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User: Tablizer

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  1. Re:Why not incremental? on Amazon Is Banning People For Making Too Many Returns (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    I agree, with caveats. There are 4 factors (at least) to consider: time period, monetary value of returned items, quantity of returned items, and total value of all customer purchases (within time-frame).

    If you make the computations too complicated, customers will get upset and/or confused, which wastes clerk-time for explanations. Whatever formula is used, it has to be relatively simple to convey.

  2. Re:Obvious conclusion: on The Whole World is Now a Computer, Says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    He isn't even half the man that Gates was during his prime.

    In what sense? Strategic brilliance? Evil? I'm not necessarily claiming he is as strategically smart as Gates, just a similar personality. (MS is doing fairly well financially, I'd note.)

    For example, my personality is fairly similar to Leonardo da Vinci's, but I don't claim to be nearly as brilliant nor as creative. I formulate or encodify lots of different ideas, but procrastinate on the implementation and jump around between them, just like he did. (For example, table-oriented programming, table-oriented AI, dynamic relational, MASP {a map-oriented take on LISP}, merging file-system/database/cms into one system using dynamic relational, the "Assume Balance" accounting model as an alternative to double-entry model {which is bad factoring}, etc.) I also dabble in art and music, including auto-composing. Perhaps you can compare me to Leonardo with lead poisoning and/or football injuries. Who knows, maybe one day the ideas will catch on when the world realizes my brilliance. (Hey, stop coughing so loud.)

  3. Why not incremental? on Amazon Is Banning People For Making Too Many Returns (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    Rather than make it all or nothing, what about ramping up a "re-stock fee" based on total quantity and/or value of returned items in the last N months? The more returns, the higher the fee.

  4. Hot Java on Creeping Lava Now Threatens Major Hawaiian Power Plant (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    I misread it as "creeping Java", and thought it was about a software boondoggle for power plant infrastructure control.

    Here's a fun conspiracy: the PHB's are trying to hide their software flub but triggering a volcano to cover it up: literally and figuratively. Kind of a HI version of Office Space.

  5. Attempt #3 [Re: Won't matter] on Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of Consumer Reports Recommendation (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I own a Tesla and I didn't buy it to be cool or to try to be cool. I bought it because the car is cool.

    Attempt #3: "Most Tesla buyers do not buy them for their practicality, but instead for some form of "coolness", as perceived by themselves and/or those who see them with the car."

    Attempt #4: "Most Tesla buyers do not buy them for their practicality, but instead for real or perceived coolness, social cred, and/or a fashion statement."

  6. Re:All politians have no respect for security on Trump Ignores 'Inconvenient' Security Rules To Keep Tweeting On His iPhone, Says Report (politico.com) · · Score: 1

    I'd like to send the news networks to your granny.

  7. Re:I thought the network on The Whole World is Now a Computer, Says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (zdnet.com) · · Score: 2

    And here I thought the network is the computer

    It's walruses all the way down. I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together. Goo goo g'joob.

  8. Re:Obvious conclusion: on The Whole World is Now a Computer, Says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (zdnet.com) · · Score: 2

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a fucking idiot.

    I find him a lot like Bill Gates, for good or bad.

  9. The Betamax/VHS battle could have gone either way: people still debate endlessly which is "better" and they fought almost neck and neck for a while. The "length problem" of early Betamax was quickly solved. Anyhow, Sony still made big profits selling VHS VCR's.

  10. Re:Freedom to Suffer [Re:That only applies if the on Supreme Court Upholds Workplace Arbitration Contracts Barring Class Actions (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Can I double-friend you?

    As long as it doesn't hurt ;-)

  11. Re:All politians have no respect for security on Trump Ignores 'Inconvenient' Security Rules To Keep Tweeting On His iPhone, Says Report (politico.com) · · Score: 1

    That "child rape" story is an example of "news" that is technically correct, but highly misleading, focusing on a specific word or label instead of actual actions (successful prosecution). A lot of that floating around. It's not so much "fake news", but rather "spin news". You don't have to lie to get the same effect as lying.

  12. Re:All politians have no respect for security on Trump Ignores 'Inconvenient' Security Rules To Keep Tweeting On His iPhone, Says Report (politico.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm a Finn so I have no direct stake in this, but following the Trump presidency from the outside has been like watching a trainwreck in slow-motion.

    So, same as it looks on the inside. Fortunately he hasn't been competent enough to do any real damage (so far, knock on wood), and most world leaders take him with a Yuuuuge grain of salt.

    His Yosemite-Sam-like supporters think he's kicking ass and taking names to "clean things up", but instead he's kicking names and taking ass. They're probably the same people who think WWE (staged wrestling) is real.

    He is an entertainer above all, and and if one views him as such, they worry less. Get the popcorn and enjoy The Show.

  13. Re:All politians have no respect for security on Trump Ignores 'Inconvenient' Security Rules To Keep Tweeting On His iPhone, Says Report (politico.com) · · Score: 1

    Let's make a deal: lock both T and H up.

  14. Re:Give Consumers The Option to Choose... on Google and Microsoft Disclose New CPU Flaw, and the Fix Can Slow Machines Down (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Not everyone is a gamer, video editor, etc.

    But who doesn't re-edit their porn to match their own stroke rate?

  15. Or for meme's sake! on Did Octopuses Come From Outer Space? · · Score: 1

    They came from Yanni, I mean Laurel.

  16. Attempt #2 [Re: Won't matter] on Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of Consumer Reports Recommendation (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    Since the original went over like a lead mod point, let me rephrase it: "Most people buy Tesla's to try to be cool, not to be practical."

  17. Won't matter on Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of Consumer Reports Recommendation (cnbc.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most people buy Tesla's to be cool, not to be practical.

  18. They were delicious.

    Indeed! Here's to A1 Steak Sauce!

  19. The bigger picture is that many Chinese workers are de-facto slaves. They don't have much freedom of political speech and so can't do much about long hard hours. The Chinese gov't will argue (externally) that overall conditions for everybody has improved to deflect such criticism. But other countries grew economically without taking away freedom of political speech.

    We should tariff countries that don't have workers' rights comparable to our own. However, other countries may use the same justification to tariff us, being many have better worker protection laws than USA. Whether that's a "bad thing" is long debate.

  20. Cheap/small harddrives didn't solve the problem of how music gets into the device. Sure, we have Internet music stores/services now, but bandwidth was expensive back then, and only a small percent of consumers were connected to dialup services of ANY kind. Nobody could predict how, when, or if it would get cheap enough. Compression algorithms of the time were proprietary and nobody could predict who would sue who and how much. (There was a legal kerfuffle over the MP3 format for a while, but vendors threatening to go OSS eventually damped that.)

    If they hadn't choked the life out of it from the beginning with their typically absurd licensing schemes...

    The word "typically" gives it away: doing such "typically" worked for them before. If X overall works, you typically keep doing X. Perfectly rational behavior. Sure, someday X might stop working, but that's life in the modern world. Hindsight is a wonderful crystal ball; but they weren't invented yet.

  21. Freedom to Suffer [Re:That only applies if the on Supreme Court Upholds Workplace Arbitration Contracts Barring Class Actions (nytimes.com) · · Score: 2

    Technically it's not "forced arbitration" because one is not forced to sign the employment contract in a direct sense. However, during economic slumps or individual hard times, an individual doesn't have much practical choice: they are compelled to take any job they are offered, include those with arbitration clauses. A desperate person has no practical freedom of choice, and thus it's lopsided bargaining not much different than what the mob offers small shopkeepers: "an offer you can't refuse."

  22. Re:"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON" on China Launches Satellite To Explore Dark Side of Moon (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    "Dark"...seriously?? Even the translation of China's press release correctly refers to it as the FAR side of the moon

    It was translated in the dark.

  23. Why do you call MiniDisc a "boondoggle"? It was decent idea to try at the time, in my opinion. You gotta try new things in the market to stay competitive. Some will secede and some will fail, and hopefully average out for the better.

    True, they could have managed it better, such as trying to increase market share over profits by having more lower-end player options. Recording labels would then offer more choice in the format. Limited content choice was a problem. Perhaps they would have eventually got a clue, but iPod and MP3 players then came along and cleaned their clock. Again, sometimes you lose such that you have to keep a lot of irons in the fire.

    Their general problem is that China squeezed their profits on the hardware side, and they were slow to catch up on the software/UI side when products grew more digital. The profit margins shifted toward software and away from hardware. Being a hardware company, it is hard to switch overnight. Are you going to turn thousands of hardware engineers into software engineers? Fire them and start over? That would be a morale kicker, and hardware quality would suffer even more. Change put them into a tough spot.

    Similarly, the gasoline engine car giants will probably have some ugly battles with electric-oriented co's, and a giant or two may fall.

  24. not news on AI Can't Reason Why (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    That current AI lacks "common sense" is not news. Something like the Cyc rule base may have to be integrated with neural nets to get something approaching common sense. Some kind of physics and social interaction simulator may also be needed so that a bot can explain its assumptions step by step and give examples.

  25. Re:Not been tested at all on NASA's Atomic Fridge Will Make the ISS the Coldest Known Place in the Universe (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    They are far far more similar than space-freeze. Your logic is bad, admit it. ...uh, why the fuck am I arguing about this?