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Comment Re:Amazon Prime (Score 3, Insightful) 136

It doesn't matter if the Washington Post is personally owned or not - Bezos' personal fortune is dependent on both it and on Amazon.com, and he's the one calling the shots with both companies. So this attempt to use one of his companies to drive business to another of his companies shouldn't be surprising.

Comment Wow, seriously - that is annoying (Score 5, Insightful) 136

There were a LOT of those "buy it now" links scattered all through the article!

If I were a Washington Post subscriber, I might very well cancel my subscription over something like that - it completely breaks up the flow of the article. That's highly annoying.

Comment Re:Split (Score 2) 85

The cable ISPs that charge less for a TV plus Internet bundle than for Internet alone are part of the problem.

Yup. We were paying $135/month for a particular tier of Comcast's cable + internet service. We looked at going internet only, but for basically the same price ($70/month) we got internet, broadcast channels and HBO (and Discovery, but who cares). And it keeps my wife happy because she wants to watch all those cop and hospital dramas.

What's really maddening is how we got to $135 in the first place. It wasn't that long ago that our cable bill was closer to $80 for that same level of service. But Comcast kept pushing the cost upward... I think when they doubled the cable speed, called it "Blast!", and started charging $10 extra for it (without asking, of course) is what finally motivated us to act - they just throttle any services that extra speed would be useful for, anyway...

We are too far away from the central office to make DSL a viable choice, so Comcast is basically the only game in town. But I have toyed with the idea of testing T-Mobile's unlimited data plan in its place - if the Comcast price creep continues unabated, I might actually do it. If Netflix streaming works adequately, that'd be good enough.

Comment Pinochle (Score 1) 274

It's the one group game I get to play semi-regularly - my wife and I have been playing it with the same friends ever since we got out of college, back in the 80s.

When I was still in college, Cribbage, Hearts, and Spades were all very popular in the dorms.

I've always wanted to learn Bridge, but since I'm the only one in my circle with any interest - it's never happened.

Comment Re:Does fiber containing photons have current? (Score 1) 103

It's actual photonic capacitance causing the induced charge within the lining. Some recent research has been done into reducing the self-capacitance of synthetic cable sheathing, and counterpolarization of the cable's dielectric field has proven to be one of the more effective methods. The main problem is that it increases the impedance to an unacceptable level, causing ghosting. But using systemic impedance matching has been found to mitigate this effect.

Like putting too much air in a balloon!

Comment Re:begs FFS (Score 1) 186

Give up. Language evolves.

While I have made this same argument here on Slashdot numerous times - particularly when, a few years ago, people took umbrage because "hacker" was supplanting "cracker" - in this case you'd first need some supporting evidence that the phrase "begs the question" is actually changing meaning in popular speech.

As far as I can tell, that is not the case - the submitter simply misused the phrase.

Comment Re:It's tinfoil time! (Score 5, Insightful) 232

What we really need - but will never have - is some sort of independent civilian oversight group designed to make sure these sorts of programs operate within some specific narrow parameters - with effective enforcement power.

Looking for passport fraud? Go ahead and look through all the passport pictures... as long as you immediately discard every single one that doesn't match.

Looking for a stolen car? Go ahead and use that vehicle-mounted license plate scanner... But you can't store any of the non-matching plates for even a second.

Comment Re:Next, Samsung (Score 5, Funny) 561

we demand that Samsung engineering department show us their diversity porfolio!

Samsung is proud to report their diversity numbers:

45% Kim
38% Lee
7% Park
6% Choi
4% Other

Samsung strongly believes in promoting a diverse workforce. We currently have a company-wide mandate to raise our Park percentage to 11% by 2018.

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