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User: Rhapsody+Scarlet

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Comments · 186

  1. I'm constantly amazed that so many people on Slashdot want to put the GNOME Foundations problems down to 'outreach programs' and 'SJWs' rather than the fact that GNOME is piece of shit and nobody wants to use it, hence nobody wants to support the foundation behind it.

    Don't believe me? KDE has its own outreach program for women, yet you don't hear about them having the same problems. Why? Because KDE fucking works, it's perfectly usable (for now at least), so not even the most anti-SJW types give a shit because good software is good software!

    This actually increasingly angers me because it pretends that if GNOME just killed their outreach program, all would be fine, when it obviously wouldn't. So if you just want to talk about the software itself, nobody's stopping you. But if your first criticism of GNOME is a bloody outreach program, then I'd say you're at least as bad as any SJW you criticise.

  2. Re:No - Presidential veto on Can the FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Decision Be Overturned in Congress? (newsweek.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't see why this is considered a problem. Pass the bill anyway, make him veto it, get Trump to put himself on the wrong side of yet another issue. You either force him to do something he'd rather not or he sits back and lets it pass. What's the harm in trying?

  3. Re:Tests don't fix the problems of identity politi on Canonical Needs Your Help Transitioning Ubuntu Linux From Unity To GNOME (ubuntu.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't understand why this is modded down.

    Because he's using the decline of the GNOME Project as an excuse to indulge his hate-boner for feminism. Seriously, what is the 2006 outreach to women post doing on that list? Can anyone give any good reason why that event lead to the next event and everything else on that list? Because I certainly can't think of any.

  4. Re:Flash games stored locally on Petition Asks Adobe To Open-Source Flash To Preserve Internet History (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Gnash. It's perfectly happy to load locally-stored SWF files and if they're old enough to work on Flash Player 7 (which was released in 2003) then they'll probably work on Gnash.

  5. Re:Someone could start a new one. on Popular Torrent Site ExtraTorrent Permanently Shuts Down (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd add that a quick look at the fansubs sites I follow shows a fair bit of fragmentation at the moment. AniDex and minglong seem the most popular choices right now, with (new) Nyaa a distant third and Nyaa Pantsu nobody's first choice so far. Anything could change, but that's what I'm seeing so far.

  6. Relative late-comer myself... on Ask Slashdot: What Was Your First Home Computer? · · Score: 1

    My first home computer was a 486 DX2/66 with 4MB RAM, a (surprisingly capable) Cirrus Logic SVGA graphics chip with 1MB VRAM, a Sound Blaster 16, a 503MB HDD, double-speed CD-ROM drive, high density 3.5 inch floppy disk drive, and a 14 inch CRT monitor with built-in speakers. Being that it was 1996 by the time I got it, this was not the most capable machine money could buy, but it did teach me a lot about computers and I enjoyed a fair bit of classic DOS gaming on it. I upgraded the RAM to 16MB later on before donating it to a school in 1999 and getting a brand-new Pentium III 450 with 128MB RAM and an Nvidia Riva TNT. I've since gone through an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ with ATI Radeon 8500LE, Core 2 Duo E6750 with Nvidia GeForce 8800GT, and I'm currently using a Core i7-6850K with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. I've also gone from MS-DOS 6.2 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux to Debian GNU/Linux. It's been a journey.

  7. Re:Init alternatives on Devuan's Systemd-Free Linux Hits Beta 2 (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    I don't know if Devuan supports it, but OpenRC is an alternative init system...

    ...viable alternatives like sinit, openrc , runit, s6 and shepherd. All are therefore included in Devuan.

    Not to be a dick, but the answer is right there in the description. You could take just a few more seconds before rushing to reply.

  8. Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians on Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    A story about how gamers from the 90s turned out okay. At first things seems great, people talk about how obvious this was, how earlier predictions of 'moral decay' turned out to be nonsense, that we're all perfectly well-adjusted reasonable people. Then someone mentions Anita Sarkessian.

    Oh dear. We were doing so well too...

  9. Re:Philips just fell off my vendor list on Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out of 3rd-Party Bulbs With New Firmware (techdirt.com) · · Score: 1

    I won't be buying their products either but that's got less to do with DRM and more to do with the pair of 'wet & dry' electric shavers I bought that died because water got into the electrics. Seriously, you're supposed to be able to use these things in the shower. After eighteen months of dry shaving and washing the head out with water (as the instruction manual tells you to) it died on me. Putting that down to just bad luck I bought an identical model to replace it. Six months of the same treatment killed that one too.

    Now I'm sure there are many reasons such things could die, but I noticed something in retrospect that was quite telling. After washing the head out with water I would always dry my shavers thoroughly and leave it air out for 24 hours before using it again. Near the time they died I noticed something that should've been more worrying now I look back. As I said I took dry shaves but after a few minutes of shaving I would noticed my hand was wet. Now since my hands started out dry, the shaver itself was dry on the outside, and there were no other sources of water to be found, there was only one place that water could be coming from. Upon inspection of both shavers I found that a back panel that was flush with the front when they were new had bowed out to a significant degree. Doesn't take a genius to work that one out.

    So yeah, nuts to DRM. I spent the best part of £150 of those pieces of crap and they died before even making it to the two year mark where I was told to replace the shaving head. It may be worth noting also that the one that lasted eighteen months was labelled as being made in the Netherlands while the one that lasted just six months was made in China. So far from getting better I think Phillips is actually lowering their already inadequate build quality.

    So now I'm struggling with wet shaves and working out what to do next. Buying Phillips is obviously right out, but it seems everyone is making wet & dry shavers and advocating the same washing out treatment that killed these things. I love the convenience (and lack of pain) that dry shaving brings but what the hell am I supposed to buy? I'm tempted to hope the high-end shavers will come with the high-end build quality to withstand a bit of water but then these were high-end too! I'm at a loss.

  10. Re:he should know better on Richard Dawkins Opposes UK Cinemas Censoring Church's Advert Before Star Wars (theguardian.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obviously private party restrictions on speech aren't a violation of 1st Amendment rights, but it should be more than obvious that freedom of speech can be threatened by private restrictions on speech by refusing access to media, venues or physical places which are commonly accepted as public spaces.

    Well it can be, but it seems to me that this is a pretty poor case to try and apply this principle. The Church of England tried their luck, probably suspecting that they would get rejected, got rejected, uploaded their ad to YouTube instead, got their story in the newspapers, on television, and even on Slashdot now, and likely got a far larger audience than they would have had they not got rejected in the first place.

    The principle of freedom of speech is certainly a good thing but it is not the only right in the mix. Companies controlling their platforms also have the right to not be compelled into carrying speech they disagree with. This is why it's important that there be numerous platforms, so anyone rejected from one can just go to another and find someone willing to broadcast what they want to say. That way both rights can be upheld and everyone should be happy. That's exactly what has happened in this case so I'm shedding no tears for anyone. The system is working, I see no reason for anyone to be complaining.

  11. Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. on Google-Supported CodeGirl Documentary Makes "Exclusive YouTube Premiere" · · Score: 1

    Regarding your contention of MRAs: So, what you're saying is that those sexists that are holding women back in careers, that are enforcing the wage gap and are keeping women out of tech and C-suites, and squashing them at the sprout level by calling them "bossy", are you saying they haven't got that so-called "MRA mindset"?

    Well the term 'MRA' is quite ill-defined and I guess people have different definitions, but by mine I would say no. The MRA mindset is quite a specific one, there are many other types of sexism out there and I don't lump all of them together as MRAs.

    Because to have it explained by anyone who shouts "MRA!" at even the vaguest criticism of women/women's initiatives, it seems as if both the sexists at the top and the neckbeards at the bottom don't like it when the wimminz get their hands on the boys' toys and would very much like to shove them back into the kitchen by any means necessary.

    Well there are some pretty nasty misogynists at the top of the management ladder but as I said I consider that different to the ranting MRAs you see on the internet. The MRAs can be absolutely terrifying to those they target but have little power on society at large, the more influential misogynists that can be considered respectable do far more damage.

    If someone is going to whinge on about MRA-type thinking and ignore the fact that the assertion of sexism in the workplace is driven by the same mentality (at least according to feminist theory), your line of thinking is either willfully ignorant or disingenuous.

    There are commonalities, but as I said I don't consider them the same. You seemed to assume I would two paragraphs ago and have predicated the rest of your argument on that. My argument was essentially that society is a very complicated and sometimes counter-intuitive thing that resists attempts to simplify it. You want me to throw all sexism and misogyny into the 'MRA' box because that would be easy, but I'm not going to do that. The MRA mindset is a recent innovation that arose because of the internet allowing for the type of organization and echo-chambering that was necessary for it. But it's only a small part of a much larger problem and while some people overly fixate on the MRA part of that problem I'm not one of them. Go find one of those people if you want to shout at them.

    Regarding your second claim: yes, that happens, but keep in mind that a campaign was started last year by very famous (and, ironically, very successful) women to ban the word "bossy" because it is apparently (as the campaign itself said) a "squasher". Emma Watson also in her initial He for She speech to the UN made it clear that women (herself included) were plagued by such things. Another recent incident involved Anita Sarkeesian going to the UN Women group and said that people telling her "You Suck" online is a campaign of "cyber violence", specifically against women.

    Well I did talk about doxing and outright threats of violence earlier, I think we can agree that those are distinct from just calling women 'bossy'.

    Hell, more than one poster here on Slashdot has jumped to my defense if an AC decides to post "tits or gtfo" at me, claiming Slashdot isn't "safe for women".

    Well given what I've seen in this comment thread, they do seem to have something of a point. There's been a lot of talk about getting rid of traditional site-based comment threads recently and I have been a staunch opponent of such efforts. Looking at Slashdot today though, I ended up wondering what I'm trying to save.

    Like fuck it isn't. And anyone who claims otherwise has never been the victim of real, true violence.

    That's a fantastic red herring.

    So, are you going to assert that there isn't at least an idea being passed around that women get hurt by words and t

  12. Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. on Google-Supported CodeGirl Documentary Makes "Exclusive YouTube Premiere" · · Score: 1

    either MRAs are losers that mommy didn't love enough but are powerful enough to be the invisible hand of society that holds women back

    Who the hell ever said that? I don't think I've ever seen anyone portray those basement-dwellers are 'the invisible hand of society', that title goes to people with actual power. No the MRAs are losers but as it turns out doxing and death threats aren't the sort of thing that requires social power or even serious numbers, just a handful of determined losers can do a lot of damage to people if they band together, which the internet makes trivial.

    or women are strong and capable until they're called "bossy", and then they get crushed back to non-existence

    Strong and capable woman works at a corporation, and does a damn good job too. But her boss doesn't get on with her, sees her strength and capability as 'bossiness', and so passes her over for promotion time and and again. End of story. While we don't like thinking of life that way, ability often only gets you so far. If your boss decides you're not going any further, you're not going any further. You could protest of course, but then you have a reputation for being a bossy loudmouth already...

    I actually saw a social experiment about racism a while back where blue-eyed people were arbitrarily chooses as the 'underclass' and all sorts of traits were made about them such as that they got angry easily, and weren't very intelligent. It's amazing how quickly protests against the propaganda was turned against them. "See how angry they are? They don't even understand!" It's an incredibly effective and versatile way of justifying discrimination. It's also amazing how well it still works, despite everyone thinking it doesn't any more. A lot of social progress up to this point has just been spot fixes, we haven't grown out of anything.

  13. Daily, rolling release FTW on Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Update Your OS? · · Score: 1

    Specifically, Debian testing with unstable and/or experimental packages if I desire a specific feature and deem them stable enough. People who talk about leaving new versions to get early problems ironed out have too much faith in software developers in my opinion. I'm amazed at the stuff I've been told they didn't notice or considered a feature. In order to get such things fixed, you need to be engaged, and that means using new versions of stuff so you actually know what's going on. If you're only using old versions then you've only get yourself to blame when developers go down crazy street.

  14. Re:What a bizarre statement on Twitter Rolls Out New Anti-Abuse Tools · · Score: 2

    So to protect against silencing, you're going to silence?

    Well let's put it this way. Say a nation has no laws against kidnapping and forced imprisonment. Then they decide it's time to ban such things and announce a new law, kidnapping and forced imprisonment are now criminal offences carrying a three-to-ten year prison sentence if convicted.

    So of course people come out with "What? That's your solution? Protect against imprisoning people by imprisoning people?". Yes, sometime in order to protect the freedom of some people we must restrict the freedom of other people. Careful balancing and oversight is required, but there is nothing fundamentally contradictory about this.

  15. Re:Took them long enough... on Federal Judge Rules Chicago's Ban On Licensed Gun Dealers Unconstitutional · · Score: 2

    What is funny about that is if you take the 3 cities with the strongest anti Gun laws (Washington DC, New York City, and Chicago) and made them their own country, they would be #4 on the list and the rest of the US would drop down to something like #20 or lower on the list.

    I don't know about these exact figures, but Mike Huckabee said something remarkably similar and PolitiFact took him to task for being full of it. So I for one would be interested to see the actual numbers behind your claims.

  16. Re:Grasping at Straws on Sun Not a Significant Driver of Climate Change · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Over the last 2 months the Drudge report has been full of climate news. All of it being evidence against AGW.

    Well when you go looking for evidence, you tend to find it. Both sides in any debate like this will present veritable mountains of evidence in favour of their position, we've seen it time and again. It doesn't make you right.

    Such as the US just had one of the 10 coldest years on record.

    Citation? Also localized event, also short dips do not contradict long-term trends, also potentially not all that remarkable if it's only the ninth or tenth coldest on record (the statement is pretty non-specific).

    The UK getting record snowfall despite AGWers claiming the UK wouldn't see snow after 2008.

    Who said that? Someone whose opinion actually matters in this debate or just some newspaper reporter on a slow day?

    Antarctica getting within .5 degrees of the coldest recorded temperature on earth.

    Well how cold does it usually get in that part of Antarctica? If it gets within a few degrees most years, then that's not news.

    Along with 2000 record low temperatures recorded over the last couple of months.

    As opposed to a typical winter, which sees... how many? Really, this needs to be placed in context.

    Add that to the IPCC report showing no warming for 17 years.

    Who said that? The people who made the report or someone else? If someone else, then I bet they're disagreeing with the people who did make the report. So what is the point of disagreement? What part of the IPCC methodology was flawed? Who reached this conclusion and how did they reach it? There are no details to go on here.

    Its become pretty obvious which side has been lying.

    Lies. Lies and deceptions. If it were so 'obvious' there would not be such protracted debate over the issue. Truth of the matter is, most people don't know what to think any more. Both sides seem to have so much evidence that trying to sift through it all is an exercise in futility. We've got to the point where it's a handful of 'true believers' on both sides who are absolutely convinced they are right, and a majority of confused individuals who don't know what side to take if they should even be taking a side at all.

    Now they are grasping at straws to report ANYTHING that shows their side "might" be right.

    Yep.

    I'm going to ignore the alarmists and look at the evidence myself.

    Nope. You're very clearly one of the true believers, you're going to find what you want to find and believe that it was just coincidence that all the evidence reinforced what you thought already.

    If AGW was real, they wouldn't have to lie as often and at least ONE of their predictions would have happened.

    Don't believe me? Look at what you just typed. You are not looking for the truth because you believe you already found it, so what would be the point of looking further?

  17. Re:Wait a second... on J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars VII · · Score: 1

    Don't hold your breath, I stand by every word of it.

  18. Re:Wait a second... on J.J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars VII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Meanwhile, those of us that like both Star Wars & Star Trek are thinking, "hrrm, Episode 7 has a chance now of not sucking."

    Assuming you actually liked Star Trek XI, which I didn't. At all. Not even a bit. In fact, I rated it my second worst Star Trek movie (saved from the bottom only by The Final Frontier). Want some reasons? I've got plenty, but here's just a few (spoilers incoming!):

    First, I see a lot of people talking about transwarp beaming, with some even defending it going "Oh, well you know beaming was just to save on money in the first place", which was was, which is irrelevant. Beaming was fine because beaming had rules. You can only beam over certain distances, you can't beam through certain atmospheric conditions, you can't beam at warp unless it's between two ships and they're both going at exactly the same speed and you have an extremely skilled operator. These rules keep it from being too powerful a plot device. So what does Abrams do? Transwarp beaming! Beam to a ship ridiculous distances away that's travelling at warp from a (relatively) stationary planet!

    That's bullshit because it's just lazy. Abrams wrote himself into a corner. Kirk needs to be on the planet to meet future Spock but Kirk and Scotty need to be on the Enterprise to fulfil their destinies, but oh shit the Enterprise warped off fucking hours ago. I know! Deus ex machina, and they're in the engineering section. It's just bad writing.

    It also brings me too... oh fucking hell, give me a second. It brings me too... the worst set. In all of Star Trek history. Even the Original Series. That engineering section. Just... what? Seriously, what? What is it? What are all these pipes? What do they do? How do they fit on the Enterprise? What was the designer smoking? I really, really don't get this set. Even in a narrative sense, what's it for? One stupid scene where Scotty gets stuck in the pipes? You could've cut that whole scene from the movie and nothing else would have to change. So why? Why not at least make it match the bridge and shuttlebay in style and design rather than feeling like a totally difference franchise in there?

    Oh, but then we come to style and design. It's just rule of cool, even when it makes no sense. The Romulan mining ship? A 'simple mining ship' that looks like some fever-dreamed eldrich abomination? I mean, I know it has to look imposing but that's not just some lowly mining ship so why does it look like that? Because it's cool of course! Explanations are for losers! Also 'red matter', surely the midicholorians of Star Trek. An incredibly powerful substance out of nowhere that can make black holes out of nothing and destroy whole stars because that's not overpowered. Also, 'red matter'? Even Spock calls it red matter, is that really what it's called? That's the scentific name? Red matter? They couldn't even care enough to give it a vaguely 'sciency' name like 'trilithium' from Generations? It may be small, but the small things are what make you know they care, and they didn't with this movie.

    If this is what Star Wars VII is going to be like then we're going to see something very special. We're going to see the franchise find an even lower place than the prequel trilogy.

  19. Re:Full of shit on French Telecom Claims To Have Forced Google To Pay For Traffic · · Score: 1

    The CEO of Orange is full of shit.

    Not really surprising. As a former customer of their UK arm, I can attest that Orange is shit. They're probably trying to gouge Google because of all the money they're losing from their actual customers leaving and not coming back.

  20. Re:Activities? on KDE Announces 4.9 Releases · · Score: 1

    I've generally found myself getting used to them with two main problems left:

    #1: No official way to bind activities to key combinations. I see an unofficial way of hacking this into Plasma, which seems to indicate high demand for this feature, but the developers have proven supremely uninterested in official support for it.

    #2: No way to bind applications to activities. If I'm supposed to use activities to group applications, then why the fucking hell can't Plasma remember which activitiy an application was grouped in last session? Why do I need to tell it all over again every time I log in? I still do not understand why this wasn't fixed at 4.1/4.2, nevermind being left this way until now. Again, the developers seem completely uninterested in this, instead taking time to implement mandlebrot wallpaper generation...

    I was hoping 4.9 would have progress on at least one of these points, but instead we get some bullshit about Folder View.

  21. Re:Great Idea on British MPs Propose Censoring Internet By Default · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really, it is about time we protect our children and others who don't want to see this kind of stuff. Objectionable material should not be seen by minors and there are many others who prefer not to be subjected to this stuff.

    Fine by me too, but here's an idea: Why don't they opt-in?

    People who don't want to see 'objectionable material' or who don't want their children to see the same can opt-in to a filtering system, that ISPs are required to provide at no charge and notify all their customers of, and anyone who doesn't gets the same internet they always have, warts and all.

    Because you see, the internet is what it is. It has pornography, hate speech, and even illegal materials. Those are facts of life. But when I ask to get 'the internet', I want the internet, not some filtered subset of it. So the default should be an unfiltered connection, and those who want filtering should have to ask for it. I'm perfectly willing to make it easier for those who want filtering to have access to it, that is their choice. But it should be their responsibility to ask for such things, not my responsibility to ask for them to be removed.

    Also, should this 'opt-in' filtering come into effect on my ISP (Sky Broadband, I believe they haven't started yet, please inform me now if I'm mistaken because they haven't told me anything) then I am taking my 'opt-in' rights, and if someone should say "So you're opting-in to pornography then?" I tell them "No, I'm opting-out of your stupid, unnecessary filter that I did not ask for and do not need".

  22. Flashblock-a-like for HTML5? on Adobe Makes Flash on GNU/Linux Chrome-Only · · Score: 1

    Well this seems as good a time as any to ask if there's a tool similar to Flashblock for HTML5. I'd be using HTML5 at YouTube already except for the fact that YouTube plays videos automatically (whether I like it or not) and I use Flashblock to prevent YouTube from doing that. But that only works for Flash Video it seems, not HTML5 Video.

  23. Re:I do not know what to do... on Firefox 9.0 Beta Available · · Score: 2

    And yet Chrome is all right by you people.

    This was my first thought too. People getting all pissy about Firefox getting rapid releases and switching to Chrome in response. Do any of them realize that Google were the pioneers of rapid release? Google started out with quarterly releases, which they then cut to six weeks, which was then adopted by Mozilla as their release schedule as Google seemed to have made a compelling argument for it.

    So feel free to criticize Mozilla for rapid releases if you like, but give Google some credit too. It was their idea.

  24. Re:Please stop.... on Firefox 9.0 Beta Available · · Score: 1

    When the rapid version changes stops interfering with addons and other such things, then people will stop caring.

    It has for me. Back on 7.0.1, all of my add-ons were already marked as compatible up to 9.x, and it's not like I've only got two or three, I currently have twenty-seven active extensions. Maybe I'm exceptionally lucky, but it's working for me so far.

  25. Re:Let it die on Firefox 9.0 Beta Available · · Score: 1

    IE 10 will give FF a run for its money and even Chrome next March when it is released.

    I'm not so sure about that. IE 10 got 6 fails while Firefox got 164 and Chrome got 415? All well and good, but note that Opera 11.52 got 3750 fails. That's a huge amount, but then the commenters note that Opera 11.60 beta gets a total of... 11 fails.

    So Opera 11.52 to Opera 11.60 brings the fail count down from 3750 to 11? Given how fast Opera seem to have improved their total, I'd think Mozilla and Google can probably do similar and IE's excellent score may just be a matter of timing. In other words, the test you cited may well be meaningless.