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User: BrendaEM

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  1. Looking for Volunteers on Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit? · · Score: 2

    Who will be the first lucky person to be killed by an autonomous car?

    "Oh, I guess I forgot to carry the one..." Professor Frink, Simpsons

  2. CC'ed To A Senator on Kerry Says US Is On the "Right Side of History" When It Comes To Online Freedom · · Score: 1

    Terrorists are a threat to our physical wellbeing, our economy, infrastructure, and our piece of mind, though it has not demonstrated that our democratic process can survive with domestic spying.

    Positive political change cannot happen if those preparations are reviled at their inception. Domestic spying allows a political opponent access to their political adversaries intent, which I feel will hinder America's growth.

    I do not believe that anyone who such holds the information gathered from domestic spying can use it in a non-partisan way. Who could be politically neutral enough, altruistic enough to have access, without also using that information for their own political gain?

    America has yet another problem: the National Security Administration itself, for this is an organization that has run unchecked and unbound by one of the most sacred principles of our U.S. Constitution; the NSA is an organization without checks and balances. There is no method for a United States citizen to defend themselves from action which cannot be disclosed; this, in my opinion is not an American structure, not organization in the intent and aspiration of the drafters of our Constitution.

    The ramifications of a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack against our people are great. I know you must answer to yourself and those people who might be lost. Yet, I am also fearful of how those same terrorists might use the information gained from domestic spying should it ever slip from the NSA's grasp. As someone considered a computer expert, I know that can happen; the fact that NSA was owned by a single idealistic American, proves that point.

    Lastly, the actual social structure of an entire country has never been so well known; the NSA is running an experiment. In my mind, I feel that it is the government's purpose to maintain peace and create unity--not to invoke fear and distrust. Each day in the news, I see the effort to stop Edward Snowden. Now we all know the NSA's business, and they do not like being spied on any more than we do. We are people. We, as Americans have unalienable rights. Respectfully, I say to you, the NSA has clearly violated the 4th Amendment. We will now watch the NSA work to protect itself like any organic structure, and as someone shunned by society, looking from the outside in, I am fearful and brokenhearted by what I see.

  3. Try it at Night on Can You Tell the Difference? 4K Galaxy Note 3 vs. Canon 5D Mark III Video · · Score: 1

    Night is when small sensors and show all their noisy crappyness.

  4. Yeah, it's tough when we're bad racists. on Identity Dominance: the US Military's Biometric War In Afghanistan · · Score: 2

    When you become a better racist, you can identify smaller factions of people.

    Oh, I might be wrong, it just might be a religious thing.

    Ahh, we're over there for the oil.

    Wait, WTF are we doing over there?

  5. Ever watch all the collisions? on FCC Boosts Spectrum Available To Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    WiFi was a huge success. We do need more channels, and bandwidth for growth.

  6. America is Weak Against Monetiziation on If Ridesharing Is Banned, What About Ride-Trading? · · Score: 1

    What if we all were made to use horses instead of trains, and trains instead of cars?

    Monetizing should not be so protected.

  7. Don't you mean the Police Switch? on Smartphone Kill-Switch Could Save Consumers $2.6 Billion · · Score: 1

    This is not the answer! Cellphone carriers should not register stolen phones.

    Soon, each citizen should wear at all times a helmet with an attached remote controlled pistol. Lol!

  8. You can have it on Million Jars of Peanut Butter Dumped In New Mexico Landfill · · Score: 1

    Go ahead, it's right in the landfill. Just dig it up and make some yummy sandwiches. We'll be here, waiting, and watching for results. It's probably expired by now anyway, and peanut butter can be a tricky thing to make without letting bacteria, but don't let that scare you. Maybe you can get a good deal on those puffy cans at the supermarket, too.

    Some people think seems a waste, but me, I don't much like throwing up. Remember: salmonella, you come out of one end; E. coli you come out of both ends. Bring something for electrolytes like Gatorade or Pedialyte.

  9. Daylight Savings Time Needs to End on Daylight Saving Time Linked To Heart Attacks · · Score: 1

    Set the clocks once in winter for optimal daylight, and be done with it already!

  10. The Survivors! on Why Darmok Is a Good Star Trek: TNG Episode · · Score: 1

    I think that this was the best episode, as far as writing. It was Warf's break-out episode. The story runs like bit of a mystery. The closing lines are sharp as any could be.

  11. Wow, that opens a up a whole world of dontgiveadam on MIT Researchers Bring JavaScript To Google Glass · · Score: 3, Funny

    Flash will be next.

  12. LibreOffice! on Why Buy Microsoft Milk When the Google Cow Is Free? · · Score: 1

    Thank you for everyone who worked to make Libreoffice so great!

    LibreOffice it's free! It's great! It's local software for local folks, with none of that being on MS's or Google's hairy teat.

    https://www.libreoffice.org/

  13. Prevention and Protection over Punishment on Time Dilation Drug Could Let Heinous Criminals Serve 1,000 Year Sentences · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I do not believe in punishment. I feel that punishment is the victim's mantra. I feel that a government's first job is the prevention of crime.

    One theory is that harsh punishment will prevent crime, as if some jealous person will consider that when they find their spouse in bed with someone else, or some poor staving person or meth-addicted person will consider that before robbing a store, or after the police still won't do anything about the neighbors they will just think of the punishment before they just let bygones be bygones.

    Instead we ask our police officers, our lawyers, our scientists, and intimately, we ask our lawmakers to be our agents for revenge.

  14. Bad Legislation With Darker Possibilities on Second Federal 'Kill-switch' Bill Introduced Targeting Smartphone Theft · · Score: 1

    This is a piece of legislation dangerous to our freedom. During peaceful demonstrations cellphones could be id'ed can be gathered and be deactivated at will.
    If we are ever in a war in the mainland, an invading army could deactivate our cellphones, thereby compromising our infrastructure.

    A better piece of legislation would be to require a 3-day delay and used cellphones to be checked against a national database to check for theft.

  15. Mixture of Paid, Free, and Open on Ask Slashdot: What Software Can You Not Live Without? · · Score: 2

    For all, most platforms: Libreoffice, Speedcrunch (Calculator), 7Zip, Firefox with Scrapbook, and Thunderbird

    Windows Utility: FreeFileSync, Nvidia Inspector, PSpad, and Speedfan.
    Windows Multimedia: SMplayer, Virtualdub, Avidemux, CDex, Audacity, Winff (Ffmepeg front end),
    Windows Games: Thief 2, Guildwars 2,
    Graphics and Design: Rhino3D, Photoshop, Inkscape (Going downhill. Pixels is the only unit that makes not sense for vector, WTF), Irfanview (But and looking elsewhere)

    Geekie: Arduino, Processing,
    Very Geekie Gucs (Circuit Simulator)
    Very Very Geekie, Salome (Science Pre/post-processing), Paraview/Volvire (Visualization), Code Aster (FEM)

    Linux: Most covered elsewhere.

    Android: Colornote (Postits), Papyrus (Vectror Notes), Osman (Maps), Quickpic, Androoffice, Realcalc, FBreader.
    Android Music: DaTuner, Simple Metronome, GuitarTabviewer
    Need for Android, but not made: Librioffice, Taskcoach

  16. Thief's 1/2 Magic Ingredients were.... on Thief Debuts To Mediocre Reviews · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have played Thief 1/2/3 and over a hundred Thief 1/2 add on missions. Thief's 1/2 Magic Ingredients were....

    There was sophisticated programing for Thief 1/2. Light and sound mattered to the AI. There were locks, puzzles, contraptions, levers. Garret could use the rope arrow on any wood. Garrett could swim.

    Thief 1/2 were made in New England, where Thief 1/2 was made, has a marked Autumn season. Notice how many leaves are strewn about in Thief 1. As someone from New England who now lives in Northern California, I will state that it's hard to imagine how creepy it is to be in a graveyard at night around Halloween, when you are a child. In Thief 1, that graveyard, is in the middle of a haunted town that you will have to make it back through, and yes, but you still have to go under it.

    There were quite a few women working at Looking Glass Studio on Thief 1/2. It wasn't made in an all-male cloistered monoculture. Women make add-on missions. Women even cos-play Garret. If you want women to buy video games, hire women.

    The biggest problem with the Thief reboot is the console game culture, where games cannot require skill to play. Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... You cannot move like a "Master Thief" unless you can control a character.

    Sadly, Looking Glass Studio failed. Thief 1/2's (as well as SS2) biggest problem was it's graphics were very polygonal even for their time. Thief was never a breathtaking game visually, but once you got over that it didn't need to be, and that is why there will be many more missions for Thief than there will be for most newer games.

    I might check out the new Thief, but for missions, I'm not expecting a mission as excellent as Ominous Bequest, or The Seven Sisters, or a story as good as Saturio Returns Home or The Bathory Campaign. I'm not expecting the care and devotion shown in Thief 2x or The Dark Mod.

    Still, I hope there is enough in the reboot Thief, to go admit their faults and go on to get everything right.

  17. What diffence would cores make if they cripple? on NVIDIA Launches GTX 750 Ti With New Maxwell Architecture · · Score: 1

    As an owner of several nVidia produts, I appalled what nVidia does to the non-Quadro cards!

    So you can choose a crippled gaming cards that can't do math well, or choose a workstation card that can't cool itself, and doesn't really know what to shaders.

    Tell your marketing department, a loyal customer will seriously give AMD/ATI a close look the next time around.

  18. "produce the the camera" on Throwable 36-Camera Ball Nearly Ready To Toss · · Score: 1
  19. NSA Clearly Violated Contitution on NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy US Economy Through Malware · · Score: 1

    The NSA clearly searched without probable cause. This is what happens when create an organization without checks and balances. If we have any justice in this country arrests will be made.

    "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

  20. Good, Because US Citizens Have No Say In Country on Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo Form Alliance Against NSA · · Score: 1

    I am just a U.S. Citizen. I no longer have a say in what my government does, so I better prop up any company that might help they unConstitutional NSA, which operates with no checks and balances, with the taxpayers blank anti-terrorism check.

  21. We Still Need Cheap Processing Power on The Desktop Is Dead, Long Live the Desktop! · · Score: 1

    As someone who does a lot of 3D modeling, and who has done professional graphics and game development, I am worried because affordable, powerful systems may become out of the reach of the average person. Cellphone and tablet chips, generally have 1/10 of the processing power than can be found on a desktop computer. You may be able to draw a few lines and rotate a few objects on tablet, but in 3D CAD can be quite demanding. Machines have parts. Circuit boards have traces. Processors have a piece of silicon with lots of little blobs of stuff on it. All of these add up to a difficult problem for even tablets. HD video editing can be demanding.

    Beyond the hardware, so little is expected from even tablet software. Is it really a miracle if we can cut and paste? Could you run an entire business on your tablet, a tablet that could have 300 times the processing power than a desktop of the 1990's business system? The problem here is we expect too little. As an example, PhotoShop Touch cannot even edit a 24 mega pixel image from a $500 Nikon D3200 entry-level DLSR camera, but PhotoShop, PaintShopPro or the Gimp could do that an a netbook.

    Cellphones and Tablets, Android and iOS are application-centric, not document centric. When we work, we often need to exchange information between programs, and that is not easy to to on iOS. In Android, every program has it's own weird file chooser. We don't have proper shared font folders for these, in fact they tried to get rid of the parent/child folder/file metaphor, which is fine of you never plan to organize anything using a computer.

    So many cell/tablet centric computers a married to the cloud so tightly, that you cannot work if your connection is slow, goes down, or something bad happens. The sobering part is: a war or natural disaster could mitigate any productivity of cloud users by offering a single point of failure. Please don't put all of your eggs in one or someone's basket.

    What we needed was one OS that worked on "devices" and computers, the difference being than one CAN work autonomously, and they other is a new metaphor for a old idea, the dumb terminal. Microsoft screwed up Windows 8, twice. They should have never made XP into Vista, and now it's too big, let that be your coffin nail. Windows 8, was not about doing the work that was needed to be done, it was about using the code you had. Apple's has tried integration, but remember, Apple likes application centricity. Gnome tried so hard, but we want a 2 pane file manager. We want to use this stuff for desktop applications. Mint chipping undermining Ubuntu Linux throne, suggests that we still want a command bar. We still want multiple window. Where would you have been in your life, if you never compared anything to anything else?

    Are we becoming a world of chattering people who can't do anything creatively with one of the greatest machines ever made?

    [Lately, I've been having problems even finding laptops with dedicated GPUs. The Intel Integrated GPUs do not seem to have a full OpenGL implementation, and the going gets slow when you need just as much CPU as GPU.]

  22. No Wonder Thunderbird is Put Out to Pasture on Mozilla's 2012 Annual Report: 90% of Revenue Came From Google · · Score: 1

    I like because I own my email mail, instead of borrowing it from someone. As a user Thunderbird, I am saddened that development energy for great program is being has diminished. Perhaps popmail conflicts with Google's wants and needs.

  23. Radioactive is Now Only Toxic? on TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water · · Score: 1

    I grow tired to reading with radiative elements and contaminated materials being labeled merely "toxic."

    Sitting in a room for few hours with a closed bottle of bleach won't terminally wound you, not like the water leaking from the Fukishima plant.

  24. Flash Over Function on Come Try Out Slashdot's New Design (In Beta) · · Score: 1

    The menu font at the top is too light.
    Subheading fonts are way too big.
    Too much horizontal and vertical space is wasted. It will make us scroll endlessly.
    Pics videos seem disconnected from story.
    Menu at top has too much whitespace.
    Menu at bottom of pages wastes a lot of space, too.

  25. Just the Thing for Eugenics! on It Takes 2.99 Gigajoules To Vaporize a Human Body · · Score: 1

    I know where we are heading with this.