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Comment I'd rather have manitory voter education (Score 1) 1089

So many idiots get their knowledge of the candidates by scripted television ads. This is how you end up electing Monty Burns.

If instead there was a website where you could put in issues you find important (checkboxes) and get a record of voting on these issues by people in office, you could see if your incumbent did what you find important. It'd require some hard workers to simplify complex obfuscated legislation into an easy to understand format, so it is not an easy website to make, but it would be valuable.

Then people would be forced to check how their politician did against what they find important before they reelect people at the voting machines.

Comment The one thing I admired about the C64 (Score 3, Interesting) 23

The thing the C64 has on todays machines is: No matter what software you ran in it, you could boot it up again cleanly. Maybe they should work on getting back that positive trait on modern computers. Even you have to separate the boot hard disk from what can be read/written to, it would be so worth it. Virus fears are the reason I hesitate to browse boldly, or to download and run any .exe.

Comment Refactoring done right happens as you go (Score 2) 247

When you code, the most important thing to do is get your memory architecture built right, then methods just write themselves. Come back later and want to make a better method, you can use your old code as a partial refactor. It is an agile sort of run and gun approach and it works.

Refactoring for the sake of refactoring is often wasted time for the original author for there is ways of understanding code past just nice variable names and indentation. Sometimes even badly formatted code stands out and reminds you what it did to remind you of how it works. But when you code in a group, this doesn't hold true and a refactor can help.

Comment I like yahoo, use it more than google (Score 1) 167

Yahoo has a great news thread that somehow custom tailors to you without you doing anything. It knows I like hockey and video games, but I never clicked any options. Sure yahoo is distracting with all the extra content, and you can forget why you came to the search page, but distractions can be good.

I always figure more search engines are good. We don't want the web to end up with just one search engine to rule them all. The only downside I say Yahoo or Google have is its hard to tell which websites are advertisements because they normally peddle malware. You'd think Google and Yahoo wouldn't allow sponsored links to come up first if they're hosting malware, but I guess the money they get trumps them being more functional.

Comment A couple solutions (Score 3, Insightful) 164

1) You can use Join.me or Gotomeeting and everyone can share the same picture. Fire up a paint program, and voila whiteboard. I find coding with multiple people actually is cool when everyone can see the screen instead of being uncomfortably bunched together.

2) For a bulletin board todo list, use www.Trello.com

I love telecommuting work, it feels more efficient than in person office work.

Comment My dream for Dreamcast (Score 1) 153

My dream for Dreamcast was that one of those JRPG makers would have made a solid MMO, and that there would have been dual: That Lameo Modem along side a LAN connection. Everyone knew online multiplayer was the future. If Dreamcast would have been the hardware for it, things could have been different. The only hard part is that broadband was just beginning to take off in rural areas over the next 5 years. So a lan connection might have been too ahead of its time... Not sure.

If I was the head of Sega, I'd keep making software, but I'd aim for mobile targets. Make Sega games for Android Tablet/Phone with a gamepad option. Start by porting the classics, or even just licensing an emulator for like 5% of sales revenue. The cash would pour in and it wouldn't take any coding time at all, just licensing deals. You might pressure Apple into a joystick driver on ipad/iphone. You could port games to run off keyboard for ipad/iphone. And if Apple won't get off their butts to make a joystick driver, you could make a joystick that operates like a keyboard. Sega would be in the drivers seat, and set up a precedence for other companies to make their old video games run on mobile or lose revenue.

Comment Google Voice/Skype/VOIP does this for free (Score 1) 73

If there is already a free solution to make calls over WIFI, why should I pay someone 5$ for it. Or maybe this service isn't for me. Maybe it is a "technical ignorance tax". Hey there are even cell phones you can pay 8$/month for now and make calls anywhere without being restricted to wifi.

Comment Easy to have competitors (Score 1) 50

The software Uber uses isn't particularly complex. A lone coder could code it up very rapidly. The only thing it got going for it in terms of competition is that,"Why should people use a different service when this one works?" So if another country wanted to make an Uber competitor and ban Uber, they can do it very easily. Every different country could have its own version of a smart phone summoned taxi service and it wouldn't cost that much in term of dev hours to the profit gained for not using someone else.

Comment Uber provide anything Google couldn't code (Score 1) 77

When I heard about self driving cars becoming possible, I immediately thought that some corporation with big pockets should buy a bunch and then write a basic ride share application to allow people to schedule taxis and get to work. I didn't even hear of Uber before this, but I did theorize a taxi service could be launched without even self driving cars. What Uber does in terms of an ap is not complex nor difficult to code. Google should just code their own ride sharing ap for when their self driving cars become feasible. I still don't have high hopes on self driving cars becoming feasible any time soon, but I understand why Google wants to give them positive press.

Comment Setting the stage for sports (Score 1) 62

Watch the game from a bunch of different angles. Put several different TVs in a sports bar with all the different angles, get way more customers. Then mic up all the players and choose the channel you want to listen to. It'd lead to famous trash talk segments when video with sound are linked on forums.

Comment Re:Not the fault of science (Score 1) 958

Exactly, it isn't science that steers you wrong, its the people who want to make a buck off the new fad.

Everything I learned in physics still applies: If you want to burn calories, you need to do work. F=ma. W=Fs. Go out there and move more. Put 1-2 hours of exercise in a day(it doesn't even have to require strenuous effort, skip the pushups), and have a reasonable diet then you'll get in shape over the course of 6 months.

Science is correct, but the way people use scientific results can be disingenuous. For example I saw Lucky Charms reported as a health food because it had oat pieces and oats are scientifically seen to promote heart health...

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