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Comment Re:July 18th 2014 (obviously) (Score 1) 35

Well, Mr Anonymous Coward ...sorry I insulted your intelligence.

Though, I'm now stuck here struggling to determine who's post was more pointless, yours or mine.

But whinging aside, why leave the reader to do any arithmetic, it's just simpler to state it regardless how obvious/trivial it may be.

I believe most of us are capable of that trivial fucking bit of arithmetic.

Though, given some replies I've seen here on /. over the years, I'm not convinced.

Comment Re:Soon... (Score 1) 226

Really?

OSX has some very annoying 'features'

Finder - that's the worlds worst GUI ever, must it really be so difficult to go up a folder, can't afford a button for that?

Keybindings - why the hack did they swap ctrl for option - I use 3 machines every day Linux, Windows and OSX and every time I use that damn mac I need to reset my muscle memory for my keyboard. Don't bother mentioning changing the key bindings as I've tried every trick in the book and while it works to some degree it is not applied consistently across all apps so then you have a 'what key do I use in this app' dilemma (which is even worse).

Default dock behaviour is awful. Can't easily see what apps are open, clicking on an icon (terminal for instance) will wizz me to a different workspace and focus all my open terminal instances when I wanted a new instance (yes I know I can right click and select 'New Window', but that's just awkward).

Sure some of these annoyances could be worked around but regardless - by default OSX is a PITA to use in a mixed machine environment. /rant

Comment Re:Or maybe it works the other way arround (Score 3, Informative) 57

I think the reference to the placebo effect it the users belief that the system can understand their emotions and not about if, why or how the devices fail.

The author also seems to suggest that the study/awareness of the placebo effect is only routinely used in medicine, but it's the one of the reasons why double blind tests are used and they are used in many industries besides medicine, including computer science.

Comment Re:Time to abolish patents (Score 3, Interesting) 73

Is that really reality though? I'm not convinced that reality would play out this way. The inventor has the advantage of being first to market, this gives a significant advantage and allows them to establish a market for their brand. Brand etc all has value, and being first to marked and establishing a brand continues to give the inventor an advantage over the competition. This also encourages the inventor to continue to innovate to remain ahead of their competitors - which is a natural motivator for innovation.

People will invent and will innovate regardless of if a patent system is in place or not - I think that the concept of "recoup your costs" is probably better described as "making an absolute disproportionate shit load", and this is half the problem with our world right now - organisations don't want to recoup costs, they want it all, every dollar, every person has and the patent system is just one more tool that is being wielded to achieve that goal.

Sure there will be cases where this doesn't fit well, but there are also many cases where the current patent system doesn't fit well. It's not simple choosing which way is best.

Comment Re:Time to abolish patents (Score 3, Insightful) 73

This is a fair question, and perhaps I would think differently in this position. I'm not in this position so my view is not tainted by my greed.

So my view is based on what I see as the better situation for the greater good of all, and I'm giving little to no consideration to any individual (be it a person or other entity).

I could also counter with the converse argument - consider I had an idea that could yield me a couple of thousand dollars a month but I can't due to a patent issue then ....

Comment Re:Time to abolish patents (Score 4, Interesting) 73

Agreed - as the situation is right now it seems that everyone except lawyers would gain from abolishing patents. The large patent holders just seem to be passing (and passing through lawyers) penalties to each other. There seem to be no net gain for the parties on either side. Abolish patents and it's almost business as usual except for the lawyers.

I know this is an exaggerated assessment but from an outside observer, it's not that far from the reality I see.

Comment Re:Who's at fault for this? (Score 1) 231

As an Android user (and I dislike Apple for various reasons that have been covered to death here) I must give Apple credit here - they do seem to have done it correctly from the start.

It does seem Android included encryption in 2.3.4 but I was unaware of this: http://www.howtogeek.com/14195...

It seems android does have full device encryption (not enabled by default). It also has an option 'Clear storage' which "Clears credential storage of all contents resets its password"

I'm glad that Android is no longer lacking here.

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