"How many of you are in a successful relationship that would have never gotten off the ground if you had been required to reveal all of your past upon meeting your mate?"
I stalked my current girlfriend for almost 12 months before we got together. She was in a relationship and I spent a lot of time and money carefully crafting a frame up for her boyfriend. When he went to prison on the child prostitution charges I was able to introduce myself to her and comfort her, which was how we ended up getting to know each other (well, I already knew her quite well, obviously).
It's something we laugh about now, but if I'd have told her about it too soon it probably would have freaked her out.
(Her ex-boyfriend didn't really have much of a sense of humour about it though, but he's on the sex-offenders list now and has to live in hiding, so who cares about him?).
"Democracy != Pro America. Democracy != Capitalism. Democracy != American"
I think people keep forgetting that America is not a democracy but a republic. IIRC the constitution specifically mentions that it is not a democracy but a republic. They are not really the best people to be 'spreading democracy' throughout the world, which I think is the main reason the British goverment support them in their various invasions. To make sure they have someone along who knows what they're doing.
I particularly enjoy the fact that he appears to consider clicking all over the screen a proper problem solving system.
I've always wondered how people rationalise that. After ten clicks do they really think the eleventh click is magic and will fix their problem? Maybe they're just really slow at pattern recognition.
"So, if we attached a couple square inches of this stuff to a pigeon, or filled a 747 with some of these chips, and flew it around the world, how fast would the transfer rate be?"
There'd be an amazing transfer rate, but the lag would make CounterStrike quite difficult to play.
But when you have one CMS for everyone, you might as well make it easy for _someone_ to use.
But it still has to allow the webdeveloppers to build the website in a few hours, and have a GUI that makes the client thinks that it was done so solve his own particular problems (if it doesn't look like that, the client *will* be confused).
Not at all. Lots of clients can cope with something that doesn't look as if it solves their particualr problem, as long as they can work out what it does.
No, we had a backend, the issue was just over how easy it should be to use, as in whether links to 'delete this item' should be in an obvious place or not, and whether commonly performed actions should be hidden deep in a cryptic menu system or not.
It was little things that I had previously thought were self-evident. Not only that, but they were selling the back-end to other people as well (not a custom made job) so I would have assumed it would be in their interest to make it good.
Probably the age old case of job-security through code-obscurity.
I was in a discussion with our web developers and I said that the back end of the site needed to be easy for the administrators and moderators to use, which they disputed.
They said that they could just give everyone a day's training on how to administrate the site and then it didn't need to be easy to use.
I was so shocked I couldn't reply, and once I had gathered myself together I couldn't persuade them otherwise. The website still isn't easy to administrate.
Governments in Developing countries need massive computing power to automate their operations and processes, they need huge networking to bring the systems together, training to run the systems and money to do it, before their citizens can surf the net. Think of that next time you surf for pr0n.
I'd rather not. It might make it diffcult for me to maintain my erection.
I'm curious because I also perform a little parking space vigilantism. When someone parks in a space so crooked they make the space next to them virtually unusable, I'll squeeze my car in so they have to climb into their car from the other side. I drive an old beater, what are they gonna do? Key my hood? So what. Besides, they know they suck.
I do something similar, but I do it to people who have genuinely parked in a disabled space, but parked badly. Watching them put their wheelchair through the passenger door, and climbing through the car is hilarious.
Has anyone produced a keyboard for programmers, where all the commonly used punctuation keys are easier to reach?
For example (on a UK Keyboard) the fact that {} are both shifted, means hell of a lot of extra keystrokes in some languages, as does the fact that @()": are all also shifted.
I'd like to see a keyboard that kept the QWERTY layout, but had better positioning of punctuation for programmers.
I take it this idiot senator believes all the world's coders live in the US, right? And that Russians and Poles and Brits and Aussies are all too backward to write P2P code..?
He'd be right about the Aussies though, wouldn't he?
"The government got caught out rejecting every single emailed objection, because they were emailed and not written"
The objections that were rejected were faxed, not emailed, and they were rejected because they were overly similar (and so were counted as one objection).
A particular website had given a form letter that people could fax, to encourage people to do so. the Gorverment thought this was cheating or something and combined them all into one objection.
One of the major problems with democracy is that the stupid people get just as much of a vote as the intelligent people. Allowing people to not vote at least lets a lot of the stupid people stay at home, and therefore increases the average intelligence of the voters.
Yeah, I was referring to the Slashdot crowd, though also trying to emphasise the vagueness of the question in the article (as you did more explicitly with mine).
"Instinct tells us that computer security and computer usability are inversely proportional to each other."
I don't think this is particularly true. In all walks of life, if something is more usuable, then it tends to be more secure, if only because if it is easier to lock something then people are more likely to lock it.
If it is easy to use the security features on a computer, people will. A lot of home routers tend to be left in an insecure state simple because securing them is too complicated and it is the type of task that can only be done if you already know how to do it.
I would be willing to bet that if you did a survey of the broadband routers installed by 'normal' home users, the ones with the highest usability of the firmware, would also tend to be the ones that have been scured the most.
Slashdot Mirror
I stalked my current girlfriend for almost 12 months before we got together. She was in a relationship and I spent a lot of time and money carefully crafting a frame up for her boyfriend. When he went to prison on the child prostitution charges I was able to introduce myself to her and comfort her, which was how we ended up getting to know each other (well, I already knew her quite well, obviously).
It's something we laugh about now, but if I'd have told her about it too soon it probably would have freaked her out.
(Her ex-boyfriend didn't really have much of a sense of humour about it though, but he's on the sex-offenders list now and has to live in hiding, so who cares about him?).
"Democracy != Pro America. Democracy != Capitalism. Democracy != American"
I think people keep forgetting that America is not a democracy but a republic. IIRC the constitution specifically mentions that it is not a democracy but a republic. They are not really the best people to be 'spreading democracy' throughout the world, which I think is the main reason the British goverment support them in their various invasions. To make sure they have someone along who knows what they're doing.
I particularly enjoy the fact that he appears to consider clicking all over the screen a proper problem solving system.
I've always wondered how people rationalise that. After ten clicks do they really think the eleventh click is magic and will fix their problem? Maybe they're just really slow at pattern recognition.
There'd be an amazing transfer rate, but the lag would make CounterStrike quite difficult to play.
But it still has to allow the webdeveloppers to build the website in a few hours, and have a GUI that makes the client thinks that it was done so solve his own particular problems (if it doesn't look like that, the client *will* be confused).
Not at all. Lots of clients can cope with something that doesn't look as if it solves their particualr problem, as long as they can work out what it does.
No, we had a backend, the issue was just over how easy it should be to use, as in whether links to 'delete this item' should be in an obvious place or not, and whether commonly performed actions should be hidden deep in a cryptic menu system or not.
It was little things that I had previously thought were self-evident. Not only that, but they were selling the back-end to other people as well (not a custom made job) so I would have assumed it would be in their interest to make it good.
Probably the age old case of job-security through code-obscurity.
I was in a discussion with our web developers and I said that the back end of the site needed to be easy for the administrators and moderators to use, which they disputed.
They said that they could just give everyone a day's training on how to administrate the site and then it didn't need to be easy to use.
I was so shocked I couldn't reply, and once I had gathered myself together I couldn't persuade them otherwise. The website still isn't easy to administrate.
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and suggest that the law will apply to Google's French subsidiary, Google.fr, rather than Google.com.
I can't seem to find a mod for "doesn't understand sarcasm".
Europe and Africa?
Why the hell are Europe and Africa being lumped together? It's not as if they share that much in any cultural way.
Maybe I should RTFA.
I'd rather not. It might make it diffcult for me to maintain my erection.
I do something similar, but I do it to people who have genuinely parked in a disabled space, but parked badly. Watching them put their wheelchair through the passenger door, and climbing through the car is hilarious.
Has anyone produced a keyboard for programmers, where all the commonly used punctuation keys are easier to reach?
For example (on a UK Keyboard) the fact that {} are both shifted, means hell of a lot of extra keystrokes in some languages, as does the fact that @()": are all also shifted.
I'd like to see a keyboard that kept the QWERTY layout, but had better positioning of punctuation for programmers.
I know, I know. I was being facetious.
I love them Aussies really.
He'd be right about the Aussies though, wouldn't he?
> What's the point?
Well, 20-30% more porn on my hard drive is the point as far as I can see.
So, 'close the barn door when the cows have bolted'? Must be an American thing...
Horses live in stables, not barns AFAIK, so it would make more sense.
He should get a GMail account and scrap the department.
"Google informs me that 40% of 30 billion = 12 000 000 000"
You had to use Google to work out 40% of 30 billion? I don't think you belong here.
The objections that were rejected were faxed, not emailed, and they were rejected because they were overly similar (and so were counted as one objection).
A particular website had given a form letter that people could fax, to encourage people to do so. the Gorverment thought this was cheating or something and combined them all into one objection.
Still unfair though, so your point still stands.
I don't agree with forcing everyone to vote.
One of the major problems with democracy is that the stupid people get just as much of a vote as the intelligent people. Allowing people to not vote at least lets a lot of the stupid people stay at home, and therefore increases the average intelligence of the voters.
Yeah, I was referring to the Slashdot crowd, though also trying to emphasise the vagueness of the question in the article (as you did more explicitly with mine).
"how many 'isolated incidents' are there going to be before we admit we have a 'real problem' on our hands?"
Well I'd say 'we' already have admitted we have a problem on our hands...
"Instinct tells us that computer security and computer usability are inversely proportional to each other."
I don't think this is particularly true. In all walks of life, if something is more usuable, then it tends to be more secure, if only because if it is easier to lock something then people are more likely to lock it.
If it is easy to use the security features on a computer, people will. A lot of home routers tend to be left in an insecure state simple because securing them is too complicated and it is the type of task that can only be done if you already know how to do it.
I would be willing to bet that if you did a survey of the broadband routers installed by 'normal' home users, the ones with the highest usability of the firmware, would also tend to be the ones that have been scured the most.