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User: MikeBabcock

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Comments · 6,826

  1. Re:Shocking on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 1

    I was thinking that he deserves to be paid *more* than his local counterparts as well.

  2. Re:Shocking on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 2

    Not to mention that using Java leveraged all the professional Java developers already out there.

    The C# pool is substantially shallower.

  3. Re:Shocking on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was on that page myself ... how on earth is this even news to people who've followed Oracle? The whole company appears to be one big jerk.

  4. Re:Comments here are overreacting on Programmer Debunks Source Code Shown In Movies and TV Shows · · Score: 1

    Its pretty redundant to even do. The medical decisions in movies make no sense, the car jacking makes no sense, the jumping through windows, computer hacking, alarm defeating and air duct crawling are all ridiculous too.

    Looking at the source code is barely even interesting on that scale.

  5. Re:What's with the Doom and Gloom? on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 1

    Or you could get a Google corporate domain account and you won't have the ads any more.

  6. Re:$3.2B on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 1

    More importantly, Nest has hired a bunch of really bright people who make really good products who will now work for Google.

  7. Re:Track your every move on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 1

    I don't see why anyone is as paranoid about Google's oversight as they are. This data is all already easily aggregated by IP address by anyone else, and Google at least offers the option to change your tracking tag whenever you want so the advertising engines can't follow you long term.

  8. Re:Track your every move on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 0

    Self-programming so easily my grandma can do it? Nest is.
    Easy to adjust with a simple exterior knob like my grandma's accustomed to? Nest is.
    Automatically turns itself on and off when you're away for the day or not? Nest does.
    Will run the fan periodically to keep the house from getting stale even if the AC or furnace isn't required that day? Yup, that too.

    Those cheap programmable thermostats are great for people who actually have set schedules and can figure out the programming. Nest is for the other people.

  9. Re:Track your every move on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 1

    I've never had the problems you cite, but the one that bothers me is that it is run by enviro-hippies who care more about saving energy than comfort.

    For instance: the Nest resists very strongly using the second stage of heating on my furnace, which means that in the morning, the house is a full two degrees (Centigrade) cooler than I've set it to be, even though it already "knows" exactly how long it takes to heat the house by 4 degrees in that weather because it insists on staying on stage 1 for an hour.

  10. Re:Z wave on New Home Automation? · · Score: 1

    That works great if you live alone ...

  11. Re:WTF? on New Home Automation? · · Score: 1

    Why shouldn't he? Here in Canada you could stuff a few million of those houses here and there without anyone even noticing that the space is used.

    And they do ... its called The Muskokas.

  12. Re:conduit in anticipation on New Home Automation? · · Score: 1

    RG6 for satellite TV would be my only reason (and I would only run one per room) but honestly with modern DVRs, you could easily just have those where the connections come into the house and extend the HDMI outputs instead.

  13. Re:conduit in anticipation on New Home Automation? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Update that to three CAT-6 + 1 coax, and you're doing well. Most signals can be piggybacked on CAT-6 these days (including HDMI and USB) so make those connections easily cross-connected and well labelled.

  14. Re:second whine on Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs · · Score: 1

    Especially now that corn soared in cost because of ethanol production

  15. Re:Yes, you should do the math. on Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs · · Score: 2

    If we did nothing as a society except include breakfast at every school, we would be doing an incredible long term service to the brain wealth of the nation as a whole.

  16. Re:Math, do it. on Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs · · Score: 1

    Its an education issue to explain to middle class folks that healthy choices are way too expensive for poor people and cheap food is bad for them.

  17. Re:When upgrades break code on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    That's not Python's fault; compile your own copy of Python 2.x and you'll get a 'python' binary, not a 'python2' binary. The distributions figured out the problem between python 1 and python 2 and started doing that themselves.

  18. Re:When upgrades break code on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    Its frequently done by distros but not done officially by Python .. that's my point. With an interpreter being more like an operating system of its own, it would be nice if you could properly specify the version to run in your application header.

  19. Re:Where have we seen this before? on Ford Exec: 'We Know Everyone Who Breaks the Law' Thanks To Our GPS In Your Car · · Score: 1

    I told my GM dealer the first thing I'd be doing with my car was disconnecting the OnStar antenna physically. He understood completely.

  20. Re:Because it works. on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    An awful lot of us started learning Python with things like customerdata[n:12] (where n is the result of a search) to grab some data. Now with Unicode set by default, that string could be 12, 24, even 48 bytes long and needs more parsing to be done. Like I said, its a good change, but it breaks things by default.

  21. Re:Because it works. on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    The requirement to use parentheses and the change in string handling (while both wonderful) cause major parsing differences between python2 and python3.

    Surely someone must have written a "python2to3" conversion tool by now :)

  22. Re:Offline side-by-side Python on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    Dial-up.

  23. Re:When upgrades break code on Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases? · · Score: 1

    I really wish for this reason Python had gone with a versioned binary name.

    Using #!/usr/bin/python2 -ttu in a script makes me feel safe that it won't crash on someone.

  24. Re:Interesting... on McAfee Brand Name Will Be Replaced By Intel Security · · Score: 1

    Really? Because AVG has Linux support as well, and there's ClamAV as well obviously.

  25. Re:"Android most important platform for gaming" on Nvidia Announces 192-Core Tegra K1 Chips, Bets On Android · · Score: 1

    Apple sold 9 million iPhones in a weekend. That's hardly a rounding error; its an order of magnitude but seriously, it means consoles are a major device to this day. Also, since consoles are primarily for gaming and smart phones are not, this shows a willingness to spend real money on gaming specifically whereas a mobile user who picks up a few free games and spends $5 a year on random others is barely worth mentioning in comparison.