hard drives in all small capacities. The slope still puts that many years out.

    Maybe 3DXpoint will depress the NAND prices for existing fab utilization next year. Here's hoping.

  14. Re:38,000 cubic meters of helium? on World's Largest Aircraft Crashes Its Second Flight (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Isn't helium that same stuff needed for MRI machines that I keep hearing is in short supply?

    That kind of thinking is so sixty days ago.

  15. Re:So global warming started... on Global Warming Started 180 Years Ago Near Beginning of Industrial Revolution, Says Study (smh.com.au) · · Score: 1

    ...even before humans had any significant CO2 output.

    Right. This has been known for at least a decade. What, it doesn't dominate the discussion withing the "scientific consensus"?

  16. Re: Bill Nye only has a bachelors degree in mechan on Bill Nye Explains That the Flooding In Louisiana Is the Result of Climate Change (qz.com) · · Score: 2

    It's true that he has little credibility on this subject but what a sixty year old guy did in undergrad is practically meaningless.

  17. Re: Tell me about the public, again. on Has WikiLeaks Morphed Into A Malware Hub? (backchannel.com) · · Score: 2

    Don't worry, the public is fine - this is just another CIA hit piece.

  18. Re:Wayland bashing on Fedora 25 To Run Wayland By Default Instead Of X.Org Server (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1, Interesting

    wayland initially was infested by the type of developers

    Wayland was founded by the X developers who wanted to call it X12 but realized that people would freak the hell out if they fixed it the way that it needed fixing, based on their experience with X11.

    Did you know that X11 has no security and that any stupid app running at the same time as your password manager can steal your keystrokes? Wayland fixes that, among other improvements to the 1980's architecture of X11.

    Besides that, the baroque layering that means that you don't get good performance on modern hardware (because some breakage is considered unconscionable by the software conservatives). Those people can stay on X11 until they're old and creaky or their identity is stolen and they're too broke to own a computer.

    Their kind of thinking is why traditional Linux DE's are stagnant and just adding circus tricks while ChromeOS and Android are the most successful linux distros.

    Thank you, FESCO.

  19. Re: how many people on EFF Accuses T-Mobile of Violating Net Neutrality With Throttled Video (arstechnica.com) · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I remember when the EFF used to champion freedom, not regulations that ignore reality.

  20. Re: Why isn't this configurable? on Google Restores Backspace Functionality To Chrome With an Add-on (betanews.com) · · Score: 2

    Because the state of the form might be littered with Ajax operations such that simply refilling in the form won't accurately reflect the state of the page before it unloaded.

    Right, he's saying that the state should be preserved. And it should be. ctrl-shift-t to re-open a tab can already do this - forward should as well.

  21. Just use cash and not worry about it

    I've reverted to using cash for most things for precisely this reason. IT sucks everywhere.

  22. NSA _and_ Russians had access to to all thus firewalled networks for 3 years... Should Cisco and it's customers start lawyering up?

    Are you serious? The entire point of a government is that they can do things that are illegal for everybody else (ostensibly because they are morally indefensible actions) and never face any consequences for their actions. Everything else is just various arrangements of that maxim.

  23. Re: call an ambulance on Man Says Tesla Autopilot Saved His Life By Driving Him To the Hospital (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    $900 is very high. Do they enjoy a government monopoly? Private fire is supposed to allow pricing pressure. Are there very few people in your town?

  24. Re:FB should did it on Police Asked Facebook To Deactivate Woman's Account During Deadly Standoff (abc7.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When she started to resist, the police gained justification in escalation of force.

    Only in the legal sense that they won't be tried for murder.

    In every moral sense, they had an obligation to deescalate the situation. She was not a threat to anybody but the cops, and the video proves it.

  25. Re:wait what on New York Governor Bars Sex Offenders From Playing Pokemon Go (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    Yes you exposed yourself, but you aren't a "sex offender" (except in the eyes of the law, since they've legislated one to equal the other)

    Which is, in fact, a religious preference (Puritanism, specifically, the hell-spawn of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) . The naked human body is not automatically sexual in most of the world.

    No wonder that mixing of Church and State detonates so spectacularly in every case where it's tried.