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User: SethJohnson

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  1. No way is this a Sony PR stunt on North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation · · Score: 2

    I fully agree and would also point out that this hack has resulted in HD bootlegs of unreleased sony movies being posted to bittorrent. Oh, and Brad Pitt's "Fury."

    The top leadership at Sony Pictures is about to be booted out of their jobs and are so tainted that no other studio will hire them. I don't think this was their idea of a way to promote a film.

  2. Re:because the lawyers ... on "Team America" Gets Post-Hack Yanking At Alamo Drafthouse, Too · · Score: 1

    Your reasoning for pulling The Interview applies equally to showing Team America, if you think about it.

    The difference here is that The Interview was dumped national theater chains. In the case of Team America, a few independent chains were trying to screen the film and Paramount refused. In the case of the independent theaters, Paramount was not afraid that screening Team America would impact their profits for other films opening this weekend.

  3. Re:because the lawyers ... on "Team America" Gets Post-Hack Yanking At Alamo Drafthouse, Too · · Score: 2

    ....then Sony would be liable to the victim and victims family because Sony either knew or should have known that the controversy caused by the movie would excite DPRK loyalists into committing such an act of violence.

    And that lawsuit would be gently brushed aside by Sony's legal team. Heck, they'd probably send in their youngest intern to handle the distraction.

    In 1952: "The Court reverses its position on movies in Burstyn v. Wilson, asserting that "liberty of expression by means of motion pictures is guaranteed by the 1st and 14th Amendments."(citation)

    The reason the Interview was pulled out of theaters is because the distributors didn't want to see the lucrative Christmas boxoffice affected by people avoiding theaters due to these threats. Annie and Night at the Museum are expected to sell far more tickets than the Interview and the theater chains didn't want to see those profits reduced. As for why Paramount prohibited these screenings of Team America, well, they're probably worried they'll fall into North Korea's crosshairs and get hacked, etc. Damn cowards.

  4. Re:where do the workers go? on Armies of Helper Robots Keep Amazon's Warehouses Running Smoothly · · Score: 1

    Say requiring licenses and apprenticeships, which is the #1 reason plumbers make so much money.

    Those chaufer's licenses and medallions didn't work out so well for protecting cab drivers' revenue stream from the Uber hordes....

  5. where do the workers go? on Armies of Helper Robots Keep Amazon's Warehouses Running Smoothly · · Score: 1

    When those jobs are eliminated because of robots, those desperate enough to take a picker job will have no where else to go.

    Many will slide to a lower rung in the employment ladder. Some will ascend to the next rung up. For those jobs, wages will decrease.

    We are already seeing this with pseudo-jobs like Uber and taskrabbit.

    My mother has frequently said plumbers will always make a good living. When unskilled jobs disappear due to automation, many of those workers will be motivated to study a trade. The surge of new workers in the industry will reduce the 'good living' that plumbers make.

  6. Instill confidence through source escrow on Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Starting and Running a Software Shop? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you are planning to sell software to the government or business as a startup, consider source code escrow. Your customers will tend to stick with established vendors for fear of you going out of businesses and leaving them with an unsupported implementation. The source code escrow is insurance against that being more of a catastrophe for your customers than you.

    Invest in dedicated technical support. It plays up as great comedy in the movie, Office Space, when the character says you don't want the customers talking directly to the engineers. You actually don't want that. Establishing a quality support team keeps the engineers productive on developing while the support group ensures the customers are getting help with their issues. Oh, and don't outsource this responsibility to a foreign country. If you think you can't afford quality support, at least staff it with a recent college grad and split that person's time between support and bug fixing.

  7. Automation changes future job market on Billionaire Donors Lavish Millions On Code.org Crowdfunding Project · · Score: 0

    Society needs plumbers, welders, architects, accountants, doctors, physicists, line workers, and every other job there is.

    You and everyone else who thinks being a plumber is a lucrative job now and tomorrow needs to understand that automation is going to change the employment landscape dramatically in the coming years. The undereducated people who have been automated out of their warehouse work, call center jobs, etc. will dogpile on those jobs that pay well and don't require a diploma. Then those jobs won't pay so well.

    These wealthy tech billionaires see the writing on the wall and are trying to help equip the masses to be more relevant in tomorrow's job market. I appreciate your reference to Socrates and think it's an astute observation. While I think on the higher-end of the tech jobforce, companies like facebook and Microsoft are abusing the H1B visa program, I do think their support of STEM is in the interest of growing the domestic workforce towards the needs of industry.

  8. Much more secure... on Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server? · · Score: 1

    You do realize the guy is sending out unencrypted email over comcast's pipes in plain text. If privacy was his priority in choosing a home hosting solution, then you might want to awake the OP from his delusion of security by telling him he'll never see the court order that enables reading of all his inbound and outbound email messages.

  9. Get rid of your home datacenter on Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server? · · Score: 1

    I did the same thing described by the OP for many years. Suffered through hardware failures and soradic ISP service interruptions that caused me MANY hours of unnecessary work and lost productivity. I also shouldered the expense of electricity, noise, and replacing hard drives.

    Then the price of virtual private servers became so cheap, I couldn't rationally keep hosting stuff out of my house.

    Check my sig. Five bucks a month for a 512mb linux server with 150gb of storage and 2TB of bandwidth a month. You're root on your own box and don't have to deal with all the crap mentioned above.

  10. think of the insurance companies... on What Will It Take To Make Automated Vehicles Legal In the US? · · Score: 1

    .....and ban this right away, it will not matter if the fatality rate is even lower than manually driven cars.

    You ignore the gargantuan influence insurance companies wield over politicians.

    Who do you think got these types of laws passed?

    • No smoking in bars
    • No sodas sold in big cups
    • Mandatory seat belts
    • Child safety seats

    Those were the doing of an entity who could see that modifying these behaviors would reduce the payouts they make each year. This entity lives and breaths statistics and charges its customers based on anticipated payouts and profits off the difference. By modifying the behaviors while keeping the premiums at the same level, the insurance companies are able to expand their profits. Insurance companies use these profits to control politicians.

    Self-driving cars are hugely attractive to insurance companies. If they can overall reduce payouts by some small number, they'll happily pay for the fewer claims made against their customers' self-driving cars. Should cases go to court, they'll have plenty of telemetric data to throw in front of a jury to bolster their defense.

  11. Just finished books "Daemon" and "Freedom" on Elon Musk Warns Against Unleashing Artificial Intelligence "Demon" · · Score: 1
    Really excellent current-day technology thrillers. They expand on some very contemporary surveillance / privacy issues and also project many currently-available technologies into advanced what-if scenarios. It was hard not to think that the creator of the AI in these two books was not conceived as a reference to either Elon Musk or John Carmack. Definitely Carmack was an inspiration to the author at some level, but the weaponized self-driving cars hints at Musk.

    If Musk is warning about this AI-gone-wild threat, these two New York Times bestsellers might have given him the fright...
  12. Re:Ballmer investment portfolio on Ballmer Says Amazon Isn't a "Real Business" · · Score: 1

    The reason Marc Cuban is wealthy is because he had a dumb idea and was able to sell it to Yahoo before they realized they should only buy companies with paying customers rather than a pie-in-the-sky idea. Marc Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo, and they didn't know how to get any subscribers and that asset eventually evaporated into nothing.

    Then Marc Cuban started HDnet cable channel thinking he would corner the market on producing high-definition cable TV content. Then all the other cable channels began broadcasting in HD and the property floundered for a reason to exist until Ryan Seacrest bought and rebranded it as another entertainment variety channel-- AXS..

    Take a read of Cuban's blog. It's fun to click around in the archives to read his thoughts on the direction of future technology trends. Like when he predicted just ten years ago people would go into video rental stores to have movies transferred to a physical hard drive instead of walking out with optical disk media.. Somehow he didn't see the rise of Netflix and Redbox, did he?

    Cuban and Ballmer have a LOT in common. When a board of directors selects either of them to be the CEO of a multi-billion $ company, their opinion might be relevant. Right now, the industry and stock market has a lack of faith in the decision-making powers of these two.

  13. weak link isn't the host on Ask Slashdot: Good Hosting Service For a Parody Site? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Any organization attacking your published site will send DMCA emails to the hosting / bandwidth provider, but will also attack the DNS registrar for copyright violation. That's going to be the more difficult one to choose because there are a finite number of registrars and they all want to cover-their-ass against ICAAN violations.

  14. Re:I live in the Northeast part of Austin... on Google Fiber To Launch In Austin, Texas In December · · Score: 1

    Well-chosen slashdot nickname, Dimwit.

    All the public infrastructure crap you're complaining about was part of bond packages that voters approved and paid for with tax money.

    Google fiber ain't that. It's a subscription service being provided by a corporation. The fact that you're complaining of not having sewers hooked up indicates you live in a rural section which isn't the most lucrative region for Google to spend money where the people / mile-of-fiber ratio is thin.

  15. Re:I don't trust it on FBI Director Continues His Campaign Against Encryption · · Score: 1

    An NSL can be sent to Apple telling it to give the FBI all information it has.

    Brune,

    Pump the brakes, son. The words you have written here strongly indicate an irresponsible underestimation of the power wielded by National Security Letters. Go ask the ex-owner of Lavabit if he agrees with you that there are limitations on how National Security Letters may be applied to corporations.

  16. Re:way more than 10x now.... on Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity · · Score: 2

    I just checked less than 24 hours later. It's up to $247,000. Something tells me there is strong consumer interest in this type of a product.

  17. way more than 10x now.... on Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity · · Score: 2

    According to the kickstarter page, the campaign is over $170,000.

    A $51 pledge gets you one shipped to your house in the USA.

  18. Allow me to lubricate... on Tor Executive Director Hints At Firefox Integration · · Score: 2
    From Wikipedia:

    The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser.[29] To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite

  19. Sales knows best on this on Ask Slashdot: Software Issue Tracking Transparency - Good Or Bad? · · Score: 2

    In competitive sales situations, each company has performed competitive analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of their competition's product. When talking to a customer, the sales team is emphasizing the problems of the competitor's product and the strength of their own. The customer is beating up the salesman by asking questions about the weaknesses of their product that were fed to the customer by the competing salesperson.

    "It took them six years to fix these three simple bugs."

    "It wasn't until release 4.5 before they found a critical security vulnerability that has probably been exploited since release 1.0."

    "They decided not to fix these important problems in the current release and customers are going to have to wait another year for this functionality to work properly."

    Helping your competition perform competitive analysis is a really good way to help your company go out of business. The benefit of transparency will be hugely outweighed by the savagery that will be perpetrated against your sales team. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see the sales team quit if this transparency continues.

    Because car analogies are so hated on Slashdot, here's one:

    If a dealer handed you a piece of paper listing 100 things mechanically wrong with one car and then offered a second car that they said verbally had nothing wrong with it, would you really buy the car that is documented to be broken in 100 ways or would you trust the dealer's word on the other car?

  20. Re:What about BSD derivatives on Outlining Thin Linux · · Score: 1

    It is a working system with everything you'd need to run a legitimate server.

    I have wanted to run *BSD as our server OS for years, but the lack of native Oracle java support has held us back. Our app demands Oracle java and will not run on OpenJDK. Wish it would, because that's the only dang thing holding me off of *BSD these days.

    I can fully expect some people will claim the lack of availability of native Oracle java support is a benefit of BSD. I would not argue against that sentiment, but my paycheck depends on other criteria.

  21. I think you have Dr. Dre confused with Rick Rubin.

    Dre does create the music you hear while a vocalist raps. He's known as a perfectionist in the industry and has refused to release material that was not up to his ideals even though contracts were signed, etc.

    As for Bono and Apple working together to prevent piracy, I think U2's newest album is an example of the technology-- create an uninspired, unnecessary product that a major corporation gives away to consumers for free. Seems like the Fort Knox of piracy protection.

  22. Edison missing a lot on SparkFun Works to Build the Edison Ecosystem (Video) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ok. I have mostly been working with Beaglebone and looked at this video to see what I might be missing with Edison. The shill in the video promotes Edison by saying it has all these things built in-- wifi and bluetooth.

    From this video, it's clear the board is missing USB and any kind of normal power connector. Oh, and removable storage? And ethernet?

    This device screams of a scheme to dump atom processors after the market disappeared for netbooks and intel was left with a few million chips on their hands. I'll stick with ARM and the larger ecosystem that has grown around the Beaglebone Black and Rpi, thank you.

  23. Microsoft didn't pay the messengers on Microsoft Paid NFL $400 Million To Use Surface, But Announcers Call Them iPads · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most commenters here and elsewhere assume these references to a competing product were accidental. I believe they were likely intentional. The $400m paid to the NFL did not include any money paid to the broadcast corporations. They're sitting there wondering why they should help the NFL promote something while at the same time having to pay the NFL similarly-sized piles of cash.

    I think these carefully-executed comments were an intentional message to Microsoft that their promotional budget is better spent with them on commercials rather than trying to embed them in the content without paying the broadcasters.

  24. Re:Lucrative isn't all it's cracked up to be on Unpopular Programming Languages That Are Still Lucrative · · Score: 1

    Fully agreed. Additionally, if it's lucrative, that means the organization perceives it as a cost-center. At some point, management will finally tire of the burden of this inflated paycheck and under-performing technology and will dump it out along with you.

    I find that the more reliably lucrative jobs are the ones that provide efficiency and cost-savings to organizations.

  25. Re:There is no public benefit on Put A Red Cross PSA In Front Of the ISIS Beheading Video · · Score: 1

    If this is your takeaway from that footage and you are proposing that watching this footage can have a valuable effect for viewers, it does not surprise me that you can't find a job using your journalism BA.

    In your entire discussion of this topic, you ignore the relationship his suicide has to the larger community. You are caught up in the graphic sensationalism of the State Senator suddenly pulling out a gun and shooting himself. You treat the end of his life as if the meaning is journalists should pay attention at press conferences.

    Yes, in j-school, they taught you to get the Five W's for your story. The first four are the least important... . The fifth is last for a reason- the 'WHY' is where you have the opportunity to fill your prose with meaningful content that can improve the human condition. If you focus on that dimension of your journalism, it will enable you to stand out of the crowd and get that job.

    Nobody needs to see the beheading of a western journalist at the hands of lunatics. YouTube is right to remove the stage out from under these violent criminals.