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Comment Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad? (Score 1) 382

I would treat people like they were stupid if they can't handle facts. The fact is that living organisms are sensitive to very, very subtle changes in PH:

http://www.chemcraft.net/acidph2.html

But hey, if it's 0.1, or 0.01, that's a small number, and anyone who thinks thatz a big numberz iz gust trin 2 pul the wul over ur eyez.

Comment Re:There are two sorts of PHP developers (Score 3, Insightful) 178

> Personally I also think frameworks are silly. If you can lash up a site in 30 minutes, then the request simply isn't distinctive enough.

Let me first point out that I agree with most of what you say (which is essentially that the value of a programmer is in solving problems which have not already been solved), however:

The entire point of a framework is to give you the underlying repetitive parts so you can focus on coding the complicated domain specific pieces later.

Frameworks and libraries are everywhere. In fact, many people judge the quality of a language by the quality of the libraries they have.

Comment Re:whores. (Score 2) 393

What you're asking for is silly. Corporations aim to eliminate free markets. That's what they do.

Free markets != Perfect markets, but corporations seek to eliminate the major components of free markets:

* Freedom of Information - Fraudulent Marketing (do you really get 5mb/s at any time?), Confusing pricing schemes (more common in retail), elimination of product information (what is you bandwidth cap, are certain services restricted?)
* Freedom to Price - Comcast wants to make it more difficult for Netflix to sell content cheaply, so it is effectively using it's monopoly status over users to cause netflix to raise prices
* Few Barriers to Entry - Starting a cable company is obviously a non-trivial task - many regulations (we'll give communications companies a pass here)
* Equal Access to Production Technology - One result of the comcast/nbc merger is now other cable companies and content companies will have to come to them for their product.

Comment Re:Bad deal for AT&T (Score 1) 220

Because we are the people, and it's *our* damn airspace and we get to dictate the terms of the contract. It's straight-forward - the people have spoken, don't sell our airspace to corporations who want to make it as difficult as possible to move freely between other options in the marketplace.

Comment Re:Simple really, just like government accounting (Score 1) 1006

Only 30mpg? The TDI does well enough, no need to overstate things:

The TDI gets 30mpg in city. Diesel isn't as plentiful in the US, but I think your point still stands, it will take a long time to make up the actual cost assuming the Volt doesn't come with a boatload of incentives (but they do, and will)

http://www.vw.com/jetta/completespecs/en/us/

Comment Re:Text Messaging is Marked up 7314% (Score 1) 300

I paid a lot less than that for a land-line in the early 90's. There was a more infrastructure to support and that infrastructure was a whole lot more expensive. And, as I think it's been pointed out a number of times, that the cell service you are happy to overpay $50 here is much more advanced outside of the US, though I can't vouch for that myself.

Data Storage

Intel 34nm SSDs Lower Prices, Raise Performance 195

Vigile writes "When Intel's consumer line of solid state drives were first introduced late in 2008, they impressed reviewers with their performance and reliability. Intel gained a lot of community respect by addressing some performance degradation issues found at PC Perspective by quickly releasing an updated firmware that solved those problems and then some. Now Intel has its second generation of X25-M drives available, designated by a "G2" in the model name. The SSDs are technically very similar though they use 34nm flash rather than the 50nm flash used in the originals and reduced latency times. What is really going to set these new drives apart though, both from the previous Intel offerings and their competition, are the much lower prices allowed by the increased memory density. PC Perspective has posted a full review and breakdown of the new product line that should be available next week."
Privacy

Online Vigilantes, Or "Crowdsourced Justice" 339

destinyland writes "The Chinese credit the 'human flesh search engine' for successfully locating 'the kitten killer of Hangzhou' from clues in her online video. But in February, the same force identified a teenage cat-abuser in Oklahoma — within 24 hours of his video's appearance on YouTube. 'Netizens are the new Jack Bauer,' argues one science writer, and with three billion potential detectives, 'attempts to hide will only add thrill to the chase.' But China's vigilantes ultimately turned their attention to China's Internet Propaganda Office, bypassing censorship of a director's personal information using social networks, including Twitter. The author suggests there's a new principle emerging in the online world: 'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'"

Comment Re:Meanwhile over in Congress (Score 1) 311

We watch the Matrix and say, WOW! This could all be a dream, that our entire perception is constructed through an external mechanism...

It is still very possible to hold the belief that the world is 6000 years old, and that all of the evidence and proof of evolution etc... is manufactured so to speak. (by this rule though, the age of the universe could be any arbitrary age, including just now*

* - que spaceballs "just missed it" bit

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