Posts by intrigid

Re: This is a 'how hot is hot' question

My entire music collection is stored in FLAC, mostly ripped from CDs. I carry it with me in multiple microSD cards.

Why the hell not? Storage is dirt cheap, especially considering that people paid $200 for a decent CD-walkman and wallet 15 years ago.

Can I tell the difference between a 1000kbps FLAC and a 192kbps MP3 in a blind test? Most likely not. All I know is that in 2014 I'm bloody sick of hearing compression artifacts in dance clubs, on the radio, in other people's cars, and I enjoy the peace of mind knowing that I have a bastion of unbastardized harmonics available to me in my pocket whenever I want.

Actually, yes. Constitutional rights have been eroded, and exceptions have been made and upheld by the supreme court.

1st amendment - Holocaust denying can be punished by law.

2nd amendment - Owning unregistered firearms or automatic weapons is a felony in many places.

4th amendment - Police stop-and-search checkstops have been deemed "technically unconstitutional but we'll let it slide" by the supreme court.

5th amendment - People have been charged with obstruction of justify for refusing to decrypt their own devices.

That's some pretty awful trolling. If anyone was fooled by that, then I weep for their soul.

Re: @Erik Is this actually warranted?

"This isn't a good thing for IBM. It says long term, IBM is toast because they can't attract the necessary talent and they don't invest in their people."

Sorry, please explain to me how them investing in their people is them not investing in their people.

Please feel free to scrutinize my math, but as I see it, having to work 20% fewer hours for 10% less pay amounts to an hourly pay raise. And on top of that, receiving free training is another very tangible benefit.

Re: But...

Auto failover to backup token ring, obviously.

Re: Giant Sugarlumps!

The flaw in your visualization is that you're compacting all the suns together, which does not represent the density of stars in Laniakea.

Spread out the 100 quadrillion 1x1mm sugar grain stars so that they're each 3,000 kilometers apart, and there you go! A perfect super-shrunk visualization of a supercluster!

Re: "If you want to listen to great-sounding music"

For any reasonably sane person, live music necessitates earplugs, which pretty much immediately destroys any possibility of sound quality.

Re: Deflation is great

But but but but if prices fall then nobody will buy anything and the economy will collapse!

Wait, 70 pounds for 30 minutes is a "better value" than 3 pounds for 5 minutes? Any video game, anywhere, would actually try to charge as much for an hour of play as an all-out meal at a high-end restaurant?

You've GOT to be making this up.

Re: No sympathy.

More disturbing in this story is the fact that the supreme court ruled in favor of the defendant while allowing the conviction of the defendant to stand.

If this were a case of an axe murderer, where the police barged into his home without a warrant and happened to find the axe, the case would have been thrown out.

The only reason the conviction stands in this case is because it was about child porn. It's a radioactive issue, and the justices simply caved to fears of a backlash against the court. They even implied as much in their statements.

"That patent very obviously states that a camera is part of their system, which the Wii most certainly doesn't use."

I can assure you that the pointing functionality most definitely involves a digital camera embedded in the Wii remote.

Or are you saying the Wii console (the physical white box) doesn't contain a camera?

Re: One more off the list...

In my experience, those struggling with their weight tend to be following the "eat less, move more" approach.

For those following the "low carb, high fat" approach, I don't think I've ever met a single follower who had a weight problem.

And there's the (in)convenient aspect that it's not just anecdotes backing this up; the science does too.

I guess the moral of the story is that when it comes to peer-reviewed science, the populist finding beats the scientific finding the majority of the time.

Re: Dumbasses

How would the donation be misplaced? Admittedly, I didn't read the whole story, but my assumption was that the donations were for all the aggravation he went through unnecessarily.

Re: Pretty easy

I did a quick CTRL-F before posting to see if anyone made a homeopathy reference. Damn you.

Re: Does not add up!

First of all, 1 in 35 elementary school kids view porn in a given month? I call bullcrap. 1 in 5 is a much more believable number.

And I don't care if 9 out of 10 kindergarteners are getting the good stuff. It doesn't justify a shred of legislation.

Re: @intrigid

99.9999% even.

Re: ... Blood from a stone?

That's like saying that a bank that went bankrupt and lost the 10 kilos of gold in your safety deposit box "can surely just go mine some more".

"One could imagine a similar disaster with ordinary currency; the difference is, a bank that badly run would be shut down by regulators."

Or it would be bailed out using billions of dollars worth of freshly minted currency.

Re: Virtual currency banking has been done before

Ponzi schemes don't recover after a crash.

Re: Sigh @intrigid

I wasn't arguing that Bitcoin is less risky than your bank deposits. Bitcoin is highly speculative, so of course it is very risky.

But if we're talking specifically about default risk, which is what happens at the end of a pyramid scheme, as opposed to valuation risk, then your bank deposits are indeed riskier.

If Monopoly­­ money suddenly started trading for face value on the open market, you would be calling that a ponzi scheme too. And you would be wrong about that as well.

Overvaluation is NOT the same as a pyramid scheme.

Re: weird

Well, let's see. The "recovery" is mainly defined by two things: Falling unemployment and rising asset prices. One component of the falling unemployment rates is people exiting the workforce. When your unemployment insurance runs out, you have officially exited the work force and you contribute to the falling unemployment rate. Also, the decline in full time jobs in combination with the rise in part time jobs contributes to a rising total number of jobs even while aggregate employment falls. Repeat this for a few million people and it can be quite significant. This is why we see unemployment falling to multi-year lows, yet the total number of people not in the labor force continues to reach all-time highs. The other component is rising asset prices. Conveniently excluded from the "inflation" index, prices of stocks and real estate continue to be fueled by loose monetary policy. It's clear enough that stock prices have far outpaced earnings in the past two years. As for real estate, prices continue to rise while the number of mortgage applications continue to fall. The percentage of homes purchased in all-cash is reaching all-time highs, even surpassing the numbers in the 2005 housing bubble. This is pretty clearly signalling a speculative bubble and the greater fool theory. And of course, let's not forget the fact that governments have debt levels far higher than they ever were in the previous housing bubble, making them unable to tolerate interest rates even as high as the historically-low rates of 2005. Of course, they continue to pretend that their "tapering" or easing up on the gas pedal in any way means that they could ever think about pressing the brakes. We're on a bus that will blow up if it ever goes below 50MPH, but unfortunately there won't be any Keanu Reeves coming along to shuttle everyone off.

But doesn't it just sound nicer to point to unemployment rates and asset prices and say that we're "slowly but surely" recovering?

Re: I don't understand

Bizarre as it sounds, extremely low prices can be more of a motivator for people to pirate. When a person sees a .99 app, they perceive it as having a very low value. They almost expect it to be garbage. If they pay for it and it turns out to be garbage, they'll feel like a sucker who got reeled in. To avoid any risk of feeling that way, they just go ahead and pirate it.

Conversely, very few people will be afraid to pay 19.99 for a game that's critically acclaimed, addicting, and played by millions around the world.

Re: This event that's happening now happened a long time ago

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics really needs to go away. It's almost as bad as Deepak Chopra's interpretation of quantum mechanics, and I am NOT exaggerating when I say that.

Re: "Self-Incrimination"

Your entire argument is a disaster.

"The password he was required to give is, in itself, not evidence against himself"

First of all, what if his password was "I_confess_to_the_crimes_of_xyz"? Wouldn't the requirement for him to give up his password be in direct conflict with his right not to incriminate himself? Please don't say "Well, he would be stupid to do that" because fundamental rights belong to everyone, not just the intelligent.

Secondly, other than name, date of birth, and address, ANY AND ALL information that you give to the police is potentially incriminating. The police can demand to know what your favorite color is, and you are STILL protected from having to tell them this. That's because police can, and do, twist anything you say to make you appear as guilty as possible.

That is why nobody can ever be "required" to give "innocent" information to the police.

"Additionally, as he had already been convicted of a serious crime, there was probable cause "

No. Wrong. A criminal record NEVER constitutes probable cause. If it did, the police would be entitled to search his car, search his home, etc etc, every day for the rest of his life.

"As he had already been convicted of a crime, the right not to incriminate oneself becomes moot: as he is no longer capable of incriminating himself as he has been found guilty. "

It pains me to have to explain how wrong you are on this. NO, A CRIMINAL RECORD DOES NOT REVOKE YOUR RIGHT NOT TO INCRIMINATE YOURSELF IN FUTURE CRIMES. THAT I NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO YOU IS DEEPLY DISTURBING.

"but again, concealment of evidence is taken more seriously and the right to silence does not protect the concealer."

You are just 100 percent dead wrong. Nobody on this planet is legally required to provide evidence that might be used against them. This is so basic it almost gives me a headache.

"(Somewhat analogous are court decisions in the US stating that income must be declared even if the result of criminality and a failure to declare such income renders one liable for imprisonment for income tax evasion."

And there's a very good argument to be made, a slam-dunk case even, that the laws in the tax code are unconstitutional. The only reason the IRS can get away with this is because filing an income tax return is officially declared a voluntary act, not compulsory. However, the law states that you MUST volunteer to submit your 100% completely non-compulsory income tax return. If you fail to volunteer, you're guilty of tax evasion.

Pointing to the Internal Revenue Service as a role model of legality is ridiculous.

Re: I think Bitcoin will die a death very soon

The problem with trying to fix the value of various commodities relative to each other is that people will game the system. If fuel suddenly became scarce while iron was plentiful, then people would dump their worthless iron into the government's coffers to snatch up the precious fuel. Eventually, the government would have to abandon its scheme when it simply runs out of fuel.

They tried this exact scheme with gold and silver, trying to fix their price at a 15:1 ratio, and they eventually abandoned it for those exact reasons.

The only way for a government to back its currency with a "basket" of commodities is to have a "basket" of different currencies. But that's really not the point.