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User: noldrin

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  1. Re:Blame yourselves on More Performers Are Demanding Audiences Lock Up Their Phones (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    I went to a concert lately and the 50+ year old were far worse. They were constantly snapping pictures and texting them out to there friends.

  2. Re: The Taste must have been fired also on Hostess Saves Twinkies By Automating, Fires 94% Of Their Workforce (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    I've wondered for a while now why they often add sugar and banana flavoring to banana chips made from actual bananas, this likely explains it.

  3. For me: GPS is the killer feature on Taxi Owners Sue NYC Over Uber, While Court Overrules Class-Action Appeal (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't know about NYC cabs specifically, but everywhere I go, traditional cabs don't use GPS. So instead of sitting back and relaxing, I have to play navigator to the guy driving the cab. This is interesting in locations I've never been. I give the address, and the drivers asks me which highway to take. How am I suppose to know? I end up using my phone's GPS just so the driver can go where I need.

    Now you can run into problems with Uber when they are relying on GPS to get places somewhere like Boston, and the major roads are underground and the buildings can interfere with signal. You'd think someone driving Uber would at least know where the major sports arenas are located, but I guess not. Anyways, an experienced cab drivers, with GPS, who I could hail from my phone, would be my goto service, regardless of all but extreme pricing differences. Boston cabs wouldn't even take credit cards till Uber (and some even still use carbon paper to do so) so they still have a long ways to go to catch up.

  4. Re:Let's just throw out all the rules of English t on The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 Is an Emoji (oxforddictionaries.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    The use of "they" as a singular pronounce dates back to the 15th century and is a generally understood convention, one which is receiving increased use due to increased need to refer to people in a way which is dignified.

  5. Automated conversation has been done before on Microsoft's Plan To Port Android Apps To Windows Proves Too Complex (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, the original poster is wrong, automated conversation from one platform to another has been done at least one time in the past, check out Project Odin which could on the fly automatically convert a Win32 binary into a native OS/2 binary.

  6. Unless it's open source... on The Return of OS/2 Warp Set For 2016 (techrepublic.com) · · Score: 1

    I used OS/2 for a few years, from 1995 to around 2001, it was a lot of fun. A lot of the technologies were interesting, but now antiquated. If it was open source, it could be something fun to run in a VM and tinker with.

  7. Re:Massive Economic Benefits = Going to Happen Fas on How Tesla's Autopilot and Google's Car Are Entirely Different Animals (robohub.org) · · Score: 1

    Other industries will try to push back against them such as municipalities who earn income through traffic enforcement, and insurance companies who make big money on point surcharges.

    Self driving cars will likely change our relationship with our cars as much as media on demand has with our TV. When we drive somewhere in the city, the car drops as off, looks for parking on it own, and can just keep driving around if nothing is found. Heck, if are going for the day, why pay $35 when it can drive to a further cheaper lot, or even just drive back home. Instead of walking to where we park the car, we will be able to call our car to us. If we need to take something over to a friend, we can have our car bring it without us going for the ride.

    What if they made our cars better designed to sleep in? Go to bed in city, wake up in another. Planes suddenly only become attractive if you need to go outside your watch your evening TV and then sleep all night radius.

  8. Re: Switching on LibreOffice Turns Five · · Score: 2

    > 2) Compatibility with .docx sucks. Compatibility with Excel is _terrible_.

    True, although I have the same problem with Excel. Micrsoft broke excel document compatibility, and all of a sudden, all of my users could no longer open the excel generated by our local servers. I had to switch everyone to LibreOffice so people could do continue to do their jobs.

  9. Creditability lost on SourceForge Suspends Independent Project Mirroring · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At this point, downloaders can't have confidence that any software coming from Sourceforge hasn't been tampered with and might include unwanted guests. Till they establish ethics in how they host software which conform to what most users expect from a software download site, they are a no go for me

  10. reputation = ruined on Lenovo To Wipe Superfish Off PCs · · Score: 1

    When are customers ever happy about having their shopping experience "enhanced" especially by adware? I would suggest wiping those computers clean and putting a third party OS install on them as Lenovo has pretty much shown how it views it's customers.

  11. Re:Kind of disappointed in him. on Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explains His Christmas Tweet · · Score: 1

    It's hard to know his intentions, he does tend to be a bit smug, but I might just be reading into him. As a Christian, I think it's pretty cool Newton's birthday was on Dec 25th. I'd put a Newton ornament on my Christmas tree. He was scientists, mathematician, inventor and theologian.

  12. Astrid on Marissa Mayer's Reinvention of Yahoo! Stumbles · · Score: 1

    I have to wonder about the logic with acquisitions of sites like Astrid, which it owned for only two months before deciding to completely shut them down. It gives the impression that Yahoo! just causes everything it touches to wilt.

  13. Re:1960 "Black Like Me" experiment on Virtual Reality Experiment Wants To Put White People In Black Bodies · · Score: 2

    There is also a movie you can watched. I chucked when they said it was impossible before VR technology.

  14. Re:Blatent memory leaks continue. on Firefox 34 Arrives With Video Chat, Yahoo Search As Default · · Score: 1

    Strange, because all the people I know who switched away from Firefox did so because of the persistent memory leak issue which has only gotten worse version after version. How can the developers not find something that is so plainly observed by so many people?

  15. Re:And nothing to be said about "non-profit" schoo on Colleges Face New 'Gainful Employment' Regulations For Student Loans · · Score: 1

    Yes, back when Universities were for the leisure class, not the poor who are taking out loans

  16. Re:This has been doctrine for decades. on Pope Francis Declares Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Right · · Score: 3

    Plus 60+ years ago Pope Pius XII declared no conflict with evolution, and this was built on top of earlier papal doctrines from 1909 and 1893 and that stated it had no objection to evolution and non-literal interpretation of the book of Genesis outside of human creation.

  17. good for the ecosystem? on Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork · · Score: 1

    I think it could be potentially good for the free/open source software ecosystem for there to be multiple developed solutions to the init system being used out there. I think at this point, a fork could potentially be a lot of work, so I hope they are able to express a more complete vision of future goals, and perhaps differentiate itself For instance, will they try and become Free Software endorsed by the FSF?

  18. Re:Quality of Slashdot discourse in death-spiral on GNOME 3 Winning Back Users · · Score: 1

    > Look slashdot: If you don't like something stop being whiny luddite bitches and fix it. That's what open source is about.

    People would rather give excuses which reveal they haven't even done a cursory review of the technical aspects involved. People confuse passion with effort, and actually working on open source takes effort.

  19. Re:Critics should take positive action on Lennart Poettering: Open Source Community "Quite a Sick Place To Be In" · · Score: 2

    People fork distros all the time, it's not as dramatic as you make it sound. You also have Gentoo and other distros based on it not using systemd, like Funtoo. Both Gentoo and *BSD could use development help. You could also work with uselessd, whether on the project itself or work on adapting a distro to use it. Start with smaller pieces and if people like what you do, others will join in to help.

  20. Critics should take positive action on Lennart Poettering: Open Source Community "Quite a Sick Place To Be In" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I haven't like the changes he's caused in Linux, but none of those things are the way one should deal with it. If you don't like where Linux is going, fork things and make it the way you like. These types of actions you'd expect from people with no discernible skills to be able to contribute. If you have skill to contribute, put the work in, if you don't have skills, put some work in and gain them.

  21. forcing them to enforce a flawed policy on The Single Vigilante Behind Facebook's 'Real Name' Crackdown · · Score: 2

    The best way to show a flawed policy is to force them to actually enforce the policy. Too often we enabled flawed policies and rules to flounder because we ignore them or find ways around the policy. If you want to change the policy, enforce the policy. For too long, Facebook's real name policy has been indiscriminately enforced. Many users persist for years with obviously fake names, while other people feel the full force of the policy, usually those in discriminated groups. This happens all the time in real life, where enforcing agencies will selectively enforce policies or laws on targeted groups. Selective enforcement of the law can be illegal as it runs counter to the equal protection act and 14th amendment, and corporations need to be careful that they don't run afoul those in discriminatory business practices.

  22. Re:Systemd integration counted as a positive thing on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    I would say that there are some extremely bad and troubling design elements at play *if* indeed the initial process is now dictating the graphical desktop. Does upstart or openrc have this issue? Yes, initd was old and needed to be replaced, but it had already been satisfactorily replaced on many distros with upstart, which also provided backwards compatibility and didn't take over your entire system in onerous ways.

  23. A brisk walk works wonder on Link Between Salt and High Blood Pressure 'Overstated' · · Score: 1

    I got diagnosed with high blood pressure and got the doctor pressure me into starting to use blood pressure meds. I was also cautioned against losing "too much" weight even though I was clearly 17 lbs over the recommended BMI zone. I got a blood pressure monitor and started experimenting. In the end, I found that taking a 45 minute to hour brisk walk, had the most lasting and immediate effect on my blood pressure, even more so than the medication, which I've stopped taking.

  24. Re:Maybe, maybe not. on Obama Administration Says the World's Servers Are Ours · · Score: 1

    Quite true. For instance if I live in one state and work at a company located in another state, my home state can not compel the company to withhold income tax, unless of course that state opens a branch office in my home state, then they can legally compel my company to take withhold money in the foreign state.

  25. Re:Google already has the technology to fix this on How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure that they want to. The way they seem to be verifying authenticity of listings is through Google+, the current situation encourages businesses to sign up and properly set up their Google+ pages, if they fixed it, then there would be far less need for the companies to use Google+