Slashdot Mirror


User: dryeo

dryeo's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
6,838
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 6,838

  1. Re:One thing's for sure... on Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate · · Score: 1

    I know that for all of human history we've had to work hard to get the stuff we want/need

    Actually it was only the invention of agriculture that created the need for excessive hard work. The average hunter gatherer only had to work 4 hours a day on average. Of course the problem was the total lack of a safety net. If the game stayed away or there was a drought and the plants didn't grow, you were fucked.

  2. Re:Communism is the only way forward on Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate · · Score: 1

    Shortage of continents where you can kill all the native populations to make capitalism work now. The hundred million deaths estimate might also be a bit high and then might not when you consider the other countries that were exploited to make capitalism succeed. Recently heard a program about how America pressured Haiti to keep the minimum wage at $3 a day instead of raising it to $5. How many deaths will result from that? At least underwear will be cheap and very profitable and the CEO of Haynes earned his $17,000 an hour job (based on 40 hour work week).

  3. Re:Physical Access = owned on Remote ATM Attack Uses SMS To Dispense Cash · · Score: 1

    In the early days of ATMs (1980s) I used to get "overcounts" about 5% of the time at certain machines... that doesn't happen (to me) as much anymore, but I'm mostly plastic based now, so maybe it still does.

    I'm quite surprised how well the ATMs handle the plastic money, especially during this transition phase when it is a mix of paper and plastic. As a human, I have trouble correctly counting the plastic money, it's thinner and sticks to neighbouring bills.

  4. Re:Diebold? on Remote ATM Attack Uses SMS To Dispense Cash · · Score: 1

    You can set up systems where it is hard to do fraud and systems where fraud is trivial. That is the problem with most electronic voting so far. How do you ever know if Diebold has a way to flip 1% of the votes? In a close election it doesn't take much to flip the results.
    Then there is the other types of election fraud, often legal. Gerrymandering, strategic placement of polling station, limiting the number of polling booths in areas are some examples.

  5. Re:Why are they posting old source code? on Microsoft Posts Source Code For MS-DOS and Word For Windows · · Score: 1

    No I'm not. This was the 16 bit OS/2 ver 1 cmd.exe from which the current Windows cmd.exe is descended from. It ran natively on NT using the OS/2 subsystem. Used to be able to get a Presentation Manager kit from MS at one time and natively run 1.x 16bit GUI applications as well. Remember NT started out as OS/2 NT ver 3.

  6. Re:HUH? on Remote ATM Attack Uses SMS To Dispense Cash · · Score: 1

    Funny thing is all the people who scream "socialist" about Obama and the Democrats and even obvious things like nationalizing the failing banks they don't do, rather instead supporting them.
    Newest American Ambassador to my country is a former Wells Fargo big shot, which shows their true stripes.

  7. Re:HUH? on Remote ATM Attack Uses SMS To Dispense Cash · · Score: 1

    If the banks were truly too big to fail, they should have been nationalized, senior management at least fired, preferably arrested and charged and the banks broken into small pieces and sold.

  8. Re:HUH? on Remote ATM Attack Uses SMS To Dispense Cash · · Score: 1

    They sure aren't very fast or dependable at replacing any money that is stolen through a debit card (such as debt card being used in a fraudulent ATM to skim the PIN).
    Similarly we all pay increased costs through fees being spread out through the whole customer base for credit card fraud.

  9. Re:True to their genesis on Microsoft Posts Source Code For MS-DOS and Word For Windows · · Score: 2

    Not IBM-DOS but PC-DOS.
    OS/2 got a bad start due to IBM trying to keep a promise that it would run on a 286. Getting a 286 to multi-task and run a VDM was not easy. Still OS/2 looked like DOS when you fired it up, with basically the same extra commands as cmd.exe still has, things like start to launch a program in the background. The graphical interface that came with OS/2 1.1 was what Windows 3.x and Win NT 3.x copied though they did remove things like folders in the Program Manager.

  10. Re:Why are they posting old source code? on Microsoft Posts Source Code For MS-DOS and Word For Windows · · Score: 1

    I've run the 16 bit ver 1 of cmd.exe under NT (W2K). Being a protected mode OS/2 16 bit application it ran fine though Windows didn't honour the full screen bit in the file header and ran it in a window. I'm sure it would not have given it as much hardware access as it was capable of using either.
    They did remove the capability to run the older versions after W2K but it could most likely easily be put back if there was a need though only in the 32 bit versions of Windows.

  11. Re:Ponzi scheme on Cryptocurrency Exchange Vircurex To Freeze Customer Accounts · · Score: 1

    One of the aspects of currency is that sometimes you do sit on it. I have an American $20 bill that someone gave me a year ago for payment. I haven't bothered to use it for payment anywhere and by chance that bill is now worth about $22 in local currency. Being accepted as currency most places, I can go into almost any store etc and trade it for goods. They'll take a couple of percent for the hassle of dealing in currency that is not legal tender but it works as currency and it is worth close to the same after a year.
    Sounds like with bitcoin, better spend it quick as its value is not stable, but where do I spend it, I can't use it to buy food or gas at any of the local businesses and without being connected to the net it is useless.
    The American dollar, even though not legal tender around here is currency. Bitcoin, not so much.

  12. Re:Ponzi scheme on Cryptocurrency Exchange Vircurex To Freeze Customer Accounts · · Score: 1

    If you invest in a company who has as a sole product strings of numbers and a plan that they'll become more in demand and due to the strings of numbers being limited they'll go up in value, I'd say that you've invested in a scam. Scams do make people wealthy occasionally, especially the early investors, but it doesn't mean it is not a scam.
    I'd guess you're an early investor and need more demand for your strings of numbers so they'll go up in value so naturally you're all in favour of the scam.

  13. Re:Ponzi scheme on Cryptocurrency Exchange Vircurex To Freeze Customer Accounts · · Score: 1

    Late adopters, and indeed, society as a whole, benefit from the usefulness of a stable, fast, inexpensive, and widely accepted p2p currency.

    It depends on this sentence being true and so far it does not seem stable nor widely accepted.

  14. Re:What about private companies? on L.A. Police: All Cars In L.A. Are Under Investigation · · Score: 2

    You don't still have Railway police there? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... Or the other varieties of private police that have "If they have attended the basic law enforcement officer's training academy in the state in which they work, they may be granted powers of citation, investigation, arrest or detention authority as long as it does not violate state law." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    They used to be much more common and seem to be making a comeback.

  15. Re:"The state" has gone too far on L.A. Police: All Cars In L.A. Are Under Investigation · · Score: 1

    What makes you think that big business wouldn't just step into the power vacuum and use their private police force to enact the police state? Private police have the advantage of not having to even pay lip service to the Constitution as they're not the government and the only reason they aren't as big of players as they were in the second half of the 19th century when the Pinkerton Detective Agency was bigger then the US Army is because it is cheaper to get police funded by the tax payers.
    As the 19th century also taught, even a small government can be corrupted, at that it is easier, just corrupt the local judge and sheriff and you can get away with anything.

  16. Re:Whatabout we demand equal time of our views ins on Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos' · · Score: 1

    OK, I misunderstood you and can't disagree that the American federal government has grown way too much in relation to the States. What the ideal is is up for debate remembering as the originally setup led to the American civil war with lots of deaths etc. Really the Constitution probably needs some tweeking but the Americans don't seem interested in opening that can of worms and can't even do something as basic and sure to pass as make the Air Force constitutional, little well work on the more questionable stuff like how far does the Interstate Commerce clause go.

  17. Re:Whatabout we demand equal time of our views ins on Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos' · · Score: 1

    You said,

    Let the people and states keep their money

    When in reality it'll only be a few people keeping the money while the rest (including the States) will continue the race to the bottom.

  18. Re:Whatabout we demand equal time of our views ins on Creationists Demand Equal Airtime With 'Cosmos' · · Score: 1

    +1, it would be nice not to have to pay the workers so much and with lower taxes we can drop their salaries and have more profit, bigger bonuses and more money for campaign contributions to get our guys into government and laws passed to protect our business model.

  19. Re:Smert Shpionam! on Inside NSA's Efforts To Hunt Sysadmins · · Score: 1

    Only during war time. Traditionally during peace time their fate is often to be traded for the other sides spy.

  20. Re:Go after em Nate on Nate Silver's New Site Stirs Climate Controversy · · Score: 1

    For an example of a planet that hasn't sequestered any carbon in the form of hydrocarbons or carbonate rocks, look at Venus. Personally I think it is good that so much carbon has been removed from the atmosphere that temperatures are milder then Venus and considering we have evolved during an ice house phase of the Earth I also think that we're lucky we're still in the ice house phase.
    Eventually the Earth will flip back to the hot house phase and most of the life that we know will die out, including us, but why rush it.

  21. Re:71 years, Hanford is still a radiactive cesspoo on It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing · · Score: 1

    Perhaps Church Rock would be a better example? Shame they didn't do hardly any follow up studies on the effects on the people, being poor native Americans why bother.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

  22. Re:er whoops I mean nationalized on It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing · · Score: 1

    My power comes from a government owned utility. Rates are rapidly increasing as we have a right wing government who believes in low taxes so they're taking billions from the power company as well as other government owned businesses to make up for the budget shortfalls. Does the job though of pushing the government funding down to the lower classes.

  23. Re:We've learned nothing? on It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing · · Score: 1

    Last time I checked, no nuclear waste ever caused an accident worthy of a single-paragraph story, much less something like this...

    Yea, if it doesn't affect white people the media don't do much coverage. The Church Rock spill was an order of magnitude smaller then this one but it was much more radioactive, flowed much further and in many ways was a bigger disaster, with some considering it releasing more radioactivity then any other accident in US history. Affecting mostly poor Navajo people it wasn't considered important enough to declare it a federal disaster.
    Disasters like this along with all the Navajo people who worked in the Uranium mines and then died of cancer aren't ever mentioned by the pro-nuke people even though coal is still worse.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

  24. Re:Not even close to the worst. on It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing · · Score: 1

    Antibiotics couldn't exist if coal was replaced by natural gas? While 3rd and 4th generation nuclear sounds promising, I'm not aware of too many commercially successful plants yet and the lead time to bring them into production is not short.

  25. Re:what "company"? It's a government operated plan on It Was the Worst Industrial Disaster In US History, and We Learned Nothing · · Score: 1

    Did the government actually run it or was it subcontracted out to private industry?