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User: David+Gould

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  1. I'm just still trying to figure out WTF "Next To the Stars" is supposed to mean.

  2. Re: Standards on Is The Linux Desktop In Trouble? (zdnet.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sure -- as long as the one we standardize on is KDE.

  3. Re: Jif... on What's The Correct Way to Pronounce 'GIF'? (thenewstack.io) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh. Somebody who thinks the way an acronym's letters are pronounced in their respective words has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with how the acronym should be pronounced... is calling somebody *else* a moron? Funny.

    Once again, the ONLY points that have any relevance whatsoever are:

    1. The person who invents a technology deserves the right to name it, and only a total asshole would ignore their wishes.

    2. The Cabal has authorized me to reveal that, for as long as the GIF format has existed, pronouncing "gif" correctly -- i.e., like "gin", not like "git" -- has been one of the not-so-secret recognition codes by which people who have any clue about computer stuff identify each other.

  4. Re: He would get my vote (fist post?) on Beto O'Rourke's Secret Membership in America's Oldest Hacking Group (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    > "God I hate this timeline."

    Have you been having lots of "Mandela Effect" moments too?

  5. Re: He would get my vote (fist post?) on Beto O'Rourke's Secret Membership in America's Oldest Hacking Group (reuters.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Much like with Bernie Sanders and his "trouble with Black voters", those who are desperate to tear down Elizabeth Warren latched onto something that was "not especially popular", exaggerated it into "super UNpopular", and have been obsessively trying to spin it into bring her "major (perhaps fatal?) weakness".

  6. Re: Depends on relevant lifetime of messages on Quantum Computer Not Ready To Break Public Key Encryption For At Least 10 Years, Some Experts Say (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Right. Another way of saying "it won't be broken for at least 10 years" would be "it could be broken in as soon as 10 years!" -- which, for the purposes of at least some organizations, is a "ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING WE'RE SCREWED AAAAAAAH!!1!" scenario.

  7. Exactly, you'd have to do something like that for the results to be meaningful. Data from people playing at home on their own machines will have all kinds of bias.

  8. Re: Of course, that implies you trust CloudFlare on Cloudflare Expands Its Government Warrant Canaries (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    By the way -- again, I don't remember what company this was in reference to, I have no idea how it may relate to CloudFlare's statements, and I might just be imagining the whole thing, but -- I think the context was that some company had been including something like "Number of National Security Letters Received: 0" in their quarterly reports, or some such official documents, and then one day someone noticed they'd stopped doing so, and they wouldn't comment on it.

  9. Re: Of course, that implies you trust CloudFlare on Cloudflare Expands Its Government Warrant Canaries (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    "Contempt of what?" -- Exactly, and that's the brilliance of it! At the time you write it, you've never received any such order. You're aware that such things exist, though you have no specific knowledge as to whether you will ever receive one. Still, they represent a risk to your ability to provide the service your customers rely on; all available information regarding them is therefore clearly important to your shareholders. Seems you're almost *obligated* to include that in your SEC filings, right? At least, for as long as you're at liberty to do so...

  10. Re: Of course, that implies you trust CloudFlare on Cloudflare Expands Its Government Warrant Canaries (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    At the time you write it, you have never received any such order, nor do you have any specific knowledge that any such order will ever exist.

    No court has ever ordered me not to tell you that I'm wearing pants right now. It's possible that one could do so in the future. Must I refrain from talking about my pants-wearing status now, for fear of some such future order?

    "conspiring to violate a court order" -- conspiring with your own future self?

    "act of contempt" -- contempt of a time-traveling order that binds you retroactively on actions taken before it was written?

  11. Re: Of course, that implies you trust CloudFlare on Cloudflare Expands Its Government Warrant Canaries (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, it has that effect, but the "self-destruct" idea is to set it up so there's no other choice. I'm not sure what company I first heard this about, or how it relates to these Transparency Reports, but the way I remember it, the statement was included in official documents filed with the SEC. (Something like "Number of Disclosures: 0" in a state-of-the-company section.) Falsifying information in one of those would be unthinkable(!), so there'd be no choice but to stop including that line. Poof!

  12. Re: Yet Another Doomsday Prediction on Extreme CO2 Levels Could Trigger Clouds 'Tipping Point' and 8C of Global Warming (carbonbrief.org) · · Score: 1

    This is an argument for the climate change situation being difficult -- more so than many of us realize, in terms of how widespread the potential economic pain is -- but it's not an argument against it being true.

  13. Re: You sound like a flat earther. on Could 'Oumuamua Be A Fluffy Radiation-Driven Icy Fractal From Another Star System? (syfy.com) · · Score: 1

    What are you talking about? What laws of physics say an object, artificial or otherwise, can't travel from one solar system to another? Heck, whatever Oumuamua is, it's an existence proof to the contrary.

    Should I clarify that when we talk about the spaceship hypothesis, we're not saying we think it's an *operational* spaceship full of living aliens? A multimillion-year-old, and (duh) long-dead, spaceprobe would fit the bill too.

    Is there some law of physics I'm not aware of that says it's impossible that, millions of years from now, our Pioneer 11 (for example) might drift close enough to some other star to make a similar hyperbolic swing around it and cause the aliens living there to have this same argument?

    (Of course I'm not saying it's likely, or that there's any scientific evidence for it, but why should it be *impossible*?)

  14. Re: Twitter edit button is a stupid idea on After Calls For an Edit Button, Twitter Says it is Considering a 'Clarification' Feature (mashable.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the right balance seems to be: allow editing, but keep edit history; display only latest version, but with an "(edited at )" label that links to the history; no hotlinking to old versions, but they're available.

  15. Re: Correct hourse battery staple. on 8-Character Windows NTLM Passwords Can Be Cracked In Under 2.5 Hours (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    "the four-word example popularized by online comic XKCD, 'correcthorsebatterystaple'."

    In fact, use that exact passphrase. It's the best one.

  16. "Oh, wait..." on Ask Slashdot: What Could Go Wrong In Tech That Hasn't Already Gone Wrong? · · Score: 1

    I was expecting this thread to be a whole bunch of descriptions of things exactly as they are, followed by "Oh, wait...".

  17. Re: But UBI? on When No One Retires (hbr.org) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But, see, if you cherry-pick the cases of good behavior among people on your side, and equally cherry-pick the cases of bad behavior on the other side, you can turn it into "proof" of your side's moral superiority!

  18. "CIA Exposed a Highly Sensitive Communications System on the Public Internet, Where it Could be Compromised by Iranians Simply Using Google Search"

  19. Re: Climate has never stayed constant on World Is Finally Waking Up To Climate Change, Says 'Hothouse Earth' Author (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Yours. The one who glibly ignores all context and pretends the two sides are equivalent. That's the one who's dealing in "alternative facts". (Also, the one who can't use apostrophes -- that's usually a good clue.)

  20. It could even be rephrased as "They _are_ doing it, it's just that they're making the transition more slowly than they could if they were willing to write off _all_ the investments in their current tooling, etc., all at once (which would be financially impossible, because shareholders)."

  21. Re: The Worst IT-Related Joke I've Ever Heard? on Ask Slashdot: What's The Worst IT-Related Joke You've Ever Heard? · · Score: 1

    No surprise that someone stupid enough to believe that would also be someone who thinks the internet started in the '90s.

    Hint 1: yes, it's a recent policy, but one that only recently became necessary because the abuse it's designed to prevent was starting to happen.

    Hint 2: '60s.

  22. Nope.

    (Is this where I'm supposed to make a uid reference?)

  23. Re: Very slim edge case on Devs Working To Stop Go Math Error Bugging Crypto Software (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    We weren't laughing, we were watching in horror.

  24. "phishing site threat"? on Equifax Breach is Very Possibly the Worst Leak of Personal Info Ever (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    So does anyone know what's up with OpenDNS blocking the equifax security site (the one that all the news articles are pointing to) with a "blocked due to a phishing threat" message?

  25. GP: "The game Lemmings..."
    PP: "You used to frantically click objects on each screen to see if it had any purpose."

    Heh, yeah. How long did it take you to figure out what the little pair of paw-prints meant?