I live in fear that some ransomware is going to encrypt my collection of ASCII porn, so I've been printing it out little by little on my Okidata 320. The good news is that I'm protected from ransomware, but the bad news is my house is now a serious fire hazard. Stacks of paper everywhere.
Don't worry too much. Neat stacks of paper are no more of a fire hazard than are wooden supports or furniture. Tightly-stacked paper does not burn well, which is why we have historical documents from many great minds, even though their will stated "burn all of my notes at death."
It's messy piles of crumpled paper, mixed in with pizza boxes (+ cheese), empty Cheetos bags, and semi-empty whiskey bottles that is the real fire hazard.
Congratulations Mac, you final have a large enough installed base that malware developers are starting to support your platform. Maybe someday game developers will support it as well.
Seriously. If code is well-written, with portability in mind, then there is absolutely no reason for games to not come on Mac at release.
And yes they are written to be portable –PlayStation, Windows 7 or 8 or 10, Linux, X-Box. FFS, if a game is ported to Linux, then it should be trivial to slap together an interface for Mac OS X—It's based on the BSD of UNIX.
This bit of malware is reported to look for and encrypt/corrupt any Time Machine backups.
That's one form of backup, but it shouldn't be your only backup. I periodically clone the drive partition to external hard drives and copy disk images to the file server.
R'Amen to that. Hourly auto-backups (Time Machine) are great, but are not enough! Periodic (monthly) cloning to an external drive that you store in a different location is closer to a full backup scheme. I have two externals, and alternate them in my monthly backups, but for time's sake, do incremental backups.
My extra step is, once a year or so, to do a full clone to yet another external (or just keep the HD when I buy a new computer or upgrade storage). Why? I have a 23-year scientific body of work on my computer. (Physical objects are also safely stored – lab books, samples, film negatives, etc.)
cremier has an even savvier addition to the cloning approach. Rather than incremental clones, full archival disk images of those clones stored on some huge HD/RAID/server, as space allows – preferably encrypted. Caveat is that those take a lot of drive and processor time.
Perhaps I should exclude the "Games" Directory from the cloning. That will cut the time in half!
Sure, it's not a system patch but a certificate revocation, but still a responsibly swift resolution.
BTW, it was a malware Trojan, likely a double-Trojan, injected between the unwitting developer and the unwitting downloader, using the compromised certificate. Whether in transit if http downloaded, or by some other exploit, I dunno. Those more expert than me can answer that one.
It was not a virus. It was a Trojan inserted by a third party. I understand that it (probably) affected Linux and Windows as well. Please, everyone, just use proper terminology. It aids discussion.
What are the numbers for damage to humans and environment from the rare-earth manufacturing from china? One can hardly tout numbers resultant from accidents from stupidity without equally making accounting for cost-cutting malfeasance.
The "Rare Earths", or more properly, the "Lanthanide Elements", are not manufactured. They are elements of the periodic table.
Mining of mineral ores and reducing them to metals is generally a nasty business. Copper, gold, tantalum...
Humans run mines and processing operations, which are often in remote locations and difficult to inspect for safety and environmental compliance. Some companies cut corners. Accidents, sloppiness, or general "I don't give a fuck about humans" types of environmental damage happen with anything mined.
Hmm... No condemnation of bullying... No condemnation of hacking a system...
It's cool when it happens to non-politically approved persons... Right slashdot?
Morons.
Actually, becoming a politician does open up many aspects of your life to the public.
Everyone has known this for a long time. There are lines that are traditionally not crossed (family life), and the location of these lines is an issue of constant debate.
It only works if one assumes that this level of school is merely job training. Some could argue that education is about broadening knowledge and exercising the brain, not just 'how am I going to use this in real life?'
YES, yes, a million times yes.
Robots, computer, and computer-automated systems take over more and more jobs as time goes one.
An education is preparation for a person to be an informed, independently thinking adult. It's necessary for any voting-based governance model to work over the long term.
HS graduates are not going to get jobs in sewing-machine sweatshops. The educational system, with its organization based on preparation for factory work, is outmoded by decades. If young HS graduates expect jobs, but can't find one, they will become disenfranchised.
Better, brig back the arts, music, debate, gym, and other 'non-essential' types of courses that have been eliminated in favor of high schools churning out code monkeys. The future has no place for kids educated in this manner. Change their expectations, and their personal valuation of critical thought, self-expression, or athletic competition—or else we are all in for a big(ger) problem in a couple of decades.
He suggests dropping Algebra II as a requirement. The first two statistics courses I took in college had only Algebra I as a prerequisite.
As someone who actually taught Algebra II in high school (years ago), and who taught it one year in a lower-class mostly minority school district, I'll offer a few observations:
(3) However, the problems with algebra II often start with teaching in algebra I. The algebra I and "pre-algebra" classes tend to be the "dumping ground" in many school districts for less qualified teachers. Teachers with real math degrees... (There are serious teacher shortages in many places in the US, particularly for secondary math and science.)
How very true. But the STEM teacher shortage is not the result of a lack of qualified individuals. Oh no. It is the "seniority-rank" system that many teachers' unions so vigorously enforce. This means that you can teach wrestling, or you can teach Calculus, and get paid about the same salary. It is human envy driving this false 'STEM shortage'.
I had a friend who did a two-year 'Teach for America' tour. (For those not in-the-know, it's like the Peace Corps., but in super-troubled US school districts.)
Anyway, I heard stories from this person, on a regular basis, of the teachers' union refusing to do anything for any teacher with less than five years of teaching experience (and union-dues paying). Back-stabbing by 'established' teachers was rampant against these TFA people who voluntarily took a low-paying job to 'make a difference' in the US educational system.
This particular person was a Harvard grad, so the envy was even heavier, despite her being an extremely social and nice person, and a super-excellent teacher. That was her downfall, actually. Human envy—she made the vested teachers look bad.
In summary, there is no STEM shortage, merely a corrupt set of teachers' unions who protect only those who have hung around long enough to merit union protection. Pay STEM teachers appropriately, keep the union off their back, and they will flourish. Otherwise, the only math teachers that high schools will get are random misfits, and the occasional passionate teacher who is willing to self-sacrifice.
fast forward to this foul year 2016. ads now track you, sites track you, and campaigns overtly demand your input. there are entire analytic suites and social science departments that study you like a petri dish for any semblance of clue as to what defines your wants, and how to exploit your desires. they do this because without information about who you are and what you do, the product cant be targeted to appeal to what lifestyle you can be made to desire. Be it astronaut, playboy, or racecar driver. unless the idea of brand-as-culture is dialed back, this is only going to get worse.
what we're seeing online is a revolt against the intrusiveness of ads from bandwidth to page view and browser experience, but its also a revolt against the idea of a consumer as a lab-rat
Spot-on! Those 'predictive ad-serving software' get it wrong far more often than they get it right.
YouTube's algorithm is notoriously error-prone, when choosing the next nine vids you might want to watch. They must be taking payola from certain 'Advertorial' video producers. Although I am taken, and have been for many years, I get these "how to seduce women with three simple words" videos after I play some engineering video.
It's so bad that I now refuse to use YouTube in any professional setting. If I want a vid for a demo, I'll download the stupid thing. Using YouTube in a professional setting is an invitation to trouble.
Maybe a relative clicked on one of those links once, or maybe it's payola. That is irrelevant to me. YouTube is strictly forbidden from any seminar or class that I present.
How about a Govt who has a backbone to say No, the public do not want Ads. I bloddy hate ads on TV and we have gone from 3min ads 3 times and hour 10 years ago to ads 5 mins into programme start, then 8 mins later we 6min ads, then 8 mins later another 6mins etc etc.
When downloading 1 hour programmes off the SKY network the progrtames are now only 35 mins of content, then we have crappy TV producers who fill the tv programs with loads of "What's coming Up" and Recaps that the 35min of content is now actually 23mins of content.
The odds now of turning a TV and hitting an ad break is nearly 83%.
So no to TV ads and No to Ads on my broadband.
In the 1990's, I would mute the television during ads. Except for my favorite channel – C-SPAN, which has no ads.
I quit watching TV around 2001, and ditched the thing to Goodwill a few years after I grew tired of it sitting in the garage.
For the very select few of TV programs that are worth watching, I consider them like movie rentals. I will 'purchase' a season, which spares me all of the "Last time on..." and other recap crap. Or, better, I will walk three blocks to my local, independent video store, and rent a season of the (rare) worthwhile show for $3.
Even better is my local Public Library. Huge collection. Tons of stuff that no one will ever transfer to DVD from VHS. No problem—I have a multi-CODEC VHS player, and a region-unlocked DVD player. Seriously, go to your local library!
I'll support anti-blocking initiative, if and only if these websites and ad providers are held criminally and financially liable for any damage caused by malicious ads.
I've never heard of a TV ad locking up someone's TV and ask for ransom. Hold online ads to the same standard.
I am still mystified that no one has (to my knowledge) pursued a Trespass to Chattels Civil Suit (or Class Action) against these bandwidth-allotment and processor-load consuming ads. And trackers? Geesh!
Say I want to read a 1000-word essay. Why does the page take a long time to render (50/50 Mb/s), and why does it consume, say, 30 MB of my allotted data plan? This is especially true with browsers on cell phones.
It has been a problem for 20 years. The ad industry fails to exert any sort of control over the more egregious offenders. Same with 'content' providers, who allow some dumb keyword-based algorithm to serve up these awful ads? If it's your damned 'news outlet', then it is your damned job to be a little discriminating. The result is that I block almost everything possible.
Outlets: Please let me know when you have reverted to static banner ads. Until then, all ads will be blocked through various means.
Even if ads were hosted on the same server of the website, and were as little as a simple jpg, people would still block them. Tracking/malware etc are just scare tactics, the real issue is people just want stuff for free.
I block ads for two interrelated reasons. First, they do something to my computer that is more than an in-line image on a web page. Second, they're visually obnoxious and make the site that I'm trying to visit unusable.
I can accept ads that are a simple still-image or simple animated image in-line on the page. The image needs to not detract from the use of the page. The image needs to not cause some kind of epileptic fit. The image needs to have content that is suitable for the site on which it is displayed and for a reasonable expectation of the age of the average user of the page.
...
Early-on I allowed ads. then ads started hijacking my browser, and eventually ad-delivered malware through a site that required the use of IE broke the DNS on a particular computer, and I decided that from that point forth I was not going to allow any Internet-based ads until they fixed the problem. They have not fixed the problem so I still do not allow ads.
I've been blocking ads since the 1990's. In those days, the only option was to have a Post-it note handy, and to put it over the offensive animated 'punch the monkey' or some other crap.
Advertisers always go overboard. At least some. Therefore, if the Industry cannot or will not self-regulate, then every ad gets blocked. Content providers have needed to do some house-cleaning for about 20 years. They let the annoying ads through, so I have learned, over two decades, that it will never end.
I subscribe to some magazines and other sites. Thanks to my subscription, they do not host ads. It is an absurdly simple situation to resolve.
PS — Back then, I also used to merrily crash the email servers of early spammers. It was simple enough then, before forged headers became common-place. And in any case, crashing an email server, even one with spoofed headers, gets the attention of someone with the power to do something about the hijacker.
why don't you just do paper ballots? at my precinct we use a scan tron system. voters fill out a scan tron sheet ("fill in the bubbles with No 2 pencil"). Machine counts it locally and prints out a summary tape. Precinct sends summary tape and all scantron sheets to the state. State adds up the summary sheets and that's the total. Not only are the summary sheets auditable by hand, but even the scantrons can be auditted. 100% transparency, 100% paper trail.
In what way would an electronic voting system be better?
IBM is laying off 1/3 of it's workforce at the time kids are told to pursue education for careers in STEM. Seems one of those things is incorrect.
Precisely. All of this talk of a great need for more STEM education is just a way to depress the wages for the upcoming flood of new engineers, scientists, and so on.
BTW, a lot of industry 'Trade Groups' are always beating this drum. Same purpose. Sure, students can be members for $15 or whatever, but the big money for (some trade groups & professional societies) comes from the companies looking to keep the market saturated with fresh-outs.
I hope you are not paying for Lotus Notes. Wow, did they ever turn that into a steaming pile.
Off-topic: My former employer's C-levels ordered a study to find the cost of migrating off of Lotus Notes. Their conclusion? "It would be too expensive to migrate."
They actually put it writing! I expect that IBM noticed this, and raised the subscription fee substantially at the first opportunity.
Dunno about you, but I don't have a bunch of crimes to hide,
Are you sure? What country do you live in?
and I don't mind court granted access to suspected criminal communications.
As if it would end there.
Kangaroo allegations and frame-ups occur. You DO have something to fear. It is done, frequently, to whatever person is handy. No real dirt needed.
Why are people unable to understand this point?
"First they came for the Jews, but I was not one, so I did not say anything. ... And then they came for me, but there was no one to speak on my behalf"
... Facebook is hiding behind the "the servers are not physically located in Brazil, so we don't have to comply" argument.
So this strategy means that not only is FB is aggregating information on you, but so is the US's NSA.
Any internet traffic crossing US borders, even in transit to elsewhere, is potentially stored. They built a giant (redundant) data center, and per the Snowden leaks, their intention is "Full Take" and storage thereof for at least 30 days. (Probably more now.) Sure, the NSA claims that because computers storing, indexing, and/or term-searching is not an illegal "Search and Seizure". That is the wall that they are hiding behind.
Note that indexing is, by definition, a "Search". And Seizure? Well, if the law says that copying an.MP3 file or DVD's contents is considered stealing, then the same ought to apply to the NSA. Right? Or, more technically, you own the Copyright to any 'work' that you create, by definition, in the US. Emailing it gives the recipient reproduction rights (w/o disclaimer), but does not forfeit your Copyright. Anything that you write can be considered a 'work', and you can file for a certification of your Copyright. An email must certainly be a work—Some poems are three lines long. IANAL, and tons of case law exists, so I know only what an IP-creator & holder needs to know. (And of course, the MP3 & movie copying stuff is still being worked out in the courts, yes. The NSA might have some 'carve-out' law to exempt them, but the Constitution trumps all.)
Wherefore have the Supremes not taken this up? ( recall them declining at least a couple of Court cases for reasons unrelated to the meat of the case, like 'No Standing' for example.)
Anyone with a law background, please chime in. Correct me. I want to know. Everyone does.
I sort-of felt it coming, but am probably 10 years younger than you, and lacked the perspective, at that tender age, to shout, "WTF are you guys doing?!? This will not end well." Ah, but it has, and there is no mechanism of abatement in sight.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in fear that some ransomware is going to encrypt my collection of ASCII porn, so I've been printing it out little by little on my Okidata 320. The good news is that I'm protected from ransomware, but the bad news is my house is now a serious fire hazard. Stacks of paper everywhere.
Don't worry too much. Neat stacks of paper are no more of a fire hazard than are wooden supports or furniture. Tightly-stacked paper does not burn well, which is why we have historical documents from many great minds, even though their will stated "burn all of my notes at death."
It's messy piles of crumpled paper, mixed in with pizza boxes (+ cheese), empty Cheetos bags, and semi-empty whiskey bottles that is the real fire hazard.
Congratulations Mac, you final have a large enough installed base that malware developers are starting to support your platform. Maybe someday game developers will support it as well.
Seriously. If code is well-written, with portability in mind, then there is absolutely no reason for games to not come on Mac at release.
And yes they are written to be portable –PlayStation, Windows 7 or 8 or 10, Linux, X-Box. FFS, if a game is ported to Linux, then it should be trivial to slap together an interface for Mac OS X—It's based on the BSD of UNIX.
This bit of malware is reported to look for and encrypt/corrupt any Time Machine backups.
That's one form of backup, but it shouldn't be your only backup. I periodically clone the drive partition to external hard drives and copy disk images to the file server.
R'Amen to that. Hourly auto-backups (Time Machine) are great, but are not enough! Periodic (monthly) cloning to an external drive that you store in a different location is closer to a full backup scheme. I have two externals, and alternate them in my monthly backups, but for time's sake, do incremental backups.
My extra step is, once a year or so, to do a full clone to yet another external (or just keep the HD when I buy a new computer or upgrade storage). Why? I have a 23-year scientific body of work on my computer. (Physical objects are also safely stored – lab books, samples, film negatives, etc.)
cremier has an even savvier addition to the cloning approach. Rather than incremental clones, full archival disk images of those clones stored on some huge HD/RAID/server, as space allows – preferably encrypted. Caveat is that those take a lot of drive and processor time.
Perhaps I should exclude the "Games" Directory from the cloning. That will cut the time in half!
Well, that was fast. One day.
Sure, it's not a system patch but a certificate revocation, but still a responsibly swift resolution.
BTW, it was a malware Trojan, likely a double-Trojan, injected between the unwitting developer and the unwitting downloader, using the compromised certificate. Whether in transit if http downloaded, or by some other exploit, I dunno. Those more expert than me can answer that one.
It was not a virus. It was a Trojan inserted by a third party. I understand that it (probably) affected Linux and Windows as well. Please, everyone, just use proper terminology. It aids discussion.
What are the numbers for damage to humans and environment from the rare-earth manufacturing from china? One can hardly tout numbers resultant from accidents from stupidity without equally making accounting for cost-cutting malfeasance.
The "Rare Earths", or more properly, the "Lanthanide Elements", are not manufactured. They are elements of the periodic table.
Mining of mineral ores and reducing them to metals is generally a nasty business. Copper, gold, tantalum...
Humans run mines and processing operations, which are often in remote locations and difficult to inspect for safety and environmental compliance. Some companies cut corners. Accidents, sloppiness, or general "I don't give a fuck about humans" types of environmental damage happen with anything mined.
Last, the rare earths aren't rare.
Perhaps it's time someone posts this:
https://asiancorrespondent.com/2011/05/green-deaths-the-forgotten-dangers-of-solar-panels/
What do you think, mdsolar? Sound like an interesting article to you? I bet more people have died from solar power than nuclear power. Ever.
DO NOT CLICK! The (very stupid) linked article is about people falling off the roof while installing solar panels.
NEWS FLASH: People sometimes fall off when doing roof-work.
Heavens! We should ban people from re-roofing! Or installing Christmas lights! Or cleaning out their gutters!
Hmm... No condemnation of bullying...
No condemnation of hacking a system...
It's cool when it happens to non-politically approved persons... Right slashdot?
Morons.
Actually, becoming a politician does open up many aspects of your life to the public.
Everyone has known this for a long time. There are lines that are traditionally not crossed (family life), and the location of these lines is an issue of constant debate.
The only reason why maths is hard is adults keep telling children that it's hard.
Talking Barbie told me that "Math is hard!"
It only works if one assumes that this level of school is merely job training. Some could argue that education is about broadening knowledge and exercising the brain, not just 'how am I going to use this in real life?'
YES, yes, a million times yes.
Robots, computer, and computer-automated systems take over more and more jobs as time goes one.
An education is preparation for a person to be an informed, independently thinking adult. It's necessary for any voting-based governance model to work over the long term.
HS graduates are not going to get jobs in sewing-machine sweatshops. The educational system, with its organization based on preparation for factory work, is outmoded by decades. If young HS graduates expect jobs, but can't find one, they will become disenfranchised.
Better, brig back the arts, music, debate, gym, and other 'non-essential' types of courses that have been eliminated in favor of high schools churning out code monkeys. The future has no place for kids educated in this manner. Change their expectations, and their personal valuation of critical thought, self-expression, or athletic competition—or else we are all in for a big(ger) problem in a couple of decades.
He suggests dropping Algebra II as a requirement. The first two statistics courses I took in college had only Algebra I as a prerequisite.
As someone who actually taught Algebra II in high school (years ago), and who taught it one year in a lower-class mostly minority school district, I'll offer a few observations:
(3) However, the problems with algebra II often start with teaching in algebra I. The algebra I and "pre-algebra" classes tend to be the "dumping ground" in many school districts for less qualified teachers. Teachers with real math degrees ... (There are serious teacher shortages in many places in the US, particularly for secondary math and science.)
How very true. But the STEM teacher shortage is not the result of a lack of qualified individuals. Oh no. It is the "seniority-rank" system that many teachers' unions so vigorously enforce. This means that you can teach wrestling, or you can teach Calculus, and get paid about the same salary. It is human envy driving this false 'STEM shortage'.
I had a friend who did a two-year 'Teach for America' tour. (For those not in-the-know, it's like the Peace Corps., but in super-troubled US school districts.)
Anyway, I heard stories from this person, on a regular basis, of the teachers' union refusing to do anything for any teacher with less than five years of teaching experience (and union-dues paying). Back-stabbing by 'established' teachers was rampant against these TFA people who voluntarily took a low-paying job to 'make a difference' in the US educational system.
This particular person was a Harvard grad, so the envy was even heavier, despite her being an extremely social and nice person, and a super-excellent teacher. That was her downfall, actually. Human envy—she made the vested teachers look bad.
In summary, there is no STEM shortage, merely a corrupt set of teachers' unions who protect only those who have hung around long enough to merit union protection. Pay STEM teachers appropriately, keep the union off their back, and they will flourish. Otherwise, the only math teachers that high schools will get are random misfits, and the occasional passionate teacher who is willing to self-sacrifice.
fast forward to this foul year 2016. ads now track you, sites track you, and campaigns overtly demand your input. there are entire analytic suites and social science departments that study you like a petri dish for any semblance of clue as to what defines your wants, and how to exploit your desires. they do this because without information about who you are and what you do, the product cant be targeted to appeal to what lifestyle you can be made to desire. Be it astronaut, playboy, or racecar driver. unless the idea of brand-as-culture is dialed back, this is only going to get worse.
what we're seeing online is a revolt against the intrusiveness of ads from bandwidth to page view and browser experience, but its also a revolt against the idea of a consumer as a lab-rat
Spot-on! Those 'predictive ad-serving software' get it wrong far more often than they get it right.
YouTube's algorithm is notoriously error-prone, when choosing the next nine vids you might want to watch. They must be taking payola from certain 'Advertorial' video producers. Although I am taken, and have been for many years, I get these "how to seduce women with three simple words" videos after I play some engineering video.
It's so bad that I now refuse to use YouTube in any professional setting. If I want a vid for a demo, I'll download the stupid thing. Using YouTube in a professional setting is an invitation to trouble.
Maybe a relative clicked on one of those links once, or maybe it's payola. That is irrelevant to me. YouTube is strictly forbidden from any seminar or class that I present.
How about a Govt who has a backbone to say No, the public do not want Ads. I bloddy hate ads on TV and we have gone from 3min ads 3 times and hour 10 years ago to ads 5 mins into programme start, then 8 mins later we 6min ads, then 8 mins later another 6mins etc etc.
When downloading 1 hour programmes off the SKY network the progrtames are now only 35 mins of content, then we have crappy TV producers who fill the tv programs with loads of "What's coming Up" and Recaps that the 35min of content is now actually 23mins of content.
The odds now of turning a TV and hitting an ad break is nearly 83%.
So no to TV ads and No to Ads on my broadband.
In the 1990's, I would mute the television during ads. Except for my favorite channel – C-SPAN, which has no ads.
I quit watching TV around 2001, and ditched the thing to Goodwill a few years after I grew tired of it sitting in the garage.
For the very select few of TV programs that are worth watching, I consider them like movie rentals. I will 'purchase' a season, which spares me all of the "Last time on ..." and other recap crap. Or, better, I will walk three blocks to my local, independent video store, and rent a season of the (rare) worthwhile show for $3.
Even better is my local Public Library. Huge collection. Tons of stuff that no one will ever transfer to DVD from VHS. No problem—I have a multi-CODEC VHS player, and a region-unlocked DVD player. Seriously, go to your local library!
I'll support anti-blocking initiative, if and only if these websites and ad providers are held criminally and financially liable for any damage caused by malicious ads.
I've never heard of a TV ad locking up someone's TV and ask for ransom. Hold online ads to the same standard.
I am still mystified that no one has (to my knowledge) pursued a Trespass to Chattels Civil Suit (or Class Action) against these bandwidth-allotment and processor-load consuming ads. And trackers? Geesh!
Say I want to read a 1000-word essay. Why does the page take a long time to render (50/50 Mb/s), and why does it consume, say, 30 MB of my allotted data plan? This is especially true with browsers on cell phones.
It has been a problem for 20 years. The ad industry fails to exert any sort of control over the more egregious offenders. Same with 'content' providers, who allow some dumb keyword-based algorithm to serve up these awful ads? If it's your damned 'news outlet', then it is your damned job to be a little discriminating. The result is that I block almost everything possible.
Outlets: Please let me know when you have reverted to static banner ads. Until then, all ads will be blocked through various means.
Even if ads were hosted on the same server of the website, and were as little as a simple jpg, people would still block them. Tracking/malware etc are just scare tactics, the real issue is people just want stuff for free.
I block ads for two interrelated reasons. First, they do something to my computer that is more than an in-line image on a web page. Second, they're visually obnoxious and make the site that I'm trying to visit unusable.
I can accept ads that are a simple still-image or simple animated image in-line on the page. The image needs to not detract from the use of the page. The image needs to not cause some kind of epileptic fit. The image needs to have content that is suitable for the site on which it is displayed and for a reasonable expectation of the age of the average user of the page.
Early-on I allowed ads. then ads started hijacking my browser, and eventually ad-delivered malware through a site that required the use of IE broke the DNS on a particular computer, and I decided that from that point forth I was not going to allow any Internet-based ads until they fixed the problem. They have not fixed the problem so I still do not allow ads.
I've been blocking ads since the 1990's. In those days, the only option was to have a Post-it note handy, and to put it over the offensive animated 'punch the monkey' or some other crap.
Advertisers always go overboard. At least some. Therefore, if the Industry cannot or will not self-regulate, then every ad gets blocked. Content providers have needed to do some house-cleaning for about 20 years. They let the annoying ads through, so I have learned, over two decades, that it will never end.
I subscribe to some magazines and other sites. Thanks to my subscription, they do not host ads. It is an absurdly simple situation to resolve.
PS — Back then, I also used to merrily crash the email servers of early spammers. It was simple enough then, before forged headers became common-place. And in any case, crashing an email server, even one with spoofed headers, gets the attention of someone with the power to do something about the hijacker.
why don't you just do paper ballots? at my precinct we use a scan tron system. voters fill out a scan tron sheet ("fill in the bubbles with No 2 pencil"). Machine counts it locally and prints out a summary tape. Precinct sends summary tape and all scantron sheets to the state. State adds up the summary sheets and that's the total. Not only are the summary sheets auditable by hand, but even the scantrons can be auditted. 100% transparency, 100% paper trail.
In what way would an electronic voting system be better?
None.
Market is generally down today; IBM is up
For how long?
After their next quarterly report, with the corresponding share-price spike, I will be shorting IBM as a long-term wedge of my investment pie.
IBM is laying off 1/3 of it's workforce at the time kids are told to pursue education for careers in STEM. Seems one of those things is incorrect.
Precisely. All of this talk of a great need for more STEM education is just a way to depress the wages for the upcoming flood of new engineers, scientists, and so on.
BTW, a lot of industry 'Trade Groups' are always beating this drum. Same purpose. Sure, students can be members for $15 or whatever, but the big money for (some trade groups & professional societies) comes from the companies looking to keep the market saturated with fresh-outs.
Cheaper workforce!
I am an IBM customer ...
I hope you are not paying for Lotus Notes. Wow, did they ever turn that into a steaming pile.
Off-topic: My former employer's C-levels ordered a study to find the cost of migrating off of Lotus Notes. Their conclusion? "It would be too expensive to migrate."
They actually put it writing! I expect that IBM noticed this, and raised the subscription fee substantially at the first opportunity.
Dunno about you, but I don't have a bunch of crimes to hide,
Are you sure? What country do you live in?
and I don't mind court granted access to suspected criminal communications.
As if it would end there.
Kangaroo allegations and frame-ups occur. You DO have something to fear. It is done, frequently, to whatever person is handy. No real dirt needed.
Why are people unable to understand this point?
"First they came for the Jews, but I was not one, so I did not say anything.
...
And then they came for me, but there was no one to speak on my behalf"
So this strategy means that not only is FB is aggregating information on you, but so is the US's NSA.
Any internet traffic crossing US borders, even in transit to elsewhere, is potentially stored. They built a giant (redundant) data center, and per the Snowden leaks, their intention is "Full Take" and storage thereof for at least 30 days. (Probably more now.) Sure, the NSA claims that because computers storing, indexing, and/or term-searching is not an illegal "Search and Seizure". That is the wall that they are hiding behind.
Note that indexing is, by definition, a "Search". And Seizure? Well, if the law says that copying an .MP3 file or DVD's contents is considered stealing, then the same ought to apply to the NSA. Right? Or, more technically, you own the Copyright to any 'work' that you create, by definition, in the US. Emailing it gives the recipient reproduction rights (w/o disclaimer), but does not forfeit your Copyright. Anything that you write can be considered a 'work', and you can file for a certification of your Copyright. An email must certainly be a work—Some poems are three lines long. IANAL, and tons of case law exists, so I know only what an IP-creator & holder needs to know. (And of course, the MP3 & movie copying stuff is still being worked out in the courts, yes. The NSA might have some 'carve-out' law to exempt them, but the Constitution trumps all.)
Wherefore have the Supremes not taken this up? ( recall them declining at least a couple of Court cases for reasons unrelated to the meat of the case, like 'No Standing' for example.)
Anyone with a law background, please chime in. Correct me. I want to know. Everyone does.
FTA: "Quite simply – if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist
Let's see, how long have I been blocking ads?
It required post-it notes in the early days to avoid those stupid punch-the-monkey animated GIF banner ads.
OK. 20 years. 20 years. If the 'Free Market' requires more than that to speak, then someone is being a corporate shill.
Yep, nobody likes a Cassandra.
Not when she warns of impending risk...
And CERTAINLY not when she points out her prior (unheeded) warnings.
And so it goes.
So, might as well just grab the popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show - except for the ending.
Good advice. It eases the mind.
Going out to pick up some popcorn right now...
TL;BUT I DID READ.
You are spot-on. Scarily so.
I sort-of felt it coming, but am probably 10 years younger than you, and lacked the perspective, at that tender age, to shout, "WTF are you guys doing?!? This will not end well." Ah, but it has, and there is no mechanism of abatement in sight.
MOD the parent up!!!
"Usury is murder" — Jewish Proverb *
* Source: Harper's Monthly, or just go to Wikiquotes.
Yep, nobody likes a Cassandra.
Not when she warns of impending risk...
And CERTAINLY not when she points out her prior (unheeded) warnings.
And so it goes.