Slashdot Mirror


User: sydbarrett74

sydbarrett74's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
929
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 929

  1. Re:I would have had a frsoty post on The NSA: Never Not Watching · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Democratic Party passes the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare

    Oh, and another thing. The ACA is based on model legislation authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. Whilst there are member of both parties who are ideological outliers (e.g., Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold when he was in office on the left, and some of the Teabaggers on the right), the bases of both parties are overwhelmingly similar. Hence the colloquialisms 'Demopub' and 'Republicrat'. To quote Chomsky: 'The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.'

  2. Re:I would have had a frsoty post on The NSA: Never Not Watching · · Score: 2

    suicide bombings and truck bombings by terrorists

    Don't discount the possibility of such events being staged in the form of false-flag ops in order to justify an Orwellian surveillance society. Do you honestly think that a government which inoculated blankets with smallpox and withheld medical treatment from syphilis patients is above killing a few fellow Americans all in the name of consolidating power? Don't be so fucking naive.

  3. Turf the old farts! on With Sales Down, Whale Meat Flogged As Source of Strength · · Score: 1

    Younger generations of Japanese seem to be refreshingly open-minded, but I can't stand these old farts in power who worship at the altar of tradition. Tradition is all well and good as long as it's not maladaptive, but let's not blindly maintain tradition as an end in itself, mmmkay?

  4. Cor blimey! on SCOTUS Says DNA Collection Permissible After Arrest · · Score: 1

    Scalia voted to maintain civil liberties rather than abrogate them? I think I see flying pigs outside my window, as well as demonic snowmen and cows mooing.

  5. Re:Think of the children blah blah on In UK, Search Engines Urged To Block More Online Porn Sites · · Score: 1

    Sadly enough, that was my hardcore Catholic father's answer when I asked him about sex at 10 or 11 years of age. 'I'll tell you about sex on your wedding night. You have no reason to know anything about it until then.' He passed away when I was 18, and I of course immediately started having sex.

  6. Re:I'm a MOOC addict on What Professors Can Learn From "Hard Core" MOOC Students · · Score: 1

    2) Science, Programming, Finance, Engineering, and Math courses are real courses, courses from Bschool and other sections are often ridiculously simple.

    Sadly, the same thing largely holds true in meat-space, as well.

  7. Fred Campbell = Koch Brothers shill on Why You'll Pay For Netflix — Even If You Don't Subscribe To Netflix · · Score: 1

    A quick googling reveals that the 'Communications Liberty and Innovation Project' is an offshoot of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Big Business PR body-shop. Fred Campbell is nothing but a water-boy for the Koch Brothers and other right-wing loonies. His anti-neutrality stance says it all: he's in the pocket of the large ISP's. Why bother listening to this rabid asshat? He has zero credibility.

  8. Re:This is already happening on Khan Academy Will Be Ready For Its Close-Up In Idaho · · Score: 1

    What kind of shitty education did you folks get where things operated this way?

    No, the GP is right. Of the 50-some teachers I had from kindergarten through my last year in high school, only ten or so are memorable. The rest were mediocre droids who merely droned on and did little to facilitate true learning. That's the nature of the beast in this country -- due to the fact that 'education' departments in most universities are something of a joke, the discipline doesn't exactly attract the best and brightest. Most of the teachers I know are nice if not all that intelligent. Maybe if teachers were paid more we wouldn't have to put up with people whose main draw to the profession is a three-month break every year.

  9. Re:6809xxxxxx on Debian m68k Port Resurrected · · Score: 1

    Your proposal sounds like a perfect Kickstarter project. If you can make an adequate sales pitch to IC designers and other such people, it shouldn't be that hard of a goal to realise.

  10. Re:tech is a fairly broad category on If Tech Is So Important, Why Are IT Wages Flat? · · Score: 1

    Why did Russia fail?

    Military over-expansion, you witless prat.

  11. Re:Oops, somebody noticed on That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill · · Score: 1

    I disagree. Different presidents have actually delegated quite a bit of power to their VP's -- all within Constitutional parameters, of course. Obama has given Biden quite a lot of responsibility, due to the latter's vastly greater political experience. The office of vice president is not necessarily toothless. And remember, as president of the Senate, the VP always has the power of breaking ties in case of otherwise intractable gridlock.

  12. Re:Oops, somebody noticed on That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill · · Score: 2

    Uh, under the original system, McCain would've been VP. He wouldn't even have had Palin as a running-mate.

  13. Codename Blue on Windows 8 Sales Below Projections · · Score: 1

    My prediction: Project Blue (the incremental upgrade that MS is promising sometime next year) will be officially christened Windows 8.5 or Windows 8 Second Edition and bring a return to the conventional Start Menu, and be targeted exclusively at desktop/laptop users. It will of course retain all the benefits of Windows 8 (better virtualisation, faster booting, et cetera) but ditch the Metro UI since it's so poorly suited for knowledge workers and content producers. MS will acknowledge that bringing Xbox/desktop/tablet/phone onto a single NT-based core is a worthy goal, but that forcing the convergence of wildly different use-cases into one inferior computing experience was a stupid bet. Windows 8 on tablets has enough vestigial desktop baggage that it's confusing for new users; correspondingly, desktop users hate the arbitrary and tacked-on feel of Metro. Over in Apple-land, longtime Mac users have been screaming that Apple's iOSification of Lion and Mountain Lion has only succeeded in dumbing it down and making the Mac a more awkward platform for content creation: MS would be wise to take heed, rather than slavishly copying Apple's missteps as well as its perceived successes.

  14. Re:Oops, somebody noticed on That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill · · Score: 2

    THIS . Such as system worked well for decades, and fostered compromise between the parties. We need to return to this system ASAP. It would also reduce the mudslinging between candidates during the campaign, because they would both know they have to work with each other for the next four years. Abandoning this protocol was a deeply regressive move, IMO.

  15. Another thing -- the burden of proof is on YOU on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Convince Someone To Give Up an Old System? · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, you're the newbie and the onus is on you to prove that you know WTF you're talking about. One way to gain Bob's trust and respect is to volunteer to organise the documents into some coherent order -- but tell him what your plan of attack is before you do it. If you come off as a cavalier who's going to take no prisoners and engage in a scorched-earth strategy, all you'll do is make enemies and leave the place worse off than you found it. Nobody likes a back-dooring interloper. Take some extensive time to learn all the interplay amongst the board's members, and in the meantime develop some policies that will prevent the system from getting to its current state ever again -- with buy-in from all the key players. It'll probably take you a year to achieve all this. Oh, and please help Bob clean up the existing system. Whether or not you transition to a new system, you're going to have to muck out the stalls anyway.

  16. What you need is *workflow* on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Convince Someone To Give Up an Old System? · · Score: 1

    What you need to codify is a workflow -- a process -- for creating/updating/deleting data. Without this, you could drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on an OpenText or Documentum CMS and it would quickly become the unmaintainable mess that the current solution has become. As usual, people, not technology, make the difference between a solution that succeeds and one that fails. If you have undisciplined idiots who can't be arsed to provide updated material in a timely manner and comply with reasonable policies and procedures, any shiny blingy new solution is quickly going to become fucked up as well.

    I also share others' reservations about choosing a cloud-based solution. The 'cloud' should only ever be used as a backup solution, not a primary one. I'm not saying that Google will go belly-up next week, but you'd be at their mercy because they house your organisation's crown jewels. Also, Google has a habit of decommissioning technologies they view as marginal or simply not providing the profit margins they seek -- and as they're a profit-making enterprise you can't really blame them. If you're going to adopt new infrastructure (and it's vital that you have policies and procedures agreed upon and implemented first), then keep it in-house and only use Google Docs as a backup. With their published API's, it shouldn't be too hard to cron a periodic dump to Docs.

  17. Re:Just what Apple needs... on Samsung May Start Making ARM Server Chips · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I seriously doubt Apple will ever switch to ARM chips in OS X (not iOS) machines. They don't provide enough performance to run at the level of current OS X machines, not to mention that ARM64 is immature as hell.

    No, but the threat of switching will provide that extra minute push to ensure Intel's continued refinement of Atom chips, and perhaps force them to release subsequent generations a year or two sooner than otherwise. Now that MS is actively promoting ARM-based tablets, Intel should be worried if not outright scared.

  18. Re:WebOS came damn close on KDE Plasma Active: the Mobile Interface That Works · · Score: 1

    Maybe they can use the HAL from Meego and mash something together. Who knows.... All I know is Android needs a viable, open competitor to keep Google on their toes -- so scratch Windows Phone and iOS. Too bad Nokia completely fumbled the Symbian ball.

  19. Re:As a Canadian on Nate Silver's Numbers Indicate Probable Obama Win, World Agrees · · Score: 4, Informative

    Romney on the other hand is hard to pin down. He has taken every stance available on every issue.

    I'm not crazy about Romney, but Paul Ryan ('Eddie Munster') positively scares the fuck out of me. He really is an odious, red-eyed demon. If Romney wins and decides to delegate a lot of (albeit constitutional) power to Ryan, we could be in for a world of suck.

  20. WebOS came damn close on KDE Plasma Active: the Mobile Interface That Works · · Score: 2

    WebOS has an elegant interface that in terms of UI/UX puts Android (even Jelly Bean) to shame. Its problems were two-fold: 1) underpowered hardware that didn't showcase the software stack effectively; and 2) lack of developer courtship from Palm and later HP. Hopefully the open-sourcing will rectify these points. In comparison to WebOS and iOS, Android is the ugly, freckly ginger stepchild. I think people willingly overlook its flaws because of the relatively decent hardware it tends to run on.

  21. Americans are of two minds... on Thousands of Muslims Protest 'Age of Mockery' At Google's London Headquarters · · Score: 1

    ...when it comes to freedom of expression. They gladly allow their kids to watch someone get disembowelled in the latest horror flick, but recoil in moral indignation if they see the top part of a female nipple on broadcast television. Freedom of expression has always been relative.

  22. Re:zuh? on HP Plans To Cut Product Lines; Company Turnaround In 2016 · · Score: 1

    That's why Netflix is beating the shit out of cable

    Only until the ISP's implement universal tiered monthly usage caps (see the story here on /.; it was posted within the last couple of days). The stodgy incumbents can't have their gravy train interrupted, now can they? :-(

  23. Re:The article on The Rage For MOOCs · · Score: 1

    Ummmmm....rate and ratio are the same thing. They are both defined as one number divided by another. Units or measures don't matter. It's all the same shit. Percentage is defined as a number divided by 100. The words 'rate' and 'ratio' are cognates. The parent to your post is correct. You are completely wrong.

  24. Re:No on Do We Need a Longer School Year? · · Score: 1

    How the bloody fuck did your post get modded Insightful? FYI, there are far more fruitful ways to inculcate care for one's body and the virtues of team participation than throwing a dead pig around.

  25. Re:Google+ on Ask Slashdot: Options For FOSS Remote Support Software? · · Score: 1

    Well then maybe they need to ditch a version of OSX that's eight years old and slap on Linux.