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User: idlake

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  1. Why should we trust you? on Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC · · Score: 1

    You're a lawyer, and the restrictions on speech you propose will certainly lots of opportunity for lawyers to exercise power and get additional work. You personally are almost certainly part of the 1%, and if you insinuate that businessmen try to influence politics for their monetary gain, why shouldn't we assume the same about you? Furthermore, while you propose restrictions on the political speech of other people, you don't seem to be proposing restrictions on the political speech of newspaper corporations, universities, or their employees.

    To the degree that your proposals are specific at all, it looks to me that they amount to a self-serving attempt at further concentrating political power and the ability to engage in political speech in the hands of political incumbents, lawyers, the media, and universities. And in the many areas your proposal is vague, I don't see why I should assume that you are not simply pursuing your self-interest with your political activities, which, being a member of an intellectual elite and "the 1%", almost certainly don't coincide with the interests of average Americans. So, why should we trust you?

  2. Re:Arduino Yun on UDOO Looks To Combine Best of Raspberry Pi, Arduino · · Score: 1

    You're missing the point. These devices are for embedded applications and robotics, where low power and low cost matter. SATA, HDMI, and (in many applications) multiple cores are not an advantage. I think the UDOO is too big and too expensive for applications where you want an Arduino.

  3. Re:I hate to break it to them on UDOO Looks To Combine Best of Raspberry Pi, Arduino · · Score: 2

    No, it doesn't have the same specs: it's missing the Arduino. People buy don't by these boards to run Android, they buy them to develop embedded applications.

  4. Arduino Yun on UDOO Looks To Combine Best of Raspberry Pi, Arduino · · Score: 1

    Arduino is coming out with the Yun, another combination of non-real time Linux chip and real-time ATmega chip, and it includes WiFi. It also is ready to go when you power it on, and allows you to upload sketches over the air. It looks like a better deal and better design to me for many applications.

    The UDOO has HDMI output and some other features, but it's not so clear to me what the advantage of UDOO is over just plugging a regular Arduino into a Raspberry Pi via USB (and the resulting combo is cheaper to boot).

  5. RTFA on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    Climate change will cause one half of species to decline

    That's not what the article says. The article says that a third of the animal species will see a substantial decline in their range. It says nothing about a decline of species or even their populations.

  6. Re:What will replace Maize in 50 years? on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    We don't need evolution to fix this. With increasing global temperatures, more land will probably become suitable for cultivation of mainstream varieties of corn and other food staples. In addition, we have a wide range of other varieties that we could plant.

    In fact, climate change does not mean that you can simply add the average increase to local temperatures to get the new climate. Higher temperatures have historically meant an extension of plant growth to more northern latitudes without an increase of temperature near the equator. Instead, regions near the equator just tend to see higher precipitation. Overall, AGW may well result in a significant increase of arable land both up north and near the equator.

  7. misrepresentation of article on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    The article talks about a "dramatic decline of habitat range" for "half of plant species" and a "third of animal species". This does not mean a dramatic decline of species or anything like that.

    You could describe the same result as "The study shows that almost all species will have more than enough habitat to survive even under the worst case scenarios of global warming and pessimistic assumptions on their ability to adapt".

  8. Re:Get resigned to further losses of freedom on A Critique of the Boston Bombing News Coverage (Video) · · Score: 1

    A lot of "CCTV" cameras are private webcams on people's private property. You're saying I shouldn't be able to put a webcam in my window and make the pictures publicly available? I shouldn't be able to take pictures in public spaces? Why not? Should press be permitted to do so?

    And if the bombers get caught, doesn't that indicate that these cameras may be useful after all? I mean, the objection to them used to be that they didn't actually help in catching criminals, but one can revise that belief in light of new evidence, right?

  9. the way it works on How-Not-to-Hire-U.S.-Workers Law Firm Fires Back · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The companies I have worked for have looked for the best educated and qualified applicants. They post on mailing lists, network, and find people through word of mouth. People send in their resumes, some get invited for interviews, and the best get offers. At no point does nationality or salary play a role, either way.

    Only once the companies have already decided who they want to hire do silly US regulations, like posting to "Sunday newspapers". Geez, who gets hired based on responding to a Sunday newspaper ad anymore? Day laborers? So, yes, people who are saying that these ads are a sham are absolutely right, they're just wrong about why people are posting these ads.

    Don't kid yourself: if you can't get a job as a software engineer now, you won't get one even if no foreign labor gets admitted to the US. The consequence of restricting H1b visas is simply that the jobs themselves move overseas.

  10. already accounted for on Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars · · Score: 1

    Yes, the sun is responsible for some global warming, that is well-known and has been taken into account. Changes due to greenhouse gases are on top of that. The contribution due to solar changes make acting particularly urgent because it leaves even less room for human contributions.

  11. it's not a scripting language on Groovy in Action · · Score: 1

    Groovy was designed as a dynamically typed language that is compiled into the Java VM. Examples of scripting languages based on the Java VM are Beanshell, Jython, and JRuby. In terms of language features, the two kinds of languages may seem fairly similar, but Groovy should perform better than the scripting languages.

  12. no, not really on Groovy in Action · · Score: 2, Informative

    So Goovy is like Mondad, I mean PowerShell

    No, PowerShell is a shell, as the name suggests, and is based on the CLR. Groovy is a compiled language for the JVM.

    I mean PERL ripoff for Windows but not M$'s proprietary system?

    Well, no, Perl is a weakly-typed scripting language.

    I'm sorry programming languages are a blur for you, but there are big differences between them. Groovy is a god-sent for the Java platform, given what an awful language Java has turned into. Personally, I have no use for either Perl or PowerShell, and I think both of them have serious problems.

  13. what is not cool... on Water Logic Gates Built at MIT · · Score: 2, Insightful

    is that the people who did this at MIT failed to reference the prior work. Either they didn't know about it (which is profoundly stupid), or they deliberately didn't reference it (which is dishonest).

  14. Re:apples and oranges on No Closed Video Drivers For Next Ubuntu Release · · Score: 1

    " Beryl and and Compiz go far beyond the released versions of either OS X or Vista, both in functionality and in architecture." Really ? How ?

    Well, what does Apple actually actually ship in terms of graphics beyond software-rendered vector graphics? Texture composition with OpenGL, that's it. On top, they have built some graphically neat special effects, nothing more.

    XGL and AIGLX are OpenGL-accelerated drawing through and through (in fact, XGL can simply run entirely on top of OpenGL). Compiz and Beryl are based on a general purpose compositing architecture. Apple has nothing like Compbiz/Beryl, and probably still won't have by the time those systems ship with every Linux system.

    Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ?

    The excitement about those systems isn't because of some pissing contest with Apple, it's because people like those features and because they are well designed and well implemented, and they enable some powerful new functionality.

    Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

    The reason why you see all three major desktop environments adopt them now is simply because graphics cards have finally gotten cheap enough so that it's worth putting in the effort for mainstream desktop environments.

    Trying to imply (as people like you do) that Apple is leading and others follow is bullshit; Apple is just following trends and costs. (Look at the iPhone/Prada thing for another example of Apple's false claims of leadership.)

    "I don't want to buy a Mac" isn't a usability issue.

    Neither is "I don't want to buy a supported Linux computer." or "I can't get Linux to work on my Windows PC hardware."

  15. apples and oranges on No Closed Video Drivers For Next Ubuntu Release · · Score: 1

    To try and suggest it's anything close to the equivalent of OS X's and Vista's offerings, however, ignores some pretty hefty usability issues with regards to getting - and keeping - it working.)

    Beryl and and Compiz go far beyond the released versions of either OS X or Vista, both in functionality and in architecture. Current OS X and Vista-like functionality have been in X11 desktops since before they were included in Apple's and Microsoft's commercial releases.

    There are no installation issues with Beryl and Compiz: you install them using the package manager, like everything else. It's just that Beryl is not part of any release yet, and your graphics card many not be supported either.

    In fact, you may never be able to run Beryl or Compiz reliably on your hardware because your hardware may never be fully supported. That has nothing to do with the maturity or usability of Beryl or Compiz. Heck, there are some "pretty hefty usability issues" getting OS X to work on my PC hardware--does that mean that OS X isn't mature yet?

  16. better altenative on Illinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Get more PCs for the libraries. Seems like money well-spent even if students spend their time on MySpace.

    Not helping emo kids whine about their girlfriends.

    Emo kids, whining, and girl friends is mostly what literature (i.e., the stuff that belongs in libraries) is mostly all about. Think of MySpace as interactive, participatory fiction.

  17. Re:the ivory tower on University Professor Chastised For Using Tor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The school still has every right to direct what he teaches at thier institution. If they don't want him teaching that, he should stop. After all, he works for them.

    "The school" has that right to some degree, but a network manager is not "the school" and does not have the right to set school policy. At best, the network manager can make a temporary decision (arguing that this was necessary to protect the university), which the faculty and university administration can overturn. And if faculty and the university administration don't like what the network manager did, they can fire him.

  18. Re:the ivory tower on University Professor Chastised For Using Tor · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what the story is here, the right to use tor on someone elses network? Does he have that right? It's not his network.

    Well, it's more "his" network than that of the IT department: the primary purpose of the university and its various employees is to support him and his students.

    And that is reflected to a large degree in the governance of universities. Ultimately, the IT department must implement what the faculty and the university administration tell them; they have no independent authority to set policy for the university.

  19. you don't understand organizations on University Professor Chastised For Using Tor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The university does have an absolute right to dictate how their network is used.

    The university does, but the IT department and the campus police don't. Their function is merely to implement university policies, they ultimately don't have a right to make them.

  20. where's the conflict? on eBay Virtual World Delisting Skips Second Life · · Score: 1

    It's uncertain if this constitutes a conflict of interest, because confusion about what exactly Second Life is persists pretty much everywhere.

    This is no more of a "conflict of interest" than when your cafeteria decides to serve only Coca Cola company products. It may suck, but until they are a near-monopoly, they can favor each other in whatever way they want.

  21. Re:Sickening on Jim Gray Is Missing · · Score: 1

    a guy repeatedly threw around the term "bible thumper", presumably to refer to Christians

    Yes, in the same sense that it refers to humans and bipedal critters. See, the term "bible thumper" doesn't refer to all Christians, but only to a subset--particular kind of Christian. And, yes, the term is derogatory in that case and appropriately so, as far as I'm concerned.

  22. Re:Global warming ... just not that way. on Global Warming May Have Killed the Dinosaurs · · Score: 0, Troll

    they concluded that the heat of re-entering rock on ballistic trajectories would have heated almost the entire atmosphere to incandescence

    No, that's not what they concluded.

    I've seen talks by archaeobiologists who assert that the dinosaurs were simply broiled by the heat coming from the atmosphere

    That may be, but then the still survived for another 300ky.

    It is also consistent with the fossil record,

    Well, no, it's not consistent with the fossil record.

    Disclaimer: I am not a paleontologist, I'm only an astrophysicist.

    Given the mess astrophysics is in right now, it seems to me you could learn something from paleontology.

  23. not with the iPhone on Apple Turning Cell Phone Market Upside Down? · · Score: 1

    Maybe the pricing is fake to keep the competition off balance but at >=$500, the iPhone simply won't get enough market share to make any difference no matter what it does. And what it does isn't much: limited storage, limited applications, limited interface, no choice in carriers. I don't think so.

    At $150, the E62 may turn the smartphone market upside down. The iPhone won't.

  24. they can't patch these holes away on AACS Hack Blamed on Bad Player Implementation · · Score: 1

    You can play around with keys so that the same player won't play both old and new discs, but that doesn't change the fact that the old software will continue to be out there and will continue to be able to play old discs. And next time someone screws up, all the discs up to that point will be compromised, and on and on.

  25. Re:Not a new result on Underground Water on Mars? · · Score: 1

    This isn't about the occasional seeps, it's saying that there may be vast quantities of water locked up because water is being lost much more slowly than previously thought.