Slashdot Mirror


User: mccalli

mccalli's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,121
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,121

  1. Re:How About Fining Them $10,000 Per Theft? on Facebook 'Unintentionally Uploaded' Email Contacts From 1.5M Users (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    My question is how would I know if I was affected? I don't have a Facebook account, but I am a contact in the address book of those that do. So how could I find out whether affected or not?

  2. Away from accounts on Is It Time To Rethink the Fundamental Dynamics of Twitter? (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Literally. Focus not on accounts? No reporting of inactive user count to your investors...

  3. Marzipan apps are currently terrible on Apple Will Likely Replace iTunes on macOS With Standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV Apps in Next Major Update (9to5mac.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    They really, really do not feel like Mac apps and are very clunky. Try to manipulate a list in the Home app - it is nothing at all like the drag and drop you'd expect, it's clearly built around the idea of a long-press triggering some kind of mode, then reordering, then saying 'Done'. A phone app, in other words.

    iTunes may not be everyone's favourite, but at least it's designed for a computer interface. It's also more powerful than the iOS one too, with things like smart playlists not syncing properly over to the iOS app (try a smart playlist that's dependent on another playlist - eg. all tracks from a certain playlist that are also rated above three stars - won't sync).

    I hope it doesn't start a dumbing-down of the apps and a transition to a less Mac-like interface. If Apple can't be bothered to use their own native APIs and start cross-porting, why should any other developer show interest?

  4. Re:Can we dig on Europe To Pilot AI Ethics Rules, Calls For Participants (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Four. The Zero'th Law: A robot must not harm humanity .

    That's what they're going for here, but they should read the rest of the extract:

    Trevize frowned. "How do you decide what is injurious, or not injurious, to humanity as a whole?"

    "Precisely, sir," said Daneel. "In theory, the Zeroth Law was the answer to our problems. In practice, we could never decide. A human being is a concrete object. Injury to a person can be estimated and judged. Humanity is an abstraction."

  5. Re:"oops" on Toyota Will Share 23,740 Hybrid Vehicle Patents For Free (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Been one for a while - the BMW i3 Range Extender. The extender is a petrol generator which recharges the battery. Means you get about 80 miles range on pure electricity, 135 miles if you include the generator and then of course you can just go into a garage and fill up the generator to immediately start adding more.

  6. Re:"Need to feel like heros"?!?!?! on Linux Mint 19.2 'Tina' is On the Way, But the Developers Seem Defeated and Depressed (betanews.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Freely writing code. Mint isn't a company, it's an old school-style open source project. And people do it for fun. Part of the fun? Happy users saying happy things happily to you.

    If people start taking them for granted under the "no good deed goes unpunished" doctrine, then I can understand the despondency. Add in the fact that it seems the people have been working really hard whilst having the tiny detail of the entirety of their outside lives intrude, for instance one person talks about now having to juggle a full time job with a very difficult rewrite of their window manager, well - difficult, you know?

    For what it's worth, when I use Linux at home these days it's mostly in VMs and I always go for Mint. So I appreciate the Mint team. I appreciate the cleanness and the fact change is made for good reason, rather than faddish just 'coz, I hope they see this Slashdot article and read it. I hope they see that people like what they're doing, and that they're onto a winner even during the difficult times. The very fact they've taken on this refactoring of Muffin despite the obvious difficulties and tensions it has caused - that's a sign of a team that can do the right thing.

    Thanks.

  7. Wrong target market on Is Adobe's Creative Cloud Too Powerful for Its Own Good? (vice.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you care about animated GIFs, you're not who Photoshop is aimed at.

    Personally I use Pixelmator - it easily covers anything I need. But again - my needs are reasonable simple and I'm simply not who Photoshop is really targeted at.

  8. Gawd people, why the negativity? on Steam Link Anywhere Will Let You Stream Your PC's Games On the Go (pcgamer.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is good news. It may or may not work for SuperUltraMegaTwitchBlast'Em'Up but maybe you fancy a relaxed game of Civ, or perhaps an MMORPG, or....well, you get the idea. Plenty of good uses cases, and hey - you're gaining a new facility anyway.

    Steam Link hardware went on sale for around £3 the other month. They're not asking for much here. I'm happy with the announcement, whether I intend to make drastic use of it or not.

  9. Re:Stop Reinventing Everything on Microsoft Asks Users To Call Windows 10 Devs About ALT+TAB Feature (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    Remember why Firefox exists though - originally Pinball (I think), created as a lightweight alternative because the main Mozilla project was getting too heavyweight.

    It wasn't always better. Firefox's very existence is proof of that.

  10. Alt-tab is a UI thing Windows did right. It's a feature that was lacking from contemporary Macs, and was first added by a freeware extension about the System 7 era before being ripped off wholesale in System 7.5 (from memory) and I also remember the Apple lot openly acknowledging where it had come from.

    My feedback on it? My feedback would be instantaneously suspicious and the phone call would consist of me repeating over and over "for gawd's sake leave it alone and don't faff".

  11. Re:UK on European Parliament Set To End EU-Wide Daylight Saving (dw.com) · · Score: 1

    We were, and I voted in it. I voted to end it.

  12. Re:What the fuck happened to "just works"? on USB 4 Will Support Thunderbolt and Double the Speed of USB 3.2 (engadget.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's just cashing in on the retro craze. If you were nostalgic for SCSI, wide SCSI, ultrawide SCSI, I-can't-believe-it's-not-SCSI and my-god-why-can't-I-connect-this-SCSI-to-that-SCSI et al., then USB is the standard for you.

  13. Re:Cringely is neglecting the interest rate... on Cringely's Final Predictions: Apple Becomes a Financial Service and Hedge Fund (cringely.com) · · Score: 2

    In the EU at least that's illegal - unbundling laws happened a few years ago and you are charged for device and plan separately. You could do minimum voice/data of 2 years I think, but you can't do the same for the device - it's a separate finance agreement.

  14. Cringely is neglecting the interest rate... on Cringely's Final Predictions: Apple Becomes a Financial Service and Hedge Fund (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    0%. Apple is trying to get people to buy devices, not create a financial powerhouse.

  15. Re:What a stupid idea that was on Amazon Stops Selling Press-to-Order Dash Buttons (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    I did. I used it for razors and for dog dental sticks. I would always forget I needed them, so I placed the buttons right next to the slot I stored razors, and right above where I stored the dental sticks. In both cases buying online was cheaper than the shops*, in part because I always bought the largest pack of dog dental sticks available which many local shops didn't carry.

    They were, and are still, handy.

    * I'm aware of the holy wars it's possible to get into over razor blade choice. Suffice it to say I was happy wit my choice, and it was cheaper online to get the blades associated with that choice.

  16. Re: "...who runs cassette-only label Sad Club Reco on The Cassette Returns On a Wave of Nostalgia (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Walkman was definitely yuppy though - only they could afford them. A few years later I got a cheap Seisho knock-off in my early teens, which I coincidentally found again last week. Worked fine, well, as 'fine' as it ever was.

  17. "...who runs cassette-only label Sad Club Records" on The Cassette Returns On a Wave of Nostalgia (theguardian.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Couldn't have a better name for it. This one is utterly ridiculous. I mean, you had tapes originally so that you could record off your friend's record player, or maybe later to put in your car. That was an end to it, and they were never really loved as such.

    On the other hand, get past the 80sness and listen to C30, C60, C90, Go! as a perfect description of when the writing was on the wall for physical record shops.

  18. Re:Server to server access on Linux Users Are Unable To Manage Their Apple ID on Applecom (9to5mac.com) · · Score: 2

    That's what I thought too, although another possibility is that several JS frameworks compile for only specific browser targets. It's possible they have just omitted the target.

  19. Re:Reverse correlation on Reddit Users Are the Least Valuable of Any Social Network (cnbc.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Depends where. On the big subs that hit /r/all, definitely. On the smaller ones that are more what you're interested in? Tends to be a bit more friendly and higher quality. If you're after fake internet points then you'll had to the big subs. If you're after discussion....go small.

  20. Re:Interpretation on Reddit Users Are the Least Valuable of Any Social Network (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Reddit also has the potential to do free ads. It's risky because there'll be a backlash if it's realised, but it's clear that not every post to every sub is exactly 'organic'. Make your own story and ignore official advertising route. You see it every day - "I gave up my job five years ago and have been labouring to create this pixel retro game!". Err...yeah.

  21. It's all fun and games... on Developer Releases Windows 95 OS as an App For Windows 10, macOS and Linux (betanews.com) · · Score: 2

    ....until somebody ports EMACS to it.

  22. Liability, integration etc. on Should All Government IT Systems Be Using Open Source Software? (linuxjournal.com) · · Score: 1

    Who would deal with the inevitable liability suits? What about integration with vendor systems which are often proprietary or under NDA? What about vendor-derived systems full stop (not shrink-wrap, more thinking vendor has a core product which they then customise for each client)....

    It's too blanket a rule.

  23. Undoing moderation in this thread to respond to this.

    Yes, the troll problem is an issue and it frustrates me that I use so many mod points clearing up rubbish rather than promoting good comments. It's endless, and some of it is copy/paste and I think there's a case to be made for sysadmin-level filtering of a lot of it. There's a slippery slope argument to have about that, but it's one I would sit on the "ok so long as we keep an eye it" side of things.

    I've been coming to Slashdot for a long time - this is my second account, after losing/forgetting contact details for resetting the password on my other. The quality of discussion here was why I kept coming back. Slashdot was and still can be a place to discuss the implications of things, rather than just the specific detail. It used to be seen as an influential venue on tech culture, and sadly is less so now but the core discussions are still quite good.

    The trouble right now is the massive troll spam issue. Obsessive vendettas and an inability to understand that not every sentence of every subject ever is to do with US politics. I do my best when I get mod points, and I'm sure the other moderators do as well. But it's just a bit wearing having to clean things up rather than promote good conversation.

  24. Re:Dogs on iRobot Unveils Terra, a Roomba Lawn Mower (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    Start the Kickstarter! You'd make millions. Millions, from time-pressed dog owners such as myself. Oh, and people who just plain don't like the task...also like me.

  25. Re:Is this new? on iRobot Unveils Terra, a Roomba Lawn Mower (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    There has been and the article mentions them, however there are a couple of interesting bits. The first is that most require you to sink wire boundaries all around the lawn whereas apparently this one does not. The second, as you say, is the entry of iRobot into this area.

    I've been watching this area for a while as I'd find one very useful. Be interested in knowing price.