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Comment Yes, duh! (Score 1) 437

There is very little point in an autonomous car in which you 'have to be on the alert' and 'be ready to take over in case of a possible accident'. You may as well be driving yourself. The point of an autonomous car is to take away the requirement you pay attention to the road to free you up to do other things, i.e. read a book, watch a film, have a nap, stare out at the lovely scenery in the distance, have a beer, none of which are possible if you are required to be able to take over if something goes wrong, you simply wouldn't be able to switch context quickly enough, so the car will have to deal with any emergency itself.

So assuming we're talking about the only type of automomous car which makes sense, no license should be required as no driving skill will have any impact.

Comment I have a Sony Blu-Ray player (Score 5, Insightful) 477

The picture quality is excellent and puts the streaming alternatives to shame. But every time I play a film that I've bought legally from a reputable shop, they treat me like a dirty, stinking pirate. I get shown lots of warnings and there's lots of unskippable propaganda sequences, I've even seen unskippable ads. Even worse, the player shows an obnoxious "this operation is illegal" when I attempt to skip these things and this warning requires an extra click to get rid of. I love buying a real physical disc and watching proper quality video on my TV, it feels much more like a proper movie night, but they were testing my patience from day 1 and this patience has run out.

The lesson as I see it: don't treat your legitimate customers like criminals. The first thing pirates do is strip these obnoxious warnings.

Comment Don't bother remembering most passwords (Score 2) 288

This should be the first thing you tell your mother or Aunt Tilly [tm].

If you do the occasional shopping, email and Facebook usage you only really need to know one password; your email account. The others can be stored in your browser/app or reset if you ever forget. Having to do a password reset before doing your "once-a-year" ordering of photo-books is a minor inconvenience compared to having to remember loads of different passwords or worse; using the same password for all sites.

Teach Aunt Tilly [tm] the typical password-reset procedure and tell her that she doesn't have to remember these passwords, so there's no need for the password to be simple.Shopping sites really should move away from using passwords anyway. They can store a token in your browser and perform a reset using your email address if you're using a browser without the token. They can also do periodic resets of the token.

Just make sure that Aunt Tilly [tm] knows that there is one password that needs to be GOOD and she needs some way of remembering it; her email account. Having access to your email account would give criminals many great ways of screwing you over, since they can reset nearly all your passwords that way.

If she really can't remember a complicated password, then writing it down on a piece of paper in her house is much less likely to cause her trouble than using "mathilda" or "whiskers" as her password.

Comment Re:It's a design problem, not materials. (Score 4, Insightful) 195

It seems like most of the IPhones I see have broken screens, but other phones only rarely.

I'll counter your anecdote with one of my own. I've seen dozens of iPhones in the hands of friends and co-workers. Only one of them ever had broken glass (the back panel) and that was in the hands of one of the biggest drunks I've ever known.

You simply only notice what you want to notice.

Comment They've received EUR 140 in contributions (Score 1) 157

It may not produce many flying cars, but it may pay for a few rounds of drinks! And thankfully they use flexible funding, so they'll get their bar bill covered even if only four people have donated so far.

From the page:
"This campaign will receive all funds raised even if it does not reach its goal. Funding duration: March 31, 2014 - May 15, 2014 (11:59pm PT)."

Comment Re:XP users don't care (Score 1) 245

Home users either won't know how or won't care to bother. Most people I know who are still running XP have been virus-infected for months or even years. As long as it lets them play YouTubes, check their gMail, and surf Crackbook they just flat out don't *care* that the machine is infected.

I hear you, but I hope they just might care if someone grabs their credit card and bank details, or much worse; their PC gets turned into a file server for child porn and they have to defend themselves in both the proper courts and the courts of public opinion.

Comment Very sensible decision. (Score 1) 1746

I know the overwhelming majority of posts here seem to be about this being a sad day for freedom of speech. But nobody has taken away Mr Eichs right to speak.
A large group of users (and donors) have, however, made it clear that they may want to excercise their right to use and donate to whatever they want, and Mr Eichs campaigning and donating to remove people's rights may impact on that decision.

Given that Mr Eich was the CEO and not some low-level employee, it is much harder to separate his personal beliefs from that of the organisation. Furthermore, a lot of donors may be uncomfortable with the idea that their donations may well go towards funding campaigns for anti-Gay legislation. Yes, that is always a possibility as employees of an organisation are allowed to do what they want with their salary, but nobody would be as well-enumerated and as public as Mr Eich.

Comment Re:False premise (Score 2) 379

I believe most of your arguments have been answered by other posters... except this one:

Finally, who wants to hire somebody they know won't be working more than a few more years?

What is the difference between hiring a good 60 year old and good 25-year old? You will probably have the 60 year old for 4-5 years. The 25-year old will leave after 2-3 years for greener grass elsewhere. If you really want a steady hand who will stay for a long while, hire a 50-55-year old with grandchildren nearby and target extra incentives to make them stay longer. I'm not talking about throwing money at them, but rather things like 5 days extra holiday a year and the option of an unpaid sabbatical. 50+ year olds are likely to have seen it all and knows better than to jump ship whenever something fancy comes along. As long as they feel valued and well treated they are more likely to stick around.

Comment Re:What are these shiny discs you speak of? (Score 1) 250

While I get what you are saying, the difference in quality between Blu-Ray and Netflix/OtherStreamingServices[tm] is quite astounding. I completely agree that Streaming is good enough for most purposes, but if you want to watch a high quality picture on a top quality TV, then the streaming services don't yet cut it. That is a reason to (sometimes) collect physical media.

But the amount of films I'd care enough to have on physical media is severely limited. When Sony fought tooth and nail against HD-DVD to make Blu-Ray the "Standard" optical HD-format, I expect they thought they'd be able to milk that cow a bit longer.

Comment Oh good. (Score 1) 212

Now the "for sale" list will be an utterly useless way of finding a good deal because it will be filled with spam and god awful "freemium" games from the publishers. Every game will be continuously "on sale" and if Valve has any rules against this, the publishers will use the same tricks high street retailers use to always advertise a sale even in countries with marketing laws regarding sales (i.e. introduce a product at a ridiculously high price so that they can then advertise it at 50% sale the next week).

Comment Re:Unregulated currency (Score 1) 704

"You do not need to use an exchange"

If you actually want to use your bitcoins for anything, you probably do need an exchange. You obviously don't have to just use one exchange and store all your bitcoins there perpetually. If you still believe in Bitcoin, store your bitcoins yourself and only transfer a portion of them to an exchange when you want normal currency.

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