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User: Oloryn

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  1. Politics and self-righteousness on Ask Slashdot: What Would Your TED Talk Be About? (ted.com) · · Score: 2

    How self-righteousness dominates=4 modern politics and public discourse (on both sides), and how self-righteousness will turn you into a monster, even if you're right.

  2. Re:USPS offers a service to "preview" your daily m on Suspicious Packages Spotlight Vast 'Mail Cover' Postal Surveillance System (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I've found Informed Delivery handy, particularly when watching out for a particular letter. Also, it's occasionally handy for adding a bit more debugging data for delivery snags. E.g., I live at 999 E Bargle-bargle Lane, and regularly find mail destined for 999 W Bargle-bargle Lane in my mailbox. The fact that it also shows up in my Informed Delivery emailing tells me that the problem is with USPS routing software, not with my local mailbeing. The misrouted mails generally appear to have WEST spelled out, so that may be relevant to the glitch. There seems to be no way to communicate this to whoever maintains the routing software, but I've told enough of my local mailbeings about it that they sometimes catch it and locally reroute. I get the impression that the USPS has no way for local mailbeings to communicate such routing bugs upward, though. One other nifty feature is that packages sent to me generally show up in the package side of the ID page, even if the sender didn't pay for a tracking number. I've seen the occasional "mailpiece for which we don't currently have an image", but I've noticed that they usually seem to be things like magazines. Local flyers, coupons, etc, though, never show up in ID, only first-class mail and packages.

  3. Re:How is it Guaranteed to be Him? on Radio Reporter Who Lost Voice Returns To Air Using App Built From Archived Audio (ajc.com) · · Score: 1

    As other people on here have noted, Jamie Dupree is known as an incredibly principled and balanced reporter. You might duplicate the sound of his voice with this technology, but using it to impersonate him would require impersonating his principles and balanced - and is someone wanting to use his voice for bad purposes would likely find that difficult. Those who have long known his reporting would spot this even if the voice did sound like him.

  4. The comments on how the public perceives what you do reminds me of the SEA vs PKARC lawsuit back in the day. They ended up settling, and the settlement meant that SEA essential won, legally,but the online chatter about the suit, and people's perceptions about what SEA was attempting to do (IIRC, SEA's attempt to claim proprietary ownership of ARC file formats and (particularly galling) the .ARC extension did not go over well) meant that SEA went from having a defacto monopoly to being an also-ran fairly quickly. The settlement required that PKware come up with their own formats, and they did. As soon as PKZip was considered stable, pretty much the whole online community switched from ARC to Zip formats overnight.

    PKware, in light of the community's reaction, didn't make proprietary claims about their format, which eventually made it possible for zip format to be public, and available in free (as in speech) versions.

  5. Let's Encrypt's root certificate is signed by IdenTrustâ(TM)s DST Root X3 certificate, which should already be installed.

  6. Re:Why purge? on Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging (heraldnet.com) · · Score: 1

    so we can put ebooks in libraries

    Ebooks are already in libraries. The county library here makes ebooks available via Overdrive. I take out ebooks all the time. And Overdrive appears to be fairly widely used.

  7. Re:Incomplete title... on Your Political Facebook Posts Aren't Changing How Your Friends Think (qz.com) · · Score: 2

    Exactly. Politics and public discourse nowadays runs heavily on bolstering one's own sense of self-righteousness. I, and the group I associate with, are entirely righteous, and those who disagree with us are entirely evil, or at least stupid.

  8. Is this different from the Hangouts app on Android on Google Is Discontinuing Google+ Hangouts On Air On September 12 (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 2

    So, is Hangouts on air different from the Hangouts app on Android? Or will the functionality of the Hangouts app shut down on Sep 12?

  9. I've got the mitigation on all of my Linux machines, but does it work on Android? Looks like the user would be forced to root an Android in order to apply the fix, if it works.

  10. Re:Thin is the point on Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Of course, the thinness doesn't do much for you when if you want to protect the phone from breaking, you've got to wrap it in a case. And the thinner they get, the more likely you *need* that case to protect the thin and therefore increasingly fragile phone.

  11. Re:Omar Saddiqui Mateen? on World Reacts To The Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History (cnn.com) · · Score: 2

    It's something I'm beginning to call the 'omniscient imagination fallacy'. It occurs when people assume that 'if it occurs to my imagination, it must be true', and is a lot more common than we realize, particularly when it comes to what we imagine about other people's motives. Which, in a way, isn't a surprise, as it's implicit in Bulverism, which is also quite common.

  12. Re:Did they know who the culprits were? on Judges Rule Raped Woman Can Sue 'Enabling' Web Site (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Exactly right (that if you can't argue against a position without considering its source, you likely don't have an argument in the first place), but note that this has been roundly ignored in public discourse for years. It had gotten so common by the 1940's that C. S. Lewis felt compelled to make up a name for it - he called it Bulverism. Others have come up with their own monikers for it (Anthony Flew referred to it as the "Subject/Motive Shift", and it is more generically known as the genetic fallacy, or a motivational ad hominem). The technique is basically, don't bother trying to prove an opponent is wrong, just assume they're wrong, and "explain" what motivates them to say what they do. It also involves what I am beginning to call the 'omniscient imagination' fallacy, as there never is given any real evidence for the proffered motive, it is just assumed that if I can imagine that motivation, it *must* be true.

  13. Re:HRC's judgement sucks on State Dept. IT Staff Told To Keep Quiet About Clinton's Server (computerworld.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This idea from a Clinton who could not handle having two "high-tech" phones?

    In the midst of all the back-and-forth on the particular brou-ha-ha, this is the thing that's been deciding for me. By her own admission, she prioritized her own convenience over the law and the security of the nation. That's not the kind of person I want in control of the 'football'.

  14. Re:brewster's millions on A Legal Name Change Puts 'None of the Above' On Canadian Ballot (foxnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Thanks for a demonstration that what's 'obvious' isn't always true. I've never seen "Brewster's Millions", and independently came up with the "NOTA reboots the election" notion years ago. Perhaps disgust with politicians and political tactics is spread wide enough that the notion springs up in multiple people's heads?

  15. Re:I'd love to see "None of the Above" on A Legal Name Change Puts 'None of the Above' On Canadian Ballot (foxnews.com) · · Score: 1

    I've been maintaining this for a *long* time. My latest twist: a candidate who is in a sufficient number of races which go to None of the Above, is permanently disbarred from running for office.

    The advantage of "NOTA winning reboots the race" is that it discourages negative campaigning. Negative campaigning currently works because, if voters believe it, they don't have much choice but to drop out of voting, or voting for the candidate using the negative campaign. Making NOTA a viable vote means that a candidate using negative campaigning may well be pushing votes to NOTA (which, with the new twist, may permanently sideline the candidate).

  16. Falling into the genetic fallacy on Cold Fusion and the Reputation Trap (aeon.co) · · Score: 1

    So, the scientific community is being inhibited by a wide-ranging use of the genetic fallacy? In a way, not surprising, given how much modern public discourse is dominated by Bulverism (another form of the genetic fallacy).

  17. That's a pretty low bar. on How Long Until the Cyborg Olympics Are Better Than the Traditional Games? (ieee.org) · · Score: 2

    Given how commercialized and tied up in monopolies the traditional games are, isn't trying to be better than the tradional games setting the bar pretty low?

  18. Re:Facebook on Users Revolt Over Yahoo Groups Update · · Score: 1

    Oh, they do revolt, but not for long. FB has become their primary way of keeping track of family and close friends, most of whom are non-techies who they can't convince to move over to Google+, so they stay on FB. It's the ol' networking effect in action.

  19. Re:No wonder ... on The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same · · Score: 1

    You scoundrel! Several hours and hundreds of tabs from now, thousands of Slashdot readers are going to look up from their computers, wondering "Where did all that time go?".

  20. (The Real) Murphy's Law strikes again! on Upside-Down Sensors Caused Proton-M Rocket Crash · · Score: 2

    Wasn't something like this responsible for the formulation of Murphy's law?

  21. And if someone is taking notes during the previews, with the phone kept low and unobtrusive, what would you do?

  22. A 2x4 would be fine.... on Ask Slashdot: What Planks Would You Want In a Platform of a Political Party? · · Score: 1

    As long as we're allowed to use it on the party's politicians when they inevitably start trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

  23. Just out of curiosity, do you enforce this during the previews? I don't make or take calls in the theatre, but I do make notes during the previews about the upcoming movies I think I might be interested in. Once the previews end, the phone goes off, but cell phones nowadays aren't just phones, they are often our memory.

  24. This will change the terminology on Biological Computer Created at Stanford · · Score: 2

    So, is this going to bring a new meaning to the term "computer virus"? As in an actual biological virus might affect the hardware.

  25. Re:IOW, we're making it harder get a response... on We The People Petition Signature Requirement Bumped To 100,000 · · Score: 1

    Sure enough, we're there.