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User: WatchMaster

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  1. Translation on Consumer Groups Want To Tax Facebook To Save Journalism (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    "We couldn't figure out a way to stay in business, but those guys did, so we want the *government* to legally attach us as parasites to them"

  2. Re:"Community norms" on The Complicated Economy of Open Source Software (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    there are a lot more little ones, those are just the biggest ones. Many guys/small companies support themselves by providing support/customization for various FOSS packages. If they don't 'check in' the changes (e.g. most businesses not in the software business don't have to share the custom changes back to FOSS if the software is not re-distributed) that work is not made public.

  3. Re:"Community norms" on The Complicated Economy of Open Source Software (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Mostly because that guy isn't very good at business. RedHat makes billions from FOSS software, as does ORACLE.

  4. Re: Tax is for the little people on New York Mayor Says Amazon Headquarters Debacle Was 'an Abuse of Corporate Power' (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Amazon is paying all of the tax that they are required to by law. Whiners should be talking to their lawmakers, not criticizing Amazon for following tax laws.

  5. Re:You spin me right round baby, right round... on New York Mayor Says Amazon Headquarters Debacle Was 'an Abuse of Corporate Power' (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    well if they don't get the revenue, they don't pay much taxes and don't really need any sweet tax deals.

  6. price and quality fallacy on Why Some US Cities are Fighting 'Dollar Stores' (eastbaytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    equating higher price with higher quality is also a fallacy. Some brands purposely charge more to create the impression of high quality. E.g. the entire perfume industry. The economics of quality goods are not so simple.

  7. I always format usb drives as NTFS because it is more damage-resistant than FAT32. Not immune, but more resistant to several types of errors due to journaling.

  8. So a 4B annual revenue product is not sustainable on 'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?' Goldman Sachs Analysts Ask (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    So the business geniuses there think that a 12B peak subsiding to 4B annually is not sustainable? These are the people who brought you the mortgage meltdown and now this wisdom. Why does anyone think they give certified advice?

  9. Code for IBM360 still runs great. If it does the job why change it? Why not keep a few GB of libraries around to make life easier.

  10. Where ai/deep learning research is published on Is China Outsmarting America in AI? (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    The publication evidence is that the major centers of research on deep learning are Redmond, Cambridge and universities in China -
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...

  11. the tools should make this easier on PHP, Python and Google Go Fail To Detect Revoked TLS Certificates (softpedia.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    in java at least, it is quite a project to properly validate a chain of certificates to a root with full support for the several types of certificates. These libraries should provide a simple binary function that can validate a certificate, including revocation. That is - this is an area where experts in this subject should provide standard libraries. Much like one should be wary of writing your own encryption, one should be wary of writing certificate validation code without the required expertise.

  12. Re:It's almost sane(really) on Judge: US Search Warrants Apply To Overseas Computers · · Score: 1

    well this case has nothing to do with warrants, so the analogy is not valid. The legal action is a subpoena, which is a totally different thing. The subpoena directs microsoft representatives to produce documents under their control. No law-enforcement action or searching is involved.

  13. MIssed point Apples - Oranges on R Throwdown Challenge · · Score: 1

    No one uses R for it's amazing language*. The language sucks. R is used because it has nearly limitless, tested, and approved statistical algorithms. Want partial least squares, support vector machines, linear models, principle components analysis, Fisher's exact test?, they are all there waiting to process your data. Along with hundreds of other analyses that you might really need to use but don't even know about yet.

    "Python" doesn't have this stuff because it is a language, not a set of statistical methods.

    *there may be a few deviants who use it for self flagellation

  14. Re:So from here on out ... on Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional · · Score: 1

    exactly why the health care players want this plan.

    I also had catastrophic insurance only, it is way way way cheaper, and if you are healthy it is the practical way to go.

  15. Re:I Don't See the Parallelism Here ... on Student Charged For Re-selling Textbooks · · Score: 1

    No, it doesn't apply only to goods made in the US. In the quoted Costco case the Omega watches are made in Switzerland. The issue was the re-importation to the US and the SCOTUS made totally the wrong decision there.

  16. Re:precedents have been established on Student Expelled From Indiana High School For Tweeting Profanity · · Score: 2

    Schools can't really expel a lot of students because the state funding formulas are by student-days - the number of students attending the school. If they expelled a significant number of schools their funding would be cut noticeably. Poor things.

  17. Re:hello, this occurs with swap too on Data Breach Flaw Found In Gnome-terminal, Xfce Terminal and Terminator · · Score: 1

    That is true. for laptops or computers you are hibernating one should just use the same encryption key for swap as for the other volumes on the disks.

  18. hello, this occurs with swap too on Data Breach Flaw Found In Gnome-terminal, Xfce Terminal and Terminator · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is true of vi and many other programs. The exact same issue occurs with the swap partition.

    Anyone can solve this problem, just mount /tmp and swap using dm-crypt with a new random password every reboot. The partitions are perfectly good while the computer is booted, but are inintelligible afterwards.

  19. Re:Welcome to the USA... on NASA Sues Apollo Astronaut To Return Moon Camera · · Score: 1

    ofmg profit = evil. Why is exchanging your goods for money suddenly more evil than keeping it at your house? Who really cares about a camera that was used 40 years ago then kept in some guys closet.

  20. Re:What classified information? on State Dept. Employee Investigated For Linking To WikiLeaks · · Score: 2

    It should lose its classification when it is public knowledge. There is no point in classifying material published in the new york times, or otherwise available to anyone on the planet.

    Nearly every non disclosure agreement I've ever seen releases responsibility to keep things secret if the covered information becomes public knowledge through disclosure by others.

    Keeping public information "classified" is a 1984-ish way to make everyone a criminal for discussing or "disclosing" state secrets. Now we can all be criminals and be prosecuted arbitrarily at any time.

  21. Re:oven on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives? · · Score: 2

    I've been there. These methods work, and are practical for a reasonably large number of drives:

    1) put them in a fire in your fireplace. Most of the thin aluminum will melt leaving just some metallic debris. 100% destroyed. I've done this, it is simple and very effective.

    2) drill some holes in them with a drill press, so that holes pass through the platters. Theoretically some data could be recovered although it is very unlikely.

  22. Re:Wait, what? on Massachusetts Lottery Broken · · Score: 1

    Stanford is in California.

  23. Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This? on Debt Deal Reached · · Score: 1

    exactly my point - if you *spend* money (thus helping the economy) you get a deduction (or it reduces profit, or taxable income). If you stuff it in your mattress/coffers you don't.

    So if taxes are lower you have more money to spend on buying stuff - which helps other businesses and employment in general.

  24. Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This? on Debt Deal Reached · · Score: 1

    wrong. you can't escape any taxes through investment or stuffing money into matresses. Once you get the money you pay corporate tax on it. You do that before you "lock it away".

    shareholders expect a year-on-year return, so businesses need to spend money to grow to make them happy. the spending can be in many area - e.g. building new stores, acquiring other companies etc. Companies that don't spend are generally forced by shareholders to disburse any excess cash holdings to the investors, as dividends since most companies are't in business to hoard cash - they are in business to make money for investors (or owners).

  25. Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This? on Debt Deal Reached · · Score: 1

    Reagan et al thought that this means that they should lower taxes to make more money in taxes

    the concept is that lower taxes encourage business growth, which results in net increase in tax income, from increased profits, and increasing payroll taxes. There is some evidence for this effect.

    The key concept is that the economy isn't a "zero sum" game - the economy grows through businesses creating value. For example the microcomputer industry resulted in a huge economic net gain.