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Comment all wubbly and wiggly (Score 1) 126

The station keeping and vibration might not be a problem - as long as you know what is happening I bet you could digitally correct for it. In fact, that might need to occur in any event, since for the levels of precision, you will probably need to be able to correct for the difference in gravitational forces acting on the ring between sea level and whatever orbit they put it in.

Comment Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score 5, Insightful) 468

Perhaps the police should stop behaving in was that make non-criminals scared of them. The number of dangerous criminals in society is really very small. If this app is downloaded more than a few hundred times that would indicate that more people than just hardened criminals want to keep tabs on cops. Just the download counter for the app could be read as a social barometer of public trust.

Also, the watchmen don't like being watched? Tough shit. You want more power than the average person, you had better get used to extra scrutiny too.

Comment Re:Terrible names (Score 1) 378

At least the old Unix names were at least somewhat relevant to their purpose, even if severely shortened to save keystrokes:

grep: Global Regular Expression Print -- Ok, still pretty bizarre sounding if you're not a bearded unixguy
man: Short for MANual. Straightforward.
awk: Beats me. I think it's named after the author's initials or something
sed: Stream EDitor: does what it says, edits streams of characters

Comment New name: 'Windows Auschwitz 9-11 happy' bar (Score 5, Funny) 378

Now they're just marketing doublespeak.

So true. When I saw the blurb about the 'charms bar' I immediately imagined an exclusive hipster cereal bar in San Francisco that exclusively served lucky charms cereal with organic unpasteurized milk. The flatware was reclaimed 1890s mining camp tin spoons, and the maitre'd was dressed like lucky the leprechaun.

I suppose we have that dumb fuck Balmer to thank for this....

Comment Who are you? I'm bat- er, ANON! (Score 5, Insightful) 413

This also looks a lot like a slightly unpopular kid going and beating up the most unpopular kid to make everyone else like them more.

Pedophiles are like Nazis: They are widely assumed to be completely and thoroughly evil and thus worthless human beings. If you are going to pick a group to engage in vigilante activity against this is just about the perfect one, because who is going to going to stand up and say 'that's not right'. Unlike other extremely unpopular groups like Human traffickers or actual no-Nazis, pedophiles are not generally gun toting violent lunatics, so the risk of being murdered in retaliation is pretty low.

If you want to break the law to try to uphold the law, this is a logical choice, I guess.

Comment Not a career politician? (Score 3, Insightful) 120

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
> I don't care what anyone says, the masses are morons. My own grandmother is an idiot. You can't count on them to pick good stuff. Just check out Network TV to see what the masses want for entertainment. There's certainly a place for that kind of thing but it's not on Fark. Now go away and let me finish taking a crap!

And now he wants the "masses" help to elect him?

Do you think that's air you're breathing? Hmmm...

Comment Nein (Score 1) 332

I was one of the early (and later) adopters of HDTV. I've currently got a ~5 year old Pioneer Plasma (Kuro baby!) that does 1080p and, frankly, I'm fine with it. I've seen the 4K TVs and the additional resolution, to my eyes, doesn't seem to do much for the picture. I'm sure there's more detail there. I had the fortune of seeing the Hobbit in both the new HiDef projection screen (with LCD style panning, oooh) and in an IMAX theater back to back and I was amazed at how much more sharper and detailed the HiDef projection was vs the IMAX (EG I could see specific details and patterns on emblems on the clothing) But I only noticed it for a few seconds and then that was because I was specifically thinking about the picture quality. On a "smaller" screen (50" TV screens oughta be enough for anybody!) I just don't think those details are going to be noticed as much.

If I NEED a TV I'm sure I'll take 4k screens into consideration (especially if they're commonplace by the time I need one) but it's not going to make me jump from my current setup.

That said, do I want a 4K monitor for my PC? Oh yeah!

Comment And this is why MBA CEOs fail (Score 5, Insightful) 126

This, a thousand times this.

The one reason that people like Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, et al made such lasting impacts on not only their companies but the world as well was not because of some great business acumen but because they fixed the problems directly. Sure, they were assholes but ultimately they cared about their products and how customers reacted to them.

Degree milled MBA's don't understand this and would not have given this fix a second thought because a> they couldn't do it and b> the economics didn't make sense because some team would've had to be picked to go out, ascertain the problem, determine the solution which might be a larger fix than a one line change and now you're looking at potentially tens of thousands of dollars expense to fix a bug in a product that isn't even YOURS! It just don't make no economic sense and you'd get dinged and the next stockholders meeting.

You see this in all the industries. Apple after Steve Jobs. Car manufacturers who were eventually run by "businessmen who understood the auto markets" instead of "a car geek who understood business" the entire industry turned into regurgitated pablum with a few occasional bursts of brilliance by a car geek that broke through the red tape. I worked in the consumer electronics industry and have seen first hand how once highly held and coveted products have been turned into cheap commodities by a "fresh executive team" because it's easier to sell to the masses who don't understand the finer details of a product than it is to actually push the envelope and innovate your product into the next generation. Then, when that market dies out completely because the enthusiasts don't want your product because it sucks so the masses don't want it anymore because "it's not cool", the CEOs blame the market for being fickle.

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