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User: PhrostyMcByte

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  1. Re:Just make it fast on Google Releases Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK and Nexus Preview Images · · Score: 1

    This please. My tablet becoming unusable while automatic updates get installed is mind-boggling.

  2. I wonder how much we can trust it on Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Making Tor dead simple to use is great, but this is such a nice device for three-letter agencies to target inserting a backdoor into.

  3. It's quite possible that he means they have artificially slowed down the graphics rendering to provide more cycles to the AI.

    This is how I read it as well. Though, pure rendering and lerping should not eat up much CPU especially on consoles. Unless they've got a really inefficient rendering pipeline. I'm curious exactly how much extra AI this would allow them to run.

  4. Your logic doesn't track. People enjoy a good murder mystery, yet murders are actually uncommon.

    Stories are all about exploring the unknown without actually having to experience it. I'd even say violence is a common thread in stories for a similar reason as evil science/tech -- people are certainly hostile toward it.

  5. I disagree.

    So many movies and TV shows have inept, complacent, or downright evil scientists creating technologies that either lose control or are specifically for enacting violence. Or they mishandle something and a plague starts. Or a technology-driven society encroaching on one who's in touch with nature or a hundred years in the past.

    And it's usually either a dumb "everyman" who stumbles into the situation and rises to the occasion -- maybe a military guy with a heart of gold -- and saves the day without much science or wit. Heck, look at Bruce Banner -- a brilliant scientist who needs to turn into a dumb tank to fight evil.

    The scientists who do good in these stories are rarely portrayed as healthy people. They may be brilliant, but they're also asocial goofballs and usually side characters.

    I think he's right on the money. People are hostile to technology and science. A fear of the unknown, a fear of someone being smarter than them, a fear of something clashing with their beliefs, or telling them they need to change their ways.

    This trend in media, entertainment, and politics is obvious. There are plenty of counter-examples but on a whole, I think it's very easy to see if you're looking. It must reflect society to a not-insignificant degree, or people wouldn't latch on to it.

  6. Re:Using the Internet to Look up Answers! Tut Tut! on Only Two States Have Rules To Prevent Cheating On Computerized Tests · · Score: 1

    The odd thing is, after succeeding at exams and leaving education with a glowing set of grades, they'll get a job in which if they refused to use the internet to look up answers, they'd be fired.

    This. I have a Stack Overflow tab open up as a pinned tab.

  7. Re:Is it time for C++? on Object Oriented Linux Kernel With C++ Driver Support · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but C++ literally cannot offer any feature which is impossible in C

    Apology accepted.

    So when I mentioned zero-cost error handling, I was referring to an exception handling model that keeps all exception handling code -- your entire catch block -- entirely out of your hot path. It can be put in entirely separate cache lines. Basically ensuring that your non-exceptional code is all as close together and fast as possible.

    You can't do this in C. Please prove me wrong! I enjoy learning.

  8. Re:Is it time for C++? on Object Oriented Linux Kernel With C++ Driver Support · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Good C++ is just as fast as good C, and easier for the programmer to optimize. Compiler optimization is on the same level. C++ even allows some interesting things like zero-cost error handling that is actually impossible in C.

  9. Re:Why do people still care about C++ for kernel d on Object Oriented Linux Kernel With C++ Driver Support · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Windows kernel APIs are all C, there is no C++ in it. You can use a subset of C++ that doesn't require runtime support, but it is unsupported.

    Linus hates C++ for a lot more reasons than ABI, and the majority of them are completely uninformed and show a lack of C++ experience.

    All the understandability and maintainability worries people have about C++ in the kernel would be easily controlled by standard patch review. Don't like giant template metaprograms? Don't accept the pull request. That easy. Perhaps one of the valid reasons to keep C++ out of the kernel right now is purely that Linus would be unable to review such patches with authority.

    Even simple things like classes, RAII, basic templates, and exceptions would do wonders for development.

  10. And now it all makes sense on JP Morgan Chase Breach Compromised Data of 76 Million Households · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My workplace gets regular audits from our clients, usually every 3-24 months depending on how big/paranoid the client is. JP Morgan Chase is one of them.

    We could tell the audit this summer was a bit different. It took about twice as long and went into much more detail than usual specifically regarding our tech side. After the audit, we got an unexpected list of demands related to stopping leaks.

    Now, we don't handle sensitive financial information for them, so it's possible they were just trying to cover all their bases and we got stuck with security theater. Irritatingly, everyone in IT immediately recognized that the demands wouldn't actually prevent leaks. When you have a company full of employees who regularly use FTP, email, and even dropbox to send files to clients, you're simply not going to be able to prevent it.

    After months of back and forth trying to kill some of the more ridiculous demands -- like blocking access to Gmail, which we use for company email -- they simply wouldn't budge. We've been wondering why they're standing so firm about it, and now it all makes sense.

  11. Re:CloudFlare is a f.ing nightmare for anonymity on CloudFlare Announces Free SSL Support For All Customers · · Score: 2

    he trouble with CloudFlare is, if you want to stay anonymous on the internet using Tor, you're SOL, as they serve you captchas every 3 pages when they see a connection coming from a Tor exit node.

    This feature can be easily turned off in their settings. It is part of their security features.

  12. This isn't going to work. on Tor Executive Director Hints At Firefox Integration · · Score: 2

    I'd love to see more people using Tor, but the experience has to change a lot before we can do that.

    Being anonymous and secure on Tor is not easy. It's a major inconvenience to disabling browser features like Javascript, and it requires firm behavioral changes from the user.

    Putting a mainstream user into the same environment is simply not going to work.

  13. Re:Scorpion ot the rescue! on Nearly 2,000 Chicago Flights Canceled After Worker Sets Fire At Radar Center · · Score: 2

    So did they send in the new Scorpion team to save the day?

    They tried, but were having trouble finding a 458 that could transform into a 360 and back in the blink of an eye.

    (The dash they flash to while accelerating was a Ferrari 360, not the 458 he was driving)

  14. Re:This is silly on U2 and Apple Collaborate On 'Non-Piratable, Interactive Format For Music' · · Score: 1

    The #2 thing Apple can do is offer songs in Apple Lossless. AAC was a good choice back when 128K was the bitrate of the day. But, in a world where everyone is selling 256K and 320K tracks, I'd rather get my music in a lossless format and convert down to VBR MP3.

    A thousand times this. It's been shown that ~192K VBR from a modern encoder is transparent to our ears, so these 256K or higher bitrates are the worst of both worlds: it's not lossless AND it's a waste of bandwidth.

  15. Re:I am guessing they will make a sequel on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 1

    They said they wont make changes to Minecraft, so how will they make money?

    I've seen kids wearing Minecraft backpacks and shirts, said something like "hey cool! what're you building right now?" only to discover that while they've heard of the game they haven't actually played it.

    I suspect these paraphernalia stand to make a lot more money than the game does.

    As far as coming out with sequels, I'm not sure how well that would work anyway. Minecraft prides itself on being extremely basic, letting the player provide the creativity. What could a sequel possibly provide that didn't do away with that premise?

    Anyway. Worth 2.5 billion? Highly doubtful, especially looking at the lackluster response to anything non-Minecraft they've brought out.

  16. Bikes lanes are nice on Surprising Result of NYC Bike Lanes: Faster Traffic for Cars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But it sounds like optimizing left turns is what actually improved traffic.

  17. Re:Can someone clarify the state of BitCoin? on Paypal Jumps Into Bitcoin With Both Feet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bitcoin itself doesn't have any known security flaws. One usability issue is that you can't instantly guarantee a transfer of coins -- nobody is going to be buying coffee with it directly.

    It's not so much about problems with Bitcoin, but with Bitcoin "banks" that turned out to be incredibly insecure. The banks were created to exchange paper money for Bitcoins, and to facilitate instant transfers. They just happen to be incredibly bad at it, and because there is no regulation like an actual bank, are pretty much free to be as bad as they want.

    Paypal is actually a good fit, as Bitcoin is essentially a decentralized Paypal. Paypal is also pretty well known for the same evils as they aren't regulated like an actual bank either, but they've got a lot of infrastructure and experience that could make them a far better Bitcoin bank than what's available right now.

  18. Re:Franchise laws = Racket laws on Tesla's Next Auto-Dealer Battleground State: Georgia · · Score: 1

    Car franchise laws were put in place to protect dealerships. Car manufacturers did not want to put in the heavy local investment to sell cars in every area, and dealerships did not want a manufacturer swooping in to steal the business with lower prices once the areas started booming.

  19. Are you a programmer? on Ask Slashdot: the State of Free Video Editing Tools? · · Score: 4, Informative

    AviSynth is extremely versatile and often leads in state-of-the-art filters long before any other video editor gets them, including professional ones. The trick is that there's no UI for it -- to edit videos, you write scripts.

  20. Re:pdf.js on Ask Slashdot: Best PDF Handling Library? · · Score: 2

    Office Automation is problematic -- because it literally opens up a hidden window of your Office app and simulates clicking around the UI to do what you need, if something unexpected happens it can unhide the window to show the user a message. This might be good enough for a desktop app, but if you're running it on a server it'll just freeze up your process with noone there to click it.

    For Office->PDF conversion of word docs, Aspose.Words has a fairly easy API and generally very accurate rendering. I highly recommend it.

  21. I'm convinced there is no elegant PDF library on Ask Slashdot: Best PDF Handling Library? · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least on the C# side of things, the three libraries I've used (iTextSharp, PdfSharp, and Aspose.Pdf) are all a bit of an unintuitive mess with inconsistencies all over the place and very little documentation. In the case of iText, their revenue stream is putting all their documentation into a book for people to buy, so it's not uncommon to get an intentionally vague response when asking for help.

    I cycle between each depending on what I need to do, because they all have their own quirks and supported features. I've even piped from one to another to get certain parts of the process working.

    Good luck.

  22. Re:Bose is worried on Bose Sues New Apple Acquisition Beats Over Patent Violations · · Score: 1

    Well, I never said Bose actually had quality, only that people perceive them as having it. I carefully worded it like that because while I agree with you, it was not the point I was trying to make. I'll stick to my Mad Dogs and DT880s.

  23. Bose is worried on Bose Sues New Apple Acquisition Beats Over Patent Violations · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bose and Beats are both highly brand-focused. Bose targets the more mature quality-seeking crowd, while Beats targets the bass-hungry and fashion-conscious youth. There's some overlap, but generally I'd say their targets kept competition to a minimum, and they've pretty much cornered those targets

    Apple has the best of both worlds being viewed both as high quality and a status symbol. If they start using their monster marketing teams to align peoples' view of Beats with that of Apple, Bose stands a chance of being pushed out of the market by a frightening direct competition. They've got good reason to try to stall the acquisition as much as possible

  24. Re:Why haven't they fined practically every ISP? on FCC Reminds ISPs That They Can Be Fined For Lacking Transparency · · Score: 2

    If this order still stands, why hasn't the FCC fined practically every ISP under this rule?

    It seems they've got quite a lot of bark, but not enough bite. Unless it comes to boobs on TV.

  25. Re:Automation is killing jobs faster than ever on FBI Concerned About Criminals Using Driverless Cars · · Score: 1

    Umm, is that per 100,000 65-74yo drivers, or just per 100,000 drivers in general? I imagine, you know, death, would skew that quite a bit if the latter.