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Television

Netflix: 'Arrested Development' Won't Crash Our Service 127

Nerval's Lobster writes "No, the latest season of 'Arrested Development' won't fatally crash Netflix, despite comedian David Cross's tongue-in-cheek comment that the series will melt down the company's servers on its first weekend of streaming availability. 'No one piece of content can have that kind of impact given the size of what we are serving up at any given time,' a spokesperson wrote in an email to Slashdot. Although 'Arrested Development' struggled to survive during its three seasons on Fox (from 2003 to 2006), the series has built a significant cult following in the years following its cancellation. Netflix commissioned a fourth season as part of a broader plan to augment its streaming service with exclusive content, and will release all 13 new episodes at once on May 26. Like Facebook, Google, and other Internet giants, Netflix has invested quite a bit in physical infrastructure and engineers. It stores its data on Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), which offers a significant degree of durability and scalability; it also relies on Amazon's Elastic MapReduce (EMR) distribution of Apache Hadoop, along with tools within the Hadoop ecosystem such as Hive and Pig. That sort of backend can allow the company to handle much more than 13 seasons' worth of Bluths binged over one weekend — but that doesn't mean its streaming service is immune from the occasional high-profile failure."

Comment Re:Yeah Right (Score 5, Insightful) 542

3. #2 also applies to gays. They should have a right to live how they wish like everyone else. They don't deserve the special privileges or attention they get from the left.

What special privileges do you suppose liberals are trying to get for gays. The right to marry the person of their choice just like a heterosexual can?.

The special privileges granted to married couples. How about we just do away with those entirely? Allow people to form whatever family units they want. Don't give special tax statuses. Allow inheritance under uniform rules. Allow whomever somebody wants to be involved in medical decisions.

Recognizing gay marriage perpetuates the problem; the real solution is to de-recognize marriage as a special state of being. Just let people make their own decisions.

Comment Re:And... it's gone (Score 1) 636

No need for nukes with North Korea, anyway. They will easily be flattened by conventional missles. They are effectively defenceless and have a tiny infrastructure. Any war with them with missiles would be concluded before you heard about it on Slashdot.

Certainly before the third time we heard it on Slashdot, anyway.

Comment Re:Wrong lesson... (Score 1) 1111

Sounds like Ruby Ridge.

When Weaver refused to become "a snitch," the ATF filed the gun charges in June 1990, also claiming Weaver was a bank robber with criminal convictions (those claims were false: at that time Weaver had no criminal record and the subsequent Senate investigation found: "Weaver was not a suspect in any bank robberies.")

Comment Re:Assault Rifles (Score 1) 1435

By the definition given in 26 U.S.C. 5845, there is legally no distinction between full-auto as you have described and burst:

(b) Machinegun
The term “machinegun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.

Assault rifles, by definition, are selective fire: they have a semiautomatic and some form of automatic mode. The term "assault weapon is a misleading term deliberately crafted to take advantage of the confusion between assault rifles and cosmetically-similar semiautomatic-only rifles.

Comment Re:So Proud of Gun Ownership (Score 1) 1232

It's actually illegal to buy a gun outside your State of legal residence unless:

1) it is a private sale, not innvolving a licensed dealer (you want to buy a gun from your uncle, no problem, you go into a gunshop, no sale)

or...

the sale is executed through a gun dealer local to you. I had to do this once when I saw a really sweet Mauser hunting rifle while traveling. Only way to actually buy it was to arrange with the gunshop that had it to ship it to a gunshop local to where I lived, and do the actual sale there. And pay sales tax twice, essentially, plus dealer markup twice.

If you're going to give legal advice, you should get it right. Your first option is, in fact, a Federal felony--you have it exactly backwards.

It is illegal to buy a gun from a private seller outside your state of residence. If the owner is not a resident of your state, he must send it to a licensed (FFL) dealer in your state of residence, who can then transfer the firearm to you.

You can buy a long gun from an out-of-state FFL, so long as it would be legal for you to make the same purchase from an in-state FFL. You cannot buy a handgun from an out-of-state FFL.

The only common exception would be for those buyers who hold Curio and Relic collectors' licenses, who may buy C&R-eligible firearms from out-of-state sellers and receive them directly. That's because the C&R license is, in fact, a limited FFL of its own.

Comment Re:Sorry, judges (Score 1) 218

Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure....

1) Applies in the criminal, not civil, context, and
2) Is not being breached in this case anyway. This is standard discovery, and the defense is quite entitled to discover evidence that would bolster its own case or impeach the plaintiff's.

Comment Re:This will cause a terrible precedent.. (Score 1) 218

It should be the decision of the plaintiffs to provide that information as evidence, not the position of the judge to order private information.

No. A thousand times no. Defendants have rights, and they should have rights. One of those rights is necessarily the right to obtain evidence necessary to mount a capable defense. Telling the defense "you can only have the evidence the plaintiff wants to give you" puts his defense at the mercy of the plaintiff (who, you will remember, is fundamentally adverse to the defendant).

Comment Re:Isn't this what Libertarians WANT? (Score 1) 627

Allow me to refine the statement, then. Speaking only for myself--though I suspect many will agree, I am not appointed as their mouthpiece--I've no problem with the government enforcing contracts. The issue is that the government has taken it upon itself to say that for this type of contract, we're putting very narrow qualifications on who is permitted to enter into the deal. Having such strict limitations is relatively rare, and in nearly all other cases, has been struck down as unconstitutional. Even in the same realm (marriage), we've struck down such restrictions as anti-miscegenation rules (see Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)). Outside of marriage, there are almost no restrictions on who can enter into a contract; the few that exist tend to center on capacity. Individuals are free to come as pairs, small groups, or very large groups, with structures to allow all to act as a single entity; to allow one to make binding decisions for the others; to own property in common; to share in gain or loss; etc. In fact, we even have a name for such coming-together:

Incorporation.

Comment Re:Are you a human being? (Score 1) 527

The Flying Tigers were active duty airmen, not volunteers. This made their flights against the Japanese an act of war by the US government against Japan, well before the actual declared hostilities.

The Flying Tigers were volunteers; they resigned their commissions in the US armed forces before taking the assignment.

Now, I'll grant you, the US government provided tacit support funneled through corporate intermediaries, including allowing the volunteers to leave the service, but as a matter of formality, they were not agents of the US government.

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