Comment Those prices look fine to me. (Score 1) 569
I'm currently paying around $80us a month for a land line and 100Gb of 8M-bit broadband.
Comment Re:Helmets should be required! (Score 1) 947
Or even, by actually having real driving skill requirements and every 3 years a required road test, for cyclists.
They have to obey the road rules, but are never tested on them...
Comment Re:Unfortunately I have to side with the Scouts (Score 1) 289
http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Licensing/Protecting%20the%20Brand/Boy%20Scouts%20of%20America%20Trademark%20Listing.aspx
They have to defend their trademark, or they will lose it. IMHO, "Hacker Scouts" is confusing and when I first heard it I thought it was a Scout-related computer group.
They have a trademark on "* Scouts"?
Baden-Powell would be surprised...
"* Scouts of America", I could understand...
Comment Re:I don't get it. (Score 1) 336
Consider the prospect of flash mobs with guns.
They're called armies.
Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops 1029
Nerval's Lobster writes "In June, Steven Spielberg predicted that Hollywood was on the verge of an 'implosion' in which 'three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing to the ground.' The resulting destruction, he added, could change the film industry in radical and possibly unwelcome ways. And sooner than he may have thought, the implosion has arrived: in the past couple weeks, six wannabe blockbusters have cratered at the North American box office: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger.' These films featured big stars, bigger explosions, and top-notch special effects—exactly the sort of summer spectacle that ordinarily assures a solid run at the box office. Yet all of them failed to draw in the massive audiences needed to earn back their gargantuan budgets. Hollywood's more reliant than ever on analytics to predict how movies will do, and even Google has taken some baby-steps into that arena with a white paper describing how search-query patterns and paid clicks can estimate how well a movie will do on its opening weekend, but none of that data seems to be helping Hollywood avoid shooting itself in the foot with a 'Pacific Rim'-sized plasma cannon. In other words, analytics can help studios refine their rollout strategy for new films—but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck."
Comment placebo (Score 1) 230
It sounds like placebos have just become far more effective in recent years...
Comment Re:Any real evidence for the flip side? (Score 1) 208
You can jab with a spear many times.
You can only throw it once.
Comment Re:nuclear war resistant (Score 1) 289
This company is probably the only one in the area that will still be operational in case of a nuclear war. that type of computing device is pretty much impervious to EMPs.
Ex MP's?
Jack Reacher may have something to say about that...
Comment Hero 1 & 2 vs 3 (Score 1) 232
The Hero 1 & 2 have legions of happy users.
The Hero 3 Black has some happy users and legions of unhappy ones.
I love my Hero 1 and have taken hundreds of hours of error free footage.
The only time it's borked was on a supposed 32Gb class 10 Samsung card that is probably not genuine.
Comment Call Don McLean (Score 1) 180
It's American Pi day.
Facebook Knows If You're Gay, Use Drugs, Or Are a Republican 473
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Not that there's anything wrong with that — as the Guardian reports that Facebook users are unwittingly revealing their sexual orientation, drug use and political beliefs– using only public 'like' updates. A study of 58,000 Facebook users in the US found that sensitive personal characteristics about people can be accurately inferred from information in the public domain. Researchers were able to accurately infer a Facebook user's race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality or political views (PDF) using only a record of the subjects and items they had 'liked' on Facebook – even if users had chosen not to reveal that information. 'It is good that people's behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed,' says Michal Kosinski, 'But what is shocking is that you can use the same data to predict your political views or your sexual orientation. This is something most people don't realize you can do.' For example, researchers were able to predict whether men were homosexual with 88% accuracy by their likes of Facebook pages such as 'Human Rights Campaign' and 'Wicked the Musical' – even if those users had not explicitly shared their sexuality on the site. According to the study other personality traits linked to predictive likes include for High IQ — 'The Godfather,' 'Lord of the Rings,' 'The Daily Show'; for Low IQ — 'Harley Davidson,' 'I Love Being A Mom,' 'Tyler Perry'; and for male heterosexuality — 'Wu Tang Clan,' 'Shaq,' and 'Being Confused after Waking Up from Naps.' Facebook's default privacy settings mean that your 'likes' are public to anyone and Facebook's own algorithms already use these likes to dictate what stories end up in users' news feeds, while advertisers can access them to determine which are the most effective ads to show you as you browse."
Comment Richard Pearse (Score 1) 267
And then there was Richard Pearse who flew 9 months before the Wright bros buy didn't consider the flight to be controlled enough.
Comment Re:What? (Score 3, Interesting) 267
It was only after there was competition from aircraft manufacturers trying to invalidate the Wright patent that all this prior art suddenly magically materialized. The Wrights never lost a case.
And since then, all planes have used wing warping for controlled flight.
Oh, hang on...
Comment Re:Spoofing sender e-mail address (Score 1) 47
Not just address book.
I had mail sent to everyone in my Sent Items too, so they were trolling all the folders for addresses.
Comment Re:Too Late (Score 1) 175
Paypal is pretty much your only option.
Especially if you want to sell online (imagine how online auctions go if you can't pay via credit card).
Very few auctions here give the option of credit card and of those about 0% offer PayPal.
Direct deposit to bank account number.No buggering about with chargebacks after the fact etc...
