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User: Deep+Esophagus

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  1. Re:humanity on EVE Online CSM and Diplomat Killed in Libyan Consulate Attacks · · Score: 1

    If that's humanity, where do I apply for a transfer to another species?

  2. Re:Scams on Inside a Ransomware Money Machine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's why the thought that 1 to 3 percent of the targets are falling for this makes me weep for the collective intelligence of the human race.

  3. Re:High school level programming. on Ask Slashdot: How Many of You Actually Use Math? · · Score: 1

    OK, someone finally hit on an issue that I face every day in my job. I work on a web-based application so my job is a mix of client-facing HTML/JavaScript and backend vb.net / SQL. At best I'm mathematically middleweight -- I know my way, albeit clumsily, around trig and algebra but my brain freezes up at the first mention of integrals and derivatives; calculus is completely alien to me.

    Frequently, optimizing those SQL queries to ensure the user's page doesn't get a script timeout error makes a lot of difference. How would a better handle on math beyond the high school level help me find a more efficient SQL query? This is genuine curiosity, not a cloaked setup for arguing the point. I always assumed when we hit delays it was because the servers were overloaded (we have thousands of customers) or because there's just no way to speed up a query that returns 50,000 records.

  4. Re:Is this a journal entry? on IT Support Pro Tells Why He Hates Live Chat · · Score: 1, Funny

    Webcam support? Are you insane? Never mind worrying about what the guy working out of his mom's basement in Bangladesh is wearing (or not); *I* don't want to have to close my bathrobe just to call tech support!

  5. Re:Opposite experience on IT Support Pro Tells Why He Hates Live Chat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You'd think that the login system would eliminate the initial exchange of information, but in my experience with tech support that's rarely the case. Put in my name, my product info, a brief summary of the problem, and invariably it's "Hello, my name is Mary. How can I help you today?" Well, "Mary", you could help me by reading the information I just took five minutes to look up and type into the login page before I got here.

  6. Re:Opposite experience on IT Support Pro Tells Why He Hates Live Chat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's exactly why my daughter prefers chat/email over phone support. She's a CSR for a retailer, not IT, but the process is similar. Get the relevant customer info, get the question, look up the answer, lather, rinse, repeat. And yes, she has hotkeys out the wazoo for the routine responses.

    She says with chat, she can keep 4 or 5 conversations going at once -- sometimes in different languages, thanks to her college Spanish and Google Translate -- and close out far more calls than her peers.

    The other advantage from her point of view is, the online CSRs aren't required to upsell like they have to on the phone. "Would you like a nice parka to go with those skis?" She really hates that.

  7. Re:The first rule of controlling a market... on Author Claims Apple Won't Carry Her ebook Because It Mentions Amazon · · Score: 1, Informative

    How on earth is this censorship, or controlling a market? Unless Apple can stop her from distributing her book in any form in any marketplace, all they've done is stop somebody from going into Walmart and putting up "Shop at K-Mart" signs.

    People keep throwing around the word "censorship" like they think they know what it means, but it's obvious they don't. Censorship is when the government restricts your speech. Even if every single one of her claims is true, she is not being censored.

    Disclaimer:I am most certainly not an Apple fanboy; I have loathed Apple ever since Woz left. I think they have horrific business practices, terrible design, and don't get me started about proprietary-everything with no user servicable parts inside. Despite all that, I think this is a non-story.

  8. Re:Not me! on The Nation Is Losing Its Toolbox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see why it took you 6 more weeks of sleeping outside to get the handrail installed and porch light fixed? A handrail is a couple hours of work, even in concrete. Couldn't you just fix them and schedule a followup inspection?

    Now that I think about it, it was more like 3 weeks but to answer your question it was because the contractors who did the initial work had squeezed us in between larger jobs and moved on to their next job in another state as soon as they got their truck unloaded, and everybody else within a hundred miles (it's a rural area in Wyoming) was booked months in advance. Once the original contractor was able to send somebody back to do the handrail, we had to wait for the inspector to come back out for the followup inspection.

    Your wife is disabled, so you should understand the need for hand railings on stairs. Even if they are OUTSIDE the house, since presumably they may be used for emergency egress. If the porch light was installed as part of the permitted work, then I can understand why they rejected it -- a loose light can be a shock hazard. If it wasn't part of the permitted work, then the inspector was being petty and should have just pointed it out without writing it up. But if it was done under the permit and he gave his signoff and your wife electrocuted herself while changing the light bulb, it's his head on the line.

    She will also never, ever be able to use those stairs under any circumstances. But that's beside the point. I'm saying it's intrusive and counterproductive to deny occupancy of our bedroom because of an outside handrail. Yes, all the things you cite are potential hazards and it's quite conceivable that some poorly placed item or loose fixture could someday hurt me. Our choice of placement of chairs and the exercise bicycle in the living room are tripping hazards (ask me how I know). The stupid cat who parks herself right in front of my office door in the unlit hallway at night before I go back to the bedroom is a safety hazard who is, at this point, lucky to be alive and that only because she made it out of reach before I could find an axe.

    But all of that is my problem. If I get hurt, or somebody decides to sue me because they got hurt, on my own property due to decisions I made; if a future buyer refuses to make an offer until I change the layout of the stairs, I bear the consequences of my actions. I don't need every minuscule aspect of my life safety inspected, protective helmeted, or compliance regulated. I shouldn't have to stop by my building office and speak to inspector to manage my property to my specifications. If they want to offer advice as to what they think is the best way to approach things, I think that's great and I'll seek out such advice and take it into considerations; making me legally bound to adhere to every jot and tittle of that advice goes beyond helping me make my home safe and becomes an unreasonable intrusion into my private life.

  9. Re:Clean Up on Ask Slashdot: Value of Website Design Tools vs. Hand Coding? · · Score: 1

    Sure, using a CMS is fantastic... if you want your content to look exactly like the content of everybody else who uses the same CMS. I know, I know... "But mine is unique! I have a totally different font and background wallpaper! And I put my menus on the RIGHT side instead of on the left! And I can choose one, two, or even THREE columns in my layout!"

    No, thanks. I'll take the time to do it right, with no unreadable / unmaintainable garbage to wade through when I have to make changes and complete control over every byte that goes into or out of my site. The times I've used Joomla or Wordpress took me longer to configure the design to my specifications than it would have to just do it all in HTML to begin with. It was like trying to... perform a delicate, intricate task with some obviously unsuitable oversized tool.

    Sorry, my analogy engine seems to be broken again. I'll have it back up again as fast as... something that occurs surprisingly quickly.

  10. Re:Not me! on The Nation Is Losing Its Toolbox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm 30, I'll rebuild computers, and wire a house.

    Wire a house? Right this way, citizen. You have the right to remain silent...

    A few years back the county commissioners in our area voted to apply city building codes to construction anywhere in the county. Not only do you need permits out the wazoo if you so much as want to bang two rocks together, but the odds that you'll actually pass the inspection the first time around if you're not on the commission or screwing somebody who is on the commission are somewhere between jack and squat.

    We had a basement foundation put in for a modular house and jumped through all their hoops; when the inspector came out we failed the inspection because the front porch light was loose and there was no handrail on the concrete stairs leading to the basement OUTSIDE the house. Because of that -- and that alone -- we were not permitted to occupy our own house on our own property. Apparently he felt it was safer for my handicapped wife, my dog, and me to live for six weeks in a leaky motor home in our driveway with no running water in below-zero winter than to sleep in beds in our heated house because of that porch light and handrail.

    Do I sound just ever so slightly bitter? Six months later we're going through the same Kafka nightmare trying to be allowed permission to use the interior stairs we had installed. Our builder submitted plans to the commission, those plans were approved, and still the jackass tyrants wanted us to rip out the stairs and install them in a different place because the treads were 1/2" narrower than his arbitrary building code prescribes. No, I'm not saying arbitrary because I'm angry; I'm saying arbitrary because they didn't have a problem with stair tread width five years ago before adopting those building codes, and the width they decided on isn't a standard for anyone, anywhere -- building codes other places recommend different widths, so there's nothing magically safe about the width he wants.

    This time around, we do have a friend-of-a-friend of one of the commissioners so we were at least able to get the stairs themselves approved. But we still can't get final acceptance of the construction until we rip out the lighting we put on the stairs ("you might bump your head on the bulb if you grow to 7 feet tall"), put up safety mesh over a window at the foot of the stairs ("if you're drunk and you trip going downstairs, you might break the glass and cut yourself"), and replace a steel beam we had to remove in the first place because it really was too low to go under without smacking into it.

    So why bother learning how to use tools? I'll never be allowed to use them anyway; it's for my own good that I leave all construction to licensed professionals.

  11. Re:Context on Gartner Analyst Retracts "Windows 8 Is Bad" Claim · · Score: 1

    People always took Ralph Nader's statement out of context too. When he said "Unsafe at any speed", he didn't mean that all cars were unsafe; he only meant they were unsafe at any speed over 5 miles an hour. Outside of that, they're perfectly safe.

  12. Re:Obligatory on Can Anyone Catch Khan Academy? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Missed opportunity: Should have titled this article "Catch Me If You Khan".

  13. Re:Willing to bet.. on 12 Dead, 50 Injured at The Dark Knight Rises Showing In Colorado · · Score: 3, Informative

    Right, because obeying the law was obviously his first concern.

  14. Re:Simple is not ugly. on Why Is Wikipedia So Ugly? · · Score: 1

    I lost interest when the author suggested Wikipedia could learn something about a usable UI from Facebook. Facebook, the site that periodically incurs user wrath by implementing random, annoying changes to their UI? Right, tell me another.

  15. Re:gateway on Study Finds Alcohol, Not Marijuana, Is the Biggest Gateway Drug For Teens · · Score: 3, Informative

    Bearing in mind that I *agree* with decriminalizing marijuana, you apparently don't understand how studies like this work. If 10% of people who use Substance A end up with Problem X but 80% of people who use Substance B end up with Problem X, there's reason to suggest a link. Yes, correlation is not causation and those aren't actual statistics; I'm speaking hypothetically here. My point is they didn't just randomly pick two events and abitrarily decide they are connected.

    They could still be totally wrong, of course, but that's what they do the studies to find out.

  16. Additional story tag on Study Finds Alcohol, Not Marijuana, Is the Biggest Gateway Drug For Teens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This should be tagged #noshitsherlock. Seriously, the only reason pot is demonized is because the tobacco and booze industries own too many politicians (and vice-versa).

  17. Re:They have no intention of really doing anything on FTC To Revisit Robocall Menace · · Score: 2

    Even the genuine political calls are scams disguised as polls. "Hi, this is a totally unbiased voter survey conducted by an independent research company. If you found out that Candidate A rapes puppies and Candidate B spends 25 hours a day working unpaid for charities, would that affect your voting preferences?"

    And of course even the retailers get around the call restrictions by using these bogus surveys to push their products. "By answering this market survey, you can make sure retailers know what you like so they can improve their services. Now, previous surveys showed that 11 out of 10 housewives prefer new Oomph! detergent over the major competitors that may or may not have baby seal meat and maggots in them. Would you say you agree strongly, agree very strongly, or agree more than words can describe?"

    Oh, and my personal favorite: fraudulent law enforcement charities that imply without actually saying so that your contribution will make cops like you better and give you a break when they see that decal on your windshield. I emailed the sheriff in my county that these clowns claimed to represent and he assured me he had never heard of them; shortly thereafter a notice went up on the department's website making it clear they did not support or approve of the solicitation from the whatever-it-was Deputy Association.

    If I taught my two twentysomethings nothing else useful when we were homeschooling, it was never to believe anything that anybody ever said to them. Unfortunately I didn't think to save that lesson for last, so I was unable to teach them anything else afterwards.

  18. Re:It's like this. on Does Grammar Matter Anymore? · · Score: 1

    The phrase you're looking for here is "code-switching". For people who are members of multiple unrelated social groups, using the language/dialect/idioms of one group in another context can be a source of merriment... or get you branded as an idiot outsider. The successful communicator, such as your hypothetical sales person above, knows when to switch among various langauge contexts.

    Of course, TFA was about written communication, and I can't think of a single instance where I have exchanged any kind of printed/electronic email with anyone who didn't care about proper spelling and grammar. A few of my younger friends abandon all pretense of readability in text messages and Facebook posts, but... who cares?

  19. Re:Standard Scientology practice on Church of Scientology Enlisting Followers In Censorship · · Score: 1

    OK, again I ask: Where do you see references to being sold into slavery for not paying a tithe? C'mon, just one reference shouldn't be too hard.

    Nor does separation of church and state have anything to do with it. Martin Luther decried abuses of power within the church, and their thinly-veiled extortion ("indulgences") to amass profits, long before the US constitution was written. All you've discovered is that some people have (and sure, still do) hidden their corruption behind a cloak of religion. There always have been, and always will be, people who use the church for personal gain and people who use it as they believe their holy book (not limiting this to one particular flavor) tells them is the right thing to do.

    In any case, this rabbit trail didn't start out discussing what those people did 100 years ago; you explicitly said they WILL ask for money and there WILL be pressure and expectation for you to hand over your money. That is the claim that I disputed.

  20. Re:Standard Scientology practice on Church of Scientology Enlisting Followers In Censorship · · Score: 3, Informative

    Citation?

    While many churches are pretty opulent, I've never been inside one and there aren't any like that within a hundred miles of where I currently live. I've attended five churches comprising three different flavors over the past 20 years, and I never got so much as a baleful stare when I couldn't afford to contribute... and at two of them, that lack of funds lasted several years. In two of them the pastor worked a second job to pay the bills and received little or no salary from the church. In all of them the balance remained just big enough to go a couple of months paying the rent and other bills if all income suddenly stopped.

    People give to churches voluntarily because of what they expect to accomplish with their money -- feed the hungry, house the homeless, send missionaries to the remote corners of the world to spread their message, whatever. Church finances are, by law, open books so we all know exactly how much the church staff is tucking away (hint: I could never live on that little!) and how much goes to charitable causes. Any nonstandard major expense like buying a new heater to replace the one that's 40 years old, the congregation gets together to vote on it.

    Yes, places that call themselves churches misuse their status beyond belief for selfish purposes or ugly causes (I'm lookin' at YOU, Phelps) but those are individuals acting on their own initiative, vs. corporate policy as defined by the CoS.

  21. As the wise philosopher Tom Lehrer put it, "'cause the balance of power is maintained that way!"

  22. Re:really?? on Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome? · · Score: 1

    Right, because some applications specifically designed to work with images are more intutive to use a GUI, there's no place at all where a CLI would work better.

    Just off the top of my sleep-deprived head, here's a partial list of things I can do 819x faster from the command line than from a stupid bloated GUI: grep
    find
    cat
    sed
    less
    ping
    traceroute
    whois
    useradd
    usermod
    smbpasswd
    chmod
    chown
    Piping the results of any one or more of the above into any one or more others
    pacman that's the package manager, not the Atari ® game

    All of those have some GUI equivalent, I'm sure, but you'll never catch me using it. And yes, get off my lawn.

  23. Re:13 year old boy on Chatbot Eugene Wins Biggest Turing Test Ever · · Score: 1

    TFA mentions that his "father" is a famous gynecologist (famous? OK, I'll give that to 13-year-old's exaggerated sense of importance in the world) so I asked what a gynecologist is. By way of answer he said he asked his father what is the difference between boys and girls and his father replied that it's a state secret.

    Did they mean 13 or 3 years old?

    I really try not to use deliberately confusing or vague statements when I'm testing an AI, but seriously... not one single answer was relevant to my comments or questions. I asked him to tell me a joke; he said if I could see him he'd pull his pants down. I asked him to tell me a riddle; he looked up the word and gave me a dictionary definition. I asked him to teach me some Russian; he gave a geographical description of Ukraine. And those are the ones he at least had an answer for; nearly everything else was some expression of inability to parse.

    You'd have to be some kind of an idiot to think for a moment this is a human.

  24. Understatement of the year on Ask Bas Lansdorp About Going to Mars, One Way · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Living on Mars cannot be considered entirely risk-free, in particular during the first few years."

    Ya think?

  25. So does this mean the "look and feel" decision against Visicorp was in error? This comes about 40 years too late for Dan Bricklin.