The problem with that logic is when the guy at FBI-Informant Squad gets paid each time he turns someone in. So even if your computer HAD none going IN, that doesn't mean it won't end up ACQUIRING some THERE, which they will then claim it HAD when you brought it in, and for which you'll suffer, and they'll pocket the cash. It's called corruption, and it stinks. Bit like getting pulled over by someone who needs to bust three more people before his shift ends, and then he tosses the bag of weed and the unregistered handgun with the serial numbers filed off into your trunk, then "finds" them there. Corruption is why you can BE innocent, and still get fucked. It's also why we "can't have nice things."
You can always fucking turn fucking SAILOR-MODE off if you just press the little fucking Angel key on your keyboard, the one with the Angel with the shit-eating grin as its symbol. Christ.
And thanks for the perceptive observations as well. (Yes, I just pressed the key.)
I'm using an 82-key keyboard; there are no angels on it anywhere, I did a web-search, (I refuse to call it "googling,") to see what key-sequence would get me that, and it turns out it doesn't translate to anything I can reproduce on my keyboard. But I just so love the feel and clicking sound of the original IBM keyboard that I refuse to give it up, so you'll just have to fucking deal with it. I can make THESE though...
;-p
Hope you like. Also, I'm not sure I really want to turn SAILOR-MODE off. There's a certain catharsis to be had screaming FUCK FUCKEDY MOTHERFUCKING FUCK!!! at the top of my lungs. I'll omit the details, for reasons that would only be obvious if I included the details... which I can't, though I can't explain why... so, sorry, can't. But if I did, I'm confident you'd agree, then say, "oh, and you probably should have kept those details to yourself," to which I'd reply, "I KNOW!" Hehehe...
You love to say "I told you so..." ~ Georgia Lass, Dead Like Me
Yeah, I kinda do, don't I? Anyone taking something like that to someplace like that and assumes their shit isn't being combed through either by someone looking for jackoff material, or worse, something to rat you out to the feds for, is a goddamned fucking moron. (Damn, what is up with my LANGUAGE lately, huh?!? Oh, shit... I have "SAILOR-MODE" set to "enabled".... That explains it. SHIT... I can't fucking disable it! What the fuck! I'm supposed to sing in my church's choir this Sunday! What the fuck am I going to DO?!?!) ^o^
Happily, this doesn't impact me. I just sold off my last Mac.
Actually, I'm typing this on a Mac, but it runs GNU/Linux, so... Apple can take iTunes and all their other garbage and shove it right up their asses. So happy to be done with them, and so glad to be back using free software.
In case anyone should wonder why I stopped using Linux, I'll tell you, it's because of Apple's much vaunted, "it just works," reputation, which has turned out to be total bullshit. I was trying to find a DECENT Android (Android/Linux,) PHONE, and couldn't stand any of the (at the time-) current crop of Android phones, so I bought an iPhone, then an iMac on ebay, so I could put music on it, among other things. But I've finally reached a point of so sick and fucking tired of all this bullshit that I have resolved to switch back to a dumb-phone, pull out and dust-off my old MP3 player, and say "screw all this" to the increasingly connected, INCREASINGLY DISTRACTED"lifestyle" and get back to basics. Dumb/burner phone, music on my music player, and I'm e-bay'ing all my other Apple bullshit as I get workable replacements. Because fuck ALL that shit.
Sorry if this offends, but not half as sorry, not a tenth, actually, as sorry as I am that I ever bought a single, solitary, goddamned fucking piece-of-overpriced-designed-to-be-obsolete-in-a-year, APPLE SHIT. I have given Apple so much money they didn't really earn or deserve, that I could have done so much better with, than buying into their bullshit cult.
Just feels good to be out of it. Apple iWorld. You can iKeep it.
Rot 26 only works in your elitist, snobbish 26-character alphabets, you insensitive clod! If you have either MORE, or FEWER characters in your alphabet, or have anything even more exotic or foreign, such as an ab-jad or syllabary, then it really mucks stuff up.
GPL'ed software isn't allowed in the Apple iOS Appstore, or at least it didn't used to be, which was, (I was told,) why Firefox was for so long absent therefrom. Still waiting for LibreOffice for iPad though.:(
You probably still can. I don't care to check, because I don't particularly care about Firefox any more, but from what I can tell they're simplifying the "basic user" UI to make it merge all storage together, rather than show individual cookies.
The dev tools (Ctrl-Shift-I) contain a UI that lets you view and manipulate ALL local storage, including individual cookies. It doesn't sound like this is going away. So if you need to remove a single cookie in Firefox, you can probably still do it through the dev tools.
This probably isn't quite as bad an idea as the article wants you to think it is because I suspect most people who knew enough to remove individual cookies were probably using the dev tools anyway and not the cookie tools available via the preferences.
Why do I, as a non-dev, need to access dev tools to do something that as a user, I'd like to be able to do? Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here, but it feels a bit like some clown making me pull my car over, and switch the gear selector lever into park to unlock the ability to change stations on the radio, so that I won't fiddle with it while I'm driving. Finding out that a car I'm looking at buying has this feature would probably make me choose a different car, or, if all cars had that feature, no car at all.
I have disabled automatic updates on my FF58. I never use it for anything requiring a login anyway, I just use it so I can squash annoying/overbearing advertisements anyway, but this, if true, will mean I will be ditching Firefox, or simply just using a progressively more and more outdated version. That said...
All good things come to an end. The internet seems to have peaked, and now it's just going to go slowly downhill with the end of net neutrality, so it's time to figure out what things are done WITH the net now, and how to do it without the internet again as it was in the old days, and get used once more to doing things that way once again. It was great while it lasted but I think in the near future I'm going to be using my computer increasingly offline, to prepare for a future in which the internet is simply not safe to use, not worth paying for, not worth the trouble.
Once upon a time, there was no internet, and I remember those days. Had a C64, and swapped files with friends on 5.25" floppy disks, and though these days it's more likely to be USB thumbdrives or CD-ROMS, things are heading back in that direction.
Seriously, I'm about done with all this high-tech bullshit. Going to trade-in my iPhone for a dumb phone and just be happy not to have to charge it every goddamned day, and not have it constantly distracting me with bullshit. It's gone to far and it's time to end it.
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed. DUI? Ban all cars, alcohol, and drugs (including medicines). Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports. Cyberbullying? Ban computers. Works for a lot of things!
Not sure which logical fallacy you're committing most here, reductio ad absurdum, straw-man, or what. There are people who would like to see weapons of WAR be illegal to posses by people not engaged in that profession, without banning ALL guns. Personally I'd love to see all guns banned, IF, IF, IIIIFFFFF you could somehow get ALL the guns off the streets and out of people's possessions, PERMANENTLY, which is physically impossible, so no, I don't actually want to see ALL guns banned, thank you very much. HOWEVER, civilians (and most police,) don't NEED to have or be able to have devices whose sole purpose is to kill LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE RAPIDLY. The COUNTERARGUMENT to this is that we NEED them because "freedom" and "murica". Well... then we ALSO need, by that same pair of, for want of a better word, argument, access, the right to have, keep, posses and bear, all manner of arms, too, besides just weapons of war, like assault rifles and machine guns. These include nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological, and energy weapons. Because... 'freedom'. Also, because... 'murica'. Will you be okay with everyone being allowed to grow anthrax and culture small pox, and walk around with things far more dangerous than these? Why is it just assault rifles that get this protection?
See how stupid that argument sounds? It goes both ways. But I digress... I actually came here to opine on Twitter, which is to say the following: if Twitter allows bots to post shit, what the fuck is the point of Twitter? If they let bots on, let bots keep it.
If there were no other OS you could install on these machines, (i.e., any of the gazillion different flavors of GNU/Linux, any of the Unices, etc.,) you MIGHT have an argument. The "the right to use bundled software follows the computer, and is heritable by any and all future owners" argument falls down in a number of ways, not the least of which is the EULA which you have to accept to be able to use the software, (else you are violating copyright/intellectual property law,) MIGHT say (and from what I recall back when I used that pathetic excuse for an OS, it did say,) that Microsoft was granting to the original retail purchaser of the computer a limited, non-transferable, nonexclusive, revokable right to use the software as installed. Just because software is ON the computer when you get it doesn't necessarily convey rights to use the software. ALSO, the fact that they produced software to which they hold a copyright, and are no longer selling it, does NOT magically strip them of the rights granted BY the copyright. Just as an analogy, imagine you wrote a book. You found a publisher and created 1000 copies. People bought those copies and you decided not to print more at this time. Then some jackass decides you shouldn't have the right to NOT print more copies, so they print copies and either sell them, alleging the sales were not for profit, or even if they WERE not for profit. Even if he gave them away, copyright laws grant to you, the owner of the copyright to the work, the ability to control, until you've been dead for like, 70 years, (I think?) the right to control HOW MANY copies of that book exist, and grant you, in addition, certain other rights and privileges. To DENY authors these rights, would reduce the incentive for authors to bother creating works of art, literature, or other creative endeavors. ALSO, even if the software itself were "abandoned," that would not grant you the right to counterfeit. The use (by Microsoft and others) of KEYS does NOTHING to the status of the copyright of the software on the physical means of distribution. It is an ADDITIONAL security measure to make it so people don't rip them off.
NOW, let it be clearly known that I DESPISE Microsoft, and all their evil, and their abuse of various systems that they've committed and been found in some cases, in a court of law, to have abused, illegally, a lot of laws meant to protect competition. BUT... that's for the legal system to sort out, not cause for stealing from them. MOREOVER, there are, as I've pointed out, alternatives, BETTER alternatives, and the "I'm just trying to keep e-Waste out of landfills argument falls flat as well. Unless you can demonstrate that you've never polluted anything in your life, never consumed anything, never done anything resulting in stuff ending up in landfills, (like all the discs you pirated, for example,) your claim that you were just trying to protect the environment rings hollow.
The effort you put in to ripping off Microsoft could have been put into educating people on how to use any one of the many free alternatives to MS WinDOS, or helping to develop said alternatives to make them even more attractive options. Instead, you disregarded laws in-place to protect the authors of creative works, hiding behind the flimsy shield of "I was trying to help prevent e-waste from ending up in landfills!"
You're not Batman, you're not Robin Hood... you're just that guy going to jail. The slashdot summary is the kind of fake-news, clickbait bullshit this site is rapidly devolving into a cesspit FULL of.
[...] faces prison time for extending computers' lives [...]
Yeah, and I think I might go and pull books out of dumpsters behind book stores, (before those cease to exist) that have had their covers torn off, to "extend their lives" too. (Or not, since that's also called THEFT. Look it up if you don't already know about this. Taking, selling, buying, etc., books reported to publishers or distributers as DESTROYED (a
The whole point of crypto currency is to evade the law. Being able to buy things online is just coincidental.
All the people freaking out who lost a bunch of real, actual money and whining about it now were trying to MAKE money through speculation, meaning they wanted to GET more money than they had, without doing any actual work, for having loaned the crypto currency issuer some cash. This is really no different from putting it in a bank, except in this case the bank was promising return rates higher than (or at least different from and irrespective of the performance of) the rest of the market. They might accomplish this through lack of regulation of the nascent market, or by offering takers the additional perk of not having to report gains, facilitating the avoidance of taxes, judgements, liens, fines, etc. The downside to doing business with such a bank is the high risk that theyâ(TM)re not legitimate.
I feel no pity for the crooks and would-be crooks, trying to get to have more money than they should by exploiting some thing or some one, who then in turn got exploited themselves, who got ripped off by other crooks it sounds like, in this case.
I hope as many people as possible will help Apple be a better company by PUNISHING rather than rewarding misbehavior of this kind, by refusing to buy their products
We have a distributed method to determine the desirability of various products, in which no one asshole dictates what everyone should buy. It turns out that Apple does very well according to that method, sometimes called the "free market". If people didn't like what Apple products did for them, they wouldn't buy them.
D’awww... it’s so cute when someone pops up and expresses a seemingly sincere, and not at all sarcastic assertion that they believe in the existence of something like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or free markets. Yer adorbs!
The barriers to entry into this free-market (which Apple was only able to enter itself because it was ALREADY a tech manufacturer, it ALREADY HAD the ability to manufacture portable electronic devices, it ALREADY HAD legions of cultist fans, people who no longer properly evaluate a product before buying it beyond the Apple logo*, it already had a war-chest of R&D money to throw at the problem, already had marketing people, already had a lot of things that made going from “Apple Computers, Ltd.,” (or whatever their original name was, circa... 1982?) to “Apple, Inc.”) are far too high for most would-be competitors to enter. It was far easier than it would be for any other manufacturer who did NOT have those advantages, for Apple to bring a product to this “free” market, without regard to the relative quality or value being offered by whatever Apple decides to try to sell. While it’s true that Apple can’t exactly just MAKE anything and expect people to buy it, at any price, it does seem awfully much like that sometimes... (can you imagine ten years ago, even adjusting for inflation, if someone told you that people would be lining up around the block to drop a THOUSAND F’ING DOLLARS... on a SMARTPHONE?!?)
Now I hear what you’re saying, if what you’re saying can be boiled down to “if you don’t like it, fine, don’t buy it,” which begs the question, don’t you think I know that I am free not to buy their stuff? The question is, is it alright with you if I express my opinion? Did I write, “I COMMAND YOU not to buy Apple products”? I don’t think I did, but I’ll go back and check. Hmm... no, I only opined that I HOPED people wouldn’t. You might think that’s splitting hairs, but then I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I know being a semi-anonymous writer on Slashdot gives me a GIANT amount of influence and power over a HUGE swath of Apple, Inc.’s customer base, and it is... heady, given the ability it gives me to impact adversely the fortunes of a giant, soulless, multinational corporation. (Hehehe). I should use this power judiciously.
BUT, on the other hand, sir, your assertion, (see what I did there? LOL) that no one asshole dictates what everyone should buy is misleading if not outright false and patently absurd. Remember the famous (or infamous?) assertion, attributed to Henry Ford, that you can get one of his company’s cars, the Model T, in any color, so long as it’s black? Apple has used intellectual property law like a cudgel, giving them a monopoly first on producing and selling computers that run their Operating System, (Mac OS, OS X, or macOS, or whatever,) then on producing devices that run iOS, (when iOS is actually built on top of a freely available, open-source operating system, just like OS X and macOS are, though it’s even more hidden away from the user,) which means that actually, if you (as I did,) made the mistake of buying ANY Apple device, then bought any others that work WITH them, or made an investment** in buying software, you’re increasingly stuck, and at the mercy of t
... is an advertisement for why not to buy anything from Apple. I am so sick and goddamned tired of their bullshit. I hope as many people as possible will help Apple be a better company by PUNISHING rather than rewarding misbehavior of this kind, by refusing to buy their products. When people ask why you would not consider buying whatever the latest, ludicrously overpriced gadget Apple is trying to force-feed you, just say, “because Apple has become a monster and I refuse to aid or abet them in their crimes against the people.” That is why I won’t buy anything from Apple anymore.
[...] it is 'reasonably foreseeable,' it said, that doing so would injure the 'quality of agency decisions.'"
Know what else could “injure” the “quality” of agency “decisions”?!? Putting Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC, predictably, and sure-enough... when will the incompetent/evil/vicious/stupid/bad-governance-on-purpose/corrupt nightmare END?
If we're doing this rigidly, then you're saying that reciting the official warning should cause the operator to issue the test alert. There have to be differences.
According to the operator's account, the announcement was put on speakerphone after the first "exercise exercise exercise" and cut off before the last. I don't know if it's true, but it's plausible. There was some confusion in the room, as it was shift change (and I'm not faulting having a practice during shift change). Counting on the words before and after the script to show it's a drill is dangerous.
The checklist can indeed be "call operator, read script...". The drill can contain a somewhat modified script.
I agree... but another, perhaps better safeguard would be to have the system's OUTPUT looped back so that a (false) warning could NOT be sent out, BEFORE the start of the exercise. I'm pretty sure that's how anyone responsible conducts exercises. If they only have ONE system for alerting the people and therefore can't take it offline for training during the exercise, then that means that if anything goes WRONG with that system, they would have no means of alerting the people and so HOPEFULLY, that's not the case, because that would be ANOTHER, even bigger and more ridiculous problem if it were the case, on top of the ridiculousness we were already treated to.
Also, to anyone further wanting to weigh-in on whether "exercise exercise exercise" either DOES, or DOES NOT cancel the meaning of "this is not a drill," or vice-versa... the very fact that this point is being argued back and forth is, to my way of thinking, rather a good argument for how fucking stupid it is to have BOTH being used in the same situation. What if, for example, one of the people didn't HEAR the "exercise exercise exercise" part? OR, what if DURING the exercise, (as could theoretically happen,) an ACTUAL, real-world incoming missile (or missiles) is detected? How would YOU take the facility in question OUT of exercise mode, and put them, RAPIDLY, EXPEDITIOUSLY into real-world, not simulation mode? Oh, maybe you might say "THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE". (In reality, if you had the coolness of character and were sufficiently collected if you just found out there're FOR-REAL not for-play INBOUND MISSILE(S) approaching you, and you didn't now ALSO have to worry about how to get the system out of play mode and back into fight mode, as it were, you MAYBE might say, "ABORT EXERCISE!!! ABORT ABORT ABORT! RESUME NORMAL OPERATIONS! ATTENTION: WE HAVE REAL, ACTUAL, NOT-SIMULATED INBOUND MISSILES REPORTED BY RADAR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL ISSUE ALERTS NOW. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
That does not sound like it happened in this case. It reminds me of the loss of millions of dollars and tens, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of man-hours of work in the case of the Mars Lander, due to confusion between SI and Imperial (US) units, or at least, that was the culprit they went with publicly. (I'm not meaning to cast doubt on that, but this thing in Hawaii is THAT level of stupid.
The WHOLE POINT of using the expression "this is not a drill" is to indicate when a situation is real, and not a drill. The way it's being described would be like a couple having rough sex, and it being part of their fantasy to use the safe-word as something to indicate the intensity of the sex, rather than AS A SAFE-WORD. It's stupid and irresponsible, and this could all have been avoided, and what's worse, is not just the embarrassment all around, but that it highlights flaws in some of our systems to others, including adversaries, who could then exploit this for strategic advantage... or maybe just laugh their asses off at us.
Unless people were leaving suicide notes citing Williams’ suicide as a reason for theirs or happened to be doing it in the exact same way, including minor details INDICATING a relashionship, I doubt there is anything to this. Their there lacks a certain... je ne sais quoi... là?
The tumble in cryptocurrencies that erased nearly $500 billion of * IMAGINARY * market value over the past month could get a lot worse, according to Goldman Sachs Group's global head of investment research.
And give cash to users like me who bought your âoethey just workâ phones, or at least a decent iTunes or Apple Store credit for the trouble of having to drag myself to your store, (or be without my phone when I send it in, wait for you to swap the battery, (or pretend to,) then ship it back, and assuming all goes to plan, I have WHAT I ALREADY PAID FOR.
Just about ready to eBay all my Apple shit and buy something from a company NOT constantly trying to rip me off.
How long do you think that will stay that way when the CD is gone?
For all practical purposes, the CD is already gone.
I can go to Amazon and buy any song I want, DRM free, for $1. I don't see any reason for that to change.
How is Amazon's service related in any way whatsoever to availability of CDs?
...what you've written here is like a small child walking into negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and saying "but why can't you guys just get along?" You have demonstrated you have no idea what we're talking about. Please go back to the kids' table. "oh, I can buy any song from Amazon for a dollar..." Jesus H.M.F. Christ... One day, when CDs are extinct, and Amazon tells you that you don't need to be able to buy songs, when you can get them for "free" with "Prime membership..." you can come back and read this again, and maybe will understand better why I'm likening you to an ignorant child. It's not to hurt your feelings nor to feel superior, it's because you seem to be somehow assuming that the way things are now will never change, ignoring the forces at work here.
Basically, in terms of being able to buy music, and OWN it, and play it wherever you like, whenever you like, however you like, without big corporations taking their cuts, (in the case of Amazon (which you brought up,) and Apple (which you didn't, but they're in the same basic boat,) when it comes to manipulating things so that you have to pay, and pay through the nose,) it seems as if you're happily enjoying the lovely wedding ceremony, and somehow have no idea why the mood in the room just suddenly turned dark and foreboding as the musicians wraped up the tune they were playing before, and began playing "The Rains of Castamere," or why Amazon.com's Lord Jeff Bezton is wearing chain-mail under his shirt to an occasion such as this. "My shareholders send their regards," he'll say...
You and people like you, ShanghaiBill will wake one day and wonder where the hell your ability to buy music and not pay over and over again for it went... and we (people like me) fucking warned you about this. "Oh, ho ho ho... I can buy any song I want on Amazon for a dollar..." yeah. When you look back on this, I hope you'll recall one day that today I asked you (in advance,) "how's that working out for you now?"
So, basically the complete opposite of what Uber currently says they stand for (people owning their own vehicles and using them to make some extra money sharing rides).
Uber clearly has the best interests of the people at heart and isnt just in it to make a buck by whatever means are more convenient.
Itâ(TM)s almost as if they are a giant, rich corporation, acting anti-competitively, and against the general interest, instead in favor of themselves.
THIS is what happens when you engineer a system that is designed to reward money-making at any and all costs, to the exclusion (and often, to the detriment) of ANY and ALL other considerations. The system is SICK, and it is slowly but surely and inexorably destroying what is left of our so-called civilization. If we fail to fix this somehow, it is going to destroy us. I cannot say exactly HOW we can fix this, I will not even state as a matter of fact that I believe it CAN be fixed. BUT, it IS, I will assert as a fact, that our system is untenable, unsustainable, and living on borrowed time, and someday, the piper will have to be paid.
All any of us can hope for is to die before that day, and to die old, generally surrounded by loving family, children, grandchildren, etc., which necessarily implies the DAY (that the piper will have to be paid,) is a long, long way off, and with each passing day, it comes one day closer, and it seems more and more evident that it cannot be pushed off far enough for even MOST of us to be able to die peacefully in our sleep, old, surrounded by loved-ones, because boy... it is a-coming, and that right-soon. Some might say that it is selfishness to hope for that, because if we, (the current generation alive,) can manage to get out of this life, having lived full lives, before the lowering of the boom on all of us, that means all those loving children and grandchildren I just mentioned, will be the ones to live through the coming Second Age of Darkness... and why should we hope THEY fix it when we could, and we do not?
You do NOT. PUT. THE. WORDS. this is not a drill IN. A. FUCKING. DRILL.
To the person or persons responsible for firing the guy, if, that is, I had the power to fire them, I would ask the following question: Yes means no, and no means yes. Would you like me to fire you?
Then I would totally fire them no matter what they said.
I myself have had to deal with incompetent morons in leadership positions who literally did not know the literal meanings of words they were using, including, yes, literally.
I wonder if that is related to reading something written by Uber?
Strange how their bare assertion seems so self-serving and convenient. Almost as if it is a steaming pile of bullshit.
Oh, and of course they are going to pretend that all the lost jobs will be made up somewhere nearby. That is until they figure out how to take those over too. Oh, and the argument is completely and obviously fallacious. The current number of short-haul, local truckers is limited by demand for products and materials being delivered locally, NOT by the availability of drivers. All that the former (displaced) long-haul truckers looking for local jobs will do is depress the already low wages of local drivers. Long haul drivers drive long-haul because you get PAID more, not because they enjoy spending weeks on end away from their homes (that they still have to pay for,) and their families.
What I wonder is what the rich assholes being allowed to slowly strangle and destroy our economy, our society, and eventually our civilization, will replace customers with. They are automating everything else... oh! I cannot WAIT until they automate being a rich asshole and throw all the rich assholes out of work.
All Uber did was figure out a way to circumvent laws meant to ensure people riding in taxis got someone who knows how to drive and can be trusted TO drive fare-paying strangers, and that the drivers in question are protected from scabs who will undercut them because they donâ(TM)t have to undergo the same background checks, are able to evade anti-discrimination laws, and oh, that normally would stop companies from ignoring laws requiring them to provide pay and benefits to their employees by pretending theyâ(TM)re not employees when they obviously are, and which by the way, a court of law SAID they are.
The approach of Uber is to fuck all of us, and run away with all the fucking money, so I say in response, fuck Uber.
Iâ(TM)m not against capitalism, properly implemented and practiced... Iâ(TM)m against someone systematically ripping people off and then using all that stolen money to live above the law. Because the whole reason we all follow the law is because it applies equally to everyone. When it STOPS applying equally to everyone, suddenly there is no real reason to follow it anymore, is there. That leaves law-abiding citizens in a position where they feel either like they are chumps for following the law, getting stepped on, kicked, and punched by people who ignore it, or like they may as well ignore the law too, at which point, increasingly NO ONE follows any laws.
The fact that this is happening across the board does not bode well for human civilization, since the authorities only reply is to use technology to crack down further, which is why we now see this slide towards totalitarian behavior in so-called elected leaders, militarization of CIVILIAN police, (who seemingly think, to hear them talk, as if they are somehow NOT civilians anymore which they most certainly ARE...) and increasingly fascist rhetoric... I am not certain about this, but it looks more and more like we are totally fucked. Sorry... what were we talking about again?
Slashdot Mirror
Or simply don't have so much child porn.
The problem with that logic is when the guy at FBI-Informant Squad gets paid each time he turns someone in. So even if your computer HAD none going IN, that doesn't mean it won't end up ACQUIRING some THERE, which they will then claim it HAD when you brought it in, and for which you'll suffer, and they'll pocket the cash. It's called corruption, and it stinks. Bit like getting pulled over by someone who needs to bust three more people before his shift ends, and then he tosses the bag of weed and the unregistered handgun with the serial numbers filed off into your trunk, then "finds" them there. Corruption is why you can BE innocent, and still get fucked. It's also why we "can't have nice things."
You can always fucking turn fucking SAILOR-MODE off if you just press the little fucking Angel key on your keyboard, the one with the Angel with the shit-eating grin as its symbol. Christ.
And thanks for the perceptive observations as well. (Yes, I just pressed the key.)
I'm using an 82-key keyboard; there are no angels on it anywhere, I did a web-search, (I refuse to call it "googling,") to see what key-sequence would get me that, and it turns out it doesn't translate to anything I can reproduce on my keyboard. But I just so love the feel and clicking sound of the original IBM keyboard that I refuse to give it up, so you'll just have to fucking deal with it. I can make THESE though...
;-p
Hope you like. Also, I'm not sure I really want to turn SAILOR-MODE off. There's a certain catharsis to be had screaming FUCK FUCKEDY MOTHERFUCKING FUCK!!! at the top of my lungs. I'll omit the details, for reasons that would only be obvious if I included the details... which I can't, though I can't explain why... so, sorry, can't. But if I did, I'm confident you'd agree, then say, "oh, and you probably should have kept those details to yourself," to which I'd reply, "I KNOW!" Hehehe...
You love to say "I told you so..." ~ Georgia Lass, Dead Like Me
Yeah, I kinda do, don't I? Anyone taking something like that to someplace like that and assumes their shit isn't being combed through either by someone looking for jackoff material, or worse, something to rat you out to the feds for, is a goddamned fucking moron. (Damn, what is up with my LANGUAGE lately, huh?!? Oh, shit... I have "SAILOR-MODE" set to "enabled".... That explains it. SHIT... I can't fucking disable it! What the fuck! I'm supposed to sing in my church's choir this Sunday! What the fuck am I going to DO?!?!) ^o^
Happily, this doesn't impact me. I just sold off my last Mac.
Actually, I'm typing this on a Mac, but it runs GNU/Linux, so... Apple can take iTunes and all their other garbage and shove it right up their asses. So happy to be done with them, and so glad to be back using free software.
In case anyone should wonder why I stopped using Linux, I'll tell you, it's because of Apple's much vaunted, "it just works," reputation, which has turned out to be total bullshit. I was trying to find a DECENT Android (Android/Linux,) PHONE, and couldn't stand any of the (at the time-) current crop of Android phones, so I bought an iPhone, then an iMac on ebay, so I could put music on it, among other things. But I've finally reached a point of so sick and fucking tired of all this bullshit that I have resolved to switch back to a dumb-phone, pull out and dust-off my old MP3 player, and say "screw all this" to the increasingly connected, INCREASINGLY DISTRACTED "lifestyle" and get back to basics. Dumb/burner phone, music on my music player, and I'm e-bay'ing all my other Apple bullshit as I get workable replacements. Because fuck ALL that shit.
Sorry if this offends, but not half as sorry, not a tenth, actually, as sorry as I am that I ever bought a single, solitary, goddamned fucking piece-of-overpriced-designed-to-be-obsolete-in-a-year, APPLE SHIT. I have given Apple so much money they didn't really earn or deserve, that I could have done so much better with, than buying into their bullshit cult.
Just feels good to be out of it. Apple iWorld. You can iKeep it.
Rot 26 only works in your elitist, snobbish 26-character alphabets, you insensitive clod! If you have either MORE, or FEWER characters in your alphabet, or have anything even more exotic or foreign, such as an ab-jad or syllabary, then it really mucks stuff up.
GPL'ed software isn't allowed in the Apple iOS Appstore, or at least it didn't used to be, which was, (I was told,) why Firefox was for so long absent therefrom. Still waiting for LibreOffice for iPad though. :(
You probably still can. I don't care to check, because I don't particularly care about Firefox any more, but from what I can tell they're simplifying the "basic user" UI to make it merge all storage together, rather than show individual cookies.
The dev tools (Ctrl-Shift-I) contain a UI that lets you view and manipulate ALL local storage, including individual cookies. It doesn't sound like this is going away. So if you need to remove a single cookie in Firefox, you can probably still do it through the dev tools.
This probably isn't quite as bad an idea as the article wants you to think it is because I suspect most people who knew enough to remove individual cookies were probably using the dev tools anyway and not the cookie tools available via the preferences.
Why do I, as a non-dev, need to access dev tools to do something that as a user, I'd like to be able to do? Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here, but it feels a bit like some clown making me pull my car over, and switch the gear selector lever into park to unlock the ability to change stations on the radio, so that I won't fiddle with it while I'm driving. Finding out that a car I'm looking at buying has this feature would probably make me choose a different car, or, if all cars had that feature, no car at all.
I have disabled automatic updates on my FF58. I never use it for anything requiring a login anyway, I just use it so I can squash annoying/overbearing advertisements anyway, but this, if true, will mean I will be ditching Firefox, or simply just using a progressively more and more outdated version. That said...
All good things come to an end. The internet seems to have peaked, and now it's just going to go slowly downhill with the end of net neutrality, so it's time to figure out what things are done WITH the net now, and how to do it without the internet again as it was in the old days, and get used once more to doing things that way once again. It was great while it lasted but I think in the near future I'm going to be using my computer increasingly offline, to prepare for a future in which the internet is simply not safe to use, not worth paying for, not worth the trouble.
Once upon a time, there was no internet, and I remember those days. Had a C64, and swapped files with friends on 5.25" floppy disks, and though these days it's more likely to be USB thumbdrives or CD-ROMS, things are heading back in that direction.
Seriously, I'm about done with all this high-tech bullshit. Going to trade-in my iPhone for a dumb phone and just be happy not to have to charge it every goddamned day, and not have it constantly distracting me with bullshit. It's gone to far and it's time to end it.
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed. DUI? Ban all cars, alcohol, and drugs (including medicines). Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports. Cyberbullying? Ban computers. Works for a lot of things!
Not sure which logical fallacy you're committing most here, reductio ad absurdum, straw-man, or what. There are people who would like to see weapons of WAR be illegal to posses by people not engaged in that profession, without banning ALL guns. Personally I'd love to see all guns banned, IF, IF, IIIIFFFFF you could somehow get ALL the guns off the streets and out of people's possessions, PERMANENTLY, which is physically impossible, so no, I don't actually want to see ALL guns banned, thank you very much. HOWEVER, civilians (and most police,) don't NEED to have or be able to have devices whose sole purpose is to kill LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE RAPIDLY. The COUNTERARGUMENT to this is that we NEED them because "freedom" and "murica". Well... then we ALSO need, by that same pair of, for want of a better word, argument, access, the right to have, keep, posses and bear, all manner of arms, too, besides just weapons of war, like assault rifles and machine guns. These include nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological, and energy weapons. Because... 'freedom'. Also, because... 'murica'. Will you be okay with everyone being allowed to grow anthrax and culture small pox, and walk around with things far more dangerous than these? Why is it just assault rifles that get this protection?
See how stupid that argument sounds? It goes both ways. But I digress... I actually came here to opine on Twitter, which is to say the following: if Twitter allows bots to post shit, what the fuck is the point of Twitter? If they let bots on, let bots keep it.
NOW, let it be clearly known that I DESPISE Microsoft, and all their evil, and their abuse of various systems that they've committed and been found in some cases, in a court of law, to have abused, illegally, a lot of laws meant to protect competition. BUT... that's for the legal system to sort out, not cause for stealing from them. MOREOVER, there are, as I've pointed out, alternatives, BETTER alternatives, and the "I'm just trying to keep e-Waste out of landfills argument falls flat as well. Unless you can demonstrate that you've never polluted anything in your life, never consumed anything, never done anything resulting in stuff ending up in landfills, (like all the discs you pirated, for example,) your claim that you were just trying to protect the environment rings hollow.
The effort you put in to ripping off Microsoft could have been put into educating people on how to use any one of the many free alternatives to MS WinDOS, or helping to develop said alternatives to make them even more attractive options. Instead, you disregarded laws in-place to protect the authors of creative works, hiding behind the flimsy shield of "I was trying to help prevent e-waste from ending up in landfills!"
You're not Batman, you're not Robin Hood... you're just that guy going to jail. The slashdot summary is the kind of fake-news, clickbait bullshit this site is rapidly devolving into a cesspit FULL of.
[...] faces prison time for extending computers' lives [...]
Yeah, and I think I might go and pull books out of dumpsters behind book stores, (before those cease to exist) that have had their covers torn off, to "extend their lives" too. (Or not, since that's also called THEFT. Look it up if you don't already know about this. Taking, selling, buying, etc., books reported to publishers or distributers as DESTROYED (a
According to noted research singer Joe Jackson, everything is linked to cancer.
The whole point of crypto currency is to evade the law. Being able to buy things online is just coincidental.
All the people freaking out who lost a bunch of real, actual money and whining about it now were trying to MAKE money through speculation, meaning they wanted to GET more money than they had, without doing any actual work, for having loaned the crypto currency issuer some cash. This is really no different from putting it in a bank, except in this case the bank was promising return rates higher than (or at least different from and irrespective of the performance of) the rest of the market. They might accomplish this through lack of regulation of the nascent market, or by offering takers the additional perk of not having to report gains, facilitating the avoidance of taxes, judgements, liens, fines, etc. The downside to doing business with such a bank is the high risk that theyâ(TM)re not legitimate.
I feel no pity for the crooks and would-be crooks, trying to get to have more money than they should by exploiting some thing or some one, who then in turn got exploited themselves, who got ripped off by other crooks it sounds like, in this case.
We have a distributed method to determine the desirability of various products, in which no one asshole dictates what everyone should buy. It turns out that Apple does very well according to that method, sometimes called the "free market". If people didn't like what Apple products did for them, they wouldn't buy them.
D’awww... it’s so cute when someone pops up and expresses a seemingly sincere, and not at all sarcastic assertion that they believe in the existence of something like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or free markets. Yer adorbs!
The barriers to entry into this free-market (which Apple was only able to enter itself because it was ALREADY a tech manufacturer, it ALREADY HAD the ability to manufacture portable electronic devices, it ALREADY HAD legions of cultist fans, people who no longer properly evaluate a product before buying it beyond the Apple logo*, it already had a war-chest of R&D money to throw at the problem, already had marketing people, already had a lot of things that made going from “Apple Computers, Ltd.,” (or whatever their original name was, circa... 1982?) to “Apple, Inc.”) are far too high for most would-be competitors to enter. It was far easier than it would be for any other manufacturer who did NOT have those advantages, for Apple to bring a product to this “free” market, without regard to the relative quality or value being offered by whatever Apple decides to try to sell. While it’s true that Apple can’t exactly just MAKE anything and expect people to buy it, at any price, it does seem awfully much like that sometimes... (can you imagine ten years ago, even adjusting for inflation, if someone told you that people would be lining up around the block to drop a THOUSAND F’ING DOLLARS... on a SMARTPHONE?!?)
Now I hear what you’re saying, if what you’re saying can be boiled down to “if you don’t like it, fine, don’t buy it,” which begs the question, don’t you think I know that I am free not to buy their stuff? The question is, is it alright with you if I express my opinion? Did I write, “I COMMAND YOU not to buy Apple products”? I don’t think I did, but I’ll go back and check. Hmm... no, I only opined that I HOPED people wouldn’t. You might think that’s splitting hairs, but then I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I know being a semi-anonymous writer on Slashdot gives me a GIANT amount of influence and power over a HUGE swath of Apple, Inc.’s customer base, and it is... heady, given the ability it gives me to impact adversely the fortunes of a giant, soulless, multinational corporation. (Hehehe). I should use this power judiciously.
BUT, on the other hand, sir, your assertion, (see what I did there? LOL) that no one asshole dictates what everyone should buy is misleading if not outright false and patently absurd. Remember the famous (or infamous?) assertion, attributed to Henry Ford, that you can get one of his company’s cars, the Model T, in any color, so long as it’s black? Apple has used intellectual property law like a cudgel, giving them a monopoly first on producing and selling computers that run their Operating System, (Mac OS, OS X, or macOS, or whatever,) then on producing devices that run iOS, (when iOS is actually built on top of a freely available, open-source operating system, just like OS X and macOS are, though it’s even more hidden away from the user,) which means that actually, if you (as I did,) made the mistake of buying ANY Apple device, then bought any others that work WITH them, or made an investment** in buying software, you’re increasingly stuck, and at the mercy of t
... is an advertisement for why not to buy anything from Apple. I am so sick and goddamned tired of their bullshit. I hope as many people as possible will help Apple be a better company by PUNISHING rather than rewarding misbehavior of this kind, by refusing to buy their products. When people ask why you would not consider buying whatever the latest, ludicrously overpriced gadget Apple is trying to force-feed you, just say, “because Apple has become a monster and I refuse to aid or abet them in their crimes against the people.” That is why I won’t buy anything from Apple anymore.
[...] it is 'reasonably foreseeable,' it said, that doing so would injure the 'quality of agency decisions.'"
Know what else could “injure” the “quality” of agency “decisions”?!? Putting Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC, predictably, and sure-enough... when will the incompetent/evil/vicious/stupid/bad-governance-on-purpose/corrupt nightmare END?
If we're doing this rigidly, then you're saying that reciting the official warning should cause the operator to issue the test alert. There have to be differences.
According to the operator's account, the announcement was put on speakerphone after the first "exercise exercise exercise" and cut off before the last. I don't know if it's true, but it's plausible. There was some confusion in the room, as it was shift change (and I'm not faulting having a practice during shift change). Counting on the words before and after the script to show it's a drill is dangerous.
The checklist can indeed be "call operator, read script...". The drill can contain a somewhat modified script.
I agree... but another, perhaps better safeguard would be to have the system's OUTPUT looped back so that a (false) warning could NOT be sent out, BEFORE the start of the exercise. I'm pretty sure that's how anyone responsible conducts exercises. If they only have ONE system for alerting the people and therefore can't take it offline for training during the exercise, then that means that if anything goes WRONG with that system, they would have no means of alerting the people and so HOPEFULLY, that's not the case, because that would be ANOTHER, even bigger and more ridiculous problem if it were the case, on top of the ridiculousness we were already treated to.
Also, to anyone further wanting to weigh-in on whether "exercise exercise exercise" either DOES, or DOES NOT cancel the meaning of "this is not a drill," or vice-versa... the very fact that this point is being argued back and forth is, to my way of thinking, rather a good argument for how fucking stupid it is to have BOTH being used in the same situation. What if, for example, one of the people didn't HEAR the "exercise exercise exercise" part? OR, what if DURING the exercise, (as could theoretically happen,) an ACTUAL, real-world incoming missile (or missiles) is detected? How would YOU take the facility in question OUT of exercise mode, and put them, RAPIDLY, EXPEDITIOUSLY into real-world, not simulation mode? Oh, maybe you might say "THIS IS NOT AN EXERCISE". (In reality, if you had the coolness of character and were sufficiently collected if you just found out there're FOR-REAL not for-play INBOUND MISSILE(S) approaching you, and you didn't now ALSO have to worry about how to get the system out of play mode and back into fight mode, as it were, you MAYBE might say, "ABORT EXERCISE!!! ABORT ABORT ABORT! RESUME NORMAL OPERATIONS! ATTENTION: WE HAVE REAL, ACTUAL, NOT-SIMULATED INBOUND MISSILES REPORTED BY RADAR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL ISSUE ALERTS NOW. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
That does not sound like it happened in this case. It reminds me of the loss of millions of dollars and tens, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of man-hours of work in the case of the Mars Lander, due to confusion between SI and Imperial (US) units, or at least, that was the culprit they went with publicly. (I'm not meaning to cast doubt on that, but this thing in Hawaii is THAT level of stupid.
The WHOLE POINT of using the expression "this is not a drill" is to indicate when a situation is real, and not a drill. The way it's being described would be like a couple having rough sex, and it being part of their fantasy to use the safe-word as something to indicate the intensity of the sex, rather than AS A SAFE-WORD. It's stupid and irresponsible, and this could all have been avoided, and what's worse, is not just the embarrassment all around, but that it highlights flaws in some of our systems to others, including adversaries, who could then exploit this for strategic advantage... or maybe just laugh their asses off at us.
We will always know, definitively, in the future, for OUR species, at least... which came first: it was the human, and not the egg. ;-)
Correlation is not causation.
Unless people were leaving suicide notes citing Williams’ suicide as a reason for theirs or happened to be doing it in the exact same way, including minor details INDICATING a relashionship, I doubt there is anything to this. Their there lacks a certain... je ne sais quoi... là?
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
The tumble in cryptocurrencies that erased nearly $500 billion of * IMAGINARY * market value over the past month could get a lot worse, according to Goldman Sachs Group's global head of investment research.
FTFY.
And give cash to users like me who bought your âoethey just workâ phones, or at least a decent iTunes or Apple Store credit for the trouble of having to drag myself to your store, (or be without my phone when I send it in, wait for you to swap the battery, (or pretend to,) then ship it back, and assuming all goes to plan, I have WHAT I ALREADY PAID FOR.
Just about ready to eBay all my Apple shit and buy something from a company NOT constantly trying to rip me off.
How long do you think that will stay that way when the CD is gone?
For all practical purposes, the CD is already gone.
I can go to Amazon and buy any song I want, DRM free, for $1. I don't see any reason for that to change.
How is Amazon's service related in any way whatsoever to availability of CDs?
...what you've written here is like a small child walking into negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and saying "but why can't you guys just get along?" You have demonstrated you have no idea what we're talking about. Please go back to the kids' table. "oh, I can buy any song from Amazon for a dollar..." Jesus H.M.F. Christ... One day, when CDs are extinct, and Amazon tells you that you don't need to be able to buy songs, when you can get them for "free" with "Prime membership..." you can come back and read this again, and maybe will understand better why I'm likening you to an ignorant child. It's not to hurt your feelings nor to feel superior, it's because you seem to be somehow assuming that the way things are now will never change, ignoring the forces at work here.
Basically, in terms of being able to buy music, and OWN it, and play it wherever you like, whenever you like, however you like, without big corporations taking their cuts, (in the case of Amazon (which you brought up,) and Apple (which you didn't, but they're in the same basic boat,) when it comes to manipulating things so that you have to pay, and pay through the nose,) it seems as if you're happily enjoying the lovely wedding ceremony, and somehow have no idea why the mood in the room just suddenly turned dark and foreboding as the musicians wraped up the tune they were playing before, and began playing "The Rains of Castamere," or why Amazon.com's Lord Jeff Bezton is wearing chain-mail under his shirt to an occasion such as this. "My shareholders send their regards," he'll say...
You and people like you, ShanghaiBill will wake one day and wonder where the hell your ability to buy music and not pay over and over again for it went... and we (people like me) fucking warned you about this. "Oh, ho ho ho... I can buy any song I want on Amazon for a dollar..." yeah. When you look back on this, I hope you'll recall one day that today I asked you (in advance,) "how's that working out for you now?"
So, basically the complete opposite of what Uber currently says they stand for (people owning their own vehicles and using them to make some extra money sharing rides).
Uber clearly has the best interests of the people at heart and isnt just in it to make a buck by whatever means are more convenient.
Itâ(TM)s almost as if they are a giant, rich corporation, acting anti-competitively, and against the general interest, instead in favor of themselves.
THIS is what happens when you engineer a system that is designed to reward money-making at any and all costs, to the exclusion (and often, to the detriment) of ANY and ALL other considerations. The system is SICK, and it is slowly but surely and inexorably destroying what is left of our so-called civilization. If we fail to fix this somehow, it is going to destroy us. I cannot say exactly HOW we can fix this, I will not even state as a matter of fact that I believe it CAN be fixed. BUT, it IS, I will assert as a fact, that our system is untenable, unsustainable, and living on borrowed time, and someday, the piper will have to be paid.
All any of us can hope for is to die before that day, and to die old, generally surrounded by loving family, children, grandchildren, etc., which necessarily implies the DAY (that the piper will have to be paid,) is a long, long way off, and with each passing day, it comes one day closer, and it seems more and more evident that it cannot be pushed off far enough for even MOST of us to be able to die peacefully in our sleep, old, surrounded by loved-ones, because boy... it is a-coming, and that right-soon. Some might say that it is selfishness to hope for that, because if we, (the current generation alive,) can manage to get out of this life, having lived full lives, before the lowering of the boom on all of us, that means all those loving children and grandchildren I just mentioned, will be the ones to live through the coming Second Age of Darkness... and why should we hope THEY fix it when we could, and we do not?
You do NOT. PUT. THE. WORDS. this is not a drill IN. A. FUCKING. DRILL.
To the person or persons responsible for firing the guy, if, that is, I had the power to fire them, I would ask the following question: Yes means no, and no means yes. Would you like me to fire you?
Then I would totally fire them no matter what they said.
I myself have had to deal with incompetent morons in leadership positions who literally did not know the literal meanings of words they were using, including, yes, literally.
I wonder if that is related to reading something written by Uber?
Strange how their bare assertion seems so self-serving and convenient. Almost as if it is a steaming pile of bullshit.
Oh, and of course they are going to pretend that all the lost jobs will be made up somewhere nearby. That is until they figure out how to take those over too. Oh, and the argument is completely and obviously fallacious. The current number of short-haul, local truckers is limited by demand for products and materials being delivered locally, NOT by the availability of drivers. All that the former (displaced) long-haul truckers looking for local jobs will do is depress the already low wages of local drivers. Long haul drivers drive long-haul because you get PAID more, not because they enjoy spending weeks on end away from their homes (that they still have to pay for,) and their families.
What I wonder is what the rich assholes being allowed to slowly strangle and destroy our economy, our society, and eventually our civilization, will replace customers with. They are automating everything else... oh! I cannot WAIT until they automate being a rich asshole and throw all the rich assholes out of work.
All Uber did was figure out a way to circumvent laws meant to ensure people riding in taxis got someone who knows how to drive and can be trusted TO drive fare-paying strangers, and that the drivers in question are protected from scabs who will undercut them because they donâ(TM)t have to undergo the same background checks, are able to evade anti-discrimination laws, and oh, that normally would stop companies from ignoring laws requiring them to provide pay and benefits to their employees by pretending theyâ(TM)re not employees when they obviously are, and which by the way, a court of law SAID they are.
The approach of Uber is to fuck all of us, and run away with all the fucking money, so I say in response, fuck Uber.
Iâ(TM)m not against capitalism, properly implemented and practiced... Iâ(TM)m against someone systematically ripping people off and then using all that stolen money to live above the law. Because the whole reason we all follow the law is because it applies equally to everyone. When it STOPS applying equally to everyone, suddenly there is no real reason to follow it anymore, is there. That leaves law-abiding citizens in a position where they feel either like they are chumps for following the law, getting stepped on, kicked, and punched by people who ignore it, or like they may as well ignore the law too, at which point, increasingly NO ONE follows any laws.
The fact that this is happening across the board does not bode well for human civilization, since the authorities only reply is to use technology to crack down further, which is why we now see this slide towards totalitarian behavior in so-called elected leaders, militarization of CIVILIAN police, (who seemingly think, to hear them talk, as if they are somehow NOT civilians anymore which they most certainly ARE...) and increasingly fascist rhetoric... I am not certain about this, but it looks more and more like we are totally fucked. Sorry... what were we talking about again?