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User: gumbi+west

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Comments · 2,026

  1. Re:Logical on As Hubble Breaks a Distance Record, We Learn Its True Limits · · Score: 1

    What's absorbing in the x-ray region? Certainly not hydrogen, taking a 1s to free would not absorb that much energy.

  2. Re:The review, it does something... as does sandbo on Researchers Detect Android Apps That Connect to User Tracking and Ad Sites · · Score: 1

    Android Apps don't ask for permissions, they list demands. Once you've installed the App, you're just forced to just live with all their demands, uninstall, or root your phone. iPhones, on the other hand, allow you to grant and revoke permissions on the fly.

    I realize that here on slashdot, rooting your phone may not seem like a big deal, but it's a pain and violates my agreement with my carrier--not something I'm willing to do.

  3. Re: Bullets are OK, but... on Breakthough Makes Transparent Aluminum Affordable · · Score: 1

    The point was it's not like a 7.7 Mohs and transparent material is unheard of. It's the price that is interesting.

  4. Re:Gemstone on Breakthough Makes Transparent Aluminum Affordable · · Score: 1

    I scratched it. There are construction materials with inclusions that have hardness above sapphire.

  5. Re:Gemstone on Breakthough Makes Transparent Aluminum Affordable · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't be so sure. I managed to scratch the sapphire crystal on a watch when i nicked a wall I walked too close too. Expensive mistake.

  6. Re:Bullets are OK, but... on Breakthough Makes Transparent Aluminum Affordable · · Score: 1

    Yeah, imagine if we could get transparent sapphire (9 Mohs) or even diamond (10 Mohs).

  7. Re:Thank god on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 1

    If these executives didn't have to do anything to deserve this money, why aren't you one of them?

  8. Re:ASCAP and BMI on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 1

    No. You're confusing digits with precision. Accuracy is a ex ante property of a statistical estimator, not ex post. Your examples are all ex post.

  9. Re:ASCAP and BMI on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 1

    You weight to avoid this. So if a station has a 10% chance of getting into the sample, you multiply it's results by 10. If a station has a 100% chance (say some huge NYC station) you multiply it's results by 1. This is how estimation via sampling works. Survey methodology is a real field and it's not occupied by idiots as you seem so willing to believe.

  10. Re:Work made for hire on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 1

    No arguing there, and that's probably how they are paid. When the firm decides if it should make an additional album (so, this would be a low level star group, they always make as many huge star songs as they can get from them), they have to think about how much it will cost and how much money they will make. If they think it will make more money than it will cost, they probably make the album / song.

  11. Re:Final nail in the coffin of radio? on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 1

    It's not really a quick buck. The music industry is contracting because there isn't enough revenue. They need more bucks or there will be less music (likely just huge stars and less midlevel groups, which is most of what I love).

  12. Re:Final nail in the coffin of radio? on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 2

    The summary said it would be $500 if you make less than $1M in revenue. Doesn't seem like a ton of money.

    If the huge corporate stations without jockeys fold I'm not so sure I care.

  13. Re:Thank god on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are a lot of people besides artists who work hard to make music. There are many jobs that need to be done. It's like a movie--think of how many people you could name that work on a movie vs how many appear in the credits. Yes, the people you could name get paid more, but everyone else in the industry still would rather have that money to do that movie job than some other job.

    Human's have a tendency to focus on the obvious (the star, in this case) and not to think about the everything else--but it's still there, even if we don't think about it. It's like dark matter and dark energy in that way, I guess.

  14. Re:ASCAP and BMI on Legislation Would Force Radio Stations To Pay Royalties · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The flip side of the sampling is that there is some near (but not exactly) zero play bands getting far more than their share of royalties. Basically, they face a very imprecise but accurate estimate of their payout.

  15. Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS on Sign Up At irs.gov Before Crooks Do It For You · · Score: 1

    Hi, can you explain what you mean by this, "Government should not be concerned with redistributing wealth (which is almost wholly unrelated to the legitimate social responsibility of caring for the poor and needy)."?

    Also, progressivity has decines quite a bit in the US over the last 40 years.
      http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/...

    and there are good reasons to want a progressive system https://www.aeaweb.org/article...

  16. Re:Why is it even a discussion? on Republicans Introduce a Bill To Overturn Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    Ok, when did regulation help with communication. Let's see. maybe when we all payed taxes and then funded the creations of TCP/IP and arpanet. Just throwing that one out there.

    Another time government regulation was good--when we didn't allow banks to do anything but be boring with deposit accounts and loans. These rules were lifted in the late 90s and slow but steady growth was turned into an erratic economy.

  17. Re:Is it REALLY cheating? Test to teach. on German Teenager Gets Job Offer By Trying To Use FOI For His Exam Papers · · Score: 1

    In my favorite case we got a study guide with several sample essay questions on it and then the difference between the study guide and the final was that the header had been changed from "study guide" to "final exam". I had guessed this and even suggested it to several others in the class. I even went so far as to write essays for each question. Everyone else thought I was nuts but, unfortunately for them, the "curve" was to set the highest score to 100 with no care for the number of As, Bs, Cs, ... too bad for them.

  18. Re:I'm all for abolishing the IRS on Sign Up At irs.gov Before Crooks Do It For You · · Score: 1

    I think it's debatable if income tax is a production tax. Certainly, given the individual it is, but across individuals it's more like a tax on being able to produce (being "smart" would be one way to put it, but smarts do not make one rich and all the rich are not smart).

  19. Re:Repeat Submission on Broadband ISP Betrayal Forces Homeowner To Sell New House · · Score: 1

    They don't give a shit?

  20. Re:In contrast to DockPort on Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors? · · Score: 1

    The problem with USB is the S for serial. The connection always has to make space for other devices on the bus to talk and that really brings down maximum bandwitdh for any individual device. So while USB 2.0 hi-speed (remember that debacle) may have high bandwidth, the amount available for, e.g. a single drive, was much lower than the theoretical max.

  21. Re:You keep using that word.... on Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    Can you point me to some evidence that the iPhone is invading my privacy? Again, the Android literally can record my conversations without my knowledge--and I can't turn that off in the settings without violating my agreement with the telco and rooting the machine.

  22. Really, because I have a robot that does it for me on Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.

  23. Re:Who uses any of that crap anyway? on Gadgets That Spy On Us: Way More Than TVs · · Score: 1

    You could say I consented to Chrome being installed (it can't be uninstalled) but not connecting to that is the same as having an android device that is a brick.

    "On the other hand, a lot of the 'control' over privacy in Apple products is directly in the hands of Apple, and there is no guarantee Apple will stay friendly."

    Uh, all of the control is in Apple's hands, and I'd rather have the device that is currently friendly then the device that is currently taking a crap on me and laughing.

  24. Re:You keep using that word.... on Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    I knew of these but don't like them. It's really shitty to think that one would have to root the phone to get it to work at all correctly. I'm concerned about the security implications of installing non google play software and rooting the phone are also not trivial and I want to do things in my life other than fix a phone that was sent to me broken.

    In other words, buying an iPhone is a more attractive option than this.

  25. Re:Lots of weird crap coming out of Congress latel on White House Threatens Veto Over EPA "Secret Science" Bills · · Score: 1

    Except that just today Scalia said that he doesn't have to consider congresses intent. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...