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Comment Re:Look at *why* people are pirating (Score 2) 143

Exactly. I offer Netflix only as a legitimate source of "all you can watch for $20/mo". The fact that they carry only a very limited selection of movies (not even the old B&W ones from the 40s) leads me to consider using other, less legitimate means, to obtain the films I want to watch. I'd be happy to watch them on Netflix (considering that I'm paying for it), but, for whatever reason, they choose not to offer them. And we're not talking about current films, either. There's really only one alternative: $60/yr for a Hide-My-Ass VPN and torrents.

Comment Look at *why* people are pirating (Score 3, Insightful) 143

It's because there's no convenient way (other than pirating) to get the media you want to watch/listen to, when you want to watch/listen to it. If the media companies would make *everything* available under a subscription model (like Netflix), there would be no need to go to Pirate Bay to get it. I suspect much of what is pirated is watched once. Figure $60/yr for a VPN, or $20/mo for Netflix (which, sadly, doesn't have a tenth what's available by torrent), and the media companies could do pretty well...if they would only do it.

Comment Re:That's how I clean my cat's litter box. (Score 2) 58

I shake 'er up. The big pieces float to the top. I scoop them out. Brazil nut effect. Asteroid problem solved. It took an international team to sort this out? Come on! :D

It's the same in an organization -- shake it up -- the management rises to the top.

Any similarity to a litter box is purely coincidental

Comment Re:Not me... (Score 1) 753

by Peter Simpson (#47447985) Attached to: Predicting a Future Free of Dollar Bills

As someone who has had a recent issue with a certain major bank(they closed the account and sent cashiers checks to me for the balance. Waiting 2-3 days without money wasn't pleasant)...I will never go cashless. Relying on these financial institutions for every transaction is something I will not trust. I won't get into the whole NSA/FBI/etc. potential tracking of all my purchases.

Nor me.

Cash is anonymous.
No fees to use cash (yet, I guess)

Comment Having solved all other earthly problems... (Score 1, Insightful) 181

Words fail me. Almost. I realize that Congress needs to do appear to be doing something, while avoiding all possible controversy, but this seems like a press release that should never have gone out. Perhaps if they concerned themselves less with asteroid mining and more with the immigration issue, pollution, healthcare, and any number of more important issues, Americans might have a smidgin more respect for their elected officials. This seems like an issue that could wait...or maybe they could let the interns handle it.

Comment Re:A win for freedom (Score 1) 1330

Further, Hobby Lobby still provides coverage for more than a dozen kinds of birth control. Just not the ones that can induce abortion of an already fertilized fetus.

Do they alow gay people to work for them? Just as religion should have no place in government (hah!), it has no place in the commercial world, either.

Comment History (Score 1) 519

by Peter Simpson (#47210785) Attached to: Teacher Tenure Laws Ruled Unconstitutional In California

"And the history teachers never bothered to mention the Germans and Italians that were in American concentration camps alongside the Japanese."

Yeah? My mother had an italian surname and she joined the Navy. The Japanese-Americans were shamefully interned, but I'd like a reference to support your claim of internment of German and Italian Americans. If you're referring to POW camps, the German and Italian POWs were, by their own accounts, well treated, well fed, and given the option to remain in the US at the end of the war.

Tenure in elementary and secondary schools makes good sense. Otherwise, the school administration. ever eager to save a buck, would lay off the older, higher-paid teachers, and hire new ones at lower wages. Tenure isn't what it used to be anyway, with teacher annual competency reviews and three-year recertification programs. Fail any of these and you're out. Tenure, correctly managed, retains older, experienced teachers, even though they cost more.

Comment Re:SHeriff Michael Gayer (Score 1) 875

by Peter Simpson (#47201567) Attached to: America 'Has Become a War Zone'

needs to go to a war zone for a few months.

Violence has been trending down for decades. This dumb ass just get a hard on with driving around in the military vehicle.

Plus he is in Johnson county doing Sheriff duties. Not anything close to a war zone. Using a few stories from the news to claim America is a war zone is so fucking stupid this guy should be fired.

Wait until he gets the fuel bill for the first month. Then, the first maintenance bill. The MRAAP is a white elephant.

Comment Re:I wonder about man hour figures... (Score 1) 264

The Office Ribbon UI was created because the Office UI needed a reset.

A "reset"? I was doing just fine with the old menus. I have no problem with a "reset" if that's what you want. But I'm more efficient when I use the UI I'm used to. So at least, give me the option of keeping the old UI. You can even make the new UI the default. Just leave me a way to use the one I'm used to.

The UI needed to change. It did. Most people who don't have an automatic rejection of any change prefer the new UI.

I have yet to meet one person who prefers the ribbon over the old menu system. Maybe they exist, but I haven't met them yet. If you want to talk about UIs that need to change, I present: Visio. Purchased by Microsoft from Visio and, to this date, the UI is quirky and out of step with the other Office products. And that's putting it kindly.

Office has had 20 years of adding features since then. Features that few could use because they couldn't find them, buried in menus and tool strips and everywhere else

I'm sorry -- is this a plus or a minus, or just a clear indication that Microsoft's Office development team has been badly in need of a competent UI designer for over 20 years?

Most office documents are now editable on the web and on the phone. That's kind of a Big Deal.

Maybe for you. I edit my documents on a wide screen laptop. I'll grant you that being able to share documents is a big deal, but you will never convince me that being able to edit documents on your phone is a major leap forward in anything but frustration and eyestrain.

Comment No. No. and No. (Score 1) 187

by Peter Simpson (#46998967) Attached to: Do Embedded Systems Need a Time To Die?
Our shop, up until a few years ago, included some n/c milling machines with very old PC-based controllers. They worked. It was sometimes challenging to find replacement hardware when a power supply or IDE hard drive failed, but once you replaced the failed part, the DOS-based controller software did what it was supposed to do, and did it reliably and repeatedly.

If the electronics had decided it was time to die, we would have had to replace the machine it controlled, as nobody made electronics and sensors for these old machines.

Comment Re:That's some crazy shenanigians right there. (Score 1) 303

IIRC, one of the permitted exceptions to copyright is interfaces. You need to be able to copy interfaces to produce code that's compatible with existing code, and that's why interfaces can't be copyrighted.

This is what happens when you have non-technical lawyers and judges trying to rule on technical matters.

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