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User: ctishman

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  1. Re:Holy "Colossus, The Forbin Project", Batman! on Facebook's AI Keeps Inventing Languages That Humans Can't Understand (fastcodesign.com) · · Score: 1
  2. Re:Arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic on Mozilla Is Changing Its Look -- and Asking the Internet For Feedback (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the designers have seized power, it sure as hell doesn't show in those logos.

  3. Re:oh crap on Windows 10 Updates Are Now Ruining Pro-Gaming Streams (theguardian.com) · · Score: 4, Informative
  4. Re: No self driving trains? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    It's also thousands (or tens of thousands) of tons, bafflingly complex at times to operate correctly (for instance, properly managing the slack between cars along a mile-long train during acceleration/deceleration/ascent/descent is a true art form) and subject to a much harsher regulatory environment. The stakes are higher, so it only makes sense that cars would come first.

  5. Actual Utility? on 404-No-More Project Seeks To Rid the Web of '404 Not Found' Pages · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given the choice to display either out-of-date information (potentially causing liability or other miscommunication) or simply putting up a catch-all branded error page with a link back to the site's home, I'm not sure what sort of organization would choose the former.

  6. Re:Answer: No. on Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov · · Score: 2

    I was under the impression that nothing happened because they poured a lot of money into fixing old systems for 4-digit years before they screwed up, not that nothing would have happened if they'd let it be.

  7. Re:I tried to install iTunes on Windows once. on iTunes: Still Slowing Down Windows PCs After All These Years · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not the average use, no, but it does raise a whole lot of accessibility issues for those who have physical issues that prevent their using mice. Both Apple and Microsoft publish a set of user interface guidelines that say the following: Excerpted from Microsoft UX Guidelines ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511258.aspx ):

    To ensure that your program's functionality is easily available to the widest range of users, including those who have disabilities and impairments, all interactive user interface (UI) elements must be keyboard accessible. Generally, this means that the most commonly used UI elements are accessible using a single access key or key combination, whereas less frequently used elements may require additional tab or arrow key navigation. For these users, comprehensiveness is more important than consistency.

  8. Re:There goes my plans for fleeing tyranny in the on Canada's Online Surveillance Bill: Section 34 "Opens Door To Big Brother" · · Score: 1

    That's because a great country is what you make of it.

    You want your freedoms? You can pay for them in the sweat of your brow or the passion in your heart or the cash in your pocket like your ancestors did or you can settle for what you've got.

    Now, I'm not saying this in a 'USA love it leave it' sense - Some countries are more ripe for the fostering of democratic progress than others - but moving to a place and looking to live off the benefits of its preÃstablished press and lifestyle freedoms is closing off a lot of your options right off the bat.

  9. Re:Great on Amazon Pushes For National Internet Sales Tax · · Score: 1

    I suspect they've just realized that individually lobbying every single state, one by one, as they start running low on money and turn their greedy eyes to The Internets for income, is counterproductive. They're trying to head it off and approach the problem from the federal level, where they can toss out their bribes all at once, get a federal tax rate that's less harmful to their business than the weird-ass stuff the states keep proposing.

  10. Re:The profit motive is a great motivator on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1

    Well, calling them shitheads is an awesome way to motivate them, isn't it?

    Once again the Asshole OS Advocate rears his head. Sure, your OS of choice may be superior, but calling names and implying that they're so stupid they should be terminated shows simple disrespect for the user's time and expertise.

    These people aren't stupid, they just have other things to do. Things like the jobs they were hired to perform, at which they are generally very good. Every hour of training time, every call to tech support over something that doesn't run exactly as it should straight out of the gate, every time the foreign office's entire agenda has to be put on hold for a week because there's no good driver for the passport press is lost productivity and an increasing backlog that can even bog down the rest of the government.

    It may take them an hour to learn web browsing, document writing and emailing, but that's because these are instances where an inspired team helped Linux to rise to the occasion and meet the user halfway. Without teams willing to step off of their pedestal like that for the purpose of getting things done, you'd still have Linux advocates using PINE and moaning about how the user just has to be educated on proper CLI mail programs.

    These opportunities don't come along very often, and this one seems to have been blown pretty badly. Whose fault is it? It's ours. Every UI that doesn't pick up and scurry to fulfill the user's needs. Every missing driver for an obscure printer that halts a workflow vital to the national interest. Every time some nerd on the internet sneers at the people who had the audacity to give his product a try.

    It's our fault, because taking responsibility for the fun parts of changing the world also means taking responsibility for the failures.

  11. Re:What's the use on Apple To Unveil Light Peak, New MacBook Pros This Week? · · Score: 1

    The historical irony of this statement is not lost on me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerbook_Duo

  12. Re:conservatives on Does the GOP Pay Friendly Bloggers? · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure this "liberal arts" means what you think it means. It's an older term, referring not to a political liberalism, but to the education of the 'free', or noble man.

  13. Re:Not excited on StarCraft II To Be Released On July 27 · · Score: 1

    Supreme Commander 1 & 2. http://www.supremecommander2.com/

  14. Re:What "empire" on Former Astronauts Call Obama NASA Plans "Catastrophic" · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're thinking of an empire in the 18th and 19th-century sense of the word – a sense that died its last official breath after WWII, when Britain released the last of its official colonies. In that era, when the nation-state was the ultimate expression of power, a colony flew the colonizer's flag, spoke its language, had the colonizer's religion imposed upon it. Going back into the heyday of colonialism, conquest was government-centric; national glory was the cause. With the rise of international business, however, the nation-state itself has been supplanted by the multinational corporation. They do not work for the glory of the nation, but for their own glory. They do not respect the laws of the nation, and do not obey except where those laws are convenient or enforceable. In short, the heyday of the nation-state is over. Let it not be said that the nation-state is dead, though. We're still in the centuries-long transition between forms of cultural organization, so while governments are the only ones permitted to hold the weapons (this, too is changing and will continue to change over our lifetimes), the multinationals' interests dictate where those weapons are pointed and when. This is why the United States has military presence in over a hundred countries in a time of peace. These are the agents of modern colonialism. This is why there are terrorist attacks against our troops and our cities and citizens. Not because they hate our freedoms, but because we are camped out, toting guns, on their land, and have been for a hundred years now.

  15. Re:No iPad for me on Here Come the Linux iPad Clones · · Score: 1

    How can you say that? She damn near ran me down last week!

  16. Re:Different, new types of GUI? on The Secret Origin of Windows · · Score: 1

    In the consumer realm, I agree. They stand between the user and the content which is their end goal. Consumers want a webpage-like interface without having to learn a desktop metaphor.

  17. Re:Stop the madness on USPTO To Review Controversial VoIP Patent · · Score: 1

    So the alphabet is public domain. Is a language, or more topically appropriate, is specific technical terminology spelled out with those letters patentable? Like, could I patent the word Torx, or is there a need for something more akin to a trademark for specific (and innovative) ways of sending data over public domain protocols such as TCP/IP and UDP?

  18. Re:Sounds like features I need from an audio file on Bach Launches Updated MP3 Format · · Score: 1

    Not not not You know what I mean.

  19. Re:Sounds like features I need from an audio file on Bach Launches Updated MP3 Format · · Score: 1

    When in recent memory has ANY industry, to say nothing of any content industry, not taken an opportunity like this and not crapped all over it with advertisements and their partners' advertisements? These companies don't understand the concept of limited and non-intrusive ads.

  20. Re:Sign me up on First Mars-Goers Should Prepare For a One-Way Trip · · Score: 1

    No Democrats/Republicans, no stock market, no poverty, no orwellian wars on drugs.... Sounds like paradise

    ...no breathable air, no free-running water, no(t enough) natural heat. No plants, no birds, no animals, no sound, no movement but your own. ...Sounds like hell.

  21. What the hell? on SCO Preps Appeals Against Novell and IBM · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Who keeps giving/lending these clowns money?

  22. Re:Ubuntu is NOT "free Microsoft Windows". on Walt Mossberg Reviews Ubuntu · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Car analogy time. Let's transpose your statements. ...and he's defining "drive" as "move on four wheels from point A to point B along a road as most other cars do". No, LinuxCar is not "free Chevy". And there is no reason other than him being an idiot to expect it to be. So LinuxCar doesn't use gas out of the box. It DOES use leprechaun urine. Does Chevy use leprechaun urine out of the box? No, nor do the most common versions use gas out of the box (uhhh). And he kind of skips over that. LinuxCar is not "Free Chevy". Do not expect it to be. Do not complain when it is not. Understand WHY LinuxCar was built. Can I legally give duplicates I've made of my LinuxCar to 100 people without anyone being charged for it? Yes. Can I do that with a Chevy? No. === The trick isn't that he doesn't understand how special LinuxCar is, it's that he doesn't care. He's writing from the position of the everyman, who doesn't want to hunt down a leprechaun to molest whenever he wants to go anywhere. He just wants to go there.

  23. Re:The point is that Free is Free (not free). on Walt Mossberg Reviews Ubuntu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See, that's still a problem. He doesn't care that it's Free or not, just that it doesn't work as it should out of the box. Much in the way that democracy (or communism, or whatever) is both a political ideology and a form of government, Linux is both a social movement and a family of Operating System products. The thing is, he's taking the position not of the marching, banner-waving revolutionary in the street, but of the average citizen who doesn't care what that ruckus is, just that the busses run and his water's on. It's a sad fact, but that's all the vast, vast majority of people want.

  24. Re:Distance? on Internal Emails of An RIAA Attack Dog Leaked · · Score: 3, Informative

    Regular people (like you or me or, in the court's eyes, the RIAA) can't commit entrapment. It's a police-only crime.

  25. Re:The site in question? on Archive.org Sued By Colorado Woman · · Score: 1

    God, wouldn't that be a great way to set precedent regarding EULAs?