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User: foniksonik

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  1. Re:Don't get it on New Jersey Auto Dealers Don't Want to Face Tesla · · Score: 1

    Here's a thought. Your taxes can go to subsidizing farmers. Mine can go to feeding the hungry.

    There you go. Conservative and Liberal values (how subsidizing corporate conglomerates is conservative I truly don't know). Taxes applied to what we consider to be important e.g. representative taxation.

    My taxes are going to keep people healthy, decrease healthcare costs cheaply, improve the results of education (children perform better when nourished) and generally improve quality of life for all. Think of food and nutrition as the tide that raises all ships.

    Your taxes are going to improve the profitability of food producers so they can continue to consolidate that industry in a series of acquisitions and mergers.

    Feel better?

  2. Re:..or without a background check? on Facebook Wants To Block Illegal Gun Sales · · Score: 1

    Yeah but your life would suck hard if those guns were used to kill anyone important. Regardless of your rights you would become a person of interest and potentially slapped with an abetting charge. You have no record of the sale so no proof that you did not supply the weapons specifically to have your alleged accomplice commit the crime. Just imagine the Feds showing up to let you know that your firearms were involved in the killing of a US Senator and the suspected you of belonging to a pro-gun militant group, etc etc.

    Enjoy those thoughts.

  3. Re:1 option here - Comcast on Why Is US Broadband So Slow? · · Score: 1

    You have to call and give them a hard time. The. They'll reduce your rate. They charge you what you are willing to pay. It's not a fixed rate. Is $25/mo (to get back to $50) for one year worth 3 hours on the phone?

  4. Re:Temporal Control Circuits on National Ignition Facility Takes First Steps Towards Fusion Energy · · Score: 1

    Salt was more valuable than gold. Many other spices as well. Currency was only useful in cities in ancient times. Cities are working economies - a post economic world would have no use of currency. Barter would be the norm. Possibly with some trade (scheduled exchanges of goods between communities).

    The only scenario this is even remotely plausible is one where at least 999 of every 1,000 people died catastrophically and in an equal distribution around the globe (leaving about 7 million people worldwide and scattered into small groups).

  5. Re:Target needs to be sued on Target Admits Data Breach May Have Up To 110 Million Victims · · Score: 1

    And which Target do you go to where there's only one checkout line? I'll be sure to avoid that one.

    Btw 6 min / 6 lanes = 1 min (keeping it easy for the math challenged).

    The Targets I go to have at least 20 lanes plus several POS in electronics. That still seems like I'm under estimating.

  6. Re:Arthur C. Clarke on Next-Gen Windshield Wipers To Be Based On Jet Fighter "Forcefield" Tech · · Score: 1

    Hmmm sounds like the patent may have just run out then.

  7. Re:If there is no foundation ... on Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are several slide rule apps available on Apple App Store - probably some Android apps out there too. Just saying they exist.

  8. Re:And they're all shit on The Battle For the Game Industry's Soul · · Score: 1

    Try out Don't Starve. Nice Indie Game. Steam or Chrome App. Like a crossover between Legend of Zelda and Minecraft.

  9. Re:Mice = Calorie Hunters on No, Oreos Aren't As Addictive As Cocaine · · Score: 1

    No, they should have put cocaine at the other end. Then we'd know for sure if Oreos are as addictive as cocaine. A simple test made complex by lack of the right resources.

  10. Re:Are they completely blind? on Ed Felten: Why Email Services Should Be Court-Order Resistant · · Score: 2

    adjective
    adjective: catholic;adjective: Catholic
    1.
    (esp. of a person's tastes) including a wide variety of things; all-embracing.
    synonyms: universal, diverse, diversified, wide, broad, broad-based, eclectic, liberal, latitudinarian; More
    antonyms: narrow

    That word doesn't mean what you think it means.

  11. Re:world before Snowden and after, - B.S. & A. on Could Snowden Have Been Stopped In 2009? · · Score: 0

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

    Jesus existence is pretty much a fact - everything else about him, not so much. The comparison with Snowden in terms of what we actually know may be apt. It's unlikely that we will ever know all of the facts about Snowden and many details that are filled in later will be questionable.

  12. Re:Anyone noticed on The W3C Sells Out Users Without Seeming To Get Anything In Return · · Score: 2

    FairPlay is what the parent was thinking of. It's the DRM that limits you to 5 device authorizations but with unlimited lossy "burns" and 10 playlists with unlimited "burns".

    It actually wasn't that burdensome - some might say "fair" but the reality was/is that people are happy with lossy lower quality mp3s so the unlimited part was a loophole that voided the DRM in practice. Apple abandoned it ASAP and opted to simply make buying tracks easier than pirating them. Worked pretty well.

  13. Re:Oblig /. comment on Collapse of Quantum Wavefunction Captured In Slow Motion · · Score: 1

    In Soviet Russia it collapses you!

  14. Re:Odd for the country of Intel, Apple and Google on US Adults Score Poorly On Worldwide Test · · Score: 1

    The US has ~316 Million people. 5% have a net worth of 1M or more. ~20% are below the poverty line w no assets and less than 28k annual income, 1.2% live on less than $2 per day. 20% are working poor (no assets), 40% are working/middle class and 15% are upper middle class.

    So you have 20% (rich and upper middle class) that have a quality education or personal drive aka self educated. Let's add in 10% to account for the top of the middle class, educated but lacking in opportunity or ambition or just not there yet.

    30% of 300 Million, so 100 Million people with a 16 Million buffer. Let's take out the children and elderly, so we're left with 60% of that number (under 20 is ~28% and over 85 is ~12%) or 60 Million.

    Unemployment is at 7.5% so we're at 45 Million.

    I can't find a good source of jobs by industry at the moment (should be on bureau of labor site somewhere), so I'll just throw out 10% as a rough percentage of people who might be involved in something technical or scientific where they could be innovative in some way.

    4.5 Million. Let's cut that in half to 2.25 Million for no good reason and then let's take 2% of that = 45k. That's 45 thousand people who could be starting up the next Apple, Google, etc. It really only takes a few people at the top to provide leadership.

    What's my point? I don't know, but whatever it was I showed my work.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_population

  15. Re:How I see it... on Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You? · · Score: 1

    The AAC is already funded, hence the attempts to de-fund it.

    The parent post is highly overrated.

  16. Re:How I see it... on Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You? · · Score: 1

    I could be wrong but he's likely talking about the 39% of the welfare recipients who are white (and clearly poor).

    http://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/

  17. Re:Who shut down the government? on Lockheed To Furlough 3,000 On Monday, Layoffs Also Kicking In · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are correct but you're still an idiot. Now that you are unemployed and have no healthcare and potentially have pre-existing conditions, you better hope and pray for a change in attitude from the remainder of the House majority. A few days of slow business didn't get you layed off - it was going to happen anyways, this just happened to be a convenient time to do so.

    So where does that leave you? COBRA for a few months if you're lucky under existing law and then you get to be a single person (or family) negotiating with a multinational insurance corporation. Have you done that before? If not I'll tell you a trick, lube up real good before you go begging, cause you're going to need it.

    OTOH come Jan 1st, you'll get to join up with millions of others just like you and with your combined negotiating power you will be able to get a much much better deal, better in fact than any Corporate plan. Better because you will be paying less than what you plus the Corp would pay (yes they pay for some percentage of the policy, the individual typically pays less than 50%, depending on the size of the group).

    Don't be an idiot. Realize that economies of scale are real and that group plans are better than individual plans, regardless of who manages the group enrollment policy.

  18. Re:ebooks? Project Gutenberg! on Scribd Launches a Global 'Spotify For eBooks' · · Score: 1

    So you plan to ignore all books written in the future? 65k sounds like a lot but really unless you have no preferences and read simply to kill time, there are maybe 2k titles in there (and a lot of stuff you won't like but someone else will). Good luck with that.

  19. Re:Historic? on Cygnus Spacecraft Makes Historic Rendezvous With Space Station · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They both make sense in that there is redundancy. Add the Soyuz with its human transport and escape pod and you've got a pretty good justification for keeping the ISS going. Without all three the ISS becomes a liability rather than an asset.

  20. Re:Research suggestion on Rapid7 Launches Crowdsourced Security Research Project · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a thesis. Go get a grant.

  21. Re:Yeah except... on The Circle Skewers Google, Facebook, Twitter · · Score: 2

    #firstworldproblems

  22. Re:If Apple or Google came up with this... on Microsoft Shows Off Its Vision For Gesture-Controlled PCs · · Score: 1

    I actually think this is awesome. If they can license leap motions tech as well, even better. Yes hot keys could do some of this but some things like scrolling and zooming would be better as gestures. Lots of people don't keep hands on keyboard at all times either for legitimate reasons. Many many people use a mouse as their primary input and only type when necessary. If this could replace the mouse as a general pointer like a virtual track pointer (aka nipple), it would be great.

  23. Re:Can we skip this stage of UI on Microsoft Shows Off Its Vision For Gesture-Controlled PCs · · Score: 1

    This version of gestures actually looks very usable. Just map the gestures to what makes sense for your workflow. Unless you have a clenching fist tick it won't get in the way.

    This is way better than touchscreen for desktop. No gorilla arm syndrome for daily use but could be extended to LeapMotion like controls for when you do want fine control (maybe use a gesture to turn that on/off or stick with a hot key if it is too easy to do by chance).

  24. Re:Planets and life on Why Are Cells the Size They Are? Gravity May Be a Factor · · Score: 2

    It's awful when you start with one thought and end with another.

    Five times mass rather than size. A planet five times bigger could be less dense eg have less mass for a given volume and therefore have a similar gravity to earth.

  25. Re:Planets and life on Why Are Cells the Size They Are? Gravity May Be a Factor · · Score: 1

    Five times the density, not size. Gravity results from mass rather than volume.