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User: DaveInAustin

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  1. Re:Lee's summit: Population 92,000 on Google Fiber Adds 14th City: Lee's Summit · · Score: 1

    It's the birthplace of Pat Metheny. Thank alone makes it deserve Google fiber.

  2. Re:Honest Question: on How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video) · · Score: 1

    What happens today when a person winds up under a car because of a human driver error?

  3. Dell does more harm than good for linux on Dell To Offer Ubuntu Laptops Again · · Score: 2

    I purchased a dell laptop (m1530) with Ubuntu several years ago, with extended tech support. I had a harder time getting it to run properly than any other laptop in the last few years. Whenever I tried calling the tech-support, I had to transfer several times because they couldn't be bothered creating prompts for it in their phone support menus. I was actually told by their tech-support that my laptop stopped working because I did updates. With 12.04 I was finally able to get the sound working. Their website used to say "the most important thing you need to know about linux is that you don't get Windows". Look at their ubuntu website now. It has a underpowered laptop with a 15 month-old version of Ubuntu that you can't customize at all.

  4. Re:Aww poop on Curt Schilling Fires Entire Staff At 38 Studios · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Only slightly different from Curt Shillings first industry, professional sports, where they take taxpayer money, stay in business, then demand more. Had the state just given him the money, he could have stuck around for a while, then went back for more a few years later by threatening to take jobs elsewhere.

  5. Re:Happy to Beta Test on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 1

    I'm happy to beta-test too, but I wonder how the folks who are paying Stanford tuition feel about it.

  6. Won't do a damn thing to trolls on Linux Patent Protection Network Lures Facebook, HP · · Score: 4, Informative

    Patents can only be enforced against entities that actually make something useful. Since trolls don't actually make anything, they are immune to patent lawsuits (unless the IBM's patent troll patent sticks).

  7. Why have CD's held on so long on Why Has Blu-ray Failed To Catch Hold? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and are being replaced with lower-quality .mp3's? Because most folks care about content more then they care about sound or picture quality.

  8. Malcom Gladwell thinks it's swell on Intellectual Ventures' Patent Protection Racket · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In this gushing article Malcom Gladwell implies that this sort of patent trollism is some great innovation on it's own.
    Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, âoeI can give you fifty examples of ideas theyâ(TM)ve had where, if you take just one of them, youâ(TM)d have a startup company right there.â

  9. Cato Rocks on Cato Institute Critique of Software Patents · · Score: 1

    FTFA: They also sign broad cross-licensing agreements with other large firms promising not to sue one another. This has prevented patents from bringing the software industry to a standstill, but it's hard to see how the practice promotes innovation.
    This is defense from a lawsuit by a company that makes useful products. It doesn't help against patent trolls.

  10. Security excuse on Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking Could Hurt Cell Towers · · Score: 1

    I asked the DC Metro chief about open sourcing their control system code or even just publishing the control data on something like data.gov so that folks could write cool apps (iphone/Andriod/Blackberry/Pre/Web2.0) to encourage riding and make the system safer. He said no because that would allow people to hack into the system's. Instead, they are working with an unnamed "vendor". This is the same excuse a lot of folks (even Darl) gives when wanting to keep things closed.

  11. GPS will be just fine on Satellite Glitch Rekindles GPS Concerns · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A brand new GPS satellite has some bugs they are finding during testing, therefore GPS won't work as well in the future? Stop with the panic folks. Have you ever tested new code with new features and found some bugs? That's why you do testing.

  12. Deleting from the library would help on Crackpot Scandal In Mathematics · · Score: 1

    It might help if everyone asked their school library to stop subscribing to this "journal" and perhaps review other journals by this same publisher to see if they are worth keeping. At a time when worthwhile journals are being cut, it's a shame that schools are still paying for this one.

  13. Gladwell Loves them on Top Microsoft Execs Moonlighting For a Patent Bully · · Score: 1

    Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) write a glowing article about this venture.
    Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, "I can give you fifty examples of ideas they've had where, if you take just one of them, you'd have a startup company right there."

  14. Longer than the floppy disk on Compact Disc Turns 26, Has a Bright Future · · Score: 1

    When the CD came out, it was cutting-edge. At that time, a 10 megabyte hard drive was considered huge and set you back more than $1000. Today, you can get drives 10,000 times larger for 10% of the price. There's no way you put any other 10 year old part on you computer today (unless there was some data on it you needed to extract). As cutting edge as it was, you still had to sacrifice sound quality with 16/44.1 sampling. That's why vinyl is making a little bit of a comeback. Why do we have to accept having such outdated technology? Actually we don't which is one of the reasons why the music industry isn't selling music like they used to.

  15. Haris Poll? on New Olympics Scoring: No More Perfect 10.0 · · Score: 1

    Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner

    Like Division 1 college football?

  16. Still a naysayer on Testing Quantum Behavior — From Earth to the ISS · · Score: 1

    This will be really neat, but do we need to have people on the space station to do this experiment? It's not like someone going to be observing the photons with his or her eye and agreeing or disagreeing with the an observer on the ground?

  17. Ubuntu on South Africa Appeals ISO Decision On OOXML · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Have to think that this might be some good work that Shuttleworth's folks are doing. A lot of the original votes are determined by a lot of lobbying (just like in Congress).

  18. e-reader on the clie on Have You Changed Your Opinion On eBook Readers? · · Score: 1

    or a palm with a 320x320 screen or better. I love reading books on the clie. I read it in the dark, on the NYC subway, on planes. Loaned my palm pilot to a friend for a long flight to read books. He was able to find a book that he liked among the 20 books on the palm and loved it. I'm not sure what's better Kindle or the Sony Reader. It's trying to be paper. It's better to not try to be everything paper is, but take advantage of the fact that you aren't a book. And what's up with charging you for content that you can get for free on the net (nytimes, blogs, ...).

  19. Re:fine I'll say it on Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not a matter of turning off all the electricity to your house. It's a matter of running your dishwasher and drier during off-peak hours and cutting back on the A/C during the really peak times. Right not, there are no incentives consumers to time their electricity usage, even though the cost to the utility varies wildly, and the utility is expected to provide as much power as you want. This BTW, is one of the reasons for the blackouts in California. That and the fact the companies like Enron knew this fact and exploited it.

  20. Re:I'm Pretty Sure He Committed Perjury on Darl McBride Takes the Stand In Novell v. SCO · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, Darl managed to sell quite a few shares between the time the lawsuit was announced and when the stock tanked. That is, during the time when he was telling the press about the "rocket scientists" who found the "millions of lines of code".

  21. Does this conflict with GPL 2 or just GPL3? on iPhone SDK and Free Software Don't Match · · Score: 3, Informative

    This seems to conflict with GPL 3, but it's a stretch to say that it conflicts with v2. If I distribute code that uses an API, am I disclosing the API? IANAL so I guess someone could make that argument. I'm glad apple will be pushed to clarify this, but it's probably ok. Is Apple trying to make sure nobody ports an iphone app to the andriod ?

  22. Re:the dilemma in a nutshell: on Monsanto's Harvest of Fear · · Score: 1

    Are you working on biotech crops for the tropics or a cure for malaria? Why not? The problem with this whole logic is that folks who do absolutely nothing to help don't get criticized, but if you try to make a business of helping folks, you are marked as a greedy bastard. Biotech crops and drugs are hard to make. People work their whole careers and they do is figure out that some things don't work.

  23. Talking of Non-Talking on FCC, FAA Still Don't Want Cell Phones on Planes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Unfortunately, it's probably only a matter of time. Since we don't have smoking sections anymore, how about a quiet section. Amtrak and the TGV have a quiet cars. Smoke travels almost as well as sound. And if noise really troubles you, pick up some noise-blocking headphones or just some earplugs. Just don't wind up like this guy

  24. Re:Virtualization on Inside Intel's $20M Multicore Research Program · · Score: 1

    This is exactly what Intel is trying to avoid. They want people to do more computing, not consolidate their purchases. The need to sell more PC's with more CPU's. They want people to find uses for the extra computing power. In business, there are plenty of uses for that power. If people's applications are using just one core at at time, the consolidation effect will occur and Intel's sales will plummet. If applications make good use of the multiple cores, the applications themselves become more useful the competitive advantage people who use those applications have over people who don't will increase, and Intel's sales will actually increase.

  25. Long overdue on Justice Dept. Approves XM/Sirius Merger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I say this as an early XM subscriber from 2001, but these companies will have a hard time breaking even, even as a single company. There is too much competition from free radio and mp3 players now. hd-radio is the digital version of free radio and that will push satellite radio further into the niche category. HD-radio will effectively triple the number of public stations available in most urban areas. Even clear channel will have a hard time making all the new commercial radio channels bland. I realized the XM's real problem as I was driving in my car, listening to xm radio, not through an xm radio, but through its internet feed through my broadband card. Today, I can almost get my pick of thousands of stations today (many with better sound quality than XM) while I'm mobile. Think about what's going to happen when Verizon and AT&T get the new frequencies they just purchased in the recent auction. I know that most folks despise free commercial radio (outside of the public stations), and for people in remote areas, XM/Sirius might be your only option, but rest assured, things will get better. And this merger will help. For one, they might be able to reduce the overlapping stations and use the bandwidth for more alternatives (like bringing back edgier stations like ngoma and xm-unsigned and music lab).