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User: Bruce+Perens

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  1. Slashdot Takes Next Step After "Anonymous Coward" on Interviews: Ask Florian Mueller About Software Patents and Copyrights · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Slashdot, obviously, has to innovate in order to stay current. Thus, they are now taking the next step after "Anonymous Cowards". The new "Identified Troll" feature will include interviews of people who have prostituted their personal credibility to some company's calculated disinformation campaign.

  2. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    I last tried a Debian install around the time of Dayton Hamvention, so a few months ago. I don't have a bug #, I tried to debug GDM for a while but didn't have enough time. I can try another install sometime soon.

  3. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    Well, a Core i5 tablet with two parallel screen digitizers is an odd enough bird that you can't expect it to run on the somewhat aged Debian stable. And indeed the older GNOME there handles the touchscreen incorrectly.

  4. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    Because it has a touchscreen and a separate pen digitizer on the same screen. And now with the keyboard, it also has a Cirque touchpad, for a total of three digitizers.

  5. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    The Toughpad has a touchscreen and a pen (with a separate digitizer!) and the touchscreen doesn't work properly in the older GNOME in stable.

  6. Re:Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 1

    There is a video of someone throwing around my model, without the keyboard, here.

  7. Debian GNOME needs some attention on Debian Switching Back To GNOME As the Default Desktop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After something like 20 years I finally found a system that won't run Debian unstable right now. My Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 magnesium tablet + iKey Jumpseat magnesium keyboard. Systemd and GDM break. Bought (for less than full price) because I am a frequent traveler and speaker and really do need something you can drop from 6 feet and pour coffee over have it keep working.

    But because of this bug I have ubuntu at the moment, and am not having fun and am eager to return to Debian.

  8. What is really happening here? on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 1

    We are in a War on Faith, because Faith justifies anything and ISIS takes it to extremes. But in the end they are just a bigger version of Christian-dominated school boards that mess with the teaching of Evolution, or Mormon sponsors of anti-gay-marriage measures, or my Hebrew school teacher, an adult who slapped me as a 12-year-old for some unremembered offense against his faith.

  9. Re:Anti-math and anti-science ... on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 1

    Hm. The covenant of Noah is about two paragraphs before this part (King James Version) which is used for various justifications of slavery and discrimination against all sorts of people because they are said to bear the Curse of Ham. If folks wanted to use the Bible to justify anything ISIS says is justified by God's words in the Koran, they could easily do so.

    18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
    19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
    20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
    21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
    22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
    23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
    24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
    25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
    26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
    27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

  10. Re:Ignorance is self-righteous posturing on Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion · · Score: 1

    Get rid of your dictator and adopt a representative democracy and it will be over. Indeed, nobody could have thought it would go on this long.

  11. Re:FUD filled.... on How a Solar Storm Two Years Ago Nearly Caused a Catastrophe On Earth · · Score: 1

    Gas lines need nonconductive sections to protect from becoming long ground loops.

  12. Re:FUD filled.... on How a Solar Storm Two Years Ago Nearly Caused a Catastrophe On Earth · · Score: 1

    It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

    One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

  13. Re:FUD filled.... on How a Solar Storm Two Years Ago Nearly Caused a Catastrophe On Earth · · Score: 1

    In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

    They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

  14. Re:Evolution on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

  15. Re:Evolution on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    :-)

    You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

    If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

  16. Evolution on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

  17. Re: If you pay... on Open Hardware and Digital Communications Conference On Free Video, If You Help · · Score: 2

    Martin,

    The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

    Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.

  18. Re: If you pay... on Open Hardware and Digital Communications Conference On Free Video, If You Help · · Score: 2

    We do charge entry to the convention. We get really nice facilities for the people who actually travel there and for the speakers. Last year's location was subperb. But I don't see why they should actually subsidize the folks who do not attend.

  19. Re:One hell of a slashvertisement! on Open Hardware and Digital Communications Conference On Free Video, If You Help · · Score: 2

    I think TAPR's policy is that the presentations be freely redistributable, but I don't know what they and Gary have discussed. I am one of the speakers and have always made sure that my own talk would be freely redistributable. I wouldn't really want it to be modifiable except for translation and quotes, since it's a work of opinion. Nobody should get the right to modify the video in such a way as to make my opinion seem like it's anything other than what it is.

  20. Re:If you pay... on Open Hardware and Digital Communications Conference On Free Video, If You Help · · Score: 1

    If I remember correctly, it was 4 video channels last year: tracking on presenter, proscenium, audience, projector.

  21. Re:If you pay... on Open Hardware and Digital Communications Conference On Free Video, If You Help · · Score: 2

    Yes. I put in $100, and I am asking other people to put in money to sponsor these programs so that everyone, including people who did not put in any money at all, can see them for free. If you look at the 150+ videos, you can see that Gary's pretty good at this (and he brought a really professional-seeming cameraman to Hamvention, too) and the programs are interesting. Even if at least four of them feature yours truly :-) He filmed every one of the talks at the TAPR DCC last year (and has filmed for the past 5 years) and it costs him about $8000 to drive there from North Carolina to Austin, Texas; to bring his equipment and to keep it maintained, to stay in a motel, to run a multi-camera shoot for every talk in the conference, and to get some fair compensation for his time in editing (and he does a really good job at that).

  22. Re:Another another delay? on SpaceX Delays Falcon 9 Launch To Tuesday · · Score: 2

    Remember when we had a Debian system on the biosciences mission? They scrubbed the whole mission after they were already in space due to a fuel-cell issue that I think turned out to be a faulty sensor, and flew the entire mission a second time.

  23. Re:citation needed on Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    Consider yourself lucky, then, and pray that it lasts. The people around you are not made of such strong stuff, and I can't be sure that you are either.

  24. Re:Wow on Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    It actually is a bit different for the Republicans, in that they are caught in an internal party schism of a scale we've not seen on either side since desegregation, if even then. It's difficult for the less right to look good to the more right, undirected pushing against the Democrats is one of the few ways they have to do it.

  25. Re:Wow on Interviews: Bruce Perens Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    Do not forget that ObamaCare was rammed through without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate.

    It's the unfortunate case that Republicans don't generally support Democratic bills. Witness the recent student loan bill. There is not much question that a better educated populance means a better economy and a stronger nation. It's a truism that we could just pay for college education in a number of fields and reap economic benefits of many times the spending. Indeed, we used to do more of that and the country was stronger when we did.