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User: Mr.+Slippery

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  1. Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? on EFF To Unveil Open Wireless Router For Open Wireless Movement · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do.

    My ISP is Sprint/Clearwire. (Complicated corporate and branding relationship.) I got a nastygram from them about peer-to-peer downloads. They didn't care that I was downloads GNU/Linux distros, they didn't want me using PtP at all. (So I got a VPN account and flipped them the bird.)

  2. Re:It's Chicago on Chicago Adding Sensors For Public Monitoring · · Score: 1

    What separates the left, especially the European version of left, from the American concept of left/liberal?

    Left=pro-worker=socialist, though that word has been poisoned by a century of Red Scares here.

    Right=pro-aristocrat=capitalist. (When you have a hereditary class of state-backed "owners" who control the economic resources, that's an aristocracy.)

    Left/right has nothing to do with social issues like abortion rights, gay marriage, etc., nor does it have to do with the size of government. It's about who the economic system should benefit.

    The Democratic party is thoroughly capitalist, with only a relatively minor disagreement with the Republican party as to what degree of exploitation of the proles by their feudal lords is best.

  3. Re:Translation on TrueCrypt Author Claims That Forking Is Impossible · · Score: 1

    They ignore the letter because a letter from the NSA to someone outside the US has no legal significance.

    A letter from the NSA to someone inside the US has no legal significance either. That doesn't stop the U.S. government from acting illegally.

  4. Re:Asset Bubble verse Rent Seeking on High Frequency Trading and Finance's Race To Irrelevance · · Score: 2

    ...rent seeking - where somebody is able to shave some of the economic profit from an activity without doing much of anything.

    I.e., the highest and most pure form of capitalism -- a system in which the state-backed "owner" of capital extracts profit from laborers (physically and intellectual) without actually creating anything themselves.

  5. Re:#notallgeekyguys on Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds · · Score: 1

    The number of men who actually carry out rapes is relatively small, so long as you only define rape as a violent act that occurs in dimly lit alleyways. Once you open it out it becomes substantially larger.

    No, not really, as the research of people like David Lisak shows. Rape is the act of a small percentage of repeat predators.

    The "rape culture" model is finally being laid by the wayside; as RAINN's recent memo to the White House task force notes, "Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime."

  6. Re:Exactly right on AT&T To Use Phone Geolocation To Prevent Credit Card Fraud · · Score: 1

    But that isn't the fault of the system, capitalism. That's the fault of corrupt "leaders".

    If your system is vulnerable to attack by corrupt "leaders", that's the system's fault. It's the problem with Marxism and it's also the problem with capitalism: when people get power, via state-backed control of capital or via a "dictatorship of the proletariat", these use that power in their own interests.

  7. Re:As Jim Morrison said... on Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds · · Score: 1

    Men, if you want something in life, whether that "something" is a job, a house or a relationship, you have to earn it.

    Stop. A relationship is not something that you earn. You can argue to your boss that you've earned a promotion with your job performance, you can argue to the bank that you've earned a mortgage with your credit history, but if you argue to a woman that you've earned a relationship with her, that's sexist bullshit.

    That said, if you want to have more friends, including the type of friends who go to bed with you, self-cultivation is a good idea. Clean yourself up, get some exercise and eat real food, practice social skills. Hack yourself. But you don't get to collect experience points and say "ok, now I've earned this sort of relationship with this person."

  8. Re:#notallgeekyguys on Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds · · Score: 2

    Not everything is about you. As a man, you should not be offended when those who do rape get called on it, just because they are also men.

    Consider: African-American men are, statistically, far more likely to commit murder than Caucasian men are. Does an African-American man have a right to call racist bullshit if you tell him to stop murdering? Of course he does, and that in no way implies that he doesn't want those who do murder to get called on it.

    In exactly the same way, men are, statistically, far more likely to commit rape than women are. Does a man have a right to call misandrist bullshit if you tell him to stop raping? Of course he does, and that in no way implies that he doesn't want those who do rape to get called on it.

    I'm not saying you will, but it's possible you may surprise yourself one day.

    You're just illustrated a huge part of the problem: a belief that ordinary men somehow, to their surprise, suddenly turn rapist someday. This myth is at odds with what we know about rapists: they are deliberate repeat predators with a pattern of offending from a young age and a high probably of cross-offending.

    It's why the whole notion of "rape culture" around which so much of this discussion revolves is a distraction: rape is not the result of ordinary guys made confused by their culture about consent, it's the result of deliberate acts by violent assholes who know quite well what they are doing, and all the hashtags in the world won't change them.

    If we actually want to stop rape, rather than have a feel-good self righteous flamewar, we need personal safety and bystander intervention training.

  9. Re:#notallgeekyguys on Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Why is it not helpful to say 'not all men are like that'? For lots of reasons. For one, women know this.

    Most women probably do, though there are handful of misandrist dingbats out there. It would be useful for women who are not misandrist dingbats to disassociate themselves from that group. You don't get points for making prejudiced statements about Group X and then saying "Oh, I know not all members of Group X are like that."

    And men know that rape is wrong, except for a vile handful of predators who are not going to change because of some internet discussion. It would be useful for men who are not vile predators to disassociate themselves from that group.

    (I am assuming all present are familiar with and will not fall into the fallacy of the extended analogy, and will not think I am saying that misandrist statements are comparable to rape.)

    Women, if you want to end the phenomenon of men saying "Not all men are misogynist," don't make statements that imply all men are misogynist.

    Men, if you want to end the phenomenon of women saying "All men are misogynist," don't make statements that imply you are misogynist.

    All, if you don't want people to respond defensively, don't makes statements that imply you are attacking them.

  10. Re:Misstated on Temporary Classrooms Are Bad For the Environment, and Worse For Kids · · Score: 0

    No, what's needed is an infinite supply of money, of course.

    Infinite, no, but adequate. If we restored taxes on the wealthy to the rates they were in, say, the Eisenhower administration, that'd help a lot.

  11. Re:Global warming is causing bad grades now on Temporary Classrooms Are Bad For the Environment, and Worse For Kids · · Score: 1

    then why are they using rising CO2 as the gauge instead of the much more relevant declining O2 levels?

    Your body measures CO2 levels, not O2 levels, to know when to breathe. Your brain will go into full scale psychedelic freakout mode if CO2 levels are high even in there's plenty of O2. CO2 is incredibly relevant.

  12. Re:Do we really need new books? or new TV on Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil? · · Score: 1

    So what's the point in making more? Either TV or books. The amount we have seems to be sufficient for our needs

    And what are our needs? If it's merely "something to put in front of our eyes for momentary distraction", sure, there's more than enough. If it's "something that speaks to the human condition as it exists today, that evokes an aesthetic experience, that's a different matter.

    Also, of course, there is the joy and reward of having created something. I hope to sell a lot of copies of my book, but even if it never sells more that 100 copies I learned a tremendous amount in the process of writing it.

  13. Re:Sick on Facebook Refuses To Share Employee Race and Gender Data · · Score: 1

    If Facebook chooses to hire an all "white" staff, it is none of your damn business.

    Facebook is a corporation, an entity created by government fiat. I don't think the government should create racists.

  14. Re:One drop rule? on Facebook Refuses To Share Employee Race and Gender Data · · Score: 0

    I am pretty sure the problem can be traced all the way back to the inequality in public schools.

    Of course there's no inequality in private schools. Right.

    I don;t think Google and other companies like Google would be begging for more H1B visas to hire more minorities from other countries if they were racist.

    Non sequitur. American slaver owners were racist but were happy to have more Africans imported into the country to enslave.

    Any unnecessary discrimination would be cutting into their bottom line.

    Not at all. In a racist and sexist environment, where folks who are not white males are generally underpaid compared to us white guys, a company maximizes profits by continuing that underpayment, perhaps just doing it slightly less than their competition. ("The industry average is that Group A are underpaid by X%. Amalgamated Profits Inc. only underpays Group A by (0.9*X)%, so as a member of Group A boy am I glad to have a job here.")

  15. Re:A relic of spinning rust on Goodbye, Ctrl-S · · Score: 1

    Now, with faster HDDs and even better SSDs, making "save" a separate, user-triggered operation doesn't make much sense.

    Of course it does. "Save" means "commit the set of changes I have made to this file". It's all well and good to have an separate auto-save (preferably incremental and saving several versions) to back up my work, but if I do a bunch of edits and then decide that I don't like the result and want to start over, I'm going to be pissed if I find that some moronic developer has destroyed my original document without my direction to do so.

    I think the real shocker is why applications still have a 3 1/2" floppy disk as the save icon. It's just an anachronism now.

    So is the light bulb icon used in many contexts, the phone handset icon on your phone, videocamera icons that look like 1990s camcorders, video playing software with a film icon...

  16. Re:One problem with auto saving on Goodbye, Ctrl-S · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Carl-s

    It's only pronounced that way.

    It is? When did this start? "Control" is too difficult to say?

  17. Re:The Problem Isn't "Free Speech vs Privacy" on The US Vs. Europe: Freedom of Expression Vs. Privacy · · Score: 1

    You are trying to enforce that on Europe, where the rule is "no, actually, that hurts someone else, you can't do it".

    Censorship hurts everyone. So if that was actually the rule, this case would not have gone this way.

  18. Re:The Problem Isn't "Free Speech vs Privacy" on The US Vs. Europe: Freedom of Expression Vs. Privacy · · Score: 2

    If your ability to earn a living can be taken away because of something you said or did, even though what you did is perfectly legal and you broke no laws, and even though you weren't at work when you said or did it, then you have effectively created a society where there is no free speech.

    Nope. You've confused "freedom of speech" with "freedom from consequences." When you say hateful and vile things about a group of people,whether you're on or off the clock when you say them, no one in that group can work effectively with you. They know, after all, that your opinions don't change when you come into the office.

    To take a recent example, Brendan Eich has the right to say and believe whatever bigoted nonsense he wants. Others have the right to say "fuck you" and choose not to associate with him as a result of that. If those people's free choices mean he can't do a certain job and so he doesn't get the job he wants, cry me a river; I can't get the job I want either. (I keep looking but no one is offering a six-figure salary to be a subject for hedonic engineering studies but no one's hiring.)

  19. Re:Finally! on Grace Hopper, UNIVAC, and the First Programming Language · · Score: 1

    Essentially a lot of women got jobs because the family needed the money, not because they read "the second sex", or because Gloria Steinhem existed.

    Except that's not the matter in question. Could a woman in 1950 get a job? Sure. As a secretary, or a nurse, or a kindergarten teacher. The feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s opened the door to women taking employment on an equal basis with men. Of course that job's not done yet; and there are elements of the feminism movement that have gotten distracted with misandrist and authoritarian bullshit (both before and after the 60s and 70s), but that doesn't change the progress that has happened because of feminism.

    You can disagree if you like, and that's fine, but having a different opinion on where change comes isn't un-educated.

    When your opinion is at odds with historical facts,yes, that's ipso facto uneducated.

  20. Re:For it on Comcast Predicts Usage Cap Within 5 Years · · Score: 1

    For the same reason that someone who makes 10 minutes of local calls on their landline pays the same as someone who makes 200 minutes of local calls.

    With a landline, if you only make 10 minutes of calls per month, you can often get a "metered" rate and save money. I'd do this in a second if Verizon still offered POTS here, but they don't; only FiOS based voice service, so I replaced my POTS landline with a second cellphone.

    And with that second cellphone, since I only make a few minutes of calls per month, I got a prepaid plan that charges by the minute and saved money.

    I don't have a problem with broadband providers having less expensive plans for limited use. The problem is imposing ridiculously low usage caps on plans that were formerly billed as unlimited

  21. Re:640k isn't enough for everybody on Game of Thrones Author George R R Martin Writes with WordStar on DOS · · Score: 1, Informative

    What the hell is "It'd"?

    First Known Use of IT'D 1859. It's been a part of the language for over 150 years, and is perfectly standard -- if informal -- usage in both American and British English.

  22. Re:NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH. on From FCC Head Wheeler, a Yellow Light For Internet Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Wheeler can not to more or less then congress wants.

    Congress long ago shifted its regulatory authority to executive branch agencies like the FCC. They're too busy accepting cash from lobbyists to waste time making policy!

  23. Re:Tears of a clown on From FCC Head Wheeler, a Yellow Light For Internet Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Someone else will come along and compete with them.

    How do folks like you manage to so completely ignore observational evidence? It is a natural talent or a learned skill?

    He never advocates to eliminate the government enforced monopoly status

    High speed telecommunications needs wires, cables, or waveguides. That means access to land. Access to land means permission of governments: it is governments that turn land into "property".

    The telecom infrastructure is a public good like roads, rails, the water and sewer system, and the electric grid. Ideas of competition simply do not apply. If you don't find the sort of pants you want in the market, you can go start making your own and compete; if you don't like the railways, you can't start laying down tracks next to Amtrak's and Conrail's. We can recognize that and do things sensibly, with public ownership or a heavily regulated monopoly; or we can have the sort of corrupt and counterproductive bullshit that marked the start of the railroad age and which currently infects telecomm in the U.S.

  24. Re:It's not "Han shoots FIRST"! on Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First · · Score: 2

    First implies an order.

    First can also imply pre-emption. A nuclear first strike, for example, is intended to knock out the other guy's arsenal so that there is no counter, no second attack.

    First can mean "before some other thing, event, etc.: If you're going, phone first." Or "[b]efore or above all others in time, order, rank, or importance: arrived first; forgot to light the oven first.". Or "[b]efore anything else; firstly. Clean the sink first, before you even think of starting to cook..

    "Han shot first" is quite grammatically correct.

  25. Re:Its time to move on on Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First · · Score: 2

    Like it or not, George Lucas never wanted Han to shoot first.

    1977 Lucas did, and wrote the script and made the film that way. The guy who changed the film, 1997 Lucas, had the edge and artistic integrity that 1977 Lucas had.

    It's unfortunate that 1997 Lucas can screw with the work of 1977 Lucas.

    Maybe we should all get over it.

    Or maybe we should try to preserve a work of art against the deprivations of corporate scum, and of screenwriters and directors who lose their talent.