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Comment: Re:As an indie filmmaker... (Score 1) 187

by zippthorne (#43566953) Attached to: Hollywood Studios Fuming Over Indie Studio Deal With BitTorrent

Kickstarter is terrible advertising, because their discovery interface is not well designed. I've literally never found anything on kickstarter I was interested in that I did not already know about from other sources (such as here...).

I've tried to find stuff on my own, but I don't have the time or inclination to drill into one of their overly broad categories and browse through everything. You can't even do an intersection of categories like music and <my town> which should be a pretty obvious one to make available.

The most prominent stuff you can find is also the stuff that is already past the funding date...

Comment: Re:I'm not sure what his complaint is (Score 1) 164

by zippthorne (#43522409) Attached to: Former Diplomat Slams Facebook For Inaction On Fake Pages

If your principle is that you really don't want facebook to track you, the right way would be to not use facebook and if all possible ,block it as much as you can. If you are still going to allow them some tracking with the hope they cant puzzle together that its you, your principle really isn't worth all that much.

Also, you need to not have any friends who use facebook, or you'll get a "shadow account" created for you if you don't sign up....

Comment: Re:Already is regulated (Score 1) 385

by zippthorne (#43325077) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Should Bitcoin Be Regulated?

If you were using bitcoins for everyday purchases, you could potentially have hundreds of transactions in which you would have "realized the value" that you would then need to calculate your taxes on.

If you buy a sandwich worth of bitcoin, and a month later you spend it to buy two sandwiches, have you not realized gains which the government will feel ought to be taxed?

Comment: Re:I call bullpucky (Score 1) 170

by zippthorne (#43324977) Attached to: New Camera Sensor Filter Allows Twice As Much Light

Eh, even if he made up this usage case for discretizing, it's a reasonable interpretation of the word, especially given the context - take something that is continuous (say, the range of possible values a thing being measured) and transform it to something that is a series of discrete values (the actual measurement of that thing).

Communication happened in that post, and the use of the word in that context does not preclude its usage in other contexts with more precise meaning, so other communication was not prevented or limited by the connotations established. Does there need to be an issue over this?

Comment: Re:So do something about it. (Score 1) 525

by zippthorne (#43324473) Attached to: Fighting TSA Harassment of Disabled Travelers

That statement is true, but it fails to capture the real problem -

most people don't think that there is anything wrong with what the TSA is doing..

Perhaps they haven't read the constitution. Perhaps they have and think it's a reasonable tradeoff because 9/11 is such a powerful fear-button that they shut off rational examination of the issues in favor of rationalization.

I don't know the reason. I do know that I have yet to be able to convince one member of my extended family to even opt out of the rapey-scanners, and the argument I get back isn't that they're in a hurry. It's, "well, you gotta be safe." They think it makes them safe!

Comment: The Blame game pits us against ourselves... (Score 1) 161

by zippthorne (#43125907) Attached to: If Video Games Make People Violent, So Do Pictures of Snakes

Some tragedy happens, perhaps a mass murder like newtown, and people who want power come out and seek to use it to control people who are scared.

Perhaps the first thing they try is to invoke a visceral response to some aspect of the tragedy, the tools used, for instance. "Let's ban guns," they say, then the tragedy wouldn't happen because the perpetrator wouldn't have the tools (conveniently ignoring the possibility that a different tool would be used...)

Some recognize this for what it is - a manipulative power grab by people who desire power, for what checks the power of a government better than a citizenry who can convincingly chose not to consent to be governed. But they can be manipulated as well. They might be tricked into bargaining for their rights, arguing for whittling down rights guaranteed by the first amendment to stave off encroachments on the second amendment. "Oh, it must be violent TV shows and video games that are the cause," they might say, and talk about "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

So, now we can't bring water bottles and have to take of our shoes and treated like criminals when we want to travel any great distance quickly and safely, and we're talking about regulating minor tweaks to magazine size (is 7 rounds really all that different from the typical 10-round magazine?), regulating video games and movies (are books next? newspapers? blogs?), and giving law enforcement carte blanche access to our medical records.

We shouldn't put up with any of this. Don't let the bullies divide us up into camps all arguing that this thing is important, so it's ok to concede this "less important" thing to keep it, playing us against each other for their own benefit. That path leads to the irrelevance of the rights supposedly guaranteed by the 9th, 10th, and 13th amendments...

Comment: Re:Intractably horrible. (Score 1) 354

by zippthorne (#43100209) Attached to: In Defense of Six Strikes

Are we really better off with that? What benefit to the society was achieved?

Ironically, the answer is yes, in this specific example. The only situation I could find worse than every chain restaurant participating in the public embarrassment of their patrons by loudly singing a brief jingle is if every restaurant had the same awful song....

The difficult we do today; the impossible takes a little longer.

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