Slashdot Mirror


User: rtb61

rtb61's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
12,589
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 12,589

  1. Re:Steering? on How To Beat Online Price Discrimination · · Score: 1

    It depends upon how the price is presented. If the price presented is as being 'the price of the product' as in the price to all customers or the price of the product to that person. Obviously if you are not declaring that the price is not the product price to all customers but specific price to that person, that you are fraudulently misrepresenting the nature of that price and how it was achieved.

    The big lesson here, is when it is so easy to get a price on the internet don't get just one but get at least three from similarly reliable providers. Size of company is of course no measure of reliability as the modern trend of throwing as many lawyers as needed at unhappy customers to try to silence them as well as spending huge amounts on deceitful advertising to try drown out complaints that get past the lawyers, is now normal business tactic, ahh, the benefits of deregulation, 'NOT'.

  2. Re:What is critical thinking? on Employers Worried About Critical Thinking Skills · · Score: 1

    So simply put critical thinking is bureaucratic thinking, the reasoned provable justification for decisions made as opposed to psychopathic thinking, simply making high risk decisions based upon personal advantage and how readily blame for failure can be shifted to someone else.

  3. Re:We rate the groups here on Secretive Funding Fuels Ongoing Net Neutrality Astroturfing Controversy · · Score: 2

    Here's how to attack true grass roots campaigns, make a PR=B$ claim about funding transparency ie how can you have funding transparency with a true grass roots campaign when there is no group funding, the hundreds of thousands of individuals are independent from each other beyond seeking the same outcome. The reality is net neutrality suits every other business other major ISPs looking to become internet 'Publishers', attempting to block all content distribution that does not pay them a significant percentage of the income derived from that content. There are also the real problems of securing content to make sure the major ISPs can not simply onsell private information or trade secrets contained in digital communications. Every CTO should be passing onto to management the real problems with the loss of net neutrality and ensuring those concerns are passed onto their lobbyists to their politicians.

  4. Re:Why so high? on Passwords: Too Much and Not Enough · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then do the simpler thing and ensure the password file is securely protected and add some real time in the password entry. A simple countdown timer to slow password entry down and increasing the time each a wrong guess is made, say simply doubling of the wait time between entries ie 1 second, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and so it goes, with a reminder to the user of the implication of too many bad guesses. Throw in a email warning to the user when say three incorrect password attempts are made in a row. Also association IP addresses with user name passwords not locked so much as for when too many bad guesses occur as an additional flag. To go really secure put the passwords on a separate simple small cheap box and all that box does is encrypt, decrypt and test passwords and user names, nothing more. That is the only communications the box will accept and the only information the box will provide is pass or fail on that test.

    The big security advantage in switching from boxes that do everything to appliances only, is that those appliances can be hardware and software configured to be able to 'ONLY' do what they have been designed to do. You make them unhackable by simply making sure they can not carry out the required functions needed to carry out the attack, they are locked into only carrying out their designed algorithms and require a specific hardware and software rebuild to do anything more. This can be done very cheaply with things a password checker. Flexibility in technology leads to a whole lot of security problems ie the system ends up doing things the user never intended.

  5. Re:Rather... on Will Fiber-To-the-Home Create a New Digital Divide? · · Score: 1

    It will introduce new regional competitive divides. Countries with corrupt governments feeding the existing mass media and telecoms at the expense of the rest of the population as those countries fall behind creatively and technologically. A few years of corruption will results in decades of trying to catch up. Australia is a prime example of the most extreme corruption where one government instituted a modern network build only to have the effort crippled and dismantled by the next government brought into power by blatantly biased mass media, chief off which as Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp a family name that will go down in history for betraying Australia's future to feed their own greed.

  6. Re:Better than a wtch on Google Leads $542m Funding Round For Augmented Reality Wearables Company · · Score: 1

    A bit of careful thought would make clear why neither concept as mentioned work all that well in the application you implied, their inherent design fails that particular application. Quick knee jerk thinking make it seems like they might work but careful consideration of the problems inherent in them should make it clear why those solutions fail.

  7. Re:All the movies had women in business on NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders · · Score: 1

    You have to remember those kind of brain chemical driven decisions are not the decisions of today but the decisions crafted since birth. Those brain chemicals taught you and guided your actions with a simple reward punishment system and you learned associative behaviour accordingly. Now you don't even think about those kind of decisions, why you make them, you just do it.

  8. Re:Nothing says luxury... on Tesla Teardown Reveals Driver-facing Electronics Built By iPhone 6 Suppliers · · Score: 1

    A nomadic tribe comes across a hot spring and bathes in it's waters, the whole tribe shares in this experience, now that's a luxury for the whole tribe. The same with any other special treats upon their nomadic routes, shared treats, not psychopathically exclusive treats.

  9. Re:Isaac Asimov never heard on Isaac Asimov: How Do People Get New Ideas? · · Score: 1

    So how creative was the witch doctor shaman, creative enough to encompass the psychology of placebo treatments to promote recovery in conjunction with herbal remedies. Now how early did that occur in the social evolution of humanity?

  10. Re:Politics on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 1

    Yet the Republicans always rabbit on about how Socialists are a threat to freedom and independence?

  11. Re:All the movies had women in business on NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders · · Score: 1

    Most likely, you just don't like withdrawals and associate that with dealing with people. Not all the choices you make are the choices you actually make but are simply your chemically driven attempts to stay in the 'zone'. Kind of takes away from that whole delusion of being a oh so special human spiritual vessel but of course that delusion is also fed by brain chemicals, weird huh.

  12. Re:Recognition on 'Microsoft Lumia' Will Replace the Nokia Brand · · Score: 1

    So let me guess, you also had a part in the 'Zune' product name or how about 'Live' search or 'Bing' for 'B'allmer. There were two distinct brands M$ and MSN, one over time developed a really bad name and the other was for some insane reason purposefully weakened down and broken up. The real problem is they still refuse to break up the company into two distinct and completely separate units and let them go their own way, allowing the more creative MSN to further define it's own unique brand. Rather than spending billions weakening MSN, to create other short lived failed brands, a whole goofy assed trail of them. Sounds like Marketing 101 has been solidly targeted at the M$ management team and they have been sucked in time and time again by their marketing consultants to spend up big on those marketing consultants. You always have to be careful who those Marketing 101 skills are actually being targeted at and why.

  13. Re:Now I'm even happier I cancelled Netflix. on Your Online TV Watching Can Now Be Tracked Across Devices · · Score: 1

    To think that whole ads targeted at people is just a great big old scam because it targets what people wanted not what people want ie past tense versus future tense. Ads targeted at content is far more logical however it is far more expensive to provide and means less profits for the advertising provider. Hence the whole PR=B$ scam to convince those buying advertising that targeted ads works and to obscure the reality that is just pisses people off as over time it becomes more noticeably invasive tracking you recent past desires. How truly evil is advertising becoming when it's intent to manipulate your choices against your own interests is becoming so blatant, we now expect lies as the norm in advertising.

  14. Re:Not always about the money... on Cell Transplant Allows Paralyzed Man To Walk · · Score: 1

    Well yeah, more sick people means more profits for private for profit health industry and the supporting private for profit health insurance industry. So it is all about treat the symptoms not cure the illness what kind of communist are you ;)?

    Psychopaths rule, unfortunately I am not joking about that :(!

  15. Re:All the movies had women in business on NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders · · Score: 2

    That likely relates to your own psychological profile and your perceptions of time, rather than the actual flow of time. The times when you are coding and are in the 'zone' when the flow of tasty brain chemicals is just right, well, that time just flows on by without you even really noticing it all that much. Of course when you are out of your zone when that flow of tasty brain chemicals dries up and just like any other drug addict you go into withdrawals, well, that time drags on by, your perception of it far exceeds the reality of it.

    So it is a matter of selecting the job and the company that best suits your psychological profile, that profile when met, allows for the highest flow of tasty brain chemicals and keeps you from going into withdrawals. By the way those tasty brain chemicals I am talking about are naturally produced ones and not externally sourced intoxicants.

    Of course for other people, the opposite could hold true, where interactive social activity promotes the flow of tasty brain chemicals and being isolated in front of a computer screen cuts them off and pushes them into withdrawals. For humanity evolutionary speaking in the distant past, this likely reflects the difference between being a hunter in a hostile environment when communications are kept to a minimum and silent in the zone stalking is the rule versus the sustained social interaction in the village spent gathering and processing the results of that gathering.

    Over time the changes in human 'social' evolution the main drive in our evolution, this difference in activity alters and so the psychological difference between the sexes alters. Baring of course the currently still enforced difference of pregnancy and the altered social roles brought about by that difference. This is in addition to 'specialisation' inherent within the human species, allowing different roles to be fulfilled by persons of different biological psychological social make up, those most genetically suited to specific roles will fulfil them the most effectively and the society that most effectively incorporates that specialisation will evolve most effectively. Capitalism of course creates a huge psychopathic distortion where different roles are rewarded differently (greed vs need) far, far out of proportion to their benefit to that society, holding and trapping people in roles they are unsuited to in order to sustain a perceived lifestyle. In fact being a lying cheating douche bag preying upon the society they are a part of is rewarded the highest under psychopathic capitalism. Of course evolution occurs across thousands of millennia and short term distortions across centuries are really neither here nor there, apart from of course species extinction which can occur in a very dramatically short time indeed.

  16. Re:Better than a wtch on Google Leads $542m Funding Round For Augmented Reality Wearables Company · · Score: 2

    The limits in augmented reality wearable technology are processing power, weight,comfort and variable focus. Something as simple as whether you can actually see reality directly through the display or whether reality needs to be captured first, processed and redisplayed with the augmentation added to it. If you can see through the display is greatly simplifies processing requirements, just requiring a portion of the wearable display to block light at the appropriate focal point and display an alternate image. This reduces the potential for far greater visual lag, something we already deal with to a degree.

    Variable focus of the display is trickier as that requires distortion of the display field to cause the eye to shift focus upon various elements within the display.

    So logical method would be to arrange a grid of mirrors within a curved array and either allow the normal visual field to pass or block it and reflect an alternate light source at that point. That light being delivered via, say fibre optics and light channels formed by the curved array. Distortions if the array allow for variations of focus, with the base level for the array being initially set for the specific user. Tricks with polarisation can also be used to achieve this. Still the big choice is whether to capture the environment process it and alter it or just alter a transparent display.

    There is a safety factor, altering a transparent display which fails to clear is safer than altering a processed image which of course fails to no visual input and that time required to realise the loss of image is extended, reach up and take off the glasses in conjunction with the loss of possibly needed information being provided by the augmented display.

  17. Re:Politics on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Quite simple, what happens reflects the nature of a privatised for profit system. They do lip service to government regulations but if it is more profitable to ignore the rules then the cost of the penalties, regardless of the outcome, then private for profit entities will ignore the rules. When it comes to high risk medical services putting it in the hands of private for profit capitalists based upon the reality of the last century of private for profit entities, is just plain nuts, especially where those private for profit entities would actually generate more profits by failure than by success ie the spread of an infectious disease for them to treat.

  18. Re:Isaac Asimov never heard on Isaac Asimov: How Do People Get New Ideas? · · Score: 1

    A failure to understand humanity. All things have their place in the social cooperative effort that is humanity. Intelligence, common sense and creativity. Creativity comes from people willing to do nothing more than spending a great deal of time sitting and thinking, why because due to genetics their brains directly reward them with desirably brain chemicals for sitting and thinking. However those creative people do need the support of the rest of human society to spend so much time sitting and thinking but that is the nature of homo sapien, they do not do it alone, they do not survive alone, they do not evolve alone. They do it together and they do not do it together by being the same but by being slightly different and being able to specialise within human society and fulfil all the roles required to produce an ever developing and evolving human social species.

  19. Re:The essence of enterprise on Cisco Exec: Turnover In Engineering No Problem · · Score: 1

    You do understand the difference between the evolution of a social species versus a species that survives alone. As a social species we evolve 'togethor' and go extinct 'togethor', it is psychopathic to 'write' down that we in any way do it alone. Psychopaths and narcissists only see themselves, it is the nature of their genetic defect, it is normal to see and fully appreciate we do it all together, just as I write and others read.

  20. Re:how pretty on More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Technically, the most accurate description for a usable operating system and interface, is as invisible as possible, whilst allowing the user to, configure the system, search for files and launch applications. In addition rather than pointless prettiness the operating system and graphical user interface should incorporate applications in the base package that the bulk of people use, so office suite (spread sheet, word processor, simple relational database and, vector drawing tool), calendering application, email and, web browser for example.

  21. Re:'Bout time on 32 Cities Want To Challenge Big Telecom, Build Their Own Gigabit Networks · · Score: 1

    Private industries continual shift of the service goal posts. Originally government, booked to the hour, sometimes a little early or late and everyone complained. Private industry takes over, booked to within two hours, people complained louder. That soon changed booked morning or afternoon and people complained even louder. Then it went to booked for sometime on a day, a bit of the old, ' screw you', to the complainers and then spend up big on advertising saying how great service is, so much better than that nasty old government service.

  22. Re:Usury turns Free Markets into Capitalism on Bill Gates: Piketty's Attack on Income Inequality Is Right · · Score: 1

    Cooperation is very easy to achieve, simply remove the genetic defects from society, those that lack an autonomic empathic response and are unable to develop properly socially (narcissist) and those that in addition to that have an very shallow emotional base (psychopaths). Capitalism is basically a social construct of paychopaths, a system by which a minority may parasitically pray upon the majority to feed the insatiable greed, lusts and egos of that psychopathic minority. They basically corrupt the rest of human society and if there numbers as a percentage rise to high trigger the self consuming collapse of that society. There are now infallible tests to discover psychopaths which they can not cheat. So , yes, a truly cooperative society is within reach, just as it was with rule by tribal elders so it will be again by true democratic by mature socially genetically sound adults.

  23. Re:how do SSD's compare to HD's? on iFixit Tears Apart Apple's Shiny New Retina iMac · · Score: 1

    Truth is before going on about systems with 4K or 5K or any other K display, first and foremost is not how they look when consuming content but how well they work when creating content, now that's the slashdot viewpoint. What it looks like when playing content you buy, excluding all forms of interactive content requiring real processing power, is for the TV guide. Apple has long since hidden it's lack of real processing capability to pump up its profit margins behind a masquerade of pretty pictures and marketing.

  24. Re:Tit for tat on Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores · · Score: 1

    Reality is by far the majority of products in the modern market place driven largely by 'exclusivity' compete on PR=B$(lies for profit) and idiot pseudo celebrity endorsement (liars for profit) and of course contaminating and corrupting every internet review web site they can. This of course because in the face of reality, the majority would mock the crap out of the rich idiots buying 'exclusivity' like it means something beyond being a poseur douche.

  25. Re:The essence of enterprise on Cisco Exec: Turnover In Engineering No Problem · · Score: 2

    You are just repeating the same stupidity over and over again, as if that idiot right ideology actually means something. Competition just creates failure in the majority, the winners keep their secrets but it does not matter, inevitably as history has proven they 'ALL' in turn fail, so instead of cooperation you have repeated endless failure.

    OHH AHH 'idealised' cooperation, how moronic can you be, without 'idealised' cooperation we would be naked animals screaming in the darkness, which is exactly what you end up with a population of psychopaths, dog eat dog competition, or more accurately rabid dog eat rabid dog because smart dogs actually managed 'idealised' cooperation.

    What way works best, hmm, established measurement metrics the report productivity, safety, resource usage and pollution minimisation. Then simply model and simulate new methods that smart people come up and where they show promise try them out in limited trials and where success is indicated apply them across the wider market. Not idiot psychopaths who have no idea other than 'mwah haha' lets have competition and management by failure where management can take credit for the successes and blame everyone else for the by far majority repeated failures, because in reality psychopathic management has no idea what they are doing, which is basically the current model for corporate management.

    One could just imagine how you would apply you stupid competition model in pharmaceutical applications. Just administer all and every substance in the population and them when people survive and you cure the problem you have a winner, as for the loses 'er' 'um' the ones that survive can learn from the winners.

    Competition is management by failure because that is the majority outcome and success is the minority 'temporary' outcome because success inevitably also leads to failure.