http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Well, here you are standing on principles. :)

You wanted to watch Youtube vids, so you run Google Chrome, which has even more liberal implementation of this DRM.

You didn't boycott Youtube.

So, this is why Firefox is implementing it. They no longer have the leverage. Google Chrome is bundled with Flash, with Adobe Acrobat, with Oracle Java. It is pushed on every google website people interact with - Search, Plus, Docs, Youtube, Translate. There's the google app store, ChromeOS, Android...

I doubt Brendan would have held out against this either. Firefox' choice is to accede to its users, or become even more marginalised.

I'm glad they are using their limited remaining leverage to try and at least ensure user privacy and security and offer something that is cross-platform, with an open source auditable wrapper and actually works under Linux.

You'll get such things in any old red noise, which plenty of aspects of climate are.
I'm asking you what the cycle is... what is the length of time for example that you're claiming, and what do you think might be triggering it.

There *is* a sharp spike in ACE, and it might be related to, oh, who knows. Maybe the unusual strength of the solar cycle the past couple of cycles. Or maybe, oh, PDO or something.

But those aren't even necessarily cyclical. We don't know why the sun goes into depressions from time to time, and it might be simply chaotic.

The graph I was looking at, was really short. I'm curious how you could reliably extract any kind of cycle from just looking at it. So I wanted to know what your justification was.

Huh. What cycle? And, not aware of anyone bringing up any pattern in cyclones... You have a citation of some kind, or a bit more elaboration on your theory?

Hum. I did a quick google for "accumulated cyclone energy"
http://policlimate.com/tropica...

I don't see any particular upward trend there.
I'd guess that 2014 isn't going to be that dramatic.

Mm. Not only that, but Germans really do have very little airconditioning. Probably for this reason, but there's even a cultural avoidance of it.

What's amusing is encountering that same thing in, like, the south of France where you really could use it..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
"Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009"

So, he was almost dead on. October 22nd is 4.46 years ago.

Could be the parent was confusing embrittlement from stray neutrons with metal fatigue.

On that subject, I was amused that a dozen eggs for sale in the store were labeled "from vegetarian chickens!"

Translation. We aren't about to let our chickens free-range for bugs and such, so our chickens are fed a 100% vegetarian corn diet in their lil' cages.

Great. Same goal, more side effects. Also, the drugs are usually prescribed along with dietary changes.

Related:
http://healthland.time.com/201...

Lustig in his "Sugar, the Bitter Truth" youtube video claims the whole fat-is-evil thing started out based on a flawed study (one that failed to separate variables, and shaped an anti-fat public policy.

Food without fat tastes like cardboard, so Lustig says producers responded by cranking up the sugar. I'm sure the subsidising of corn and sugar didn't help. And certainly they are cheaper. But now they could argue their food was healthier "low fat" instead of having the bad mojo of it being made of cheaper lower quality ingredients.

The most sympathetic skeptical take on it would probably be: http://m8y.org/astrology.txt
snippet...
"The rules just kind of got there. They don't make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... illusion you are probably seeing.

I ran into something similar on a YC discussion, of someone who was blatantly abusing store return policies.
Stores have liberal return policies because most people are good, and don't abuse it, so annoying customers too much in return policies has a higher cost to business than the occasional jerk.

As well as the cost of implementing the pin system, there's also the disincentive that a company that implements it is a higher hassle company than one that didn't. Up until now, the costs of fraud have been low enough that they've been worth it to provide people with the convenience.

About 14 years ago, a US bank actually sent me a chipped card, and a USB card reader. Was supposed to offer extra verification for online banking, and for a network of merchants using it. It never took off, I guess inertia and customer dislike of the hassle.

http://www.volokh.com/2014/01/...
"So, this makes a differenceâ"in a high-trust, low-fraud country it generally is not necessary to invest in as elaborate security protections as elsewhere. As an analogy, consider that in the U.S. very few restaurants, stores, or hotels routinely post visible armed guards at their front door, whereas this precaution is not uncommon in other countries."

That is interesting, but doesn't change anything on the point of replacing a vandalised window or cheapness of glass :)

But, yeah, my main point was, I don't get why the parent, way back up there, was so worked up about a store window having advertising. That's what those large front store windows are *for* and even today are often filled with transparent plastic decals, paper posters, store merchandise, TV screens, even animatronics.

And certainly if this comes down in price it could be worth augmenting all the other storefront stuff with. Assuming storefronts still exist :)

That occurred to me to, but I think it is a safe bet that a pane of glass will *always* be cheaper than glass plus nanoparticles plus circuitry and power. That being said, I'm sure there's a point where it'll eventually become cheap enough to make an entire storefront window out of it, and realise some benefit from the visuals over more traditional forms of advertisement.
Assuming storefronts still exist then, and assuming it becomes common to use, I'd move on to the main point. What's the big deal? Store windows basically are nothing *but* advertising...