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Comment Google's attourneys should be kicked out of the ba (Score 3, Insightful) 56

They had the gall to say their illegal invasion of privacy was OK because their was no financial harm?

By that logic, some freak could put a camera in their shower - or worse their KID'S shower and not get punished.

Yes, I know that much of the Internet based business hates privacy and tries to pretend it doesn't exist, but that is the enitre reason why we put those laws in place.

Comment What we need... (Score 4, Interesting) 331

Is punishment for writing bad contracts.

Right now - with minimal punitive effects - the system encourages people to over-reach when writing such contracts, in the hopes of intimidating people from using their legal rights.

This effect, rather than a few rare extreme punitive tort cases (i.e. suing because the coffee is too hot), is why we get said contracts and why we have to sign away our rights whenever we decided to go say white water rafting.

Comment Rhyming variable names (Score 3, Funny) 298

Yes, that is the key measure of how good your code is.

If you have no rhyming variable names, then your code sucks. 1 stars

If you have one or two, it is barely acceptable. 2 stars

Half rhyme, then 3 stars.

If most, but not all, rhyme, 4 stars.

If every single variable rhymes with at least one other variable, you have a great job, 5 stars.

To get the coveted 6 stars, all the variable names have to rhyme with each other.

Comment Wasn't there a study that proved this was good? (Score 5, Informative) 326

I can't remember where I saw it, but someone did a study comparing booth babes to trained senior citizens and the senior citizens did MUCH better job, resulting in greater sales and great callbacks.

The conclusion was that Booth Babes brings traffic - who don't end up buying, while blocking the people that are actually interested in your product.

Comment Love how they avoid the things humans CAN NOT DO (Score 2) 177

The anti-driverless car always love to bring up the situation that they think the human handles well, but the computer does poorly - the given example of hitting a pedestrian vs a family in a car. This of course ignores the fact that 99% of the time humans have no idea if the car has a family in it, or a single neo-nazi.

But the self-driving cars ARE capable of hitting the breaks quicker and more reliably (avoiding skidding) than a normal human would

Think about it if it were the other way around - what if humans were crappy about deciding to hit the pedestrian but computers had incredibly slow reflexes and took ten times as long to decide to hit the break. Given that example we would laugh and say no way would we let anyone with slow reflexes drive a car.

But we already do that - we let human reflexes drive a car - (Even if they have had one drink 30 minutes ago, slowing them down). The question is not and never has been will computers be perfect drivers. Instead the question is will they do

  • better than humans in most situations.

And that is something that we likely can do within the next couple of years, if we can't already do that.

So stop being obstructionists idiots bringing up the rare/never seen in the real world situations, and talk about what actually happens.

Comment Major problems with the question, not the answer. (Score 2) 47

Part of the problem is the difference between true medical and general consumer products. Medical products are for a small, select group Most people will never need an Epipen, but that doesn't mean they are not very useful medical devices.

This makes it very different from regular apple products that are geared to everyone.

But the real problem is that "Apple Watch" is basically VAPORWARE right now. They announced the general program, but without enough details. No one knows what it is so no one has any business even asking if it is a medical device, let alone a useful one.

Comment Internet - lite (Score 5, Insightful) 79

What exactly does Facebook have to offer the New York Times?

The NYT already has a website, and as bad as it is, it still is ten times better than Facebook? Basically the advertisement for Facebook should read:

Do you have no idea how to make your own web page - even using squarespace?

Can you not figure out how to mass email your friends?

Are you clueless about how to find free free games on the internet?

Does the idea of signing up for a blogging site scare you?

Does the laborious process of signing into and out of websites bore you?

Does the idea of locking yourself into a relationship with a company excite you - particularly because all your friends use the same company and they force outsiders to have an account before they let them see your stuff?

Then FACEBOOK IS FOR YOU For the low low price of your giving up privacy, you too can simulate the basic internet skills that every single American should be taught in High School.

Comment Re:What's in the bill? (Score 1) 886

The constitution does not just restrict the government, it does occasionally also specifically restricts people. For example, it prevent certain people from becoming President of the USA. But that is mostly a side point.

The main thing you seem to misunderstood is that the US Constitution restricts what the government can do, but also ALLOWS the government to do certain things. Things like shutting down a business that refuses to serve black people, Jews, or gay people, etc.

But most importantly, you are mis-stating the problem. What is going on here is a bunch of prejudiced people are insisting they have certain rights when they do NOT have that rights. Religious rights are the rights to worship as you wish, they do NOT have the right to do engage in business as they wish. You can't go around claiming that your religion gives you the right to chop people's heads off.

In this particular case, the reach is EXTREME. The religion they claim to worship has no clear and concise ruling for homosexuality. It certainly does NOT mention selling anything to gays, let alone wedding related gear. The religious duty they claim is unwritten, just a matter of personal beliefs that is NOT shared by the majority of people that have that religion. They have not issued a re-written bible, clearly stating their claim. If you won't re-write your holy book to add your so called religious duty, then either you are not serious about the claim or you are not serious about your religion. On top of that, no such claim among Protestants was made until AFTER the law was passed (although one of the ancient roman Christian Emperors did outlaw gay marriages and murdered existing couples). It's not something protestants have been doing since Martin nailed his notice to the door, nor do modern Catholics allow it. Their claim for 'religious' is highly suspect.

But most importantly, this so called religious right violates laws that were not designed or written to oppress the religious people. It is legal to outlaw beheading and cocaine and you can't use "religious right" to over-ride that law. You can only use 'religious right" to over-ride a law that does not make reasonable exceptions.

The reasonable exception for a gay wedding is to sell the cake, but refuse to do an inscription and refuse to sell a cake topper with two men/women.

These idiots don't want to do that, they refuse to be reasonable. They want the right to refuse to sell a cake that looks like a wedding cake to someone that is gay because they MIGHT possibly use it as a wedding cake.

Comment Re:cause and effect? (Score 1) 262

The proper response to "we can't sell w/o data" is to say. "Well, Mr. Cashier, put in George Bush for the name, and your own address and phone number. Unless you don't think the sale is worth your information?" If he refuses, then tell him to use the store's address and phone, and Robbie Shack as the name.

Comment Re:Countries without nuclear weapons get invaded (Score 1, Insightful) 228

I always laugh at the "war for oil" people.

Do you know what the first war for oil was? World War Two. Japan wanted the oil in the Philippines, but the US owned them. So they (almost simultaneously) attacked the Philippines and the US Navy base in Hawaii that let the US protect the Philippines. That is simple history. The US proceeded to defend both ourselves and our allies (The Philippines).

That same pattern - 1) someone evil SOB who hatefull kills innocents, wants oil, so they attack an ally or pre-emptively attacks us for allying with them, 2) the US defends itself and our ally. 3) some idiot complains about 'war for oil' - continues to this day.

Do you still think "war for oil" is a bad idea?

The US has never, not once, invaded a country for oil and minerals. The idea that we have started a war for oil is just plain stupid. We are simply far too smart to do that kind of stupidity - not when we can so easily and cheaply have the CIA start a coup (which we did do in Iran).

Comment The hot linked stuff turned out to be worthless (Score 1) 68

1) Computer software can not create clever hotlinks, it takes a very clever human to do it (not just a good writer). This is expensive to pay someone to do, but a computer CAN put a picture of side-boob and put a clickbait headline on anything. Guess what we end up having...

2) Hotlinks for things you don't want to read about are annoying and make it harder to read.

3) People and computers can however, easily link dictionary definitions, which a) the intended target of an article find extremely annoying (see point 2 above) but b) do allow non-specialists to read specialized works (such as scientific papers and legal documents). But the specialist/intended target are the major market so this is rare.

4) You can always Google/wikipedia search in a separate window, without annoying the knowledgeable people.

That is, when writing something that casually mentions casu marzu, it takes a lot of effort for the writer to hotlink to an article about casu marzu and most people do not want to read about it. So they don't hotlink to it. The few people that do want to know what casu marzu is can quite easily google/wikipideia it. (Note I warn you do NOT search for it unless you absolutely HAVE to know, it is just a disgusting type of food.)

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