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User: davecb

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  1. Re:Also look at who cancelled it on Canada's Ontario Government Ends Basic Income Project (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 1

    The Ford brothers have been pushing that for years, on the grounds that reducing the number would work better. The Ontario government currently has 124 members, so it follows that Mr Ford II will consider it unmanageable (;-))

    Joking aside, my councilor, John Filion, has argued that we need a committee that only concerns itself with city-wide issues, like the old Metro Toronto council. Trying to do everything in "the committee of the whole" is a recipe for parochialism.

    And yes, that's another way of saying "less people", just a different way than the Fords proposed.

  2. Also look at who cancelled it on Canada's Ontario Government Ends Basic Income Project (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 2

    This was shut down by Mr Ford II, who is also making elected jobs appointed and rewriting city charters to dictate what they are to do.

    His late brother was the mayor of Toronto, and was the most recent precursor to your Mr. Trump. This Mr Ford arguably thinks messers Trump and Putin are heroes.

  3. Re:SOP -- and despite huge efforts to do it right on Inspector General Says NSA Still Hasn't Implemented Its Post-Snowden Internal Security Measures (techdirt.com) · · Score: 1

    The US security services and armed forces did a huge, expensive effort to provide military-grade confidentiality years ago, implemented on Multics, and later on Solaris and HP-UX. More recently, on Linux. Thy even had an example of the 'net, Dockmaster.MIL

    They they decided not to use it, because it took a week course to learn how to administer a Trusted Solaris system.

    Too much work; didn't do.

  4. Re:Sorry, but I have to say it on Can Hoover Dam Become a Giant $3B Battery? (cleantechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    Serious investment, but low operating costs(;-))

    Brazil has used it for years, here's an IEEE story on the current status https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do...

    Marmora has a proposal for the same in Ontario, https://marmoraandlake.ca/pump...

  5. Seriously? Treat it as safety-critical on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Handle Hardware That Never Gets Software Updates? (hpe.com) · · Score: 2

    Mechanical systems that keep, for example, trains from running into one another by tripping their brakes into full on, are well-understood. I took a course on doing the same thing in mixed hardware-software systems, so it's eminently possible.

    The gotcha is you have to keep it really simple and run a validator like spin on it's protocol.

    Most developers can do the spin part, but KISS? Distinctly less likely (;-))

  6. This addresses the existing "na na na" problem on Google is Building 'Virtual Agents' To Handle Call Centers' Grunt Work (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    Google has low profit margins, but many sales (eg, ads), This makes it suicidally expensive to use humans at ~ $15.00/hr to address a problem that arose out of a 3-cent sale. So they don't let you call them.

    I'll happily talk to an AI if they can solve my problem (;-))

  7. FBI vs the NSA and Armed Forces on FBI Director: Without Compromise on Encryption, Legislation May Be the 'Remedy' (cyberscoop.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spies and soldiers (especially on the spy side) need as good or better security than I need to talk to my bank. The CIA, military and (Canadian) CSE know it's a trade-off. The FBI and RCMP pitch it as a trivial question with an obvious answer.

    For every hard problem there is always one clear, obvious and simple answer.. and it's wrong .

  8. Re:In a previous life we wanted 3% on Digital Ads Are Starting To Feel Psychic (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    But I get 10x as many people, so it might well average out.

  9. Re:In a previous life we wanted 3% on Digital Ads Are Starting To Feel Psychic (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure we don't have so many more appearances of the ad to completely drown out the additional advertisers, or that additional advertisers have an effect on (in modern terms) click-through after someone read an ad.

  10. In a previous life we wanted 3% on Digital Ads Are Starting To Feel Psychic (theoutline.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These days, 1% is good

    In a previous life (Xanaro), we were doing bound-in ads in a print pub, and knew we would have succeeded sy a 3% response rate.

    These days, advertisers struggle for 1%, which means they're doing something rather badly

  11. It's a variant of "small office telepathy" on Digital Ads Are Starting To Feel Psychic (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    You get really bizzare effects when people become aware of random facts about one another. I used to work in a small company in a small room, and could jump in any time it was helpful. We fixes some subtle bugs that way. Alas, this doesn't work for larger incarnations, even of the same company. Some kind of communications hierarchy is needed.

    Now, if I were communicating with an AI (or just artificially stupid) agent of the advertiser, we might have a more useful discussion. The classic one might be "I just bought a Subaru, don't tell me about why I want an Outback, talk to me about trailer hitches for the Outback".

    --dave

  12. That was the glow-in-the-darek, go as fast as possible, not-parallel-enough Intel-like kludge. if you want a good SPARC, look at the T5. The T5 was small, cool, heavily parallel and utterly not what Oracle wanted (;-))

  13. Re:BMI's explanation on The EU's Controversial Copyright Law Has Been Rejected -- For Now (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    The emphasis may well be toward explaining how it affects money in "the technology sector." rather than benefits to actual humans.

  14. Re: obvious, but only in retrospect on Facebook Acknowledges It Shared User Data With Dozens of Companies (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Sure, citation?

  15. obvious, but only in retrospect on Facebook Acknowledges It Shared User Data With Dozens of Companies (cnet.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That wasn't the expectation when it started: it was an on-line version of the college yearbook, run on a shoestring. It was named after the Harvard student directory, thus the name.

    It grew, and added universities first, funding itself privately and then via venture capital, and only then business pages, making it a recruiting supplier (like linkedin) and then an advertiser. Eventually it added high schools, and finally anyone.

    It's customers were the "slowly boiled frogs" of the fable: only now is it obvious that facebook became a spy service at some time in the past.

  16. Don't put words in Linus' mouth on Red Hat Changes Its Open-Source Licensing Rules (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    He might well agree with RH: do ask him if he approves of the clause, and if he'd recommend to other Linux contributors. I'm sure he'll tell you if he disapproves (;-))

  17. The current idea is... on Supreme Court Backs Award of Overseas Patent Damages (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    If you do business with someone in Londinium, you're subject to the laws which the city of London, England, had agreed are common with other cities on the Hanseatic League. The league has expanded somewhat over time, and includes pretty much everyone who agrees with the Rule of Law. Outlaw states like North Korea, somewhat less so.

  18. It's a plan to change the meaning of "unlimited" on Verizon's New Phone Plan Proves It Has No Idea What 'Unlimited' Actually Means (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". Humpty Dumpty's law is a linguistic principle stating that someone can can make words mean whatever they want... "which is to be master-that's all."

  19. Re:And this is a "problem" because ... on Most Organizations Are Not Fully Embracing DevOps (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    I was actually commenting that even something clunky like sarbanes-oxley proposed something sane like dev/ops (:-)) Mostly because they are both based on some underlying good ideas like a two-person rule.

  20. Re:And this is a "problem" because ... on Most Organizations Are Not Fully Embracing DevOps (betanews.com) · · Score: 2

    That's some accounting/board/financials regulation. Where did you find the text related to operational roles outside of financials?

    I don't: my company deals directly in money, so financials are inseparable from what gets pushed. If you're doing software that doesn't involve money, you aren't required to use the two-person rule. You may wish to in any case, just as good practice, the same as doing PRs with reviewers is good practice.

  21. Re:And this is a "problem" because ... on Most Organizations Are Not Fully Embracing DevOps (betanews.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... a developer should be modifying production code?

    Sarbanes-Oxley says you need two people to do a production push. One is dev, one is ops. The cooperation is called dev/ops. Whooda thunkit?

  22. Someone doesn't understand engineering on Most Organizations Are Not Fully Embracing DevOps (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    I build the train, I drive the train. Occasionally it breaks and I fix the train.

  23. Re:Two problems here on YouTube Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringing Videos, Court Rules (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1
    I think that's part of a defense in depth. As an author, if I needed to address infringement, I would want multiple, interacting efforts.
    1. o One is to address commercial spying by cutting off the income stream.
    2. o Another is to address the recognition problem with some kind of technical brilliance (eg, get Andrew Trigell of rsync and Samba fame to apply the rolling checksum algorithm to recognizing common runs of data).
    3. o Yet another is to turn the copying into a useful form of advertising (done with the Samba book, less easy for movies)
    4. o and as many other approaches as you can invent.

    None alone is sufficient, but together they grind down the infringers by attrition.

  24. Re:Two problems here on YouTube Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringing Videos, Court Rules (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    Agreed: YT is different from a stock exchange in that way. If I were the owner, though, I would probably prefer to maximize my theatre income rather than pick up a bit of income from ads. I would definitely prefer to starve the person who posted it, and might not mind YT seizing the ad revenue if that helped starve the bad guy!

  25. Re:Two problems here on YouTube Can Be Liable For Copyright Infringing Videos, Court Rules (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    It's very applicable to people making money off ads. If you break the rules AND there is jurisprudence behind the rules, You Tube can lawfully withhold or seize payments you would ordinarily receive.