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  1. Summary is misleading on White House Touts Obama's 1-Liner as 2014 Tech Highlight · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not a Top 9 science and technology highlights from 2014, as curated by the White House. This is a Top 9 science and technology highlights that happened at the White House.

    Big difference.

  2. Re: Violence against police ... on Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force · · Score: 1

    They do. I know cops who do. You, and the media in general, just aren't listening unless it supports your agenda.

  3. Re:Violence against police ... on Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force · · Score: 1, Troll

    For every bad cop we hear about, know that an entire fucking department has facilitated his behavior, making them every bit as worthless as the "bad" ones.

    Even if this were true (which it is not), the number of police officers and police departments who do not condone this behavior FAR outweigh the number who do.

  4. Re:Gawd I hated it! on The Slow Death of Voice Mail · · Score: 1

    I agree, and I generally prefer direct-to-voicemail over the traditional wait-through-4-rings. Sometimes I need to leave someone a quick note without having to interrupt what they are doing.

    Sure, I appreciate texting and I use it (very often when you include email, which is essentially the same communication concept). There are just situations that texting is much worse than leaving a quick voice message, such as while driving or using a crappy keyboard like on a game console.

  5. Re:Why bother? on Ask Slashdot: Is an Open Source .NET Up To the Job? · · Score: 2

    Also this is completely wrong:

    Given that Java is older than C# by more than a decade

    Java 1 was released in 1996, C# 1 was released in 2002.

  6. Re:Why bother? on Ask Slashdot: Is an Open Source .NET Up To the Job? · · Score: 1

    Of course Java was ahead of C# before C# was released. C# started out as a Java clone. Java was arguably ahead of C# for about two versions or so, although .NET learned some lessons from Java and implemented some things better (like events, properties, and generics).

    C# 3+ leaped ahead by most measures with functional programming concepts such as lambdas and LINQ, as well as duck typing and more. Java has recently improved in many of these areas but I don't yet feel Java's implementation is superior.

    On the other hand if you are really into functional programming, look at Scala for the JVM or F# for .NET. Those are both fantastic languages and I would personally choose them assuming my job allowed (which unfortunately it does not).

  7. Re: As a Market Lover on Microsoft Quietly Starts Accepting Bitcoin As Payment Method · · Score: 1

    Where I live, savings accounts are generally in the category of "withdraw immediately without penalty". And, as a result, the interest rate is at or lower than inflation.

    Anyway, the point is that inflation does not cause people to hoard. Even in your case, where you have an account that has a higher interest rate than inflation, inflation isn't causing you to hoard. You are hoarding in spite of inflation.

  8. Re: As a Market Lover on Microsoft Quietly Starts Accepting Bitcoin As Payment Method · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry but I don't believe you. Please provide a link to a savings account that you can immediately withdraw from without penalty that also higher interest than inflation.

  9. Re:Can you say... on Judge Rules Drug Maker Cannot Halt Sales of Alzheimer's Medicine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me of a situation my wife dealt with a few years back. She was on a pain medication that was really the only one she had found that provided the relief she needed to get through the day. But it suddenly stopped being sold or prescribed one day.

    That day, the FDA banned the drug. It cited a study that found that the drug was linked with something bad, I think maybe suicidal thoughts.

    But then she found that the study was produced by the company that made the brand name version of the drug, which had competition by generics by that point.

    Hmm.

    Also, the brand name company had just created a new similar pain medication that had new patent protections. The FDA ruling effectively killed the competition of this new drug.

    Hmm.

    Mind you, that new drug is ineffective for my wife's pain. Also, the study was done over a very short period of time, had a weak sample size, and when you look at its bias, there's no way that study would have made it into a real medical journal. But would the FDA accept it (presumably along with a check with lots of pretty zeroes)? Absolutely.

  10. Re:Magic Pill - Self Discipline on "Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality · · Score: 1

    Well, that's exactly what I did, dropped 500 calories per day. No noticeable results over 4 months, when generally one should expect around 1 pound/week loss.

    (And I'm nowhere near the 1000 calorie limit.)

  11. Re:Cloud on Is Enterprise IT More Difficult To Manage Now Than Ever? · · Score: 1

    Fair enough, YMMV.

  12. Re:Too small to be of any benefit. on LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES · · Score: 1

    All of that said, I am just pointing out that the chart can be correct while someone still could make out "jaggies". The idea of a "retina" resolution is a bit of a myth because of things like we have pointed out, and thus we can't take that chart at face value to know whether the result is acceptable.

  13. Re:Too small to be of any benefit. on LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES · · Score: 1

    I can clearly see a line of white pixels between lines of black pixels at 8ft.

    This is a bad justification. To see why, try this experiment:

    1) Create an image of a black background with a single 1px-width white line.
    2) Set up a camera at or beyond retina distance.
    3) Take a photo and see if you can see the white line in the photo.

    I took this to an extreme, using a (crappy) 8 MP phone camera, from a distance 9 times retina distance (11.5" tablet at 1366x768 resolution from a distance of around 18 feet). The resulting photograph still displayed a visible line.

    The line was faint and quite blurry, mind you. But I think it demonstrates my point, that things smaller than retina resolution don't suddenly become invisible. And this is particularly true when looking at something that is white on a black background.

  14. Re: Fire all the officers? on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 1

    [citation needed]

  15. Re:Cloud on Is Enterprise IT More Difficult To Manage Now Than Ever? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most cloud providers are orders of magnitude more secure than company IT.

  16. Re:Too small to be of any benefit. on LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES · · Score: 1

    Not sure about your eyes, but the graphic appears to be pretty close to the values I'm getting when calculating when the resolution is better than "retina" for most people.

    Of course, video compression can alter your results. And sub-pixel motion can cause moiré patterns that are quite noticeable even on retina displays.

  17. Re:The "K system" is alright on LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES · · Score: 1

    Well, yes, resolution is a measurement and MP is a unit for that measurement.

    That's like saying a 4x increase in length corresponds with a 4x increase in meters.

  18. Re: Fire all the officers? on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 2, Funny

    The number of times ACs are actually correct is vanishingly small next to the number of times they are just acting like trolls.

    FTFY

  19. Re:Magic Pill - Self Discipline on "Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer To Reality · · Score: 2

    I'm glad you have lost 30 lbs. since August. I started around August decreasing calorie intake and increasing exercise, reducing my daily calorie consumption by around 500 calories per day.

    Have I lost weight? Not a bit. In fact, my doctor says I gained weight.

    Yes, I know some of the gain could be muscle weight, but really it doesn't seem like that is the case. I don't fit clothes any better and overall just still feel the same.

    So yes, I wouldn't mind having a pill if it will help people like me who actually try and get no results.

  20. Re:transfer the ID information to the police on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 2

    Yes, police will verify through dispatch even if they do not have data service available. Depending on your jurisdiction they probably have different rules as to whether the officer must release the suspect. Where I live, a traffic stop is legally equivalent to an arrest and I wouldn't be surprised if the officer would make an educated decision on bringing the suspect in until at least the officer can contact dispatch.

  21. Re:As a Market Lover on Microsoft Quietly Starts Accepting Bitcoin As Payment Method · · Score: 1

    Inflation: they horde for the big interest.

    Interest rates are typically less than or equal to the rate of inflation when the lender can demand that the principle be redeemed at will. This is the case for savings accounts and the like. This means that hoarding money in a savings account reduces its value over time.

  22. Re:transfer the ID information to the police on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 1

    Yes, but it isn't reliable. There are plenty of locations that don't have adequate cellular data service.

  23. Re:As a Market Lover on Microsoft Quietly Starts Accepting Bitcoin As Payment Method · · Score: 1

    You have it backwards. Inflation keeps people from hoarding, not deflation.

  24. Re:Are you ready for a weekly needle in the eyebal on Photoswitch Therapy Restores Vision To Blind Lab Animals · · Score: 2

    Perhaps, but every needle injection increases the risk of infection of the eyeball. My grandfather recently had a fake eye inserted after a single eye injection resulted in a streptococcus infection in that eye.

  25. Re:Hiding evidence on Microsoft To US Gov't: the World's Servers Are Not Yours For the Taking · · Score: 1

    If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country.

    I could buy this analogy if the email originates in the U.S. or is destined for and accessed by a person within the U.S. But if neither circumstance applies, then like the airmail scenario the U.S. would have no reasonable jurisdiction.