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Comment mod parent up (Score 1) 405

by bubblejet (#40616117) Attached to: Apple Exits "Green Hardware" Certification Program
I'm typing this on a ThinkPad I bought in 2010. I really hate messing around with hardware, and I just wanted a laptop where I could use Ubuntu and not have to think so hard. Within 6 months the speakers on the laptop were broken, and it was overheating and shutting off frequently even though I was keeping it clean and using it on a glass table. It used to have trouble with the backlight to the screen not going on, but when I took it apart to show it to a friend it started working again (figures). I've never had problems like this with a laptop before, and even though I really like the keyboard and design I couldn't recommend a ThinkPad to someone else after this experience.

Comment Re:I Give Up (Score 5, Informative) 489

by bubblejet (#39707711) Attached to: Student Charged For Re-selling Textbooks
The milk I buy in the supermarket in the US is also rbgh-free. It's required to come with a legal blurb saying that the FDA has not approved any benefit to hormone-free milk. Despite this, it's been years since I've seen a container of milk that doesn't claim to be free of synthetic hormones. (I live in the northeastern US)

Comment Re:...why? (Score 1) 1271

by bubblejet (#39050339) Attached to: Doctors "Fire" Vaccine Refusers
What about the doctor's other patients? In 2008 three babies got measles from being in a doctor's waiting room with an infectious child, a similar incident also happened in San Diego. Any money made by treating the sick children would probably be lost once the other parents sued. (Usually the anti-vaccine parent has to sign a waver not to sue, but if they don't then even they could also sue.) Also if the doctor participates in an HMO plan, part of how they get paid is by measuring statistics such as how many children are vaccinated. Finally, even if the doctor makes more money, the people who really end up paying for a child hospitalized with measles is everyone else (either through higher insurance rates, or through taxes if the child is uninsured or covered by state insurance).

Comment Re:Advice (Score 1) 643

by bubblejet (#38618672) Attached to: What a Black Box Data Dump Looks Like
You can buy cushions that go between you and the seatbelt in order to position it properly and keep it from sliding up your neck. I sometimes see them at yard sales that have pregnancy/baby items, because an improperly positioned seatbelt could kill a fetus in a crash.

Comment Re:I call bullshit. (Score 1) 455

by bubblejet (#38523994) Attached to: IBM Granted Your-Paychecks-Are-What-You-Eat Patent
Cost of groceries and cost of housing don't always relate that way. Example: My friend and I both live around Boston, I live in a wealthy area near a university, while he lives a few miles away in a much poorer area. The closest grocery to me is an organic grocery, where milk is $4.50 a gallon, but I do most my shopping there because it's only a 10 minute walk. My friend's closest grocery is a discount store where milk is $2.50 a gallon, but it's a 30 minute walk each way and involves crossing a highway. So instead he buys most groceries at the bodega around the block, where milk is $5.50 a gallon, and there aren't any fresh vegetables or meat. This is especially true during the winter, when it majorly sucks for him to haul groceries around in the snow.

Comment Re:next we'll hear that Dell is in trouble... (Score 1) 354

by bubblejet (#38431360) Attached to: Dell Ditches Netbooks
No, this is the market behaving rationally to the fact that it's no longer worth it to be the "low cost" provider. At least in the USA, the percent of total consumer spending by the richest households has risen ([link] [link]), because the "low cost" consumers just don't have the money to spend. So the "low cost" provider has to raise their prices in order to compete for a smaller number of consumers.

I don't personally know anyone who has an iPad, but I know plenty of people who bought netbooks in 2008 and wouldn't be able to afford one now. And while I'm not saying at all that having an iPad or even a netbook should be a human right, I think it's misleading to say "consumers want tablets instead of netbooks" when the number of tablets sold are only 50-60% of what netbook sales were and still are (note the headline: "Sales of Tablet computers such as iPad outshine netbooks").

Comment Re:That probably makes sense.... (Score 1) 244

by bubblejet (#37569562) Attached to: Top 1% of iOS Game Developers Make a Third of All Revenue
>> If you live in a state that actually taxes food and clothing, you need to fix it in the state.

You should also include vehicle taxes and fees (such as tolls, state gas tax, DMV fees, excise taxes on cars, sales tax on cars, etc.) since in most parts of the country it's impossible to hold a job without having a car. Even then, there are still federal taxes on essentials, such as the federal gas tax and taxes on utilities.

>> Oh, and rent is not taxed anywhere.

But landlords do pay property taxes, and when property taxes go up, so does rent. People who rent also don't benefit from tax rebates or "homestead" exemptions.

Comment Re:Just my theory. (Score 1) 378

by bubblejet (#36913592) Attached to: Girls Go Geek Again
Back in the 1960s programming viewed more like secretarial work. [thesocietypages.org] So I think it's equally likely that more men would have entered the field earlier, but didn't because programming was still seen as a "women's" job. Also I don't really buy the argument that women aren't interested in complex systems (or not interested in math, etc), when the gender disparity in other fields such as biology and statistics is much smaller or even more heavily weighted towards women.

Feed The Growth Of The Pirate Bay As A Political Movement (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
Tim Lee points us to an LA Times article on the growing success of The Pirate Bay's political movement, noting that its membership is growing in Sweden and is nearly equal to that of the country's Green Party. This is ironic for a few reasons -- most of all being that the entertainment industry was so proud over the raids on the Pirate Bay's servers last year, insisting that it had killed off the site. Instead, the site was back up in days, and the attention propelled what had been a fairly minor search engine for BitTorrent trackers into the limelight -- helping to get it many more users and to get the political movement some traction. In fact, we've now seen other political parties take on some of the Pirate Bay's platform. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. I don't support the Pirate Bay's position that unauthorized downloads are defensible. Instead, I think that copyright holders need to come to the realization that they're actually better off by letting people download content -- not that it needs to be forced upon them by users taking matters into their own hands. That said, by taking such an extreme position (and having it get some attention), perhaps it's more likely that content holders will come to this realization. They'll simply be forced to adapt and will start coming up with more successful business models that actually benefit from free downloads rather than trying to block them and sue their best customers.

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