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Comment Re: In other words (Score 1) 305

  1. It's not their land.
  2. They are not sovereign.
  3. And I never understood the deal with fighting for culture.
    That's like fighting to ensure your kids believe the same thing you do. With violence. The same argument is made when Christian folks bemoan the lack of church attendance. You don't have a right to force your meme's down everyone's throat, but that's what 'defending culture' means. It means you want the guarantee that your children will believe the same thing you do by removing dissenting beliefs. It's bullshit.
  4. I'd like to clarify that I don't think Hawaiian culture is bullshit. But the method of promoting your culture by forcibly removing other viewpoints is a shitty tactic. If your culture is worthwhile people won't need to be coerced into practicing it.

Comment Re:Not so fast, ... (Score 2) 203

You are making assumptions about laws and construction. The simple solution is to have part of the 'bulb' be the crosswalk. Have the lines for the crosswalk start ON the bulb (say, on the wheelchair pedestrian ramp) and then you have a safe place to stand where cars must legally stop for you.

Now I'm not in San Diego, so I have no idea if this is part of their plan or what their laws are. I'm just saying that even with your example law there are simple, safe solutions.

Comment Re:And so, what is wrong with this? (Score 4, Insightful) 83

I think it's more that a group which claims to be focused on external threats, and uses tactics that few would be comfortable using on citizens of their country, is focusing mostly on standard internal issues which are normally the purview of the regular police.

To put it another way, when I use my handgun to deal with an armed intruder to my home nobody would think ill of me. If I use that handgun to deal with my disobedient teenager then it's an entirely different issue. Even if the teenager is (for example) stealing from me just like the burgler was trying to, it's not an acceptable response. We have acceptable means to deal with our children, and a handgun is not on the menu.

Similarly, using DDOS, propaganda, and blackmail on your own citizens is not the appropriate response even if we may condone it against foreign nations in limited circumstances, just as we condone (at least in the United States) the use of handguns in limited circumstances.

Comment Re:$2b / 9m users (Score 1) 80

While I agree it's probably an overvaluation, I should point out that valuations also take into account the likely future growth of a service. Github is the dominant repository site, and still growing. Other repositories are being out-competed and shrinking or shutting down. If you put a valuation of $100 per user (more reasonable) with an expectation that they will double in size in the next few years then the valuation is understandable.

Comment Hyperbole (Score 5, Insightful) 73

Kasperski must characterize the malware as ultra-advanced, targeted, government hacking. Otherwise they look like fools for being penetrated.

I'm not saying they are lying; I'm saying there is no way to tell, because their success as a company depends on them assuring everyone that they can competently defend against ordinary malware.

Comment Swapping (Score 1) 130

Like a wife swap. Just two of you, and it's quite possible the swap won't be fun because at least one pair doesn't hit it off. But bring 10 couples together and the chances of finding a way to pair everyone up so that they have a good time is a lot better.

You know. In theory.

Comment IPv6 Breaks some Java Apps (Score 1) 595

A problem for some students at my University is an inability to access content in Java. The Applet loads fine (the browser does the fetching), but as soon as the applet runs and tries to access content it can't go anywhere or get anything. Disabling IPv6 fixes the issue. It's not just one Java applet from one vendor either; three separate Java based tools from different vendors fail for these users, and all three work when IPv4 is made the primary protocol.

Other than that hiccup though, I've seen surprisingly little issues with IPv6 in the past year. Hoping we get transitioned fully to IPv6 as soon as possible, though I'm gonna miss troubleshooting with easy to type dotted quads.

Comment Why Skype? (Score 1) 225

I don't understand how Skype grew to such dominance in the ip communication field while being such a bad piece of software. I've been helping users improve their computer's abysmal performance by uninstalling Skype for years.

What does Skype do better than everyone else? Why is it so popular? Is it just the network effect, or does it have actual good points to offset the bad?

Comment Re:Diversity (Score 4, Informative) 287

Your comment is absolutely true. But that's not the whole story... in a study a few years back, "applicants with white-sounding names were 50% more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black-sounding names." This is a real problem that affects minorities, so while preferential treatment is also a problem the biases have to change quite far before it's likely that minorities are getting actual preferential treatment.

Comment Re:Attempting with existing title was a mistake (Score 4, Informative) 239

Way to not pay attention. Valve took 30%. Bethesda decided they deserved 45%, and left 25% for the mod maker. 30% is Valve's cut on nearly everything, so this is not unusual or odd. If Bethesda had taken 20% that would have left mod makers with 50%, and the outcry would have not been there. If Bethesda had decided to forgo a cut in order to sell more copies of the game, everyone would have been cheering the 70% cut that mod makers received.

Should Valve have anticipated that 25% to makers would look bad? Yes. Perhaps they should have refused to roll it out with that initial revenue split. They certainly should have put better moderation tools in place to control graft and mod theft.

But the idea of charging for mods is completely fine; we've been doing it for years already with games like Dota and TF2. What's a community created hat? It's a mod that you pay money for.

Comment Re:The same as ever: Android (Score 1) 484

what ever happened to cell phones getting smaller?

Phone's stopped being just 'a phone' and became 'a primary device'. When it's also your email device, gaming device, note taking device, etc then you want a bigger screen. However, there are a lot of great, long battery life, small phones still being made... for under $99. Don't get a flagship device if you just want a phone.

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