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User: Mark+Atwood

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  1. I live here, and I think this is great on A Visual Walk Through Amazon's Impact On One Seattle Neighborhood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in Seattle.

    I am all for the rebuild and densification of my city.

    The city can't sprawl, and sprawl is wasteful and ugly.

    Seattle was a company-town shithole for most of it's history, and only relatively recently has the nasty streetcrime and the worst of the corruption been mostly eliminated. (Most of the last bits of the bad poltical corruption left when a number of the the 40 year career party apparatchiks were invited to move to DC by their national party) The city is now ok-ish decently-ish well managed and has a thriving multi-centered economy, and so people want to live here. And I welcome them. As long as they are not from California and bring California's social and government pathologies with them.

    99% of the people complaining about people moving here, are either people who moved here themselves, or are the children of people who moved here. You don't get to move someplace, and then start bitching that people should stop moving here after you move here yourself.

    And I look at the buildings that are being demolished, and they made of old dried wood, and brick held together by crumbling mortar. A major earthquake, and they where going to fall down and catch fire. We need to demolish more of them faster, and build more denser buildings that are better able to resist the constant damp and moss, save water and sunlight and energy, made from steel not wood and sand.

  2. Re:I'm shocked ... on Two Programmers Expose Dysfunction and Abuse In the Seattle Police Department · · Score: 1

    | Would you like to be filmed going about your job?

    Nearly everyone already is. Factory floors, warehouses, stockyards, retail stockrooms, retail front rooms, checkout counters, and even white-collar cubicle farms and grey-suit executives suites are routinely under the eye of security video cameras. Just the other day I was watching a construction job site get set up for yet another demolish&rebuild here in Seattle, and one of the first thing the construction crew did after putting up the safety fence, was put up the video cameras.

    That cops seem to think they are being uniquely put upon for being recorded illuminates much of the problem with cops.

    And in your last paragraph, "We still need to be able to accept the word of a cop when there is no camera footage". No, "we" as citizens or as a society have no such "need". It's the fraternity of cops that "need" that presumption, and yet they the cops have ruined it for themselves and for each other by not turning on their "brothers" who get caught lying.

    All cops will lie, to anyone, about anything, at any time, when they think they will get away with it, and their partner will back them up, the other cops on the scene will back those two up, and then their union will back them tooth and nail, even in the face of multiple camera angles.

    I will trust the uncorroborated word of a random street crack dealer over the uncorroborated word of a police officer. A crack dealer is at least held accountable by his upline and their gang enforcers for even the slightest infraction. Cops are held accountable only when they piss off someone politically powerful.

  3. Why is this a story? Everyone has always done it. on Cisco Spending Millions of Dollars Secretly Purchasing New Juniper Products · · Score: 1

    I've worked for two different hardware manufactures in the past, one of which made boxes that go into data centers, and one that made boxes that go into living rooms. OF COURSE we bought our competitor's products via a "cut out" company, and then took them to the teardown and reverse engineering lab. Everyone does it. Everyone has always done it. Everyone will always do it. It is specifically permitted in intellectual property law, and it's also well understood in case law, such that everyone knows that trying to enforce against it via "user license agreements" will fail in court.

  4. Re:Translation : on California Regulators Tell Ride-Shares No Airport Runs · · Score: 1

    mythosaz: You are either ignorant, stupid, or dishonest.

    The Uber driver does not know your destination when they pick you up. Uber Inc was very forthright about their decision to not tell that to the drivers, just to prevent drivers from rejecting short trips.

  5. Re:Good. on Employee Morale Is Suffering At the NSA · · Score: 1

    > Find a real job, and move on.

    Find a real job where?

    I wouldn't hire one.

    Honestly, I could not in good conscience approve or recommend a technical hire anyone who is "ex"-NSA. Certainly not for a dev, ops, or devops position. I cannot trust their loyalty to their job, their team, the company, the goals of any project, to any commercial NDA they may sign, or the integrity of any networking or data storage system they may touch. I cannot trust one not to leave a hard-to-discover hole in something. They have a prior oath that overrides any other loyalty, an oath they are required to lie about if confronted about.

  6. Re:What works in SoCal should stay in SoCal on Ask Slashdot: Why So Hard Landing Interviews In Seattle Versus SoCal? · · Score: 1

    Why the hell are you drinking Starbucks when you visiting Seattle!?

  7. Not happened, probably can't, most likely won't. on HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work for HP, many levels below our CEO.

    This undated document has not been distributed to employees. Most of us first heard of it today in the tech press. There is no actual *room* at all the HP offices to pull in all the employees. In fact, I understand that back when HP first started pushing telecommuting, they took the opportunity to do the logical thing, and shrink and close most of their field offices.

    So, short form, this news isn't news, because it's not a happened, and probably isn't.

  8. Basic Instructions is the Best on Ask Slashdot: What Was Your Favorite Web Comic of 2012? · · Score: 1, Informative

    1 Best: Basic Instructions http://basicinstructions.net/
    2 Single Best: too many to choose from
    3 Best Art: Girl Genius http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
    4 Most Relevant: Dilbert http://dilbert.com/

  9. Re:Anybody using Ada? on Ada 2012 Language Approved As Standard By ISO · · Score: 1

    I've used it. I liked it. For a long time my email sig was "The more I use C++, the more I like Ada".

  10. Re:SharePoint is like a Swiss Army Gun on Microsoft Steeply Raising Enterprise Licensing Fees · · Score: 1

    In US military projects and military software, the term "Joint" has the same meaning as your observation about "Enterprise".

  11. Re:Economic Geniuses on Microsoft Steeply Raising Enterprise Licensing Fees · · Score: 1

    Roughly, yes, he does.

    If he is directly directing or controlling the investment in any way, yes he does.

    On the other hand, if he owns shares in a "technology contra fund" with independent fund managers, and that fund shorts in MSFT, then he doesn't. On the third hand, if the SEC or some pissed off MSFT investors think he is overinvesting in this hypothetical technology contra fund as a way to get around the reporting rules, then he has to report that too. There is no escape, and very few safe harbors.

    If you work for a publicly traded company, and you are subject to the lock-out rules and disclosure rules, there will be someone in your HR's legal and investor relation groups who will explain this all to do you deep and exhausting detail.

  12. Re:Does Boston really smell that bad? on Thousands of Natural Gas Leaks Found In Boston · · Score: 1

    I find that Boston does have a distinctive smell. Maybe it *is* the faint trace of methyl mercaptan floating around.

  13. The press wants a "Linus" for their own reasons on Does OpenStack Need a Linus Torvalds? · · Score: 1

    The tech press thinks that OpenStack needs a Linus because the press likes telling narratives about colorful quotable characters because those are easy pieces of content to write, and they sell copy.

    The OpenStack project has a number of mutually cooperating teams of people with advanced "groupware" tooling that are doing Just Fine at performing the kind of operational day to day tech direction leadership and patch selection and merging that Linus does for the Linux project.

  14. Re:v1 was bullshit too on OAuth 2.0 Standard Editor Quits, Takes Name Off Spec · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was there, I helped write v1.

    The reason you had to sort the parameters etc etc was because OAuth 1.0 was designed to be implementable by a PHP script running under Apache on Dreamhost. Which meant you didn't get access to the HTTP Authentication header, and you didn't get access to the complete URL that was accessed. So we had to work out a way to canonicalize the URL to be signed from what we could guarantee you'd have: the your hostname, your base url path, and an unsorted bag of url parameters. Believe me, we *wished* for a straightforward URL canonicalization standard we could reference. None existed. So we cussed a lot, bit the bullet, and wrote one that was fast and simple as possible: sort the parameters and concatenate them.

    Go yell at the implementors of Apache and of PHP. If we could have guaranteed that you'd have access to an unmangled Authentication: HTTP header, the OAuth 1.0 spec would have been 50% shorter and a hell of a lot easier to implement.

  15. Re:Widely reported as fact ... on Turing Archive Director Questions Alan Turing Suicide Report · · Score: 3, Informative

    Somewhere in the bowels of the archives of the US Government is the paperwork regarding Qian Xuesen's attempt at naturalization, his enprisonment, and his deportment. On those papers will be the names and signatures of the US Government bureaucrats who decided to do this. I wonder if any of them are still alive?

    I would like to confront them with the results of their ignorant stupidity.

    Well, no, what I *actually* would like to do is throw them and their supervisors into a large bonfire...

  16. Re:While I applaud the general concept.. on Slashdot Visits Metrix Create:Space in Seattle (Video) · · Score: 1

    That sounds like a problem you have there. That is not my experience. The makerspaces I know well in Seattle: Metrix and ALTSpace, are nothing like that. All are truly welcome and encouraged to come play. And the same for the O'Reilly makerfairs. And not via some politically correct faux-welcoming "outreach" either. We have a lot of different kinds of people, working on all sorts of different kinds of projects.

  17. Re:While I applaud the general concept.. on Slashdot Visits Metrix Create:Space in Seattle (Video) · · Score: 1

    Projects similar to what you describe do happen at spaces like this, and in fact *AT* this very space.

    One of the regulars at Metrix is currently working with some friends to build a UAV quad copter.

    The widely reported FireSheep project was written and demoed at Metrix.

    Recently a class was taught at Metrix on how to pick locks.

    A team of geeks working at different space in Seattle launched a balloon to the edge of space.

    Your ignorance and apathy is showing. What about trying showing up, looking at what people are doing, and doing something really cool yourself.

  18. Re:The Big Question on Slashdot Visits Metrix Create:Space in Seattle (Video) · · Score: 3, Funny

    If only there was some sort of worldwide network of computers full of information. And if some organization would regularly read all that information into their own computers, and then index it, and give us some sort of simple UI where someone could type something like "hackerspace cleveland" and get a list of all the hackerspaces in Cleveland. Or maybe just one of the computers in that big worldwide network could have a name like "hackerspaces.org", and someone could connect to that machine via some protocol designed to carry hypertext, and find documents about hackerspaces in each city.

    That would be great.

    Too bad there is nothing like that.

  19. LJ had it before on Facebook Locks Down Social Gift Giving Patent · · Score: 1

    Didn't LiveJournal have this years ago?

  20. How is that... on Military Drone Attacks Are Not 'Hostile' · · Score: 5, Funny

    How's that Hope & Change working out for y'all?

  21. Google: INT 18 WIS 7 on Tech Expertise Not Important In Google Managers · · Score: 2

    It has taken Google ten years, a huge study, and suffering under what is their #1 cause of employee turnover, to learn something that is in nearly every good book on management? Most other companies can't do it because they are too stupid to be wise. Google can't do it because they think they are too smart...

  22. Re:The exceptions on Most IPv6-certified Home Network Gear Buggy · · Score: 1

    If your ISP claims to have IPv6, and isn't advertising their DNS servers over the DNS IPv6 anycast address, they are stupid. If they claim they can't, they are lying. If they claim it's someone else's fault, they are evil.

    Why are you believing them?

  23. About time on Google Brings Design-By-Contract To Java · · Score: 1

    I was learning Eiffel and had been coding in Ada for a couple of years when Java showed up. I was surprised then that Sun's language designers had given us a language that was already 15 years behind the state of the practice, let alone 30 years behind the state of the art.

  24. Re:wow... on Judge Declares Mistrial Because of Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    The "rules" that the judge explains to the jury are not the actual rules. Ferex, the rules about nullification, a judge will lie out of his black robed ass about.

    And the metarule for dealing with judges are the same as the metarule for dealing with cops. Specifically: listen a lot, believe little, say nothing

  25. Re:They reconsidered on Oracle Asks Apache To Rethink Java Committee Exit · · Score: 1

    MySQL already has left the building. Look to Drizzle, and the other MySQL forks (Monty Project, ferex), and the non-Oracle support companies (Blue Gecko, Palamino, Pythian, OpenQuery, SkySQL).