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User: Sir+Realist

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Comments · 181

  1. Ask Slashdot: Would You Like to Be Unemployed? on Ask Slashdot: Is Outsourcing Development a Good Idea? · · Score: 2

    What a strange place to ask this question... unless you're just looking for us to cooborate your already fixed opinion. Of course Slashdot thinks its a bad idea; this place is full of programmers who don't want to see their jobs outsourced. Might as well ask oil executives their opinons on solar energy and alternative fuels.

    (Of course, someone will now contradict me by posting in favor of outsourcing. We're not just geeks; we're contrary Slashdot geeks...)

  2. Fails to take into account on NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death · · Score: 1

    The study fails to take into account the number of suicides caused by not being able to drink coffee.

  3. Re:Public vs. Private posts? on Online Loneliness At Google+ · · Score: 1

    Exactly.

    Lets see, we have a service that lets you post your life on a billboard, and one that advertises that its like that other one, only lets you keep some privacy and only shout to your friends. And it turns out that the people who were enticed by that pitch to move to the second service with more privacy... wanted more privacy. Truly a stunning turn of events.

    Tune in next week where we show that people who buy sports cars on average drive faster than people who drive subcompacts...

  4. Good Plan, but.. on UK To Give Peer-Reviewed Science Libel Protection · · Score: 1

    They're going to need to be very careful on the implementation. Define "properly" peer-reviewed. Is the journal liable for libel (now there's a terrible turn of phrase) if it turns out the peer review wasn't "proper"? Can someone challenge the propriety of the peer review in court?

    Don't get me wrong; sounds like a step in the right direction. I'd just hate to see it abused to discourage scientific publishing in England.

  5. Re:And they would've got away with it too... on How Romanian Fortune Tellers Used Google To Fleece Victims · · Score: 1

    Heh; someone else got there first though - I didn't see his comment til after I'd posted...

  6. And they would've got away with it too... on How Romanian Fortune Tellers Used Google To Fleece Victims · · Score: 1

    ...if it weren't for those pesky kids in the stoner van.

    "their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a monster."

  7. Get a free pass; unsecure your wireless! on NY Judge Rules IP Addresses Insufficient To Identify Pirates · · Score: 1

    So its only insufficient because your wireless might be insecure? Does that mean that if they can prove that your particular setup was reasonably secure, then it _was_ your responsibility? So you should leave a spare wireless router open for plausible deniability?

    [/sarcasm]

  8. Stop trusting other people to manage your servers. on Ask Slashdot: My Host Gave a Stranger Access To My Cloud Server, What Can I Do? · · Score: 2

    I don't mean that as a flippant smart-alec remark, I mean it as real advice. You probably do have legal recourse about which you should consult a lawyer, but after its all said and done your servers are still going to be in the hands of someone else, who can do this again.

  9. Battlestations on Notch Wants To Make a Firefly-Inspired Sandbox Space Game · · Score: 2

    ... is the name of the board game that encapsulates this perfectly: flying around in a ship while also running around inside the ship. Its a good game.

  10. Re:Zelazny on Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels? · · Score: 1

    Loved that one too... and Jack of Shadows... and Isle of the Dead... and Creatures... and Roadmarks...

    Like I said: Read anything he did _but_ Amber (and then go back and read Amber too; its good, its just not his best stuff.) And when you do get to Amber, make sure you get the ones written by Zelazny himself - the Betancourt prequels, that have Zelazny's name plastered all over them, were pretty dismal, to my mind.

  11. Re:Zelazny on Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels? · · Score: 2

    Zelazny gets a lot of press - at least amongst all us old folks - and I love the Amber series to death... but to be truly honest? Read almost anything else he ever wrote first. Nine Princes is good, but Lord of Light is the real stuff.

  12. Re:Cordwainer Smith on Ask Slashdot: Good, Forgotten Fantasy & Science Fiction Novels? · · Score: 1

    Yes!

    I normally hate "me too" posts, but I have no mod points and I must scream. Cordwainer Smith dying young is one of the greatest losses SF has ever suffered. And if you get tired of his books, you can just read about his life.

  13. Re:Alternatively on AT&T On Data Throttling: Blame Yourselves · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But whats cool about the article is that AT&T is actually producing statistics demonstrably proving their own staggering incompetence as the reason why we should feel good about giving them more money.

    I mean hello? So this trend of staggering growth has been going on for FIVE YEARS, and even after finally noticing that the problem has already gotten pretty bad, and noticing that its directly related to smartphone usage, you sold more new smartphones last quarter than ever before without first doing something to fix it? And I got all those numbers from YOUR OWN PR?

    I can't decide which is more incompetent: the management of your core buisiness, or your EVP's attempts a damage control.

    Perhaps a tie.

  14. Re:$1 mil? Seriously? on Job Seeking Hacker Gets 30 Months In Prison · · Score: 1

    True, but from the original article:

    "Marriott said it had to engage more than 100 of its employees in a thorough search of its network to determine the scope of the incident and to identify the data that may have been compromised. As a result, Marriott claims that the incident cost the company between $400,000 and $1 million in salaries, consultant expenses and other costs."

    The expenses quoted weren't run up catching the guy, they were run up finding the holes in their security. This is not an expense incurred because ToolBoy the Idiot HaX0r broke into their system, its an expense incurred because their security system has holes in it. They should have spent that money locking down the system from the outset.

    ToolBoy is still an idiot, but claiming those expenses are his fault is a bit much.

  15. Colorless + odorless = harmless? on Don't Worry About Global Warming, Say 16 Scientists in the WSJ · · Score: 1

    "The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas"

    Oh, that's all right then. I'll just go leave the car running in the closed garage - carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless gas, so it must be safe!

    And cut the gas lines in the kitchen - natural gas is colorless and odorless, so it must be safe!

    And fill the house with Radon - nevermind that its the second-largest cause of lung cancer in the US, its colorless and odorless gas, so it must be safe!

  16. Re:Just coat them with plutonium on New Cable Designed To Deter Copper Thieves · · Score: 1

    Ayup. Doesn't matter if its worthless; it has to _appear_ worthless.

  17. Lifetime job security on "Learn To Code, Get a Job" According To CNN · · Score: 1

    Lifetime job security fixing or replacing badly-written code, here we come!

  18. Re:Still the Wrong Guy on X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence · · Score: 1

    Yeah fine; descend into pedantic word choice arguments if you like. Copy-replace "infringe" for "steal" (in the appropriate tense, since we've decided to be pedantic) in my original comment, and you'll find that my original point still stands; they're trying to plug the leak in the wrong place, with the wrong guy, and they've punished Sanchez disproportionately because of that misplaced effort.

    Honestly, you people who can't get past shouting "NOT THEFT" every time anyone so much as thinks the word copyright, regardless as to whether the distinction is in any way relevant to the argument at hand, are not doing your own cause any favors.

  19. Re:Still the Wrong Guy on X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence · · Score: 1

    And yet, this was never a discussion about how much of the pie the multimedia conglomerates should get vs. how much the artists should get - its about whether we should give them any pie to divide up at all. If you steal a dollar's worth of movie, you may only be stealing a tenth of a cent from the writer, but you're still taking from them. And the megacorp you stole the rest from was the one that chose to make movies you like; they're going to make decisions about what to make next year based on how much profit things made this year, and you didn't vote for the movie you liked. (Mind you, since this started with a story about Wolverine, that's probably an argument _for_ stealing that movie, if you're going to watch it at all...)

    On the divvy-up, I totally agree with your rational artist friends. I'm a strong supporter of various writer's strikes, and new technologies that allow artists to sell directly to consumers bypassing the corps. But cinema-grade movies are still heavily capital-intensive - you don't generally just pop out and make one yourself in your backyard. So the production companies that support the artists are important too.

  20. Re:Still the Wrong Guy on X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence · · Score: 1

    You left out "artists". They're the third group that use that argument regularly.

    I'm not one of them either, but I know quite a few.

  21. Re:Still the Wrong Guy on X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence · · Score: 2

    Point. And I do think this guy should be punished for what he did, to discourage people from uploading obviously stolen stuff. But it seems like they're setting the severity for the punishment on this guy as if he were solely responsible for the pirating of the movie, rather than just one idiot in a long chain of thieves. A year in prison is a long time and will probably significantly ruin this guy's life. I'd think a couple of weeks in jail, a fine, and maybe some community service would be enough to make the point in his case.

  22. Still the Wrong Guy on X-Men Origins Pirate Draws a 1-Year Sentence · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look, I don't really follow the Slashdot party line on this one; I think stealing from artists you respect is stupid, because they won't make you more stuff. And Sanchez was an idiot for uploading this thing from the illegal pirated copy he bought. But his punishment does seem disproportionate, and they still got the wrong guy.

    This guy bought stolen goods, and made illegal copies of copyrighted materials. Somebody, somewhere, actually stole the proof from the studio. That is the real crime they should be punishing if they want to stop pre-release pirates. And I won't even bother to point out how effortlessly easy it would be to track copies and identify leaks in this technical audience, because I'm sure you can all come up with half-a-dozen schemes yourselves. If the studios can't be bothered to prevent the leaks or identify and punish the leakers in the first place, why should we care what happens to the leaked materials?

  23. There. Fixed that for ya. on Congress's Techno-Ignorance No Longer Funny · · Score: 2

    The problem: key members of [strike]the House Judiciary Committee[/strike] Congress still don't understand [strike]how the internet works,[/strike] anything at all, with the possible exception of money, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to.

    There. Fixed that for ya.

  24. Don't knock walled gardens man on Facebook Settles With FTC, Admits Privacy Violations · · Score: 1

    Walls work both ways.

  25. Yeah! Take that! on Facebook Settles With FTC, Admits Privacy Violations · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now do better next time, or we'll politely ask you to do better next time again!