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Comment Re:what will be more interesting (Score 4, Insightful) 662

It's the same as how the US went through a phase of people suing for the most ridiculous reasons before it mostly calmed down to a sensible level. Of course most of those lawsuits were thrown out at the early stages, or if not turned out to have merit (like the infamous McDonald's "hot coffee" incident).

Uh, what? The McDonald's "hot coffee" incident was decided in favor of the customer. That's the opposite of not having merit. McDonald's served coffee at a temperature above their own published standards, which were set in part because they knew that the cups become inadequate at doing their job when used at those temperatures. The coffee was hot enough to cause substantial burns to the woman's flesh, which is not the case if they follow their own guidelines. The case might have been decided the way you imagine absent those guidelines, but it proved that McDonald's was aware that there was a legitimate danger.

Care to try again?

Comment Re:Bullying (Score 1) 662

Anyone who has been bullied at work must be sickened by the public support for Jeremy Clarkson.

It's interesting, the only times I've thrown fists at people, it's because I was being bullied... verbally. Of course, for me this hasn't happened since high school.

Comment Re:The BBC doesn't have much latitude here. (Score 2) 662

But at some point young people aren't going to be so keen on watching some ancient codger behaving like an ass.

At what point do you imagine that will be? I think Clarkson's spine would give out long before then.

Clarkson is amusing precisely because he acts like a child. You think that's not amusing to children?

Comment Re:Poor Linux support (Score 1) 199

My iron just plugged into he wall with a specific wattage rating; meaning it couldn't be adjusted with the dial.

Nor could you replace the tip? I have a couple of seriously old weller irons, and I've got 700 degree round tips and 800 degree pointy tips, which seem to bring about the same amount of heat into the work when you're just using the tip. Less surface area, you know.

Comment Re:It depends (Score 1) 199

I've got a trackman wheel T-BB18 and guess what? Same problem. Logitech has some of the best design, then they shit on it with crap OMRON microswitches. I've had to replace the microswitches in this trackball twice so far. Probably wind up burning off a trace next time.

Comment Re:Not concerned (Score 1) 177

Most large companies outsource their transport to JB Hunt, Schneider, etc. Sure, the big letters say 'WalMart', but in smaller, DOT minimum sized font, it often has another name.

So what you're saying is that there are actually fewer transport companies than there appear to be? Because that's an argument in favor of self-driving trucks, once again.

Comment Re:Morality Framework UNNEEDED (Score 1) 177

Instinctively this is what we humans do already -- try not to hit anything, but save ourselves as a first priority. In my few new misses (near hits) Iâ(TM)ve had, I never find myself counting the number of occupants in the other car as I make my driving decisions.

It's a horribly stupid breakpoint in any case. The truth is that if you swerve to avoid a school bus and run over an old person on the sidewalk, they're just going to do you for running over the old person because you weren't supposed to be on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, you weren't supposed to be outdriving your vision or your brakes, so you wouldn't have had to dodge the school bus anyway. The self-driving car won't outdrive its vision or brakes, so it won't have to swerve. If someone jumps in front of it, it's going to decelerate slightly right before it smacks them into next week, and the onboard video will prove that the car could not have stopped so the pedestrian is at fault.

Comment Re:Ugly Solution (Score 1) 197

Scale everything down. To simulate the tsunami wave, you will go to the beach and find a nice 4 foot wave.

You could get a wave that would have height to scale, but it would have the wrong length. And anyway, square-cube law says you're going to have to diddle all your proportions to get scale to work accurately.

Comment Re:Not really needed (Score 2) 40

What flag is that then?

On an X86, "V".

Not that checking it after every add instruction is really that practical. It would be better to have trapping and non-trapping versions of integer arithmetic, and to have languages with semantics which expose that choice to the programmer.

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