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User: frovingslosh

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  1. May be what I need to get off Gmail on Google Serves Old Search Page To Old Browsers · · Score: 1

    It will be interesting to see how this affects me. I'm typing this on a current version of Firefox, but I have an old HP notebook by my bedside that runs 24/7 and that I use, among other things, to check my mail in the morning. The thing is, I dare not keep the Firefox browser current, and I'm using a plug-in that I depend on and is only available for Firefox. I don't keep the browser current because, even though I doubled the memory the laptop had when I got it (to the maximum that the old MB would support), and also replaced the minimal hard drive with a significantly larger hard drive (most of which is sitting empty), the browser drastically slowed down with each Firefox update. While I at first could have dozens of browser tabs open (which I did regularly with no problem), the system has degraded to the point where I can only have two or three tabs open without absurd slow-downs and lock-ups. And on top of that, if I play a video in the browser (intentionally or just by opening a news page that I had no warning included a video), the system will usually crash and reboot. These changes were seen when I accepted new versions of Firefox, so I stopped further browser "upgrades" and have been locked on an old version of Firefox for the last several years.

    As I evaluate it, I need the laptop a lot more for the Firefox plug in that I depend on and a few other uses than I need Gmail.

  2. Re: Please post what the best religion is on Ask Slashdot: Best Phone Apps? · · Score: 2

    Absolutely NOT. Vi serves a false god.

  3. Re:Please post what the best religion is on Ask Slashdot: Best Phone Apps? · · Score: 1

    Actually, got there over 40 years ago, and don't really think that I need one. The question was obviously to show how pointless asking what the best phone apps are. Everyone thinks the ones they use are the "best".

  4. Please post what the best religion is on Ask Slashdot: Best Phone Apps? · · Score: 1

    I'm not happy with the religion that I was born into, many of the leaders have turned out to be child molesters and other leaders all the way to the top of the organization have turned out to be doing things that were protecting them from the law. So please post back and tell me what the best religion is.

  5. I only he had known on Hal Finney, PGP and Bitcoin Pioneer, Dies At 58 · · Score: 5, Funny

    What a shame. if only he had know that you can cure ALS by dumping a bucket of ice water on your head.

  6. Obvious Reason on Why Women Have No Time For Wikipedia · · Score: 2, Funny

    They are too busy complaining about the gender gap.

  7. Re:sure it would on Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year · · Score: 1

    If only there were some kind of search website that, with a few key words, would find such lists for you.

    Failing that, you could install the Lightbeam plug-in for Firefox and then see the shocking number of sites that get visited in addition to the websites that you want to visit. It is pretty obvious that some of them are providing the advertising. Even for those who are not, do you really need or want the site that you go to to tell other sites about you by simple links in website that force you to fetch stuff from them? I never use Facebook, will never have a Facebook account. Why do so many different websites think that they need me to get traffic from Facebook? (Even websites that show no Facebook link or logo on them often do this.)

    However, I'll be nice and get you started. Put two lines in your HOSTS file that read

    127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net

    127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net

    and see how nice things get from just that. I learned to do this over a decade ago when some "adware" that I was using not only was delivering ads from doubleclick (which I would have been fine with) but was providing a back door for doubleclick to install other stuff on my system and it was regularly crashing my system. I blocked downloads from doubleclick and my problems went away. Doubleclick has since been sold to Google, but if Google is going to enrich the weasels who were doing that I see no reason to let doubleclick traffic back into my system. (Guess where a lot of Slashdot ads come from.)

  8. or we'll have more on Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year · · Score: 1

    If you create a pool of billions of $230 yearly "contributions" to the people who are trying to milk the Internet now, do you really think that the people looking to make easy money from the Internet that you and I already pay to gain access to will go away, or can you understand that there just might be more people attracted by all of that money and looking for ways to establish themselves as Internet Advertisers so that they can get some of that money?

  9. sure it would on Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yea, all of the spam would just go away. And I wouldn't have any more spam show up in my email, right?

    And all of that drive-by malware installing stuff would just go away and people would start being ice to each other, right?

    Of course, all of our interactivity would still be there. And we could still have e-comerce on the web, we could still use sites like Amazon rather than having to drive miles to get to a limited selection and pay higher prices at a local "friendly" bookstore. But somehow there would be no advertising. And people would just automatically know where all of the new e-comerce sites were. And there would be no one who wanted to steal your identity and your credit card info and drain your bank account. And best of all, no one would ever see a bunch of fools saying "ad free Internet for $230 a year sounds good to me, where do I sign up?" and try to take advantage of that.

    We don't even have ad-free PBS television any more, but some people want to believe they could get ad-free Internet so much that they would OK an additional yearly charge?

    --

    You're not going to get ad-free Internet. But if you really care about it at all you can get greatly ad-reduced Internet. And it doesn't involve a yearly fee, just a small expenditure of effort. Block the major ad sources in your Hosts file (or, even better for the more advanced user, set up a network wide block in your router). But be aware, this has the side effect of making your browsing a lot faster, since you cut out a lot of unwanted traffic.

  10. Re:But is it really plankton? on Scientists Find Traces of Sea Plankton On ISS Surface · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course it is really plankton. The real issue is is it Sea Plankton as claimed. Or are our oceans full of Space Plankton?

  11. What's a reboot? on Babylon 5 May Finally Get a Big-Screen Debut · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I loved B5. I hate reboots, at least as I understand the word. I have no problem with replacing the actors. That happens frequently in movie franchises. James Bond has been played by a number of actors, and even the gender of a major supporting character was changed in that franchise without calling it a reboot. In my mind a reboot is when the producers and/or director want to take advantage of the name and existing fan base, but decide to do two other distasteful things: First, change key story concepts that have already been established, and second, they usually want to retell yet another origin story. Why is this being called a reboot, and is JMS calling it a reboot himself or are others just misusing the term? I'll gladly go see a new B5 movie (and I really don't go to many movies), but I'll avoid a B5 reboot like I would avoid an Ebola infected missionary. If JMS wants to tell a completely different Sci-fi story then I would welcome that too, but he should not reuse the B5 name, If he wants to pick back up story telling in the B5 universe then he shouldn't try to tear down what has already been done.

    On a side note, the list of lost actors from the B5 production should include Tim Choate who played my favorite character, Zathras.

  12. Re:Admit it. on Can We Call Pluto and Charon a 'Binary Planet' Yet? · · Score: 1

    Agreed. My first thought was that this article is just trying to bait Neil deGrasse Galactus into another fight.

  13. Typical great government idea on Cornering the Market On Zero-Day Exploits · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a typical great government idea. The really great thing about the idea is that once you deal with a zero-day vendor and buy a vulnerability, giving them a lot of money in the process, you can rest assured that they would never sell the same vulnerability to anyone else. 'cause that would be wrong.

  14. Re:hear hear! on Idiot Leaves Driver's Seat In Self-Driving Infiniti, On the Highway · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yup. And they wrote that while calling someone else an idiot.

  15. Rosetta and its probe on Rosetta Achieves Orbit Around Comet · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Rosetta and its probe"

    What in the world is that supposed to mean? Sounds dirty.

  16. tongue on EFF: US Gov't Bid To Alter Court Record in Jewel v. NSA · · Score: 0

    I like putting my tongue in chicks.

  17. Duh! on EFF: US Gov't Bid To Alter Court Record in Jewel v. NSA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We could find no example of where a court had granted such a remedy or even where such a request had been made.

    Well, duh! Normally our rewriting of history is effective enough that you will not find such records.

  18. There is a flaw in your logic on The Man Who Invented the 26th Dimension · · Score: 1

    You're making a false assumption.

  19. Re:You want to count use in many cases on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 1

    What a shame that in many cases people don't recognize sarcasm and irony.

  20. False count on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 5, Funny

    It looks like this count is coming from someone monitoring what OSs they see in use. That being the case, it must be greatly under-counting Windows 8 and Win 8.1, since while they may be on many more computers, they are unusable.

  21. Re:They should've removed one to make room. on How Many Members of Congress Does It Take To Pass a $400MM CS Bill? · · Score: 1

    One? I would have removed all of the arts and all of the foreign languages. I would certainly place computer science higher than any of those on a list of things that deserve to be "core subjects".

  22. Wrong question on How Many Members of Congress Does It Take To Pass a $400MM CS Bill? · · Score: 2

    ..."comprehensive immigration reform efforts that tie H-1B visa fees to a new STEM education fund" could be used "to support the teaching and learning of more computer science in K-12 schools,"

    Translation: We'll do this and then we'll have to let more H-1B foreigners into the country to pay for it. The question isn't how many tax dollars this law will cost, it is how many American jobs it will cost and how further American technical jobs can be devalued by an in-flood of cheap foreign labor.

  23. Re:Fucking ridiculous on US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia · · Score: 1

    Actually, they are deliberately not identifying the patent. Might be a doctor. Might be a nurse. But in any case it was a missionary, someone who went to Africa to tell the people there that his or her own religious beliefs were better than those of the Africans.

    I saw an interesting thing on the CBS evening news last night. One of the missionary spokespeople was telling the CBS talking head how distrustful the local people were if the doctor was wearing lots of protective clothing while treating patients. The supposed journalist just let this be stated and never questioned if the spokesperson was trying to say that they sometimes deliberately do without the protective gear to help gain the African people's trust. Apparently these missionaries believe that they should tell these people that the Christian god is better than whatever they believe in, but not bother to try to tell them that civilized science and medicine is better than jungle science.

  24. Re:Try, try again? on US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia · · Score: 0

    I agree completely. More importantly, this person volunteered to go to Africa and do whatever he did. The millions of people in this country did not volunteer to take similar risks in bringing him back.

  25. What an idiot you are on US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia · · Score: -1, Troll

    Boy, how stupid can you be. We are talking about bring over here someone who knew all of the precautions and should have been taking them himself. If it is so safe to treat this deadly incurable disease then the person would never have caught it in the first place. The very fact that this person has the disease when they knew exactly what they were dealing with and supposedly took all of the proper precautions disproves any claim of safety in bringing Ebola to this country.