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User: mwa

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Comments · 379

  1. Of course! on Do Social Media Bots Have a Right To Free Speech? (thebulletin.org) · · Score: 1

    Bots should definitely have rights. Look how well it worked for corporations.

    It's not like people matter anymore, anyway.

  2. Re:Kind of missing the bigger picture on Mindfulness Meditators Are Less Affected By Virtual Reality (sciencedirect.com) · · Score: 1

    So... Mindfulness training can inoculate people against political propaganda?

    Can we get the U.S. population trained before November?

  3. Re:Any legal grounds for a refund? on Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out of 3rd-Party Bulbs With New Firmware (techdirt.com) · · Score: 1

    You left out the clause enforcing mandated arbitration in the event of a dispute, eliminating any possibility of a class action lawsuit.

    Otherwise, +1 True.

  4. Re:Enjoy it while you can. on Open Source Router Firmware OpenWRT 15.05 Released · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh my God, thank you!

    That slight grammatical error totally obviates any rational point poster has. Thanks to you, and you *alone*, I scrolled all the way back to the top to find out just what, the fuck, you were talking about.

    You are the hero that nobody needs. At any time. Or any place

  5. Re:Stupid question. on Do Old Programmers Need To Keep Leaping Through New Hoops? · · Score: 1

    As an experienced elder, I can tell you this with authority: The puppies are going to chase their tails. They're not going to catch them. Then, they are going to re-invent the wheel so they can chase them faster.

    By the time they've implemented their solution, they'll be using 3 frameworks, 4 toolkit, 63 libraries, and 18 hosts with 16G of RAM to present a web page that says "Hello World."

  6. Re:First impressions of X11/Linux count on What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong · · Score: 1

    Just tell them to use CDE, then tell them to blame UNIX.

  7. Re:Is this the right way? on Lenovo Hit With Lawsuit Over Superfish Adware · · Score: 2

    I'd be happy if the judgement required mandatory inclusion of vanilla OS install media.

    I install Linux but whenever I want to help family I'd love to start from a certified MS DVD.

  8. Re:Back to One Man, One Vote on Study Finds US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy · · Score: 5, Informative
  9. Re:GPL as transitional license on FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback' · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but that's just bullshit. If you want to own the code, write it. Don't link to a GPL library and say "that's mine now."

    And far, far more developers make in-house software, for a slary, than thw number of developers that make software to sell. They are perfectly free to use GPL software, even with their own modifications if they don't mind maintaining it, as long as they don't distribute it.

    If you want to make a profit on software, don't use GPL parts. That's your choice. But don't pretend the GPL isn't protecting against hijacking by arguing that is preventing you from hijacking it.

  10. Re:Corporate executives are smart. on America's Second-largest Employer Is a Temp Agency · · Score: 1

    Exactly.

    And the cheapest alternative is to keep the minimum wage so low that 80â of the workers get subsidized in taxpayer funded food stamps and Medicare.

    The Walmart & Friends Executive Union is double dipping. They suck profits from their employees' paychecks and cut costs with taxpayers' paychecks and stick them all in their pocket because "you can't have businesses without capital."

    Once you buy that, it's a simple step to accept that human health absolutely MUST be a "for profit" enterprise. If there is no profit for someone, it must not be good for any one, right?

    As long as the capitalists control the conversation, the only relevant result is profit. Nothing else matters.

  11. Re:Corporate executives are smart. on America's Second-largest Employer Is a Temp Agency · · Score: 1

    Is that covered?

  12. Re:Instructions on Not Even Investors Know What Google Glass Is For · · Score: 1

    So, you're saying I can put shit back together and not have that one, "where the hell does this go?" part left over?

    Sign me up!

  13. Re:How is cutting anything being a Democrat? on Poll-Based System Predicts U.S. Election Results For President, Senate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Allow me to translate:

      1. Screw job-creating clean energy technologies and drill, baby, drill.

      2. Gut what little worker protection we have; outsource to the lowest bidder.

      3a. Save $$ by shifting responsibility to states that we all know can't pay.

      3b. Turn education over to private companies who are only interested in
                  increasing profits.

      4. Cut the programs that aid people in need but don't touch defense that
            fund megacorps and generate kick-backs.

      5. Screw clean water, clean air, safe food, safe medicine, safe work
              environments, safe vehicles, safe bridges, protection of civil rights,
              a free and open internet, private property rights* or anything else
              that might reduce profits.

    The entire plan can be summarized: Maximise profits by socializing the risks
    and costs. It's the Bush III plan.

    * like granting unsupervised emminent domain power to a foreign corp
    (TransCanada) to take land so they can move highly toxic sludge that no
    one knows how to clean up (see "Enbridge") through the entire middle of our
    country so they can ship it to other, foreign companies.

  14. Re:Lucky on Ask Slashdot: Old Dogs vs. New Technology? · · Score: 1

    "Seriously? A new box that doesn't work right in XP? Like others have mentioned, how do you not look immediately at the BIOS?"

    Because it's 2012 and buying a bunch of new boxes to put XP on makes about as much sense as committing the future of your business to COBOL running on CP/M?

    Just because you can get something to work doesn't mean you should.

  15. Re:Homebrew on Helping Perl Packagers Package Perl · · Score: 1

    Perl (and Ruby and Python) already have mature packaging systems and they really don't need to interact with each other.

    False. Say you have libFoo and Perl, ruby and/or python wrappers installed via their "mature packaging systems." Now, libFoo has a critical security vulnerability that requires an updated package with an API change. The system package management tool will happily upgrade the library and break the wrappers you use for production.

    There is no, sane way to use multiple software management tools effectively.

  16. Re:At least the Perl crowd is trying, on Helping Perl Packagers Package Perl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    easy_install works just like CPAN. Download and install stuff so the standard distribution software management tools are now worthless for:

      1. Knowing what is installed on which production machines (basic software inventory)
      2. Reporting packages with dependencies on a package with a newly reported security issue
      3. Automatically upgrading to new releases
      4. Easily rebuilding and deploying to multiple hosts on different architectures and different releases of distros (possibly different distros)
      5. Managing dependency conflicts between different packages

    and more that escape me right now because I haven't finished my coffee yet.

    CPAN, easy_install and their ilk are wonderful for the developer that needs a bunch of stuff to get their application working. They are evil incarnate for the administrator that needs that application to work reliably and consistently on more that a couple of machines.

    There is a huge difference between "easily installing stuff" and managing systems. The second you add anything that "works around" the standard way of doing things, whatever standard you've adopted, you've abandoned all hope of having standard operating procedures and consistent production management.

    This is why systems administrators get so edgy... Every developer, user, language community, or whatever, thinks their little exception makes life easier. Exceptions don't scale.

    Ok, they do scale. They evolve into chaos.

  17. Re:Stop Playing Their Game (Ironic Title, That.) on How To Deal With Internet Bullies? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The running gag has been a comedic staple forever. "Often, the humor in a running gag derives entirely from how often it is repeated..." is the way it works.

    I reject your definition of comedy and substitute my own. There is no objective definition of humor.

  18. Re:...Brought to you by Carl's Jr. on 35 Articles of Impeachment Introduced Against Bush · · Score: 5, Informative

    Then you might want to get behind the Read the Laws Act.

  19. How about ... on Cross-OS File System That Sucks Less? · · Score: 1

    one of these running Samba or NFS?

  20. Dear Advertizing Customers, on Traffic Fraud Inflates Video Site Popularity · · Score: 1

    It sucks when your vendors lie to you and cheat you.

    Welcome to being a consumer. It's kind of like being one of your customers.

  21. How can the Gracenote DB not be "infringing"? on MySpace to Use Audio Fingerprinting · · Score: 1

    Just asking...

  22. Re:Wait... on Indian State Encourages Microsoft Removal · · Score: 1

    Where's the "+1 Truthiness" mod?

  23. Re:Ignorant Population on Senate Passes Patriot Act Renewal · · Score: 1

    I doubt 10% of Congress understands the Constitution in any depth. This is why they think passing these laws isn't a violation of their oath of office.

  24. Re:Beware of Bribery on Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision · · Score: 4, Informative
    However, don't be surprised if Massachusetts backpedals on their decision...

    They already have. Only they backpedalled away from Microsoft Office XML.

    The previous draft of the standard allowed the use of Microsoft's XML file formats. Microsoft even changed their XML licensing in response to Massachusetts initial concerns.

    Not to be hood-winked, lots of open source/open data/open information supporters took time to educate the drafters on exactly how Microsoft's format was not free. Take note of Groklaw articles regarding Mass., XML, and OpenDoc.

    This is a huge win for open standards and democracy. The MA drafters' first priority has been citizen access to information and, once explained, they clearly understood that Office's formats are not "free" as in "freedom of the people to access government information."

    Arguments about any quality or attribute of file formats other than free access to all citizens are not going to fly anymore in MA. Here's hoping other governments learn from this.

  25. Re:Sigh, more morons reported on Slashdot on GPL Hard to Enforce? · · Score: 1
    Then to point out the even greater boneheadedness of this story, let's say that EvilMegaCorp went to court and said "oh, we didn't think you owned this copyright, we thought the FSF did" and the judge agreed, ...

    And says "Oh, I see. You thought you were infringing on a completely different victim's copyright. Ergo, you knew you were infringing someone's copyright, you were just mistaken about whose. GUILTY! Willfull infringement. Triple damages (without even a copyright registration). Thank you for your confession."