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Comment Re:should be (Score 1) 172

The magician never picks the right card. The idea is that the way the magician shows the mark that he knows which card was picked is by removing that card from the group. Since the magician in fact does not know which card it is, he just removes all of the cards and puts back a group of cards, one less than the first group, that look similar to but are in fact not any of the cards from the first group.

Comment Re:Feels early (Score 5, Informative) 227

That's it exactly. From what I have read Qt 5 will not have the backwards compatibility for Qt 3 that Qt 4 does. Too many KDE applications still use those compatibility features and so they need to rewrite it so that it no longer does to be able to use Qt 5. Since that will break programs that rely on those compatibility features it is deserving of a version change.

Comment Re:Douchebags (Score 3, Insightful) 666

Couldn't agree more. The justice system is very fond of claiming that harsh punishments deter crime. We should make them put their money where their mouth is and punish cops who break the law by having mandatory additional jail time on top of the normal sentence for whatever crime they committed. You could implement it as an 'abuse of authority' law. You break the law while acting in the capacity of your job as a police officer (I am aware there are some jurisdictions where cops are 'on duty' 24/7 in which case this would apply 24/7) and it's an extra 2 years + half the sentence length for the crime committed.

I think similar should be done for prosecutors. If you say something in your role as prosecutor about a defendant that turns out not to be true, even stating that the defendant is guilty if they are acquitted, you should have to serve time. How many people's lives have been ruined because of public perception brought on by a mouthy prosecutor? There should be punishments for doing that.

Comment Re:It's all BS (Score 2, Informative) 272

I have to call BS on that. Yes, there is a bigger increase with A, but the only time this matters at all is if I have 2 vehicles in need of replacement at the same time, money for only one of them, and no pressing preference for utility between them; and then you would have to figure out which you drive more often to get a reasonable determination of which to get.

In reality, it works like this: you have a 20 mpg car in need of replacement. You can replace it with a 25 mpg car, or a 32 mpg car. Quick, which saves more gas?:

A) Replace the 20 mpg with 25 mpg
B) Replace the 20 mpg with 32 mpg.

For direct comparison of savings coming from two completely different situations, yes, gal/100 miles is better. But the combination of events and requirements needed for such a comparison to be at all useful is completely absurd. For nearly all situations the "which number is bigger" method of determining mileage superiority is perfectly adequate.

Comment Re:Not a surprise (Score 1) 324

I hate K&M gaming for F/TPS specifically because of how insanely responsive the controls are.

Any time I can be running, turn in place 167 degrees, and hit something at 50 ft. with any kind of accuracy—in .25 seconds no less—the game has lost me. There is something to be said for fun over realism, but I think PC games take it way too far to the point where it is no longer fun.

I like being forced to actually bring the gun around to the target in more time than it takes to flick a wrist, to stop running and actually take the time to aim properly to get off an accurate shot, and to not be able to process the world spinning around my head when moving it to the side fast (motion blur). I might think about actually playing a K&M game if I ever saw one with anything close to reasonable movement limits but I doubt that will ever happen as my friends who play PC FPSs appear horrified over such things.

Comment Re:Wait 'till it hits IT (Score 1) 569

I see it like this:

Company A say it needs a new logo with features 1, 2, and 3. It informs the world it will be buying the best (a function of cost and meeting requirements) available logo on the market on future date 4. Designers X, Y, and Z decide they want Company A to buy from them and so develop a product to be sold. Date 4 comes along and Company A buys a logo from those available at the time.

This is no different than a cereal company making a new cereal—investing time, money, and resources—in the hopes that someone will actually buy it. It seems to me that the conflict here comes from the redefinition of design as a business making a product (a completed logo) instead of the former model of a business offering a service (the design of a logo).

Comment Re:Biofuels (Score 1) 355

It would work like this:

Country A has limited arable land, barely enough to feed it's people, and is unable to import food cheaply enough to feed it's people if it turned food growing land into fuel growing land. Realizing this, Country A makes the decision to limit the profitability of fuel farming by banning it's export to other countries, thus removing most of the incentive to convert crops to fuel in the first place and leaving the farmland producing food.

In the case that Country A decides to let it's people starve by not regulating and resulting in food shortages other countries, alone or in consortium, can then decide to do the humanitarian and image building thing and refuse to participate in the starving of Country A's people by no longer providing demand for fuel they would produce.

Comment Re:Biofuels (Score 1) 355

The solution then, is to illegalize export of biofuels in countries that can't afford to do so without risking their population's ability to feed itself because they are too poor in arable land to grow both food and fuel or because they lack the economic power to import food.

It is not a good solution to simply not use the technology just because some countries won't look out for the interests of it's own people. If it becomes bad enough that the world notices, then remove the economic incentive to starve their own people and make it a crime to import fuel from that country.

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