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User: Kazoo+the+Clown

Kazoo+the+Clown's activity in the archive.

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  1. There's another way... on Why Johnny Can't Speak: a Cost of Paywalled Research · · Score: 2

    It's been my experience that access to non-US journals may not be so restricted. I've found relevant articles in UK journals for instance that aren't paywalled when the equivalent US journals were. Not all countries or scientific organizations are as greedy as they often seem to be in the U S. Unfortunately, you may have to find a translator or wing it with translation software if it's not an english-language source, but at least there are a few alternatives out there. And if you're a scientist in the US, you may be able to submit your papers to non-paywalled sources, possibly in addition to the paywalled ones, or host the papers on your own website, etc., making them more accessible. Paywalled sources are not the only game out there, you may just have to dig a little more.

  2. The solution is simple on EU Parliament: Other Countries Spy, But Less Than the UK, US · · Score: 1

    Either one of those countries, or a private enterprise, based in say, the Cayman Islands, could take their own data collection and make it completely public. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. Then we'd have full dossiers on every politician in the world, phone records, credit info, criminal records, etc. And more and more citizens would be beset with corporations abusing their data in offensive ways. We might finally see a majority recognizing the value of privacy laws.

  3. Re:Forcing plus.google.com on users on Google Updates ReCAPTCHA With Easier CAPTCHAs For Humans · · Score: 1

    Um, I have a Gmail account, but I hardly ever login to Google directly, preferring to use an email aggregating app instead. I'd not use gmail if I had to regularly deal with a Google UI much, which are nearly universally gawdawful. I used to think the simplicity of the Google search page was brilliance, but after seeing other attempts at user interface, I now can only conclude they must have simply had no clue what to do for an interface so they did as little as possible. Now, all the googling I do is via startpage.com, as thus I'm not only avoiding incompetent Google page designs, I don't have to deal with their targeted advertising either.

  4. Re:Do you think you are special? on Ten Steps You Can Take Against Internet Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Well, as long as she doesn't search for a pressure cooker, or some random terrorist doesn't find some way to make a bomb with the shoes she bought, you'll be OK.

  5. Re:Do you think you are special? on Ten Steps You Can Take Against Internet Surveillance · · Score: 1

    A good way to get past the 140 character limit as well. The only non-captcha text should be the hashtags & user refs.

  6. Re:Do you think you are special? on Ten Steps You Can Take Against Internet Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Presumably, protecting yourself against government spying will also protect you against commercial spying.

    Example: post all tweets as images of captcha text. If it can't readily be OCR'ed, they won't be collecting keywords without paying some cheap labor somewhere to manually transcribe everything. And if we all did it, that would be a really big and/or slow job. Tweets are designed to be read by human eyeballs only anyhow, aren't they? Captcha them all.

  7. Re:DoS? on CryptoSeal Shuts Down Consumer VPN Service To Avoid Fighting NSA · · Score: 1

    Yes, they do employ Really Ridiculously Smart People. But unfortunately, those aren't the People In Charge.

  8. Irony on Facebook Lets Beheading Clips Return To Its Site · · Score: 1

    Doesn't anyone find it odd that the worlds biggest social networking site is run by sociopaths?

  9. Google products work bizarre in many browsers.. on IE 11 Breaks Rendering For Google Products, and Outlook Too · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would say that Google web interfaces should not be the standard by which browsers should be evaluated, I've found they work badly in a lot of circumstances. Then again, the Hotmail website does too, so Microsoft is also pretty bad at depending on the quirky characteristics of its favorite browsers. I avoid Google UIs as much as I can, preferring to use alternative interfaces where available, simply because they are so poorly designed. While Google does some good things, the Ui has never been Google's strong suit.

  10. Re:Is this a second amendment issue? on How You Too Can Be Shut Down By the Feds For Flying Drones · · Score: 2

    Mount a gun on your drone and the NRA will step in and make it legal...

  11. Re:I am a pilot... on How You Too Can Be Shut Down By the Feds For Flying Drones · · Score: 1

    There's the solution then, make sure your flying RC camera looks just like a soaring condor.

  12. Re:So on Mark Shuttleworth Complains About the 'Open Source Tea Party' · · Score: 1

    Mir was a low-orbit space station, a modular design assembled by the USSR starting in 1986, then inherited by Russia after the dissolution of the USSR. After it was deemed no longer safe, it was pushed out of orbit and into the Earth's atmosphere where it burned up in 2001.

  13. This only works at shows like this on How To Attend Next Week's Robotics Show Robotically · · Score: 1

    Such shows allow them to control what happens to the robots. Try going down the street with one of these, it'll get stolen immediately. At the very least it'll need cameras in all directions in order to not be snuck up on and shanghaied, plus it needs to weigh at least as much as a Segway.

  14. They could at least make themselves useful. on The NSA Is Collecting Lots of Spam · · Score: 1

    If they are going to invade our privacy on a massive scale, the least they could do is use the evidence of this spam to crack down hard on the spammers. It would make it easier to find the terrorists by eliminating a lot of the communications noise, and might be good PR, giving something tangible back to society instead of being just takers for all anyone can tell. And they'd have less data to store, which would be cheaper and faster.

  15. Generated code on How To Develop Unmaintainable Software · · Score: 1

    Come up with an excuse to write utility code that generates the production code and/or SQL. Then lose the utility code after the production code is up and running. Machine generated code is mostly incomprehensible, so even you won't be able to modify it without all sorts of subtle and not so subtle side-effects.

  16. Re:Interesting litmus test... on Facebook May Dislike the Social Fixer Extension, but Many Users Love It (Video) · · Score: 1

    Facebook is nothing more than a slightly better mailing list handler. It allows me to post messages to a batch of friends at once, just like a mailing list but with crappy security controls and a marginally better UI that's getting worse with every upgrade. That's all It is, IMHO. What I'd really like to see is something that will block all photos of food. I mean, come on, I really don't care what sort of crap you had for dinner.

  17. I want one for the iPad... on Facebook May Dislike the Social Fixer Extension, but Many Users Love It (Video) · · Score: 1

    I'd like this feature, but I pretty much always access FB from my iPad. I do have a 24/7 Linux box running at home that could host a filtering proxy server tho. If anyone has suggestions for one of those that'd be way better than a firefox plugin...

  18. Apple can safely blow that off... on Nokia Design Guru Urges Apple To End Cable Chaos · · Score: 1

    What are they going to do, ban the import of new iPhones? That'll go over real well...

  19. Micro USB is obsolete. on Nokia Design Guru Urges Apple To End Cable Chaos · · Score: 1

    As soon as someone tries to impose a "standard" like this, it's a sure sign that it's obsolete. It must be time for pico-USB at least. The very idea that a hardware manufacturer should be limited by such things is laughable, any company that consiously limits itself in such a way is ripe for the picking by its competitors.

    "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.".-- A. S. Tanenbaum

  20. Re:Not necessarily terrible on HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You · · Score: 1

    Re: productive and nothing else. -- and if they can't tell, it's because they're incompetent.

  21. Re:Not necessarily terrible on HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You · · Score: 1

    If you know how to manage, telecommuting is not a problem. I found I worked a lot harder after becoming full time telecommuter about 6 years ago. In the office, there was some sense of, "they're paying us just to be here". At home, it's clear they're paying you to be productive and nothing else.

  22. Counterproductive... on HP CEO Meg Whitman To Employees: No More Telecommuting For You · · Score: 1

    Well, they just removed a big reason for employees to NOT be looking for another job. Now, if they want to downsize, that's one thing but this way what you get is downsizing via exodus of your best employees. On the other hand, what you end up left with is all of the most desperate employees which you can then proceed to abuse with impunity. But that kind of work atmosphere is why Steve Ballmer is out of a job. Hopefully there's a chair-throwing range nearby that Meg can use to get up to speed...

  23. Edmund Kean on What Are the Genuinely Useful Ideas In Programming? · · Score: 1

    "Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard."

  24. Re: Cockroach rights? on Cyborg Cockroach Sparks Ethics Debate · · Score: 1

    You're probably right, but it's unfortunate that those who aren't represented by either the Rs or Ds seem content to remain relatively quiet about it.

  25. Re:Missing the reality of what kids do to insects on Cyborg Cockroach Sparks Ethics Debate · · Score: 1

    Hey, if it's ok to torture suspected terrorists, cockroaches must be fair game...