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User: tendrousbeastie

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  1. Re:Cheating? on Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results · · Score: 1

    Can anyone define what 'better' is in this context, in order to clarify the discussion?

  2. Re:Never Understood on Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results · · Score: 1

    I agree with this. I know that I have been trained to search by Google, and I can generally anticipate what keywords will get what I want, which will get a load on nonsense, which will get pop-culture cruft, etc.

    It could be in part that Bing is trying to game the input/output of Google's result to imitate this intuitive familiarity, rather than just the results themselves.

  3. Re:Cheating? on Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It depends on the purpose of the practice.

    The purpose of an exam is to test the student's knowledge and abilities, so using someone else's answer clearly damages this.

    The purpose of an admin password is to prevent unauthorised access, so sneaking a look over the admin's shoulder violates this purpose.

    The purpose of a search engine is to provide search results that match the user's desire for information. What Bing are doing is compatible with this purpose.

    That doesn't mean its right, I'm just pointing out a couple of false analogies.

  4. Re:Backwards? on Atomic Disguise Makes Helium Look Like Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    They took the Helium atom and replaced one electron with a muon. The clever part is that they managed to get the muon in an orbital shell so low that it effectively cancelled out the positive charge of one of the protons on the nucleus. So it results in an atom with a nucleus of 4 nucleons and one muon (in low orbit) with +1 charge and one electron (in normal orbit) with -1 charge.

    Chemically (i.e. under electroweak theory) this behaves like hydrogen (+1 charge nucleus and a -1 charge electron shell)

    I don't understand how they can get the muon to a lower orbit than the electron? I guess if e=hf then a heavy muon must have a higher frequency than an (light) electron, and so a shorter wavelength, so a smaller atomic orbit (the orbit being the standing Schrodinger wave)

  5. Re:Thank God.... on Cybercriminals Shifting Focus To Non-Windows OSes · · Score: 1

    It isn't an average with only 1 sample.

  6. Re:Unobservable on String Theory Tested, Fails Black Hole Predictions · · Score: 1

    Why?

  7. Re:somebody should kill the bastard on A Third of World's Spam From One Russian Man · · Score: 1

    Yes, they'd change their tactics under such circumstances. But not necessarily for the better.

    If such things happened how do you think law enforcement and government would change their policy on p2p and the internet in general?

  8. Re:Google dumped Apple into 3rd place on Devs Grapple With 100+ Versions of Android · · Score: 1

    It wouldn't show up in the financials, as MozeeToby clearly explained. It benefits Google:

    a) Every Andriod enabled device defaults to using Google services, which means more ad impressions and more user data coming to Google (which is where they make their money),

    b) Every internet user/instance in general is a benefit to Google as people overwhelmingly use Google as a matter of course when online.

    Basically, if you are a Mac perosn chances are you're buying an iPhone. But most people who by an Andriod phone are going to be linking it to a gMail account and Google therefore gets from this just the same benefit it gets from a gMail user on a desktop.

  9. Re:How does on Obama Wants Allies To Go After WikiLeaks · · Score: 1

    By this logic, the important variable is the ratio between dollars/pounds of taxes paid and dollars/pounds of state services consumed.

    If person A earns £1million and pays £100k of that in taxes and person B earns £50k and pays £5k of that in taxes (i.e. both pay a 10% flat tax), and person A consumes 20 times as much state resource as person B (which I doubt to be honest, but what do I know) then each has paid his way.

    (obviously this is not a realistic model, but I am just trying to demonstrate that so long as the extra taxes paid / the each resources consumed = approx. 1 then all seems fair)

  10. Re:Language barrier on DRM-Free Game Suffers 90% Piracy, Offers Amnesty · · Score: 1

    And generally in less developed countries, those who speak English to a good level earn a higher wage than those who don't.

    Is a Bangladeshi weaver or a Thai farmer on subsistence wages likely to be downloading an English only computer game?

    (I'm sure there are one or two, but I would wager it is statistically insignificant)

  11. Re:Afty0r on Defeating Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle · · Score: 1

    You don't measure every day macro object to any more an uncertain degree than you do a lepton or quark. It is just that h is a very (very) small number, so you don't notice it.

    You can't measure the position and momentum of your own hand or body or car or planet to an arbitrary degree, it is just that on the macro scale the difference is so small you don't tend to notice.

  12. Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas on The Amiga Turns 25 · · Score: 1

    It is true, HAM was a special case, the A1000 was limited to very few colours. Plus HAM would tend to lead to fairly obvious artefacts on screen.

    Prior to the 1200/4000 (AGA) the Amiga was limit to either 16 or 32 colours per bitmap (sorry, I can't remember exactly which it was, but some fairly low 5 or 6 bit register). By this , only 16 (or 32, etc.) could be shown on screen at a time (the Amiga had some weird display hardware).

    The AGA chipset raised it to 256 colours on screen at once (from a 24 bit palette).

  13. Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas on The Amiga Turns 25 · · Score: 1

    How is your 200GB modern PC half consumed by a default install. What are you running? A Matrix simulator?

    A clean Win7 install for me, including updates and office (2007) will easily fit on a 20GB VM.

  14. Re:Or it could be because they would be bankrupt . on Microsoft Says No To Paying Bug Bounties · · Score: 1

    From what I can tell they have little reason to offer such a bounty:

    1) Most home users couldn't care less. They view MS's monthly updates as a hassle, not a benefit, and would be much happier if they didn't have to bother with updates at all.

    2) Most business purchasers are going to see an increase in security reporting as a disincentive to buy MS products. The people doing (or at least authorising) the purchases tend to be managers rather than IT pros, so more security issues = a worse deal in their mind.

    MS's objective is to sell more product, not to release a better product. A "bug bounty" does not benefit them in this respect.

  15. Re:Or it could be because they would be bankrupt . on Microsoft Says No To Paying Bug Bounties · · Score: 1

    I think that a bit of a sample bias is going to happen in the comments - few Linux users are going to post saying "Yes, I use Linux and I rarely if ever do sex with a girl"

  16. Re:Egos don't scale on The Scalability of Linus · · Score: 1

    I'm an average human, and I'm only 28.

    (Thus ends a not funny joke)

  17. Re:Egos don't scale on The Scalability of Linus · · Score: 1

    The petty pedant in me must point out that to the best of our knowledge the universe is in fact non-causal - Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle being what it is and all. Hard to work out the superposition state for "|if> + |when>" though

    (sorry to make such a spectacularly pointless post)

  18. Re:Egos don't scale on The Scalability of Linus · · Score: 1

    Well, while not an officially different set of languages, Scottish and Welsh speakers do have a somewhat different set of idioms and phrase (and basic words) than English speakers do.

    Perhaps the parent just didn't feel qualified to speak about dialects he was not intimate with?

  19. Re:No gedanken background on Quantum Physics For Everybody · · Score: 1

    That is by far the funniest joke that no-one will get that I have read all day.

  20. Re:It's not "trade" on A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars · · Score: 1

    "Copying is a right. Just one that is restricted by law.

    Copyright law is a misnomer, it would be more appropriate to call it copy restriction law."

    Indeed. It is a law that describes which parties have the right to produce and/or distribute copies of a given piece or implementation of information (or sell/license said right).

    "A right is something you can do without the hindrance or the requirement of assistance from another. Copying information available to you is such an act."

    Not really - a "Right" is generally defined in terms of its corresponding "Duty" on some one else. My right to life is contingent on everyone else's duty not to kill me (hence murder's illegality). My right to free speech is contingent on both the public's and my government's (the UK parliament and cabinet in my case) duty to not inhibit what I can say in situations that are fully within my domain (i.e. I am not free to subvert Radio4 to have a rant about my corner shop).

    Do these rights count as absolutes? No. In most countries the right to free speech is limited to some degree - shout "Fire" in a theatre and you will probably get arrest in Europe and the US for some form of civil disturbance. In Texas your right to life is proportional to your respect to you duty to not kill others.

    Rights are all to do with the requirements placed on other people. Copyright is simply the right to copy/use/implement a given piece of information, with a duty on everyone else not to do so (unless licensed or permitted).

    As an aside, the idea of a right is a very ill defined thing. I imagine Americans and Europeans have quite different ideas on what a right is - compare the US Bill of Right to the UN Declaration of Rights.

    "Copyright restriction is not a right of the creator, but an entitlement bestowed temporarily in exchange for publishing creative work. Once information has been handed to another, only physical force can stop that person from making copies."

    Well, copyright is temporary monopoly on the particular information created, the intended effect of which is to encourage other such creative developments. It is intended to facilitate an economic return on the creation of the information, so as to incentivise other such activity.

    Your statement is, I think, partially right. Upon receipt of copyrighted data, some people will refrain from making additional copies because they think it is wrong and some because they fear recrimination (fear of force) and some will copy it regardless for their own reasons.

    I would like a discussion to happen focussing on central theme of copyright - being a limited monopoly on a given piece of information whereby only the creator can distribute or permit distribution the purpose of which is to encourage creativity.

    I would like to propose the following questions for debate, as I rarely see a real debate about this:

    1) Is there a benefit to financially encouraging creativity in this way? Is the benefit economic (bigger entertainment industry), cultural, or something else entirely (or does it not exist at all?)?

    2) If someone would never have, or could not have, purchased the information legitimately then is it wrong (or how wrong is it?) to make a non-permitted copy?

    3) How much does the copyright law affect people's behaviour (per country, per demographic, per market, etc.).

  21. Re:"I'm just a guy trying to make a living." on A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars · · Score: 1

    In what way is the music industry involved in this story?

    This bloke is trying to sell his sheet music from a website for $4 a time direct to music performers. That the product he is selling is pure information and can therefore be duplicated at no/negligible cost has resulted in a subset of people taking the product without payment, thus leaving him financially disadvantaged and therefore disincentivised from future musical composition (although I suspect this bloke is not going to change careers over this).

    We don't see a similar argument in other information based industries - fashion design for example it seems to be a shameful thing to wear copies.

    I agree that the music industry in its current form is a parasite sitting between musician and audience, serving no more purpose than a mediaeval guild, but I really don't see how that's the issue here.

  22. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I on Say No To a Government Internet "Kill Switch" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm English so I'm not so up with the Net Neutrality debate, but its always struck me that it rules out some benefits that people might want. If it is just that "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination" then am I (were I a US resident) not allowed to purchase some kind of premium service that prioritises comms between my home and my office, or between two of my offices?

  23. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I on Say No To a Government Internet "Kill Switch" · · Score: 1

    Which required the Supreme Court to arbitrate the results for over 200 years. While I might agree with it, it is clearly not the most efficiently written piece of law (e.g. 2nd Amendment)

  24. Re:10^9 is not a billion on Petaflops? DARPA Seeks Quintillion-Flop Computers · · Score: 1

    Sorry, you are right, of course. I seem to be in "crap argument mode". It makes intuitive sense to me, and seems simpler when working with numbers substantially over a 10 to the 6, but you are correct that it is not inherently consistent.

    I agree it would make much more sense if a million = 1000.

  25. Re:10^9 is not a billion on Petaflops? DARPA Seeks Quintillion-Flop Computers · · Score: 1

    The say what I want I shall - it makes much more sense to delimit at 3 zeros, as the example did.

    So a million is 1,000,000

    A billion is 1,000,000,000

    A trillion is 1,000,000,000,000

    And so on...

    So everything is multiples of a million using greek prefixes (tri, quad, quint, etc.) A million billions equalling a trillian has no logic to it.