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User: gishzida

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  1. Re:On the other hand... on Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE · · Score: 1

    When a user cannot compensate for bad design of a tool 'out of the box' it is time to get a different tool.

    IE in all of its generations has been designed to hook into the OS first rather than protect the OS and the user first.

      IE has never been designed to actually block scripted behavior because MS has always believed that scripting behavior in all its forms is a "feature not a bug" and the plug-in architecture of IE [so far as I am aware] does not allow for the use of plug-ins like "no script" and "Ad Block Plus" therefore IE is always going to be a less secure tool than others which do.

    Yes both Chrome and Firefox both are doing things that are frustrating [the number of crashes per day in FF is up!] ... BUT the important thing is every time I've had to clean up a problem on a client machine it is because the user was using IE exclusively. I have not used IE on my own machines [7 at last count] in atleast 6 years and have not had a malware infection via the browser on any of them during that period.

    While I appreciate Microsoft's willingness to give me work to do in a lean economy, I'd rather it be in a less time and energy wasting manner... I hate telling people they are idiots because they trusted something they should not have. IE is an untrustworthy browser by design. Think if it this way: Would you hook your plumbing or electrical directly to the Internet without proper safeguards and disregarding standards? Would you let your car's manufacturer design the car in such a way that it will only allow you to use one brand of gasoline or oil or other after-market device or service? Would you use a browser tool that is always collecting data on you and your usage behavior and reporting it to the software vendor?

    This all boils down to trusting Microsoft. Are you feeling lucky?

    Do you *really* want to trust a chair throwing monkey boy who wants to sell you some poorly designed crapware so an old bastid like me can come in and fix it?

    The day MS releases IE with a plug-in architecture that allows script blocking plug-ins and other security plug-ins designed to kill XSS, bad script behavior, and mouse over attacks will be the day I tell my clients it is safe to use...

  2. On the other hand... on Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft failed to mention the amount of power wasted cleaning up malware infections brought about because IE is not able to block malware 'mouse over' attacks. "Ad Block Plus" and "No Script" kill crapware attacks before they happen... unfortunately IE is part of the problem rather than the solution.

  3. Re:Pleading guilty compulsary on US Attorney General Defends Handling of Aaron Swartz Case · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about that fuzzy part about being tried by a jury of your peers? And what about that part about facing your accusers? or a Speedy trial? Any thing else is not constitutional.

    Instead we have a process that is designed to abuse the accused and give the prosecutors political points. If the prosecutor cannot convict the accused for what they were charged then maybe the prosecutor should not be wasting the taxpayer's money in the first place especially when the "victims" did not want to press charges. This is a case of prosecution for political gain which seems to be a favorite pass time of prosecutors [of both parties] who want to get political traction.

    If Judges are forced to used guidelines prosecutors should as well.

    Holder should be fired for this bit of stupidity...

  4. Re:Not Them on Which Cloud System Is the Most Open? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh the irony here... um... why does Win8 want to have you login to the "Microsoft Cloud" to authenticate you?

      BING-Doh! You have just been monetized.

  5. Re:Good Luck on Ask Slashdot: Programming / IT Jobs For Older, Retrained Workers? · · Score: 1

    I would recommend you start helping a bunch of friends with computer issues, train up on some technical certifications, and go into consulting. It will not be steady, but it would let you get some resume fodder if you really have your heart set on such a position.

    Becoming a "consultant" in "friend's computer issues" probably won't won't work either.

    I'm 59 and now on extended under employment... I've spent the last year trying to build a personal computer consultancy... after 16 years as a network admin [Novell, Windows + Some Mac OSX and Linux]. What did I get for a years effort? About $2000 and a lot of folks treating me worse than if I worked for the Geek Squad... You cannot pay the bills that way... especially when as most of you know most IT consultants need to "Blow a lot of smoke" and make a lot of noise and lie not a little to be successful... that isn't to say that all IT consultants in a consultancy sales and project management department aren't compulsive liars... but it helps... a lot.

    THe OP should Augment their skills and get into process automation [automation controllers for machinerinstallation y] / and or process automation programming where their experience as an electrician is a great help

    Good Luck!

  6. Level7 is a Phishing vulnerability on 50 Million Potentially Vulnerable To UPnP Flaws · · Score: 1

    I followed the link to the article... then the link to the PDF follow the link to their "Vulnerablity Detector"... Start to install... Read the Legalese... The terms are suspicious... Click OK tpo continue... The next screen asks for personal information. Red Lights and Alarms go off. Anytime a "security vendor" lists contract terms like those and then wants my name and address when I did not want or ask to contract a service. I killed the installer.

    Level7 is not preventing a problem --- it is the problem. If you installed their client you have just been pwned...

  7. Re:Oh no! Regulation! on Verizon Offers Free Tethering Because It Has To · · Score: 2

    So what you are saying is that you approve of the idea that government regulation is interfering with corporate profits and you would like the wireless carriers to be able charge you multiple times for providing the same service based upon that carrier purchasing the right to use a publicly owned resource-- the wireless spectrum. Endorsing the idea that a corporation should be allowed to do whatever it wants is in effect saying you want a totalitarian corporate state...

    Then I take it that you would approve and be willing to use the electric power grid under the following rules:

    All electric power companies / utilities charging you extra for each item you connect to their power grid. One fee for your TV, another for your Refrigerator, one for your laptop, one for each wall wart and of course this would all be in addition to your monthly kilo-watt hours usage. and fuel consumption surcharges. and lets not forget about their putting a maximum cap on how many kW-H you can use [unless you pay an additional fee]. not to mention additional fees and charges if you use someone's power to charge or power your devices. Would you like to pay for your power that way?

    Communications carriers like Verizon are "public utilities" and should legally be treated as such. The only reason they are not is that they buy the appropriate legislation or legislators. American phone companies are ripping American consumers off... *legally* because we don't head their thievery off in Congress and in State Legislatures.

    In some ways it was better to have Ma Bell...

  8. Re:Why dropping the NC/ND clauses would be better? on Creative Commons Urged To Drop Non-Free Clauses In CC 4.0 · · Score: 2

    You charge $149.95 for your hardware don't you? Since you don't give your hardware away for free, then tell me why any content creator should be effectively forced give away their music or poetry or prose or photographs for free for you to use in your non-free software/hardware bundle? Since when did a CC license become a "Public Domain" license in your mind?

    In open source there is a giving of equal value. One person gives this and another gives that and soon there is a whole ecosystem-- But all things being equal in an open source commons, why should you get "free content" without giving free hardware to content contributors? To be sure you'll say "oh but the designs are are free, the software is free..." then why isn't the hardware free to a content creator? The point is that you are using the moniker "open source" to get something for free that you yourself do not want to be forced to pay for and are unhappy that you can't get it for free.

    When you want to give me, as a content creator, something of equal value [the hardware] I'll be happy to share in your commons but to force me or any other content creator to share their work without receiving equal value on your forced terms is nothing more than theft with a BSD license applied.

    There is a difference between free culture and open source culture in this instance. I as a content creator prefer not to make my "free" culture into your "for profit public domain work" where you have put no effort into the creation of the work but bundle it into your work and charge anyone and everyone for a bundle that includes my work but excludes my possessing a copy because you charge money for owning it.

    My biggest fear is not that my work will be made better... no my fear is that a monopolist oligarchy will make my work part of their "pay me" culture-- locking it away from the cultural commons. NC / ND maintains my control over how I want my work used. Just as the GPL and BSD and other "open source" licenses control the ways in which works published with those licenses control how a work is used. More options for a content creator is better not less.

    free culture does not necessarily mean free profit at the expense of the exchange of "equal value" even for an alleged "open source project"

  9. A Rebuttal on Creative Commons Urged To Drop Non-Free Clauses In CC 4.0 · · Score: 2

    I tried to post the following comment on their blog but it didn't seem to want to take it---

    I agree that culture should be free but I disagree that the NC and ND should be disallowed. Why?

    As a singer / songwriter of non-mainstream works I have no problem releasing those works with a CC license as long as it is not released commercially. Why not? Explain why I as a content creator should allow corporate entities to reap a profit from my creativity with a "free license" when I have been excluded from the market by them? Why should I support monopolists that care only for profits and not for culture or cultural heritage?

    The entertainment companies are not the friends of human culture except as far as it provides a profit center -- therefore the non-commercial license is an option for me. I favor shared culture but not the trend toward the theft of human culture by "corporate entities" who see only profits and exclusive property not art. Also why should I as an artist want to support those that punish listeners who do not "pay the medicorpse" for work the mediacorpse never created?

    You are mistaken that NC is counter-intuitive. It is a perfect means for a content creator to thumb their noses at commercial entities. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say sorry Big 5 Record Companies but you cannot make a profit from my work? When the IP monsters roll back the copyright laws they paid for to reasonable limits [Life + 75 years is not reasonable - 50 total years is].

    A non-commercial license allows the recording and performance but without corporate entities using my work to make a profit. With an NC license the works could be free for cultural purposes -- call it protected public domain...

    The same kind of argument can be applied to "No Derivatives". An example: What if the content creator creates "anti-holocaust" art and releases it but their is no license option for "no derivatives" and then someone with an opposing view takes the work and turns it into a "pro-holocaust" propaganda?

    Creative Commons should be about giving the content creator a full set of options. NC and ND give content creators options. Removing ND and NC would remove options which may be important to some artists that are willing to release their work to the commons. To create a commons with fewer options will make the commons smaller and possibly drive away some which might make important contributions. The bigger the commons the better the commons.

  10. Re:It was me! on Project To Turn Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music Completed · · Score: 1

    And I thank you and all who contributed to making this happen. The only thing missing to make it perfect is J.S. Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor.

      Too bad we can't do the same for the rest of our culture - arts, science, literature... and while we are at it reset the IP laws to reasonable limits.... but that isn't likely to happen is it? We have allowed our culture to be sold into the hands of evil masters.

  11. Youe wanr a corner in a Circular Room? on Ask Slashdot: Personal Tape Drive NAS? · · Score: 2

    No. Your question has no rational purpose other than to attempt to create a corner in a circular room
    As a NAS a tape drive has three flaws--
    Cost.
    Reliability
    Software.
    Tape Drives are designed as peripherals that were either reading or writing the tape media. Read/Write is not an option--- ever heard of Seek Time?

  12. Re:And you thought the Win8 UI was ugly.... on Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate · · Score: 1

    Actually I was responding to the absurd statement above it...

    as for Paul Ryan... he's playing political games for political purposes... which is clear by the statements quoted. He does not say what he means and obviously does not mean what he says... I won't call him a liar because every politician believes what he says when he says it... regardless if it is counter factual.

    Mr. Ryan chose to replace Ayn Rand with Aquinas... so here are a few quotes from Mr. Ryan's new favorite thinker:

    on women --
    "As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power."
    [This explains the Republican war on women's rights]

    on liberty --
    "By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments. "
    [Because some are more equal that means they with the largest endowments pays less taxes and has more political clout]

    on need --
    "Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need."
    [This last quote of course negates the Republican Party's philosophy and platform so Ryan will probably just pretend that Aquinas didn't say it.]

  13. Re:And you thought the Win8 UI was ugly.... on Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate · · Score: 4, Informative

    Michelle Bachmann is that you?
    "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009

    or is it Sarah Palin?

      "But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin, after being asked how she would handle the current hostilities between the two Koreas, interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Nov. 24, 2010

    or Paul Ryan?

    “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

    but in April 2012 he said

    “I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

    Politicians... gotta love 'em...

  14. And you thought the Win8 UI was ugly.... on Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate · · Score: 1

    This seems to be the political equivalent of Microsoft's forthcoming release of Windows Vista 2.0... Pretty, but dysfunctional... sleek but pointless, rich but morally and ethically bankrupt.

  15. They are made out of meat.... on Meat the Food of the Future · · Score: 1

    Another obligatory bit of irrelevance:

    Terry Bisson's story on film...
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

  16. Immortality Episode Introduction Algorithm on University Receives $5 Million Grant To Study Immortality · · Score: 1

    1) State alleged facts. GOTO 2
    2) Play Evil Laugh GOTO 3
    3) Run Flying Police Box Video GOTO 4
    4) Queue Dr. Who theme....

  17. Firefox has warts but Chromes plating doen't stick on Why We Love Firefox, and Why We Hate It · · Score: 2

    Hate the rapid release cycle of Firefox... but I like having No Script... which Chrome does not have...

      in addition I do not trust Google overly much especially since they seem to want to strip away anonymity. While I am certain Google can figure out who I am, I prefer the ability to walk down a digital street without being assailed by them or their government minions all of the time. Firefox does not have that problem in that it is the product of a software developer and not gateway to the revenue stream of a commercial tyrant pretending to be the friendly giant.

      If Google does not want to be evil then it would not love its revenue stream so much and let their browser development team become a true open source project... that is not likely...

  18. Re:Correlation is Not Causation on Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020 · · Score: 1

    Questions then:

    What is a historian's role? To recite the past? And if that is the case, what then is the relevance of historical study at all?

    Is this why that most of these cycles research efforts [call it cliodynamics, cliology, psycho-history] is from non-historians? Is it because historians cannot see patterns in the data or is there factually no true data pattern? Could it be historians are so stuck on their own way of seeing things that it is left to others to advance the field? [as Alvarez did when he proved the mass extinction 65 M years ago was caused by an impact] Why does Dewey's and Kondratiev's work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave appear to make sense? Or are we "making patterns" out of statistical noise?

  19. Nothing new.... on Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020 · · Score: 1

    Cliodynamics seems to be the new, trending name for... Cliology [see the afterward of the hard cover edition of "In the Country of the Blind" by Michael Flynn which originally appeared as a two part article 'Introduction to Psychohistory' in Analog magazine in 1988] and "Cycles Research" founded by economist Edward R. Dewey http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/ Also a book by Dewey "Cycles, The Mysterious Forces that Trigger Events..." and some of the papers presented in the Journal of World Systems Research archives such as this one from 1995: "The Next World War: World-System Cycles and Trends" http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol1/v1_n6.php

    Dewey was of the belief that the cycles he uncovered had a 'rational cause'...

  20. Re:Always be wary of extrapolating on Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020 · · Score: 1

    Yes, Just because the Petroleum Institute believes tomorrow will be just like yesterday does not make it so... [note I say 'believes' for without any corresponding proof or research it is belief not science -- see http://berkeleyearth.org/ for a skeptic's results]...

  21. Re:Not news on Overconfidence May Be a Result of Social Politeness · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ever try to tell a Libertarian that has drunk the kool-aide that their free market liberty is swapping big government inefficiency [ineffectiveness which protects all of us -- read Heinlein] for a Darwinian construct that has no moral or ethical foundation? Libertarian Religion [sorry the political party and their weak sister Tea Baggers] is bad for the present and worse for the future... Don't they realize the "death panels" of "free market health care insurance" is already sitting-- they're called actuaries?

    So irrationality does not occur in just religion... it happens in politics and probably every other human endevor... If we were rational we would be a lot different than we are...

    My mother used to say: "Just because they are polite, doesn't mean they are nice."

    Remember that the next time your boss politely makes irrational demands and leaves you holding the bag.

  22. Re:Total n00b here on NASA Considers Apollo-Era F1 Engine For Space Launch System · · Score: 2

    The problem is that they have stopped being a science agency and become a "management agency"... where the "managers" are not really scientists... they've "outsourced" the brains in the name of "cutting the size of government"...

    the problem with this kind of thing is that instead of science driving the programs it's a bunch of corporate manager types who want to make a profit and career government politicians [I won't call them bureaucrats as these fellows don't serve a useful function whereas the scientists NASA used to employe were considered bureaucrats] ] who make decisions... and then the elected politicians get involved with "pork barrel" considerations...

    And that is why we had a Challenger disaster--- profit seekers and fame seekers decided to let fly when the engineers said don't.

    It's too bad that we've lost the political will to be a space-faring nation. The tail [the aerospace giants] now wags the dog [the science]

  23. Re:Oh man... on NASA Considers Apollo-Era F1 Engine For Space Launch System · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I grew up in Canoga Park and West Hills.... I got to see the Santa Susanna mountains light up when they ran tests when I was a kid in the '60s... then I got lucky:

    I worked at Rocketdyne during the 80s... programming 3 and 4 axis Coordinate Measuring Machines, writing data evaluation and utility programs, and Inspection procedures in the "Precision Measuring Room" for the SSME QA organization... there were only about six of us that did that as the technical staff that over saw about 40 Machine Parts Inspectors [A 3 shift operation during the height of SSME]... We touched the hardware for everyone of the shuttle engines... As far as I was concerned workin' at "The Rocket Factory" was my ideal job...

    We had a mixed batch of stuff to work with: Zeiss CMMs [applications to drive the machine and write "measuring routines" was written in HPL on 9000 series "calculators"], an Italian CMM made by DEA with a DEC pdp-11 with 16k of 12 bit core [A C64 had more computing power]... [the measuring app was loaded via paper tape and output was either via DECWriter and/or punch tape]. I got to write an app to read data punch tapes on a Model 43 Teletype Paper tape reader and convert them to an ASCII txt file on a IBM-PC XT

    In the mid 80's they upgraded the DEA to use an HP computer that ran HP Rocky Mountain Basic... we did not have anything networked-- it was all sneaker net so I had to write an app for that HP to do a matrix coordinate rotation [from raw coordinate system to measured coordinate system] on the recorded measurements and then output them as a text file to a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. The disk was walked over to the IBM PC-XT which then read the HP sector formatted disk using a commercial app and written to the IBM's "massive" 10 Mb disk. We then either plotted the data or wrote it to a floppy and delivered it to the Stress engineers... As I understand it that app lasted 9 years without a revision [long after I left]. I also wrote a plotter app that drove an 8 pen HP IEEE-488 Bus Plotter

    Languages? MS / IBM compiled basic, HPL, early on we had a time-share plotter app written for us in Fortran, Turbo Pascal [which is what I used to write most of the utility apps for PC because it was cheap and fast]. We also delved into HP calculator programs [HP11 and HP-67].

    I once got to go up to the Hill for a static firing of a set of Atlas engines [three engine set] at 3/4 of a mile away the engines sonic waves prevented me from catching a breath while the engines were firing...an F-1 has about 10 mtimes the thrust as an Atlas Set.

    Oh the stories...The memories...

  24. You know you're old when... on Google Scrambles To Restore Google Talk From Outage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    USENET was social networking

    I have a hard time understanding why people would whine about an outage from a free service. As for "paying customers" -- what were you thinking? You're getting exactly what you paid for a cheap service level. This isn't Old Ma Bell. There is no non-carrier VoIP service has the service level of Ma Bell's wired network. .
    Remember that "fast and cheap" is also = "prone to outage"

  25. Son of a Gizwagg on Analyzing Tweets To Identify Psychopaths · · Score: 1

    Um... I've been found out... but who cares? After all, trees live in a forest. I live in /.