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Comment NSA Clearly Violated Contitution (Score 1) 698

The NSA clearly searched without probable cause. This is what happens when create an organization without checks and balances. If we have any justice in this country arrests will be made.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Comment We Still Need Cheap Processing Power (Score 1) 453

As someone who does a lot of 3D modeling, and who has done professional graphics and game development, I am worried because affordable, powerful systems may become out of the reach of the average person. Cellphone and tablet chips, generally have 1/10 of the processing power than can be found on a desktop computer. You may be able to draw a few lines and rotate a few objects on tablet, but in 3D CAD can be quite demanding. Machines have parts. Circuit boards have traces. Processors have a piece of silicon with lots of little blobs of stuff on it. All of these add up to a difficult problem for even tablets. HD video editing can be demanding.

Beyond the hardware, so little is expected from even tablet software. Is it really a miracle if we can cut and paste? Could you run an entire business on your tablet, a tablet that could have 300 times the processing power than a desktop of the 1990's business system? The problem here is we expect too little. As an example, PhotoShop Touch cannot even edit a 24 mega pixel image from a $500 Nikon D3200 entry-level DLSR camera, but PhotoShop, PaintShopPro or the Gimp could do that an a netbook.

Cellphones and Tablets, Android and iOS are application-centric, not document centric. When we work, we often need to exchange information between programs, and that is not easy to to on iOS. In Android, every program has it's own weird file chooser. We don't have proper shared font folders for these, in fact they tried to get rid of the parent/child folder/file metaphor, which is fine of you never plan to organize anything using a computer.

So many cell/tablet centric computers a married to the cloud so tightly, that you cannot work if your connection is slow, goes down, or something bad happens. The sobering part is: a war or natural disaster could mitigate any productivity of cloud users by offering a single point of failure. Please don't put all of your eggs in one or someone's basket.

What we needed was one OS that worked on "devices" and computers, the difference being than one CAN work autonomously, and they other is a new metaphor for a old idea, the dumb terminal. Microsoft screwed up Windows 8, twice. They should have never made XP into Vista, and now it's too big, let that be your coffin nail. Windows 8, was not about doing the work that was needed to be done, it was about using the code you had. Apple's has tried integration, but remember, Apple likes application centricity. Gnome tried so hard, but we want a 2 pane file manager. We want to use this stuff for desktop applications. Mint chipping undermining Ubuntu Linux throne, suggests that we still want a command bar. We still want multiple window. Where would you have been in your life, if you never compared anything to anything else?

Are we becoming a world of chattering people who can't do anything creatively with one of the greatest machines ever made?

[Lately, I've been having problems even finding laptops with dedicated GPUs. The Intel Integrated GPUs do not seem to have a full OpenGL implementation, and the going gets slow when you need just as much CPU as GPU.]

Comment Not Getting It (Score 1) 117

First, the "beach bums" invented surfing as you know it.
Santa Cruz seems more organic than many of the neighboring cities. It's more family-like. Yes, there are poor people there; but many of them are creative and artsy.

The relationship between "pot smoking" and counter-productivity is bullshit. Forget your stupid antiquated corporate policies, because drugs may in-fact fuel some of the creativity in this area. Even Apple would not have been where they are without some drug use. This is the land of Aspies, and some of us are screwed together just a little too tight to be creative programmers and engineers, yes--without drugs.

In the end, the initiative just looks like an attempt for companies to exploit Santa Cruz's cheaper land, meanwhile, there are so many empty buildings in San Jose and up the peninsula.

Comment Democracy in the United States has Died! (Score 3, Interesting) 331

Of all the things I have seen the US do to its own people,this is one of the most appalling! The United States cannot function without the oversight of its people. The people who did this should be arrested and charged with treason, but that is indeed the problem in the first place. Those few people who systematically worked to undermine the spirit of the US Constitution and The Bill of Rights, are now scared. They know that they must try to fight not to lose their power over us.They know that if they lose, they might go to prison, and I hope with every fiber of my being that the do lose their power, that they do go to prison. No citizen is safe, no freedom cannot exist in the climate they dare to make for us. Please stop them. Please help do something if it is only what each one of you can. Help in your own way, but please help.

Comment Guild Wars 2 Happened (Score 2) 523

I feel that WoW lost a lot of customers to Guild Wars 2. Over 2 million people bought GW2. It seems reasonable that some of them had to have quit WoW.

Lately, Arenanet (Guildwars maker) has been tormenting its players at the endgame, reducing Tier 6 drops, implementing: if you can see it, you are already dead champions (adversaries), such as the Champion Raiths in Orr, so people will probably make an exodus for Guild Wars 2, someday, too.

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