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User: AlphaWolf_HK

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  1. Re:The real problem ... on Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned · · Score: 1

    Except unions have huge government backing. Obama himself even admits that he counts on them for campaign funds and votes. He even added special provisions just for the union biases in the affordable health care act.

  2. Re:And the unions are pissed... on Khan Academy: the Teachers Strike Back · · Score: 1

    I dunno, teachers are paid pretty well for the months they actually work. Often near $25-30+ an hour.

    Isn't that something to work towards though, instead of something to deride?

    Why does it always have to be a race to the bottom?

    In a word? Unions.

    In the movie waiting for superman, they covered this pretty well. Because of the unions, it's impossible to fire the bad teachers, so they play the lemon dance.

    They even had one case where a teacher was reading a magazine while a bunch of his students were playing craps. Another student recorded it, and it made its way to the principle. The principle fired the teacher. The union then sued the school and not only got the teacher his job back, but also got him awarded back pay for the year that he wasn't working.

    A while back, slashdot covered a story where the unions were fighting to prevent online education.

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13/2214254/teacher-union-tries-to-block-online-courses

    Once even a teacher's union boss himself said this:

    "It is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baM8N24K8kE

  3. Re:A field in its infancy on Khan Academy: the Teachers Strike Back · · Score: 1

    I think the reason learning might be hard for some is because you have the asshats who don't want to be in school disrupt the learning of people who do want to be in school.

    I had this problem throughout much of school, and got crap grades. I found college to be a hell of a lot easier, and am a straight A student.

    I think this is one reason why a voucher system would be a good idea. Allow private schools to kick out the bullies and gangbangers, and they can sit in public schools where it's basically impossible to get kicked out.

  4. Re:The real problem ... on Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned · · Score: 1

    This is one reason why I, as a libertarian, oppose tariffs universally.

    Basically your country views us the same way many here view China.

    It's harder to compete in the global economy when say, the steel you need to build cars with costs a lot more here due to tariffs, whereas its cheaper in another country who doesn't have tariffs. Sure you can protect a few steel industry jobs, but you do so at the expense of many more jobs. Contrary to popular left wing opinion, corporations love tariffs; it gets rid of their competition. Unions do as well.

    Nothing good has ever come from a tariff, every single one of them has always resulted in higher prices, and easily cost our economy twice what the jobs it saved was worth. Just look at the destructive consequences of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, whose goal was to increase employment, and had the opposite effect.

    Smoot-Hawley was the true cause of the great depression; not the stock market crash.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQon4tjlSA

  5. Re:messenger on Police Close Climategate Investigation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You could have said that in a non-trolling/flamebait way.

    My personal view is that it is a bit hypocritical to be in favor of diplomatic cable leaks, but against the Hadley CRU leaks.

    That's something I regularly see on slashdot, for example it was a good thing that the guantanamo bay documents were leaked, but it's a bad thing that the Hadley CRU emails were leaked. I figure you'd if you want secrets to be open, that should apply to both the things you like and the things you don't like.

    I found it to be a bit interesting that a top scientist mentioned he would go so far as to alter the meaning of peer review in his favor. But would he really do it? Probably not. It's already known that this is a hugely debated issue, so naturally some people would have said some dumb things. Hell, I've heard politicians say worse things and still get re-elected. Worthy of a leak? Probably not. It's mostly just a petty partisan squabble.

    The GTMO documents pretty much only revealed what we already knew: people were waterboarded, and some were believed to be innocent. However it also could have put people's lives at risk. Worthy of a leak? I'd say no, though most people who wanted the leak were eagerly looking for something to hang Dubya over. Yet again, just another petty partisan squabble.

  6. Yeah but... on Modest Proposal For Stopping Hackers: Get Them Girlfriends · · Score: 3, Funny

    We've already seen how this ends up:

    http://i.imgur.com/q0ycr.png

  7. Re:i always thought it was a lame gimmick on Has the 3-D Hype Bubble Finally Popped? · · Score: 1

    I think something akin to google glass could solve the problem of asking our eyes to converge on one point and focus on another. I don't know whether google glass has this functionality in whatever kind of light emitter it uses, but I would imagine that if it had a some sort of lens system built in to adjust the focus to where it should be, then the convergence and focus could easily be made to match.

  8. Not quite a release on XBMC Ported To Android · · Score: 1

    It's source only, so not quite where end users will be able to use it yet.

  9. Wierd.... on Is Our Infrastructure Ready For Rising Temperatures? · · Score: 1

    Here in Phoenix, Sky Harbor International Airport gets much hotter than that, but we haven't had any issues of airplanes sinking. Some people say the effect of the heat is mitigated because of it being a dry heat, but to the best of my knowledge asphalt doesn't melt easier under high humidity.

  10. Re:In Humans on "Magnetic Cells" Isolated For First Time · · Score: 0

    Well if the man is anything like me, he'd have IgA nephropathy and his piss would come out pre-carbonated.

  11. Re:none on Internet Explorer Market Share Drops To Almost 15% · · Score: 1

    Yeah I was looking at that myself. Among nearly everybody I know, including die-hard apple fans, is that safari is the running joke of web browsers.

  12. Re:Terrorist Weapon? on Cat Parasite May Increase Risk of Suicide In Humans · · Score: 1

    Well, given how slashdot explicitly declares itself an American centric site...

  13. Re:So what? on Ron Paul's New Primary Goal Is "Internet Freedom" · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My main beef with Obama is that he claims to be everything he is not.

    The biggest whopper is that he claimed to want transparent government. That apparently didn't matter when he unilaterally ratified ACTA without taking it through the senate (as is normal for any treaty) and without anybody but himself even being able to read it (granted there were leaks, we shouldn't depend upon leaks from a supposedly transparent government) He just signed our digital freedoms away without asking anybody.

    Whats pathetic is how he happily parades around hollywood with the celebrities, and the fans of celebrities eat it up. Meanwhile they don't even realize that the celebrities themselves lobbied hard for him to take these freedoms away from us.

    http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/1862

    Among a bunch of other supporters:

    http://www.ustr.gov/acta/

  14. Idea I have for android malware prevention on Microsoft Engineer Discovers Android Spam Botnet, Google Denies Claim · · Score: 1

    I'm not interested in programming myself, but I've always pondered the possibility of blocking certain android permissions with an app.

    There is an app called permission denied that will allow you to do this, but it doesn't do so gracefully. When a targeted app does something to utilize the permissions it already assumes the OS has given it, it will typically crash when it can't execute that function due to lack of a try/catch, because the developer normally wouldn't expect to need one there.

    So instead of outright denying the permission, why not spoof the data that it is requesting? For example, create a bogus contact list, and when the app requests that information, it is redirected to the bogus list. When it tries to send an SMS, just let it think that the SMS was sent even though it wasn't. Also something that might be a little bit more extreme, and should probably be off by default, would be to deny apps the ability to reach IP addresses unless that address exists in the DNS cache (from what I understand, most fraudsters just use IP addresses and not DNS.)

  15. Re:aka... on Feds Plan 'Fog of Disinformation' To Track Information Leaks · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I figure it would send a message to the leakers. That is, be careful what you leak, we may just find you.

  16. Re:The solution to the AIDS problem is simple: on FDA Approves HIV Home-Use Test Kit · · Score: 1

    HIV is still as deadly as it ever was. The only thing that changed in the 90's is big pharma produced some drugs that inhibit the HIV virus from reproducing. Trouble is, no one drug works indefinitely. The virus adapts to the drug the patient is currently taking, and once it does, they have to switch to a new one. The side effects of these drugs are terrible, and they aren't completely effective; you still have a significantly diminished immune system.

    When the virus mutates to resist drugs, it does lose some of its potency of being able to reproduce. However this is ultimately a losing battle. Some strains of the virus have recently shown up that are resistant to multiple drugs, and retain their ability to spread every bit as effectively as the wild form of the virus (that is, the one that hasn't been exposed to drugs that killed everybody in the 80's.)

    Some people think that having sex with another HIV infected person is harmless, but they're dead wrong. You're liable to end up with two strains of the virus; one resistant to one drug, and one resistant to another. Or worse, you could end up with the multi-drug resistant variant.

    Sure, HIV hasn't blown up....yet.

  17. Re:The solution to the AIDS problem is simple: on FDA Approves HIV Home-Use Test Kit · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know he's trolling, but there's actually a ring of truth to it. Approximately half of all black homosexuals have HIV.

    One study of five major cities found that nearly 50 percent of all Black gay and bisexual men were HIV-positive

    Pretty staggering number.

    source: (it's a PDF)

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/NHAS.pdf

  18. Goodluckwiththat on Arizona H-1B Workers Advised to Carry Papers At All Times · · Score: 1

    You know, a few years ago when SB1070 was first passed, tons of people made the same threats/promises (whatever you want to call it) and it had zero impact on the Arizona economy. Even several cities in California made rules that the city governments were to not buy anything that came from Arizona.

    That didn't work out too well though because California already depends on Arizona for 25% of their electricity, and they already have a hard enough time trying to keep their grid powered, and there are literally hundreds of tech companies (e.g. intel) who have major presences in Arizona, so boycotting them would be nearly impossible because then you wouldn't even be able to buy most desktop PC's, and a rather large collection of smartphones. Even AMD boards frequently include components made in Arizona, notably Freescale.

    A few companies I have worked for in fact (I live in Arizona) have reported record revenues since SB1070 passed.

  19. Re:Inflow vs outflow on Arizona H-1B Workers Advised to Carry Papers At All Times · · Score: 1

    Actually we do spend quite a bit on illegal aliens. Approximately 10 billion per year:

    http://cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

    They estimate that if we adopted an amnesty program, those costs would increase to 29 billion per year.

    They cite their sources and methodology pretty well, unlike other reports that claim upwards of 300 billion per year. Still though, 10 billion per year is a lot of money.

    I think the main problem we have is that we grant citizenship to anybody who is born here, regardless of where their parents came from. I've talked to people from other countries who think it is very strange that we do this.

  20. Re:That pay is just for the first few months on Apple Store Employees Soak Up the Atmosphere, But Not Much Cash · · Score: 2

    Where exactly is this "most places" you speak of? I live in Phoenix, which is within a few percent of the national average cost of living index, and $10 an hour (while not exactly providing for a luxurious lifestyle) was plenty to live off of only a year ago (I've increased my income substantially since then, in case you're wondering.)

    Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+phoenix

    Keep in mind, cities like New York with their large populations and massive cost of living over the national average go a long ways towards pushing up that national average figure, while only being a tiny fraction of the US. To say that 12/hour isn't a living wage in most places is a bit naive.

  21. Re:Duh - Who else would have done it? on US, Israel Behind Flame Malware · · Score: 3, Informative

    War tends to be when you are hitting military and/or government targets.

    Terrorism tends to be when you are hitting civilian targets.

    Destroying equipment used to make nuclear weapons is cyberwarfare. DDoSing the vatican is cyberterrorism.

  22. Static images on Display Makers To Use Quantum Dots For Efficiency and Color Depth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any word on burn-in, permanent image persistence, or uneven aging? That's my main concern with OLED and Plasma.

    LCD can get image persistence if it shows the same image for very long periods of time (e.g. 24 hours) but on most displays it is only temporary.

    I'd be interested to hear if quantum dot might have any of these issues.

  23. Re:Not surprising on Aussie Telco Lays New Fiber For Microsecond Trading Boost · · Score: 1

    The thing with technology is that if there's nothing to apply it to, then it doesn't make any money. They'll pay him for whatever the work is worth to them.

  24. Re:Be good. on Online Activities To Be Recorded By UK ISPs · · Score: 1

    Well that's what Obama is on the record of saying about the white house recently, at least.

  25. Re:i386 on OpenBSD Fork Bitrig Announced · · Score: 4, Informative

    As others have said, though I'll add a bit more depth, is that i386 is the catch all for anything x86, with the exception of ensuring that it distinguishes from the 286 and below. The 386 was a major step up from the 286 and below due not only to being 32-bit, but also allowing protected mode and virtual mode operations, in addition to paging.

    Virtually no modern software is adaptable to a 286 processor, whereas nearly all of them are adaptable to a 386, hence the common usage of "i386". As a matter of fact, intel actually didn't stop producing the 386 until around 2007. It was still widely used for embedded applications long after it was already obsolete.