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Comment Re:Nah (Score 1) 550

In general, no one forces you to buy bad software. (The exception being bad software updates, where the update may be forced on you.) Hence I don't see an issue if new software is not what you were expecting - only if updates are bad.

Currently, I'm sure you could sue for either intentional or negligent damages if you can prove that the developer knew or should have known that a bug could lead to monetary loss ,,, but then again, with closed source software how could you prove that?

In an enterprise setting I could see a demand for a certain degree of liability as part of the reason you buy a certain software - and as the reason you pay hundreds of dollars for said software. If it's some program you bought for $10 (or got free online) to save money then it's partly your fault for choosing to use the no name software over its enterprise competitor. But if you paid for "enterprise" software over a cheaper non-enterprise software then you should expect that it really is suitable for enterprise use and should be able to sue if for some reason - including bugs - it is not (and the company doesn't resolve the issue suitably before you ever get to court, of course).

Comment Re:Dating methods (Score 1) 199

Depends on if you assume solar activity has been relatively consistent over time. If solar activity has decreased or increased substantially over time, then radioactive dating could be wrong. If solar activity has been relatively stable over the last million years, then dates within that period are probably pretty good. Even a mathematician can see that.

Comment Re:But then (Score 3, Interesting) 199

Don't be silly, it's based on neutrinos. Not that we have an effective way to block those either.

Radioactive decay generally produces neutrinos (or anti-neutrinos) as one of the decay products, hitting the nucleus with the opposite particle (anti-neutrinos if the decay would produce neutrinos, etc.) would tend to promote the decay, though obviously the nucleus is a very small target and (anti-)neutrinos do not interact strongly in any case. But if high solar activity produces an excess of neutrinos, those decays which would normally produce anti-neutrinos will be promoted, or vice versa. (Not my field hence I'm not sure which is actually involved here.)

Comment Re:I would prefer enlargement, not shrinking (Score 1) 154

Apple's shenanigans?? Apple would make a competitor's tablet look better? Oh, you mean in court, sorry, never seen anything from the Apple/Samsung case(s).

Actually no, I was thinking of the ones I've seen in Wal-mart, though checking now I see the Acer is really 1280x800 also ... though the Coby is 1024x768. (Not that I'd buy a 10" tablet with such low resolution, but I have seen it in the store.)

Comment Re:I would prefer enlargement, not shrinking (Score 1) 154

All the 10" Android tablets seem to be 4:3 aspect, it's only the 7" tablets which are "widescreen" - and that actually allows them to fit better in a pocket ... Looking online I do see some 10" widescreen and likewise 7" 4:3 tablets, but I'd venture the two common sizes will standardize on 10" 4:3 and 7" widescreen.

(Very few widescreen tablets or monitors are actually 16:9. The 1280x800 ones are 16:10, the 1024x600 ones are 128:75 (16:9 would be 128:72).

Comment Re:3D (Score 1) 83

Can you see the internals of your four spheres?

In that sense, 4 categories would lead to 15 regions total. But as we can't really see in 3 dimensions - we can't see the inside and outside at the same time, we only see in stereo - this is not an improvement. (A computer could, in a theoretical sense, represent a large number of categories in any number of dimensions. It just can't present the results to you in more than stereo 2D.)

Comment Why mention Amazon? (Score 4, Insightful) 666

If you read TFA, it looks like it was a mistake by UPS, so why even mention Amazon? (And Amazon doesn't allow listing of guns anyway.) The article says the box was addressed to a gun dealer in PA ... not an error by Amazon or the vendor, but by the shipper.

Though I do wonder what was in the other box. The photo shows a big shipping box with the rifle box on top of it, there's still another box in the shipping box ...

Comment Re:yes (Score 1) 1010

I do that to cashiers all the time - in fact, last time was about an hour ago. Some I have to tell what the change would be, this one got it correct.

I have a problem with most of the discussion prior to this post though ... too many people are talking about high school algebra when the article was obviously about university algebra (which really means Precalculus in context). Admittedly many students are coming to college without the proper prerequisites in high school and unfortunately many colleges will still be forced to teach remedial math even if pre-calc were no longer a prerequisite ... but everyone who talked about Algebra 2 in context of the article is wrong. (Not that the math in elementary/high school discussion isn't interesting, even for a former math professor like me - it's just not related to the original article.)

And for the record, business majors are required to take Calculus too, but it's a calculus with no trig functions. "Math for Business, Life and Social Sciences" we called it at my school, course numbers Math 124 and 125 (yes, 2 semesters of Calculus). How this guy got to be a Poli Sci prof without it is beyond me.

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