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Comment Re:What happened? (Score 2) 422

If you go from 2GHz to 2.05GHz, however, you won't see much of a difference without benchmarks.

You are working to perpetuate the Megahertz myth.

Going from 2GHz from one generation to 1.8GHz in the next, can still be a 10% speed improvement.

Some of the recent iterations around 2008 were more than a 10% improvement in architecture clock for clock.

A Nehalem-based i7 is light years ahead of an old Merom/Core 2 Duo/MP/Netburst Architecture chip.

Comment This is amendment is a mistake (Score 2) 297

The amended version of House Bill 130 puts into law the state's existing practice of granting medical waivers to children whose physicians request them, and in doing so, removes the Mississippi Department of Health's ability to deny such requests.

Normally, I would agree that this would be fine.

However, the irrational anti-vaccine hysteria has become too widespread.

What is going to happen, is there are going to be improper waivers given in the name of a "health issue" constructed for the purposes of avoiding vaccination.

Inevitably, there are going to be some medical professionals who are persuaded. They should be students of science, but there are plenty in the industry who are not scientists and could be persuaded by some specious arguments.

Therefore, I would say that their waiver should be subject to review. If there is any doubt; it should not be adequate just to find one professional to sign off on something. There should have to be a documented basis that would be accepted by the industry or by the average professional.

Comment Re:Reasonable royalty (Score 2) 32

The price list should be set by the vendor and once set they shouldn't be able to change it depending on who wants to pay for it.

I would rather go with, they can change the price at any time they want but must make it available to all: e.g. within any private negotiation, once they reach a price, before they are allowed to enter into an agreement, they must conspicuously publish a neutral non-discriminatory offer at the price in a public price, the offer must be optionally redeemable by any entity without signing any contract (Simply paying royalties is sufficient to accept), and the offer cannot be withdrawn and must be valid at least until a new offer is published, or 36 months, whichever is later.

Once this is published it is an open offer to any member of the public (not just the party to negotiate), can avail themselves.

No additional restrictive terms allowed, except a minimum number of units, but a price for a single unit must be offered and cannot exceed 200% of the best offered price for units sold or produced with any required minimum number of units.

Comment Re:Well damn (Score 4, Insightful) 379

If it is public infrastructure the existing broadband companies won't have any control over it. Companies cannot open up a public resource.

The telephone network copper lines are considered public infrastructure, because the public helped pay for it both in the form of subsidies, and in the form of subscription fees generated through selling a service as a government-sponsored monopoly.

Fiber.... not so much. Although, the government did pay big telcos in the form of huge grants to build out fiber, they never did. They pocketed the money, essentially. Then went and built out new fiber-based networks, and those are not being regulated.

So the telcos stole an unfairly generous deal, and all the fiber laid by the incumbents really is and ought to be considered public infrastructure.

Comment Re:its not about the ring, its just a lesson. (Score 1) 591

I guess my point is... all rules that try to ban something have to be quite stringent to cover all cases. When they are, they are subject to being applied improperly.

Ultimately, all justice comes down to a human being making a decision.

I would rather the rules be more limited, and if discretion is to be used, then adverse decisions should be validated by a jury of the student's peers.

Preferably, students of the same grade from another school who would be unaware of the details of the incident.

Comment Re:Well damn (Score 4, Interesting) 379

Except I noted the no last-mile unbundling bit.

In other words, they still won't require broadband providers to open up the public infrastructure to competing ISPs.

You'll still be stuck using their IPv4 protocol or Ethernet service, whichever they choose... and innovation in network technology from competing providers, or innovating with different networking technologies won't be possible like you can do with an unbundled loop and a competing carrier.

Comment This is obnoxious behavior from the editor (Score 1) 425

Wikipedia is supposed to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit. And the editors of the articles chose to use comprised of. No one editor should be exerting such undue influence on the whole of the Wikipedia articles.

It is not spam.... but I would put it on equal footing to an editor deciding they don't like links to articles on a certain website, then searching for every article referencing it in order to move the link to the bottom of the list.

Clearly the widespread usage means there is not any broad agreement that comprised of shouldn't be there as a nice stylistic choice.

I feel like there should be a 1000 edits per person per day limit; unless the broader community has accepted a proposal to provide an affirmative consent to a specific large-scale change assisted by automation.

While I find some agreement that the phrase comprised of comprises a phrase that editors should probably want to avoid.

There are clear cases where Comprised Of is not wrong and it is better than any of the alternatives.

Comment Re:That's like ... (Score 1) 779

You were lucky enough to have exposure and resources to information on those languages outside the regular HS curriculum.

I would not attribute it to luck. I think it would be more appropriate to attribute the result to curiosity and persistence in the pursuit of a hobby.

I had a strong desire to be able to produce applications of my own. Originally, I wanted to make graphical games for fun; I worked on code for text-base Muds and IRC servers. All the online games these days are graphical, so I guess I abandoned the hobby part, but I would say motivation and having a specific idea of something you want to accomplish is the critical bit: not luck.

Today's average kid has access to a computer 10000x as fast as the one I learned on with 2000x the network bandwidth, which is much more capable, and a much richer open source toolset is available. There are hundreds of thousands of online manuals, howtos, and even interactive tutorials. Want to learn C, Pascal, or LISP? A simple Google search will bring you a ton of links to information on computational algorithms language syntax samples, recipes, and instructions.

Today's kids can download lots of sample code, and they don't have to transcribe from magazines and then debug typing errors to get a working sample program.

When I developed knowledge of .BAT and QBASIC.... All I had was a computer, DOS instruction manuals, a bunch of editions of PC Computing with type-in .BAS programs, and the sample programs that came with the system... Remline.bas MONEY.BAS SNAKE.BAS

The only extra resource I had when learning Shell, C, and C++ access to was a 486 computer and the Internet using PPP over a 14.4 dialup modem and 5 hours a month worth of internet access over Compuserve, and 30 hours a month worth of dialup service when a local ISP finally became available in 1995 or so.

Which was good enough to download all the Linux documentation and Slackware floppy disk sets.

There were really no online instructions or tutorials for programming languages at the time. Or if there were.... I had no idea how to find them, because there was no Google.

There were a couple very thin books at the library.... practically no books on computer programming available.

So the resources were not exactly prolific in any case.

The resources that were available to me until I entered college, were absolutely paltry, and essentially most limited or free resources, or the cheapest that money could buy.

Comment Re:That's like ... (Score 3, Interesting) 779

Hi. I am a Software Engineer with degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. My high school had a small computer lab and no other computers. I never once got to take a computer science class before college or do any programming on a High-school computer.

I learned BASIC, switched to Linux, learned, C, C++, Perl, Shell script, Awk, and Sed on my own. With a couple books, some resources from the library, and no instruction from anyone.

I don't think High School CS education is as important as they think.

Comment Re:its not about the ring, its just a lesson. (Score 1) 591

like the last few that my boss gave me.

You are allowed to threaten the witholding or cessation of any gifts or benefits that you provide someone, which you are not duty-bound or legally obligated to continue to provide.

You are also allowed to threaten, promise, or warn that you will take any action that you have a legal right to take, or that you will stop doing something you are not legally required to do.

You have a legal right to eject someone from your property, so you can threaten that you will be removed with impunity. You don't have a legal right to cause bodily harm, kill, or dispel someone from existence, so the consequences will be dire if you attempt to intimidate someone to fear they will be violently deprived of fundamental rights.

Because your boss is the slavedriver, and the actions he or she can threaten are the modern whips and other tools that can be used, but generally the mere mention of the tools is sufficient and doesn't have as-severe morale-crushing effects.

Comment Re:its not about the ring, its just a lesson. (Score 4, Interesting) 591

Credible threats have consequences. Threatening to magically make someone magically vanish lacks credibility.

How can the rules distinguish between Humor/Fake/Play threats, and real Bullying?

I think any reasonable person would believe the threat to magically disappear someone would be imaginary and non-credible.

Just like you would probably laugh if your next door neighbor tried to threaten you with Thermonuclear destruction.

But what if the victim was gullible, and the kid kept coming up with new imaginary threats to intimidate him?

Such cases can't entirely be dismissed, if there is a legitimate pattern of bullying or intentional intimidation.

Comment Re:The author of the article is confused (Score 1) 227

That would be reminiscent of Aereo TV's argument. That they were not retransmitting the broadcast, because every viewer got their own private performance.

Of course they are recording their telecasts.

Typically, they are even saving their live stream to a buffer and the broadcast is playing the buffer, resulting in a N seconds delay before what is picked up by the camera appears on viewers' screens.

By the time a performance is appearing on viewers' screens, the live content was already in fixed form seconds before it was shown to viewers.

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