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Comment Re:The problem is those who DO know best. Thanks M (Score 1) 217

The hole in the plot is that 5% when Neil is wrong but nobody is willing to call him on it because there's a culture of "Neil is usually right."
That's the kind of thing that requires a good manager. You don't want to ditch Neil because he's really good (especially if the culture build up out of true respect rather than Neil just being a jerk whenever he gets challenged.) But at the same time you have to be able to empower your junior developers to speak up when they think it's necessary without risking excessive shame on the occasions Neil turns out to be right after all and shutting down that dev's next attempt (when Neil might actually be wrong) before it even occurs.
I'm certainly no manager. That's not a challenge I'd be up to tackling. But it's the kind of challenge that differentiates an amazing manager from an adequate one.
(I'm going to ignore situations where Neil and/or the manager are intentionally jackasses.. we all know how that one goes.)

Comment Re:I have only two irises (Score 1) 224

Fido is an industry standard. It's of course possible that Microsoft managed to bungle the implementation (accidentally or otherwise) _and_ get that bungled implementation through Fido certification.. but they can only take that so far if they want to remain compatible with third party Fido systems (MS may not care about using external authentication dongles but they probably would _love_ to be able to act ass an authenticator themselves,) and of course would lose their certification if they got caught, which would be almost immediately if the flaw led to any obvious tracking or other side effects beyond what the spec lays out (accidental defects are of course much more difficult to spot since they don't have any intended purpose and therefore no extra questionable code to fulfill said purpose.)

Comment Re:averages are just that, it's not precise (Score 1) 74

Of course it's an average. Not just across the population but across time. You won't be exactly as productive tomorrow as you are today, regardless of how you budget your time. There are way too many other factors to account for. Most people aren't as productive in winter as they are in summer either (at least if you're far enough from the equator) because of the function daylight plays on our biology and circadian rhythm.

So no, the 52/17 ratio is probably not exactly equal for every person, but by definition most people are close to average, so it's generally a good plan to start at the average and adjust to suit your needs (or you know, just listen to your body instead of the clock.)

That said, this study and those like it aren't really published for the sake of telling you how to budget your time. They're published for the sake of the phb micromanagers who insist you sit at your desk for exactly 8 hours from exactly 8-5 with exactly one hour for lunch. They're trying to tell your _boss_ that you maybe know how you work better than some rules designed 200 years ago for unskilled factory labor.

Comment "market economies" (Score 1) 181

Of course it's profitable to screw over your customers. Higher prices and lower costs is the golden goose.

That's exactly the kind of thing a free market is supposed to curtail. Competition should be able to take customers by offering better services.

But of course, the market is, in many cases at least, working as designed. For every person who loses out on their complaint, there are 100 or 1000 people happy to be paying 0.05% less for the goods and services they purchase by not having to "subsidize" the people who got screwed.

Comment Re:solution finally to a problem hitched (Score 1) 90

You can count 0.501 of a vote just as easily as you can count 0.501 of a share. That's not really the problem.

The biggest problem is lack of accountability. I mean that's an intentional feature of most (all?) crypto currencies.. if accountability isn't added into crypto stocks then how do you even know who to get a vote from, or how many votes they should have? Even with integer stocks that is a problem.

Second but related, what happens if a hacker manages to steal (or even just destroy) a large fraction of shares of a major company? No accountability also means no reversibility so how does such a company even start to recover?

Adding floating point numbers is the least of the problems with the whole concept.

Comment Re:Is this a Windows only vulnerability, or...? (Score 1) 63

It's in the chip so.. every intel-based system is vulnerable. Just a question of how easy through os makes it to abuse those powers.. and pretty much all os' will make it easy (at least for admin/root/whatever) because that's the entire function -- you can't enable "good" uses without also enabling "bad" uses.
Of course that only becomes relevant once average consumers care about "good" usages (playing movies or games or whatever drm crap it's actually a designed for.) Prior to that happening, consumer-focused os' can just leave the feature disabled/blocked.

Comment Re:eSports vs streamers (Score 1) 112

There's also the issue that Blizzard consistently treats esports as an afterthought to fill the streams at blizzcon. I think overwatch may be done a bit better (haven't watched it much) but ive watched streams of all their other esports leagues and they're just not done all that well. The announcers tend to be flat and boring, the production quality is low, etc.

I mean it's not like they're streaming a local school club or something but compared to the behemoth - league of legends - they tend to come across as a bit of a sad also-ran.

If Blizzard wants to really put a stake in esports, they'll have to put in some effort (and likely a lot of dollars) to really define their role and their games rather than just acting like it's nothing more than another stage spectacle once a year (or so.)

Of course I have no idea if Blizzard does care.. maybe they're perfectly happy with their esports always being second tier rather than putting in the effort. And if that's the case then I guess it is what it is and their leagues will continue to be mediocre side show attractions.

Comment Re:wtf? They want credit card numbers? (Score 1) 102

Apple shouldn't (and almost certainly wouldn't, per PCI rules) store the full CC#. The CC information that the news outlets are wanting is likely everything other than the actual number - name and address in particular, as it's much harder to obtain a new (valid) credit card than it is to punch in a fake name or email address on a web form.
I'm not saying it isn't a bit sketchy, and I would hope Apple gives it the big old "nope", but it's probably not _as_ sketchy as it sounds on the surface.

Comment Re:Vote Libertarian then (Score 1) 108

Problem with less government is that someone else will pick up the slack, either explicitly (think 90s era Microsoft if there had been no antitrust case) or implicitly (manufacturers polluting waterways for those down stream.)

The government is supposed to represent the people's collective voice in situations where no individual voice alone will be able to correct problems -- at least, that's what modern democratic governments are supposed to be. The libertarian ideal is essentially equivalent to giving up your only method of combatting negligence and intentional damage by the powerful (which I today's world is primarily the massive corporations, but the same argument can apply to a uses of the church, individual people who happen to be excessively wealthy, or any other entity that's in a societal power level far above your own.)

Of course, power corrupts as the old saying goes, and governments are powerful. But the solution isn't to just give then up and let the world be run by completely non-representative entities. The solution is vigilance and a willingness to break with tradition any time the current government loses touch with the people they're supposed to be representing.

The US government has hit that point. We need to change the players -- and there's a surprisingly strong movement in the left to do that (progressives.. perhaps not as strong as some had hoped in this past election but still strong.) If the right can generate a similar movement getting back to policy rather blind partisanship, things will improve greatly. But as long as the Republicans (and yes, plenty of Democrats as well) are allowed to retain the current heavy bias towards corporate profit at the cost of the citizenry and even their purported ideals, things will continue going downhill.

But libertarian still isn't really a workable idea as it would be just as difficult to implement as fixing the government and not needing to simply get rid of it (thus exposing us to the problems it brings.) The same people who don't want to be replaced with a new generation also don't want to just leave entirely and for the same reason.

Comment Re:Copyright enforcement is everyone's job! (Score 1) 95

The streaming services issue has little to do with copyright, neither the law nor even abuses of the law. It's happening purely because Netflix started making a boatload of cash and streaming tech became easy/cheap/commonplace enough for any monkey with even a single popular title under their belt to decide they didn't want to share with Netflix anymore and start their own service.

Of course as you alluded to, this is not sustainable. Most people aren't going to be willing to pay for more than 2 or 3 services, and you can bet at least one of those will still be Netflix for the foreseeable future. Everyone else will be competing with Disney, HBO, Hulu and Amazon prime -- just to name 4 of the biggest competitors. And once Disney has fully pulled their licenses from Netflix and other services, they will probably be most people's #2 leaving little room in the market for all these dozens of competitors. And once they've all realized that their 3 interesting shows aren't going to generate enough viewership to justify running the platform, we'll see them start merging back together again (though possibly not back to Netflix specifically.)

Comment Re:Interesting precedent (Score 1) 95

Except this isn't just closing the account at the bank -- equivalent to taking the infringing pages offline. It's more akin to shutting down an entire branch because one criminal happened to store their proceeds in that bank.

And just like that analogy, the criminal will happily move to another bank (/registrar) and continue doing what they're doing while legitimate users get screwed. In fact happier as dns entries are far easier to replace than assets.

Comment Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US (Score 1) 210

It's a terrible thing if you aren't the American side of the conflict.. it means they'd have accurate data (the high-precision encrypted signal would still work) but the other side would be stuck using civilian grade signal.

Countries that are potentially hostile to the US don't want to be put in that situation, and putting up their own system is a hell of a lot easier than breaking strong encryption (especially if they have to do it repeatedly, which they almost certainly would since the US military isn't stupid enough to use the same keys forever.)

Russia already has a system and now China wants one as well. It's hardly surprising given the current state of US/China relations.

The other side of the coin is that if all of these systems have civilian usage available, then the US (or whoever) would need to not only shut off their precision signal, but convince all of the competing systems to shut theirs off as well. This is of particular interest in places like Iran who may not have their own system, but convincing China to shut theirs off while the US is in Iran may not be plausible.

Comment Re:Since when? (Score 1) 112

Except Einstein did have evidence. It may not have been 100% conclusive but it's not like he pulled it out of his ass either. There was getting to be an awful lot of data suggesting the prevailing wage theory of light was wrong, and Einstein provided a theory that fit all the particle-based data.

Oh yeah, and he was wrong too. The whole idea of duality didn't come around for a couple decades after he described the photoelectric effect. And you know what he did? He arbitrarily claimed that God doesn't play nice with the universe, without even bothering to fact check with God first.. so yes, even Einstein failed at doing science from time to time.
But his paper on the photoelectric effect was not one of those times. He wasn't doing the part of science where you "prove" things. He was doing the part where you make a hypothesis to fit the data. That's a very important step as well!

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 72

And exactly what freedoms do you consider to be non-trivial? Do you really think that only specific freedoms are worth having?

Never mind the fact that _any_ user-driven content is a potential avenue for someone to tell their story for the world to see. Video is video. Twitch may be associated primarily with games, but as far as I know there's nothing stopping someone from uploading any other type of video content, other than "soft" measures like terms of service agreements.

Comment Re:Isn't this largely symbolic? (Score 1) 165

the Fed also regulates anything having to do with international traffick/customs/commerce

No they don't. They have to make treaties with other nations to agree on how these things will work. That is very, very different from being able to directly regulate it.

it's just a stupid point

Yes, and claiming that a subscriber agreement between a California resident and a California ISP is interstate is 100% exactly as stupid.

Federal regulations does not somehow magically turn into an argument for non-US based regulation of US companies simply because some of their network traffic goes outside of the US.

"State regulations does not somehow magically turn into an argument for non-California based regulation of California companies simply because some of their network traffic goes outside of California."
Precisely.

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