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User: ErnoWindt

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  1. Told you so on FBI Delays Case Against Apple; May Have Way To Break Phone (threatpost.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's not called Crapple for nothing! No surprise here. As I mentioned in a previous post on this, Apple's concern about "security" is just a marketing ploy and posturing - that's it. If the FBI or anyone else really wants to get in, they'll get in.

  2. Adi's correct on Godfather Of Encryption Explains Why Apple Should Help The FBI (bgr.com) · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's all posturing on the part of Apple and its tech buddies. The FBI nailed it: it's a marketing ploy. If anyone really, really want to crack an iPhone, they'd do it. Apple's not going to stop them.

  3. Descartes, Prof. Hacker? on The Case Against Algebra · · Score: 1

    Learning math is part of an essential education, along with reading, writing, developing critical thinking and analysis skills, learning at least one foreign language, not to mention learning history, geography, etc. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and almost all of the great philosophers throughout history were skilled at mathematics. In Descartes' case, his work had a profound impact on mathematics. To say that philosophers don't need to study math only reveals the paucity of Hacker's own knowledge.

  4. Two kids and their toys on Google Is Shutting Down Picasa In Favor of Photos (engadget.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Larry and Sergey run their company like two kids on Christmas morning. They're initially enthused, open package after package, play with their new toys for a while, then lose interest and move on. Let's hope they don't decide to arbitrarily pull the plug one afternoon on driver-less cars while millions of them are on the road.

  5. Re:Funny but Microsoft is the most open ecosystem. on Microsoft Gearing Up To Release a Smartwatch of Its Own · · Score: 1

    Yes, that is true. I think one thing that might save Microsoft on this front (and avoid the fate of Novell, say) is that they've responded in an intelligent way to the growth of Google Docs. That, and almost 20 years' worth of inertia to overcome in long-time Office users - which is still just about everyone on the planet - will work in their favor. I do think Nadella is making clear that he is going to respond intelligently and with clarity to the challenges the company faces. Quite a difference from the craziness, chaos and contradictions of the Ballmer era. Assuming Microsoft is seriously embracing a platform-agnostic world, that will be a major disrupter. No one anticipated Microsoft diving in like this, however they've been inching in that direction for a while now.

  6. Re:Funny but Microsoft is the most open ecosystem. on Microsoft Gearing Up To Release a Smartwatch of Its Own · · Score: 1

    I understand your point and it is well taken. Thanks.

  7. Re:Funny but Microsoft is the most open ecosystem. on Microsoft Gearing Up To Release a Smartwatch of Its Own · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, I agree. It seems like Nadella is taking the cross-platform approach seriously and is not just blowing smoke. Refreshing, no question, and in direct contrast to Google and Apple as you point out.

  8. The silence is deafening on First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks · · Score: -1, Troll

    Only 51 comments as of this post? Sort of like way back when Sun Microsystems tried to trademark "enterprise". Crickets. One can only imagine the trollbait / flamestorm that would break out if Shellshock were a Microsoft bug. Time to put on some pants, UNIX/Linux geeks: ain't no operating system out there immune to error. Or, as Immanuel Kant once wrote: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."

  9. Orion is NOT carrying astronauts to Mars on A Look At NASA's Orion Project · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is absolutely zero possibility that astronauts are going to be travelling to Mars in Orion which is basically Apollo + 1 extra seat. NASA has been misleading the general public about this for years. Oh yeah, astronauts are going to stay strapped to their seats for 18 months...in a capsule with almost no room to move. Major components of the project - including room to live and move around, along with mild gravity provided by a centrifuge - haven't been even designed yet, let alone price spec'd. No one has any idea how they will work or how they will protect astronauts from radiation from the Sun. I'm betting it's 2100 before we ever get to Mars, at least under NASA.

  10. Here's a revolutionary concept on Traffic Optimization: Cyclists Should Roll Past Stop Signs, Pause At Red Lights · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How about this: the rules of the road, are the rules of the road. They apply for everyone, not just the other guy or what they happen to be in/on: car, bicycle, motorcycle, horse-drawn carriage. Make sense?

  11. They're all the same on Google's Definition of 'Open' · · Score: 1

    Google are to be admired for their energy and inventiveness. However, all big companies (and those who aspire to be big) all want the same thing: dominate the markets they are in, or take over everything they can. Google hides behind the fig leaf of "open source" when it suits their ends. If we compare Google to Apple, however, it's like comparing the US to North Korea.

  12. Systemic on HealthCare.gov: What Went Wrong? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not "systematic."

  13. That's funny because on A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy? · · Score: 1

    Tea Partiers don't seem to understand that the Social Security and Medicare programs they don't want changed in any way - both programs by the big, evil government they despise - are government programs. Oh, and that their friends in the Republican party - the people they're voting for all of the time - have spent the last 80 years (in the case of Social Security) and the last 50 years (in the case of Medicare) trying to destroy both programs. By any chance were the Yalies (that bastion of revolutionary thought) who conducted the study Tea Partiers themselves? ;-)

  14. Stealing Mayer's bad idea on HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Meg Whitman - a totally hideous person - mean, small, vindictive - has no ideas of her own, so she's just stealing Marissa Mayer's bad idea. Both are insanely wealthy people who literally have no clue how the proles who work for them actually live their lives. Step by step, the US stumbles toward its own French Revolution, but ours will make the one of 1789 look like a walk in the park.

  15. Very literal? on The Changing Face of Software Development · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really have to take issue with the "very literal" comment. In my experience (stretching over 20 years), it's the non-literal types who are the best software engineers. They not only have an imagination, but understand nuance as well. I'd say a literal-minded person might succeed at programming at a very low or entry level, but beyond that, it's imagination and creativity that win the day.

  16. Ballmer was fired on Steve Ballmer's Big-Time Error: Not Resigning Years Ago · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one takes a nearly $1 billion write down and lives to make more humongous mistakes another day. There's got to be a line somewhere, and Steve finally crossed it.

  17. Wait 'til Linus hears me on Kernel Dev Tells Linus Torvalds To Stop Using Abusive Language · · Score: -1

    Unload about what a piece of crap Git is. I bet he'll get very pleasant, very fast...once the ringing in his ears subsides.

  18. NASA's manned spaceflight program is over on NASA's Bolden: No American-Led Return To the Moon 'In My Lifetime' · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What Bolden is simply acknowledging is that NASA's manned spaceflight program is over. Sure, they're still recruiting and training astronauts, but that's so they can keep the ISS manned until it is retired. The future of manned space flight, including space stations, Moon bases and interplanetary and interstellar travel will belong to private industry. NASA will focus on scientific missions. There's nothing wrong with that - it represents the evolution of the space industry. Billionaires like Elon Musk can build, launch, and return space capsules today. Fifty years ago, Musk's approach would have been highly unlikely, if not completely impossible. The US government will help fund and provide frameworks - think DARPA's development of the Internet and now the 100-year starship project and the humanoid robotics initiative. Along with its own research and development, private industry will take the frameworks and ideas DARPA is developing now and leverage and exploit them in unimagined ways, just as with the Internet.

  19. North Korea on Report: Windows Blue Reaches Its First Milestone Build · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Totally hilarious reference to North Korea - but c'mon - Microsoft is run like an open source software project compared with Apple. What's interesting is that consumers seem to greet Apple's secrecy and paranoia with an almost Willy Wonka like fascination.

  20. Avoid EMC on What EMC Looks For When It's Hiring · · Score: 1

    I know a total psychotic who spent 2 or 3 years at EMC. Eventually, they fired him. Avoid that place like the plague - anyone who would fall for this guy has no idea what they're doing.

  21. Tax Reform on Nonpartisan Tax Report Removed After Republican Protest · · Score: 1

    The tax "reform" acts of the 1980s - supported by both Republicans and Democrats - shifted the tax burden off the wealthy and corporations and onto the middle class. 30 years of gradual destruction of the middle class ensued. Today, instead of a progressive system of taxation, the US has a system where the wealthiest and the largest corporations pay little or no tax, while those least capable pay the most. Having a bunch of millionaires under the influence of corporate contributions - then and now - make tax policy is the definition of conflict of interest and reveals the total corruption at the heart of the US system - and its drift toward oligarchy, now almost complete.

  22. Re:That summary is awful on Microsoft Picks Another Web Standards Fight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Absolutely correct. The logic of mikejuk's argument is so flawed is hard to know where to begin. Google isn't just proposing standards because they're nice folks who want everyone to work happily together. Google, like Microsoft, is a huge for-profit behemoth whose goal is domination of the markets they are in and any others they can get into. Doubtless Google has some product(s) of its own that require, or may require such a standard and, not being fools, they realize that hiding behind the figleaf of Mozilla and pretending to be nice will buy them some cred in the open-source world. Microsoft pulls stuff like that only when it thinks it needs to. The W3C will most likely cull what is best from both proposals, have lots of meetings, and come up with something that everyone can live with. That's one way standards come into being.

  23. Friday afternoon lynching on The Google-fication of Yahoo! · · Score: 1

    I don't know who came up with the idea of Friday afternoon meetings but unless they're accompanied by quantities of alcohol, they usually end up becoming modern day equivalents of lynchings or Soviet-era show trials. They have the great potential to end up destroying morale and productivity. Meetings in general are a tremendous waste of time (IMHO) and a large company is better served by very brief, daily morning meetings among teams or daily updates via some other means of communication, rather than stopping the entire operation dead for an hour or two on a Friday afternoon.

  24. Maybe they should downshift the Firefox updates on Mozilla Downshifting Development of Thunderbird E-Mail Client · · Score: 1

    When they stop releasing a new version of Firefox every two weeks - let me know. It's really tiresome. Maybe they should just schedule their updates with Windows Update. Yeah, I know - makes way too much sense. I can hear the howling now.

  25. ExxonMobil's science education ads on Exxon CEO: Warming Happening, But Fears Overblown · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's really nutty about ExxonMobil is that on the one hand, they are spending millions on TV, radio and print ads on how the US needs to improve math and science education, but at the same time roughly two-thirds of their political contributions (corporation and employees) are to Republican candidates. To a person, Republicans have conducted an all-out war on free public education, teachers, and teachers unions over the last 30 years. The leading US scientists over the last 100 years did not, in general, attend tony prep schools or come from wealthy families. If ExxonMobil is actually serious about improving math and science education in the US, they'll stop funding Republican candidates and start funding Democrats, as well as making targeted gifts to grammar and high school math and science programs around the country.