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User: cathector

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  1. wifi routers w/ 2nd-tier guest network ? on Free Wi-Fi: the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity · · Score: 1

    many wifi routers i've encountered can provide two networks, each of which can have QOS limits on it.
    what i haven't seen tho is a router which can make one network lower priority than the other.

    ie, i want to have the primary always get 100% when it needs it,
    but if the primary is only using up 10%, give the remaining 90% to the secondary.

    any equipment recommends ?

  2. Re:fwiw, yes. on Pushing Back Against Licensing and the Permission Culture · · Score: 1

    no: i chose to omit licensing. you're choosing to interpret it within the permission framework. congratulations.
    also i think i made it clear that my omission was made intentionally rather than out of ignorance, so screw you.

  3. fwiw, yes. on Pushing Back Against Licensing and the Permission Culture · · Score: 1

    like most of us i've self-published a bunch of crap in the past fifteen years or so,
    ranging from music CDs in actual stores to numerous personal software components,
    and i've intentionally kept them bare of any licensing information for two reasons:

    1. as a small protest against the permission culture.
    2. i feel that incorporating the permission culture into the creative work cheapens the work.

    when folks have re-purposed my work (that i know of), they've always asked first and have always offered to include attribution.

  4. that's because iOS is equated with value itself. on The Mobile App Design Tail Wags the Desktop Software Design Dog · · Score: 2

    look at the amount of advertising for products completely unrelated to computing (mobile or otherwise) which choose to position the product being sold within the frame of an iPhone. it's a nearly ubiquitous advertising technique. this, imo, indicates that the iPhone has become popularly synonymous with "value". a few years ago this role was filled by laptops: if i was selling diapers, i'd show a smart-looking housewife viewing my product on a laptop. now it's iPhones. so what's happening is that UI designers are trying to convince you that their UI has Value by making it invoke iOS. my $0.02.

  5. the interview _is_ the strategy on iPod Engineer Tony Fadell On the Unique Nature of Apple's Design Process · · Score: 0

    perhaps this whole interview is a red herring attempting to get apple competitors to go ahead and sink resources into lousy products.

  6. Re:The latter. on Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing? · · Score: 1

    i switched over to OSX a few years ago,
    but before that i also stuck with the older Jasc (6 sounds right) version in favour of the more recent and overweight Corel versions.
    iirc the older version was awesome for basic editing, but occasionally there would be specific more modern thing i'd want, and would fire up the corel version.

  7. Re:The latter. on Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing? · · Score: 1

    i agree.

  8. Re:When did you last use Blender? on Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing? · · Score: 1

    i used the latest version about five months ago.
    i couldn't figure out how to move the camera,
    but three clicks turned my simple cube into a smoke simulation!
    (not kidding on either point)

  9. Re:The latter. on Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing? · · Score: 1

    i am not a pro by any means, but my issues with GIMP are all UI.
    it has all the features i could want, but using them is such a hassle.
    there may be something to tibit's comment that it's not a worse UI, just a different UI, but i disagree.
    i find myself forced to spend way more time in UI management than the commercial apps, which i think is an objective measure.

  10. Re:The latter. on Adobe's Strange Software Giveaway: Goof, Or Clever Marketing? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    indeed.

    even for semi-serious non-professional uses i find GIMP to have a horrible UI. it's sort of like Blender.
    honestly i'd rather work out an ImageMagick script to do what i want than do it in gimp. at least then it's reusable and command-line.

    i do prop PaintShop Pro and Pixelmator for being solid products an order of magnitude or so cheaper than Photoshop.
    altho pixelmator has swallowed a bit too much of the Apple cool-aid around stamping out "Save As", imo.

  11. Re:Video and first thoughts. on Ubuntu Phone OS Unveiled · · Score: 4, Funny

    What does it bring new to developers that isn't there in Android?

    Real openness?

    What have the Romans ever done for us?

    Sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health?

    All right, fair enough, but appart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health; what have the Romans ever done for us?

    Orgies?

    i think we need to clarify "us".

  12. Re:One word: Lawsuits on Moscow Plane Crash Caught On Passerby's Dash Cam · · Score: 1

    yr right - i watched it again and the lights are right there.

  13. Re:One word: Lawsuits on Moscow Plane Crash Caught On Passerby's Dash Cam · · Score: 1

    i also do not see the light controlling the intersection for the red car.
    it's off-screen on the left the entire time.
    from the video alone it might be red or green.

    but perhaps with special knowledge of the intersection's patterns, the light's color could be deduced.
    for example, perhaps the green lights for the left-to-right moving traffic implies that the red car's turn lane had a red.

  14. fluff on 30 Days Is Too Long: Animated Rant About Windows 8 · · Score: 1

    he surely has some valid points,
    and i'm no windows fan,
    but this piece is super fluffy.
    it seems like about 80% "it's terrible, it's like < analogy >, it's really bad" and 20% actually saying what was bad,
    so in the end it's 80% appeal to this dude's authority.

  15. mental illness or gender ? on School Shooting Prompts Legislation To Study Violent Video Games · · Score: 1

    i see a lot of posts on good old slashdot here saying that "the real issue is clearly mental illness" (to quote one of many).

    so but,
    according to Mother Jones,
    of the counted 62 U.S. Mass Murders in the past 20 years,
    38 of the 62 (61%) showed signs of mental illness,
    while 61 of the 62 (98%) were .. male.

    which correlation do you think more strongly deserves attention.

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

    me too.

    is there doubt over the figure ?

  17. also, EPA bans BP from federal contracts on BP and Three Executives Facing Criminal Charges Over Oil Spill · · Score: 1
  18. Re:Google Maps was bad when it first appeared on Apple Axes Head of Mapping Team · · Score: 1

    > Until then, my phone is staying on iOS 5.

    i'm considering attempting to install iOS 5 on my iPhone 5 for this reason.

  19. woz: the boy who lived on Woz Worries Microsoft Is Now More Innovative Than Apple · · Score: 5, Interesting

    seems like one of the few people in the valley who've managed to retain their techno-weenie spirit despite enormous corporate success.

  20. imaginary mass on Mathematicians Extend Einstein's Special Relativity Beyond Speed of Light · · Score: 2

    have not RTFA,
    but if you just let the mass become imaginary, the relativistic velocity equations work just fine.
    the only singularity comes in when you're going at c.

  21. Re:C'mon man... on Curiosity Spies Unidentified, Metallic Object On Mars · · Score: 1

    also i don't see much ("much" = "anything") in the way of soil disturbance around it,
    which would be surprising even if it had dropped off the rover itself, more so if it were ejecta from the landing.

  22. some was taught but future coders were self-taught on Ask Slashdot: What Were You Taught About Computers In High School? · · Score: 1

    i was born in 1972, schooled in southern california.
    grew up with IBM punchcards all over the house.
    in 6th grade we had an apple ][ in the classroom,
    but as i recall only as a treat: if you finished work early you could play Prince of Persia.
    but even then a very small group of us would hang out in the library after school or at lunch
    and teach ourselves basic. there was no concept of teaching us how to program in school.

    by the time i reached 12th grade, there was a 'computer literacy' class offered,
    i think they taught programming on TRS-80s, but even my friends who were in it
    were way beyond what was covered in the class.
    by then i was aspiring to be part of the amiga demo scene,
    so i did an independent study to teach myself 680x0 assembly.
    my teacher did a great job - he knew he had no way to really grade my progress,
    so he helped me evaluate it myself. mad props for that.

    i'm now a programmer, and pretty much all the core programmers i know
    have a similar story - computers were around in high-school,
    but really they taught themselves.

    it's funny now - i look around facebook and see all these people i know
    who had less than zero interest in computers when i knew them in their youth,
    and are now product managers or otherwise have 'software' in their title.
    i wonder if that sucks for them.

  23. Good Thing ? on Earthquakes Correlated With Texan Fracking Sites · · Score: 1

    IANAG, and i'm no fan of fracking for many reasons,
    but inducing small earthquakes seems like a good thing to me.
    faults build up pressure, and one way or another that pressure is going to release.
    it seems better if it releases in smaller, more frequent events than less frequent but large ones.

  24. retroactive setup on Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Arrested, Jailed · · Score: 1

    ho-hum. yet another example of the guvmint's access to time travel technology.
    there's no way this guy had violated his parole in the past until the current hooplah.

  25. "uncle tungsten" on Book Review: Wonderful Life With the Elements · · Score: 2

    another memoir about the elements is "uncle tungsten - memories of a chemical boyhood", by oliver sacks.
    imo it was fairly good.