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User: malkavian

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  1. Re:So basically... on Smarter Thread Scheduling Improves AMD Bulldozer Performance · · Score: 1

    Did processor design a LONG time ago (forgotten most of it).
    You can get benefits by having a compiler that makes most use of it, and schedulers that know how to eke out the last ergs.
    If you put a radically different design out there that a base OS wasn't designed to handle, then it's no surprise that things don't quite work out..
    It's easy enough to tweak the software to get the gains (as long as you have enough leverage with the OS vendor, or can make the patch yourself); why allow things to stagnate, and force optimisation of a legacy system when you can start doing things for the future?

  2. Re:And who's gonna pay for that? on EU Debates Installing a Black Box On Your Computer · · Score: 1

    Oh, I'd love to see that. A server that has bandwidth to cope with a duplicate of all the EU traffic.
    I can see a big spike in the tax bills...

  3. Re:That's what WIPO want on UN Bigwig: The Web Should Have Been Patented and Licensed · · Score: 2

    Ok, so all those companies that provide a product for free are going down the pan? High grade support is where the money seems to be for a lot of things.
    Sure, some things help to have the IP paid for, but some find other avenues. Knowing the price of everything doesn't necessarily imply you understand the value of anything.

  4. Be open.. on Ask Slashdot: Does Being 'Loyal' Pay As a Developer? · · Score: 1

    Talk to your current employers, let them know the score.
    If you're happy where you are, then you may just be taking a leap to somewhere more stifling (larger companies have a different feel to startups when you work there). That's an 'if' though, it may work better for you.
    If they get shirty about the info, then you can always leave to the new job (no risk to you). If they really value you (and can afford it), maybe they'll match or exceed the new offer you have.
    That's the thing with conversations, you rarely know how they'll end before you start them. You'll learn a lot by talking to your current employers, that'll direct your actions once you know the results.

  5. Re:There were supposed to be 61... on HADOPI To Disconnect 60 People In France · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Informative Post over Anonymous Coward?

  6. Re:Welcome to Canada? on NY Senators Want To Make Free Speech A Privilege · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suspect you weren't listening. It was pretty clear to me.
    In a free society, you are free to do things. However, you are also responsible for the things you do (with freedom comes responsibility). Your implied concept that freedom must mean the abrogation of responsibility, then you're building the foundations of a lunatic asylum. There are already a whole slew of things that you're free to say, but reap the downside of (slander etc.).
    I suspect the intention of "free speech" was to prevent the government repressing the people, not being able to speak out against tyranny and being forced to be mere silent pawns of the state (you know, kind of how the peasantry of England was at the time of the war of independence).
    Instead, you now have abusive petty tyrants in the thousands who believe they have the absolute right to bully, demean and abuse people by way of words and expressions, and somehow, it's magically OK to do this because they're guaranteed freedom of speech, supposedly with no repercussion or consequence to their actions? This is definitely not the utopia imagined; more of a dystopia that wasn't even imagined back then. Actions have consequences.
    The idea of freedom is you get to choose the consequences, good or bad. Same as you get the choice about whether to pick a potato from the fire with a toasting fork, or use your bare hand.
    If people listen to the words, that's up to them. It gives you no real idea of their thoughts on it. As soon as they act on it, you know, and that's when you punish the illegal. However, incitement to crimes doesn't let you walk away free, as far as I believe.. Same as you'd be unhappy if someone kept threatening (in a serious way) to kill you, and asking people around to rough you up. Would you be happy that he was perfectly free to pursue this activity as 'just words' and fight for their freedom to say them? Or would you turn round and say "This guy's nuts, this is just plain dangerous and insane" and request that the cops do something?
    Know what I'd do.. Request that this loon reap the consequences of their actions (speech is an action).

  7. Re:Welcome to Canada? on NY Senators Want To Make Free Speech A Privilege · · Score: 1

    "There mere expression of an idea cannot hurt anyone"
    Interesting theory. It does fly in the face of psychology, but hey.. Sometimes, expressions of ideas are the most harmful things around.. And they leave scars you don't get to see, which makes them really convenient if you want to hurt someone and get off free..

  8. Re:I don't think that'll work. on Should Science Be King In Politics? · · Score: 1

    Interesting. Emotion doesn't make internal combustion engines run, or the world turn on its axis. Or keep the bits running through the network, keep logistics chains running or anything else that allows a civilisation of the nature of the world today to keep running.
    Of course, you'd be right if everyone was happy to return to a small, hunter gatherer tribal society (perhaps even an early agricultural level).
    Emotion makes you feel good though, which is what makes the subjective world for you. Objectively, logic makes the world go round.

  9. Wow... on Pavegen To Tap Pedestrians For Power In the UK · · Score: 1

    And that's not to the idea of the tiles, which seems to me to be great and laudable, it's a "wow" to the nit-picky posts that seem to have proliferated about "oh, they're stealing my energy from walking, who will pay for the extra effort" and such like..
    Seriously people! The body is designed to absorb shock from walking (all that cartilage in the joints and such like). Hey, to improve on that, shoes were designed to help absorb impact, and let the joints last even longer. Anyone ever thought of asking Nike etc. to pay your food bills for the extra energy that's lost from the soles of their trainers/sneakers?
    5mm is a fair old deflection, but I very much doubt that this is a plan 'free fall' level; I'm anticipating quite a 'spongy' feel to it. Like treading on moss, or loosely compacted earth.
    Rather than slate, or go all evangelical about it, I'm marking it firmly in the "very interesting tech" drawer, and I'll be making a point of visiting that mall to try out out for myself, then make my mind up..

  10. Re:Laws of Thermodynamics... on Pavegen To Tap Pedestrians For Power In the UK · · Score: 1

    If you're disabled and in a wheelchair, as long as the ramp is sane (it needs to be) there's no reason why you're any different to anyone else. Got a few friends who are wheelchair bound, and some of them are a damn sight fitter than I am!
    They're not invalids. They just have a disability, and these wouldn't bother them at all.

  11. The fundamentals under a prosperous civilization on Healthcare Law Appealed To Supreme Court · · Score: 2

    Are health and justice.
    Without a method of law and justice, there's anarchy. And a civilization can't exist in an anarchy (well, not a big one anyway, and certainly not a world player).
    Hand in hand with that is health. When you're sick, you're returned to work, or the ability to go and get the next job.
    Without both of those, life would be hard. That's what prompted the NHS in the UK years ago, and much as though it's a popular whipping boy sometimes, and a big money sink, we do have a well functioning medical body that will fix most things.
    If you want it faster, by all means, take up private insurance as well (hell, when things go wrong at the private hospitals, they pack the patients back to the NHS where they know it'll be fixed).
    If you really don't think the state should be involved in the general wellbeing of the people, then how do you feel about a completely privately owned police force and court system. You think you get it rough now with the MPAA and RIAA lobbying to get through a heavily one sided deal? It would be orders of magnitude worse under a completely private, for profit, arrangement.
    Personally, I rate my health as highly as I rate a chance at getting a bit of justice (the legal system doesn't always give you the answer you want, same as a hospital won't always give you good news, but at least everyone should have a shot at getting some, without having to reach for a credit card).
    That's part of what I call freedom. If the world falls apart around you, at least you have your health 'eh? What, you can't afford the medication, and you have to put yourself in someone's debt to be able to do so? Hmmmm...
    Healthcare should be a function of government, with commerce adding the nice bits on top.. Faster, newer, hopefully better, but definitely more expensive. The real grunt work of keeping the masses healthy should be simple and cheap.. Not necessarily profitable.

  12. Re:Don't get rid of the loopholes - license them! on Tax Loopholes No Longer Patentable · · Score: 1

    No, it doesn't put them out of a job. And where it does, the money stays in companies that are trying to innovate. For each lawyer that leaves employment, you'll probably have 10 more in productive companies that don't lose their job as their company doesn't get bogged down in a legal mire over spurious claims.
    If some part of the system is broken (and it is), fix it. This may be the first of the cracks in the "Business Process" patent crap tht starts the path to getting the ridiculously inappropriate software patents fixed.

  13. Re:Cause and effect on Don't Study the Video Game, Study the Gamer · · Score: 1

    They didn't say "guns turn you into bank robbers".
    I seem to remember a chap discovering an old firearm in public, took it to a police station to turn it in, and was promptly arrested for possession of a firearm (illegal in the UK).
    So, yes, possession of a firearm can turn you into a criminal.

  14. Re:Time to go for a class action suit. on New Sony PSN ToS: Class Action Waiver Included · · Score: 1

    I know a few good judges. A few crap ones too, but the good guys are out there.

  15. The intrepid young explorerers.. on Wild Parrots Learning To Talk From Escaped Pet Birds · · Score: 1

    Will now be greeted with the endless chants of "Get off my lawn!".

  16. Re:Really? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    Maybe. But maybe 12 weeks (likely result with behaviour) in a hard environment where some seriously unpleasant people take a serious dislike to that kind of behaviour may make a more lasting impression on someone who's already shown that they don't give a rat's ass about anyone else's feelings.

  17. Re:Really? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    That should be put on the Terms of Service of every ISP. Excellently put!

  18. Re:Solving this problem on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    You do have interesting posts.. But one thing you seem to be doing is chasing a "letter of the law" where there are cases that the "spirit of the law" is also under consideration.
    What's being taken into account is the likelihood of causing harm and suffering. Which is an objective viewing and debate about a subjective matter.
    What the judgement will have taken into account is that the likelihood of the comments/videos causing harm and undue suffering were large (bordering on certain). That the intent was of a malicious nature (they were put there to cause harm and suffering; it's what trolls do; evoke a response, primarily negative).

    Must say that you've successfully diverted the question of whether the chap maliciously caused harm and suffering (which he happily admitted to, which caused him to be locked up) and started asking whether it's now ok because he's not caused anything to be 'damaged or irretrievably broken'.
    Very nice straw man.

  19. Re:Solving this problem on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure how I'd feel about it as I don't think I can see into alternate realities, but, in my opinion, I don't think I'd be happy.

    Yes, you can see into 'alternate', or rather 'potential' realities. You do it every day as part of a process called 'planning'. Empathising, to some extent, is part of most humans. There's no magic, just the ability to predict likely outcomes, and base it on previously observed behaviour.
    I suspect you're more than bright enough to extrapolate from existing life experience and make a fair (if not 100% precise) stab at working out your reactions. Most of the time, mine are perfectly civil and often quite reserved. If someone hounds me, then yes, I can revert to more primitive behaviour; I have limits.

    I call that physically attacking someone. But I suppose it's both (as well as something I think should be illegal).

    Physically attacking someone is illegal. As is harrassment. Harrassment is illegal as it is an emotional form of that physical response (a direct attack, which this was). Same as 'Happy Slapping' is an illegal physical attack, despite people saying 'Hey, it was just a joke'. It isn't.

    You call it a utopia and then proceed to call it a place where the environment could be "nasty"? Interesting.

    I was being sarcastic, which you picked up on (I'm pretty sure you did anyway, you don't strike me an being an unperceptive person)

  20. Re:This should not be a crime on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    In the US, many say they just have the right to shoot people who do that, and let God sort it out.

  21. Re:A LITTLE too harsh? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    I think 4 months in jail is a jolly little jape they've played on him. Can they get applause for that too? Or is it only a problem because you don't find it funny?
    Harrassment is not a joke. It's actually a crime. For very good reasons (psychological torture). He made people suffer to a very large extent at a time when they're not psychologically capable of having strong defences.
    The punishment is fitting, now he has to accept the jokes being played on him behind bars (he'll be out in a month of so with good behaviour, hopefully suitably chastened).

  22. Re:Really? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 2

    Except this isn't an overreaction. He got off pretty lightly for harassment, possibly stalking and a whole boat load of antisocial activity that would have earned him the time, AND a thorough kicking if he'd done it in person.
    Last I checked, this was nothing to do with Conservative/Labour/Lib-Dem, and everything to do with a court of law.

  23. Re:Really? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    A voice of sanity! Thank you.

  24. Re:Morally wrong vs Criminally wrong? on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    No, he'd have done time (longer) for doing it outside the net. And received the due kicking as well.

  25. Re:trolling vs free speech on UK Man Jailed For Being a Jerk On the Internet · · Score: 1

    The punishement is more lenient than it would have been without (if he'd been physically present, I suspect a thorough beating would have been administered, plus jail time for antisocial behaviour, vandalism of the memorial etc.).
    You need to learn less about the internet, and more about society. Having a memorial dedicated to the life of someone you love is not an invitation to be trolled. It's an invitation to help alleviate suffering. You shouldn't need a moderator (same as if you leave your house door open to look under the hood of the car, it's not an invitation for everyone to be free to run in and burgle your house). There has to be a working social contract for a society to work.

    Amendment to your car analogy: Pedestrians have the right of way. I have the right to mow them down where I find them because I'm driving a car so it doesn't hurt me.

    These guys in question aren't on a 6 lane road in heavy traffic. They're the equivalent of a sleepy back road, on the edge of church ground coming to pay their respects to the departed. And you choose to say it's their fault when a car driver comes and mows them down for kicks for having the temerity to be out in the open.