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Comment Re:Alternatives to Mendeley (Score 1) 81

Can you explain that a bit further? I use Mendeley daily and am fairly happy with it, minus a feature here or there. For that matter, I don't understand what this article is on about. Yes, they were purchased by Elsevier. No, it hasn't affected their service. In fact, a few things, like the tablet client, are much better than they used to be.

Comment Re:Old? Old. (Score 4, Informative) 69

Australia has lots of weird animals. Hell, they've got moths down there that are as big as cocker spaniels. Animals that look like Jim Henson rejects. They've got freakin' yowies down there that make Sasquatch look like Pee-Wee Herman. I didn't actually see a yowie, but after I saw something that looked like a three-way cross between a rat, a jackrabbit and Dwayne Johnson, I don't doubt for a second that they exist. I went there a few years ago and visited a huge national park and it was like Land of the Lost.

I mean, it's a nice place. Nice people. They find out you're from Chicago and you won't have to pay for another drink. Great looking women. Good food. If it wasn't for the annoying accents, you'd think you were somewhere on the West Coast. But the wildlife, man. Way too spooky for me.

Comment Re:This is an effective strategy... (Score 2) 216

When net neutrality splits the Comcast network from the Comcast/NBC/Universal content, and Netflix has to compete for bandwidth on a level playing field, the money to create original content is going to dry up quickly.

Don't you have that exactly backwards? "Net Neutrality" has been the default. The new neutrality laws don't create a level playing field, they preserve it. Why would Net Neutrality and having Comcast separated from the content creators make it harder for Netflix? They're already paying for bandwidth. And Netflix users are already paying for bandwidth. And with the incestuous relationship severed, what would Comcast's incentive to screw with Netflix be?

Or do you believe we've reached peak bandwidth?

Comment Re:Golddiggers of 1933, Out of the Past (Score 2) 216

Oh shit. I just realized I made a grievous error, in attributing the "Trouble Man" soundtrack to Curtis Mayfield instead of its true creator, Marvin Gaye. Curtis Mayfield did the soundtrack for "Superfly" (which by the way, is also unavailable to stream from Netflix, those bastards). If you are unfamiliar with the Trouble Man soundtrack, go check it out on Youtube right now. You will come away understanding why Pharrell Williams is a punk ripoff.

I just stuck myself in the leg with a pen knife to atone for this terrible mis-attribution.

Comment Golddiggers of 1933, Out of the Past (Score 4, Interesting) 216

It's probably a good thing that companies like Netflix are making good original programming, but I've noticed that their catalog of classic films has shrunk significantly.

What I really want is a service like Netflix that is more Spotify-like, with an enormous catalog of old films, classic foreign films, art films, shorts, animation, etc.

I guess the fact that copyright trolls are scrambling to take old movies out of the public domain and congress has seen fit to extend copyright to ridiculous lengths makes that a problem. So even though I subscribe to Netflix, I find myself looking to torrent sites and the Internet Archive to scratch my film noir, King Vidor, Vittorio De Sica and Busby Berkely itch. Because sometimes Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve in "The April Fools" or Lee J Cobb in John Boorman's "Point Blank" is just what the movie doctor ordered. Sometimes, a creepy-as-hell Richard Widmark in the 1953 Sam Fuller classic, "Pickup on South Street" is preferable to watching Ryan Gosling try to create an expression on his face.

Hell, a little while ago, I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the 1973 blaxploitation classic, "The Mack" and learned that Netflix doesn't have it available for streaming (but you can get a DVD if you still use that legacy format). I mean, what the fuck. Who's gonna mess with physical media and snail mail just to watch a movie? Not only that, but they don't carry "Trouble Man" at all, and that has one of the greatest soundtracks ever by Curtis Mayfield.

In case you aren't familiar with cinematic masterpiece "The Mack", here's the scene where Goldy and Pretty Tony face off. Check the very young Richard Pryor: https://youtu.be/sdR_t5nsZqI

I'm spoiled because back in my university days, I worked as a projectionist at a revival house for seven years and got the most thorough education in film history one could ever hope for. But some of you younger folks might not know what came before The Avengers and Fast and Furious 7, and that makes me sad. Hell, the 1970s were a veritable golden age for independent films and hardly anybody gets to see those movies today. Even the "classic movie" channels on cable only play the same top forty old movies over and over again, never digging deep into back catalogs. There is so much cinema to be discovered. Don't fear the black and white or silent.

Comment Re:My B.S. Detector is Going Off (Score 2) 76

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Comment Re:Good for her! (Score 1) 143

Correct, the more time you spend with a given character/group the more opportunities you have to show them in a more favorable/humanizing light with examination of their motivations & history without explicitly trying to keep them looking evil & unbeatable the whole time.

"ZOMG the Dominion is going to conquer us! Wait... it's founders faced discrimination because of their form and decided to bring order to their part of the galaxy... maybe they aren't so bad?"

"Species 8472 is the greatest threat we've ever faced, how can we stop them? They are only fighting back against the Borg who struck first? Ok, I guess I can understand their anger"

Pick a race on Star Trek which has had more than a few episodes of backstory/examination and you see the same pattern.

Comment Oh Look, a Car Analogy for Last Week's Story! (Score 1) 649

Why don't the automakers just seek refuge under the DMCA from all those evil automobile hackers? Clearly, figuring out how your car works is a direct attack on the very hard work and property of those automakers.

Time to pass a bill state by state. I'm the sure the invisible hand of the free market will line all the right politicians' pockets to rush those through. Hopefully someday we won't be able to own our cars and we can go back to the Ma Bell days when every phone was rented.

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