The guy's first mistake was thinking he could somehow talk to the police himself and "clear things up". You will never, ever succeed at that. Always consult a lawyer first, and always have your lawyer talk to the police on your behalf. And I haven't seen a link to James Duane's famous Don't Talk to the Police video in a while, which explains why this is the case a lot better than I could in a couple of paragraphs.
OK, so they created an e-BL and stored it on a blockchain. Whoopee, I can do that with my toy Multichain setup in 30 seconds. Now what?
How many participants were on that blockchain? Was the transfer of custody of the oranges recorded via asset transfer on that blockchain each step of the way? Was the e-BL used as a contract document by legal entities who received it via the blockchain, and did a bank connected to the blockchain use it as proof of collateral, as the article implies?
Because there have been a lot of big-name exercises in practical applications of Blockchain which then turned out to be a single node using it as a simple database, like the much-ballyhooed World Food Program blockchain exercise did.
There is no irony here. People whining and pretending to be offended by a silly boob joke is stupid and silly. People reacting to that whining as if it were legitimate, and censoring software developers because of it, is dangerous and wrong. Especially in the context of "free" software, we cannot give political correctness a veto over legitimate (or humorous, or offensive) speech.
It's fine to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell women's underwear (left picture: "Bra 29 EUR"). It's not ok to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell a chair (and the scantily clad woman is just decoration / an object to draw attention to the ad) (right picture: "Chair 199 EUR"). I think that explains the issue of objectification quite well.
Who the hell are they to tell me what is and is not OK? I'll objectify whatever I want. People like sex, people like sexy things, and rational people have no problem seeing ads that feature attractive people of the opposite gender used to market things to them.
This entire issue isn't about people getting offended anyway. It's about people pretending to be offended so they can show everyone how upstanding and moral and non-sexist and great they are. It's ridiculous and we all need to stop catering to it.
Ever seen what a shotglass worth of vaporized gasoline can do with regards to explosive power?
Kind of hard to use your argument when the risk factor doesn't really change regardless of fuel source.
Jet fuel as used in commercial turboprop and jet airliners is much more similar to kerosene than gasoline in terms of volatility. Its flashpoint is generally above 38C (depending on exact mix) while gasoline's is minus 43C. Jet fuel will explode if pressurized and vaporized, which is why airplane crashes can produce spectacular explosions, but it is actually difficult to light an open container of jet fuel with a match.
All that to say, uncontrolled combustion, let alone explosion, of jet fuel in a moving aircraft is a very unlikely event.
When you are trying to charge between $30 and $40 for information that can easily be obtained more accurately on any number of wikis, to say nothing of the $70-$80 "Special Editions" with cardboard sleeves to hold even more useless junk, it's long past time you went away. I thought game guides were passe when I used to see them at CompUSA in the 90s, it's almost shocking they are even a thing today. Good riddance.
No matter what Trump does, someone will complain. He could achieve permanent world peace, and half the US would complain he's decimating the defense industry and costing jobs.
Not in this case. He is threatening pain, but giving the UPU nations time to broker a new deal before the US withdraws.
The U.S. is hoping to renegotiate the rates, known as terminal dues, but was frustrated with opposition from other nations in the UPU. According to the report, "The withdrawal would not take effect for one year, allowing the U.S. some time to broker a new deal.".
Social media allows the pushed narrative to be challenged.
No, it just reinforces a hive mind. You can theoretically say whatever you want on social media, but if you go against the dominant narrative on the platform you get modded down, downvoted, blacklisted, or brigaded. Say something bad enough and you'll get doxed and your life will be ruined. But if you can somehow manipulate the narrative to bring it in line with your goals, be they political, commercial, or social, you can saturate social media with a message that will be omnipresent and which noone will challenge for fear of the consequences.
It's pretty easy to see how that would upset people who had worked very hard to gain control of it. If you depend on preferential treatment from the government to move your product the last thing you would want is people wondering why they were paying to make you rich.
You're assuming social media will always reflect rational self-interest. But it won't, it will be manipulated by money and politics. That train may be a total waste of taxpayer dollars, bu: turn it into something the rich will pay for and it becomes social justice, turn it something that reduces automobile use and it's environmentally friendly, etc. So what if there's a water crisis, those bad rich people use too much water anyway, so punish them and raise prices to keep them from wasting it. Play that record enough times and spin it the right way and your message will be unstoppable.
I see a lot of people hyping blockchain technology for non-cryptocurrency uses, but I have yet to see an application to which it is better suited than current transaction systems. I understand that a distributed ledger potentially lets you do away with things like reconciliation transactions. But there are some downsides with that: every participant has to keep a full copy of the ledger, and participants still have to use double entry accounting, which means essentially keeping two sets of books. And while the ledger itself may be secure and tamper-proof, there still has to be some way to turn entries into actionable financial transactions, which requires another system that can itself be compromised (e.g. the Bitcoin exchanges that have experienced some famous security breaches).
Being a girl doesn't give you blanket amnesty when you're being an asshole to customers. She simply decided to be a jerk to a guy who commented on one of her public tweets. His post was insightful and polite, but she decided to blow a gasket and tell him to fuck off. Then, it being Twitter, others got involved, and when it got out of hand, she started crying sexism and mansplaining. Pathetic.
Similar situation here, I've been developing realtime traffic-management systems for 24 years. I have always used C for my own new projects, but I have had to learn C++ in order to support projects that I inherited. There's nothing you can do in C++ that you can't do in C; C++ just adds a bunch of constructs that are supposed to make software more modular, reusable, standardized, and "safe" from bad coding. In real life, it just makes for code that is harder to understand and harder to port to newer environments due to changing standards.
Antivirus software is a hot topic in IT security right now. Not because you need AV, but because most AV is terribly designed and breaks security in other applications. And while Windows Defender may not score particularly well on canned tests used by AV reviewers, it doesn't break as much software as other AVs do.
Remember that in order to work, AV has to inject itself all over the place in your system to intercept network activity, disk activity, etc. But if it does that at the expense of other security measures, is it really helping? As Justin Schuh said in his linked post, when Firefox implemented Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) to guard against buffer overflows, lots of AV suites disabled it by replacing Firefox's DLLs with their own which didn't feature ASLR. This stuff happens all the time, because AV vendors are always behind the curve in browser security compared to browser developers. Which isn't all that surprising if you think about it.
The upshot is, all AV software is pretty terrible. MS Defender isn't as good as some other AV suites at passing the canned tests that AV review sites throw at them. But at least it doesn't work against web browsers' built-in security measures.
TWC launched an app for Roku about three years ago. I use it on my two TVs with Roku 3's. One is on wifi, the other wired, and the video quality is as good as with a DVR. And the UI for the app is much better than on TWC's cable boxes; you can sort channels by name instead of channel number, navigation is quick and responsive, and everything is laid out logically for the D-pad instead of two dozen buttons on a normal remote. I mean, it's not exactly rocket science -- we're talking about basic TV functionality here, plus a navigable grid schedule and Pay Per View -- but everything about cable TV is so bad normally that this looks amazing by comparison.
Of course there's no guarantee Comcast won't screw it up, but if TWC managed to do a good job with it this has potential.
A few years back I did some consulting for one of the big cargo train companies. They had a big mission control type room with maps of all the tracks they manage, with lights indicating switch status and train positions and so forth. The actual switches were managed by a bunch of racks full of PDP-11s running RSX-11, equipped with digital I/O boards linked to the switch motors and sensor relays out in the field. The computer room was amazing, immaculately clean and completely free of static, with air cleaners that popped periodically when they caught a piece of dust. I asked them why they still used those, seeing as there are much more modern computers capable of doing the exact same job, and they replied that they just didn't have faith that new machines would be as reliable.
Tiles are nothing new; I immediately found them annoying and have always turned them off. These new "sponsored" tiles will only appear on the existing tiles page, which can still be turned off:
When you first launch Firefox, a message on the new tab page informs you what tiles are (with a link to a support page about how sponsored tiles work), promises that the feature abides by the Mozilla Privacy Policy, and reminds you that you can simply turn tiles off. If you do turn them off, you’ll get a blank new tab page and will avoid Firefox’s ads completely, including these upcoming suggested tiles.
In a world of physical media, there was at least some plausibility to the notion of export restrictions and region coding.
I'm not sure how it ever made sense. Back in the '00s, I bought a $30 region-hackable DVD player from Sam's Club just to watch "They Live". The reason being, I could either buy the out of print Region 1 version from a third-party seller on Amazon for $150, or the in-print Region 2 version from amazon.co.uk for $5. I probably could have downloaded it from somewhere, but I was willing to throw a few dollars at it to have a legitimate copy (and I liked the idea of a region free player in any case). But hey, the studio made money, Sam's made money, and some Chinese DVD maker made money. Now, with region-locked streaming, they've managed to make it completely impossible to legitimately stream certain movies, so nobody makes money. I guess that's progress?
I hate typing on laptops. Unless I am working at a customer site, I plug my laptop into the network and use it as a file server, and do my actual work on a workstation. I use two 24" ViewSonic monitors running at 1920x1080, and a Filco Majestouch 2 keyboard. I have almost the exact same setup in my home office as I do at work; the difference is that at home I use a keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches that are super loud, while work I use the version with Cherry MX Brown switches that don't have the loud "click" so it won't bother my office mate. $150 may seem excessive for a keyboard, but I've had them for several years and they're the best productivity investment I ever made.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy's first mistake was thinking he could somehow talk to the police himself and "clear things up". You will never, ever succeed at that. Always consult a lawyer first, and always have your lawyer talk to the police on your behalf. And I haven't seen a link to James Duane's famous Don't Talk to the Police video in a while, which explains why this is the case a lot better than I could in a couple of paragraphs.
OK, so they created an e-BL and stored it on a blockchain. Whoopee, I can do that with my toy Multichain setup in 30 seconds. Now what?
How many participants were on that blockchain? Was the transfer of custody of the oranges recorded via asset transfer on that blockchain each step of the way? Was the e-BL used as a contract document by legal entities who received it via the blockchain, and did a bank connected to the blockchain use it as proof of collateral, as the article implies?
Because there have been a lot of big-name exercises in practical applications of Blockchain which then turned out to be a single node using it as a simple database, like the much-ballyhooed World Food Program blockchain exercise did.
There is no irony here. People whining and pretending to be offended by a silly boob joke is stupid and silly. People reacting to that whining as if it were legitimate, and censoring software developers because of it, is dangerous and wrong. Especially in the context of "free" software, we cannot give political correctness a veto over legitimate (or humorous, or offensive) speech.
This whole discussion reminded me of a campaign by the German project
pinkstinks.de called "Sexy yes, sexism no":
https://pinkstinks.de/sexy-ode...
Summary in my words:
It's fine to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell women's
underwear (left picture: "Bra 29 EUR").
It's not ok to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell a chair
(and the scantily clad woman is just decoration / an object to draw
attention to the ad) (right picture: "Chair 199 EUR").
I think that explains the issue of objectification quite well.
Who the hell are they to tell me what is and is not OK? I'll objectify whatever I want. People like sex, people like sexy things, and rational people have no problem seeing ads that feature attractive people of the opposite gender used to market things to them.
This entire issue isn't about people getting offended anyway. It's about people pretending to be offended so they can show everyone how upstanding and moral and non-sexist and great they are. It's ridiculous and we all need to stop catering to it.
Ever seen a Tesla battery pack go up in flames?
Kind of hard to stop and jump out at 20000 feet.
Ever seen what a shotglass worth of vaporized gasoline can do with regards to explosive power?
Kind of hard to use your argument when the risk factor doesn't really change regardless of fuel source.
Jet fuel as used in commercial turboprop and jet airliners is much more similar to kerosene than gasoline in terms of volatility. Its flashpoint is generally above 38C (depending on exact mix) while gasoline's is minus 43C. Jet fuel will explode if pressurized and vaporized, which is why airplane crashes can produce spectacular explosions, but it is actually difficult to light an open container of jet fuel with a match.
All that to say, uncontrolled combustion, let alone explosion, of jet fuel in a moving aircraft is a very unlikely event.
When you are trying to charge between $30 and $40 for information that can easily be obtained more accurately on any number of wikis, to say nothing of the $70-$80 "Special Editions" with cardboard sleeves to hold even more useless junk, it's long past time you went away. I thought game guides were passe when I used to see them at CompUSA in the 90s, it's almost shocking they are even a thing today. Good riddance.
No matter what Trump does, someone will complain. He could achieve permanent world peace, and half the US would complain he's decimating the defense industry and costing jobs.
Not in this case. He is threatening pain, but giving the UPU nations time to broker a new deal before the US withdraws.
The U.S. is hoping to renegotiate the rates, known as terminal dues, but was frustrated with opposition from other nations in the UPU. According to the report, "The withdrawal would not take effect for one year, allowing the U.S. some time to broker a new deal." .
It's like on-disc DLC for cars.
Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch? Well, down the memory hole with you!
Social media allows the pushed narrative to be challenged.
No, it just reinforces a hive mind. You can theoretically say whatever you want on social media, but if you go against the dominant narrative on the platform you get modded down, downvoted, blacklisted, or brigaded. Say something bad enough and you'll get doxed and your life will be ruined. But if you can somehow manipulate the narrative to bring it in line with your goals, be they political, commercial, or social, you can saturate social media with a message that will be omnipresent and which noone will challenge for fear of the consequences.
It's pretty easy to see how that would upset people who had worked very hard to gain control of it. If you depend on preferential treatment from the government to move your product the last thing you would want is people wondering why they were paying to make you rich.
You're assuming social media will always reflect rational self-interest. But it won't, it will be manipulated by money and politics. That train may be a total waste of taxpayer dollars, bu: turn it into something the rich will pay for and it becomes social justice, turn it something that reduces automobile use and it's environmentally friendly, etc. So what if there's a water crisis, those bad rich people use too much water anyway, so punish them and raise prices to keep them from wasting it. Play that record enough times and spin it the right way and your message will be unstoppable.
You left out leverage, best-of-breed, and synergy.
I see a lot of people hyping blockchain technology for non-cryptocurrency uses, but I have yet to see an application to which it is better suited than current transaction systems. I understand that a distributed ledger potentially lets you do away with things like reconciliation transactions. But there are some downsides with that: every participant has to keep a full copy of the ledger, and participants still have to use double entry accounting, which means essentially keeping two sets of books. And while the ledger itself may be secure and tamper-proof, there still has to be some way to turn entries into actionable financial transactions, which requires another system that can itself be compromised (e.g. the Bitcoin exchanges that have experienced some famous security breaches).
Maybe I'm just not looking at it right?
Being a girl doesn't give you blanket amnesty when you're being an asshole to customers. She simply decided to be a jerk to a guy who commented on one of her public tweets. His post was insightful and polite, but she decided to blow a gasket and tell him to fuck off. Then, it being Twitter, others got involved, and when it got out of hand, she started crying sexism and mansplaining. Pathetic.
Similar situation here, I've been developing realtime traffic-management systems for 24 years. I have always used C for my own new projects, but I have had to learn C++ in order to support projects that I inherited. There's nothing you can do in C++ that you can't do in C; C++ just adds a bunch of constructs that are supposed to make software more modular, reusable, standardized, and "safe" from bad coding. In real life, it just makes for code that is harder to understand and harder to port to newer environments due to changing standards.
More like Theranos. An idea ahead of its time, charismatic founder, and a bunch of investors with more money than sense.
Antivirus software is a hot topic in IT security right now. Not because you need AV, but because most AV is terribly designed and breaks security in other applications. And while Windows Defender may not score particularly well on canned tests used by AV reviewers, it doesn't break as much software as other AVs do.
Remember that in order to work, AV has to inject itself all over the place in your system to intercept network activity, disk activity, etc. But if it does that at the expense of other security measures, is it really helping? As Justin Schuh said in his linked post, when Firefox implemented Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) to guard against buffer overflows, lots of AV suites disabled it by replacing Firefox's DLLs with their own which didn't feature ASLR. This stuff happens all the time, because AV vendors are always behind the curve in browser security compared to browser developers. Which isn't all that surprising if you think about it.
The upshot is, all AV software is pretty terrible. MS Defender isn't as good as some other AV suites at passing the canned tests that AV review sites throw at them. But at least it doesn't work against web browsers' built-in security measures.
TWC launched an app for Roku about three years ago. I use it on my two TVs with Roku 3's. One is on wifi, the other wired, and the video quality is as good as with a DVR. And the UI for the app is much better than on TWC's cable boxes; you can sort channels by name instead of channel number, navigation is quick and responsive, and everything is laid out logically for the D-pad instead of two dozen buttons on a normal remote. I mean, it's not exactly rocket science -- we're talking about basic TV functionality here, plus a navigable grid schedule and Pay Per View -- but everything about cable TV is so bad normally that this looks amazing by comparison.
Of course there's no guarantee Comcast won't screw it up, but if TWC managed to do a good job with it this has potential.
Working at a smaller company has its downsides, but it's posts like this that remind me how much worse large companies are. So, thanks for that.
This actually exists.
Yeah, but that's also when /. jumped the shark.
A few years back I did some consulting for one of the big cargo train companies. They had a big mission control type room with maps of all the tracks they manage, with lights indicating switch status and train positions and so forth. The actual switches were managed by a bunch of racks full of PDP-11s running RSX-11, equipped with digital I/O boards linked to the switch motors and sensor relays out in the field. The computer room was amazing, immaculately clean and completely free of static, with air cleaners that popped periodically when they caught a piece of dust. I asked them why they still used those, seeing as there are much more modern computers capable of doing the exact same job, and they replied that they just didn't have faith that new machines would be as reliable.
Tiles are nothing new; I immediately found them annoying and have always turned them off. These new "sponsored" tiles will only appear on the existing tiles page, which can still be turned off:
When you first launch Firefox, a message on the new tab page informs you what tiles are (with a link to a support page about how sponsored tiles work), promises that the feature abides by the Mozilla Privacy Policy, and reminds you that you can simply turn tiles off. If you do turn them off, you’ll get a blank new tab page and will avoid Firefox’s ads completely, including these upcoming suggested tiles.
So, it really doesn't matter.
In a world of physical media, there was at least some plausibility to the notion of export restrictions and region coding.
I'm not sure how it ever made sense. Back in the '00s, I bought a $30 region-hackable DVD player from Sam's Club just to watch "They Live". The reason being, I could either buy the out of print Region 1 version from a third-party seller on Amazon for $150, or the in-print Region 2 version from amazon.co.uk for $5. I probably could have downloaded it from somewhere, but I was willing to throw a few dollars at it to have a legitimate copy (and I liked the idea of a region free player in any case). But hey, the studio made money, Sam's made money, and some Chinese DVD maker made money. Now, with region-locked streaming, they've managed to make it completely impossible to legitimately stream certain movies, so nobody makes money. I guess that's progress?
I hate typing on laptops. Unless I am working at a customer site, I plug my laptop into the network and use it as a file server, and do my actual work on a workstation. I use two 24" ViewSonic monitors running at 1920x1080, and a Filco Majestouch 2 keyboard. I have almost the exact same setup in my home office as I do at work; the difference is that at home I use a keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches that are super loud, while work I use the version with Cherry MX Brown switches that don't have the loud "click" so it won't bother my office mate. $150 may seem excessive for a keyboard, but I've had them for several years and they're the best productivity investment I ever made.