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Comment: Re:What 30%? (Score 1) 467

by Grokmoo (#35503316) Attached to: Scott Adams Says Plenty Would Choose Life In Noprivacyville
I would say most likely this is a combination of confirmation bias and the fact that they do in fact track what you are buying.

You only remember when you see the coupon around your wife's period, even though you are probably seeing them all the time.

I never claimed they don't track what you are buying, simply that they are not going to extrapolate enough from their data to be able to advertise lipitor based on how much beef you eat. This is a much bigger stretch than advertising hygiene products because you buy other, similar hygiene products, which I'm sure they regularly do.

Comment: Re:What 30%? (Score 1) 467

by Grokmoo (#35503228) Attached to: Scott Adams Says Plenty Would Choose Life In Noprivacyville
It is true that isn't illegal, just non-compliant. Which I don't think is a major point in this case since it is still something the merchant cannot do.

I'm sorry that the poster didn't have the time or inclination to look anything up, but without any sources or credentials one has no reason whatsoever to believe anything being written anonymously on the internet. Anyone can easily claim they are an authority on any subject.

Comment: Re:What 30%? (Score 1) 467

by Grokmoo (#35502728) Attached to: Scott Adams Says Plenty Would Choose Life In Noprivacyville
Considering how much mail I get at my house belonging to previous tenants I don't think you can assume that all (or even most) people have their mail forwarded. Also, how much junk mail have you gotten with "Address Service Requested" on it? I don't think I have ever seen that, as there is a charge. See here.

Comment: Re:What 30%? (Score 1) 467

by Grokmoo (#35502304) Attached to: Scott Adams Says Plenty Would Choose Life In Noprivacyville
You are being a little silly here. When you sign up for the card, they get your address so they can sell it to junk mailers. They do not, however, know your current address if you have moved since getting the card (and I'm sure many people have).

Storing your credit card numbers when you use them via a magnetic swipe is actually illegal, see here for example. So, supermarkets actually cannot store your credit card information.

And finally, the reason the supermarket wants your purchase information is to do analysis of demographics and to better optimize their business. They are not doing the sort of data mining that would allow them to sell you lipitor based on how much beef you eat. You have absolutely no evidence to back up that assertion.

Comment: Re:Hmm... (Score 5, Informative) 256

by Grokmoo (#35063124) Attached to: Android Passes Symbian As Most-Shipped Mobile Platform
Despite the title, what this article is actually referring to is smartphone sales. That does not include iPods or iPads.

What I find interesting is that despite essentially doubling their iPhone sales since the middle of 2010, Apple is now already a distant second to Android in terms of sales and smartphone market share. This situation is especially remarkable when you consider where Android was 2 or even 1 year ago.

Comment: Re:Not Wikipedia's job to be a first publisher (Score 4, Insightful) 240

by Grokmoo (#34938066) Attached to: Wikipedia and the History of Gaming

There is no requirement that something be written about in an academic source to be included in wikipedia. Any reputable source will generally do, including newspapers and magazines in most cases.

Any game that had a substantial influence shaping the development of gaming is worthy of inclusion. That doesn't mean that it won't be difficult to find good sources to back up the argument that it was in fact influential.

Comment: Re:There is still long way to go (Score 1) 410

by Grokmoo (#34026980) Attached to: The Android Invasion Cometh; Is Resistance Futile?
That's interesting. Most of the non-geek people I know who still have iPhones are planning to switch to Android when their contract is up. I also know a number of people who have already switched and are much happier than they were with the iPhone. There is a whole family of non-geeks I know who have switched directly from the iPhone to the HTC Incredible and are loving it.

As an Android end user, I must say I haven't experienced the "endemic" reliability issues you are talking about. I think your sentiment that Android is "years and year behind the iPhone" is years and years out of date.

Comment: Re:More realistic? (Score 1) 326

by Grokmoo (#31190898) Attached to: <em>Civilization V</em> Announced For This Fall
There are several advantages if you think about it. One important property of hex tilings is that as you make the hex grid finer and finer, the distance between two arbitrary points on the grid approaches our standard (Euclidean) distance measure. Square tiles do not have this property. (Think moving diagonally; no matter how fine the grid is it is always faster to move diagonally than horizontally or vertically.

Another advantage is in combat; forming defensive or offensive lines will work better as the distance between a tile and any adjacent tile is always the same. In the context of Civ, this also makes a lot more sense for things like the city radius.

Overall, it is just a much better system.

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