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User: Trailer+Trash

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  1. Okay, I'll bite on Two Years Later, White House Responds To 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country..."

    Here it is, put up or shut up: name one single way that I personally am less "secure" due to Snowden's actions.

    That's it. One single example.

    Either that, or quit pushing this bullshit.

  2. Re:The joys of youth on .NET 4.6 Optimizer Bug Causes Methods To Get Wrong Parameters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since it's not possible to install the just-released Visual Studio 2015 without .NET 4.6, this means developers must make the difficult choice between using the latest tools or risking crippling bugs such as this one.

    If you're a dev, you shouldn't be chasing versions. Find a stable version, stick with it through your project. SE already has enough of that "stuff changing out from under me" feel without adding to the issue.

    Yeah, easy to say. When I was programming Microsoft systems (admittedly 20 years ago) the problem was that you were faced with the choice of upgrading and risking crap like this or not upgrading and dealing with problems that Microsoft would only fix "in the next upgrade".

    So glad I left that behind.

  3. Re:Welcome to America on Plan To Run Anti-Google Smear Campaign Revealed In MPAA Emails · · Score: 1

    Google "jim hood radley balko" to see how Hood has screwed innocent people time and again with convictions using discredited "bite mark analysis" and such. Hood's a piece of trash.

  4. Re:This is a joke, right? on Interviews: Brianna Wu Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    What rights do men have that woman do not?

    HATER!!!

    Any other questions?

  5. Re:So the good questions were ignored. on Interviews: Brianna Wu Answers Your Questions · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just like many people predicted in the submission for asking the questions, it looks like the good, hard-hitting questions were totally ignored.

    I doubt she has an opinion one way or another on systemd.

    First of all, if you are "neutral" on the horrific abuse that is systemd you are part of the problem!!!

  6. Re:For an alternative on Reddit CEO: Site Is 'Not a Bastion of Free Speech,' Change Coming · · Score: 2

    and yet... NOBODY (but you) GIVES A DAMN.

    He was stripped of his law license in Arkansas as a result of perjury. Somebody besides me cared quite a bit - including a judge and the AR bar association.

    It's always interesting that folks like yourself think sexual harassment is the absolute worst thing a guy can do - unless he's a Democrat.

  7. Re:Same thing happening to James O'Keefe on Citizenfour Director Sues To Find Out Why She Was Detained Every Time She Flew · · Score: 1

    That may be, but I'm suspecting the immigration workers aren't really that organized.

    It find it far more likely that he behaves like the conspiratorial ass that he is, instantly either pissing them off or setting off their "this guy ain't normal" alarm, which then causes a deeper questioning. Lots of the conspiracy nuts are walking self-fulfilling prophecies.

    I've yet to see anything from O'Keefe that would suggest he's a conspiracy nut. Unfortunately.

  8. Re:Can we hear from an IRS apologist? on Citizenfour Director Sues To Find Out Why She Was Detained Every Time She Flew · · Score: -1, Troll

    Can we get someone to explain how its OK for the IRS to harass people hoping to change policy but it's bad for DHS to harass people hoping to change policy?

    I'm not sure what you mean. It is not legal for the IRS to "harass people hoping to change policy."

    It is, however, legal for the IRS to ask organizations claiming tax exemption as charities to show that they are not engaging in political lobbying (because political organizations are not tax exempt). If that's what you call "harassing," then, no, not only is it not illegal, it is in fact part of IRS's job.

    I see we're checking off the media matters list here. Say, since Lois Lerner did nothing wrong why do you suppose she pleaded the 5th? Note that it's not possible for an honest person to have need of the 5th amendment.

  9. Re:For an alternative on Reddit CEO: Site Is 'Not a Bastion of Free Speech,' Change Coming · · Score: 4, Informative

    The politically correct crowd will willingly ignore horrible behavior as long as the person is otherwise supportive of their cause. I point to William Jefferson Clinton (Bill) as my defacto example of someone, who had they been had an (R) after their name, would have been judged completely differently by the PC (read, liberal) crowd.

    So I take the cries of the PC crowd to be largely hypocritical.

    In what sense?

    I assume you're referring to his affair, I'd say the reaction seems mild because a) affairs are tough for the family and a personal indictment but not really a public policy issue and are generally ignored, b) Clinton never presented himself as an example of a perfect family man so it wasn't very hypocritical, c) the reaction of the Republicans was completely over the top.

    I don't deny that the PC crowd can be hypocritical but I don't think they're moreso than any other group.

    His "affair"? No, his multiple affairs, his predatory sexual assaults on subordinates, and his perjuring himself in a lawsuit (while also suborning perjury through witness coaching) were the issues that the liberals overlook and continue to try to obfuscate (as you've done above). Had a Republican done even half of that we would still be reading about it in the press.

  10. Re:The author is easily distracted on What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong · · Score: 1

    I stopped reading when I reached the point of him complaining that the additional buttons in the login and lock screens are "distracting".....

    I stopped reading the articles around 2002.

  11. Re:The cost of doing business on Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling · · Score: 1

    Well sure. I guess I generally assume that when people say 'the cost will be passed on to customers' I read: 'the extra expense will result in an immediate increase in price for services'.

    I mean, obviously people realize that the money ultimately comes from customers. If you presume that statement to say otherwise then you clearly misunderstand what is being said.

    Uh, no. With a large established company like TW this is simply a drop in the bucket. My point stands.

  12. Re:The cost of doing business on Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the CC companies permit you to pass along swipe fees there, but in much of the world, they don't. They should probably be prohibited by law from prohibiting you from passing those fees on, but ha ha ha

    LOL, here we go again. Of course you pass on the swipe fees, unless you have a special printing press in the back that prints money to be used to cover swipe fees.

    What you're missing is that all customers pay the same amount, meaning if I pay with cash part of my cash is covering other people's swipe fees. I usually pay with cash so, yeah, bit of a bummer. However, you'll find at a lot of stores on large purchases they'll bargain way better when you wave a wad of cash under their nose.

  13. Re:The cost of doing business on Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling · · Score: 1

    As poster above stated, there are a few alternatives:
    1. Customer pays
    2. Shareholders pay (in the form of less profit)
    3. Employees pay in the form of not getting a raise or no increase in compensation
    4. The company spends less money on other things to make up the cost

    I think you missed the point, so I'll bring it up again. TW - like most profitable companies - makes all of its money from sales to customers. Therefore, for any expense that TW has the statement "the customers are going to pay for it" is true. Therefore, it's meaningless.

    Let me help you:

    2 Shareholders pay (in the form of less profit)

    <eyeroll> Yes, that'll happen either way. The money that the shareholders earn (in the form of dividends) still comes from customers. Again - they either have a printing press for money or it comes from customers.

    3. Employees pay

    Yeah, and where does employee pay come from? A magical printing press in the back room, of course, that prints the money that pays employees.

    Oh, wait, no, this is reality, so the money COMES FROM CUSTOMERS. <facepalm>

    4. The company spends less money on other things....

    (Do I have to repeat this at this point?)

    The *only* other options for "who pays for this?" would be if an outside investor approached them and, for whatever reason, says "Hey, you got screwed on that court case. Tell you what, for x% of your company I'll pay that judgement for you." Put another way, they could sell extra stock (and thus devalue all existing stock) to raise the money. For a company of their size it's probably not worth it.

  14. Re:The cost of doing business on Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They will just pass this cost and its legal costs onto the consumer.

    Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be. Every business technically passes all their costs to their customers as the customers are how they make money. When you pay your TW bill (if you have TW) then part of that bill is covering legal expenses when they screw up. Same as when you buy a can of pop at Walmart, Kroger, etc.

    And then take both as an expense tax deduction.

    It surprised me to find that they can deduct this. The IRS code doesn't allow deduction of penalties paid to governmental agencies, but apparently civil non-governmental judgements are deductable.

  15. Also on Two-Pounder From Lenovo Might Be Too Light For Comfort · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The few air spaces inside the machines are filled with helium. It actually weighs 5lbs. otherwise.

  16. Re:try facebooking with friends when you're 40+ on Scientists Show Human Aging Rates Vary Widely · · Score: 1

    I'm nowhere near your age, but I live in a country where smoking wasn't very popular until 20-25 years ago (in schools as well). And I had a few mates that smoked a lot. By graduation, they looked pretty much like fully aged adults. It was strange.
    My family, and everyone on my mothers side are non-smokers. Not even second hand. They all look better than others their age.

    I can say that smoking and possibly drugs are a factor in at least some of the folks who aged more quickly. That's a good point.

  17. Re:try facebooking with friends when you're 40+ on Scientists Show Human Aging Rates Vary Widely · · Score: 2

    Is it just you?
    Once I visited home and walked around with my dad, and ran into my friend's dad, Bill.
    All I could think was "two old men having an old-man conversation".
    Afterwards my dad told he he was surprised how much Bill had aged, while he himself had barely aged at all!

    Good question, but no, it's not just me. Admittedly I look young for my age, as does my wife. We're both commonly mistaken for being 10 years younger than we are. What stuck out in my facebook friends list isn't "me" vs. "other people", it's "some of my friends" vs. "some of my other friends". If you saw their pictures without knowing who they were you would have trouble believing they were all the same age. Some look to be my age and others look 20+ years older. I know one guy who's 50 who looks to be my mother's age (she's 72).

    The point is that when you see all of these people side-by-side in photos those differences are really noticeable. I've noticed that those who age quickest don't tend to show up at the class reunions so I didn't notice before.

    Another odd effect is that some of the girls who were babes in high school turned out to be average looking by age 30. I don't mean "fat" - I mean their beautiful face became average. At the same time some girls who weren't terribly pretty in high school are now very pretty.

    It's strange how people change throughout life, and it's not something you notice until you've lived like 50 years.

  18. Re:'Open source' on Judge Dismisses Second Conviction of Ex-Goldman Sachs Coder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was more meaning the circumstances - just because you find a GPLV2 'Copying' file in the file-tree does not mean that the whole thing can be distributed, as you have no way of knowing what the authors intent was.
    If I put a COPYING file in my windows source tree, it doesn't make windows open-source unless I have the authority, legal clearance, and intent to release that code.

    But there's another aspect of this. Say my company downloads the Linux kernel and we internally make some changes to it and use it on our servers in its modified form. Jim is one of the coders. Linux is released under GPLv2. Does that mean that Jim can take our changes home with him?

    No.

    The GPLv2 kicks in only when the company redistributes the code along with the modifications, and those modifications are available to the recipients that we've specified.

    People often mistake "GPLv2" for "public domain" - the idea being that if my company is distributing GPLv2'd software then it's a free-for-all and anybody can have it. That's not the case.

    So, even if Goldman Sachs was using GPLv2'd code unless they specifically gave it to him he can't legally have it. And my guess is that they're not about to give away the kind of code that was mentioned there.

  19. try facebooking with friends when you're 40+ on Scientists Show Human Aging Rates Vary Widely · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Getting back in touch with high-school classmates was a huge eye-opener for me. I'm 47 now, graduated in 1986. Many of my classmates look like they're in their 60s. I'm not exaggerating. It's just amazing to me how differently people age.

  20. Of course it will on Proposed Regulation Could Keep 3D-printed Gun Blueprints Offline For Good · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Proposed Regulation Could Keep 3D-printed Gun Blueprints Offline For Good

    Yep. And drug laws totally eliminated illegal drugs, prostitution laws totally eliminated prostitution, etc.

    Come on, people. This is the stupidest headline I've read in awhile. If laws actually had magical powers like that it would be irrelevant since there's already a law against using a gun to murder someone.

  21. Re:Its because she refused to censor a question on AMAgeddon: Reddit Mods Are Locking Up the Site's Most Popular Pages In Protest · · Score: 1

    Not loaded. There wasn't a single item in there that wasn't absolutely irrefutably true. He's not accustomed to being exposed and, frankly, took it like a champ. Just ignored it and tried to claim that he had some major part in civil rights progresses that would have happened without him.

  22. Re:Oh boy! on Firefox 39 Released, Bringing Security Improvements and Social Sharing · · Score: 1

    This was exactly the reason that gave the final push to ditch Firefox for me as well. Seriously, how can a page that's seen by millions of people everyday - Amazon - bring Firefox to a crawl and the devs instead of fixing the problem keep adding video chat to the bloated thing? It's just insane.

    And they still don't handle html5 date fields like 5 years later. Seriously, this is just sad to see the once mighty firefox turn into IE6. Even worse: at least with IE6 Microsoft could credibly say "we're not developing that anymore". With Firefox they're still adding worthless features while ignoring standards.

    Michael

  23. Re:Its because she refused to censor a question on AMAgeddon: Reddit Mods Are Locking Up the Site's Most Popular Pages In Protest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Someone asked a loaded question to Jessie Jackson accusing him of nefarious mob style tactics.

    Bluntly stated, such a question can't possibly be "loaded". It's fully legitimate given Jackson's background and current activities.

    I was bemused that Reddit would put someone with Ellen Pao's background in to run the place, and I figured it would probably cause a lot of problems. I was correct. First she had the stupid "we're not going to negotiate your salary" stunt (whaddaya bet she negotiated *her* salary?) and now crap like this.

    Sometimes I think people miss out on the fact that these companies are ephemeral. There's literally nothing there, just a bunch of people who come together and form a community. Those people will quickly go elsewhere - ask myspace. Someone mentioned Dig and it's a good lesson for those who would learn. You can lose 99% of the value of your company in the course of a few months by making a few stupid decisions.

  24. Re:Profit over safety on How the Next US Nuclear Accident Might Happen · · Score: 1

    I am GM of a nuclear power plan and my bonus is based on the total production of my power plant. My engineering tells me I have to take an outage to fix a pump but if I do that I am going to mix my goal and I am not going to get as big a bonus. That is a fact. The chance that the power plant might melt down that is theoretical. I am not going to take a real loss for a theoretical one no matter how bad the theoretical loss might be. And that is why nuclear power plants can't be run by for profit companies.

    I see that basic spelling and grammar skills aren't one of the job requirements for being GM of a nuclear power plan [sic].

    That, or maybe you're a lying troll.

    Hmm, now that I've thought about it for 3 seconds I'm going with "lying troll".

  25. I have another way on Windows 10 Shares Your Wi-Fi Password With Contacts · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft has two solutions; only share passwords using their Wi-Fi Sense service, or by adding "_optout" to your SSID.

    Or, just don't use windows 10. I think I may have found the answer there.