Forgot your password?

Comment: Re:Netflix rating engine sucks (Score 2) 85

by SydShamino (#47400501) Attached to: Netflix Is Looking To Pay Someone To Watch Netflix All Day

Sure, but it's so much worse now than it was then. I was trying to add old Doctor Who to my DVD queue. With each add it pops up other recommendations, but a lot of the time none of them were Doctor Who episodes!

It seems to recommend obscure crap when I'm adding a popular/cult item, and it recommends Frozen or some other recent big budget thing when I'm adding older obscure stuff. I have to think their algorithms have been messed with by their marketing and suits to push things their distribution contracts require them to, not what their users actually want.

Comment: Re:Wait until those lamers find out... (Score 2) 369

If you are using concentrated solar thermal instead of photovoltaics, the molten slag is your battery. Use both so you get PV in the morning when your salt is cool. Winds are higher in the morning too. And of course a safe thorium reactor for baseline never hurt anybody.

Comment: Re:And this surprises... who? (Score 4, Interesting) 191

Most senior citizens (those 65 or older) became senior citizens since 1995, when the web started taking off. Many became senior citizens after 2005, when it had mostly saturated middle-class households.

It's not so much that granny embraced the internet, it's that she embraced the internet and then aged into being "granny".

Comment: Re:This just illustrates (Score 2) 365

by SydShamino (#47340679) Attached to: Germany's Glut of Electricity Causing Prices To Plummet

When I lived in regular Texas, Green Mountain was my 100% wind provider, and my rates only went down for the ~6 years I used them.

Austin doesn't give me a choice as I have to use the municipal service. I'm still 100% wind but angry they didn't grandfather my past record of wind power into a lower early adopter rate.

Comment: Re:Good. (Score 1) 188

by SydShamino (#47319241) Attached to: Chinese Vendor Could Pay $34.9M FCC Fine In Signal-Jammer Sting

While there are some libertarians that support regulation of trade speech, many seem to prefer caveat emptor. Fraud, then, would be policed not through prevention but through litigation, or (for some libertarians) not at all, and instead be a life lesson.

What would that life lesson probably be? "This libertarian utopia sucks; I want regulation back." At least that's my guess.

Comment: Re:One disturbing bit: (Score 4, Insightful) 484

by SydShamino (#47315749) Attached to: Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo Streaming Service


Comment: Re:One disturbing bit: (Score 2) 484

by SydShamino (#47315707) Attached to: Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo Streaming Service


Comment: Re:8 million? (Score 3, Interesting) 143

You should write into your contract that you're allowed to take samples from fields where your bees work, and that the farmer is liable for damages if something happens to your bees, you test those samples, and find the bad pesticides.

Contract law is a lot simpler than laws to "protect nature", and since the nature in this case has an owner (you) it's not just a common resource to exploit.

No help if neighboring farms spray that pesticide, of course.

Comment: Re:More (Score 3, Insightful) 150

There is nothing that civil law can do that is punitive to the managers. They didn't do anything; the company did things, and they are merely one of the louder of the company's schizophrenic voices. To get at them where it matters (their wallet), you'd have to go after company assets and hope it indirectly affects them as the parent suggests.

Only criminal law could pierce that veil and go after them directly, and while that can be quite punitive, it's not bloody likely.

Comment: Re:This just in. (Score 1) 281

by SydShamino (#47279179) Attached to: Mt. Gox CEO Returns To Twitter, Enrages Burned Investors

Stolen doesn't just apply to the physical world. It means that you've been deprived of something you previously possessed.

If your physical thing is stolen, you no long possess it.
If your asset is stolen, you no longer possess it. Most people have digital assets in the form of cash in a bank or stocks in an account; there is nothing physical for either. Bit coins fall in this category.
If your trade secret is stolen, you no longer have a secret.

If your copyright is infringed upon, you still hold the copyright.
If your patent is infringed upon, you still hold the patent.

Them as has, gets.