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Comment Re:seems simple (Score 1) 1219

by Desirsar (#34728210) Attached to: 'No Refusal' DUI Checkpoints Coming To Florida?

...someone who read a biased article and didn't watch the video. I had the same opinion going in until I saw it - a little girl throwing a tantrum who didn't want to be touched by ANYONE until they gave her back the toy they took away to be x-rayed at the security checkpoint.

Yes, the Israelis have a better system. They rely on logic rather than "morals", and therefore have no problem profiling, like the US should still be doing in many things that it is no longer "politically correct" to do so. If you don't profile, everyone is a suspect, and that wastes a lot of damn time and pisses off a lot of people. If you profile, you get a few mouthy people with a victim mentality who embrace a culture, fashion, or attitude that matches the profile by choice, and they should generally be ignored - the trick is that you then have to let these people pass once your logic says they're not the droids you're profiling for...

Comment This reminds me of that episode of Star Trek... (Score 1) 146

by Desirsar (#33982482) Attached to: Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant

(Since I was just watching the season 2 DVD again today...) Unnatural Selection, the hyper-aging virus one.

Makes me wonder about the possibility that all allergies are transmitted this way, rather than being entirely genetic. You are, after all, spending a lot of time around people to whom you are related, presumably when they are exposed to allergens. Their cells responding to the allergen may spread to you through normal exposure and contact, not entirely dissimilar to the way hormones can, and train your cells to respond similarly. This would require, of course, that the two people are predisposed to "sharing" allergen responses.

Damn, I should have gone to college for biology instead of sports commentary. You don't get to come up with fun theories like this in sports.

Comment Windows 7 was my idea. (Score 1) 931

by Desirsar (#33783978) Attached to: 66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP

I thought to myself, "Windows 7 should run any piece of software written for DOS, or any version of Windows 95 through Windows 7, without having to install additional software, emulators, or configure anything specific to that program... and then, it just worked!" Windows 7 was my idea.

Sadly, none of us will ever see that commercial on TV. If an OS does not run all of my software, on the same hardware, either more reliably or faster, I have NO reason to upgrade. Hell, they won't even be able to get close to "killer app" for me, as I won't even buy new consoles until I know there are more than two titles out that I am interested in. (The only time I've broken this rule with myself was for a 360, racing wheel, and Forza 2, and that's not even a fair example as I knew more titles I would play would come out for it, in addition to the incomplete backward compatibility.) Aside from a new game genre or blend of genres, it's not like they can come up with a completely novel piece of software that everyone will want to have - everything that can possibly be done already has been done and will run on XP.

Comment Re:Never heard about the complaining sites. (Score 1) 178

by Desirsar (#33486366) Attached to: Texas Opens Inquiry Into Google Search Rankings

I Googled "comparison shopping" myself, to see if I'd heard of any of the results, as I never use third party comparison shopping - I go to retailers that I know carry the item I want, and do my own comparisons! (If I don't know a retailer that carries an item, I Google it, and generally get a company I already know, but didn't know carried the item.) For reference, I knew none of the sites mentioned in the article.

I recognize Bizrate, I would not use it. I recognize Forbes, but... they do comparison shopping?? comparisonshopping.com and shopping.com are to be expected, wouldn't use either of those. 20 some results down is Pricewatch, which I look at for base prices, but have never bought an item because of a listing on that site. If I were actually looking for a comparison shopping site, I would have given up at this point, and just gone back to my usual method, and having the sites mentioned in the article nearer to the top would not have gotten me to visit them, never mind use them. Maybe they should try buying some radio and TV ads and a few billboards around the US, and then complain that they still aren't getting ranked in Google in spite of their traffic. (Or... gasp and shock... PAY GOOGLE FOR AN AD!)

I guess the one site found it a better use of their money to start a non-profit that lobbies for legislating their rank in search engines rather than using it to pay for advertising. Not saying that any of this fixes his logic, but people searching for businesses of any kind in Google want the "somebodies", and you're not going to be ranking as a "nobody". Search engines aren't there to prop up your traffic, they're there for new people to find the sites that the old people are already going to.
Google

Google Says It Mistakenly Collected Wi-Fi Data While Mapping 215

Posted by timothy from the just-accidentally-of-course dept.
Even if Google says there's nothing to worry about, newviewmedia.com writes, the company "said it would stop collecting Wi-Fi network data from its StreetView cars, after an internal investigation it conducted found it was accidentally collecting data about websites people were visiting over the hotspots. From the WSJ article: 'It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open [i.e. non-password-protected] Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.'"
Image

The Parking Meter Turns 75 Today 126

Posted by samzenpus from the thanks-a@#hole dept.
nj_peeps writes "75 years ago Carl Magee filed a patent application for what would become one of the most hated inventions in history: the parking meter. From the article: 'Magee's brainwave was to install a device that had a coin acceptor and a dial to engage a timing mechanism. A visible pointer and flag indicated the expiration of the paid period, meaning you either had to move, put in more money, or face the wrath of the local constabulary. The design continued largely unchanged for more than 40 years.'"
Science

Using Infrared Cameras To Find Tastiness of Beef 108

Posted by Soulskill from the i-use-a-fork dept.
JoshuaInNippon writes "Might we one day be able to use our cell phone cameras to pick out the best piece of meat on display at the market? Some Japanese researchers seem to hope so. A team of scientists is using infrared camera technology to try and determine the tastiest slices of high-grade Japanese beef. The researchers believe that the levels of Oleic acid found within the beef strongly affect the beef's tenderness, smell, and overall taste. The infrared camera can be tuned to pick out the Oleic acid levels through a whole slab, a process that would be impossible to do with the human eye. While the accuracy is still relatively low — a taste test this month resulted in only 60% of participants preferring beef that was believed to have had a higher level of Oleic acid — the researchers hope to fine tune the process for market testing by next year."
Robotics

Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other 115

Posted by Soulskill from the this-can-only-end-well dept.
quaith writes "Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate. The authors point out that this confirms a proposal by Alan Turing who suggested in the 1950s that building machines capable of adaptation and learning would be too difficult for a human designer and could instead be done using an evolutionary process. The robots aren't yet ready to compete in Robot Wars, but they're still pretty impressive."
Image

US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum 1324

Posted by samzenpus from the come-get-you-some-learnin dept.
A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
Apple

iPad Is a "Huge Step Backward" 1634

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-needs-rights-anyway dept.
An anonymous reader writes "FSF's John Sullivan launches the Defective by Design campaign and petition to rain on Steve's parade, barely minutes out of the starting gate. 'This is a huge step backward in the history of computing,' said FSF's Holmes Wilson, 'If the first personal computers required permission from the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple's famous Super Bowl ad.' The iPad has DRM writ large: you can only install what Apple says you may, and 'computing' goes consumer mainstream — no more twiddling, just sit back, spend your money, and watch the show — while we allow you to." What is clear is that the rise of the App Store removes control of the computer from the user. It makes me wonder what the next generation of OS X will look like.
Government

FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Blocks BitTorrent 303

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-of-course-it-does dept.
master_p writes "The FCC's formally issued draft net neutrality regulations have a huge copyright loophole in them; a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 — simply by claiming that it was 'reasonable network management' intended to 'prevent the unlawful transfer of content.' The new proposed net neutrality regulations would allow the same practices that net neutrality was first invoked to prevent, even if these ISP practices end up inflicting collateral damage on perfectly lawful content and activities."

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