I know this is an old thread ... but I really don't like Pulseaudio.

I never installed it on my Gentoo system. On my Mint systems, removing Pulseaudio is one of my first post-installation steps.

If I want to play sound over a network I export a read-only filesystem containing my media to the machines on my LAN (Samba does this nicely). Then I can play video and anything else over the network too, in a transparent way. I've never seen a single benefit of running Pulseaudio but I have seen lots of difficult-to-resolve problems. It's just useless bloat to me. I have a much better time using straight ALSA.

Welcome to the Internet.

So it's local outsourcing. They're still taking away your job so that they can give it to someone that isn't in as good of a bargaining position. It doesn't matter if it's some guy in a 3rd world country, or some guy that's visiting from a 3rd world country who gets to be treated like dirt.

Both "illegals" and H1-B's fall into this sort of 3rd world underclass.

As if we didn't already have enough pockets of 3rd world fester...

Cost of living also tends to be higher in those Blue states. So this is a nice double whammy from states that are supposed to have more intrusive and effective governance.

So much for that idea...

I would be shocked if this wasn't intentional maneuvering to use the entire core of Yahoo as part of a tax write-off scheme to pay next to nothing on any profits they make from Yahoo Japan and the upcoming Alibaba IPO.

"We're valued at -$13bn, therefore Mr IRS, take a piss with your tax bill."

The most wear sensitive part of a laser printer is the copy drum. If I recall correctly the old LaserJets had the drum integrated with the toner cartidge, so you replace to most quickly wearing part of the printer four or five thousand pages. It's no wonder they lasted so long. The mechanical parts that move the paper through the printer are pretty robust, so I wouldn't be surprised if the printers go until the capacitors in the electronics dry up, or the internal power connectors go bad.

That would be interesting, if it were true. Here's what TFA says:

"Del." I assume is short for "delegate". According to their website, the American Tradition Institute's tag line is "Free Market Environmentalism through *Litigation*" I assuming this means they aren't pals with Greenpeace, or even The Sierra Club, any more than the National Socialists in Germany were pals with the socialist Republicans in 1930s Spain.

Depends on what you consider "hiding the research". A fishing expedition through a scientist's personal correspondence is an invitation to judge his work on *political* grounds.

In science your personal beliefs, relationships, and biography are irrelevant. There are evangelical Christian climate scientists who believe climate won't change because that would contradict God's will as expressed in the Bible. These scientists may be regarded as religious crackpots by their peers, but that hasn't prevented them from publishing in the same peer-reviewed journals as everyone else. Since their papers invariably are climate-change skeptic, clearly they are publishing work which supports their religious beliefs. But their motivations don't matter. What matters is in their scientific publications.

In 1988, Gary Hart's presidential bid and political career were ruined when he was photographed cavorting on a yacht named "Monkey Business" with a woman that wasn't his wife. Now I didn't care how many bimbos he was boinking, but a lot of people *did*, which made it a political issue (albeit a stupid one in my opinion). Do we really want to use the coercive power of the state to dig through the private lives of controversial scientists?

It's a pretense that that would serve any scientific purpose. Maybe Mann is intent on overthrowing capitalism and creating a socialist utopia. That would be relevant if he were running for dogcatcher, but it's irrelevant to what's in his scientific papers. Scientists publish papers all the time with ulterior motives, not the least of which is that they're being paid to do research that makes corporate sponsors happy. As long as what's in the paper passes muster, it's still science.

What about acting? Or fiction? These are artificial experiences that evoke real emotional responses. Once the right buttons in your brain are pushed, most of your brain can't tell the difference between what is real and what is synthetic.

Granted, authenticity in human interactions is important, but it's overrated. Fake engagement often is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Situations where people put considerable effort into *seeming* pleasant usually *are* more pleasant than they would be if everyone felt free to paste their indifference to you right on their faces.

So this is a very interesting technology. What's disturbing about it isn't that people might be fooled into thinking the user is truly interested; it's that the user himself no longer puts any effort into creating that illusion. What if that effort is in itself something important? What if fake engagement is often the prelude to real engagement? Maybe you have to start with polite interest and work your way up to the real thing; I suspect the dumber parts of your brain can't tell the difference. If that's true, taking the user's brain out of the interaction means that interaction will automatically be trapped on a superficial level. This already happens in bureaucratic situations where employees are reduce to rules-following automatons. Take the brain out of the equation and indifference follows.

I suspect that the researchers are well aware of these issues; I believe that I discern a certain deadpan, ironic puckishness on their part. People who truly view engagement with other people as an unwelcome burden don't work on technologies that mediate between people.

Smart engineering thinking. These are the details that make for verisimilitude.

Sad. A future that could never, ever be. Remember when the situation of Kubrick's 2001 seemed not only plausible, but likely?

Was that an ironic comment? It's SO hard to tell these days. ;-)

Hey! Look! We're all meta!

That's a fact.

Nobody dealin' with that winter, for rent.

What are you talking about? It's not at all uncommon for married couples to have two cars which are wildly different from each other. Haven't you seen couples where the wife drives some nice, new(er), fancy car, and the husband drives some old POS beater to work? Or where one drives a small econo or sporty car, and the other drives a van or SUV? Why wouldn't it be normal for (while EVs still have limited range and recharging on trips is a PITA) couples to have one nice EV for driving around town, and one possibly somewhat older gas car for the occasional long trip and for one of the partners to drive?

Or, they could have 2 EVs, and a third gas car reserved solely for longer trips. It's not that uncommon for families to have a third car. I knew a bunch of middle-class families while growing up who had three, one rarely used. Or, people could just rent a car. How often do you drive that far away anyway? A few times a year? Enterprise will even bring your rental car to you.

Unless everyone is stupid. Which is admittedly an option when it comes to essential US infrastructure.

It's not just an possibility, it's a certainty if American Slashdotters are any indication. If our "tech nerds" are this backwards-thinking, I think it's safe to assume that the average American is dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to planning for the future.

You don't think people who can afford $75-100k for a car normally have two or more cars anyway? Single under-30 guys aren't Tesla's target market; the people who buy cars like this are older and married. Married people who can afford $100k cars do not make-do with a single car.

It's amazing how out-of-touch you Slashdotters are.