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Comment Re:Not that new (Score 1) 59

I was just thinking that same thing. A reasonably titled 'cloaking device' would need to actively camouflage an object from detection. Limiting not only the viewing angle but also the viewing distance makes this more like an optical illusion or magic trick than the practically useful device the name cloaking device confers. A board covered in glue, then covered in dirt, being used to cover a hole in the ground could technically be called a cloaking device with such a ridiculously broad definition. Maybe more so as nearly any above ground distance and angle would still result in the cloaked object not being perceived.

Comment Re:I dunno about LEDs, but CFLs don't last (Score 1) 602

Have you actually stepped into a hardware store this decade? Look at the packaging and you can find dimmable versions of led's and cfls. You may lock yourself out of choices by only wanting a certain wattage equivalent or temp color but they all have soft white and in multiple wattages. I have three different dimmable CFLs and one that does three different wattages in a touch lamp.

Comment Re:Only geeks... (Score 1) 125

Whoever modded you up as Insightful has never done any real manual labor. I worked at Home Depot for a few years and had to fill in as a loader a few times. That's hundreds of bags of concrete on to carts for people every day,(or 10 skids, 42 bags per pallet in a six hour shift). That's 80lbs, (36-37 kg), over and over, all day long. And reading TFA really didn't give any kind of impression that they were being used as often as that. While the idea of the exoskeleton has been awesome since Ripley first jumped into one, we are years away from anything that will even come close to replacing your average construction worker for strength and ability. That prototype suit has trouble dealing with slopes of any kind, slippery surfaces or can't assist with turning. The key point there being that turning while carrying a heavy load is the quickest way to a bad back. Even at 20kg you're asking for trouble if you turn the wrong way or repeatedly. Add to that the fact that using this prototype suit actually keeps your core from getting use it seems like it will make those types of injuries even more common for the wearer. Until they fix that its a pipe dream for long term use. Sadly, at best, that article is a few years too soon.

Comment Re:Tag, you're it! (Score 1) 184

Wait, so just because Israel has modern guided missiles they should just stand by while Palestinians get their killstreak up? So its ok that the Jews have had their schoolkids and babies killed by hundreds of suicide bombs because they have better weaponry? Palestine's mission statement was officially, and still is unofficially, that every single man, woman and child Jew must die. Their suicide bombs, that were officially sanctioned by their government, were not targeting military installations. They targeted malls and public places, during the day when women and children were the most likely targets. Bummer for them that they are too stupid to not fire 50's era unguided rockets at a nation with a modern arsenal.

Comment Re:Tag, you're it! (Score 1) 184

Except the SA farmers weren't sending thousands of rockets into Britain and aiming them at civilian population centers instead of military or government targets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
That's just so far this year. I am in no way absolving Israel for their part in this mess but they didn't just one day decide to lock everything down in Palestine on a whim. Until Palestinians want to live more than they want to hate they will continue to allow their neighbors to fire rockets blindly into Israel.

Comment Re:Time Shifting? (Score 1) 317

I thought it used the cd player that was designed to play cds to do this? Or is there a completely separate drive that I missed in TFA? It seems exactly the same to me. A drive meant to read disc based media in order to translate that data into sound can also take that data and store it on a local drive.

Comment Re:Damn I used to like southwest (Score 1) 928

I think these kinds of stories are awesome. Fuck people. Seriously. Fuck them. Working for years in a customer service position made me sick of most assholes and their entitled bullshit. If he had a legit complaint, great. Voice it then sue the shit out of them for taking you off the plane. Once I was promoted a few times it didn't take long for me to give up 65k a year to do something else because of guys like that.

Comment Re:666 (Score 1) 753

Its more likely to be a hard sell to the millions of poor people who don't have bank accounts at all. Or try convincing banks to start allowing people to have checking accounts with less $1500 in them without no fees. Where I live there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck that can't even begin to think about opening a bank account because all of the banks around here demand a minimum amount in the account in order to keep it open without charging you out the ass in fees. Because of that we have tons of places that charge even less to cash checks and most people stick with cash and money orders.

Comment Re:Most qualified and motivated candidates? (Score 1) 435

And even if someone took that as being fact, it should still be irrelevant to a publicly traded company. I just left a large company with its head up its ass when it comes to hiring. I was told, as a manger, to try and hire more women and blacks, then was threatened when the best of those bunches were unable to perform at the same level as the white men they replaced. I couldn't care less about the supposed 'plight' of either group. I went to a high school that had around a 30% percent graduation rate. I went to college and didn't get a race or sex based scholarship. My tuition was paid by working during high school and all through college. To want better for myself and having been forced to work for everything I've ever had makes care nothing for people that claim they could be the best if only some benefactor would step in and pay their way. The math I look at is what are the percentages in the QUALIFIED pool? How they get there is of no concern to the company.
You say that a company hiring whites is mathematically denying itself the 'best and brightest' but put forth bullshit math to back it up. I would counter with parents that choose a criminal lifestyle, walk out on their children and do absolutely nothing to nurture them are not capable of producing the best and brightest children as their offspring are almost guaranteed to have the same traits as the parents. If they were the best and the brightest they would look around themselves and use all of those bad examples as what not to be. Some of the people I went to HS with did just that but most of them decided fuck it, I'd rather have a $150 pair of shoes than pay my phone bill. How many people riding around poorer neighborhoods in cars with $3000 sets of rims and tires have a college fund set up for their kids? How many of those kids will grow up living the same selfish lifestyle?

Comment Re:It happens every day in my job. (Score 4, Insightful) 593

I was a manager at Home Depot for years and can tell you they do the same thing. When I got hired we had a man as a regional manager who didn't give a shit what race or sex you were. He hired the best people he could and our team became the envy of the entire company. We literally wrote the book on how to do our jobs better and most things considered 'best practices' came from our regional team at some level. Then his boss was changed to a woman who decided their were too many white men in our region things got really bad. When hiring the last three lower level managers under me I wasn't told if candidates were nearly the same, I was told I HAD to hire more females and minorities. After giving interviews for three months, and finding zero decent female or minority candidates, my new regional manager pulled me aside and basically accused me of being a racist and a sexist. I was told I had two weeks to fill the position or someone would be found to do it for me. The best of the bunch was a black woman who had been an HR department head. I had to fire her six months later for theft and was then blamed for hiring her in the first place. I ended up leaving HD because I got tired of the stupidity. At every level of the company they have gone off the rails. Management at the upper levels of the company have decided that anyone but a white male should be hired and most of the time that means not hiring the best candidate. Men are more physically capable of doing the bottom end jobs so more men are hired for those jobs. When it comes time to hire for their boss should I hire one of them who knows every aspect of his own job plus most aspects of his boss' job or a female who knows nothing about either position as an outside hire? In nearly every case it was better to hire from within but that meant I was a racist and a sexist for thinking people most capable of doing the job were the ones I should hire.

Comment Re:Lock-in? (Score 1) 589

This is why I have little regard for 'free' or open source software. If somehow ego could be removed, these programs might have a chance of one day being usable. The issue I see is that too many of these developers start out with 'fuck ms' I can easily make a free version of this. What their arrogance always misses is that MS didn't become MS by releasing half-assed programs. They put more time and money into help systems than most of these open source programs put into their entire projects. And its always the small things that they decide aren't a priority in their quest to change the software landscape that ends up making nearly everyone but fanboys run from their products. Its funny that people are actually trying to argue with you about this. The cornerstone of every successful program is whether or not enough people who want to use your product actually can use it. Without a basic help system you can throw that software into the garbage. If the help system is junk AND there isn't a single person in that entire organization working to fix it, the entire organization is garbage. People saying its widely known that the help is junk is even more reason to stay away from anything coming from that group of developers.

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