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User: im_thatoneguy

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  1. Re:Open source equates to freedom. on The IRS vs. Open Source · · Score: 1

    Or... companies are devious and will simply use Open Source as a vector for tax evasion.

    I run a company, I sell "open source support". A customer calls and my minimum wage employee takes down their request. That employee passes it to our affiliated non-profit which then modifies the open source code and lets the for-profit company know when the change is made.

    Suddenly all of my employees now work for a non-profit except for the guy who takes phone calls.

  2. Re:Open source equates to freedom. on The IRS vs. Open Source · · Score: 1

    "Freedom" is libertarian code for "Corporate tax rate".

  3. Re:Open source equates to freedom. on The IRS vs. Open Source · · Score: 1

    Political parties aren't subject to tax-exempt status. Naming yourself "____ Party" is a surefire way to get the attention of the IRS.

    It's like calling yourself "Tax Dodgers Services" when you're a church--it's going to raise red flags.

    The conservative Republican who started this supposed partisan witchhunt was very direct in his rationalization and that was that they were A) New and B) Similar therefore it made sense to just deal with them all at once for consistency.

    By the way while you're pending approval as a non-profit you can still operate as a non-profit until you're denied. So being in limbo doesn't stop the organization or prevent fundraising etc.

  4. Re:scale on A Different Approach To Making Alternative Fuels Practical · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Coincidentally algae already is about 10x as efficient at producing oil as corn. So hypothetically if we converted all of our agro-oil space into algae space, that 10% == 100% of our daily demand. Also you need to take into account that many of our plants for oil production are even less efficient than corn.

  5. Re:imho biofuels are stil "bad". on A Different Approach To Making Alternative Fuels Practical · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now you're just being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

    It's not "something from nothing". Oil is pretty just just Hydrogen and Carbon + Energy. The algae in this instance takes in Air (CO2), Water (H2O) and Energy (Sunlight). Take a look at a corn plant though. How much of that corn plant is oil? A teeny tiny portion. It needs leaves and a stalk and then produces a tiny little fruit by comparison a couple times a year. Compare that to Algae which is a continuous growth process and is genetically engineered to invest almost all of its energy into producing oil and you can exponentially increase your yield every year.

    We've already improved the yield of corn by about 600% over the last 50 years. But we're still constrained by the biology of growing something and then extracting oil from it through an incredibly indirect route. Remove the intermediary steps and start with an organism whose sole purpose is oil production and not food and that 600% increase will look like child's play. Algae can quadruple in mass in a single day. Ever seen heads of corn do that?

    Algae already can produce more than 10x the amount of oil per acre than corn.

  6. Re:Thou hast angered thy King on China Says Serious Polluters Will Get the Death Penalty · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know. If you have the death penalty I can see pollution being a worthy offense. If you dump toxic waste into the drinking water and dozens get sick and die of cancer-- how is that any different from murder.

    Good for China. Here in the US we would just fine them a few million... they would shift their assets to a sub division... sell that to themselves and declare bankruptcy without paying a dime. Then keep on doing what they were doing until they got caught the next time.

  7. Re:How Complex Can It Be? on Whole Human Brain Mapped In 3D · · Score: 1

    The blueprints for a house are a few MBs. A 3D Scan of the house down to the texture of the wood would be petabytes.

  8. Re:non-issue on Use Tor, Get Targeted By the NSA · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I don't see this as surprising.

    If you're using TOR to try and conceal your country of origin, don't be surprised when a government agency which is allowed to spy on foreign communication might mistake your traffic for that of a foreign communication. The harder you make it to identify your communication as American, the less likely they are to legally 'ignore' your traffic.

  9. Re:I don't want to be "that guy", however on Java API and Microsoft's .NET API: a Comparison · · Score: 1

    I can write a perfectly good standard that doesn't run on any operating system. Lack of dev attention doesn't mean it's not a standard.

  10. Re:You Brave Companies, You on Amazon Vows To Fight Government Requests For Data · · Score: 2

    Many companies had appealed and had lawsuits. The difference is that now that the program is public their lawyers are letting them talk about the lawsuits. Yahoo for instance it was revealed had a 3 year long lawsuit fighting it.

  11. Re:Characters are created to suffer on The Plight of Star Wars Droids · · Score: 2

    Why are people getting so wrapped up, particularly adults, in the details?

    Because it reveals a lot of about human thought processes that unless we explicitly single out our prejudice and bigotry we will obliviously enslave entire classes of people without a second thought. How many people honestly thought about the plight of Robot Slavery in the Star Wars universe. It's a way to reveal our own shortcomings without having to go through a brutal civil rights campaign.

  12. Re:Huh? on Microsoft To Start Dumping Surface RT To Schools For $199 · · Score: 1

    My father was an elementary school teacher at the time and said the ones he had didn't do much. No one knew how to use them, they didn't fit into any educational plan, they were just paper weights that were occasionally used for games.

    Except in this case it comes with Microsoft Office and a web browser. Between those two things most school use cases are taken care of. This isn't the 80s, schools know what to do with PCs, they know what to do with ipads and if the summary thinks a windows device is hard for a windows IT staff to manage... how the hell are they handling ipads?

  13. Re:wtf on Supreme Court Decides Your Silence May Be Used Against You · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't believe that's true. To quote Findlaw.com

    Witnesses who are called to the witness stand can refuse to answer certain questions if answering would implicate them in any type of criminal activity.

    But unlike defendants, witnesses who assert this right may do so selectively and do not waive their rights the moment they begin answering questions.

    You have the right to shut up at any point but I don't believe you can shut up and then start talking and then shut up again. This was the point of debate in the IRS congressional hearing where the manager made a statement and then plead the 5th.

  14. Re:Beware of the next step on Snowden NSA Claims Partially Confirmed, Says Rep. Jerrold Nadler · · Score: 1

    Well... seeing as the NSA has said that they've only looked at the meta-data of 300 people that's not exactly a vast government conspiracy.

    And considering that the corrected news article accurately states that the NSA still requires a wiretap to listen to a phone call... I don't see where this is illegal.

    The government has tapped phones since the 1800s. As long as they get a search warrant this isn't any new invasion of privacy. What this is, is a bunch of tech blogs freaking out over misreading transcripts. Not less than 1 sentence away from this supposed "admission" the director says "We need a warrant to listen to calls".

  15. Re:Do not understand this. on Transgendered Folks Encountering Document/Database ID Hassles · · Score: 1

    Ahhh gotcha that sucks. So your driver's license will perpetually remain M even if you are now F and result in constant conflicts of "that doesn't match your driver's license".

    I was envisioning a system similar to changing your legal name. How many states don't allow gender/sex changes on their official IDs?

  16. Re:Do not understand this. on Transgendered Folks Encountering Document/Database ID Hassles · · Score: 2

    we'd rather not have our private lives paraded around in front of others

    Forgive my ignorance but is it really any more embarrassing to correct that information in a database than any other? I would imagine vast amounts of data are inaccurate on everybody. I've called and changed my birthday, I've accidentally listed 'male' for my girlfriend when filling out forms online (out of habit). If you're embarrassed just say you erroneously filled out the form or say you were reviewing your records and noticed a big inaccuracy.

    I've heard a number of transgender people ask for options which are more inclusive and specific--but that would go against your complaint since it would make your transgender status front and center and 'parade around it around in front for others'.

    I agree though on the point that tracking gender is pretty pointless for almost all forms.

  17. Re:Then do what I did. on Sony's PS4 To Have Less Stringent DRM Than Microsoft's Xbox One · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    You don't have to wait and see. Sony's presentation was largely a really brilliant piece of deception. Watch the Playstation 4 "lifestyle" video that Sony showed. They have people: downloading games from their phone, streaming games to start playing immediately and playing online co-op. No-where in their 'lifestyle' video do any of the gamers go to a store, buy a disc, put it in and play by themselves.

    If you buy a digital game from Sony you already have less flexibility than the Xbox One's digital downloads. Sony is going to do everything in their power to push digital downloads, and for good reason, they're better. No scratched discs, no swapping a hardware dongle (inserting a disc) in order to play, you can get every game on day one without pre-order, you can play your entire library of games at work, or a friends house, or home etc. Digital downloads already make up a majority of PC game sales. They accomplished that feat in 2010. Consoles will get there in no-time. When was the last time you bought a PC game at a store? Exactly.

    Though digital downloads accounted for most of the number of games sold from January to June, they accounted for just 43 percent of overall game revenue. But that difference stems mainly from the higher prices that retail stores charge over their online counterparts, says NPD.

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20016943-235.html

    Also digital downloads are cheaper. No middleman, no distribution, no printing just straight download. Again, that was in 2010. By the end of 2014 everybody will be downloading on both consoles and while "theoretically" the PS4 will have used games and sharing--that's only for disc based games.

    Similarly look at every single launch title that's being promoted, they're MMOs, they're quasi-mmos with drop-in PVP or co-op or they're multiplayer games like Modern Warfare (which kind of has a single player). So yeah you don't *need* an internet connection but it's like buying Team Fortress 2 and not having an internet connection, it's going to be a fraction of the designed game. Multiplayer is no longer an afterthought it's integral to most games. So sure on the PS4 you don't need an online check-in but it will be the shell of the game you purchased.

  18. Re:first on Linus Torvalds Promises Profanity Over Linux 3.10-rc5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would ask though whether that's useful or just technological masturbation.

    When RAM is plentiful and cheap and even your average smartphone has more than 1GB of RAM are you sacrificing anything by only using a few MB of RAM instead of GBs?

    There clearly is purely wasteful uses of RAM but there is also fully utilizing your available resources. RAM is cheap and plentiful. I would rather a system be responsive and fully featured than tick off some statistic on how few resources it uses. A 486 uses less power than an intel core i7. But you'll get a lot more per watt out of the i7.

    Ultimately the metric I care about most is productivity.

  19. Re:Wrong question anyway... on NSA Surveillance Heat Map: NSA Lied To Congress · · Score: 1

    And voting wont help... Both parties were in on this.

    Fuck you and your juvenile defeatism. Voting will help. Look at the Tea Party. They completely changed the composition of the Republican party and its platform in less than 3 years. The only reason voting doesn't help is because those who care want these policies. We get the government we ask for. This isn't some Illuminati bullshit--these are the people we voted for. What happens is instead of getting involved, participating in primaries or caucuses to choose the candidates who actually oppose these things people complain... or they vote for some mascot of a third party candidate who has no chance of winning or they beat some hippie drums in the woods somewhere or they sit on web forums and complain. You know what works? VOTING. Get out there, campaign, go door to door for candidates who you believe in and also have a chance of winning. If you look at the primary field of candidates from Dennis Kucinich to Ron Paul and say both parties are exactly the same then you're a moron. There are as liberal liberals in the democratic primary field as there are conservative conservatives in the republican field. But don't be shocked when the winner is a centrist who actually reflects most people's opinions because that's how democracy works.

    And if they truly are breaking the constitution we have a judicial system to review the government's actions on behalf of the ACLU, EFF etc.

  20. Re:And we all know what will happen... on NSA Surveillance Heat Map: NSA Lied To Congress · · Score: 1

    Hahaha a Communist. What are you 12? Name one single communist policy that Obama has advocated. One. I challenge you to just that little task.

  21. Re:And we all know what will happen... on NSA Surveillance Heat Map: NSA Lied To Congress · · Score: 1

    1/100th as damaging as under Bush? Ummm... no. There is a big difference between kidnapping someone, throwing them in a secret prison and denying them access to a lawyer and looking at badly anonymized metadata. Of the two I would rather someone look at my anonymized call logs than to haul me off to a secret prison and a secret military tribunal.

    As far as I'm aware Obama also hasn't manufactured evidence to send hundreds of thousands of troops into harms way resulting in a war that's killed tens of thousands of civilians and thousands of Americans and costing trillions of dollars.

    As far as I'm aware tens of billions of dollars wasn't put into shipping containers and 'disappeared' into companies Obama or Biden used to be board members of.

    Where is the news recently 100x more damaging than Bush?

    Solyandra? A Republican CEO who gave money to both sides (like every CEO) gets some money along with hundreds of other companies in an effort to reduce the price of solar power and increase US solar manufacturing. They go bankrupt but mostly because the price of solar panels has plummeted... wasn't that the stated goal?

    A diplomat is attacked and killed. There were dozens of embassy attacks and dozens of people killed under Bush. Nobody complained because even during the height of Bush blaming people were at least sensible enough to recognize that we can't keep everyone in the world safe all the time.

    The only thing that's ratcheted up 100x is Fox News' bluster.

  22. Re: Not-so-accurate source on BBC Clock Inaccurate - 100 Days To Fix? · · Score: 1

    It's funny that people fight tooth and nail for people to give them DRM free content. And when someone actually does effectively give away content DRM free but uses what amounts to the "honor" system--they call the people who actually ask nicely for the license fee fascist stormtroopers.

  23. Re:Finally looks exactly like Chrome on Mozilla Plans Major Design Overhaul With Firefox 25 Release In October · · Score: 1

    Says 5% of the population. Me? I love it.

  24. Re:Battery Life on Sony Touts 25 Hour Battery Life For Haswell-Equipped Vaio Pro · · Score: 1

    I don't know. I was worried about that with the Surface but my Surface and Surface Pro almost always get more than the advertised use time. I've generally found laptop manufacturers to be generally pretty accurate.

  25. Re:Sigh on iPhone 4, iPad 2 Get US Import Ban · · Score: 1

    Apple presumably will continue manufacturing them and paying Samsung for the parts. And after a $1B payout to Apple I imagine that Samsung just wants vengeance a this point. Both of them are already going to lose when the scorecard gets rung up but I doubt Samsung wants Apple to come out ahead.