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Comment Re:Flat UI Design (Score 4, Insightful) 165

Clearly you are not the only one. The flat UI seems to be the hot idea among UI designers and I am sure that they are all impressing themselves with their work. But, to me, as a user, it is just a gratuitous change that does not contribute to the UI's usability. And, to my kernel s/w engineer eyes, it, for the most part, doesn't look as good as what it is replacing.

I wonder how long I will be able to get by with OS X Mavericks.

Comment Legitimate engineering uses (Score 4, Interesting) 98

Apple is often prone to adding capabilities without thinking through the security implications. But this researcher should do some more research into what constitutes legitimate engineering uses.

From TFA:

“Some of this data shouldn’t be on the phone. HFSMeta creates a disk image of everything that’s on the phone, not the content but the metadata,” Zdziarski said. “There’s not even an engineering use for that.”

I can imagine plenty of legitimate uses of just metadata. For example, the old iOS backup mechanism basically took a snapshot of everything and something like HFSMeta could be used to identify the files that have changed so only those files are backed up.

Comment Re:Free market economy (Score 1) 529

>we had enough regulation already, look where it got us.

To the most economically, technologically and military powerful nation the planet?

America only started falling off once Reagan and Clinton started busting unions, signing free trade treaties, giving amnesties to illegal aliens and deregulating wall street.

Actually, no. America started falling off in the late 60s.

Comment Re:What the senator is really saying... (Score 1) 529

Unless you are Native American, you are a foreign worker too.

My most recent immigrant ancestor came to North America in 1869.

How many generations of ancestors have to born in an area before their descendants can claim to be native to that area?

There is a good chance that the people living in a particular area in North America when the Europeans arrived are not descendants of the very first people ever to inhabitant that area. Were they foreign as well?

Comment Re:Black box data streaming (Score 1) 503

However, how often are black boxes not recovered?

After the AF447 crash, there was a push for real-time flight data. However, the people who argued "the flight data recorder was recovered 90+% of the time, so it is unnecessary" ultimately won the argument. I had a link to a story about this from back then, but I can't find it.

Meanwhile, I found this link to a NY Times article that was written before the post-AF447 real-time flight data discussion was settled. It seems that we keep having the same discussion over and over again.

Comment Re:Black box data streaming (Score 1) 503

If you are referring to MH370, no, it didn't. There were roughly hourly handshakes initiated by the ground station and a final handshake initiated by the aircraft (likely when it ran out of fuel).

Here is a report on flight MH370 done by the Australian Transportation Safety Board that describes how the search area was established - ATSB Search Area report. The analysis of the satellite communications starts on page 17.

Comment Re:Hi speed chase, hum? (Score 4, Insightful) 443

Did you read article? The police had given up on the chase before the guy crashed the Tesla that the final time.

According to the source, "the pursuit was terminated because there wasn’t enough time or police resources in the area to catch up with the vehicle." It didn't help that the pursuing officers were involved with a minor collision of their own.

Comment Re:Actually makes good sense (Score 1) 702

I hope that you aren't referring to MH370. What happened on the flight is unknown and some kind of terrorist action is only one possibility. If it was an act of terrorism, without confirmation that it was terrorism, it failed to accomplish a primary goal of terrorism, which is to create terror.

Why is killing a couple hundred people on a plane an attractive option when there are easier ways to kill more people in a way that gets more publicity?

Comment Re:I love getting into strangers' cars (Score 4, Insightful) 273

What's with this obsession with licensing?

The skills that one has to demonstrate to get a commercial drivers license is higher than to get a regular car drivers license. Same goes for a motorcycle license. Why shouldn't one need to demonstrate a higher level of skills in order to be allowed to get paid to drive other people around.

I don't trust Uber to verify that their drivers have the skills needs to drive me around safely. Uber's background check that somehow missed one of their drivers was a sex offender.

Comment Re:Families come first (Score 1) 370

It takes a couple of years experience to become good and productive.

I was productive at my first job out of college after a month. My group has hired a lot of new grads in the last year or so and they have all gotten up to speed pretty quickly.

Google and Microsoft has fucked up hiring for everyone with their idiotic interview questions

See, the fact is companies have no clue how to get the best.

Both of these are very true.

Comment Re:MacBook Air 13 Inch (Score 1) 702

I had a 12" Powerbook G4 that I sold a couple of years ago. It was just too slow to running the applications that I needed to run.

I still have a Powerbook 540c (from 1995) that I play SimTower on. I also use it as a serial console for my collection of Sun lunchbox systems and Axil 320 SPARCstation 20 clone. They still all still run (despite PROM battery failures), but I don't use them frequently.

Comment MacBook (2007 model) (Score 1) 702

My primary work laptop is a 2007 MacBook. When the time came that the company would buy me a replacement, Apple products were no longer on the list of corporate approved laptops, so I have just continued to use the MacBook. It has been pretty much trouble-free. Had to replace the battery and the power adapter and that's it.

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