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User: Brad+Mace

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Comments · 285

  1. Re:After on 'Smart Gun' Firm Wants You To Fund Its Prototype · · Score: 1

    The biggest push for requiring any product or service almost always comes from those who stand ready to provide it. Using the government to force people to buy your product can be so much easier than making a product people want.

  2. Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea on US Scraps Virtual Fence Along Mexican Border · · Score: 1

    I never understood how they planned to get Mexicans to wear those collars anyway

  3. Re:In soviet Russia... on A Third of World's Spam From One Russian Man · · Score: 1

    You've been on the site that long and you still think that's funny?

  4. Re:Oh common.. on Real-Life Gadgets For Real-Life Superheroes · · Score: 1

    Are you honestly that naive? Really? What do you suppose they're doing? Do I have to let him come in and kill someone before I can do something about it? I don't agree with the right-wing in the US on much, but at least they think my life is valuable enough that I should be entitled to defend it. It's absolutely pathetic when people value the lives of criminals more important than the people just trying to live their lives and have the audacity to consider it "civilized". So much sympathy for criminals and yet mysteriously little for their intended victims.

  5. Re:Oh common.. on Real-Life Gadgets For Real-Life Superheroes · · Score: 1

    Brilliant. "Let's not trouble ourselves about the guy breaking into our house at 2am. He's probably here to retrieve our overdue library books."

  6. Re:Oh common.. on Real-Life Gadgets For Real-Life Superheroes · · Score: 1

    Good thing you gave the issue serious thought instead of just replying with a pithy, holier-than-thou one-liner.

  7. ISPs as police on Colleges Risk Losing Federal Funding If They Don't Fight Piracy · · Score: 1

    Why would it be any ISPs job to enforce the laws? That sounds like law enforcement's job. This makes no more sense than holding the people that put in your driveway responsible for ensuring you obey traffic laws.

  8. Re:Not a bad idea... in fact, an obvious good idea on Mississippi Makes Caller ID Spoofing Illegal · · Score: 1

    Well, they did overreact on the punishment. Fine them, sure. But a year in prison for spoofing caller id? Really guys? The cost to taxpayers for that is worse than the harm of letting them spoof.

  9. Re:I don't know anything about this but.. on Martian Microbe Fossils, Not So Debunked Anymore · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure if it tells us anything about what kind of life we might find elsewhere in the universe. If they find life on Mars, I think there's a fair chance that life or some of its makings was transplanted from Mars to Earth or vice versa, and would therefore have some inherent similarities. Plus, Earth and Mars formed from the same dust cloud, giving them many of the same raw materials. They have fairly similar sizes and orbits, all of which could predispose life to develop in similar ways.

    Of course, finding life on Mars would be a huge scientific breakthrough, but to generalize about the requirements of life throughout the galaxy or the universe we need a far larger data set, which is obviously centuries off. If they determine that life evolved independently on Earth and Mars, that's another huge discovery that tells us a lot about how common life is, but not necessarily what shapes it will take. There are legitimate reasons to suspect all life might require water, but we're a bit biased by our own circumstances.

  10. Re:Free trade of ideas, anyone? on Google Hacked, May Pull Out of China · · Score: 1

    Being arrested in China because the government doesn't like you is a risk that can outweigh a huge profit margin.

    And also, how much profit can you really make if the government is using these sorts of tactics to impose price controls?

  11. Re:yeah on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    You can rail against the injustice of it all you want, but when someone has to go through 30 applications for 1 job opening (and maybe they've got a dozen other jobs to fill each with 30 of their own applicants), they're not going to sit down and learn everyone's life story. They've got to get the list down to a handful to actual look at in depth, and to do that they're going to use shortcuts. After they throw out the ones that are clearly not qualified, they're going to look at things like spelling, grammar, and (depending on who's doing the reviewing), maybe your @aol.com address. Therefore, ditching an AOL address is one more little tweak you can make to your resume to keep it in the pile.

    You seem to be under the impression that the hiring process is about you, or justice or fairness or something. They don't care about you. They generally just want to find someone qualified reasonably quickly. When they've got one more interview slot and two similar applicants, little things can make a difference.

  12. Re:yeah on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    forgot to include my actual point in that message: judging people for having used AOL in the past is a bit harsh :) Just about everyone goes through the training wheel stage. Just don't get stuck there forever.

  13. Re:yeah on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    Fair enough, but I was about 13 when we had AOL, so not my choice. :)

    But we should also remember that the reason we disdain AOL and/or its users is directly tied to the reason it was successful. It's the internet with training wheels. In the mid to late 90s there was a huge demand for just that, but now the world's grown up and people are expected to be able to ride on their own. (and now that everyone has at least one 'computer person' in their family it's practical for people to learn from each other instead of working it out themselves on services like AOL). All this is exactly why people are going to be judged for having AOL emails: it announces to the world that you're taking your first baby steps into the world of computing.

  14. Re:yeah on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really? Pretty much everyone with any tech savvy abandoned aol years ago. Also, anyone with any tech savvy knows how AOL is regarded. So if you apply for a tech job with an @aol, you're telling them you're either clueless, stubborn, or just totally lacking in common sense. All of those seem like valid reasons to toss an application if you need to thin the pile. For a less tech-oriented job I wouldn't consider it such a big deal, but with so many jobs requiring some level of computer usage, who wants to hire someone with AOL-level computer skills?

    Would a nutritionist apply with an @mcdonalds.com email? A truck driver with an @alcoholicsanonymous email? It's just common sense.

  15. Re:As someone who purchased ... on NY Times, LA Times Want Amazon To Collect More State Taxes · · Score: 1

    recommendations on a sale-level; people who bought this also bought that, 57% people on this page bought this item, the others went here, combo deals with books you viewed before, etc. You'd think they would be able to come up with a system for the taxes

    Not the same thing at all. There's no legal repercussions for bad recommendations, and the other features are only mildly clever algorithms. Paying taxes requires understanding and then keeping up to date with tax codes in what must be 10s or 100s of thousands of jurisdictions then filing the appropriate paperwork and submitting the payments. There's state, county and city level and even other entities like levy districts which can overlap the boundaries of the other levels. If anyone can, Amazon can probably manage it, but you can't just target Amazon with a rule like this. You'd be sinking a lot of smaller online retailers who can't manage all the insane complexity.

  16. Re:Programming on How To Teach a 12-Year-Old To Program? · · Score: 1

    I agree completely, glad to see a voice of reason in here. Submitter sounds a bit too eager to turn his brother into his little nerd minion. Kid is 12 and submitter is already dragging him into the c++ uber alles wars. It's not about this vs that language or platform or what *submitter* considers the One True Path. Just give him something where he can see results.

    The first things I played with were Logo and Hypercard, which I think used a variant of AppleScript. Neither is at all relevant to the real world, but they were good starting points. No fancy editors or tool chains, just a little coding for quick results. The only special feature I'd consider useful is syntax highlighting to help them spot mistakes. He's not going to be creating big enough programs that he'll need anything else, and he certainly doesn't need to be bogged down learning obscure vi or emacs commands or complex tool chains. At most an editor like jEdit or Notepad++ would be just right, probably with a lot of features disabled or just ignored.

    Next steps were javascript (again quick results) and programming my TI-82 (first programs that were actually useful, for math class). Then C++ in highschool, followed shortly by Perl. Learned PHP the summer after highschool, took classes on Scheme, Java, Haskell and Python in college. Of course I don't remember a lot of those now, and this kid probably won't either. So don't try and railroad him cause it won't work anyway.

  17. Re:Windoze on How To Teach a 12-Year-Old To Program? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Do you know how stupid and childish you look when you say things like 'Windoze' and 'M$'? All that does it let people know that they should ignore whatever else you're saying. And why exactly does a 12 year old care about "an OS and full tool chain"?

  18. Re:Isn't this the opposite of evolution? on Music By Natural Selection · · Score: 1

    Do you not understand the word-symbols you're putting into your computer-box or do you just like being contrarian? God 'designs' things the way he wants them the first time. This music is generated randomly, then subjected to fitness tests in the form of listener reviews. The fittest members survive and provide the input material which is then randomly mutated again for the next generation.

  19. Re:GA vs. Hillclimbing on Genetic Algorithm Helps Identify Criminals · · Score: 1

    I also have to wonder how they are accounting for selection bias

    are they accounting for racial variances

    I don't see how either of those issues are affected by this new technique. It's something the police have had to deal with long before this, so I assume they'll continue to do so.

  20. Re:Wal-Mart Wins on Wal-Mart, Amazon Battle For Online Retail's Future · · Score: 1

    Wal-Mart is winning in my book as they take PayPal and Amazon doesn't. I always use PayPal when buying stuff online.

    lol, you owe me a keyboard. Preferably from amazon

  21. Amazon Prime on Wal-Mart, Amazon Battle For Online Retail's Future · · Score: 5, Interesting

    don't forget Amazon Prime. $80/yr for free 2-day shipping? That's a guaranteed money-loser for them. And I'm shocked by what they include in that offer. They've sent me all sorts of heavy and bulky items including a 70-pound air compressor and a storage cabinet that was about 4'x4'x3', all free 2-day shipping. Beats driving to the store any day. It also gets you upgrades to overnight shipping for $3.99, so unless you absolutely must have it this instant, online shopping wins.

  22. Technobabble backlash on Has Sci-Fi Run Out of Steam? · · Score: 1

    I agree, I think there's been a backlash against technobabble which is steering scifi away from Star Trek tech-porn towards a more BSG style focused more on people than cool gadgets. I certainly enjoy Star Trek, but they've saturated the gee-whiz-look-at-this-cool-gadget market, and people are ready for something new. Now that we've been exploring space for a few decades, and everyone has cool gadgets, they want more depth in the stories. It's not so much that scifi is running out of steam, it's just evolving as all genres do.

  23. Not discriminatory against smokers on Apple Voiding Smokers' Warranties? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't say whether this new policy is in line with their warranty, but I don't see how anyone would make a case that it's discriminatory even where smokers are a protected class. They are targeting the smoke itself, not the smokers. If you're a smoker but you don't do it around your computer, or it just happens to be reasonably clean, you're going to be fine. If you don't smoke, but you like to store your computer in your chimney flue, they're still going to refuse to work on it.

    On the other hand, smoke residue is hardly the most dangerous or disgusting thing anyone has had to deal with on the job, and using OSHA as an excuse seems pretty weak. If they just acknowledged that they're going to treat excessive smoke exposure the same way they would excessive heat or humidity, that would seem entirely reasonable.

  24. And the solution is... on Glenn Beck Loses Dispute Over Parody Domain · · Score: 1

    more education about local conditions, not less education about traffic management

  25. Re:Robots.txt on Murdoch To Explore Blocking Google Searches · · Score: 1

    Let's see what the hit count looks like when answers no longer are found from his pubs, in popular search engine results.

    Indeed. Google could settle this thing now by removing all News Corp sites from their listings proactively. The screaming from Fox and the Right would be almost deafening though.