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User: Dausha

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  1. Giving Value to OSS on The Complicated Economy of Open Source Software (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Software is software, whether Open Source or Commercial. I tried explaining to a peer that a given commercial product was a heavy user of OSS. The peer said that was a flaw because OSS is totally unsupported...so we should go with a separate product that is totally supported by commercial software.

    There are many OSS products that have a corporate license model in place that bridges the divide between the two. In the case above, the product using OSS invests in the technologies it needs, regardless of whether the product is OSS. That's a matter of risk management (pay to ensure your dependencies are supported) and giving back to the community.

    I no longer develop...I'm effectively a layman. I use a few OSS offerings (e.g. Atom), and I license to a few products I like (e.g. Font Awesome). So, here's my thought:

    If you're using FOSS, ask yourself how much you would pay for the product if it were commercial. Then either donate or license that amount financially...or offer your time. Assume you work 1800 hours per year (US Department of Labor says the average US adult works 1811 hours/year). Divide your take-home income by that amount. That's the value of your time. Rather than spend that money to the OSS, give that many hours of your time.

    So, let's say your per-hour value is $30, and you would pay $900 a year for a given software product. That's 30 hours of labor you could give back to that OSS product.

  2. There have only been seven Landsats. Landsats six died on the pad. Landsat 9 is being prepared for launch.

  3. Agree...

    That said, the Second Amendment states it shall not be infringed...which means strict scrutiny. The Fourth protects from unreasonable privacy invasions, which is a rational basis. Best way to think about it is...if the people don't protest the TSA body cavity searches and replace their congressman it is reasonable.

  4. The problem with NN is... on Lawsuit Filed By 22 State Attorneys General Seeks To Block Net Neutrality Repeal (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Net Neutrality relied on and enforced a law from the 1930s that in the case of the Internet was repealed in the 1990s. We are only returned to status quo pro ante 2012.

    The lawsuit should fail for lack of standing. Further, the federal government has supremacy under our Constitution in this regard due to the interstate nature of the Internet, so states cannot pass their own equivalent.

    The only way to meaningfully change this is through Congress. All else is political smoke and mirrors.

  5. Re: age of code on Which Programming Languages Are Most Prone to Bugs? (i-programmer.info) · · Score: 2

    FTFA:

    "Project age is included as older projects will generally have a greater number of defect fixes; the number of developers involved and the raw size of the project are also expected to affect the number of bugs and finally the number of commits is bound to."

  6. Re: Mainstream languages, duh on Which Programming Languages Are Most Prone to Bugs? (i-programmer.info) · · Score: 1

    I know this is /. and RTFA is simply not done, but if you read the sample, you would see that Ruby was 2nd in developer count (after C), 4th in project counts (JS, python, C) and 5th in commits. Ruby represented 9.6k of the 28k developers; about a third. So, not so niche. In fact, C and Ruby together represented 22.4k of the 28k.

    Java had about a third as many developers as Ruby with the same project count.

    What is interesting is that Typescript had a 0.15 coefficient compared to Javascript's 0.03, meaning it is more error prone--tying Objective-C for first place in error-proneness. More error prone than C.

    I was amazed at how well Go fared in all categories, with a high developer count and lowest coefficient.

  7. Looking forward. on New Energy Efficiency Standards Take Effect This Week In the US (nrdc.org) · · Score: 2

    I look forward to personally saving $300M next year in electricity. Oh, you meant totally? Well, you are only saving me a buck, less than a penny every three days.

    Like other climate solutions, I expect this to cause more climate harm than it is meant to mitigate.

  8. Re:Obligatory on The Science of Santa · · Score: 1

    There's a problem with the science in your comment above. It presumes all the boys and girls are Nice. We can scientifically prove that most of them are in fact Naughty. How many parents fake Santa's appearance to mask their children's Naughtiness?

    As a result, Santa is mostly underfed, underworked. He's not as chubby as before since he has few morsels to eat every Christmas. He's home by 9PM PST. His elves were able to participate in this year's Occupy protests without any meaningful dent in productivity.

  9. Costs on 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars · · Score: 1

    So, I played a little math and it looks like 1 gram of Thorium would power my car for about 11,000 miles. I see the car being pre-equipped with the element, and the auto industry pre-equiping a car with 5 grams... then telling you it cannot be replaced due to the huge economic impact. There won't be gas stations to fill up from. It will be like Apple's integrated battery...

    That said, the cost of one gram of Thorium would end up being as high as 7,500 gallons of gas...which is about $26,000.

    According to the chart, there are about 400 billion grams in the US, or 3x10(15) gallons of gas. That's equivalent to 15,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil. Based on US consumption, that's 71,428 days or about 195 years.

  10. Obligatory on Lawyer Attempts To Trademark Bitcoin · · Score: 1
  11. Re:Or.... on Betelgeuse To Blow Up Soon — Or Not · · Score: 1

    Just showing that /. Continues to post old news...

  12. Adjust... on Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes · · Score: 1

    If he's going to show 200 years, he needs to adjust for inflation. If the average UK salary was $400 (in pounds) in 1840, that's 20oz (@$20/oz through the 19thC). Gold price now is ~$1,350/oz. Average salary (from the graph) is about $40,000. That's about 30oz. So, in real (1840) dollars, it's only a net increase of $200, not $39,600.

  13. Not such a big deal. on Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun · · Score: 1

    That's only 44,280 hp*s (horsepower per seconds). It's hurling a small object at a speed of only 16.3 million furlongs per fortnight. They need to get it up to at least 88 million fpf...

  14. Damn Global Warming on A Lost Civilization Beneath the Persian Gulf? · · Score: 1

    As somebody who was there when it happened. I told them it was coming. I said, "Hey, keep driving around those large chariots and eventually this whole place is going to flood." A friend of mine said he was going to build a boat. Took him 100 years. He probably could have done it faster if he had stimulus money. But, hey, times were tough back then.

  15. Re:Harsh Sentence on IT Worker's Revenge Lands Her In Jail · · Score: 1

    Heck, I'd like to see her delete passwords and lock IT systems without a computer.

  16. Re:So how is a 16 year old report news? on Medical Researcher Rediscovers Integration · · Score: 1

    It's more recent than that, actually. If you notice one of the links, that the article summary completely plegerizes, is dated March 2007. So, we not only have old news, we have a three year-old blog entry that laughs about it---and an article summary that plagiarizes.

  17. Re:Launched April 22? on X-37B Secret Space Plane To Land Soon · · Score: 1

    It's been in Space for seven months? It is a space ship, after all. A future flight will be one of the last of America's deep space probes. I've heard the pilot is William Rodgers; but I don't remember his call sign.

  18. Re:That's clearly impossible on Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall Worldwide In 2009 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know you're being cheeky, so I'm a fellow traveler.

    A friend's son's research suggested that CO2 levels correlated with temperature change, but only after the temperature had shifted. So, no causation. Of course, there is also the historic data that shows that our temperature swing is not unprecedented, nor accelerated by us.

    And while we're trying to create cars that somehow magically scrub CO2 from the air, the quality of air in Beijing is being given "hella bad" ratings.

    I wish the focus would be on something akin to "quality of life" or "being good stewards of our environment" than some quasi-religious tilt to Gaia.

  19. Re:wrong OS? on Desktop Linux Is Dead · · Score: 1

    No, it's additive, not multiplicative. Totally different result.

  20. Unified Theory on Hawking: No 'Theory of Everything' · · Score: 1

    God. That's my theory. Proven.

  21. Re:The last sentence is misleading on Newspapers' New Revenue Plan — Copyright Suits · · Score: 1

    "As copyright law was originally written, you sued only over financial damages. For roughly 200 years, you had no basis to pick and choose except financial harm. The law still doesn't give you that right in the US - if it did, it would include what are called 'moral copyright clauses', as, for example, the ones now used in French law which the US has deliberately avoided including in treaty. Now that parts of copyright law have been criminalised, you are in effect arguing that your right allows you to compel the state to engage in selective prosecution of crimes, as is expressly forbidden in the bill of rights, for damned good reasons."

    Where in the U.S. Bill of Rights does it forbid selective prosecution?

  22. Re:Does what to HTML 5? on Firefox 4 Beta 1 Shines On HTML5 · · Score: 1

    "Come on, mods: if you can't be honest about yourself, what can you be honest about? Shut off Olbermann and Beck, accept what our country is, and just deal with it. Seriously."

    I don't accept where our country is going, any more than I would accept my girlfriend is sleeping with my best friend. Some things require a reaction, especially "where things are going" is a retrenchment in what our ancestors sought to leave behind.

  23. Slant? on Students Show a Dramatic Drop In Empathy · · Score: 1

    "The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality."

    Our Free-Market economy was around 30 years ago. I vaguely remember reading about that sort of economy stretching back into the 18C and 19C, including the "Gilded Age." I would argue that income inequality was also around 30 years ago. What does that really mean? That college kids today don't have as much discretionary income as their peers around 1980 (30 years ago)? I submit these two situations are factors the article wished was the cause.

    Child-rearing practices and self-help has changed radically in the past 30 years. It was the 1970s that saw the rise of the dual income among middle-class parents. Children are immediately carted off to day care as soon as the mother can return to work. The family wants that income, needs that income to maintain the house they own so they can be in the school district they want. Of course, two-incomes is a doubled-edged sword; because so many are in this situation, it makes it more difficult to have a comfortable living on one because prices (at least home prices) account for the higher family income.

    I've heard at least one woman complain about how she had a child so she could pay somebody else to raise it. In East Europe there are orphanages where kids are not give familial affection or attention and end up sociopaths. Is it any wonder that carting kids to day care has a negative affect on empathy?

  24. What? on "Innocent Infringement" Defense May Reach Supreme Court · · Score: 1

    Okay, under the copyright law, everything is copyrighted by default; unless something has sent it to the public domain (age, author release, etc.). Registering a copyright just gives the copyright holder the ability to sue for damages (verses just an injunction). So, every song downloaded is copyrighted. So, I have a hard time accepting the innocent infringement when the individual actively downloads music.

    According to the [Copyright Law], the only scenario she might exercise is that "[she] consciously and intentionally copies from the plaintiff's work, with a good faith belief that the conduct is not infringing." And IF she proves this, then the court may "reduce statutory damages below the minimum of $750 to as low as $200." The RIAA was asking for $200 per song anyway.

    If you read the rest of the link, then to pull of Innocent Infringement, she has to prove good faith and a reasonable belief the works were not copyrighted. What's reasonable is what a jury can agree to, essentially. So, if you found 12 random people on and asked if it was okay to download known music for free.

    [Copyright Law]: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Innocent_infringement

  25. Re:Time to stop relying on Texas... on Conservative Textbook Curriculum Passes Final Vote In Texas · · Score: 1

    "Yet Texas ranks 49th out of the 50 states in education. Instead of trying to raise the standards to match the states that are the most successful in education students, we're intent on lowering our standards to match the states that are the worst."

    Texas ranks #25 (http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm), which is pretty good as its immigrant population is 1/6 its total population. (http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/state.cfm?ID=TX#1). Many of those came in just the past ten years, and 3 of 4 are from Latin America. So, they do pretty well for a state that has a language barrier.