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User: iluvcapra

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  1. Re:Ner ner! on Google Photos Launches With Unlimited Storage, Completely Separate From Google+ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Think of everything people expect a photo hosting service to do. How to you think you can legally do them without those permissions?

    The demands they make are ridiculously broad, not only do they ask for the right to take anything you upload and repurpose it in whatever way they please, they even demand this on the part of their partners, "those we work with." A picture (which you thought you deleted) of you and your ex-girlfriend at the zoo appears on a Samsung phone in an ad? Covered under the agreement. Can you tell me any other photo sharing service that demands this?

    Apple's language on this point is instructive:

    2. Changes to Content. You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices or computers. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.

    That's it, that's all you need.

    Really important point: someone who holds media for someone else doesn't need to obtain any kind of license. You only need a license if you want to be able to make copies of something and put them in public for your own purposes.

  2. Re:that's what spy agencies do on Google Photos Launches With Unlimited Storage, Completely Separate From Google+ · · Score: 1

    Pftbt, I'd be impressed if any Google service lasts 20 years.

    Just because they shut down Reader doesn't mean they threw the dataset away.

  3. Re:Android to iDevice on The Tricky Road Ahead For Android Gets Even Trickier · · Score: 1

    If you bought an iPhone last quarter, your Apple Tax was $252.

    You can't see it in terms of cost-plus, you have to see prices in terms of marginal utility and premium over supplemental good. If an iPhone and a Galaxy S6 do the same thing, and the ASP of the Galaxy is $6 less, that's the baseline.

    So then you can either say, either the Apple Tax is $6, or the Samsung discount is $6. And then you have to ask why exactly is Samsung selling phones short when they (putatively) have the same value? And why does Samsung even bother selling phones at the bottom of the range if they lose money on every sale? And if Apple is able to turn their profit over costs into marketing that buys them significant pricing advantage, why can't Samsung do the same thing?

  4. Re:Android to iDevice on The Tricky Road Ahead For Android Gets Even Trickier · · Score: 1

    If Google made a requirement that device makers provide "No Bullshit" builds of the OS for their devices (no TouchWiz, no bloatware, no crap) and made the carriers agree to allow for the use of that firmware set I think Android would be better off.

    If Google did this, Samsung would pull out of the OHA and switch to Tizen. If Samsung did this, Android's marketshare would collapse, particularly in the US and at the high ranges where the app developers and ad buyers live.

  5. Re:I guess that if a Mathematician... on A Beautiful Mind Mathematician John F. Nash Jr. Dies · · Score: 1

    Yes, it's technically correct, though I get tired of hearing this brought up all the time, as if it's some sort of weird conspiracy theory to make it sound like there's a "Nobel Prize" when there isn't one.

    There is the matter that Nobel, nor his family, even those alive today, had any intention of giving an award to economists. The award is given in the memory of Alfred Nobel, which is nice, but taken to the extreme and you get David Miscavage giving Tom Cruise the "Albert Einstein Humanitarian Anti-Psychology Award." It's a shameless appropriation of the name Nobel simply to promote the award.

    Alfred Nobel created his foundation as a humanitarian enterprise, mainly to atone for his invention of dynamite. He wanted to promote brotherhood between nations and the pursuit of knowledge. The Swedish National Bank created the Economics award because they wanted to promote economic science.

  6. Re:Not news, not for nerds, doesn't matter on WSJ Crowdsources Investigation of Hillary Clinton Emails · · Score: 2

    Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear.

    If you've found an email that substantiates any of this it would be news to everybody.

    Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative.

    Even if this were true, even if you could establish intentional, premeditated lying, it's not illegal, nor am I sure it's in violation of any statute or guideline, unethical, or even just plain morally wrong. It was clearly established that everyone's talking points were based on reported intelligence at the time. That was over a year ago.

    We've gone from "Hillary ordered SPECOPS to stand down!" to "We have an email (which I won't cite) where they weren't talking about Innocence of Muslims..." It's all just so dopey, even the Republicans in congress probably don't wanna keep investigating but they can't let it go because of all the dweebs at home passing around creepy conspiracy emails about Vince Foster. Boehner probably gave the job to Trey Goudy specifically to get him out of his hair and hopefully make some kind of career-ending overreach.

  7. Re:Hillarhea! accomplishment outside who she marri on WSJ Crowdsources Investigation of Hillary Clinton Emails · · Score: 1, Troll

    1. Getting elected senator from a state that is overwhelming democrat is an accomplish, really? What did she accomplish AS the carpet bag senator?

    Note that she had to get around the entire Cuomo machine to do this. I don't know, go to a state that's overwhelmingly Republican and get yourself elected senator, just being from the right party isn't worth much.

    2. Her being Sec of State was payback for supporting Obama's election.What did she accomplish AS Secretary of state besides getting an ambassador killed?

    Note that she had to run neck-and-neck with him basically to the convention in order to get to that point, she won 48% of the Democratic popular vote and dozens of states, including New York, Florida and California. I don't know what you mean by "ambassador killed," Issa spent years on the Benghazi committee and got nowhere, he eventually quit and the Speaker had to establish a new select committee just to keep the faux outrage in the news. Stop reading your grandpa's emails.

    3. Successful attorney of child rapists

    John Adams: successful attorney of murderous british soldiers. Are you really suggesting that we should hold lawyers in any way accountable for the crimes of their clients? Do some people not deserve lawyers? Or do they only deserve bad ones?

    4. On HRC's commodities trading ... It is pretty obvious that Hillary had something better than luck. She had well-placed friends who wanted her to have $100,000. The likelihood of such a return on such an investment was close to lottery odds, twenty-four chances in a million.44 This was in a decade in which no speculator made more than $400 profit a day with one contract of cattle futures. Yet Hillary managed to make $5,300 a day. Such a return would have required her holding thirteen contracts, involving 232 tons of beef with a value of $280,000.

    In other words, you got nothing.

  8. Re:Someone is making decisions for me regarding th on Criticizing the Rust Language, and Why C/C++ Will Never Die · · Score: 1

    Since this is Rust/Swift day on /., I'd bring up that swift doesn't have `goto` but it does have named break statements.

    processDocs: for doc in allDocs {
      for line in doc.allLines {
          let sum = parseLine(line)
          if sym == .EndOfDoc {
            break
          } else if sym == .StopProcessingAllDocs {
            break processDocs // breaks the outer loop
          } else {
            handleSym(sym)
          }
      }
    }

  9. Re:What is Swift written in? on Swift Vs. Objective-C: Why the Future Favors Swift · · Score: 1

    One must always keep in mind that when the first guy called "C", "portable assembly language," he was saying it pejoratively.

  10. Re:Let's close it because it's too popular. Really on Critics Say It's Time To Close La Guardia Airport · · Score: 1

    So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, [airnav.com] with 1741 flights/day.

    Any solution that involves emulating LAX is probably a mistake...

  11. Re:Yawn. on Actress Grace Lee Whitney, Star Trek's Yeoman Janice Rand, Has Died · · Score: 1

    2) Although it was the same actress, she wasn't playing Janice Rand in that scene but just a random Starfleet officer.

    I dunno, most of the continuities identify that particular lieutenant commander as Janice Rand, and we see Grace Lee Whitney as Rand in Star Trek I, identified by name as Rand, and again in Star Trek VI as Excelsior's comm officer, not identified there, but later in that Voyager episode where Tuvok remembers his service on Excelsior and LtCm Janice Rand is identified as the officer and is a major character in the episode.

  12. Re:Yawn. on Actress Grace Lee Whitney, Star Trek's Yeoman Janice Rand, Has Died · · Score: 1

    Film crew here.

    If you work for a major studio like Paramount, in California, everyone's supposed to be in a union so they can't get away with paying people a pittance, you're generally guaranteed a living wage, even a very good one, if you can keep working all year (and if you can keep it consistent enough you'll get health and pension). The people you hear cheating at this aren't usually big studios, but little fly-by-night operations making TV movies in the valley, and production companies in right-to-work states like Georgia and Louisiana. Those are the sketchy operations.

    Also, most of the time nowadays actors get residual payments, every time a show they acted in airs, they get paid a little something. It's not much but if you act on TV for a long time it really adds up. In the late 60s though it was customary for TV actors to be contracted into a "buy-out," where they sold they residual rights, or they agreed to only take residuals from the first few runs of the show. Back then the idea that a show would make money in re-runs was unheard of and nobody considered demanding residuals. I think I read somewhere that specifically in the Star Trek case, the actors got residuals for the first one or two NBC network re-runs, but they didn't get any money from the syndicated re-runs, which is where Star Trek really made its money.

    Rental payments from Star Trek episodes literally kept Paramount in business in the 70s, they would have gone bankrupt without that show.

  13. Re: Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 1

    I totally don't dispute that.

  14. Re:Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 2

    To wit, New Pope is a Jesuit and worked as a chemical engineer.

  15. Re: Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 1

    They weren't against free thought or free exchange in general. They were against free thought and free exchange when it dealt with theological matters. The early colleges and universities were started by them.

    There's obviously going to be some conflict over "theological matters" when the Universities you found are uniformly staffed with clerics in all departments. Note many of these "scientific" or philosophical conflicts tended to arrogate with theology. All of the science faculty at the University of Paris were trained scholastics and din't for second see any conflict with science and, say, Thomist natural theology, which is in fundamental opposition to the scientific method and the interpretation of empirical knowledge.

    It could also be difficult to have any political argument in these places, since the Church was not just a Church but also a state, in alliance with many of the countries of Europe against others, either due to the schism or the Reformation, and voicing a political opinion not in accord with Vatican policy on, say, the excommunication of Urban VI by Clement VII could get you kicked out of your job, or worse.

  16. Re: Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 1

    his unfortunate habit of insulting a medieval absolute monarch.

    As I said, freethought and free exchange of ideas. Note also that his "insult," substantively, was attempting to publish his works.

  17. Re: Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Surely, the church has always had a remarkable scientific establishment. They didn't lock up and suppress Galileo because of his science, they were just hostile to free thought and the free exchange of ideas more generally. :)

  18. Re: well... on Pope Attacked By Climate Change Skeptics · · Score: 2

    The Catholic Church generally supports universal free healthcare, as long as it doesn't pay for the Pill or abortions.

  19. Re:have to rewrite muc federal law to not microman on Incorrectly Built SLS Welding Machine To Be Rebuilt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When you have a comoany that knows how to do a certain thing , aka one of those evil corporations, getting hired by the federal government, some people want to do a lot of paperwork and stuff to keep track of what's going on, and other people go crazy with it.

    If we're doing something important, like killing Hitler, or trying to beat the Commies to the moon, federal procurement can be remarkably efficient. Clear goals, and the stated willingness to accept some waste as long as the job's done, can do that.

    Unfortunately since about the mid-1970s (Watergate you say?!), approximately zero "waste," of any kind is tolerated on any federal project, as this is "profiteering" or "wasting the people's money," so a lot of contractor time is spent on compliance. This makes the process incredibly loss-averse, and probably too risk-averse to actually accomplish anything.

    The reality is that Elon Musk is able to do a good job, because he can destroy two or three recovery barges in a row and he doesn't have to explain it to anybody but his accountant. If the SLS had only one slip-up like that there would be a bloodbath of firings, senate hearings, press conferences with the President, and maybe the entire program might be scrubbed. Back in the late 50s NASA screwed up these kinds of operations all the time, but the American people tolerated it because of the Cold War. Nowadays the budget is so tight and public accountability is so fierce that frigging welding assembly subcontractors are apparently front-page news. We probably built and destroyed five facilities on the scale of this thing during Apollo and nobody batted an eye at the expense.

  20. Re: There's a reason for professional journalism on Wikileaks Publishes Hacked Sony Emails, Documents · · Score: 2

    Just speaking as someone who's PI is in the Sony dump, I have not yet been killed.

    However, I'll be under fraud alert for the next three years, Nigerian princes call my cell about twice a day, and someone has already tried, and fortunately failed, to open a student loan in my name. (No, I don't get it either.)

    I mean it's not awful, it's not like I slept with a video game reviewer or anything. But it's been a huge hassle.

  21. Re: an atheist show would be nice on StarTalk TV Show With Neil DeGrasse Tyson Starts Monday · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure Tyson is an atheist.

  22. Re: Real fight on Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps · · Score: 1

    I may decide that I have (iTunes,Amazon,BeatPort) music but you have no business deciding, or worse forcing, those ditinguishing attributes for me.

    Where have you been the last five years? The war was fought and consumers of your ilk have lost utterly. I mean you may want your phone or your computer to work this way but you're a vanishing minority. Only dorks prioritize app choice over content.

  23. Re:Real fight on Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps · · Score: -1

    Can I store an arbitrary file on an iOS device yet? What if I want to download an MP3 using Safari or Chrome and play it with the native iOS music player? Can arbitrary apps share data without specific developer support yet?

    How would you share data between two apps if both developers didn't support that?

    Generally speaking, if you're a developer, you can vend whatever files you want as long as you and the recipient agree on type identifiers, either copying or by sharing a destructible reference. You can't save an arbitrary file to an arbitrary location because the apps are sandboxed, as far as they can tell they're the only thing running on the phone. It's a little more careful than Android but it's meant to be part of a defense in depth.

    Everything you mention is fine but I'm not sure there's some killer user story or use case that justifies it in light of the security issues. I don't think any 3rd party app developer should be able to see any of your file system ever, not on your phone. It's just too dangerous, the thing is always on the network, it knows where you live and you can't unplug it.

    Visible global filesystem on a phone always seemed like a gee-whiz feature that wasn't really justified. Frankly I think the visible global filesystem on personal computers isn't really justified, considering how many people just dump everything into ~/Documents and most productivity apps have their own bespoke document browser/organizer.

    Honestly I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find a website where I could even try to download an MP3, usually everything I'd want to listen to is in the podcasting app (or the site the content is on just has an app). I used to have GoodReader, which you'd launch from a URL in Safari and it'd just download anything and play it, but it sorta became unnecessary after a certain point. I'm not sure what the point of being able to play it in the "native music player" is. What app you play content with shouldn't be important, all the matters is that the desired content is available by a convenient and appropriate modality. iOS doesn't have a "native music player," it has iTunes for music in iTunes, Podcasts for Podcasts, and then Beats and Amazon Music and Spotify and everything else for their music.

    One app to play all your music is 1990s thinking; modern apps are meant to brand content and service experiences, instead of them all launching the "native music player" they all call the same native sound API. The mechanics of how the media moves across the internet or across the filesystem is invisible to the user.

    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K

    "Oh, I don't know" -- Joel Robinson.

  24. Re:Fight within a platform, not between platforms on Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps · · Score: 0

    The IBM PC was an open platform, not an Open platform. :)

    Similarly Microsoft's platform was "open," but only relatively, when compared to IBM. Meanwhile Linux is open and Open and really only excels at niches.

    The conventional wisdom is that the Wintel platform prevailed because the hardware was cheaper; Windows and Mac OS had about the same level of openness from the perspective of third-party developers.

    Google runs Android as an Open OS but most of the units sold are actually running closed-source code, because the OEMs can license their way out of being Open. Which is why Cyanogen exists.

  25. Re:Real fight on Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps · · Score: 1

    I respectfully submit that Android is substantially more functional with its core set of applications than iOS.

    A good case can be made that an OHA Android phone is a better value proposition for a vanilla end user than an iOS iPhone. If you're alright with your phone being a dumb terminal for Google services and $SOCIAL_NETWORK_X, you're better off.

    If you're a third party developer like Microsoft though, it's a much worse value proposition to target the platform, because Google aggressively crowds them out of providing features, and their store/monetization model doesn't produce as much income. If you're somebody like Microsoft, Apple is kindof easier to work with, since Apple isn't trying to clone Onenote and constantly dragging the users to their clone through defaults and platform integration. Also if Microsoft wants to charge $5 for an app or an IAP, on iOS there's a good chance they'll actually get the sale. Ads just don't generate the revenue sales do.

    The user value proposition starts to break down if the end user isn't vanilla, and actually kinda wants access to the kinds of high-quality 3rd party apps that tend to show up on iOS first or exclusively. Or they're privacy conscious, or would just prefer not use Google services for everything.

    Android can share data freely among applications and is much less picky about data formats, so there's no need to resort to some of the weird fuckery or workarounds iOS users have to deal with to bend, fold or mutilate their needs into something that iOS can actually do.

    I think you may be working with old information.