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User: gmack

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  1. Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? on Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel · · Score: 1

    It also doesn't help that in some cases the change is rather jarring and the problem has gotten even worse now that the systems are fly by wire.

  2. Re:So many improvements on Linux 3.13 Kernel To Bring Major Feature Improvements · · Score: 1

    I had the same problem with the Nvidia drivers but 3.12 was such a large difference on my other systems that I spent the time and patched the Nvidia drivers myself using patches I found using a Google search "Nvidia Linux 3.1.2".

    You should be able to do the same but if you get stuck, feel free to contact me for help.

  3. Re:How's that tech bubble working out for you? on SnapChat Turns Down $3 Billion Offer From Facebook · · Score: 1

    I remember this exact logic right before we had the huge dot-com crash in the early 2000s. If it's not making revenue now it is dangerous to assume just throwing ads on it will somehow make it turn a profit rather than turn users off the product.

  4. Re:What's the problem? on Online Retailers Cruising Tor To Hunt For Fraudsters · · Score: 1

    What does logic have to do with it? I work for a company that uses 3d secure and it has changed nothing about how the bank treats us when a chargeback happens.

  5. Re:Is that really going to work? on Online Retailers Cruising Tor To Hunt For Fraudsters · · Score: 1

    Thankfully tor exports a handy list of exit nodes. This list is also kept in other places and it came in handy a few months back when someone used tor to flood my ssh server with a massive amount of ssh logins. You can even find some scripts that parse the list and turn it into an iptables ruleset.

  6. Re:What's the problem? on Online Retailers Cruising Tor To Hunt For Fraudsters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are so wrong it's not even funny. The retailer is almost always held responsible for any fraud. If a charge is determined to be fraudulent the retailer is out the money plus a chargeback fee and on top of that, the event is kept track of so if the overall total gets too high, the merchant account gets terminated.

  7. Re:Young stupid people on What Employee Lock-In Means At Facebook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stupid managers as well. Every few years my employer retries that idea only for the bug counts to skyrocket as the hours get later. After about an 11 hour day, more time is spent fixing bugs created by overtired employees than making actual progress.

  8. Re:This on Facebook Comment Prompts Arrests In Cyberbullying Suicide Case · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You know who got bullied a lot in my school? The kid with the pacemaker. Please tell me how he was supposed to stand up for himself. Also in my experience the kids who fought back ended up with the bullies coming back in groups.

    The problem is the kids who bully and not the victims.

  9. Re:This applies to television, too? on Is Choice a Problem For Android? · · Score: 1

    The trend of "cutting the cable" has more to do with the fact that with all of those channels, there is still nothing worth watching most of the time. Most of the channels are barely distinguishable from each other and all show similar crap. Even channels that were supposed to be different have become the same as everything else (MTV cut back on music, Syfi cut back on science fiction etc). And that's on top of the fact that anything I find worth watching tends to be on when I would rather be doing something else.

    So I'd say the problem with cable is actually the lack of choice disguised as choice.

  10. what about the data format? on Billion Year Storage Media · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's nice and all but can we trust our data formats to stay static for that long? Having the data but being unable to open it seems rather useless to me.

  11. Re:put it in perspective on Foxconn Accused of Forcing InternsTo Build PS4s Or Lose School Credit · · Score: 2

    What makes you think they had a choice where they ended up? They needed to pass an internship to graduate and I wonder how many potential opportunities wouldn't exploit them this way.

  12. Re:Me gusta! on GNU Make 4.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Why? It autodetects source files and subfolders so they never need to touch the build system.

  13. Re:Me gusta! on GNU Make 4.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Once your project reaches a certain size the actual commands and their arguments end up making a multiline mess for each command and aren't actually that helpful unless it's the build process itself you are debugging. It gets even worse if you generate dependency files which involve piping the output of gcc through some arcane sed commands.

    I generally prefer having make tell me what it's doing (Generating depfile.d, building file.c, linking file.o) etc. And then it's very easy to spot what file threw the error. Where I work, we turn on every GCC warning we can find and that alone is several lines per gcc execution (programmers are under orders to not leave warnings). Compiles here happen several times an hour but the build system only gets worked on when I have some free time and feel like I need some pain in my life (once a year at best). The other programmers don't know or care that the build system crawls the source tree, duplicates the tree structure in a build folder, generates dependency and object files in the corresponding subfolders of the build folder etc etc. They only want to see what source or include file they broke.

  14. Re:Look past the article's version of the cast ... on New York Subpoenaed AirBnb For All NYC User Data · · Score: 1

    Well that's fair, if they signed an agreement stating they would not do short term rentals than they are obligated not to and you don't need the state of NY to regulate that for you..

    But keep in mind that that something like airbnb isn't necessarily a problem with maintaining a good quality of life since the renters are rated and those with poor (or no) reputation can be refused. It's the same as when I used to use ebay and certain products were only sold to people with good ratings.

  15. Re:Look past the article's version of the cast ... on New York Subpoenaed AirBnb For All NYC User Data · · Score: 1

    But this is not a hotel and customers don't expect to be treated like they are in a hotel. If I'm in a Hotel I expect clean sheets and a level or service. If I'm borrowing someone's apartment I usually bring my own sheets and expect to clean up after myself.

  16. Re:Technophobia on He Fixed 300,000+ Machines - America's Oldest Typewriter Repairman Dies At 96 · · Score: 2

    And my grandmother started learning how to use a computer in her 60s and that was twenty years ago and I still get facebook birthday messages from her. Also during a slow period work wise, I made extra pocket money teaching retirees how to use the Internet.

    It's really not an age thing.

  17. Re:Not going back on Seagate's Shingled Magnetic Recording Tech Boosts HDD Capacities to 5TB and Up · · Score: 1

    Whether a spinning rust drive gives you warning depends entirely on the failure mode. I've had more than one die on me with no warning whatsoever thanks to problems with the drives electronics.

  18. Re:FP on Egyptian Authorities Detain French "Spy" Bird Found With Tracker · · Score: 1

    Keep in mind that they consider, North America and Europe as under Zionist control.

  19. Re:FP on Egyptian Authorities Detain French "Spy" Bird Found With Tracker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are more recent examples such as Saudi Arabia accusing a condor of spying Or Egypt Blaming Isreal for shark attacks. The fact is that the Egyptian government wants to distract it's people from the latest military takeover of the government and finding something to blame on the "Zionists" is a time tested way to do that.

    I used to have a Moroccan co worker who blamed Israel for everything bad in life down to his country's poor economy. It really is a weird how an otherwise intelligent person could miss the game of misdirection being played out repeatedly.

  20. Re:Oh, really? on Why One Woman Says Sending Your Kid To Private School Is Evil · · Score: 1

    It's not so anecdotal when we went through them as a group. You need to keep in mind that Slashdot tends not to be filled with the "average student". Many of us were outcasts and disliked by both the other students and teachers. Personally, I intimidated my teachers and when the buggy as hell bargain basement 4 year old motherboards the school bought started losing their passwords, they assumed it was me doing it and I was banned from several computer labs for hacking for no other reason than the fact that I was assumed to be the only person who would know how to delete the passwords.

    And then, of course, Colombine happened and the intelligent students who liked to game (the average Slashdot crowd) became a source of fear. Thankfully I was out of the system by then but some of my friends had some pretty off putting experiences and I got to read many more here.

    Please don't assume that we hold our views for no reason.

  21. Re:Betteridge's law of headlines on Is Europe's Recession Really Over? · · Score: 1

    Spain voted right because the country was broke and couldn't borrow more money without getting the money from Germany and Germany has at best, enough money to create a soft landing rather than a hard one.

    Option A: Keep spending until the money runs out and then everything gets cut.
    Option B: Make painful cuts but most of everything keeps running.

    Unless you know of some third option?

  22. Re:Betteridge's law of headlines on Is Europe's Recession Really Over? · · Score: 1

    Spain's problem is that the regulatory system makes it very hard to do business. I don't see how they expect to improve their economy while the bureaucracy actively fights anyone trying to make money or pay people.

  23. Re:Attention to detail on Behind the Story of the iPhone's Default Text Tone · · Score: 1

    I have a feeling that cellphone companies deliberately changed SOS to something else in order not to cause trouble. Unfortunately the result now is that most people have the wrong idea of what SOS in Morse code sounds like.

  24. Re:We should pause and step back a moment... on Zimbabweans Hit By Cyber Attacks During Election · · Score: 1

    I agree about filtering outbound traffic but keep in mind that these attacks work best with open recursive mail servers and there are few reasons to configure them that way. Need a resolver for your network? Then lock it so only your network can make requests on it. I just did a quick look up of the ISPs with open recursive name servers and found a company my employer does a lot of business with has 31 open recursive name servers. There is just no excuse for that.

    My thought is that we need to cause pain for people who are lazy and we could easily start blacklisting name servers because having domains stop resolving would be more painful than fixing the problem.

  25. Re:We should pause and step back a moment... on Zimbabweans Hit By Cyber Attacks During Election · · Score: 1

    There are multiple ways these attacks could have been prevented but laziness and incompetence rule yet again. ISPs could add egress filtering, or they could limit the amount of open recursive resolvers on their network.

    In the end, I suspect the only way to fix this will be the same way we fixed open mail servers: start blacklisting badly behaving ISPs.