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  1. Re:Must we call him a genius? on The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pretty much. You look at the geniuses that are identified and lauded at that age and few of them are still doing well 20 years later.

    The brain does decline somewhat with age, but not to that extent. At some point you hit a wall you can't figure out and if you haven't developed other interests, then you can spend 50 years banging your head up against it without noticing the door on the other end of the room.

    But, more than that, this kind of focused genius isn't particularly resilient in the long term. The brain needs to have various stimuli in order to function best. Sometimes the answers you need are only accessible with mental flexibility.

  2. Re:Will be?? on Student Arrested For Using Phone App To 'Shoot' Classmates · · Score: 1

    That site covers maybe 5% of the people in that age bracket. In fact, I can't recall ever having met a single person in that age group that behaves like that. So, to suggest that it's common is pretty dishonest.

    What's more studying abroad is something that's much more common outside of the US and leads to more informed opinions. The reason the author of that site gets on it, is that people who have actually lived outside the US, know just how shitty it is to be an American right now. You work hard, probably don't get a raise. You get barely any time off and you're lucky if you get any sort of bonus at the end of the year.

    Meanwhile the people who own the company make out like bandits and you're lucky to be able to afford health insurance.

  3. Re:Will be?? on Student Arrested For Using Phone App To 'Shoot' Classmates · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's not arrogant that's somebody that lives in the US and knows how things work. In order to get a decent job they expect you to have 3-5 years of experience doing the job and that's for entry level positions. I highly doubt that you had to put up with that bullshit when you were entering the workforce.

    Around here $30k a year would barely cover the rent along with the bare necessities. The average rent around here comes out to over $12k a year. Want a car? You're looking at an additional $6k or so a year. Even the bus costs $1200 or more a year.

    It's arrogant people like you that perpetuate the notion that things aren't bad as they are. Wages haven't kept pace with inflation and gains in productivity in my lifetime. It's all well and good to complain about the current generation being "greedy" but when people are being asked to work harder and harder for less and less, then perhaps it's time to acknowledge that bending over isn't resulting in any improvements.

  4. Re:What... on Student Arrested For Using Phone App To 'Shoot' Classmates · · Score: 2

    Bullying isn't something that schools care about. And neither is child abuse. In order to get the schools to care, you pretty much have to be beating the kids in front of the principal. It gets rather ridiculous as simply just seeing a bunch of belt shaped welts on a kid isn't enough to forward things for investigation, because that could just be corporal punishment. Well, hitting a kid with a belt isn't punishment, and leaving marks is definitely not punishment.

    As long as schools aren't held accountable for looking the other way and refusing to do anything, this bullshit will continue. If the reports aren't being investigated, then precisely why shouldn't students be permitted to take matters into their own hands? Is it really reasonable to expect students to keep reporting it even after it gets ignored the first dozen times?

  5. Re:Will be?? on Student Arrested For Using Phone App To 'Shoot' Classmates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sense of entitlement? You mean expecting to be able to find a living wage job and have college largely paid for by the government?

    They don't expect 6 figures and to run the company in 2 years, they expect to be able to find a living wage job. Unfortunately because of cheapskates like you, for a lot of them making 6 figures is what it's going to take to pay off college and buy a house in a reasonable period of time.

    It's always interesting how arrogant old people like to ignore the fact that when they were young, college was heavily subsidized and we hadn't figured out that it was possible to send jobs overseas rather than offering them up to the people at the bottom. What's more, there was little competition from other countries and the rich didn't expect to get all the profits of other people's work.

    They're fucked alright, but mostly because of people like you got yours and to hell with anybody else.

  6. Re:Wouldn't call it a standard... on Why iTunes Radio Could Take Down Pandora · · Score: 1

    Sigh, this is ridiculous. Yes, the World Series is somewhat overblown, but players in those games come from pretty much all over the world. I can't think of any from African nations, but there's tons of players from Asia and South America that play the game, if having players from about a third of the world doesn't make it international, that's a bit ridiculous.

  7. Re: Streamtuner on Why iTunes Radio Could Take Down Pandora · · Score: 1

    iTunes on Windows blows chunks. I assume that it's better on OSX, but it's ugly and bloated and generally gets uninstalled from my computer within hours of when I install it.

    There are some nice features to it, but I have yet to find a feature that iTunes has which isn't done by somebody else better.

  8. Re:When only one high-RAM process is running on Why Apple Went 64-Bit With the iPhone 5s · · Score: 1

    Apple obsoletes older phones because it's bad for business to keep updating them and nobody seems to care.

    I'm still using a phone that only has 256mb or RAM, and I rarely have any trouble with things that I'm doing. It's mainly games where I'm using large portions of my RAM. Most of the apps I actually need are less than 40mb of disk space and as such tend not to use very much memory.

    I'll be upgrading to a new phone in a couple weeks, but not because of the RAM, primarily because having a larger screen size makes things I'm doing easier and having to use Link2sd to get things to install with the paltry internal storage is causing major headaches.

    RAMwise though, 256mb is probably enough RAM for most non-gaming purposes. I'm sure some apps genuinely need more, but not the ones that people are likely to need.

  9. Re:Why would users want this? on Why Apple Went 64-Bit With the iPhone 5s · · Score: 1

    I'm curious why a phone would need more than 4GB of RAM at this stage. I can definitely seeing it happen eventually, but I'm still using a phone that has 256mb of RAM and rarely, if ever having trouble for want of RAM. What sort of apps is Apple envisioning being created that are appropriate to the iPhone or iPad architecture that would need that much RAM?

    Serious question, I'm all for planning for the future, but this seems to be very strange when we're no where near the point of being able to use that much RAM on these devices.

  10. Re:So.... on The Post-Lecture Classroom · · Score: 1

    Spoken like somebody that doesn't know anything about education. Lectures aren't a stupid teaching method, they're a compromise between having individual tutors and having everybody learning out of a book. A good lecturer can inspire an entire classroom full of students to gain interest in the subject.

    I know I struggled with math until I had a particularly talented lecturer in college. He had a long beard, wore a meter stick through his belt like a sword and was far more effective at communicating interest and passion than I would have gotten in a different style of class.

  11. The point is that robots don't tailgate unless they're programmed to do so, they can maintain a safe distance under the visibility conditions and the robot doesn't get tired.

    The bottom line is that by the time these things are permitted on the roads they'll know how to handle all the conditions that human can handle. They might have trouble under some conditions, but most of the traffic crashes aren't the result of conditions, they're the result of human error.

    Personally, I don't find it to be an acceptable risk to be killed by a human driver. Drunk driving, tailgating, speeding, running red lights and such are things that robots wouldn't do, and if humans didn't do them the fatality rates would go way down as well. On top of that robots don't get tired and always follow traffic safety laws that they have programmed in.

  12. Re:So.... on The Post-Lecture Classroom · · Score: 2

    The point is that this isn't really a win. It's just enforcing the best practices. What's more, for students that take less time this means getting short changed on lectures and for students that take longer to do the homework still don't have sufficient time to do so.

    Also, test scores are a lousy way of measuring performance. Having students spending less time to master the material or mastering more material is a better place to focus.

  13. Re:I agree with OP on Promising Vaccine Candidate Could Lead To a Definitive Cure For HIV · · Score: 1

    Pretty much. I'm not the biggest fan of big pharma, but some of the conspiracy theories are just ridiculous. Yes, they do tend to overcharge and use government subsidies to help their profits, but there's more than enough incurable diseases out there to provide treatments for to make it not worthwhile to hold back on cures for things that can be cured.

    Preventative medicine isn't really their domain anyways.

  14. Re:I agree with OP on Promising Vaccine Candidate Could Lead To a Definitive Cure For HIV · · Score: 1

    That's ridiculous. I realize that it's cool to hate on big pharma, but let's keep it within the realm of reality.

    HIV related medications aren't something that the industry would like to be involved in. The medications don't last very long before the virus mutates it in a way that renders it ineffective. During that time they have to charge huge amounts of money to hopefully break even before they need a new medication. Same goes for antibiotics, the more you sell, the less effective it becomes. And a lot of the folks with HIV have it because they didn't know how to protect themselves or engage in other risky behaviors.

    The medications that they like selling are things like diabetes or asthma medications that are needed for decades and don't need to be updated regularly.

    Or in other words, big pharma would be more than happy to cure HIV because it's just not that profitable compared with other chronic diseases and there's little predictability about how much they could make in the future.

  15. Re:Keep trying. on Promising Vaccine Candidate Could Lead To a Definitive Cure For HIV · · Score: 1

    Not really. One of the reasons why HIV is such a nasty bugger is that it can lay unobserved for prolonged periods of time. If you've only got 2 years, before onset of AIDS, that's going to greatly reduce the amount of spreading it does.

    It's not about how quickly you can clear it, it's about how effective the vaccine is at preventing the infection in the first place. 50% is not a particularly good number. It's a hell of a lot better than nothing, but it's nowhere near high enough to justify changing ones views on HIV.

    Assuming of course that the vaccine even works on other strains. HIV is a PITA due to the rapid response to the medications we have available.

  16. OK, then how do you explain it then? Something causes the wires to cross and it sure as hell isn't shaking hands, I hold the wires as tightly as possible.

    I always love the way skeptics manage to come up with ridiculous explanations for something that's happening. And have no problem with an explanation that's even more convoluted and questionable than the original assertion. Or hand wave it away as coincidence, which is to say have no plausible explanation either way. But, somehow because they're "skeptics" somehow the fact that their explanation is even more ludicrous it's somehow better.

    BTW, the human nervous system has a crap load of juice. The brain itself is capable of going through 75w worth of electricity if every neuron fires at the same time. Granted that never happens, the closest you get is a seizure, but there's still a fair amount of juice in the body at any given time.

  17. Re:Poor statistics on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1

    Spoken like somebody who doesn't understand the technology. That write cycle cap isn't so much a cap as a reflection of how many times you can use specific sectors. SSDs have hardware that reduces the likelihood of the same sectors being used continually. However, if you've got data stored on the disk, then those areas of the disk aren't available for wear leveling. So, the wear gets concentrated further. And thanks to the fact that SSDs are tiny compared with HDDs, you need to leave a much larger portion of the disk free to allow the wear leveling to work.

    Consequently, you can have some of the drive no longer usable before the whole disk goes south.

  18. Re:Poor statistics on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1

    And if you have the code stored in an external repository, don't mind the small size and don't mind buying new drives regularly, then an SSD is just fine. For those of us that aren't rich or don't want to have several HDD, it's just not a reasonable solution.

    Also the Linux Kernel is only about 30mb or so, I think it's under 100mb is you compile absolutely everything in. Compiling an entire OS is substantially larger in terms of final binary size and source code size.

  19. Re:Poor statistics on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1

    Where did I suggest that there aren't other things that use up a lot of write cycles?

    What's more, those are applications that SSDs are not well suited. SSDs are fast, but HDD still have more durability in terms of write cycles.

  20. Re:Why? on Cisco Can't Shield Customers From Patent Suits, Court Rules · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because Cisco has patents and a fleet of IP attorneys. In other words, the patent holders are looking to sue people that can't fight back.

  21. Re:I don't understand on Cisco Can't Shield Customers From Patent Suits, Court Rules · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem here is that the IP owners get to sue people with no knowledge or patents to fight back with. If Cisco gets sued, they have their own patents that they can use to fight back with. But, when a customer gets sued, they have to either settle, invalidate the patents or face losing the case.

    This seems like bullshit to me as Cisco would be the ones actually infringing on the patents, assuming they are infringing, rather than the companies that bought Cisco equipment.

  22. You don't think that can be solved? There may need to be a revision to the MUTCD to accommodate that, but it's not that tough. Just put traffic cones out to indicate the lanes as is. And I'm sure there's a way of updating the maps about where the exits have moved.

    In most cases though, the only reason for a human to take over is if the AI has conked out and the car is still moving. Chances are good that these cars will be programmed in such a way that unless they're deactivated, they'll just come to a stop and the rest of traffic will route around the disabled vehicle.

    Also, if you live some place where main street has been under construction like that for years, chances are that you're in a small town. The simple fix to that would be for the city engineers to plan things with driverless cars in mind.

  23. Re:Hard drives warranty on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1

    I've found that with HDDs it makes more sense to get the cheapest one that fits the need I have as I can and just go in for a proper UPS. I don't think I've had a single HDD fail to make it at least 5 years since I started that policy. Google some years back was looking into the reliability rates on HDDs and their basic conclusion was that there isn't any meaningful difference in terms of the expected lifespan of a HDD.

    That was some years back, it would be interesting to see if that's still the case with regular HDD. But, with backup services so cheap, I'm not as worried about the occasional HDD failure as I used to be. Especially now that I regularly check for bit rot and can restore anything that goes bad.

  24. Re:But the disc can store much more on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1

    If you've properly backed up the data that's a moot point. And I can't recall ever having had a HDD die so suddenly that I couldn't make one last image before it bit the dust. Whereas I have regularly had SSD of various types die over the years in such a way that none of the data could be recovered.

    Also keep in mind that those 5% of HDD that failed typically failed in a way that you could still access the last data that was on there. Even if you had to have a specialist remove the platter and read it. A SSD that goes bad means that damn near everything is lost due to the wear leveling that's built in.

    I'm sure it's possible to have a severe head crash or somehow shatter the platter resulting in a disk that goes bad instantly, but I've never seen it happen and I don't think I've even met somebody that's had it happen to them or known anybody that's had that happen.

  25. Re:Poor statistics on SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% · · Score: 1, Informative

    The other problem is the write cycle limit on the SSDs, that may or may not be an issue depending upon how you use your computer. But, for those of us that regularly recompile the OS and kernel, an SSD isn't going to stand up to that for very long.

    Oh, and SSDs are fast, but they're still tiny. I had to replace a HDD recently and I was able to get a 1TB disk for $75 including shipping, and it's a fairly fast disk as well. I could never have afforded that much capacity with SSDs.