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User: yodleboy

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  1. Re:Political Correctness? on Microsoft Patents Bad Neighborhood Detection · · Score: 1

    "Its because those indicators will often fall along racial lines"

    Crime is crime. If your little pocket of town has higher crime than another then it's not somewhere I want to walk. When I travel, I don't know what areas to avoid.

    Give you a couple of examples from business trips. In Baltimore, driving thank god, I see these row houses up on a hill. Looks nice from where I am, so I exit the freeway to go take a look. Whoa. Crack house city. Another time, in Memphis, on foot. Looking for a restaraunt downtown. A guy stops me and says "you're not from around here are you? you don't want to be on foot going the direction you're going". Find out later I was heading to a lovely slice of urban crime. Anyway, in both cases, a little routing via GPS that said !!!DON'T GO HERE!!! would be nice.

    Anyway, as a visitor, I don't care what the underlying causes are, I'm in no position to make a difference OTHER than by becoming a new crime statistic.

  2. Re:Design on Solo Explorer Begins Bicycle Journey To South Pole · · Score: 1

    if you click "simple brakes" in the image, it explains they are used instead of hydraulic brakes (yes they do make them for mountain bikes) which might have issues w/ fluid freezing. So, yes they are "simple" in comparison to alternatives. Maybe they should have said mechanical. I wonder if they could have just gotten some antifreeze to the right viscosity and used it as a brake fluid.

  3. Re:Propaganda? on US Report Sees Perils To America's Tech Future · · Score: 1

    what's the point of proposing a solution if a bunch of "take my ball and go home" types on the other side of the aisle are just going to stonewall you every time? Republicans have elevated cutting off the nose to spite the face to a new level lately. It's almost to the point that Obama could say "an FDA sponsored project just found a cure for all forms of cancer but we need another $100 in the budget to make it available to everyone" and Republicans would vote against it just because Obama announced it. Don't believe it? How about the recent hostage situation over employment taxes? Nothing but a ploy by the right to get more time to cram pork into the long term solution. Pretty typical really. Let's let OTHER people be miserable now so I can be more comfortable later. Do they every actually think of anyone but themselves and big business?

  4. Re:erm on Apple Patents Power Adapter That Recovers Lost Passwords · · Score: 2

    why not resign themselves to the fact that users that care about security will use strong passwords and the built in tools already in place to protect themselves and the other 95% will not bother.

  5. Re:How about making a simulator? on Microsoft To Offer Flight For Free This Spring · · Score: 1

    actually, if you just watch the video it's light on details. I read elsewhere that it will be configurable to be as complicated or as easy as you want. If you want the full realism sim, do it, if you want basically an arcade game, you can do that too. It is also not limited to those 3 inputs. Full support remains for all the fancy flight controls as well. Here's a more detailed look MS Flight. From the article: "That being said, allow me to assuage the longtime fans' fears. Though Microsoft Flight can be played with a keyboard and mouse, it will support all the fancy joysticks, flap pedals and other doo dads that enthusiasts love."

  6. Re:This still doesn't address fragmentation on Holo Theme Is Now Mandatory For Android Devices · · Score: 1

    absolutely correct. Saying they are the same is wishful thinking and Apple have no intention of giving you new features indefinitely. I bought a Gen1 iPhone and loved it as there was very little real competition at the time (i wasted a lot of money trying the ones i could get). As always, I was not a big fan of the closed environment, but I still enjoyed my phone.

    Fast forward to the iOS 4 release. What? I can't get iOS4 on my phone (w/out a jailbreak anyway). What's that Steve? It's because my phone is underpowered? Wait a sec, except for 3G and a GPS chip my phone has the same internals as the iPhone 3G iPhone Spec Comparison, which is eligible for the upgrade. OOOOOHHH what you really mean is you want me to get a new phone! Okie Dokie! Now I have a Galaxy S and my wife has moved from iPhone to Android as well. You know if they'd just come out and said "we want more money, time to buy a new phone people" I might have gotten a 3GS. My wife had one and liked it ok, but by burying it in a lot of "for your own good user experience" BS, it just bugged the crap out of me.

    Anyway, I reserve the right to screw up my own user experience in whatever way I want and Android at least gives me the choice. : )

  7. Re:Bullshit on Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson · · Score: 1

    i happened to be looking at light bulbs at Home Depot today and saw at least a couple of LED's labeled "Dimmable". Too bad the $15 price for the smallest bulb ($38 for an indoor flood!) sent me moving on down the aisle to bad old incandescents. So, they are out there, can't testify to how well they dim though.

  8. Re:What the hell is wrong with you? on China Reveals Its Space Plans Up To 2016 · · Score: 1

    agree 100%. There's a lot of flag waving horseshit going on in this thread. I don't care WHO does it, I'm just glad that SOMEONE has picked up the manned space flight flag since we (the U.S.) have decided to let if fall (sorry, engineering studies and crap on the drawing board that will never be built don't count).

    Great! NASA did some awesome manned stuff 50 years ago! Now what? Don't get me wrong, I'm a space nut. Just had a lovely weekend trip to Johnson Space Center a couple of months ago. I remember the first shuttle launches as a kid and how amazing they seemed. It was like a REAL spaceship! Then the disappointment when they just went in neat little circles in LEO for 30 YEARS! 30 years guys, 3 times longer than they spent getting to the moon. Think of everything that has changed in that time, except for our #1 people launcher.

    Just because our leadership has given up doesn't mean it should stop. It's nice to see the Chinese taking a long term, methodical approach to this, they don't seem to care if it takes 50 years. Back here in the U.S. our leaders are poisoned by the Wall Street mentality that says if something spectacular doesn't happen by next quarter it was a waste of money. Yes, there has been some amazing stuff from Hubble and the rovers and various probes, but let's face it folks, what sells the space program is manned flight, not wall-e.

    Anyway, stop with the flag waving and just be glad someone is doing it and has a plan. If nothing else we may see what NOT to do when (if) we ever decide to go back to space.

  9. Re:Only 1.154GW? on NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design · · Score: -1

    and .056 GW from powering my flux capacitor. so close, yet so far.

  10. Re:EULAs on Sony Sued Over PSN 'No Suing' Provision · · Score: 1

    "You don't have to use PSN to use a PS3"

    Wait a sec...this is not entirely true. I don't game on my PS3, I DO use it for Bluray and for Netflix access. About once a month when I launch Netflix, I get a message along the lines of "Your PS3 requires a system update". You cannot use Netflix without doing the update and (here's the punchline) the update REQUIRES you to login to PSN. there may be other PS3 apps that have similar nonsense going on, i wouldn't know. I do know that I would not have a PSN account if i didn't have to have it for these damn forced updates.

  11. and up next from Apple... on Apple Patents Using Apps During Calls · · Score: 1

    Apple will now patent "holding your phone correctly".

    I'm sick of Apple. I've never been a fan of their closed ecosystem, and I find that they seem more "evil" than MS ever did to me. Dunno, in the 90's MS seems to be kind of naive and amateur in their strong arming. Today's Apple is sneaky, insidious and far more dangerous in my opinion. They are very good at convincing people that should know better that an idea wasn't legitimate until it got that Apple polish.

    Oh well, I'll continue to exercise my right not to buy their stuff, and hope that their patent trolling and lobbying don't screw up the alternatives too badly.

  12. Re:Use the old O2 system? on Fatal Problems Continue To Plague F-22 Raptor · · Score: 1

    funny, i read that as "they could charge more by reinventing the wheel".

    no one's really saying yank one out of an F18. With all the previous planes produced for the military, all the major ergonomic requirements should have been known in advance. little things like accessibility (under the seat and behind your back is not a good idea) of emergency handle and realistic limits for pull pressure should have been ironed out decades ago. Planes change, pilots, not so much. Of course that only addresses the final failure of the emergency part of the system, not the utter crap of the O2 generating system failing to begin with. Why there's not an automatic cutover is beyond me. Light goes off, system switches over and pilot stays alive while determining whether this is a real emergency or not. I'd think that fail safe would be the operating mode for anything directly keeping your operator alive...

    Maybe I'm attributing corporate greed to an error of simple human nature. some smarty pants engineering team probably wanted to get to the "good stuff" and called this one in. Too bad all the bells and whistles don't mean much if your subsystem kills the pilot first.

  13. Re:While they're at it on NTSB Recommends Cell Phone Ban For Drivers · · Score: 2

    Studies be damned, there's a huge difference between talking using a handsfree and holding the phone. Handsfree, it's no different or more distracting than talking to a passenger. But the second that phone and hand goes to the ear, it's like half the brain shuts off. It happens to me, it happens to my wife and it appears to happen to just about everyone else. One of our driving games is to guess whether the person driving 20 mph under traffic flow/having trouble staying in lane/driiiiifting over slowly when changing lanes is on the phone. I wish i'd kept records for the "show me the data" crowd here, but after a few years of this game I can tell you that the hand to ear oblivi-bots are winning. It's getting to the point it's not fun anymore, we could just say "on the phone" and most of the time we'll be right. not much of a game these days.

  14. Re:This is what happens when Americans make things on Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System · · Score: 1

    I don't know where you are, but where I live most 80's vintage American cars don't appear to be in very good shape (paint jobs appear to be particularly bad quality in the 80s). There's a big difference between "still on the road" and "safely, reliably and comfortably still on the road". Still running is not a sign of quality.

  15. Re:This is what happens when Americans make things on Voyager 1 Exits Our Solar System · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whatever. I distinctly remember from Back to the Future that all the best stuff is made in Japan. And that was in 1985, so there!

  16. Re:Sounds fun... on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    interestingly enough, there may be a remake of Starship Troopers in the works: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/1157184/starship_troopers_and_the_state_of_hollywood_scifi_remakes.html

  17. Re:Sounds fun... on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    no i get where you're coming from. had i never read the book, i'd have probably thought it was an ok movie. I was in my mid 20's when the movie came out and yeah it still annoys me. It probably irritated me more than it would NOW, because NOW every book, comic, or vague idea obtained while straining on the pot is seen as not a single movie that should be made with some care and/or integrity. Instead it's seen as a franchise gateway to a downhill slope of forgettable sequels. Now days you'd expect The Sound of Music to be remade w/ a cliffhanger ending and giant Michael Bay explosions.

    Maybe it's always been like this and i just need to get off my own lawn.

  18. Re:Sounds fun... on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    oh come on. then they should have named it "bugs from outer space" rather than blatantly trying to capitalize on the "source" being the RA Heinlein novel and then stripping 90% of the book. This is NOT the same as the rabid fanboy rage over Arwen being a strong female character in the LOTR movies. There's a huge difference between taking creative license when presenting something in a new medium and taking source material and gutting it.

  19. Re:Sounds fun... on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    ahg, please don't ever bring up the Starship Troopers movie. I've loved the book since I was a kid and was so exited to see the movie. God what a total, abysmal let down and a complete failure to capture anything of what the book was about or even, if you ignore the deeper themes, what made the book fun. I will say that at least if it had been made in today's CGI orgy we'd have gotten proper power armor. Of course then people would claim it's a Halo rip off. I imagine we'll hear that if there's ever a Ringworld movie too.

  20. Re:Reminds me of Moon on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    the opening shots of the Nostromo (inside and out) still hold up today in a way that CGI effects today will not 30 years hence.

  21. Re:Bullshit. on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 1

    preview... silly me. this should say: Hating on CGI is not what's going on, people are hating on the abuse and overuse of CGI.

  22. Re:Bullshit. on Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi By Going Old School · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Pixar films could be done on an etch-a-sketch and people would love them. It's because there's always a story FIRST and the CGI is there to serve the story, not the other way around. I swear, too many all CGI movies look like someone said "ooooh look how nice this hair simulation looks! Now, let's make a movie so we can show it off!"

    Hating on CGI is not what's going on, hating on the abuse and overuse of CGI is the problem. What's the line from Jurassic Park? "Your scientists were so concerned over whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." Something like that...In the past, effects shots were time consuming and expensive so they were only used where absolutely needed in a story. Now, every damn scene has an effect because it's a relatively cheap way to jazz up a scene that sucks. It's annoying, because you can almost always spot it. For me it's the light, the "fake" light just never seems to match the ambient "real" light in the scene. It's good, don't get me wrong. If it was in an all CGI scene it would look great, but stick it in a the "real" world and it's just not right. I guess the uncanny valley applies to more than robots.

    I've don't even know how many times i've posted this, but it always bears repeating: a crappy movie is still crappy in 3d/HD it just looks better. Same applies to CGI, no amount of it can save a bad story.

  23. Re:Wrong problem on Genome Researchers Have Too Much Data · · Score: 1

    out of curiosity, what's the analysis? are you looking for something specific? comparing to something else? poking around to see what looks interesting? all of the above? thx

  24. Re:You know why Apple's winning? It's not about sp on NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's A5 In First Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    meant to say, those reasons alone probably add up to a lot of Android sales and none of them have anything to do with user experience.

  25. Re:You know why Apple's winning? It's not about sp on NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's A5 In First Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    "If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?"

    There might be a few reasons... One, some people hate Apple and will never by a phone from them. Two, some people don't want to look like a trendy boob and will buy anything but an iPhone to avoid that, even if they like the iPhone. Three, some people aren't willing to pay that much for a phone. Finally, some people just don't care. They aren't going to switch carriers for an iPhone, they just go into the store and grab whatever is on offer.

    I think those add up to a lot of Android sales. My wife and I both switched from iPhone to Android phones. She was skeptical, but she really likes it now. I must have heard "oh, it just lets me do that" 50 times the first week. It was very liberating for her, especially not being tethered to iTunes. Oddly enough the only thing i think we really miss is the easy backup/restore process iTunes does. It's not as simple a task on Android.