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User: MightyMartian

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Comments · 19,559

  1. Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles on Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts · · Score: 1

    And, Mr genius, why exactly do your kids have so small a chance of getting a disease like measles?

  2. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece on Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians · · Score: 2

    Fortunately a know a few Greeks who are anal to the point of stupidity.

  3. Re:we didn't had submarines in ancient Greece on Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians · · Score: 2

    The meaning of words evolves. Good grief what an idiotic argument. And do you think all the words in modern Greek are identical in meaning to their Koine, Classical and pre-Classical roots? Oh my goodness, we have to stop the presses, it turns out words have changed in meaning since Proto-Indo-european and we must do something about it!

  4. Re: A few more on Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians · · Score: 1

    So Germany invading Belgium despite Britain's guarantee to Belgium and France had nothing to do with the war.

  5. Re:We can thank the code breakers on Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians · · Score: 1, Troll

    I'm not clear here. Are you asserting Turing didn't 1. play a substantial role in the war effort through his work at Bletchley Park and 2. play a significant role in the development of the digital computer?

  6. Re:I agree on Poll Shows That 75% Prefer Printed Books To eBooks · · Score: 2

    Most dreading software I've used has bookmark and return to last page features.

  7. Re:Metro UI on Microsoft Stock Drops 11% In a Day · · Score: 1

    The only source for those reports is astroturfers. I have yet to talk to actual human being who owns one or knows anyone who knows one.

  8. Re:FUD on Collision Between Water and Energy Is Underway, and Worsening · · Score: 2

    Because, of course, planning for a few decades in the future costs money and requires political will. We'll let tomorrow worry about the problems we're creating! I'm so lucky to live in the Age of the Sociopath.

  9. Re:Says it all! on Study Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn't Pollute Water · · Score: 1

    The researchers seem pretty open about the results. It's one site, and clearly one site does not a full study represent. Obviously the industry is going to trumpet this as the be-all and end-all, just as they did with some preliminary research, now largely debunked, that fracking didn't lead to or at least exacerbate earthquakes. That's the part I'm still dubious about. It's rather like feeding a five hundred pound guy a near-fatal dose (if he was 200 pounds) of arsenic and then, when he doesn't drop dead after a few days, declaring "Arsenic is safe!"

  10. Re:Sounds iffy on Study Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn't Pollute Water · · Score: 5, Informative

    The way I read it (yes, I read the article) is that they put a marker of some kind into the chemical brew being slugged into the ground, and found no sign of that marker in ground water. Now obviously there are still questions to be raised, but still, in and of itself, this seems a pretty reasonable way to determine groundwater contamination.

  11. Re:I'm glad on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 1

    I should also add that, at work, we use OpenVPN, and there are clients for iOS and newer versions of Android that work without rooting and allow encrypted access to internal resources like RDP, internal websites and file shares. Just yesterday I rebooted a server with an encrypted file store on it and was able to issue the decryption passphrase from my Nexus 7 about 90 miles away from where the server was located.

    This is Microsoft's problem. Whatever problems it thinks Surface RT is supposed to solve, most of them have already been solved.

  12. Re:I'm glad on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have an RDP client on my Nexus 7 that works just fine. I have no idea why someone would claim that there is a limitation.

    I also have a pretty damned good file browser for my Nexus 7 that allows me to connect to my work SMB shares, Google Drive, Dropbox and the Android filesystem and copy files between them with ease.

  13. Re:Microsoft doesn't know what it wants to be on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 1

    They're going into hardware because it's pretty clear no profitable company wants to make RT devices, so if they don't directly involve themselves in putting devices on the market it won't be there at all.

    The larger reason is they fear (not without justification) that the consumer market has shifted away from PCs completely, and is now firmly in the hands of smartphones, tablets and other smart devices. While Microsoft's fortunes don't rise or fall with the consumer market, the fact is that it would take a big enough swipe out of revenues to cause them concern. Worse, once the consumer market gets comfortable with non-PC computing devices running non-Microsoft operating systems, there will be creep into the enterprise market (much as Microsoft made its fortunes by creep from the enterprise market into the consumer market), and that could have serious ramifications in the medium and long term.

  14. Re:Steve Sinofsky on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 2

    I think you've nailed it on the head. But there are deep systemic issues here. The failure of Surface RT (and, I would imagine, ultimately Surface as well, along with the deep unpopularity of Windows 8) is that Microsoft is a company who has seen its consumer market shrink catastrophically. In part I think it is just bad luck. For whatever reason Apple had Steve Job's Reality Distortion Field that made iDevices sexy must-haves that could be sold at a premium simply because there was an "i" at the beginning of the device name. Whether it was Zune, smartphones or tablets, Microsoft just couldn't pierce that field.

    At the same time, Google did its best over the same timespan to get Android put on everything from throw away cell phones to high end tablets, and has absolutely astonishing market penetration.

    Between Apple and Google, iOS and Android have become ubiquitous on smart devices, and everyone else is a very distant third. Blackberry can't get back in and Microsoft can't get any footing.

    Sure, Microsoft could, and probably will end up selling them far below cost or just giving them away. Maybe that will trigger something, but at this point I doubt it. No one wants Surface RT, and I don't think it has a damned thing to do with quality of product.

  15. Re:I'm glad on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 1

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! They're going to end up dumping them on schools or burying them in the desert.

  16. Re:I'm glad on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It failed because Redmond was four years too late, and Android and iOS are so dominant at all price points that there is simply no room for a third competitor. Surface RT offers nothing that mid and upper end iDevices and Androids do not.

    In other words, Microsoft has been out-Microsofted.

  17. Re:How can that be? on Microsoft Is Sitting On Six Million Unsold Surface Tablets · · Score: 1

    Indeed. My organization might have found that a tablet that tightly integrated with Active Directory infrastructure something to invest in, even at a higher price point. As it is, you basically have a high priced that isn't meaningfully more integrated to MS's enterprise offerings than your comparable Android or iDevice.

  18. Re:+5 Insightful for on Jimmy Carter Calls Snowden Leak Ultimately "Beneficial" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The economic problems predated Carter, and while he certainly was unable to fix them, he was, after all ultimately stymied by the energy crisis of the late 1970s. As to the Afghan invasion, what exactly could he have done? At no point during the Cold War did the US contemplate direct intervention against the Soviets, save as a final nightmare scenario like an all-out invasion of Western Europe. Neither Carter, nor any other President, would have directly involved the US in Afghanistan. As to Iran, yes, he misjudged the unpopularity of the Shah, but then again, so had several administrations before him, so I fail to see how you can put your focus solely on the Carter Administration's actions surrounding Iran, seeing as he was perpetuating a policy that his predecessors had maintained for well over two decades.

    Carter was hardly a perfect president, but he is a classic example of how sometimes leaders get the job at the worst of all possible moments, and ultimately no matter what they do or don't do, the situation is far larger and chaotic than any leader, particularly of a democratic state, can hope to overcome.

    Carter is a damned bright guy, a helluva brighter than his immediate successor, but he was as screwed as Herbert Hoover (another very bright guy)/

  19. Re:Practicality? on Scientists Silence Extra Chromosome In Down Syndrome Cells · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe some aspects of Downs could be reversed, but as many of the neurological and physiological aspects of the disorder are doubtless developmental, I can't imagine any substantial changes to a person already with the syndrome. The greatest hope, I imagine, is in utero treatment which would prevent the developmental aspects of Downs Syndrome from happening at all.

  20. Re:UPS on Ask Slashdot: Enterprise Level Network Devices For Home Use? · · Score: 1

    Totally agree. We bough a Cisco AP and it was a buggy piece of shit that only worked,tolerably well after a firmware update released a year after we purchased it. Even then it ran incredibly hot, and seemed to randomly flake out and clients would lose connectivity. It was an overpriced hunk of junk.

  21. Re:But still... on Casting a Jaundiced Eye On AnTuTu Benchmark Claims Favoring Intel · · Score: 1

    They're rigging results by using parameters and optimizations useful only for the benchmarks in question. In other words, unless the only thing you use processors for is benchmarks, you have learned absolutely nothing about how this processor will work in any real world application.

  22. Re:Fuck 'em on Researchers Now Pulling Out of DEF CON In Response To Anti-Fed Position · · Score: 2

    Because the first step in solving any dilemma is to grab the nearest sharp knife and cut off our noses despite our faces.

  23. Re:Bullshit on First Exoplanet To Be Seen In Color Is Blue · · Score: 1

    The last I had heard, we were nowhere near determining whether that was so. It seems improbable that a gas giant would, but until we actually have a reasonably decent sample size of gas giants under close observation, I'd say it's awfully premature to jump to conclusions.

  24. Re:Question: what atmospheric constituents? on First Exoplanet To Be Seen In Color Is Blue · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's a very primitive biosphere; dominated by methane, molecular hydrogen and congressmen.

  25. Re:PCs are not going to die. on PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History · · Score: 1

    All I can say, from a purely anecdotal position, is that the two PCs in our house almost never get used. I bought my wife a Kobo Arc for Christmas for e-reading, and within a couple of weeks she stopped using her notebook for anything other than the odd big email or document. I still use mine for working from home (mainly coding and management), but still, I prefer my Nexus 7 for reading and casual computing.

    If a fair chunk of users are in the same boat my family is in, about the only time we will replace our PCs is when they croak, and considering how little they're used now compared to a year ago, I'd say that could be quite a while.