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User: Pollardito

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Comments · 1,560

  1. Great Paywall of NYT on Chinese Hack New York Times · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe they were just trying to read the many witticisms of David Brooks and Maureen Dowd?

  2. Re:That's what he was saying on How Apple Killed an iTunes Competitor · · Score: 2

    Being able to sell tracks for prices other than a uniform 99 cents was part of it too. Apple caved on that in order to get the right to sell DRM-free music. Here's an article from the time of the switchover

  3. Re:IBM has quite a patent culture on 2012 Patent Rankings: IBM On Top, Google Spikes · · Score: 1

    I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but it seems like "employees are used to identifying what might count as patentable and submitting it" really amounts to "employees know to just go ahead and patent almost anything, and IBM can decide later if they want to enforce it"

  4. Re:Very Different on Why JavaScript Is the New Perl · · Score: 1

    you won't find that many people that wouldn't wish for the languages said bits were taken from. I mean, if people actually liked the language, would we find things like Coffeescript and objective-J out there?

    The existence of alternatives like Coffeescript and Objective-J doesn't mean everybody (or even a sizable majority) hates JavaScript. It just means that at least one person hates it or even that someone decided to reinvent the wheel. That's why we have a million languages that are essentially acting as CGI replacements on the server-side: Perl, Java, ASP, Ruby, PHP, C, ...

    No language is perfect for everybody or for every job. I'm not sure JavaScript is even especially objectionable, but you're right in saying that as long as it's the only language that all browsers support you're basically stuck with it (or at least stuck compiling down to it)

  5. Re:too expensive on A Subscription-Based Movie Theater · · Score: 2
    They don't need "the usual person", they need the 15% who watch the most movies:

    They ran models of Nelson's subscription-based theater idea, showing that to break even they would need 3,000 people, or 15% of the mountain communities, to sign up

    For them this is a good deal and saves them a lot of driving. For other people $16 for a day pass is also a good deal

  6. Re:it only makes sense on China Set To Surpass US In R&D Spending In 10 Years · · Score: 1

    Actually it's more like "all the money we were spending on R&D was producing technology that China was stealing anyway"

    Copyright infringement is not stealing.

    This thread isn't about downloading the latest pop album. I was talking about Chinese companies stealing hardware and software technologies in order to resell them or to use them to outcompete the original developer in the market. Most people (even on Slashdot) would regard that as stealing

  7. Re:There would be no need... on How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car? · · Score: 1

    1) If an operable, but safety related issue is detected, restrict the driving destinations to either the repair shop or the hospital (you know, the repair shop for those organic units) and drive with the hazard lights on.

    My GPS doesn't know about entire streets. Apple Maps doesn't know about entire cities. What if I pick a destination that is a hospital or repair shop that it doesn't know about? What if the only one it does know about is closed or is tens of miles further away? You're adding new liability in order to guard yourself against liability

    2) Not the manufacturer's fault... hardware failures happen; if it's that critical then call a taxi (budgeting enough time is YOUR responsibility).

    I'm not sure a judge is going to listen to that argument if he believes that the only reason the detector that failed was added to the car is because the manufacturer didn't want to potentially lose a court case over a broken taillight.

    3) Legally disallow tickets for equipment violations on the way to the repair shop.

    Step back and look at the big picture here. We're making a lot of changes here (paying for broken taillight detectors and hundreds of other detectors to be installed, adding other laws that have their own wrinkles) in order to save on a few court appearances where a car owner tries to pass on the blame for his ticket. Cases that the car owner may lose anyway and therefore would have solved themselves fairly

    4) The car would get authorization from you before setting off. If you are home alone and need to go to the hospital ASAP, call 911.

    Then my medical insurance company is probably going to take the car company to court for the ambulance bill, which can be pretty steep

  8. Re:There would be no need... on How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car? · · Score: 1

    The original post played Devil's Advocate and said essentially "shouldn't a car manufacturer make a car that can't get repair tickets", and I'm just saying that sometimes even a reasonable person would use a technically ticketable car in an emergency. And if a reasonable person would do that *ever*, then blocking someone from using a technically ticketable car is a potential new liability. If we're playing Devil's Advocate, then you can't just play it on one side.

    So right now in the current system, if you had to go to the hospital and you were alone you wouldn't drive there if your taillight was broken? You wouldn't assume that people can see your other taillights or brake lights, or maybe it's even daytime? Cops can give tickets for broken taillights even if you have other working lights and even if it's daytime. Usually they'd give a warning or an order to show proof of maintenance at a later date, but they *can* ticket because technically that's not "100% safety compliance” as the original poster mentioned.

  9. Re:Google Fiber on How ISPs Collude To Offer Poor Service · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The primary purpose of Google fiber is to threaten anyone in the industry that would charge Google (as a content owner) a fee to move data to their customers (i.e. network neutrality). "You charge us to reach your customers, and we'll make them our customers or less profitable customers with a price war." They probably only need to successfully wire one city to do that, so we'll see what happens after that. They try to avoid entering industries that require a lot of customer service, so it seems unlikely they'd follow up K.C. with a lot more deployments unless they feel they need to do so to prove their point.

  10. Re:it only makes sense on China Set To Surpass US In R&D Spending In 10 Years · · Score: 1

    Actually it's more like "all the money we were spending on R&D was producing technology that China was stealing anyway"

  11. Re:There would be no need... on How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There would be cases where the car's owner would deserve the ticket - busted lights, missing first aid kits, no winter tires,.... So give the ticket to the car's owner, then have the manufacturer reimburse the owner if it was the fault of the 'driver'

    Devil's advocate here. For insurance/liability reasons shouldn't the car refuse to operate unless it's operating with 100% safety compliance? If it does, than it would be a manufacturer that would be liable. A car should sense when maintenence is required and, if it's prudent to, drive itself to the repair shop.

    That's just introducing new liability:

    I needed to go to the hospital, but the car wouldn't drive because it said I had a broken brake light
    I missed my flight and lost my job, because the broken brake light detector was faulty
    My car drove itself to the repair shop, and got a ticket for a broken brake light on the way
    My car drove itself to the repair shop while I was indoors, and I came out to drive to the hospital and had no car

  12. Re:Google Could use some Fresh Ideas in AI on Why Google Hired Ray Kurzweil · · Score: 1

    Do humans "understand"?

    I guess this is anecdotal, but I'm human and I stopped understanding about halfway through your otherwise high-quality explanation

  13. Re:Spanish on Ask Slashdot: 2nd Spoken/Written Language For Software Developer? · · Score: 1

    As a bonus Dora the Explorer will make so much more sense (and your kids who watch it will too)

  14. Re:Prisoners are getting used to being sodomized on Microsoft Has Been Watching, and It Says You're Getting Used To Windows 8 · · Score: 1

    the very notion that a party or group is getting used to something does not mean they like it or want it

    Exactly. It just means they're past the Bargaining and Depression stages and are into Acceptance...

  15. Re:The Terminal Man on Brain Pacemaker Helps Treat Alzheimer's Disease · · Score: 2

    It's not terribly far from Flowers for Algernon either

  16. Re:Suck it down on Ouya Consoles Will Start Shipping On December 28th · · Score: 1

    This argument would be a slam dunk if this were posted AFTER it shipped. But until then this story is just as premature as the ones saying it'd fail

  17. Re:But does it include the chaos monkey? on Netflix Gives Data Center Tools To Fail · · Score: 1

    Good point, sounds like it might be PHB-proof

  18. Re:How about... on Why Facebook Is Stressing You Out · · Score: 1

    It's worse than that. Even if you can manage to separate the different roles (or treat every post like it's completely public as a common denominator), if your friends can't do it too then you can get in trouble for things they post about you

  19. Re:But does it include the chaos monkey? on Netflix Gives Data Center Tools To Fail · · Score: 1

    I wonder how many pointy-haired bosses have used Chaos Monkey to load test their own Amazon setup but accidentally hit someone else's servers (or is it somehow PHB proof?)

  20. Re:Evolution on Did a Genome Copying Mistake Lead To Human Intelligence? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a mistake because an error was made in the process of transcribing genes between DNA strands. The mechanism failed in its task, no matter whether that mechanism itself was designed or evolved

  21. Re:Nook Color on A Kindle Fire Review For Those Who Plan To Void the Warranty · · Score: 1

    Rooting and side-loading aren't related to secure boot loaders (which only block custom ROMs). I'm seeing now that they eventually got past the efuse on the Motorola Droid though, so maybe they'll get past this one too.

  22. Re:Nook Color on A Kindle Fire Review For Those Who Plan To Void the Warranty · · Score: 2

    I think the latest Nook Tablet news is that it has a secure boot loader, and reserves most of its built-in storage for Barnes & Noble content. An additional SD card will help with the latter, but the former seems like a deal breaker given that this article sounds like it's about jail breaking

  23. Re:Why did everyone else pay? on B&N Pummels Microsoft Patent Claims With Prior Art · · Score: 1

    There's a good reason for both Samsung and HTC who wanted to sell Windows Phones (and laptops for Samsung) to come to an agreement with Microsoft. Most of the other companies that settled are also Windows PC vendors

  24. Re:Mythbusters! on Strange Video of Dancing Cloud Explained By Electric Discharge · · Score: 1

    I'm trying to think of how they could test this by blowing something up. If they can't do that, then I'm not sure they'll bother

  25. Re:Android the free OS. on Microsoft Now Collects Royalties From Over Half of All Android Devices · · Score: 1

    I guess if the cellphone manufacturers aren't willing to run Microsoft's mobile OS on their devices, Microsoft will just have to start acting like all the other patent trolls that don't make viable products either.

    Look at the other side of the coin as well. The list of companies that have agreements to pay MS in order to use Android is made up of companies that are in the business of selling other MS products. Samsung and HTC both sell Windows Phone devices, and Samsung sells Windows laptops as well. Compal (Windows laptops), Acer (Windows PCs and laptops), Itronix (Windows laptops), Velocity Micro (Windows PCs and laptops), Wistron (Windows PCs and laptops), and Quanta (Windows laptops) are all also manufacturers of Windows devices. I can't find a link for Viewsonic and Onkyo, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.

    This is the same sort of agreement as when MS said that computer manufacturers had to pay MS for every PC they sold whether it had Windows or not. I'm sure it's worth throwing MS a few dollars more for every Android device if it means they're not going to chop your PC business off at the knees.

    Motorola and Barnes and Noble don't have any skin in the PC game, so it's likely that they won't settle prior to a lawsuit.