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User: hughbar

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  1. Re:civiCRM on Ask Slashdot: Events Calendar Software For Local Community? · · Score: 1

    Thanks for all of these. I'm aware of Drupal and CiviCRM too. I've used Joomla for more recent projects because end-users find Drupal management 'harder', actually both are non-trivial. CiviCRM is really great but used to be pretty hard to install.

    I'm not aware of openatrium and redhencrm, so thanks for those!

  2. Re:Joomla on Ask Slashdot: Events Calendar Software For Local Community? · · Score: 1

    Thanks. I'm aware of and use Joomla too, but I'm looking for 'close fit'. I think one or two are appearing further down the thread.

  3. Re:Accenture? on White House Reportedly Dismissing Key Healthcare.gov Contractor · · Score: 1

    Thank you. I'm 63, in the UK, have been alongside Accenture [Arthur Andersen as it was then] for about forty years during various projects. Every one has been a mess equally composed of their arrogance and incompetence.

    I say this without bitterness, never worked for or been fired by them, for example. However a great deal of my tax money has been wasted by them, since, for reasons that no-one sane understands, they seem to be a darling of governments nearly everywhere, that does include the UK.

    In the larger picture we badly need to fix the 'gap' between dot gov and sane IT, make a lot of stuff better, improve personal outcomes and save us a bunch of public cash. None of the big contractors seem to be very effective, but Accenture is surely one of the very worst.

  4. How about this? on Searching the Internet For Evidence of Time Travelers · · Score: 1

    Twin towers on Johnny Bravo: http://tinyurl.com/pvblodn, however I'm sure it's a cloud, something photoshopped/gimped or 'not meant to be that'. Intriguing to look at images that 'shouldn't' be too though.

  5. How do you know? on Soviet Union Spent $1 Billion On "Psychotronic" Arms Race With the US · · Score: 1

    That the research has ended? Maybe that's what they've made you believe using a late-model cerpan? Cue Twilight Zone music etc. etc. etc.

  6. Thanks goodness for that... on 62% of 16 To 24-Year-Olds Prefer Printed Books Over eBooks · · Score: 2

    As a 63 year old, life spent in IT, I fear e-books: DRM, can't share, they will be very selective about texts [blockbusters, crowd pleasers], 'book' can be removed remotely etc. etc. That's apart from the pleasure of having a house full of book, trashy science fiction from the 60s and 70s, crime novels and even a few serious books too.

  7. Why don't they put themselves in lead-lined boxes? on Mobile Devices Banned From UK Cabinet Meetings Over Surveillance Fears · · Score: 1

    As a Brit, I feel that this would solve a great many problems simultaneously. No sneaky air-holes for these a*-holes either. There, I feel much better now...

  8. Re:Or better yet on Sleeper: LG G2 One of the Fastest Android Smartphones On the Market · · Score: 1

    Exactly, I have two phones, one for home, one for business, the 'newest' is three years old and I'm not changing either. They both 'work', apparently an alien concept to millenials other assorted young'uns.

  9. Re:Fahrenheit 451 Got a Lot Easier Recently on Books With "Questionable Content" Being Deleted From ebookstores In Sweeping Ban · · Score: 1

    It was an illustration. Actually, I don't mind if other people take me seriously or not.

  10. Fahrenheit 451 Got a Lot Easier Recently on Books With "Questionable Content" Being Deleted From ebookstores In Sweeping Ban · · Score: 1

    For those younger readers of slashdot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

    We don't need firemen to burn books now, we just need Amazon and all the big corps that control the various e-readers to send 'censor with extreme prejudice' packets [I've made that up, but it'll come] to those naughty people who read naughty books. We must think of the children, mustn't we?

    And of course the next thing is radicalism [people really need protecting from Karl Marx don't they] and unpalatable material [people need protecting from Mein Kampf too]. Let's not forget cult movies etc. which we can dump in the constant change of format from VHS to DVD to Blueray to next-profitable thing.

    The world will be really lovely when we've finished all this, just Disney, idiot talent competitions and gameshows. Personally, I can't wait, can you? Meanwhile, I'm stocking up on physical books whilst they're still available, that way they have, at least, come around and break the door down to get them.

  11. No, I want them dead on Changing a Single Gene Allows Mice To Live 20 Percent Longer · · Score: 1

    I don't want my pesky mice to live 20% longer. I want my cat to kill the b**gers.

  12. Re:Who is really endangering agents' lives? on UK High Court Gives OK To Investigation of Data Siezed From David Miranda · · Score: 1

    And also, the MI5 [internal security service for the UK, as opposed to MI6 or the secret service] do a pretty good job of losing data themselves: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/03/28/second_spy_loses_laptop/ Sometimes, one feels, it's questionable whether they need help from journalists, simply for the act of 'losing' anyway.

  13. Re: Government vs terrorists on Lord Blair Calls for Laws To Stop 'Principled' Leaking of State Secrets · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pretty lousy cop too: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/02/ian.blair.resigns very political and not very coply [to use Jess Stone's lovely word].

  14. And the UK is heading the same way on Rise of the Warrior Cop: How America's Police Forces Became Militarized · · Score: 1

    Robert Peel, the founder of our police, believed in 'policing by consent'. We, in the UK, are drifting further and further from that with armoured police vans, tasered up thugs 'patrolling' and [one recent incident I witnessed] 10 police for one angry unarmed man in a incident in a bus queue. Birghtly painted cars including one I've seen recently marked 'interceptor', they've obviously been watching Mad Max. They are rude and patronising if you ask them something and violent towards any protestors. Crime is declining here too.

    Most of the bad trends tend to drift in here from the US and this is one.

    I was mugged last year. It wasn't very serious, but, in spite of 12 similar incidents they couldn't catch the guys because their main 'method' was 'look at CCTV footage', they are not 'near' the community, something that would enable them to do 'police work'. Go figure.

  15. Re:err, can you walk me through it? on MIT Uses Machine Learning Algorithm To Make TCP Twice As Fast · · Score: 1

    Skynet jokes aside, it's [my opinion] a general problem with sub-symbolic and also, in a related area, data mining. It works [sometimes], produces a number rather than a model or chain of reasoning and we can't really follow it. I wouldn't be really happy to have something like this in an autopilot, for example. Losing control and depending entirely [no shutdown and back to 'manual'] on systems that we don't completely master [actually with the amount of things that are 'connected' we're heading there anyway] is not a great recipe for the future.

  16. Re:Its not about 100% privacy on DuckDuckGo: Illusion of Privacy · · Score: 1

    I so agree with this, absolute privacy is an illusion. Even if 'they' [tin foil hats on, guys and gals] can't get at the text of your stuff, they can use traffic analysis to get a little insight into some of your social graph. So I also use DDG, encrypt stuff where I can, use Tor, anything to increase the levels of difficulty and make the system run hotter.

    Also, finally, they might work out that this is foolishness: http://qz.com/92207/simple-math-shows-why-the-nsas-facebook-spying-is-a-fools-errand/ and go back to some real work, as if that would happen.

  17. Re:Uh-oh: Second Variety on Cat-like Robot Runs Like the Wind · · Score: 1

    I really like the theme song to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfREvKI8DQI

  18. Uh-oh: Second Variety on Cat-like Robot Runs Like the Wind · · Score: 2
  19. Maybe just radioactive brains? on Atomic Bombs Help Solve Brain Mystery · · Score: 1

    Sir, my brain is getting BIGGER! [cut to tanks, artillery etc. etc.]

  20. Teach Yourself Cobol + Filetab + RPG + APL on How Did You Learn How To Program? · · Score: 1

    As an ancient person, I learnt COBOL from a book but I didn't have a computer. Then when I got near a mainframe, I taught myself filetab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filetab and later stll I used RPG2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG, later still Basic on a mainframe via a TTY33 [of course] and also the ineffable APL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language) which prepared me for my career in Perl. If you think Perl is unreadable, try APL, but get off my lawn first.

  21. How about poo? on UC Berkeley Group Working On Creating Inexpensive 3-D Printer Materials · · Score: 0

    That's cheap and plentiful...

  22. Re:Hm... on RPiCluster: Another Raspberry Pi Cluster, With Neat Tricks · · Score: 1

    Yes, my sig is a 'jeu de mots' based on 'honi soi qui mal y pense', translated it would mean 'off we go for those who think little of it' but it sounds like the original. French speakers spend a certain amount of their lives doing this, look as Asterisk in the original, all the characters names 'mean' something.

  23. Re:What else is new, kiddies on Working Handgun Printed On a Sub-$2,000 3D Printer · · Score: 1

    Thank you, as a relic from the 60s, I was about to mention zipguns, but you beat me to it, all kudos. If you're quite young, get off my lawn though!

  24. Re:Hm... on RPiCluster: Another Raspberry Pi Cluster, With Neat Tricks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes that's funny, but no-one much on here knows French...

  25. Re:Junk DNA Research on Carnivorous Plant Ejects Junk DNA · · Score: 1

    That would explain a great deal about the modern world.