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User: Phleg

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  1. Re:Dissuade from driving cars? on Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use · · Score: 1

    Can you afford a $500,000 1 bedroom apartment for everyone?

    Wow. Exaggerate much?

  2. Re:Sueing others for being copycats... on More Photoshopped Evidence In Apple v. Samsung · · Score: 2

    Right. The most significant difference between the Nokia MID and the iPhone is just marketing. And people think the Apple kool-aid is potent.

  3. Re:pure urban myth on Accused Teen Bomber Finds FBI Surveillance Team's Wireless Network · · Score: 1

    Heh, ours is "FBI Surveillance Van 4d134b".

  4. Re:Dissuade from driving cars? on Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use · · Score: 1

    The point of these measures (if done in the United States) would be to get from where we are now (impotent public transportation, cars as a necessity) to something more sustainable and less costly to society (people living closer to cities, using public transport, walking, or cycling).

  5. Re:Dissuade from driving cars? on Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use · · Score: 1

    Because we encourage people to drive miniature living rooms by offering free parking and free roads instead of actually building out and funding public transportation.

  6. Re:Movement won't be a reliable measure on Dutch Government To Tax Drivers Based On Car Use · · Score: 1

    That penalty is nowhere near enough. It's the tragedy of the commons: each additional car on the roads during rush hour might cost the rest of the area hundreds of dollars in externalities. That's why there's been so many attempts at finding ways to manage congestion pricing. By tailoring the price to discourage use when demand is high and encourage use when demand is low, you can dramatically reduce the amount of congestion at peak use.

  7. Re:These patent lawsuits are getting out of hand. on Apple Sued Over OS X Quick Boot · · Score: 1

    So if I understand you correctly, your recommendation is that we let one company innovate and take risks, and let everyone else jump on board once it's been borne out in the market. The fact that Android devices have as big of a slice of the market-share pie indicates that this is exactly the situation that's occurred. Apple invested in R&D, took a risk with a dramatically unique product, and everybody else follows suit when it turns out to be a hit.

    That kind of situation is the exact reason patents exist. To encourage risk-taking, encourage innovation, and allow individuals and companies to get a huge return on their investment through an artificial monopoly on the market when they come up with something novel.

  8. Re:These patent lawsuits are getting out of hand. on Apple Sued Over OS X Quick Boot · · Score: 1

    How about the fact that the whole fucking thing is driven by a touch UI? That it's a thin "shell" that merely exists to assist you in launching apps, as opposed to a full-blown Windows environment? There's more here than just looks. Again, look at the examples of products before the iPad and after the iPad. You can't tell me the only thing that has been copied is the shape and color.

  9. Re:ridiculous on Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil · · Score: 1

    Flamebait taken.

  10. Great on Military Working On Laser Powered Drones · · Score: 1

    Now thousands of troops will simply die while trying to hold mirrors providing line of sight back to the original light source.

  11. Re:These patent lawsuits are getting out of hand. on Apple Sued Over OS X Quick Boot · · Score: 1

    Ahem...

    Regardless of the particular patents Apple has chosen to fight with in these battles...

    It's certainly not reasonable for Apple to sue any company that makes a device that merely looks similar. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about Apple suing companies who have essentially copied their products and innovations wholesale.

  12. Re:These patent lawsuits are getting out of hand. on Apple Sued Over OS X Quick Boot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apple single-handedly made tablets and smartphones into the products you recognize today. Before Apple, we had products like this and this. Suddenly, post-iPhone, we have this and this.

    I'm no fan of patents, but this is the exact sort of innovation the patent system was designed to protect in the first place. Regardless of the particular patents Apple has chosen to fight with in these battles, can't reasonable people agree that Apple ought to have some protection on their R&D investments?

  13. Re:Efficient pricing makes congestion obsolete on L.A. Artist Contemplates Future Traffic Flow, With Hot Wheels · · Score: 1

    Commuters from suburbs impose significant costs when they drive into the city. For instance, traffic planners have determined that the maginal cost of the average person deciding to drive into the Central Business District of Manhattan costs New York City residents $128.

    What's absurd is the concept that people whose crappy, selfish lifestyle decisions impose insane costs upon others shouldn't have those costs brought to bear upon them instead. Rising gas prices have barely encouraged people to stop purchasing millions of miniaturized monster trucks — demand-based tolls to access highly-trafficked areas stands a better chance. And it offsets some of the costs back onto the people who impose them in the first place.

  14. Re:Sigh on Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges · · Score: 0

    UV light != visible light. Go back to high school.

  15. Re:Sigh on Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges · · Score: 1

    UV light != visible light. Go back to high school.

  16. Re:Sigh on Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges · · Score: 1

    Irrelevant. I'm replying to the person who lacks a fifth-grade understanding of the term "radiation".

  17. Re:Sigh on Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges · · Score: 1

    I hate replying to myself, but "radiation" has become the new "chemical". Chemicals are bad. Radiation is bad. This is what we get for de-funding science education.

  18. Re:Sigh on Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges · · Score: 1

    -1, Idiot

    Visible light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of radiation. Therefore light bulbs cause cancer, right?

  19. Re:What does Git, Got? on The Rise of Git · · Score: 1

    What does GIT have over other version management systems? Easier to use? Easier to install?

    Not irreparably broken.

  20. Re:Git could use revision numbers on The Rise of Git · · Score: 1

    To those who are unfamiliar, each commit in Git has a SHA1 hash which is used as an identifier instead of a revision numbers. Unfortunately, they are very unwieldy to communicate to others.

    Oh come on. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V is "unwieldy"?

    I have used git exclusively now for over three years, and I completely forgot that incremental version numbers even used to exist. It's a bullshit non-issue..

  21. Re:The down side to nuclear is the waste on Bill Gates On Energy · · Score: 1

    More to the point, we could simply vaporize every hunk of nuclear waste generated by nuclear power straight into the atmosphere, and it would _still_ be better than coal.

  22. Re:Apple is gambling that Samsung would fold. on Samsung Tries To Ban Import of iDevices To US · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apple are suing because Samsung smart phones are taking sales away from Apple phones.

    Apple is suing because that's how the game is played at this point. Trot out your patents, so does the other guy, and settle on some cross-licensing agreement that (if you've calculated right) puts you in a better position than your competitor. Or encourages your other competitors to follow suit in licensing your patents. You clearly do not understand this level of "business chess". That's alright, but you just really ought to shut up about it until you learn more.

    ...they've got a lot to lose if phone sales are threatened, namely their astronomical share price.

    Share price is an arbitrary value without knowing market cap. If you actually meant "share price", you have no idea how the stock market works. If you actually meant "market cap", you might understand how the market works, but are laughably far from reality. AAPL is currently trading at a 15.92 P/E ratio, compared to a 19.32 P/E for GOOG, an astronomical 2,424.63 P/E for LNKD, and 10.15 P/E for MSFT. However, AAPL has (as of last quarter) nearly 10% of their share price in cold, hard, liquid cash. Assuming a zero growth rate, AAPL will have more cash on hand than its current share price in less than five years.

    So tell me, please, how Apple's share price is astronomical.

  23. Re:The obvious question on World's Best Chess Engine Outlawed and Disqualified · · Score: 1

    Rybka is sold commercially. Seriously, have you perhaps considered briefly familiarizing yourself with the obvious facts surrounding an issue before mindlessly commenting on it?

  24. Re:base-12 base-10 on The Future of Time: UTC and the Leap Second · · Score: 1

    Being a power of two is not of as much use as is being an even multiple of 2, 3, 4, and 6, giving you many possible factors to divide evenly by.

  25. Re:do people really hate IVR systems? on Fonolo Lets You Bypass Company Phone Menus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But they don't. I've not once been sent to somebody who can't help me by dialling "0" repeatedly or repeating "operator" to the voice recognition system. Not to mention, it's infinitely frustrating when they make me waste a half hour dialling in identifying numbers, my address, etc., only for the CSR to ask for the exact same information the second they pick up the phone.