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User: Howitzer86

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Comments · 865

  1. Re:Lame duck on Silicon Valley Is Filling Up With Ex-Obama Staffers · · Score: 1

    Yeah if you're a powder keg.

  2. Re:Lame duck on Silicon Valley Is Filling Up With Ex-Obama Staffers · · Score: 1

    We've never caught Obama calling for riots and disruption like we have with those two. The harshest word he's ever had for any white person is a cop who behaved "stupidly" for arresting a black professor for looking suspicious on his own property.

  3. Re:Because Brawndo's got electrolytes. on High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet Can Lead To Cognitive Decline · · Score: 1

    Other people are more threatening to our survival than any animal on the planet.

    If you think about it, it doesn't take a lot of brain power to hunt a woolly mammoth. Perhaps there was a minimum requirement to hunt the way we did. But maybe our current situation is the result of a runaway chain reaction of bigger and bigger brains so that we may better compete with ourselves rather than other animals.

    The "whole dumb people reproducing more" meme may be true in some places, but in others, I bet that dumb people don't live very long. And by dumb I don't mean uneducated, I mean unintelligent. Someone with a lot of street smarts is intelligent, they just learned different things, and those things were needed for their survival. Someone unintelligent in an unstable or failing society is probably going to end up dead at a young age. While the smart ones live to become village elders or guerrilla leaders or whatever, but most importantly - mothers and fathers.

    That said, both of our comments are off-topic.

  4. The industry is playing an progressively larger roll already. Perhaps it's too early to say for sure, but I think what we may see next are other industries: construction, healthcare, agriculture, entertainment, etc, competing with each other in the educational dominance of American children from the cradle on up.

    If you are taught from preschool to 12th grade be a nurse, and your exposure to alternatives are reduced, you'll probably become a nurse. What we're seeing now is just one industry seeking to dominate education in that way. The result - if held consistent over a generation - may well be a glut of computer programmers. The outcome of that is obvious, but what may also occur is a call to attention from the other industries, who suddenly feel left behind and forced to pay more for their dwindling supply of talent.

  5. Re:If a software dev make $250-500k a year... on WA Gov. Sides With Microsoft: Philanthropy-Funded K-12 CS Education Now the Law · · Score: 1

    Assuming you're talking about an average industry-wide income - I think you can get to that by having a shortage of talented applicants thereby forcing the industry to compete for them.

    If there's a glut of talent, the scramble for the best of that is less intense, and the talent overall is made cheaper.

  6. Re:they ought to kill mail too on Yahoo Killing Maps, Pipes & More · · Score: 1

    YOUR account is full of spam.

    Mine is not. Remember you can unsubscribe and block emails.

  7. Re:And what about the infrastructure issues? on Amtrak Installing Cameras To Watch Train Engineers · · Score: 1

    Etinin, you are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.

  8. Re:Gates and Zuckerbergs Vision for America on Gates, Zuckerberg Promising Same Jobs To US Kids and Foreign H-1B Workers? · · Score: 1

    I might be okay with this if not for the constant propaganda used to snare kids into this vicious cycle for their benefit. I mean, I guess eventually word will get around that these jobs won't pay well... after hundreds of thousands of people find out the hard way. The AC poster here has a good point I think. Computers aren't the end-all-be-all of everything. There's jobs people don't talk about or know about, that pay well and have decent hours and are sorely under-serviced.

  9. Re: Do not on Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid · · Score: 1

    In modern history, we're known to do things with uranium and lead that we shouldn't have. Today we continue to muck about with chemicals in things with unpredictable results on our fertility and fetal development. So I say that sort of thing should not only be possible, but remains a contributing factor to our potential decline.

  10. Re: Do not on Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid · · Score: 1

    They don't just do that for ancient peoples. I've heard theories about modern technology coming from aliens. The great minds from 70 years ago to today that developed the computer technology that almost everyone on Slashdot benefits from? Ada Lovelace? Alan Turing? The geniuses at Bell Labs? Fairchild?

    Nope. Aliens.

    If one of us make something amazing, you can count on some group saying aliens did it, and it'll only take a generation or two.

  11. Re:The new analog hole. on Microsoft, Chip Makers Working On Hardware DRM For Windows 10 PCs · · Score: 1

    Hardware DRM 2.0 Proposal: Videos only playable within intense the EM field of a Neutron bomb.

  12. Re:privacy :{ on Microsoft Announces Device Guard For Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Nope.

  13. Re: privacy :{ on Microsoft Announces Device Guard For Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Tell that to Autodesk's Navisworks division. I'm just a guy making a plugin.

  14. Re:privacy :{ on Microsoft Announces Device Guard For Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    That was the first thing I did. It didn't work.

  15. Re:privacy :{ on Microsoft Announces Device Guard For Windows 10 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had to turn off UAC in Windows 8 to compile and automatically copy my plugin project to its proper directory because that directory is under Programs Files. This was necessary because I had set the host program to start immediately afterwards in order to debug my plugin as it ran. This worked, but in doing so, I lost access to my Windows 8 apps. I only use a few, but it was annoying enough that I eventually moved the project to a Windows 7 machine (and you don't have to turn UAC off completely, it's just as far as Windows 8 is concerned, if that one registry entry concerning protected directories is toggled off the whole thing is compromised).

    So, while any rebuttals here to the effect that "undoubtedly you can turn this off" are probably accurate, I wouldn't be surprised if there were things like this built into the system to encourage the user to keep it on. "Want to develop software on your PC? Well, either apply for a personal certificate or stop using Metro apps." It won't really stop developers, but it could shut down new user interest outside of closed markets.

  16. Re:We want you to buy a new car every 3 years on Automakers To Gearheads: Stop Repairing Cars · · Score: 1

    The first manufacturer to offer a 40k-mile car should be the first to go bankrupt.

  17. Re:Hope your hardware is this-year modern on Google Sunsetting Old Version of Google Maps · · Score: 1

    Nothing I have is that new, and I haven't had the trouble a lot of people here are reporting. But I do have glitches when switching viewing modes, and I find it annoying that they keep moving around that street view icon. It was in the top right for the longest time and I keep looking their first. But back to the glitches, lately what it'll do is not completely pop in the sat view textures, and during that I'll move around and it won't show the correct anything... all this in the Chrome browser. It's frustrating when it happens, and it only started this up a couple months ago.

  18. Re:Or Anywhere on 2K, Australia's Last AAA Studio, Closes Its Doors · · Score: 2

    Indy titles are great. A lot of the older games that are fondly remembered can be produced by independent authors today. Abusive publishers, going Public, "Hollywood accounting", polygons for every speck of dirt, and tight schedules are completely optional. You and your team might not do it for a living, but that might be okay.

  19. Re:wow. some of you are amazing on Would-Be Bomber Arrested In Kansas; Planned Suicide Attack on Ft. Riley · · Score: 1
    No kidding. There's even one guy that says

    The worst he could really do is paint graffiti on the Post Office.

    If that's not a failure of imagination, I don't know what is. Young, "powerless" people are the ones blowing things up.

  20. Re:They have to do something to keep the prisons f on Florida Teen Charged With Felony Hacking For Changing Desktop Wallpaper · · Score: 1

    You there! Are you running an unauthorized hex-editor?! That is a capital offense. I'd read you your rights, but as of today, you have none.

  21. Re:Give it to ReactOS on Microsoft Engineer: Open Source Windows Is 'Definitely Possible' · · Score: 1

    A while back, ReactOS had to audit their code due to the possibility that some of it may have been sourced in violation of reverse engineering laws. I doubt they would be so eager to take code in any form directly from Microsoft, even if MS tried to give it to them. I also doubt the "open source" license MS is known to author would grant the ReactOS team the kind of freedom they'd want.

  22. Re:That car behind you... on EFF Fighting Automakers Over Whether You Own Your Car · · Score: 1

    Dude... brakes are easy to work with. If something goes wrong, you'll find out before you even make it onto the street. The neglectful driver who needs new brake pads is much more of a threat to your safety.

  23. The Car Analogy Come to Life on EFF Fighting Automakers Over Whether You Own Your Car · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm glad the EFF has taken up this fight. To me there's no symbolic difference between the code controlling the digital throttle in my xB and the cable doing the same thing in my 24 year-old Tercel... except that the Tercel does it better. I'm not sure, but I think the values that represent my throttle pressure aren't as smooth as they could be, and it might be due to it not being a float value.

    Wonky throttle values aren't exactly unknown to Toyotas, as Wozniak discovered with his Prius. I probably would be unable to fix this bug, but he could. It's also possible that the somewhat rough transition between super-light pressure and the notch above that is actually a developing issue with my engine (it's not that noticeable, so the nuance leads me to believe it isn't physical - or at least that it could be improved in code).

    So what if I could kill someone by editing the code in my xB? I could kill someone by working on my Tercel too. The legal responsibility rests with me either way. There's no real difference except that there exists precedence for controlling what people can do with the code in their gadgets. Perhaps in some crazy parallel universe, not only could automakers argue that the code isn't yours, they could argue that the whole car isn't yours to do with as you please either. I can imagine the same kind of EULA you agree to in software being applicable to the entire vehicle, listing off all the things you can and cannot do to with "your" brand new car. If they say you must go to the dealer for all repairs, then you must do it, and in the event of tempering, they can revoke your license and take your car back from you.

    It's really the car analogy come to life. I have no doubt this argument has been made before. It's just that in the past, computers were computers, cars were cars, and if your car had a computer, it was just an 8-bit micro-controller that managed your vacuum control valves and fuel pressure.

  24. Re:Objectivist utopia on The Dystopian Lake Filled By the World's Tech Sludge · · Score: 1

    In any case, both utopias are fully capable of hosting companies that dump toxic sludge into lakes and silencing dissent. When a society gives into absolutes, pragmatism is anathema. Eco-Activism can be both Anti-Revolutionary and Socialist, depending on the observer's fringe point of view.

  25. Re:a question on Apple's Tim Cook Calls Out "Religious Freedom" Laws As Discriminatory · · Score: 1

    After some further thought, I've decided the religious conservatives were right on this issue. If society were dealing with a Jim-Crow styled situation but focused on gays, I can understand some outrage with this bill. But that's not the case and it changes nothing on the ground anyway. So opposition to the bill appears to be a little over the top after all. If I could delete my previous posts on this issue I would, because I'm embarrassed that I was so easily wound up over it.