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Comment Re:Online International Newspapers (Score 4, Informative) 163

I suspect it's an attempt to replicate the Wall Street Journal model. The Wall Street Journal business/finance reporting, especially focused on the New York exchanges, is not generally replicated among mass-market newspapers. And it constitutes genuinely valuable work-related information to certain people who also have employer-provided expense accounts, these people go ahead and subscribe, and the subscriptions are paid by their employer as a business expense.

The Washington Post at least had (I don't know if they currently still do) a reputation for doing detailed nuts-and-bolts political/policy reporting on the US Federal Government in depth that nobody else matched. That is similarly genuinely valuable work-related information to certain people who also have employer-provided expense accounts, who will (presumably) then go ahead and subscribe, the subscriptions are paid by their employer as a business expense.

The Buffet-owned papers are, according to the article, going to go with "local, local, local stuff." Which is to say, the theory is the subscription will be worth it for the stuff that you can't get from a general-interest international paper. I'm more suspicious of this model; it doesn't have the advantage of the expense accounts. But it does at least try to sell something other than AP wire reports.

Comment Re:one way to increase windows 8 adoption (Score 5, Funny) 255

What was Microsoft thinking? Thinking had nothing to do with it; they had no choice.

See, Windows 98 SE was followed by Windows Me, which sucked more.
Windows Me was followed by Windows XP, which sucked less.
Windows XP was followed by Windows Vista, which sucked more.
Windows Vista was followed by Windows 7, which sucked less.

Windows 7 accordingly had to be followed by a "sucked more" release.

Comment Re:Doubtfull, Google won't make a stand (Score 2) 350

Given how Google handled the French-language press in Belgium, and that they've already said they'd stop indexing French news sites if required to pay, I think it's fairly obvious that they will make a stand.

Indeed, the current major complaint from the French government is that saying they'll de-index rather than pay is "threaten[ing] a democratically elected government."

Comment Re:Is this Sufficient? What else could you want? (Score 1) 255

Mere source code disclosure is worthless as proof of trustworthiness, and has been known to be worthless to that end to everyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject ever since Ken Thompson gave his Reflections on Trusting Trust speech 29 years ago.

The real question is, given anyone who knows anything about the subject knows the source code disclosure proves nothing, why did Huawei offer to disclose the source?

Comment Re:careful what you wish for (Score 1) 419

Google expects publishers sit quietly by while they scrape larger portions of their content than just a few sentences to put under search result links, and instead use it in services like Google news where increasing people might get all of the content they need and never visit the source sites; which is crazy.

You know how I know you have never actually used Google News?

Comment Missing the whole point. (Score 2) 866

you are not allowing him that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at

Right, exactly. Because, see, K-12 education is not about having your kid do really well at things. It's about instilling a modicum of basic skills and understanding. This is why the kids who suck at math still have to take math, and the kids who suck at writing have to take English, et cetera. A public speaking class won't teach him anything about how the most powerful approach to discovering knowledge humanity has ever tried works, and a multi-science survey course will do so much less effectively than a single in-depth look at one science.

Not that he's likely to actually learn anything given your attitude, but, at least it's a better chance than if you were being allowed to make the decisions.

Comment Re:we've taken (Score 1) 111

Sure, if you selectively ignore the second half of the sentence, and artificially narrow the comparison to only Soyuz, you can pretend the first half is deceptive.

But, since you so strongly object to number of people killed, let's instead count merely by number of fatal in-flight failures. The Shuttle has had 50% of all fatal in-flight failures in the history of spaceflight, and 100% of all fatal in-flight failures in the last forty years.

Comment Re:we've taken (Score 1) 111

we have intentionally interjected a middle man into the US space program for no apparent reason.

Well, you know, except for Shuttle failures accounting for 78% of all people who have ever died on space flights, and 100% of such fatalities in the last 40 years. And the repeatedly proven inability of NASA to design and build a replacement for the Shuttle.

SpaceX does not launch commercial satellites

They don't? So, in what category, exactly, do you put the Orbcomm, Inc.satellite that was part of the payload of this very rocket?

Comment Re:Goes to show... (Score 2) 295

So, is the above a ridiculous, inadvertent display of your ignorance of the characteristics of standard normal distributions, or a ridiculous, inadvertent display of your ignorance of the fact that intelligence in the general population is such a distribution?

Because, you see, in the case of a standard normal distribution, there's no actual point in making a distinction in which average you're using. The mean, median, and mode are all the same value. The only people who would think saying "mean or median?" in such a case had any point are fools under the delusion that the comment makes them look smart.

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