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User: gnupun

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  1. Re: Lawsuits on what grounds? on Nope, No Intel Chip Recall After Spectre and Meltdown, CEO Says (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    People buy CPUs for their speed. The so-called fix for this massive bug eliminates a good chunk of the CPU speed that the consumer paid for. So the CPU is a lemon, and the consumer must be compensated somehow for using an inferior CPU.

  2. the *best* outcome an inventor can hope for, is for a paltry salary from a giant corp that then goes on to make millions in profit off of what is solely your work.

    Exactly. Elon Musk is making billions using the AC induction motor in his cars and trucks. However, the inventor of the AC motor, Nikola Tesla or is his estate, won't see a penny, thanks to patents being only 20 years long. If the patent system were fair, Tesla Corp. would pay a sales royalty of 5% that would further be divided up to pay all the inventions their cars use.

    Patents are bait (set by the govt and big companies) to trick the working class person to do R&D for 10x to 100x his typical salary. Once the patent expires, the most efficient corporation (i.e., big corp) is going to take the patent and profit handsomely for centuries to come.

    And since technology comes from science, inventors owe scientists some of the royalty they earn.

  3. Second, the content providers are paying thousands (millions?) of dollars for their "upload" access. They are contracting with Level 3, or buying their own fiber to provide their content.

    Here's a travel analogy: you want to meet a friend somewhere. You both want to meet far away from your homes. You buy a greyhound bus ticket (expense 1 of your post). He buys a plane ticket (expense 2 of your post).

    Neither of those two expenses are unreasonable. However, expense 3 is superfluous. Therefore, it's double charging by the ISPs, but not triple charging.

    Netflix is hurting the cable TV business and the cable tv operators want to use Ajit Pai to profit from TV over internet. This is to make up for the losses the internet has caused to their TV business.

    The new "ISP internet plan" is like paying the amazon delivery company such as UPS or Fedex, a percentage more for the goods you buy. For example, you bought $500 in books on Amazon. According to Ajit Pai, you have to pay Fedex $50 extra (10% fee). That's what the new, greedy republican plan is.

  4. Re:Some do-gooding politician failed basic economi on How 'Grinch Bots' Are Ruining Online Christmas Shopping (nypost.com) · · Score: 1

    Better, make the toy scalpers watch the crying kids... No ear plugs allowed.

    Why would they plug their ears? Crying sounds like very high demand for the toys to the scalpers. So it's like music to their ears... (cha ching)

  5. Re:Why not more supply on How 'Grinch Bots' Are Ruining Online Christmas Shopping (nypost.com) · · Score: 1

    If you charge more, fewer people will buy (except during christmas when they will buy). If you produce more, retail and distributor space will get wasted (not sure who pays for that).

    And there is still the risk that scalpers will buy up all the extra product even at higher prices and quantities. With a profit of almost $1,000, why wouldn't they?

  6. So, it's only useful in the most commonly used software products to date, that in some cases is responsible for running all of those fancy "webapps" that everyone likes so much, and is used practically everywhere regardless as to the purpose of the program / user actually using it / proficiency required, and it's some how a niche area that's irrelevant?!?!? What a response, I have no words....

    It's like an OS, something that is very important. Yet how many developers code OSes for a living or as a hobby? Extremely few. Let's see if Rust can unseat C++ from its throne since it is as fast as C++ with a lot of safety features. As efficient C++ is at runtime, it's badly designed for the programmer at development time.

    If your software needs to rely on GC, then you're doing it wrong

    Trying to figure out where any of the hundreds of dynamically allocated objects should be freed is something that should be automated, otherwise you end up with something like Firefox (a C++ app) -- a huge memory leaker that uses up GBs of RAM even if you have closed all the tabs.

    This is the issue I have with these languages. They assume the developer is an idiot, and hand hold them to the point that they forget the limits and boundaries of the machine that they are programming. Then they want to know why their code keeps crashing when they get a NULL pointer in a for loop, and demand that the compiler fix it for them. I'd argue that we need to get rid of these languages.

    Why use software programmers at all? Just do all your tasks in Verilog/VHDL hardware languages and manufacture ASIC chips using that code. Except nobody will do that, because it's expensive as hell (10000x or more costly). People are definitely going to use Python if it's 10x faster than C++ in development time for some simple task. C++ is now in a position that assembly used be many decades ago -- use it only if there is no other option. But unlike assembly, it's really badly designed.

  7. Re: 20% slower!???? Are you INSANE!!!!!!111???1111 on Why ESR Hates C++, Respects Java, and Thinks Go (But Not Rust) Will Replace C (ibiblio.org) · · Score: 1

    You're a typical /. moron... assuming stuff without any proof. Thanks for lying, asshole.

  8. Re:In defense of C++ on Why ESR Hates C++, Respects Java, and Thinks Go (But Not Rust) Will Replace C (ibiblio.org) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    How is this insightful? Desktop apps require GUI design and .net GUI design tools are excellent. Even the macos Xcode GUI design tools are far behind. With performance in par with Java, C# is a good choice for in-house apps with a good blend of development speed and app performance. /. mods are very biased.

  9. Re:20% slower!???? Are you INSANE!!!!!!111???1111! on Why ESR Hates C++, Respects Java, and Thinks Go (But Not Rust) Will Replace C (ibiblio.org) · · Score: 1

    I'd like that stolen battery life back please, you Code Monkey.

    And the programmers who write your phone apps would like it very much not to waste 10x or 20x of time writing software in a half-low level and half-high level language like C++. That's why they use Java (Android) or Swift (iOS). Before Swift, programmers had to use Objective C, which is slow as hell in terms of app development time.

  10. Re:In defense of C++ on Why ESR Hates C++, Respects Java, and Thinks Go (But Not Rust) Will Replace C (ibiblio.org) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not sure what your frame of reference is, but that's a LOT of software.

    No, it's not. Few programmers work on projects that are millions of lines of code and it has to be as fast as possible (real-time).

    For servers, memory is cheap ($200 extra) so you can just use Java for that 2 million LOC project.

    That leaves C++ only for AI, professional games and large desktop apps (Photoshop, browsers, office etc.). While these types of software are used a lot, no more than 100,000 programmers are working on this, at any given time.

    For in-house desktop apps of medium complexity (upto say 500k LOC), you can use C# or VB.net.

    Even for games, where low time for development is paramount, the engine is written by one company in C++. Then dozens of other companies use that engine and Lua or some other scripting language to actually write the game quickly.

    The remaining 95% programmers can use a sane programming language like C, Python, Swift, Java, Rust, Nim or even Go.

    Bottom line: programmer time is money for the company and C++ probably has the 2nd highest cost per line of code compared to other languages (assembly language is 1st in cost/LOC).

  11. I get it that some people dislike or distrust C++. It's a complex language that's hard to master.

    And once you master it, there's limited benefits. It's useful for large, complex programs where speed is important. Examples are games, browsers, large desktop apps etc. That's it -- it's useful in a very small amount of software. For any other type of software, you can use C, Java, Python, Rust, Nim etc.

    Languages like Rust (which is already used in browsers like Firefox) and Nim (which has a very efficient reference counting GC) are the future where performance is important. If you want high performance and an easy to use language, use Nim -- it's slower than C by about 20%, which is not bad. If your software cannot tolerate GC pauses, then use Rust although it's a lot harder to code than Nim.

    ESR statements about Go are bogus. Go is a gimped version of Java although it is less verbose. If speed is not important in your app, use Python. Java has better features than Go (like exception handling) and similar GC performance.

  12. Re:Why does it matter??? on Portuguese ISP Shows What The Net Looks Like Without Net Neutrality (boingboing.net) · · Score: 1

    After looking at the Portuguese ISP's plans, I'm outraged that they are stealing from the websites. The ISPs don't run the servers that provide the services, they did not write the code that powers those sites. They did nothing, except collect money from someone else's work.

    It's like the Apple app store or google play store, where Apple and Google collect 30% of all app purchases even though did not write the app. But that's okay because they own those app stores and the OSes the apps run on.

    The ISPs don't own the internet, they cannot charge a distribution fee like Apple's and Google's 30% cut.

    Do you think there should be a different phone rate/minute when you transact $100,000 over the phone and when you talk to your relatives or friends? I don't think so. We're paying to rent their equipment to send data from party A to party B, regardless of what that voice data contains.

    Non-neutrality == theft/extortion from website owners and users.

  13. Re:Language matters on Do Strongly Typed Languages Reduce Bugs? (acolyer.org) · · Score: 1

    * Ada has a lot of type safety and yet no one uses it.
    * Pascal has decent type-safety and yet only a few people use it.
    * C is very weakly typed and plenty of people use it.
    * Python and JS are strongly typed, but with weak static checks, and again have plenty of users.

    Can we infer that programmers are lazy and prefer languages that "don't check too much?" Languages with fewer compile-time error messages seem to do better.

  14. Re: All that predictor technology... on Apple Ordered To Pay $506 Million In Damages For Processor Patent Infringement (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    software slightly different, imho - but only if you dont believe software patents should exist in the first place.

    You should know that almost all hardware is written and simulated in some language like C before it re-designed in a hardware description language (HDL) like Verilog. Yes, your magical hardware innovation (that deserves patenting) was born as some piece of C software initially. Yet, that C can only be patented if you transform/translate it to a language like Verilog.

    Which points out to the BS that software should not be patentable.

  15. Re:My biggest complaint other than indentation on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    This is compounded with Python not having types esp for function args.

    Maybe you need to update your Python version. Latest Python supports optional types:

    https://docs.python.org/3/libr...

  16. It's a lot of money in China. Remember that a ton of their people make very little. This might be like 30% of his yearly salary, maybe more.

    But since he lost his phone in the fire, they are just reimbursing for his loss, which means the bribers are real cheapskates. Customer loss: $800-1000; bribe: $900.

  17. Re: Interesting, Dave Chappelle. on More Performers Are Demanding Audiences Lock Up Their Phones (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    A live performance cannot be copyrighted due to the fact that it's live.

    The two problems arise under section 1101 of the Copyright Act and the criminal anti-bootlegging statue that Congress passed a number of years ago (Title 18 USC 2319A).

    Section 1101 requires "consent of the performer" if you "fix the ... sounds and images of a live musical performance" (which is what you've done in making the recording, assuming it's a "live musical performance"). It also would require consent if you "transmit ... to the public" (which is what your blog would do).

    Read the rest of the lawyer's argument here:
    http://www.socialbrite.org/200...

    The mind boggles at how stupid some of you people are.

    No kidding.

  18. Re: Interesting, Dave Chappelle. on More Performers Are Demanding Audiences Lock Up Their Phones (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    a performer has no expectation of privacy, which is typically the rule of thumb used when determining if recording is permitted.

    Go ahead and record a movie in the theaters with your phone and see what happens when you apply your rule of thumb. Here a movie showing in a theater is a public performance that is similar to concert, except it's not live.

  19. Re:Fallacious association on More Lithium Battery Product Recalls Predicted (mercurynews.com) · · Score: 1

    Could it be because fuel tanks occupy only a small area of the underbody of a car compared to almost all the underbody of a Telsa car is occupied by the battery.

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

    Or someone will upload the video to youtube or bittorent... where others will watch the show and guess what? Fewer ticket sales. If money was not an issue, most of these performers would not mind cameras. But they have to make a living... so no cameras, no piracy.

    Oh and live performances are almost always sloppy compared to recorded events meant for mass-consumption, so no one cares about these slip ups.

  21. Re:Fallacious association on More Lithium Battery Product Recalls Predicted (mercurynews.com) · · Score: 2

    It's catchy to slide in Tesla in unrelated articles but just because it uses batteries doesn't mean they are prone to fires.

    Except batteries are prone to fires when damaged which is why Tesla added titanium shields to the underbodies of their cars.

    https://www.tesla.com/blog/tes...

  22. Re:Ok, we've added. Now let's subtract. on Pokemon Go Could Add 2.83 Million Years To Users' Lives, Says Study (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    10% of 40 million is 4 million and a lot of users.

  23. Re:Ok, we've added. Now let's subtract. on Pokemon Go Could Add 2.83 Million Years To Users' Lives, Says Study (cnn.com) · · Score: 0

    Let's subtract...

    Let's say a poke go user spends an average of 1 hour/day for 3 years playing the game. That's 45 days spent on a worthless, non-entertaining activity that's played only because "you gotta catch'em all." I'm tired of all these xp-based, grinding mobile games that keep the player playing just by adding new characters. Games should be played for a few months, then discarded.

  24. Re:The cycle continues on Creators Call Out YouTube For Demonetizing Videos (dailydot.com) · · Score: 1

    Step 1: Provide a free service that people like, funded by the occasional ad
    Step 3: Increase the amount of ads and start moderating content because now you have to worry about lawsuits

    Do you have any idea how expensive bandwidth costs are? That's the reason there are very few video sites. How exactly is step 1 feasible without some sort of revenue in step 3? You don't just have to cover costs, you also have to make a profit.

    Next time you want a free service, ask yourself if you would sign up for a 9-to-5 job with a $0 paycheck?

  25. Re:One thing to fix this on Sony To Boost Smartphone Batteries Because People Aren't Replacing Phones (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    They need to do only a couple things to fix this. Firstly, they need to just design the phone so that it never charges above 80%.

    I agree with you except about the "never" part. The phone settings should allow charging to 80% or 100% (in case you need the extra 20% on rare occasions, like a long trip).

    I bet the phone manufacturers already know this, but still charge to 100% knowing that a lot of users will upgrade to newer phones once the batteries in their current phone die prematurely due to 100% charging.