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User: OzTech

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  1. Reality Check on Australian Target Stores Ban GTA V For Depictions of Violence Against Women · · Score: 0

    I have never played (or seen) any of the GTA series, however this did catch my eye...

    "Jim Cooper, general manager of corporate affairs for Target, explained that customers have voiced a "significant level of concern about the game's content."

    Whoah .... Hold the phone .... "customers" ?
    If they really were or are customers then they bought the game. Can one then assume they returned it for a "no questions asked refund", which Target pretty much do in Oz. If not, then they were not "customers", but dare one suggest the "vocal minority" who do nothing but wreak havoc and mayhem while jumping on a band-wagon to push a cause without taking 2 seconds to look at what they are complaining about.

    FWIW, I still have no interest in looking at any of the GTA series. If you ask me, from the title alone ...the puckers should have been locked up for the first one where they even suggested the concept of stealing some poor bastards car was a fun thing to do, and a bit of a game!

  2. Correst Response = do not try to predict outcome on Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit? · · Score: 1

    If all possible solutions result in an undesired outcome.

    The only correct way to handle this is; if at ignition on request, the super-smart autonomous vehicle computes that a life threatening scenario could develop while operating, it should refuse to start, thereby prohibiting the scenario from developing in the first place.

    ... Never test for an error you don't know how to handle.

  3. Previous Governments on Indonesian Politicians Plan To Quiz Snowden Following Visit By Russians · · Score: 0

    While he may not be 100% clean, the activities that the Indonesians, Labor, Rudd, and Julia Gillard are all hyperventilating about, occurred under the previous Government. Let me see, who may have been responsible? Oh, that's right, Gillard, Rudd, Labor!

  4. Re:I wonder... on Mystery Humans Spiced Up Ancients' Sex Lives · · Score: 1

    Yes, but ... only in New Zealand

  5. Typical for a 2 year old on IBM's Watson Gets a Swear Filter After Learning the Urban Dictionary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Watson really is just simply amazing and a true testament to the brilliance of those who worked on it. In many ways, this proves just how close IBM are.

    Watson really is just like a super-smart 2 year-old.
    Welcome to parenting 101

  6. Seriously on What Are the Unwritten Rules of Deleting Code? · · Score: 1

    While RCS may be well and good, it won't necessarily show what was deleted or why.

    My rule of thumb is to comment out the old stuff, and date it. If it is still there after a few months and the new stuff has been working without anyone noticing or commenting (in a negative fashion), this it's pretty safe to delete it and leave any history/archiving to RCS. Before doing the final delete, I will usually still put a comment in the function/proc header (if I hadn't already done so) about the deletion/major-change as this is more often than not the only thing that is really seen.

  7. There are only 2 important rules on What Are the Unwritten Rules of Deleting Code? · · Score: 1

    #1 Make sure your code is better.
    #2 If it isn't ... Don't get caught!

  8. Are you studying Computer Science or Programming? on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With University Firewalls? · · Score: 4, Funny

    If so ...

    This is the basic test to see if you are worth letting back for the second semester.
    As you have posted this question on /. I suggest your consider a different career path.

    As you obviously want other technical people to get you out of trouble and solve all of your problems for you, I suggest you look at Sales and or Marketing.
    Something tells me you have a natural aptitude for either of these.

  9. The MPAA and Porn will save the day. on Non-Copied Photo Is Ruled Copyright Infringement · · Score: 2

    The film and porn industries won't sit by and let this one survive because it will put them all out of business overnight.

  10. He had a vested Interest in advising them. on Security Researcher Threatened With Vulnerability Repair Bill · · Score: 1

    Strange how most people seem to be forgetting this very simple yet very pertinent fact.

    This fund had been making his personal and financial details publicly available!

  11. Won't someone please think of the Children on Telstra Starts Implementing Australian Censorship Scheme · · Score: 1
  12. Good God, Slashdot needs to explain a microsecond on Japan Earthquake May Have Shifted Earth's Axis · · Score: 0

    The world really has gone to hell in a hand-basket when a news site that promotes itself as being "for nerds" needs to tell readers what a micro-second is.

    Does anyone proof read or edit this "news for nerds" before it is posted?

  13. Re: Opposition and Green parties scare mongers ! on Transparency Required For $37 Billion Aussie Broadband Deal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With respect. You are a numb-but, otherwise known as a "muppet".

    If you haven't realised or woken up to the fact that the NBN is really a smoke-screen thrown up the the Grubber-mint as a back-door way to totally control Internet access within our country, I suggest that you scour the fine pages on Slashdot and just take a quick look at what has occured recently in other counties where the Grubbermint has had absolutely no control over the pipe leading into their fine land to inform the general population.

    In case you are to think to understand, the NBN is Labors back-door mechanisim to control the flow of information in and out of this place because they didn't get it past the general population when they used the old American trick of Motherhood and Apple-Pie when wrapped into the blanket of kiddie-porn and terrorism the way the Yanks seem to continually do.

    Make no bones about it. The NBN has nothing to do with access. It is about "control" at any and all costs. With a Grubbermint as the Naitional ISP and ultimately controlling the pipes, what more or less would.could you expect?

  14. Another Substitute for Parenting on Police Chief Teaches Parents To Keylog Kids · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is east to always justify things like this in the name of protection and safety. It is the motherhood and apple-pie argument which Americans use to defend all of their actions.

    Sadly, it is not a substitute for taking care of your children. Explain things to them, teach and guide by example. Make them aware of what they can stumble into and how to get out. Handled correctly and with educated children, you don't need nanny filters, porn filters, or key-loggers. With 3 children connected to the internet since their early to mid teens, two of whom are now in their early 20's, I have actually practiced this method and it works. Show some respect and guidance, you might be surprised to discover that you get the same in return. Children are a reflection on their parents, so kids who grow up with nanny filters and snooping software, think it is normal and won't have any issue in seeing it used elsewhere for any reason whatsoever.

  15. Worst Reporting Ever - a "creepy" virus? on Virus Shuts Down Australian Ambulance Dispatch Service · · Score: 1

    A rather interesting choice of words in TFA: "The virus crept into"
    Eek ! In all my years, I've never known a virus to "creep" anywhere. Once in a computer they usually jump about and whack the system senseless in a few microseconds. This must be one of those new super-viri we've been hearing about because the mental giants responsible for this system still have no idea as to the cause or source, according to TFA. Glad to know that calls to the 000 emergency number weren't affected, although for the unknown virus to lung out and infect a totally physically isolated network (Telstra) would have been pretty impressive.

    The most depressing part of the entire article is that it was supposedly written by someone at "TechWorld.com.au". How on earth do these idiots get jobs, let alone keep them? If this really is the state of our technical media and specialists, then the country really has gone to hell in a hand-basket.

    The fact that the numb-sculls responsible for this system still have jobs and the gaul to report, "we know nothing", is simply scandalous and an outrage. Still, that's what you get when you farm essential services out to private enterprise and only pay 6 times what it should cost to run.

    The whole thing is a disgrace.

  16. Re:LIAR !! on Aboriginal Sundial Pre-Dates Stonehenge · · Score: 0

    > But enough of this. Nothing more need be said

    However, you felt it pertinent to add > 70 words in 5 sentences using about 10 punctuation marks and 2 apostrophes.

    Thank goodness, you closed this one out so succinctly.

  17. testing with the web, what a great idea on Physicists Call For Alien Messaging Protocol · · Score: 1

    > The protocol could be tested via a website

    'coz we all know that the "Aliens" have high-speed web access.

    Before you start laughing ...At least this explains a few things.

  18. Reality Check Please on Record Labels To Pay For Copyright Infringement · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Excuse me. I [b]must[/b] be missing something here!

    They set-aside $50 Million to "cover this". This implies they [b]knew[/b] they were doing something wrong!
    They were fines $47.5 Million.

    If I'm not mistaken, they just made a @2.5 Million [i]profit[/i] from the deal!

  19. Re:Seems unfair to me on Aussie Retailers Lobby For Tax On Online Purchases · · Score: 1

    The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for . What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.

    Whoops. Me thinks you hav e no understanding of how our GST works. At the end of the day, the final consumer or purchaser of the goods *always* pays the 10% GST.
    When a retailer or any wholesalers purchase any item, they pay 10% GST on that item.
    When they on-sell the item (be it wholesale or retail), they charge the next person in the chain 10% GST. They then claim the 10% they paid back and pass on the difference to the Grubbermint.

    For anyone involved in manufacture, wholesale, or retail, GST is so much easier and simpler than what we had before (wholesale sales-tax which climed to 22.5%). It is also harder for people to cheat. As a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, you never need to worry about GST. You pay it and get it back when you on-sell the item, so you don't need to factor GST into anything, because the end user pay it. It is really quite clean and simple.

    If people import stuff directly, then Customs will charge them the 10% GST on the declared value. The Customs and Taxation departments have worked out that it is not worth their while to try to get the GST on items which are less than A$1,000- in value. Persumably because someone worked out tha tit costs them more than $100 to collect it. How they did that is beyond me, but it doesn't matter. The Australian Grubbermint does not need to charge the overseas retailer anything, they simply charge the person importing the goods. It really is plain and simple. So plain and simple, that even a moron like Gerrry should be able to understand it.

    Gerry, his mate Solomon and the rest of the cronies trying to beat this up are just having a sulk because Australians aren't spending much money at the moment.

    Their days of sucking people in with loss-leaders and high-interest interest-free deals are over. They've scammed all of those they can scam, and people are now taking a little longer and looking around. This might involve on-line stores, it might involve catalouges, it might even involve visting other shops. In some instances, people might choose to look overseas, but that would really be the minority.

    Their huge markups (typically over 35%) for doing nothing other than employing morons who don't know shit from clay and lie to customers is starting to wear a little thin, but the number of people buying from overseas would be infintesimal. The savings aren't that great and it is a real pain with a high chance of getting ripped-off.

    GST has absolutely nothing to do with it.

  20. Re:Sun made a strategic mistake not tactical one. on Ex-Sun CEO Warns Oracle of Death By Open Source · · Score: 1

    > OS vs OS. Server vs Server.
    > But Microsoft had an unending money supply through its monopoly in the MS-Office franchise.
    > Microsoft could simply wait it out in a slugfest.

    Wrong. MicroShaft won the API wars.

    They embarked on a propaganda war and ran seminars convincing CEO's and other non-tehco's that "the API was are over" - Win 3.1 has won over OS/2; the perfomance race is over, "NT 3.1 is as fast as Netware". The application was is over, "WinWord is better than Wordperfect and Excel smashes Lotus". Then they stole OS/2 (win 3.1) and gave away packaged as Win 3.11W, 3-Com's Lan-Manager became the giveaway known as WfW 3.11 and they did similar things with NT 3.51, WinWord 2.11, and a plethora of neat programs for anyone who wanted then under the guide of "helping" the developers. Cripes, they were doing this before the Mac was even a stolten glint it Steve Job's eyes. They hosed som any companies and effectively stole their packages that it wasn't funny. If you had a decent package in the early 80's and entered into a sales and marketing agreement with M$, you deserved everyting you got it you didn't cash in your shares the next day. Do you really thing M$ wore their now only C compiler - No, they stole it "legally", the same way that Borland did except theirs cost them less. They didn''t develop PC based networking, they entered into "strategic marketng exercises and joint partnerships" with companies who were the best in field and re-packaged their software under the Micro$haft brand for a few years. To ensure success, they sent some Mickey$oft programmers to "help" the company develop and evolve the package that M$ were flogging. Strange how as ever agreement reached it's termination period M$ no longer needed the other company and had developed thier own in-house alternative, which saw the origionator vanish within 6-12 months.

    The really sad thing is that the droids who conducted thiscampaign were were really nice people who I like to think did not realise what they were doing at the time or where it was headed. The few I had contact with were really proud of what htey were doing for society and of their small contribution in fixing a bug here and there. The ones I was the closest to are not sadly no longer with us, but I like to think they would not really be all that happy about how things turned out, then again, a few made some very seroius money and like the vast majority of other M$ employees at the time, probably do'nt give a rats arse.

    Sun and many/most other technical organisations were fighting a loosing battle. Whlle Microsoft were advertising in Airline magazines and Accounting Journals etc, they were trying to sell to the "techs" and like the techs themselves, didn't realise that the "tech's" were ultimately told what to do by the finance guys. Sun had the tech guys who were super-smart like Bill. Their sales and marketing guys like Scott were just not at the same level, yet still tried to run the show. Sometimes I wonder how or if things would have turned out different if the real techs ran the companies instead of the pseodo puppets like Scott. Would the real techs like Bill J (Steve W, and the plethora of others) have got through, and if so, where would have be now?

  21. What he really said on Ex-Sun CEO Warns Oracle of Death By Open Source · · Score: 3, Funny

    > We were a wonderful acquisition — we got stolen for a song at the bottom of the Dow

    Translation (spin removal) - I screwed up - and would now like to thank the Gods for my "golden parachute". Since I think a suitable time period has passed (hey, it's 2010 and people have an attention span of 2 minutes or less, besides nobody who will live much longer than another 2-3 years even knows who Bill Joy, or a SPARC let alone a 360 was), it is okay for me to now attempt to twist and distort history so the world doesn't remember me as "the bloke who fsked up, big time and killed off one of the last bastilions of real technical people who "got it"."

    - Yeah, I fsked up BIG TIME, but you can' t prove it and my name isn't Julian Assange, so after tomorrow you won't remember anyway.

  22. Will they change its name? on NASA Concedes Defeat In Effort To Free Spirit Rover · · Score: 5, Funny

    From Rover to Spot?

  23. A question for those who have experience with this on Tin Whiskers — Fact Or Fiction? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does a conformal coating stop the whiskers from growing?

  24. What a Brilliant Technical Innovation on Denon's $499 Ethernet Cable · · Score: 5, Funny

    These cable will be a great leap forward for Digital Audio.

    The arrows to indicate direction will mean that the Electrons wont have to look around before knowing which way they are supposed to be moving. This will allow them to get to their destination quicker and even take a moment to go back and get any stragglers who can't keep up. The end result being that all of the electrons will arrive at the intended destination and as you can imagine this will mean a much better signal.

    The next generation of these will probably contain filters to stop those pesky noise electrons making their way down the cable. This will really help the signal to noise ratio, although the commercial development of this is still a little way off yet.

  25. The answer is simple - They're charging to much. on Open Source Killing Commercial Developer Tools · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real reason people have trouble selling commercial Editors, IDE's, and Compilers is because they charge to much. Many if not most programmers get this thing in their head that once they have written one program, they should never have to work again. They charge over $100- and in some cases over $500- for a compiler or editor and then expect a small company with 3 or 4 developers to buy a full license for every developer and every computer that developer uses.

    Even in a small company with 2 developers/engineers, this can often mean that they need 8 licenses.

    1 for each developer/engineer for their primary machine = 2 licenses
    1 for each developer/engineer for their home machine = 2 licenses
    1 for each developer/engineer for their notebook = 2 licenses
    1 for each test lab machine = 2 licenses

    In total, we are now looking at 8 licenses for 2 blokes, when in reality only one of them will ever be using it at a time anyway.

    Then they put a myriad of protection and security in there which makes it a pain to install, maintain, or move.

    Then we need a yearly maintenance fee for each license to get bug fixes. With 8 licenses, we need 8 maintenance fees. Even at $100 per license for maintenance, we're now looking at $800- every year just to get bugs fixed!

    Assume the Editor costs $250 per license and $100 per year for maintenance (bug fixes), which is about what they charge, with 2 developers/engineers we are now looking at $2,000 for the initial licenses and and additional $800 every year if we want to keep using it or heaven forbid we actually expect it to work. If course, they claim that we get "features" with the maintenance, but most of the time we don't want "features", we just want the product to keep working. Yeah, I know, they'll add support for Windows-Vista or another feature which is neat, but instead of looking at that work as a way of expanding their market, they tend to look at it as a way of lockin or bleeding their existing customer base. This is at the very core of what is wrong with software and the mindset that programmers of software development tools end up with.

    Here's a tip for you guy's who do make good tools.

    WE WANT TO BUY THEM.
    - price them reasonably
    - license them reasonably

    WE WANT YOU TO STAY IN BUSINESS.
    - we will tell all of our friends
    - we will tell all of our associates
    - we will tell the next generation
    - features and fixes generate new customers

    WE NEED TO MAKE A LIVING TOO.
    - we can't bleed our customers
    - we need to write a new program every month or two
    - slash the price you charge me to fix your problems
    - we can't afford the prices you guys are asking/expecting

    Look at the prices for Micro$haft compilers and tools. They quickly run into the thousands of dollars. Borland has also lost the plot and charge an obscene amount of money for their products. Very few of us have customers with unlimited budgets. Very few of us actually want to cheat and buy "Accademic" versions. We are programmers and developers too. We know that it takes you time and you need to eat, but fair is fair, you guys are providing spanners. If you make a good one, you can sell thousands of them, but don't try to retire just because you've made one spanner. The world doesn't work that way anymore.