B5geek

Why oh why can't we live in a world where the concept of "If this material is illegal in your country, you shouldn't be looking at it." or "Be aware of laws that pertain to you and respect them or change them if you disagree."

Comment · 12 years ago

"Profit" is very easy to hide. Income, not so much. The difference is 'net' vs 'gross'.

The horrid nature of current tax law is geared towards lawyers and accountants being creative. The system is geared to reward con-men and punish the honest.

A flat-rate tax system based on income might be more effective but the real danger is the tax-breaks that companies get. I see this all the time with Ford/Chrysler/GM. "We will build a factory in your city/state/county if you give us X-billion in tax breaks."

My thoughts: You want to sell your product don't you? In Canada we had a law called "The AutoPact" [1] which basically said that for every 3 cars that you sell in Canada, 1 must be built here.

Corporate welfare will always be a greater hindrance to tax-coffers then personal welfare will ever be.

Why are we paying companies so they have the privilege of taking our money?

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_Au...

Comment · 12 years ago

I have used it, but it is too limited. If they had made it a variable scale (i.e. 0-5 stars) that would have made it vastly more practical and functional.

The way that it is presented as a "remember this item" or "note this for later reference", is completely redundant when you consider that everything you archive is "save this for later".

So to actually answer your question: No. I tried and gave up.

Comment · 12 years ago

Will the KDE people get the message? </troll> Sorry I had to get that out of the way.

In all seriousness, 'Semantic Web' has always felt like a SciFi inspired version of AI intelligence. A concept that sounds cool, but in reality can't ever work.

Take movie ratings & "suggested viewings" for example. Jim, Bob, and Steve all watch the same movie. Jim thinks it's funny because of the physical gags. Bob thinks it's funny because of the dialog & jokes. Steve likes it because the hot new actress is naked. Dave likes the director and cinematography. All 4 guys give it a rating of 4/5.

With this one data point Streaming-movie-place.com cannot ever 'guess' what to suggest to these guys to offer more movies for them to watch. The hope is that once these guys start watching and rating other films a pattern will emerge. That pattern can then be marketed and offer valid suggestions.

BUT reality is too different. We like different things for different reasons, and no algorithm can ever get it 100% right. How many of you have a Netflix queue of things that you want to see, but the suggested movies are full of crappy suggestions? most or all of us I bet.

Which brings me back to my point; it's a sci-fi illusion. It can never exist in real life. Humans are too damn fickle. (Which brings me back to KDE; I wish they would give up on neopunk/symantic desktop crap. it's bloated, slows the system down and offers nothing in return. Or I am just using it wrong.) </rant>

Comment · 12 years ago

Yes this helped a lot too. Thanks.

Comment · 12 years ago

I must be in the minority (based on the comments that I have read), but I hate it. The other day the PHB announces to the office: We are going to use Slack and move away from IM, Skype, etc. So I signed up. What I don't like: -you need to keep a a tab open all the time,

-you need to keep an eye on that tab in case something comes up,

-the 'notifications' don't work all the time (Archlinux + Firefox)

It's like somebody took all the bad qualities of IRC, and shoehorned it into a web-page and all the horror that brings. The features that I don't understand:

search-able logging of messages. Email and/or Pidgin already does that.

Group messages: Email already does that.

Transferring of files: Email and/or corporate LAN shares already do that.

But it does add the necessity of stopping my workflow every 5-10 minutes so I can check to see if there are any messages that _might_ apply to me.

The quicker it can be killed with fire the happier I will be. Or am I missing the point? curmudgeonly - check

beard - check

Unix admin - check

Perhaps there is no hope for me. Next thing you know people will want to take pictures with their cellphones! =)

Comment · 12 years ago

This is amazing, thank-you. I would love to see the addition/option of adding static geometric shapes. In other words this would make for an awesome wind-tunnel simulator.

Comment · 12 years ago

Thank-you for your patient and well reasoned reply.

I wish you the best of luck with your project.

Comment · 12 years ago

I don't think I am your target audience, but I will respond just so you have at least one data-point.

I don't use gestures. Ever. For anything (except unlocking my phone, which I am stuck with).

Opera 'introduced' mouse-gestures a long time ago, and like all other attempts I have tried; I cannot understand the point. I don't think that waving my hand/mouse/fingers around like a spell-caster writing runes in the air is ever efficient. There is far too many chances at misinterpretation, and it obscures the target action. Give me buttons. on/off-yes/no simple binary choices that give exact feedback. Need something more analog (i.e. volume slider) let me input a number.