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User: compgenius3

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  1. Re:Useful Fitness-Function? on The Artificial Life of the App Store · · Score: 2

    Interesting argument, having written an Android app that was the first of its kind, I disagree with your argument that hobbyist development takes away jobs. If anything, it can create jobs, exactly because of the "copycat" phenomenon. I wrote an app that was the first of its kind available in the Android Market. There was at least one similar for iOS before I wrote mine. About a month after my first release, I discovered that another company had hired a developer (possibly more than one) to basically copy my app. In the end, because I was unable to dedicate my full attention to the project, and wanted to do other things, their app became far more popular than mine. The point is, someone who relies on app development for a living can easily compete with, and outperform, a hobbyist who only sees it as a fun side project that is nice to make some extra cash from.

  2. Re:mythnettv on MythTV 0.25 Released, New HW Acceleration and Audio Standards Support · · Score: 1

    Yes, it is automatic as of 0.24, but if you use VDPAU to decode, it will not work as the video stream is never passed back through mythtv.

  3. Re:In other news... on Blind Man Test Drives Google's Autonomous Car · · Score: 1

    I read an article a while back about the cars. It turns out, when they programmed them to follow the rules of the road exactly, they couldn't get anywhere because other drivers continuously broke the rules. So they had to reprogram the cars to allow for bending the rules in certain situations. The example that stuck in my mind was at a 4-way stop sign, the car has to inch forward to indicate its intent to pass through the intersection. Otherwise, the other drivers just ignore the car and keep going in turn, despite the rules of the road stating that's illegal.

  4. Re:Screen on NHTSA Suggestion Would Cripple In-Car GPS Displays · · Score: 1

    Source?

  5. Re:The real problem on Facebook Denies Accessing Users' Text Messages · · Score: 1
    Alternatively, the core Android APIs should provide a null data set when the app hasn't been granted permissions to a particular resource, and normal rules of error checking your data apply. I've written a few Android apps and can easily see how the Android permission system is broken. For example, when verifying an app purchase with the Google Market API, Google suggests using some unique identifier to encrypt the data store:

    [...] the Policy must always obfuscate the data before storing it, using a key that is unique for the application and device. Obfuscating using a key that is both application-specific and device-specific is critical, because it prevents the obfuscated data from being shared among applications and devices.

    However, in order to get a truly device-specific identifier requires extra permissions:

    Note that, depending on the APIs you use, your application might need to request additional permissions in order to acquire device-specific information. For example, to query the TelephonyManager to obtain the device IMEI or related data, the application will also need to request the android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE permission in its manifest. Before requesting new permissions for the sole purpose of acquiring device-specific information for use in your Obfuscator, consider how doing so might affect your application or its filtering on Android Market (since some permissions can cause the SDK build tools to add the associated ).

    So it's easy to see how permissions can be declared for something innocuous but used for something nefarious.

  6. Re:why phase out DVI? on VGA and DVI Ports To Be Phased Out Over Next 5 Years · · Score: 1

    Thank god someone has a voice of reason in here. Too bad it's AC

  7. Re:Time to put on my tinfoil hat on Library of Congress To Receive Entire Twitter Archive · · Score: 1

    Well, they do give you the option to "protect" your tweets, making it so that you have to approve everyone who can see them. Will those be archived as well?

  8. Re:Pretty easy to prevent infection on this one. on Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware · · Score: 1

    NOTHING has access to the physical disk directly unless it is a program coming off of the physical media that the machine was booted with (An OS installation ISO).

    Solution:
    1. copy malware executable to system disk
    2. relaunch
    3. ???
    4. write to MBR

  9. Re:Sigh on ISPs Will Now Be Copyright Cops · · Score: 1

    But think of the latency!

  10. Re: Interesting? on Visualization of Egyptian Revolution On Twitter · · Score: 1

    it's interesting to see the large flow of interconnected retweets in just one hour

    I think the visualization of a slashdotting is more interesting.

    It looks like this: Network Error (tcp_error) A communication error occurred: "" The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time. For assistance, contact your network support team.

  11. Re:Im sorry - define Kit on EMC Engineer Steals Almost $1 Million of Kit One Piece at a Time · · Score: 2
    uhhh, from the original article, and the summary (this is slashdot after all), emphasis mine:

    stole US$930,000 of goods from the storage giant's North Carolina factory

    Storage. They make storage.

  12. Re:So don't call it a phone... on When Should I Buy an Android Tablet? · · Score: 1

    yeah! just call it a "smart"

  13. Re:Uhmm.... on The Significant Decline of Spam · · Score: 1

    Interesting, my gmail is down to under 500 spam messages from the last 30 days. That's the lowest I ever remember seeing it and actually was quite a shock when I noticed it a few days ago. My usual has been somewhere around 1000

  14. Re:Spotify Not Available to Me on LimeWire Lives Again · · Score: 1
  15. Re:gray area? on Why 'Cyber Crime' Should Just Be Called 'Crime' · · Score: 1

    If I had gone door to door pretending to be with your bank and requested any of your credit cards, you'd either be considered an idiot and/or I could be charged with some form of fraud.

    I would argue that you're an idiot if you respond to phishing e-mails.

  16. Re:Great Simple Idea on FCC Will Tackle Cell Phone 'Bill Shock' · · Score: 1

    Have you ever seen the tables the gas companies use to calculate the taxes in all the counties/states/cities/townships that they sell gasoline? They're incredibly complex and occupy several binders full of material.

  17. Re:This is actually not that bad on US ISP Adopts Three-Strikes Policy · · Score: 2, Informative

    What if I don't use the ISPs awful DNS servers? How will I be redirected to the notification page? I couldn't possibly have had a chance to change my behavior if I was never informed of my wrongdoing in the first place.

  18. Re:More like... on How Good Software Makes Us Stupid · · Score: 1

    This is pretty common in supermarkets, and I know several highly intelligent people who refuse to believe that you can buy one and still get the same price.

  19. Re:If you know enough to change the name... on Auto-Scanning the Names People Choose For Their Wireless APs · · Score: 1

    Not only are these steps not adding any additional security, they force *you* to jump through more hoops in order to protect this fake security. The added convenience of wifi has been removed, you may as well just use a wire, which will be infinitely more secure. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=454

  20. Re:If you mean did not relent, then yes on Apple Balks, Finally Relents, At Possible User Queries of Dictionary App · · Score: 1

    I think that would be the FCC if there were any problems with radio spectrum. The FTC would be right to investigate any shady business practices.

  21. Re:Where are you located? on VHDL or Verilog For Learning FPGAs? · · Score: 1

    I agree entirely, as a student who started with VHDL, I think that it's really easy to switch to Verilog. I find it pretty easy to understand, though the terminology is much harder to understand, as VHDL is more like a natural language. That's just my $0.02

  22. MythTV is great, so long as you take the time on Preview the New MythTV User Interface · · Score: 1

    I absolutely love MythTV, yeah I'll admit it's cost waay more than I originally thought it would, and I've spent far too much time working with it and maintaining it, but that's part of the fun. This past summer I finally reached a point where I don't have regular issues. Mostly it was an issue of getting hardware that had strong support. My suggestion to anyone looking to build a MythTV box, pick out some hardware then look on the Wiki for any issues. Overall, while it has been a huge time sink, MythTV has been an amazing learning experience and has gotten me into Linux more than I ever would have otherwise.

  23. Re:That... that's super. on New Mexico Might Declare Pluto a Planet · · Score: 1

    Are you by chance from Minnesota? That's the only state I've ever heard people say "cripes"

  24. Re:Problems? on Prescription Meds For Vista Sleep Disorder · · Score: 1

    My laptop has intermittent problems with going to sleep and then re-enabling the bluetooth card on wake-up. I suspect the bluetooth drivers. But it seems to be getting worse as time goes bye.

  25. Re:Which university? on University Migrating Students to Windows Live Mail? · · Score: 1

    You say that niether of these options costs money, but who will maintain the database that contains this forwarding information? I work at the help desk at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign and a large portion of the problems we see are with e-mail. While we do maintain our own e-mail services, persons can set their *@uiuc.edu address to forward to any mail, or their more precise *@express.cites.uiuc.edu address can be forwarded, but this is set using a different feature. At any rate, when students graduate they can opt to forward their uiuc.edu address for some time. They have to set this address themselves, but someone has to be there in case entries become corrupted or otherwise messed up. I get paid to fix some of these errors, so the University is spending money to have me there fixing problems with this. Of course I do a lot of other things too, like reset people's passwords but that's another story.