Slashdot Mirror


User: Kethinov

Kethinov's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,318
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,318

  1. Re:Obligatory on Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman · · Score: 1

    No wireless. Less space than an obsolete iPod Classic. Lame.

  2. Netflix was coerced on Netflix Begins Blocking Users Who Bypass Region Locks · · Score: 2

    Hollywood bullies Netflix into implementing draconian DRM.

    But like any abusive relationship they're too afraid of losing their sugar daddy to speak out against it in public.

    From the leaked Sony emails: "Netflix are heavily resistant to enforcing stricter financial geofiltering controls, as they claim this would present a too high bar to entry from legitimate subscribers. For example, they want people to be able to use various methods of payment (e.g. PayPal) where it is harder to determine where the subscriber is based. They recognize that this may cause illegal subscribers but they (of course) would rather err that way than create barriers to legitimate subscribers to sign up."

    Yeah, right. I'll consider Netflix "heavily resistant" to draconian DRM when they launch a PR campaign publicly skewering Hollywood for asking for it.

    Instead this leaked email tells us only that in private they're mildly uncomfortable with draconian DRM but at the end of the day they don't really give a shit and will fall in line in public for The Almighty Hollywood.

    Keep taking those beatings, Netflix. Keep doing your abuser's bidding.

  3. Re:This seems relevant, re: leaked Sony emails: on Netflix Cracks Down On VPN and Proxy "Pirates" · · Score: 1

    I'll consider Netflix "heavily resistant" to draconian DRM when they launch a PR campaign publicly skewering Hollywood for asking for it.

    Instead this leaked email tells us only that in private they're mildly uncomfortable with draconian DRM but at the end of the day they don't really give a shit and will fall in line in public for The Almighty Hollywood.

  4. Re:Chinglish on What Language Will the World Speak In 2115? · · Score: 1

    Statistically significant: "Lots of Chinese people learn English, but very few English speakers learn Chinese."

    Subjective anecdote: "I see plenty of English speakers learning Chinese."

  5. Re:Chinglish on What Language Will the World Speak In 2115? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I often wonder how realistic that possibility really is. Lots of Chinese people learn English, but very few English speakers learn Chinese. That has led to a one-way lingual exchange exporting English to China.

    But to create a Chinglish-style creole in the future, the lingual export would need to be bidirectional. English speakers would need to be learning Chinese at at least a comparable rate that Chinese speakers are learning English.

    One could argue that with China's increasing economic prominence that it may some day be necessary for non-Chinese people to learn Chinese, but even as the #2 superpower that still has yet to happen.

    As such, I'd wager that English as it currently exists will continue to dominate in 100 years. The fact that it's the first language of several major countries and virtually everyone worldwide learns English as a second language is a trend that shows no signs of stopping.

  6. Chat is terrible hellscape on Slack Now Letting Employers Tap Workers' Private Chats · · Score: 1

    Internet chat is a terrible hellscape and it's saddened me for almost two decades.

    Unlike email and the web, the dominant systems for instant messaging have been proprietary forever. Sure, XMPP exists, but nobody uses it. There was a chance when Google Talk was using it, but ever since Google stopped federating, that's basically fucked.

    Now we're seeing the slow death of IRC too at the hands of better but more proprietary user experiences being offered by Skype and Slack.

    And it's easy to see why too. The proprietary chat tools out there like Slack are absolutely incredible user experiences.

    If IRC and XMPP are ever going to be competitive with the new proprietary guys in town, it needs to get competitive on the usability front.

    If we ever want to reclaim our freedom, we have to find a way to make XMPP is as usable as WhatsApp and IRC is as usable as Slack.

    I don't really know how to do that. I wish I did. But I think the internet would benefit massively from it. Imagine if there were 5 different competing proprietary protocols for email or webpages? That's the world we live in now for internet chat. It doesn't have to be this way.

  7. Re:99.8% of all mobile malware is on platforms on Android 5.0 'Lollipop' vs. iOS 8: More Similar Than Ever · · Score: 1

    Malware on Android exists for the following reasons:

    First and biggest reason: it has a massive market share. If iOS had Android's market share, you better believe it'd have more malware.

    Second biggest reason: Google kinda sucks at curating their app store compared to iOS. This has nothing to do with sideloading. They let far too much malware into the Google Play store thanks to their policy of reporting bad apps rather than actively prescreening apps as rigorously as Apple does. Google really needs to get better at this.

    Distant third: OS vulnerabilities. iOS suffers from this too occasionally.

    Very distant fourth: sideloading. Way less than 1% of Android users ever enable sideloading. This is not where the majority of Android users are getting their malware. It's by far the least significant attack vector.

    As such, I think it's pretty obvious that Apple adding an "enable sideloading" checkbox on iOS would not be a malware disaster anymore than it is on Mac OS X.

  8. Re:If that matters to you then don't buy an iDevic on Android 5.0 'Lollipop' vs. iOS 8: More Similar Than Ever · · Score: 0

    That's a false dichotomy. One platform can provide both. Android does that today.

    By default Android is a walled garden and locked to Google Play just as iOS is locked to the App Store. You have to flip a well-buried switch in Android to turn that off.

    On iOS there is no such choice. OS X does, but not iOS. It's totally arbitrary and unnecessary.

  9. Re:Terminology on Revolutionary New View of Baby Planets Forming Around a Star · · Score: 1

    That response is kind of a non sequitur. You're correct that "the Sun" is correct, but I'm also correct that "the Solar System" is a planetary system named after our star, Sol.

  10. Re:Terminology on Revolutionary New View of Baby Planets Forming Around a Star · · Score: 1

    The Solar System is a planetary system named after its star, Sol.

  11. Re:Terminology on Revolutionary New View of Baby Planets Forming Around a Star · · Score: 1

    It's not "a" Solar System, it's the Solar System. There is only one.

    Solar is a proper noun, not a generic term. But it is commonly misused that way.

  12. Terminology on Revolutionary New View of Baby Planets Forming Around a Star · · Score: 1

    I really wish news articles would get their terminology right.

    Welcome to HL Tauri - a star system that is just being born

    In short, this is the mother of all embryonic star system ultrasounds.

    No.

    The correct term is planetary system.

    But hey, at least they didn't do what so many other publications do and incorrectly refer to exoplanetary systems as "other solar systems" as though "Solar" is a generic term and not, in actuality, a proper noun referring to our sun, Sol.

    Okay I'll stop being pedantic now.

    But seriously, people, use the terms correctly.

  13. Re:The iOSification continues! on Apple Announces iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, OS X Yosemite and More · · Score: 1

    What if I want them to be purple! ;)

  14. The iOSification continues! on Apple Announces iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, OS X Yosemite and More · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For those of you who are a fan of customizing the colors of message bubbles in Messages.app and don't like that Apple removed this ability as part of the iOSification of Yosemite, there's an app for that: https://github.com/kethinov/Bu...

    I made this during the developer previews because I don't like the default puke green for most of my IM conversations. Hope this helps some people. Source code also available.

  15. Re:Successor to Agile/Scrum on 'Reactive' Development Turns 2.0 · · Score: 1

    It's a bit of a circular argument to say that sprint planning meetings exist because product owners don't have time to frequently reassess priority on their own. Before Scrum really took off, I recall product owners having no trouble finding the time to own the issue tracker in this manner on a regular or even daily basis.

    It seems to me everyone would have significantly more time for such things if there was less process in the way like unnecessarily verbose scrum meetings which can be replaced by less invasive forms of communication.

  16. Successor to Agile/Scrum on 'Reactive' Development Turns 2.0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If anyone's really looking for a 21st century successor to Agile/Scrum, I would recommend checking out the "async" manifesto which was written in a manner deliberately parodying the agile manifesto: http://asyncmanifesto.org/

  17. Re:Lucky them on Court Rules the "Google" Trademark Isn't Generic · · Score: 1

    It's not shorter when you make an apples to apples comparison.

    "Go google it" is equivalent to "go web search it."

    More words and more characters, sure, but the same number of syllables.

  18. Re:When will it support killing CPU-hogging tabs? on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 1

    Guilty as charged on all counts.

  19. When will it support killing CPU-hogging tabs? on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When will Firefox support killing CPU-hogging tabs individually?

    That's the only killer feature from Chrome I'm waiting for to switch back to Firefox.

    In Chrome, if I've got 50 tabs open (not uncommon) and one of them starts spiking my CPU, I can pull open Activity Monitor (on OS X) and kill the "Google Chrome Helper" that's eating all the CPU.

    That kills the one tab that was the problem, not the whole browser. And lets me reload it when I actually care about that tab again.

    I haven't found a similar way to imitate this workflow in Firefox.

    The whole noscript / flashblock / adblock / etc approach hasn't worked. Tried it with Firefox, still had constant CPU issues after whitelisting sites I need JS or Flash turned on for, still had no way to kill runaway processes individually.

  20. Re:Big Data on Netflix CEO On Net Neutrality: Large ISPs Are the Problem · · Score: 1

    Both issues punish customers, as anyone who's ever wanted to save a Netflix movie for offline viewing on a flight can attest to.

  21. Re:Big Data on Netflix CEO On Net Neutrality: Large ISPs Are the Problem · · Score: 1

    Not that I disagree, but right now I'm just finding it funny how Hastings can complain about ISPs doing bad things while he remains conspicuously silent about Hollywood forcing draconian DRM into Netflix and, indirectly, into the HTML5 spec itself. Maybe the major ISPs should look into buying Hastings' silence too. It would help with their PR.

  22. Customizing chat bubble colors in Messages.app on Mac OS X Yosemite Beta Opens · · Score: 1

    Apple seems to have removed the ability to customize the chat bubble colors in Messages.app in Yosemite. If you liked that feature (as I did) and want it back, I've got your back! https://github.com/kethinov/Bu...

  23. Re:gee so weird on Could High Bay-Area Prices Make Sacramento the Next Big Startup Hub? · · Score: 1

    This is why I don't understand why after all these years companies are still so reluctant to embrace telecommuting.

    "We are hurrying back and forth across town at morning and night to situations which we could quite easily encompass by closed-circuit. Documents, contracts, data. All of these materials actually could be just as available on closed-circuit, at home." - Marshall McLuhan, 1965.

  24. Re:mac only? on GitHub Open Sources Atom, Their Text Editor Based On Chromium · · Score: 1

    Try out Brackets http://brackets.io/

    Very similar to Atom's architecture, also open source, more mature community, better visual design (IMO).

  25. Re:That doesn't really explain it on Russia Writes Off 90 Percent of North Korea Debt · · Score: 1

    Can't believe some idiots are marking you "informative." Cuba ranks near the bottom of the Democracy Index. Try that socialism sucks argument again when a social democracy is failing so miserably.