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User: Rob+the+Bold

Rob+the+Bold's activity in the archive.

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  1. The web (and internet) that wasn't on The Web We Lost · · Score: 0

    If you need a way to send a contact a file via the interwebs, the most universal method is still email.

  2. Re:The Maths on Is It Worth Investing In a High-Efficiency Power Supply? · · Score: 1

    So living in an apartment is "doing it wrong"?

    In this case, your landlord is the one "doing it wrong." Unless it's you who has to pay the electric bill, then he did it right.

  3. Why are we so goddamned worried about terrorism? on NCTC Gets Vast Powers To Spy On U.S. Citizens · · Score: 1

    We're so damned worried about "terrorism" that the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't matter anymore.

    Meanwhile, diabetes mellitus directly kills more than 70,000 Americans a year. But propose something to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and suddenly people are screaming that tyrants can pry their Big Gulps out the the remainder of their cold dead fingers.

  4. Re:"Live Free or Die!" -State motto of New Hampshi on New Hampshire Cops Use Taser On Woman Buying Too Many iPhones · · Score: 1

    "Live Free or Die!" -State motto of New Hampshire. ....unless you're buying too many iPhones.

    "Live Free and Die!" sounds more like it now.

  5. Whether this turns out to be true or not on Nokia Abruptly Closes Application Store In China For N9 · · Score: 2

    Whether or not this is a legit story, if you've got an N9, you might want to get MeeCatalog just in case as a hedge against Nokia's eventual demise, Store and all. At least you'll have some community support.

  6. Re:Yeah. But what's "reasonably" angry?" on Schmidt On Why Tax Avoidance is Good, Robot Workers, and Google Fiber · · Score: 2

    Restraint is not merely legal. Restraint is about your own internal compass. If you prove not to have one, I will hold that against you.

    His investors, however, will find other, more lucrative investments, insulated as they are from the moral dilemmas involved, separated by their 401k that holds mutual funds that buy indexes that own company stocks.

    Wait, wait, wait . . . Don't get me wrong. I am not endorsing a "profit above all else" viewpoint or unethical behavior. But someone else here will assume I will. Someone always does when I point out the dangers of laissez-faire capitalism. Like if I yelled "Black widow" when one was crawling up his arm he'd figure I was rooting for the spider. I've been accused of endorsing genocide when I advocate legal restraint of corporations.

    But anyway, insufficiently legally restrained capitalism selects for those who can put profit over all else. An employee can refuse to do something he believes is unethical, assuming he even knows how the product of his labor will eventually be used. Maybe he quits. Maybe the boss finds someone else to do it. Maybe he convinces the boss. Then maybe the boss tells his boss, quitting, convincing or being replaced, etc. up the line. Maybe company management can be convinced, but the board is unhappy with the CXO's for poor performance. Maybe they too quit in protest, or get replaced. Maybe they convince the board to do the right thing. But if another company can do something legal but perhaps more anti-social, and their stock goes up and yours goes down, the investors may revolt and change the board. Or maybe they just sell their stock and buy something more profitable -- by the time you get to the investor, you're quite a few degrees removed from any moral or ethical dilemma. But just maybe the board sells the stockholders on taking the high road. But still they get out-competed by the company with less restraint. Stock prices drop, and the ethical investors now have less money and less influence compared to other investors who just looked for the best gains/dividends/performance.

    So a company just can't be a moral entity. And it's not because the people that work for it and manage it aren't. A company is more than the sum of its employees. It's more than just its investors. It is an entity created by our laws and our desire to thrive. As such, the only moral control that can be imposed to level the playing field so that companies don't grossly abuse the people, the environment and everything that matters is to have effective laws so that the less ethical don't out-compete the more so.

    And I'll say again: I am not endorsing amoral behavior. I am pointing out that a corporation -- and corporations in general -- are amoral by design, all the best behavior of the people involved be damned. It is up to us to have law that "designs" the restraint into the system. I am not endorsing amoral behavior. Again, I am not endorsing amoral behavior.

    To sum it up, we need more than just one guy to "hold it against" a given corporation. I don't shop at WalMart*. Perhaps you've heard of my protest? No? Ya, nobody else, either. If it's just you or just me, nothing we do individually will matter. We need to get together with the rest of the citizenry and as the GP suggested: "change the fucking laws." Not that we can't piss and moan, though. I'm willing to endorse changing the law while still pissing and moaning. In fact, asking for change can sound exactly like pissing and moaning, but i'm gonna take that risk.

  7. Re:Question on Schmidt On Why Tax Avoidance is Good, Robot Workers, and Google Fiber · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't be angry with Google for following laws that allow them to pay less in taxes than you think they should, be angry at the lawmakers that craft the laws that allow them to do so.

    And also don't be angry at someone who uses food stamps, medicaid, unemployment insurance, social security, medicare . . .

    "Why is it that if you take advantage of a corporate tax break you're a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of something so you don't go hungry, you're a moocher?" -- Jon Stewart

  8. Re:maybe I am missing something on Vector Vengeance: British Claim They Can Kill the Pixel Within Five Years · · Score: 1

    excuse my ignorance if I am off base but Isn't a vector just a different way of targeting your pixels on the screen? isn't this just a different way of describing which pixels to activate? and if so how does this remove the need for pixels?

    Actually, vector graphics targets particular lines, i.e. vectors, on your screen. Of course, as pixel count approaches infinity, the distinction gets less meaningful. And if you're showing vector graphics on a matrix-type display, your vectors are gonna get interpolated into pixels.

    You could display vector graphics on other types of displays, like scanning onto a phosphorescent coated surface or projecting on something semi-transparent or semi reflective (old-school, like the 4014), or even shooting frickin' lasers right on your retinas (which is probably also 5 years off, probbaly always will be).

    But with the low cost and high resolution of matrix-type (pixel) displays, I doubt we'll see a resurgence of true vector graphics all the way to the user interface like there used to be. So are far as the eye can see, so to speak, there's probably no real difference from the user's perspective, also, so to speak.

  9. Re:get ready for some Tempest 2017 on Vector Vengeance: British Claim They Can Kill the Pixel Within Five Years · · Score: 1

    get ready for some Tempest 2017

    Quick, someone page the Yak. Or tweeter him. Or however the cool kids get their favorite developer's attention.

  10. Re:Big Brother on How Websites Know Your Email Address the First Time You Visit · · Score: 1

    May the programmers that coded this stuff burn in hell!!!

    No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood. For that matter, what single raindrop really knows what part their tiny contribution plays in the flood?

  11. Re:Tor on How Websites Know Your Email Address the First Time You Visit · · Score: 1

    You just need to get into the habit of wearing face paint/camoflage... http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/02/facial-recognition-camouflage/

    Wouldn't it be easier to recognize "camouflage guy" when he comes into your store vs. ordinary dude? I guess you could try to get everybody to wear ever-changing paint disguises, but I coudn't even get one correspondent to agree to use PGP for their emails with me, so "color" me doubtful.

  12. Re:Apple bashing on Australian Police Warn That Apple Maps Could Get Someone Killed · · Score: 4, Funny

    Methinks someone who takes the attitude "Its 1000 miles to Wongamonga, we've got half a tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it's dark, we're wearing sunglasses and we've got GPS - hit it!" is an accident waiting to happen.

    You clearly haven't driven in Australia ... that would be 1,600 kilometres, you wouldn't leave with only half a pack of cigarettes and where's the booze?

    Maybe if you're really lucky, Wongamonga's got smokes, alcohol and the world's last Blockbuster Video store where you can rent "The Blues Brothers" after enjoying a relaxing evening of Country and Western music.

  13. Re:Apple bashing on Australian Police Warn That Apple Maps Could Get Someone Killed · · Score: 1

    You obviously haven't driven in Australia much.

    From experience, the problem isn't unique to Apple Maps or Australia. Traveling in "rural" Missouri can get you lost relying on GPS, whether Apple Maps or another. Note the directions and GPS warning for this establishment. And I write "rural" in quotes because you are only about 15 miles from Springfield, a metro area of 450,000 people. If you do like my wife, you put the address in your car's GPS and go. And if you're like me, you say "OK, dear" and we follow the directions right to a goat farm. And then you get out (at least it's only 105F), look around, trample down some weeds and grass to uncover a fallen yellow coreplast sign. You flip the sign over -- no snakes, yay -- and find the message "GPS wrong: turn right on Washington in Walnut Grove and follow signs." At least we weren't in any grave danger, plenty of fuel, reliable vehicle, cell service (except for iPhone), other traffic on the road and worst case: a farmhouse or other dwelling every 1/4 mile or so.

    For the record, I did my best to make the sign visible for the next guy and told the proprietor he might want to go out there with a weed whacker and his staple gun.

  14. Re:Good grief... on Ubuntu Community Manager: RMS's Post Seems a Bit Childish To Me · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is so trivial to disable (and remove) this "feature" that bitching about it is almost meaningless and indeed borderlines on childishness.

    Yes, for those of us aware of the issue and are a little more technically savvy . . . but . . .

    [Ubuntu is] a fairly easy to install distro that works out of the box with most modern equipment - which is a great thing for the less technically savvy.

    (Last emphasis in quote is mine.) A less technically savvy person could google "remove amazon search dash" and probably figure out how to disable it, but he'd first need to know about it.

  15. Re:KMail on Ask Slashdot: Current State of Linux Email Clients? · · Score: 1

    Lastly, you're putting together two things unrelated to each other: Akonadi is a local cache for PIM data (contacts, mails, calendars...), while Nepomuk is a framework used to organize data semantically (and used a lot in other bits of the KDE platform), which is used in Akonadi to store mail and contact data for searching.

    To tell you the truth -- and I don't mean this in a mean or snarky way -- I just don't care what they do, except that they appear in error messages, apparently break KMail, and they aren't (or at least weren't last time I checked) ready for production use. From the user perspective, Akonadi/Nepomuk is an error generating system that has something to do with searching/indexing. An email client is just something I use, not something i'm interested in debugging or even understanding in-depth.

    I am glad to hear about the new maintainer. A couple releases too late, but better than never, I suppose.

  16. Re:Kontact/KMail on Ask Slashdot: Current State of Linux Email Clients? · · Score: 1

    However it has been improving steadly, even drastically since kde 4.7.

    But it's still slower than an arthritic sloth on sopors. Which doesn't seem to even be on the developers' radar.

    If you think it's slower than a sloth on sopors now, wait for the version shipped with Kubuntu 13.10, Soporfic Sloth.

    But I could live with the speed and the occasional hiccups if I thought that my email would still be there after a version upgrade.

  17. Re:KMail on Ask Slashdot: Current State of Linux Email Clients? · · Score: 2

    It works fine for me at least, though it loads a bit slow. Has all the features you describe except calendar integration, but you can get that by using Kontact (which gives access to both Kmail, calendar and contacts in the same interface). Integrates with KDE address book, syncs with Google contacts/Google Calendar, PGP+S/MIME encryption/signing, modern UI, import/export, Sieve rules editor, modern UI (threaded message list, though no Gmail-like threading).

    KMail developers and maintainers seem hellbent on breaking existing functionality every few versions. And by break, I mean stuff like "delete all your old mail" and "make your mail go away after version upgrade, maybe forever, maybe just a few weeks". If you've avoided these issues in your upgrades, you've been lucky -- so far. Akonadi and Nepomuk, whatever the hell those are, really aren't ready for prime time. As such, KMail has gotten too "alpha quality" to use in such mundane, critical, production work as -- well -- email.

  18. What could be more social? on RMS Speaks Out Against Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    What could be more social than having your Ubuntu Quantal-using attorney searching for your files using relevant (embarrassing, incriminating, deal-queering, etc.) keywords and having that data transmitted to a non-privileged 3rd party? Doesn't get more social and enjoyable than that.

  19. Local searches, too? on RMS Speaks Out Against Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers.

    I haven't used this version of Ubuntu and don't have extensive-enough knowledge of this feature to corroborate or deny this. However, if true, I imagine plenty of organizations really couldn't live with this being installed by default. Organizational policies, regulations, and laws might even forbid them from letting such data leak out. In such case, it might be much easier to select a different distro/OS for the organization than to make sure someone remembers to disable Dash search on every new install. One oops, and you might violate HIPAA, e.g.

  20. Re:Deadlines don't change on Stay Home When You're Sick! · · Score: 1

    Employers don't care about you being sick, they just want something shipped, and if you can't do that, they will find someone who will.

    If they can find someone to do it, they can afford to let you stay home until you're productive and not contagious. Or, if they prefer, they can trade a couple of days of one guy coming in and doing a half-assed job for 3 or four guys doing the same thing next week when they catch it. It doesn't sound like a good idea to me to pick option two, but if I were a smart guy, I'd be the boss, so what do I know?

  21. Re:Sick leaves on Stay Home When You're Sick! · · Score: 1

    Aren't in the US sick leaves taken from your holiday ?

    Pretty much depends on the employer. The "time bank" concept of folding sick days, vacation, PTO into a single pool was pretty popular a few years ago. Probably plenty of employers still do it. Other places have a strict separation between types of leave. Small business often have vague or nonexistent policies that amount to whatever the boss feels like in your situation. That's either the best case or the worst, depending on your relationship to the bossman.

  22. Re:How do they 'encourage' us to stay home? on Stay Home When You're Sick! · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've always thought that a supervisor who insists that a sick employee come to work should talk to the employee in person. In close quarters. After they recover, maybe they'll be more generous with sick time.

    Here's where you, as the employee, can take the initiative. When I worked for a supervisor that didn't like people out sick, I dragged my miserable ass to the office in the morning to pick up some work to do at home and visit the boss's office for a personal check-in -- you know, to see if there was anything special that came up that I needed to deal with before/instead of what it was understood I was working on. Maybe i had to borrow his desk phone to track him down when he wasn't right there. Proactive stuff. It's what conscientious employees do.

    Now I'm an engineer, not a doctor, so I don't know if that had any relation to the boss not showing up the next week.

  23. Re:What? on SEC Investigates Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Over Facebook Posting · · Score: 1

    Whatever happened to Caveat Emptor?

    TFA doesn't seem to say the accuracy of the numbers is in question, but rather that the SEC is looking into how he shared what might be considered important information to the investors.

    But as to the "buyer beware" aspect of investing . . .

    Yes, investing is inherently risky. Even buying mutual funds is risky. Even participating in your 401k plan that buys mutual funds is risky. Shooting craps is risky.

    It's not the SEC's job to remove the risk. After all, the flip side of risk is reward. It is, however, the SEC's job to reassure investors that everybody is taking the same risks. Because if investors decide that the market is rigged against them, then it's just like betting in a game with loaded dice: it's better not to play. And if no one "plays" the market by investing in stocks, 401ks, IRAs, mutual funds, etc., then nobody wins because there's no money being invested. And that's the SEC's purpose: to convince wary people that investing is a better option that stuffing money in a mattress.

  24. Re:Legal? on Verizon Patents Eavesdropping Using Your TV For Ad Targeting · · Score: 1

    How does this get around wire-tapping laws in the two party states (where both parties need to know there's recording going on)? If someone comes over and watches TV, do you have to tell them or does Verizon since Verizon is the party doing the recording?

    Do you use Verizon? If so, I'd suggest carefully re-reading your contract with this development in mind . . .

  25. Too late on Verizon Patents Eavesdropping Using Your TV For Ad Targeting · · Score: 2

    "Imagine . . . cuddling and then seeing ads for contraceptives."

    If one could actually get past the creepy, peeping-tom, psycho-stalker element of that concept -- which I don't think I could do -- there's still the problem that once you're "cuddling" you've probably already made your contraceptive purchase. And if you haven't, it's a little late for advertising.

    Now I'm trying to un-imagine what "cuddling" sounds like.