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User: hackwrench

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  1. Re:As someone who actually uses Windows 10 on Ask Slashdot: Should You Upgrade To Windows 10 For Accessibility Features? · · Score: 1

    I find it a bit frustrating around the edges and it would be a little bit better with not keeping the cursor dead center of the view. One thing I forgot to mention that I sometimes use that can be very effective is that I run TightVNC on the desktop with VNC Viewer on a phone. My current phone is an Alcatel One Touch 5054N

  2. Re:He is lucky he did not get shot on the spot on Carrying A Gun-Shaped iPhone 'Makes It Much Less Likely You'll Catch Your Plane' (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    I have no clear perspective on police expectations. However, I call foul on your assertion that people's expectations are shaped solely by statistics.

  3. Re: Surprise? Why? on TIOBE's Language-Popularity Index Sees A New Top 10 Language: Assembly (tiobe.com) · · Score: 1

    I have a hard time understanding the benefits of after the return restoring the stack over during/before the return. When you do it that way you have to write stack resetting code every time you return from the call instead of just once. My best guess was that it has some benefit for procedures that could accept a variable number of parameters. The former was called "c" passing and the latter "pascal". Somehow the pascal term got changed to system if I'm looking at #defs correctly. Maybe with a few underscores thrown in. Then there's the left-to-right/right-to-left mess.

  4. Re: Who tells who what they have to do... on Brexit: Government Rejects Petition Signed By 4.1 Million Calling For Second EU Referendum (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    My parents taught me how to never have people tell you what you have to do. Of course that means understanding civilization and since what that comes down to is nothing like the game by the same name, I can see how it can be hard for some people. As long as you interact with the sort of people who the community respects and they can act as character witnesses, as long as you realize that it is ultimately up to you what your defense is going to be and plan accordingly, no one is able to tell you what you have to do. The prosecution gets people to agree to a plea deal by letting them know how much the prosecution is going to inconvenience them. People live free when at every step they remind everyone else, the police, the prosecution the judge how much prosecuting them is going to cost. Of course that actually means planning ahead, which isn't most people's strong suit. Always emphasize how much of an asset you can be if you get your way and how much trouble it will be, not entirely of your own making, of course, if you don't.

  5. What makes you think that the actual owners have any interest in selling... or your piddly petitions. You actually bought all that government for the people, by the people stuff? Well it's only true if you stop believing that the people in those big buildings are your government and understand that the only way you are going to have government by the people is when individuals actually take it upon themselves to govern themselves and not attempt to vest it in a governing body. When you get to talking about petitioning your governing body, you aren't governing yourself.

  6. Re: Might as well order them to produce cold fusio on Putin Gives Federal Security Agents Two Weeks To Produce 'Encryption Keys' For The Internet (gawker.com) · · Score: 1

    Makes me glad that these people in no way actually "lead" me. Like "The Prisoner", I am a free man.

  7. As someone who actually uses Windows 10 on Ask Slashdot: Should You Upgrade To Windows 10 For Accessibility Features? · · Score: 2

    If you have a PC with only 4GB of memory, don't even touch it. I had to upgrade my laptop from 4GB to 12GB for it to become really usable. I actually run the Windows Insider Home builds. My mom runs the ordinary Home version and now has an 8GB machine. I actually run my laptop closed and upgraded from a 24 inch 720p TV as a monitor to a 32 inch 1080p TV as the monitor. I was changing the size of the text in Windows elements in Control Panel Display to 20 on the 24 inch, and have the display set to 175% and still have elements scaled to 14 on the new display. For some applications I have to turn Magnifier on.

  8. Re: And we criticise China? on UK ISP Sky Is About To Start Censoring the Web For All of Its Customers (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    Just saw your reply on the thread in that other recent story. To clarify I once thought a complaint that is in Ecclesiastes was in Lamentations. What makes mistakes like that important.

  9. Re: It's your turn, Mr Assange on FBI Director: Guccifer Admitted He Lied About Hacking Hillary Clinton's Email (dailydot.com) · · Score: 1

    Er, what is the difference... that matters?

  10. Re: And we criticise China? on UK ISP Sky Is About To Start Censoring the Web For All of Its Customers (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    So Trump got his enumeration wrong and has done it on a variety of things. I don't see it as that big a deal.

  11. Re:It's your turn, Mr Assange on FBI Director: Guccifer Admitted He Lied About Hacking Hillary Clinton's Email (dailydot.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's from a conservative Republican website, by the way.

    Which of course means that they will sensationalize minor gaffes of people they don't like... like Trump. Getting numbers wrong that enumerate things is really quite minor. The article also points out that he misremembered which book of the Bible he wanted to cite. I've done that quite a number of times. It's really no big deal. If these are the sorts of things they want to try to make hay out of, they really should be working harder.

  12. Re: It's inevitable on UK Bill Introduces 10 Year Prison Sentence for Online Pirates (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    He seems to be interpreting the original post as saying that Disney is trying to prevent people from building on the same stories as Disney built on, but someone did it and in a way that makes it substantially different from Disney's works. However, what is really meant is that Disney is trying to prevent people from building off Disney's works after the same amount of time and substantially more time has elapsed between the time of Disney's works and the new works and the time between works that Disney could have used and Disney's works.
    Time...
    And Over was under Under and Under was under Dunn.

  13. Re:What is original content? on UK Bill Introduces 10 Year Prison Sentence for Online Pirates (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 2

    You start out with a statement then proceed to argue against it.

    Statement: The size of the scale has little to do with it. (It presumably being whether something is original)
    To that, I add the following restriction: A composition is only considered a "real" composition if people will listen to it.
    Counter-statement: Non-Western scales have more notes in their scales.

    Arguments you made:
    Argument 1: Music is built on recognizable patterns and our brains have a real knack for matching similar motives even if the notes or intervals are not quite the same.
    Conclusion a reasonable person would draw: If the notes or intervals are not quite the same, if the motives are similar, the music is not original.
    Effect on your statement and the counterstatement: Scales with more notes in them have more room to be original, thus making it more likely that the size of the scale has something to do with it.
    Argument 2:Moreover, the vast majority of randomly chosen patterns from the 12-note chromatic scale sound like nonsense, just like randomly chosen strings of letters (only 26!) are mostly gibberish.
    Supports my additional restriction.
    Further reduces the amount of space in the scale that meets the conditions.

    ...but by itself is doesn't limit unique melodies very much at all.
    Changes the original conditions far more that my restriction and I assert that my restriction is closer to the spirit of the original comment.

  14. Re: Registered Slashdot username on AMD Details Driver Fix For Radeon RX 480's Controversial, Spec-Exceeding Power Draw (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Ah, but the hackwrench name comes from the name of Gadget Hackwrench who was a fictional character in the show Disney's Rescue Rangers and had little to do with what the word hack has come to mean with computers and more really old school working with machines. Still there is no excuse, but I did say something along the lines of the most obvious loopholes. I am also poor, so while I know of VPNs I am not routinely in contact with the technology to experiment with, though I have seen claims of lifetime VPN for more money than I am willing to shell out. I have been experimenting with P2P though, and of course the potential of the business going kaput. I hadn't realized that VPN solutions were that complete or that Slashdot vetted posts by IP address instead of username as opposed to potentially in addition to username. Spammers have poisoned TOR addresses. I figure it might be a matter of time before they poison VPN addresses as well.

  15. Re: Outsmart Re: Debate on Self-Driving Tesla Owners Share Videos of Reckless Driving (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Any debate between, for example, a man and his wife, is a very poor debate? Say, debating over what should be had for dinner, or which car to buy (and why).

    Exactly. Not only is it a poor way to decide what to have for dinner and what car to buy, it only enriches at most the man and his wife. I am 39 and live with my mom. There is no debate over what to have for dinner. Either she knows exactly what she wants and I decide whether or not to have the same, or she asks me to give her options or something along those lines. We rely quite a bit on what we had for dinner recently and how soon we want to repeat it. We make some decisions on what to buy at the grocery store in advance that influence our decisions later. I don't drive, but there are a number of factors that mean I should provide input, but the factors involved when mom buys a car are known in advance and the main factor left is whether to accept or reject the car the dealer offers us and if reject wait for the dealer to find us a better deal. None of this requires a real argument about the car itself. Any of my siblings know this as well. Arguing was a feature of my parent's breakup, though. Arguing is best done between people with vastly differing opinions/backgrounds/beliefs/ People talk about not arguing over semantics, but really that's one of the best reasons to argue, because I have found that semantics vary widely, which played a part in the current debate.

  16. Re:It's inevitable on UK Bill Introduces 10 Year Prison Sentence for Online Pirates (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course not. What part of "And they are doing everything they can to keep someone else from doing the same." don't you understand. If they weren't, maybe you'd see something resembling Disney's Snow White. The point is, between Disney and a lot of other people extending copyright, the works in recent history can't be used like Disney and Philip Pullman used prior works. And when you have to go that far back to produce new content that just shows you how impoverished they've made the public domain.

  17. Re: Outsmart on Self-Driving Tesla Owners Share Videos of Reckless Driving (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, I consider myself a little more than merely an interested observer as I really do want the answers in your minds and to point out flaws and to maybe engage in a little bit of debate myself (Who says there only has to be two sides, and the presidential debate is still kind of a debate, though I may be kidding myself... still there's precedent). There's so much that I think I know in terms that I find hard to place when compared to the way the two of you think of things, such as the humans having "just a compressed lookup table" possibility I mentioned somewhere around here.

  18. Re: Outsmart Re: Debate on Self-Driving Tesla Owners Share Videos of Reckless Driving (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Ah, but any debate that serves only the two (or so) people debating is a very poor debate indeed, and I posted not for the benefit of the other debater, but for my own and as I made a post at the top of the chain of this debate, I believe my request not that far out of question.

  19. Re: Suicide by politician Re: Laws on The FBI Recommends Not To Indict Hillary Clinton For Email Misconduct (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    For anyone interested, here is a link to an article on the topic: http://www.politifact.com/trut...

  20. Re: Registered Slashdot username on AMD Details Driver Fix For Radeon RX 480's Controversial, Spec-Exceeding Power Draw (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Thus defeating the purpose of not allowing people to both mod and post. I really do wish they'd fix that bug one way or another, either by allowing people to post and mod in the same discussion or by closing the loophole that allows you to check the 'Post Anonymously' button while you are logged in and mod the discussion and while they are at it, log the IP address for 24 hours to prevent you from being able to mod simply by logging out. That covers the biggest loopholes, but it's all the same to me if they simply do away with it. Though I apparently seem to be on some sort of moderation blacklist since I was never given mod points ever again since around the time there were a lot of people complaining they were banned from moderating on account of participating in a particular thread I have no memory of taking part in. Googling thread Slashdot banned from moderating returns no relevant hits. Maybe I should try emailing banned@slashdot.org?

  21. Oh, come on... anybody with any sense knows that if you actually work at the top levels of your industry, if anyone knows what you really think and disagree with it, they'd never work again.

  22. Re: Easily destroyed or disabled on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    I suspect the reason that people are failing to even read the summary is that Slashdot now makes the summary links go straight to the comments. According to the summary, there are also human security personnel on the premises.

  23. Re: Easily destroyed or disabled on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    What part of "charges its battery" and "patrols" says "inanimate object"? I do wish clicking on the summary link didn't take you directly to the comments. It seems that people stopped reading even the summaries since they started doing that.

  24. Or maybe it's a turret. I can hear it, now. "Are you still there?"

  25. Re: Registered Slashdot username on AMD Details Driver Fix For Radeon RX 480's Controversial, Spec-Exceeding Power Draw (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    No, but it does mean that the person's posts are now trackable by clicking on the person's username on their post. You can tell what posts he's made on Slashdot or made an account for just one post and maybe see what posts he's made on other sites under that username though there's no guarantee that the person on other sites using that username is the same person.

    Alternatively if the Coward had provided a link to a forum where he (or somebody) discussed the failure, that could help too. I try to always post under my username though the Post Anonymously checkbox is easy to hit accidentally on my phone.