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Comment Re:Overblown nonsense. (Score 4, Insightful) 99

Here's how you clearly put something in within the law: (1) You declare it public domain. (2) Now, keeping it there: You simply exercise a level of ethics even a 5 year old understands: You don't go back on your word, because (for one thing) that would make you a major fucktarded scumbag.

That doesn't work. Maybe a year later you get sued for something and the court orders that your copyright be transferred to the person suing you as compensation. Or you go bankrupt and your copyright is sold to your creditors. Or, instead of being sued, you die and the copyright goes to your heirs. And the new owner doesn't consider himself bound by your word.

Furthermore, even if none of that happens, it's still not equivalent to public domain because even if you keep your word, someone who wants to use your work has no way to read your mind and know that you're the kind of person who keeps his word. So he has to act as if you could withdraw permission at any time even if you never would.

Comment Re:Defaults (Score 1) 2

This is a bad idea.

1) This would teach users that when they are redirected to a page that offers malware cleaners and antivirus choices, they should download and install one. Most such pages are frauds, and the user won't understand the difference between the ISP sending them to the page and a banner ad or phishing email sending them to a similar-looking page,

2) Given the way that ISPs are actually run, encouraging ISPs to detect malware will lead to ISPs just detecting and banning all sorts of unusual activity. The ISP has probably not heard of a user running Linux, for instance, and would not care if all Linux users were detected as false positives or disconnected for refusing to run Windows virus scanners on their Linux boxes. And it's unlikely that the ISP has staff who would understand a Linux user's explanation of how his box is not actually running any malware.

3) If this was put into practice on a large scale, I would expect that shortly, the MPAA or similar groups would try to tell the ISPs that all torrenting is dangerous, malware-prone activity and should result in cutoffs.

Comment MP3 players? (Score 1) 391

I really wish I could find a decent MP3 player that is not a "purity of the original signal" type $1200 scam, and was not discontinued years ago.

The usual advice is "buy a cheap phone and don't use it as a phone". This fails because

  • most of them have horrible battery life (the 33 hours for this sounds fairly decent, if only it wasn't $1200)
  • there are so many models of phones out that it's hard to find a good selection of reviews for any specific one
  • They tend to have random gotchas (for instance, there are phones which don't let you use the non-phone features until you activate it as a phone)

Comment Is there a point? (Score 1) 110

From the linK:

It uses a low cost micro-controller and an emulator to

If you want to use an emulator, you don't need one of these. Just get a tablet with an HDMI connection, or an Ouya, or a jailbroken Wii.

I was wondering if this implements the Spectrum in hardware the same way the Commodore 64 direct-to-TV did, but apparently not.

Comment Re:This isn't new... (Score 2) 155

I believe the Ferguson rioters were left-wing. And they were certainly trying to use violence to terrorize people for political purposes. Of course, you could always be loose as to your definition of terrorism on the right and not so loose on the left. And Moscow didn't need to fund them, but they still count as left-wing terrorists by your overly loose definition.

Furthermore, since you went back to 1995 for the Oklahoma City bombing, I can point out the rise of ecoterrorism, and the Discovery building shooter.

Comment Re:Well then, let her be a princess (Score 2) 584

That is stupid. By this reasoning, if the girl really did want to be a scientist, the dad should make sure she understands the drudgery of working in a lab to 4 AM, how difficult it is depending on a grant application that could leave you out of a job, and how most scientific discoveries are of small things that would be as boring to a kid as political boundaries and court etiquette.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 2) 584

Also, related is a simple fact: most kids, of whichever sex, aren't going to want to be scientists You probably can't get your daughter to want to be one even ignoring that different sexes are interested in different things, because "scientist" is not something that most kids want to become. And even for the few kids who want to be scientists, it's a pretty good bet that at age 4 they know as much about what a scientist does as they do about what a princess does.

This is a variation on "how can I get kids interested in (various nerdy interests of mine)", except it's dressed up in social justice phrasing. Fifty years ago he'd have been trying to get his kid interested in Westerns or Beatles albums.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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