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User: matria

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  1. Re:What is the best choice for Open Source lights? on Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out of 3rd-Party Bulbs With New Firmware (techdirt.com) · · Score: 1

    And the first thing I see on the API documentation site is a News section update about the Friends of Hue issue - "There have recently been many questions regarding Philips Hue and it’s certified partners..." I'm getting too old for the Internet. The era of paying attention to things like grammar and spelling as an indicator of the level of one's professionalism has passed.

  2. Re:What is the best choice for Open Source lights? on Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out of 3rd-Party Bulbs With New Firmware (techdirt.com) · · Score: 1

    They want your name and email address, and the Terms and Conditions are short and fairly innocuous. About the only eyebrow-raiser I was was that "We want all your apps to work with our API to form a rich ecosystem of interoperable applications, so it is a condition of access to our API documentation that you do not use it to develop or distribute any bridges or devices which interpret the hue API."

  3. Re: Code for Encryption Backdoors, obviously. on Hillary Clinton Urges Silicon Valley To 'Disrupt' ISIS · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So we shouldn't be concerned with sidewalks or pedestrian crossings or bicycle paths. Forget about railroad crossing alarms and barriers. Who cares about how many people die because of drunk drivers? Don't worry about whether or not the doctor has washed his hands. More health practitioners die from hepatitis every year than have ever died of AIDS, so why the sudden rush to use rubber gloves all the time? How many other ways of preventing "insignificant" numbers of deaths can you think of? I mean, we all eventually end up dead from some cause or another, right?

  4. Re: Causes cancer on Study: Cutting Sugar From Diet Shows Immediate Health Benefits (wiley.com) · · Score: 1

    Interestingly, but purely anecdotal, as I aged I began having the usual "control problems" that older ladies tend to have. Then, totally unrelated, just to see if anything would happen, I cut out all wheat products for six weeks. Surprisingly, after about three weeks I noticed no more "control problems". Also I was sleeping better. Then I started eating limited amounts of wheat products, maybe bread or pasta two or three times a week. Within a week "control problems" were back. Now, if you were me, what would you do about wheat products in your diet?

  5. Re:Theory on Alabama Will Require Students To Learn About Evolution, Climate Change · · Score: 1

    The only problem with this is that the Citrate-eating bacteria are still bacteria. The varying mutations of fruit flies, mosquitoes and dogs are still fruit flies, mosquitoes and dogs. Dark peppered moths and light peppered moths are still peppered moths. Salmon that go to the sea and get big before returning to their stream to spawn and the salmon that remain in their stream and stay relatively small are all still the same species of salmon. That is species variation, not evolution, unless the definition of evolution no longer means the development of new species.

  6. Re:Small correction on Malaysia Blocking Websites Based On Political Content · · Score: 5, Informative

    What constitutional racism does Israel have? Its Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws that act as its constitution are very clear that any kind of racial or religious discrimination is illegal. There are Arabs in the government. There are Arabs on the Supreme Court. There are Arab doctors, professors, business owners, university students, high-tech employees. On the other hand, there are not only no Jews living in Jordan, but by law it is a captial offense to sell property to a Jew. There is constitutional racism.

  7. Re:Exclusivity on Do You Have a Right To Use Electrical Weapons? · · Score: 1

    I don't think that tinfoil was available when the Founding Fathers felt it necessary to add the second amendment to the Constitution.

  8. Exclusivity on Do You Have a Right To Use Electrical Weapons? · · Score: -1

    Governments and their enforcement branches do not want civilians to have the means of defending themselves from those same government enforcers. Their goal is to keep the public totally defenseless. A defenseless citizenry is easily controlled.

  9. Re: My email to press@starbucks.com on Hacker Warns Starbucks of Security Flaw, Gets Accused of Fraud · · Score: 1

    And the fact that he immediately paid it back is irrelevant? It's like somebody "waltzing onto your yacht" and taking a fistful of diamonds, then handing them back to you and saying that you ought to secure your valuables better.

  10. Re:When a local call isn't a local call on AT&T Bills Elderly Customer $24,298.93 For Landline Dial-Up Service · · Score: 1

    Oh, I should probably also mention that a year later that company was bought out by AOL.

  11. When a local call isn't a local call on AT&T Bills Elderly Customer $24,298.93 For Landline Dial-Up Service · · Score: 1

    20 years ago there were new billing policies being put into place in different regions. I was in a California hotel over one weekend for a business meeting, and used the corporate network's local access number to connect and work all day, since my employer had bought a cheaper airline ticket that meant I had to stay over an extra day. I was shocked on checking out to be billed at $0.50 an hour for that time. Being from Florida I had no idea that local calls were charged at that rate from a commercial venue, such as a hotel, and there was nothing anywhere in the hotel mentioning this. Some time later the local Florida telco also implemented the same kind of charges. The company hadn't covered any "extra" charges, such as the meals for that extra layover day. I didn't have enough to pay the phone bill and had to call my local supervisor - at 5:30AM - to get the company to cover the charge before I could leave the hotel to catch my plane. They fired me later that week, and deducted those phone charges from my severance pay.

  12. Montessori on Finland's Education System Supersedes "Subjects" With "Topics" · · Score: 1

    Sounds a lot like the Montessori method. It's been around for a long time. http://www.montessori.edu/

  13. GitLab Presentation on GitLab Acquires Gitorious · · Score: 4, Informative

    GitLab presentation at the MODX Weekend last September https://video.modmore.com/modx...

  14. Local middle school? on US Government Lurked On Silk Road For Over a Year · · Score: 1

    Big deal. 30 years ago my kids in middle school could get anything you can imagine right there at school. That hasn't changed at all, in spite of suspending girls for having Midol in their backpacks. More people are using drugs (including alcohol and tobacco - it's the money, stupid!) than ever before. Considering the scandals that are uncovered from time to time about the government using drug running itself to further its own interests it's pretty obvious that this is just one of the more blatant attempts to make their bloated "war on drugs" empire look like it's doing something.

  15. Re:Not seeing the issue here on Judge: It's OK For Cops To Create Fake Instagram Accounts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And then the public defender you're assigned because you can't afford a decent lawyer tells you to go ahead and plead guilty to the lesser charge, even though everyone knows it's a false charge (the accusing party has a long history of making such charges and is well-known to the local police and judiciary) since it really doesn't mean anything, and you'll just get probation, but if you take it to trial they'll be mad and will throw the book at you. And two weeks after you are frightened and pressured into pleading guilty, and are sentenced to several years in prison, your lawyer is hired by the state as an assistant prosecutor.

  16. Re:off chance on Ask Slashdot: Workaday Software For BSD On the Desktop? · · Score: 1

    Why am I not seeing anything about the Solaris clones like Illumos/OpenIndiana? I've had great fun playing with OpenIndiana. This from three years ago might help address the OP's questions http://viritxian.deviantart.co...

  17. Re:You know what's really sad? on Court Shuts Down Alleged $120M Tech Support Scam · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of the time my Cuban refugee ex-husband wanted me to help him work with the widow of a deceased Spanish ambassador to Nigeria, who needed to move several million dollars out of a Nigerian bank account before the Nigerian government seized the money. It took a while to convince him that it was a scam.

  18. Re:8000? on Dirty Diapers Used To Grow Mushrooms · · Score: 1

    With my own children, I used cloth diapers, and washed 3 dozen diapers twice a week. I had my children very close together, so I had two in diapers most of the time. And before I get any of these "popping out babies" cracks, it wasn't my idea. Marital rape does exist, and is not any more pleasant than any other variety.

  19. Re:8000? on Dirty Diapers Used To Grow Mushrooms · · Score: 2

    I worked as a nanny for triplets for nine months. I'd say that I changed each one 8-10 times a day. The well-baby clinic said it was the first set of triplets they'd ever seen that never had any sign of diaper rash. The grandparents provided the diapers, with the stipulation that I use as many as I saw fit without worrying about cost.

  20. Re:Eames lounge on Ask Slashdot: What Recliner For a Software Developer? · · Score: 1

    I spent 5K on a sewing machine...still sitting on an old wooden school chair from the dump to work at it, though. Never found anything more comfortable.

  21. Needs Java? on Will Google's Dart Language Replace Javascript? (Video) · · Score: 0

    I was going to give it a try, and downloaded the Dart + IDE bundle. Then found out it needs a Java runtime engine to run the IDE. So forget it.

  22. Re:Borg Home on Hacking Internet Connected Light Bulbs · · Score: 2

    Sounds like this sort of thing could be useful in the Deaf community - have the lighting flash different colors for various alarms and notifications.

  23. Re:wrong and trivial solutions on Kids With Operators Manual Alert Bank Officials: "We Hacked Your ATM" · · Score: 2

    When I was in the Navy, there was a key rack in the wachstander's office (barracks watch). Oncoming watchstanders called in to base security to report status, including the presence of all keys, at regular intervals. One petty officer who was a good friend of the barracks chief kept the keys to the barracks back door in her room so she could let her boyfriends in. I was always getting in trouble when I stood watch because I refused to falsify my reports. I would report the key missing, and base security would come blasting into the barracks to find the key, and I had no trouble telling them where it was. I still have the scars, after more than 40 years, from the several times I was assaulted in the barracks because of it.

  24. Re:So... on Microsoft Is Paying Brazilian Users In Skype Credit To Switch to Bing · · Score: 1

    But...but...Bing Translate has Klingon!

  25. Re:Apples and Oranges on Ohio Prison Shows Pirated Movies To Inmates · · Score: 1

    That's not unusual. One of my kids is in the Texas state pen, where they don't provide much at all... including no writing materials, no lunch on the weekends, no personal hygiene items, no Internet access thus no email. So I scraped up $20 to put in his account so he could at least write me every now and then and buy a toothbrush. The state took it all, as a repayment of the "services" that he is receiving as a "guest" of the state. And I thought Charles Dickens wrote about 19th century England.