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Comment Liability (Score 3, Interesting) 175

Who wants to be the first developer to get sued when your program doesn't dial 911 (perhaps because there is no signal)? Who wants to be the first developer sued because it got the location wrong?

Way too much liability potential. IT is too important a thing to mess up, and you can bet that something will mess up eventually, and the developer will be blamed, regardless of whether or not they are actually responsible.

Comment Re:Good... alternatives are better (Score 2) 314

Just a quick note... sugar cane ethanol costs about US$0.22 per liter to produce in Brazil, or about US$0.83/gallon.

IF E85 was less than $2/gallon, it would be viable to use, but since E85 has about 80% of the mileage rating as "regular" gasoline, I think it has to be even cheaper per mile to buy, since I am trading fuel range as well for the cheaper biofuel alternative. I might be willing to make more gas station stops for cheaper gas.

The last time I calculated it, it was still more expensive per mile to buy and use E85 in my car.

Comment Good... alternatives are better (Score 5, Interesting) 314

Switchgrass, Sugar Cane, and Hemp all provide more sustainable, easier-to-convert alternatives to creating ethanol, which, even with the subsidy, was more expensive per mile to operate vehicles with when made using corn.

These alternatives cost about 30% less to convert and are easier to grow.

Comment Not just Windows 8 (Score 3, Interesting) 94

Actually, I heard he hates Visual Studio 2012 even more. Something about using bland, similar monochromatic icons tends to bother people who work with image processing and innovate the field using all that wonderful color information in those images.

Same difference though... some idiot exec at Microsoft has decided the world needs Fisher-price Playschool operating systems and development tools.

Comment Re:Feminist Programming Language (Score 2) 575

Ludicrous rantings that apply sexism to tools deserve scorn, satire and parody.

Are there "Feminist" wheels?

A better (but still stupid) question might be: Are languages Anglo-centric? At least we could make some sort of case and fluff up enough flowery academic language and references to make it stick - and yet it would also be pointless.

Programming languages only deserve to be criticized in terms of their ability to produce usable software, measured by productivity, ease of learning, flexibility, and robustness. Anything else is simply inane rambling.

Comment 45mph? (Score 1) 961

I doubt they lost control at 45mph. 145mph, probably... on a city street.... pretty much any car is dangerous in that situation.

Speeding in most cases isn't dangerous, but reckless driving is, and three times or more than the speed limit is certainly reckless.

Comment Consumer vs enterprise tape technology (Score 3, Interesting) 267

I've worked as a tape monkey in a large facility (Camp Foster RASC, Okinawa, circa 1989-90), so I know tapes do work well in the enterprise, but my experience with tapes in the consumer space in the 90s was anything but good. 90% of the tape backups made (using several different formats) using consumer-grade systems were corrupt and worthless.

We took great care with the tapes, but when we checked them (thankfully never needed them, except one occasion), they were mostly all bad.

Optical isn't much more reassuring as a backup media, given that optical discs tend to degrade over time.

If somebody has a tape system that can store terabytes on a cartridge, reliably, for say... $10/TB or less, and the system costs less than $200, I'd look at it, though. Otherwise, it is still more worthwhile just to use hard drives to back up data (even at their inflated prices)

Comment Seriously? (Score 1) 245

Strangest of all was the ability of infected machines to transmit small amounts of network data with other infected machines even when their power cords and Ethernet cables were unplugged and their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards were removed.

This is as far as you need to read. Geez, Clearly this virus has infected the system and re-written power management subsystems to utilize the CMOS battery to provide enough juice, probably reprogramming an EEPROM on the I2C system to execute code and infect other systems.

Was this article written by a Hollywood screen writer? Who is going to star in this one... Willis? Bullock?

Comment Re:No media server support upsets me (Score 1) 312

My Samsung TV and blu-ray players work great with a variety of DLNA servers; the iPad, XBMC, WD Media players, Android media players, and LG products also have worked great with a variety of DLNA servers. The problem is entirely Sony's - and I suspect it is more a matter of Sony standing against people who have their own private media servers and the implication of "piracy" rather than anything technical.

My main server runs TVMobili on Kubuntu Linux as a DLNA server, but I've played with some others.

As for the PS4, I'm passing on this generation. I'm putting together a nice gaming HTPC to leverage my family's vast Steam libraries. I'd like to dual boot Windows 7 and SteamOS. I'll have the benefits of a hacked console (emus & other activities) and be able to eat in to my large backlog. If I needed to, I could also use it for accessing the media library, but as I said, the TV handles it fine without any problems.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 5, Informative) 277

Except in this case, it is an Islamist who beheaded his wife for "cheating" on him. ...AND it managed to get 2500 likes on Facebook. Way to go , Facebook, that sure looks like condemnation.

I guess restricting beheading videos would be considered racist.

Meanwhile, posting pictures of a girl's head and elbows while she's in a bath, suggesting (only to the lame Facebook censors who have never seen an actual naked woman) boobies will get you banned.

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