Yeah, let's go straight to, "someone was bribed". Whatever you do, don't think about what they said in the article.
What they DID say in the article is that Freiburg is using OOo 3.2.1, which is two-and-a-half years old. It also mentions that the city didn't consult any open source software experts. That may or may not add up to "someone was bribed", but it sounds at least a little bit fishy to me.
The only way for the Freiburgs of the world to throw off the yoke of MS oppression is to support FOSS. And no level of government has any business conducting OUR affairs using propietary data formats that can be easily held hostage.
I get seriously pissed off with LibreOffice, (and with Linux for that matter). But I stay the course because ultimately, freedom requires watchfulness and maintenance, and we'll never be truly free if we give up control and autonomy for the sake of ease and convenience. It's easy to be seduced by the latest bit of shiny, and that's a good part of the reason why our world is so fucked up.
Now, I can say the only thing I really don't like in XFCE is Thunar... for me it lacks lots of functionality (like, ffs, copy-paste with right button!
I don't much like Thunar either. That said, I'm posting this using XFCE, I have Thunar open on my other monitor, and right-click copying and pasting work just fine. Unless, of course, I'm trying to paste onto the desktop. I'm looking forward to a fix for that...
Re:To bad that non college education does not resp
on
MOOC Mania
·
· Score: 1
Not to mention, the incorrect use of the semicolon.
Your own command of grammar is hardly exemplary. The so-called sentence which I quoted above has no subject, and is therefore not complete. Your pedantry would be less offensive to me if you knew enough to consistently compose correctly formed sentences.
Please edit your post to reflect the misused commas and semicolon.
I believe you meant to say "Please edit your post to correct the misused commas and semicolon". In the context given, the word "reflect" makes no sense.
In a posting consisting of three sentences you managed to make two mistakes. If you are indeed an English teacher, and if you are representative of your profession, then it's not surprising that grammar and spelling mistakes are so common. Please edit your post to reflect your own high standards, hypocrite.
Just as stupid as bamboo and cardboard bikes. There's nothing wrong with using steel or aluminium for your bike frame. If you treat it right, it will last 20+ years, at which point it can be recycled into a new bike. Even if you leave it out in the rain, the frame will most likely still last 10+ years, its the rest of the components that really don't like rain that much.
That's not really a relevant comparison. The server chassis won't have to be locked to a lamppost in a vain attempt to thwart thieves, whereas bikes are stolen all the time. If my cheap cardboard bike is stolen, I won't cry much. And the city I live in could buy thousands of them for a minuscule portion of our transit budget and make them available for people to use at will, with the effect of making mass transit much more viable, convenient, and attractive.
As for server chassis, biodegradable ones may also be cheaper, lighter, and easier to manufacture. If they are, they could be a real advantage for server farms in depressed areas where heavy industry isn't up to snuff. Not to mention the lower shipping costs, and possibly smaller carbon footprint.
Back when Microsoft decided to turn Do Not Track 'on' by default in IE, I was one of those who applauded them and defended their actions. But now, the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me is feeling like a sucker, 'cause I'm thinking maybe MS wanted Do Not Track activated for the majority of its users so they could suck up more ad revenue from their own freshly-minted built-in ad trackers.
Assholes... It seems that every time I get the feeling Microsoft isn't 'all that bad' they pull something like this. So this time I'm writing them off for good. MS could donate all of their assets and income to the poor, and I'd still suspect them of continuing to be unreformed slime-sucking bottom feeders.
I'm quite sure that it IS the touch screens that require calibrating.
The thing that concerns me is that resistive touch screens are subject not only to long term resistance drift that can be corrected by calibration, they are also subject to a thing called 'ITO crack'.
ITO stands for Indium Tin Oxide, and it is commonly used in resistive touch screens as the transparent, resistive coating which is at the heart of touch screen functioning. When this coating cracks, the discontinuity causes position sensing errors that nullify calibration, and selections not intended by the user may be registered. Worse, the effect of an ITO crack can change with time, temperature, and use, so its behaviour can be inconsistent and intermittent.
I've never seen an electronic voting machine so I didn't know that they use touch screens. Now that I DO know that, I'm surprised - ITO cracks are a well-known failure mechanism.
A bright laser pointer aimed directly into the lens ought to damage the CCD - after a few such 'treatments' the camera will be seriously impaired, or outright useless. (Just make sure the videographer isn't looking through an optical viewfinder, and that the beam or its reflection doesn't hit anyone's eye).
IANAL, however I doubt very much that the police would even lay charges over such an incident, (never mind secure a conviction), and Mister Asshole would probably find better things to do with his time after a few hundred dollars' worth of damage to his camera equipment.
The garbage is going to decompose anyhow and release the greenhouse gases. Sweden isn't doing anything to increase the gasses and might actually be reducing it. And this is before you take into account the greenhouse gas savings from not producing electricity from coal or natural gas. So how is what Sweden is doing causing an increase in greenhouse gasses?
For one thing, even 'garbage' may have a significant portion of recyclable, and perhaps even re-useable, material in it, as a result of human error, laziness, lax regulations, etc. (I doubt the jurisdictions that Sweden imports garbage from are anywhere near as good as Sweden itself when it comes to separating waste). Incinerting this stuff, as opposed to recycling it, just means that we use lots more energy to extract more from the earth and refine it next time we need it, rather than recovering the energy investment we made the first time we extracted and refined it.
In the second place, (and I could be wrong about this), composting the component of that garbage which is amenable to being composted, (although it produces methane gas), may contribute LESS to global warming than manufacturing and transporting the chemical fertilizers that might be at least partly supplanted by good old compost.
Third, how much greenhouse gas is emitted in the course of transporting 800,000 tons per year of garbage to Sweden?
All of which is peripheral to the main point of my argument, which is that we are killing ourselves and our planet in the pursuit of material wealth far, far beyond what we need to keep us happy, healthy, sane, and fulfilled. "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle". The ordering of words in that motto is no accident.
Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?
And now perhaps it's time to broaden your view a bit. Poisonous as Silicon Valley may be, it's probably less so than corporate sectors featuring the likes of Big Pharma, Monsanto, Halliburton, and on and on and on.
Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other.
You may not realize it, but what you're talking about is nothing less than revolution. And given the stranglehold on power that the corporations have, such a revolution would be unlikely to be bloodless. (See "French Revolution").
Geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses won't fix it. Social networks designed to identify you to corporations so they can sell you more stuff won't fix it. Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it.
No, but they will keep the majority of the population amused, distracted, anaesthetized, materially ambitious, divided, and unable/unwilling to challenge the status quo. (See "Bread and Circuses", unless you believe, as I do, that corporatism is a religion - then see "Opiate of the Masses").
We all need to get really serious about building citizen-controlled network infrastructure. (By 'citizen', I mean, for example, most of the people reading this - not the people who have effectively renounced their citizenship in civilized society by acting to diminish and enslave the rest of us in various ways).
Citizen-controlled networks wont't immediately solve long distance problems such as trans-oceanic data links, (and they'll still be subject to governmental and corporate interference), but they're a start. And yes, for the time being the Great Firewall and its rapidly-evolving Western equivalents still have lots of holes to be exploited in the name of freedom. But there are still a LOT of people who are unable to exploit those holes, and the power-mongers may manage to close most or all of them some day, so my point still stands.
Research has shown that in some markets if we outlawed advertising, prices would drop while demand wouldn't decrease as significantly, and everyone would be better off.
But, but... think of the advertisers! Everyone would be better off, except them...
I'm an economist so I might be biased, but this seems like a good thing.
I agree. What was that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide about the 'useless third' of the Golgafrincham population?
Apologies for twisting your words - I just couldn't resist.
I'd be probably be flipping burgers if it weren't for unpresecribed Adderall.
Instead, you're posting on Slashdot.
I submit that this indeed is the crux of the issue. One road leads to productive citizenship, the other to a wasted, debauched life. You are the poster child for the evils of drug use.
If I had points left I'd mod you up as Funny! I have no idea why you were modded 'Troll' - I guess a few people here forgot to take their humour pills...
There should be a limit on the number of details that can be linked.
Yes, and that number should be zero. If I'm paying for the service, they have no moral right to be selling my data, anonymized or not, nor do they have a right to link it to third-party databases. And they especially have no moral right to use that data to engage in targeted advertising. Fuck those leeches and fuck the tide of slime they rode in on. And fuck the politicians who have sold us out to the highest bidder by legalizing this kind of thing.
I think I can explain this. The first thing to understand is that the amount of force needed to make a tire 'break free' and skid, as opposed to continuing to roll, is less than that needed to *maintain* the skid. (This is analogous to pushing a heavy box along the floor - it's harder to get it moving than to keep it moving). When using your brakes, it's very easy to cross that 'breakout' threshold and put the car into a skid. And on slippery surfaces, the transition between rolling and sliding, (i.e. between the wheel rolling and the brakes locking up), is very abrupt.
But with engine braking, the wheels are always turning, by definition. The wheels can't lock, so they're less likely to reach the breakout threshold. This is very important for steering - if the wheels aren't rolling, the car basically won't respond to the steering wheel - the front tires become rubber plows. (FWIW, I drive an automatic, and I still downshift on slippery surfaces when I want to slow down - engine breaking isn't limited to standard transmissions).
While I'm at it, I'm in the mood to explain ABS. ABS applies and releases the brakes really quickly when the controller senses that the wheels are no longer rotating. Steering happens during the short intervals when the brakes are released and the wheels are rolling; slowing down/stopping occurs mostly during the transition from from rolling to locked, and partially during the interval when the wheels are locked. Keeping the wheels in that 'break free' zone as much as possible is not only responsible for maintaining steering ability in a skid - it also decreases the stopping distance. (This goes back to what I said in the beginning about the force needed for the wheels to break free being greater than the force needed to maintain the skid). BTW, in an ABS stop you have to turn the steering wheel a lot farther than you're used to for a given degree of arc, because the wheels are only redirecting the car roughly half the time - the rest of the time they're just sliding.
And just a reminder that if you're driving on a REALLY slippery surface, technology and mad skillz won't save you - you're at the mercy of inertia and external forces. I've been there, and it sucks.
If you bothered to read the entire summary or article,
...which I did...
you might have noticed that she didn't put anything on Facebook about it. Someone else added them to a group without her permission.
My point exactly. Just being a Facebook user, and having 'friends', can and often does leave one's privacy open to violation, regardless of whatever precautions one takes. So the safest policy is 'just don't go there'.
It's too bad this happened, but perhaps it will convince some people to simply not use Facebook. Facebook's habit of raping users' privacy shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who uses a computer - they've done it many times, and it's been big news.
Users don't pay Facebook any money, so they have no reasonable expectation of ANY standard of privacy, service, or redress, and Facebook has no 'duty of care' obligations. So it's really quite simple - don't use Facebook, and if you DO insist on using it, then A), don't post anything from which your secrets might even be deduced, and B), prepare to suffer the consequences when, (not if), your secrets are revealed.
It's been said before, and it bears repeating: when you aren't paying for a service, then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. If you don't want to be treated as a product, don't use the service.
...is for my mobile device to have the entirety of my 'computing life' contained in it - even all the stuff like CAD applications and drawings, microcontroller development environment, etc, that I CAN'T normally use on a mobile device.
Mobile devices should plug into docking stations that provide the HMI necessities currently provided by desktops - large/multiple monitors, 'real' mice and keyboards that actually support a day's serious work, USB ports, extended and backup power, wired network connections, etc. The docking stations would become ubiquitous, and I'd be able to do mouse-keyboard-and-graphics-intensive work wherever I go. As I see it, the computing part of our lives is too integral to NOT be portable in its entirety; but a device that I can put into my pocket won't have a practical, heavy-duty HMI of its own until 'Minority Report'-style interface hardware can fit into an Altoids tin. So in the meantime, I'd like to put all of the computing power and data into my pocket, and connect to the bulky HMI hardware only as and when necessary, 'cause there's still a lot of useful stuff to be done on a pocket sized device, at least in a pinch.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid an ugly little thing called 'The Cloud' is going to ensure that this vision never sees the light of day.
Maybe someone on/. can dig up some history on the work CT and EK did for Monsanto.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Monsanto, Clarence Thomas worked for the company in the 70's. I can't find any specific info on what he did for them. My guess is that Thomas would defend his refusal to recuse himself by pointing to the 30-years-plus that have lapsed since he was employed there.
Elena Kagan was Solicitor General in 2009 when, according to Truthout.org, "the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the previous ruling and placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa." Again from Truthout.org, "In March 2010, a month before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the solicitor general's office released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case." This brief argued that "The judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent injunction entered by the district court." However, as far as I can determine, Kagan never worked for Monsanto.
Regarding Monsanto's influence in the Obama administration, Naturalnews.com has the following to say: "At least three former Monsanto execs hold high positions of power in the Obama administration. Michael Taylor, senior adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), used to be vice president of Monsanto. Islam Siddiqui, former vice president of the Monsanto-funded lobbying group CropLife, is now a negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative on agriculture. And Roger Beachy, the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is former director of a plant science center funded by Monsanto.
To me, the only surprise here is that people are surprised by all of this - it's just business as usual. When citizens allow their politicians to spend unlimited amounts of money on election campaigns, this kind of rampant abuse is inevitable.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, let's go straight to, "someone was bribed". Whatever you do, don't think about what they said in the article.
What they DID say in the article is that Freiburg is using OOo 3.2.1, which is two-and-a-half years old. It also mentions that the city didn't consult any open source software experts. That may or may not add up to "someone was bribed", but it sounds at least a little bit fishy to me.
The only way for the Freiburgs of the world to throw off the yoke of MS oppression is to support FOSS. And no level of government has any business conducting OUR affairs using propietary data formats that can be easily held hostage.
I get seriously pissed off with LibreOffice, (and with Linux for that matter). But I stay the course because ultimately, freedom requires watchfulness and maintenance, and we'll never be truly free if we give up control and autonomy for the sake of ease and convenience. It's easy to be seduced by the latest bit of shiny, and that's a good part of the reason why our world is so fucked up.
These would make for a kick-ass revival of the old Rock'em Sock'em Robots toy!
Now, I can say the only thing I really don't like in XFCE is Thunar... for me it lacks lots of functionality (like, ffs, copy-paste with right button!
I don't much like Thunar either. That said, I'm posting this using XFCE, I have Thunar open on my other monitor, and right-click copying and pasting work just fine. Unless, of course, I'm trying to paste onto the desktop. I'm looking forward to a fix for that...
Not to mention, the incorrect use of the semicolon.
Your own command of grammar is hardly exemplary. The so-called sentence which I quoted above has no subject, and is therefore not complete. Your pedantry would be less offensive to me if you knew enough to consistently compose correctly formed sentences.
Please edit your post to reflect the misused commas and semicolon.
I believe you meant to say "Please edit your post to correct the misused commas and semicolon". In the context given, the word "reflect" makes no sense.
In a posting consisting of three sentences you managed to make two mistakes. If you are indeed an English teacher, and if you are representative of your profession, then it's not surprising that grammar and spelling mistakes are so common. Please edit your post to reflect your own high standards, hypocrite.
Just as stupid as bamboo and cardboard bikes. There's nothing wrong with using steel or aluminium for your bike frame. If you treat it right, it will last 20+ years, at which point it can be recycled into a new bike. Even if you leave it out in the rain, the frame will most likely still last 10+ years, its the rest of the components that really don't like rain that much.
That's not really a relevant comparison. The server chassis won't have to be locked to a lamppost in a vain attempt to thwart thieves, whereas bikes are stolen all the time. If my cheap cardboard bike is stolen, I won't cry much. And the city I live in could buy thousands of them for a minuscule portion of our transit budget and make them available for people to use at will, with the effect of making mass transit much more viable, convenient, and attractive.
As for server chassis, biodegradable ones may also be cheaper, lighter, and easier to manufacture. If they are, they could be a real advantage for server farms in depressed areas where heavy industry isn't up to snuff. Not to mention the lower shipping costs, and possibly smaller carbon footprint.
I'll get off your lawn now...
Back when Microsoft decided to turn Do Not Track 'on' by default in IE, I was one of those who applauded them and defended their actions. But now, the paranoid conspiracy theorist in me is feeling like a sucker, 'cause I'm thinking maybe MS wanted Do Not Track activated for the majority of its users so they could suck up more ad revenue from their own freshly-minted built-in ad trackers.
Assholes... It seems that every time I get the feeling Microsoft isn't 'all that bad' they pull something like this. So this time I'm writing them off for good. MS could donate all of their assets and income to the poor, and I'd still suspect them of continuing to be unreformed slime-sucking bottom feeders.
It's wonderful to read such a positive and inspiring story. Bravo!
I'm quite sure that it IS the touch screens that require calibrating.
The thing that concerns me is that resistive touch screens are subject not only to long term resistance drift that can be corrected by calibration, they are also subject to a thing called 'ITO crack'.
ITO stands for Indium Tin Oxide, and it is commonly used in resistive touch screens as the transparent, resistive coating which is at the heart of touch screen functioning. When this coating cracks, the discontinuity causes position sensing errors that nullify calibration, and selections not intended by the user may be registered. Worse, the effect of an ITO crack can change with time, temperature, and use, so its behaviour can be inconsistent and intermittent.
I've never seen an electronic voting machine so I didn't know that they use touch screens. Now that I DO know that, I'm surprised - ITO cracks are a well-known failure mechanism.
But seriously, what will it be called?
Since it's an Apple product, call it the aPhone.
The docking port? That's the aHole...
A bright laser pointer aimed directly into the lens ought to damage the CCD - after a few such 'treatments' the camera will be seriously impaired, or outright useless. (Just make sure the videographer isn't looking through an optical viewfinder, and that the beam or its reflection doesn't hit anyone's eye).
IANAL, however I doubt very much that the police would even lay charges over such an incident, (never mind secure a conviction), and Mister Asshole would probably find better things to do with his time after a few hundred dollars' worth of damage to his camera equipment.
...and in THIS version Han and Greedo will sing songs from Pirates of Penzance together.
The garbage is going to decompose anyhow and release the greenhouse gases. Sweden isn't doing anything to increase the gasses and might actually be reducing it. And this is before you take into account the greenhouse gas savings from not producing electricity from coal or natural gas. So how is what Sweden is doing causing an increase in greenhouse gasses?
For one thing, even 'garbage' may have a significant portion of recyclable, and perhaps even re-useable, material in it, as a result of human error, laziness, lax regulations, etc. (I doubt the jurisdictions that Sweden imports garbage from are anywhere near as good as Sweden itself when it comes to separating waste). Incinerting this stuff, as opposed to recycling it, just means that we use lots more energy to extract more from the earth and refine it next time we need it, rather than recovering the energy investment we made the first time we extracted and refined it.
In the second place, (and I could be wrong about this), composting the component of that garbage which is amenable to being composted, (although it produces methane gas), may contribute LESS to global warming than manufacturing and transporting the chemical fertilizers that might be at least partly supplanted by good old compost.
Third, how much greenhouse gas is emitted in the course of transporting 800,000 tons per year of garbage to Sweden?
All of which is peripheral to the main point of my argument, which is that we are killing ourselves and our planet in the pursuit of material wealth far, far beyond what we need to keep us happy, healthy, sane, and fulfilled. "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle". The ordering of words in that motto is no accident.
Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?
Our pursuit of 'shiny' is killing us.
And now perhaps it's time to broaden your view a bit. Poisonous as Silicon Valley may be, it's probably less so than corporate sectors featuring the likes of Big Pharma, Monsanto, Halliburton, and on and on and on.
Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other.
You may not realize it, but what you're talking about is nothing less than revolution. And given the stranglehold on power that the corporations have, such a revolution would be unlikely to be bloodless. (See "French Revolution").
Geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses won't fix it. Social networks designed to identify you to corporations so they can sell you more stuff won't fix it. Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it.
No, but they will keep the majority of the population amused, distracted, anaesthetized, materially ambitious, divided, and unable/unwilling to challenge the status quo. (See "Bread and Circuses", unless you believe, as I do, that corporatism is a religion - then see "Opiate of the Masses").
We all need to get really serious about building citizen-controlled network infrastructure. (By 'citizen', I mean, for example, most of the people reading this - not the people who have effectively renounced their citizenship in civilized society by acting to diminish and enslave the rest of us in various ways).
Citizen-controlled networks wont't immediately solve long distance problems such as trans-oceanic data links, (and they'll still be subject to governmental and corporate interference), but they're a start. And yes, for the time being the Great Firewall and its rapidly-evolving Western equivalents still have lots of holes to be exploited in the name of freedom. But there are still a LOT of people who are unable to exploit those holes, and the power-mongers may manage to close most or all of them some day, so my point still stands.
Research has shown that in some markets if we outlawed advertising, prices would drop while demand wouldn't decrease as significantly, and everyone would be better off.
But, but... think of the advertisers! Everyone would be better off, except them...
I'm an economist so I might be biased, but this seems like a good thing.
I agree. What was that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide about the 'useless third' of the Golgafrincham population?
Apologies for twisting your words - I just couldn't resist.
I'd be probably be flipping burgers if it weren't for unpresecribed Adderall.
Instead, you're posting on Slashdot.
I submit that this indeed is the crux of the issue. One road leads to productive citizenship, the other to a wasted, debauched life. You are the poster child for the evils of drug use.
If I had points left I'd mod you up as Funny! I have no idea why you were modded 'Troll' - I guess a few people here forgot to take their humour pills...
There should be a limit on the number of details that can be linked.
Yes, and that number should be zero. If I'm paying for the service, they have no moral right to be selling my data, anonymized or not, nor do they have a right to link it to third-party databases. And they especially have no moral right to use that data to engage in targeted advertising. Fuck those leeches and fuck the tide of slime they rode in on. And fuck the politicians who have sold us out to the highest bidder by legalizing this kind of thing.
I think I can explain this. The first thing to understand is that the amount of force needed to make a tire 'break free' and skid, as opposed to continuing to roll, is less than that needed to *maintain* the skid. (This is analogous to pushing a heavy box along the floor - it's harder to get it moving than to keep it moving). When using your brakes, it's very easy to cross that 'breakout' threshold and put the car into a skid. And on slippery surfaces, the transition between rolling and sliding, (i.e. between the wheel rolling and the brakes locking up), is very abrupt.
But with engine braking, the wheels are always turning, by definition. The wheels can't lock, so they're less likely to reach the breakout threshold. This is very important for steering - if the wheels aren't rolling, the car basically won't respond to the steering wheel - the front tires become rubber plows. (FWIW, I drive an automatic, and I still downshift on slippery surfaces when I want to slow down - engine breaking isn't limited to standard transmissions).
While I'm at it, I'm in the mood to explain ABS. ABS applies and releases the brakes really quickly when the controller senses that the wheels are no longer rotating. Steering happens during the short intervals when the brakes are released and the wheels are rolling; slowing down/stopping occurs mostly during the transition from from rolling to locked, and partially during the interval when the wheels are locked. Keeping the wheels in that 'break free' zone as much as possible is not only responsible for maintaining steering ability in a skid - it also decreases the stopping distance. (This goes back to what I said in the beginning about the force needed for the wheels to break free being greater than the force needed to maintain the skid). BTW, in an ABS stop you have to turn the steering wheel a lot farther than you're used to for a given degree of arc, because the wheels are only redirecting the car roughly half the time - the rest of the time they're just sliding.
And just a reminder that if you're driving on a REALLY slippery surface, technology and mad skillz won't save you - you're at the mercy of inertia and external forces. I've been there, and it sucks.
If you bothered to read the entire summary or article,
...which I did...
you might have noticed that she didn't put anything on Facebook about it. Someone else added them to a group without her permission.
My point exactly. Just being a Facebook user, and having 'friends', can and often does leave one's privacy open to violation, regardless of whatever precautions one takes. So the safest policy is 'just don't go there'.
It's too bad this happened, but perhaps it will convince some people to simply not use Facebook. Facebook's habit of raping users' privacy shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who uses a computer - they've done it many times, and it's been big news.
Users don't pay Facebook any money, so they have no reasonable expectation of ANY standard of privacy, service, or redress, and Facebook has no 'duty of care' obligations. So it's really quite simple - don't use Facebook, and if you DO insist on using it, then A), don't post anything from which your secrets might even be deduced, and B), prepare to suffer the consequences when, (not if), your secrets are revealed.
It's been said before, and it bears repeating: when you aren't paying for a service, then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. If you don't want to be treated as a product, don't use the service.
...is for my mobile device to have the entirety of my 'computing life' contained in it - even all the stuff like CAD applications and drawings, microcontroller development environment, etc, that I CAN'T normally use on a mobile device.
Mobile devices should plug into docking stations that provide the HMI necessities currently provided by desktops - large/multiple monitors, 'real' mice and keyboards that actually support a day's serious work, USB ports, extended and backup power, wired network connections, etc. The docking stations would become ubiquitous, and I'd be able to do mouse-keyboard-and-graphics-intensive work wherever I go. As I see it, the computing part of our lives is too integral to NOT be portable in its entirety; but a device that I can put into my pocket won't have a practical, heavy-duty HMI of its own until 'Minority Report'-style interface hardware can fit into an Altoids tin. So in the meantime, I'd like to put all of the computing power and data into my pocket, and connect to the bulky HMI hardware only as and when necessary, 'cause there's still a lot of useful stuff to be done on a pocket sized device, at least in a pinch.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid an ugly little thing called 'The Cloud' is going to ensure that this vision never sees the light of day.
Maybe someone on /. can dig up some history on the work CT and EK did for Monsanto.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Monsanto, Clarence Thomas worked for the company in the 70's. I can't find any specific info on what he did for them. My guess is that Thomas would defend his refusal to recuse himself by pointing to the 30-years-plus that have lapsed since he was employed there.
Elena Kagan was Solicitor General in 2009 when, according to Truthout.org, "the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the previous ruling and placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa." Again from Truthout.org, "In March 2010, a month before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the solicitor general's office released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case." This brief argued that "The judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent injunction entered by the district court." However, as far as I can determine, Kagan never worked for Monsanto.
Regarding Monsanto's influence in the Obama administration, Naturalnews.com has the following to say: "At least three former Monsanto execs hold high positions of power in the Obama administration. Michael Taylor, senior adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), used to be vice president of Monsanto. Islam Siddiqui, former vice president of the Monsanto-funded lobbying group CropLife, is now a negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative on agriculture. And Roger Beachy, the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is former director of a plant science center funded by Monsanto.
To me, the only surprise here is that people are surprised by all of this - it's just business as usual. When citizens allow their politicians to spend unlimited amounts of money on election campaigns, this kind of rampant abuse is inevitable.
I can't wait until carrying a telephone is mandatory.
How would people with low income, who until now have relied on payphones for the occasional call away from home, meet such an unfunded mandate?
If you don't believe some governments would be willing to further marginalize those already disenfranchised, please note that some states are making it more difficult to register to vote.
I just got my old girl primered and re-upholstered and I'm thinking a new engine would really make her kick ass.
Is your 'old girl' a rear-engine design? If not, you may be out of luck...