Slashdot Mirror


User: TaoPhoenix

TaoPhoenix's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
4,352
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 4,352

  1. Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"? on Facebook Ads Could 'Out' Gay Users · · Score: 1

    Exactly, and this is different than "Joe likes Red Cars" because it starts tying in a preference that has social implications.

  2. Re:soooo..... on Facebook Ads Could 'Out' Gay Users · · Score: 1

    That's two fierce posts so far which are doing the "narrow interpretation of the facts" thing.

    The thing is, maybe you outed yourself under one site, maybe even a pseudonym, you get served a certain ad. That advertiser sells that site's user info to its other marketing partners. Except because the user entered their info to something else, and now that ad ring has a preference attached to that email address anywhere on the net.

    This is seriously in "well *this time* they restricted it to openly declared profiles, but *next time* it will get served to anyone who has pink chickens in Farmville."

  3. Re:App Store on Apple Deprecates Their JVM · · Score: 2, Insightful

    However, if they pull through an App Store for the Mac, which doesn't even have the "it's on a Phone" excuse, they will have effectively succeeded in solving the 20+ year old problem of how to actually sell "shareware" aka "Free/Premium".

  4. Re:...cate on Apple Deprecates Their JVM · · Score: 1

    It's even funnier if you consider "deprecate" is the nice way of saying the other word "defecate" which translates as "Applet thinks Apple Java is now $hit".

  5. Re:First Henge on All Your Stonehenge Photos Are Belong To England · · Score: 1

    (Sonorous British Professor Says)

    "According to a study of over 4,000 stories, threads with a legitimately insightful First Henge/item have a much reduced rate of low grade troll posts throughout the thread.

    Therefore a new habit to be encouraged is clever first posts for the good of the social welfare, which will increase ad revenue to provide tangible benefits."

  6. Re:Perfect for traffic - let's make it mandatory? on Digital Dashboard Device Detects Driver Drowsiness · · Score: 1

    Fair answer, hence why I held off on downmodding.
    (Though if I were to accuse, you're right I should be thinking flamebait, not troll.) But I'm not because I read your post twice and it's in good faith.

    Unfortunately Super-Surveillance is all the rage right now. You're perfectly right that this tired-sensor does not *yet* talk to the police... but I fear it's "when-not-if" in these matters. Sadly, this has led me to look for the abusability of anything these days.

    If you want to amp this up to "official notify" level you're welcome to email me and then if I match both halves I'll drop you a note.

  7. Re:Perfect for traffic - let's make it mandatory? on Digital Dashboard Device Detects Driver Drowsiness · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nope.

    However for your good faith effort I will reply rather than mark you troll.

    "Let's make it mandatory! Then every infraction will be posted to the police, and the media, and maintained on a public page. Captain Panic, who was pulled over on suspicion of driving tired, pleaded not guilty, saying that he was just trying to figure out more information about the grooved pavement in front of him."

    "Pshaw! Likely story!"

    "Captain Panic's employer has been contacted and his hours have been cut since, as he cannot drive properly rested, he must be working too hard."

    No, surveillance measures are all to easily abused in this Orwellian Age.

  8. Re: Small Towns on IT's Last Hope — a Job In the Boonies? · · Score: 0, Redundant

    There must be a few variants of small town.

    The ones I have been in are more of the "Mrs. Garplethwaite's Tulip Died four years ago today when someone dumped bleach on it. In a Post-Tulip World, we must never again use anything that contains an element from the leftmost column of the periodic table without its loving mate Chlorine wed in holy matrimony".

    (For those of you who missed the joke, sometimes education in raw factoids is there but the conclusions drawn then get dialed to 11. That was my attempt to combine "Never Forget", "Nasty Chemicals", and Hetero bias in one pronouncement. Salts are typically (Na/K)Cl and are tasty enough, but sky help you with "Nasty chemicals" of Sodium Hydroxide and Hydrochloric Acid. But most of all, all this gets wrapped up in one Town Story that is simply mashed to a pulp.)

    Remember the Tulip!

  9. Re: Fixing the False Choice in Ribbon discussions on Microsoft Admits OpenOffice.org Is a Contender · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's worth skipping my mod points for this issue. I'll reply to you out of the 5 possible posts that are relevant.

    I hate the Ribbon. But I banked on Rule ____ of the net that says if there's a purpose for someone's potential small project, it has better than even odds of existing.

    Classic Menu for Office

    http://www.addintools.com/

    It's a plugin for Office that puts mostly similar menus back.

    So the comparison becomes:
    A: Office 2007 (or 2010?) with Old Menus
    vs
    LibreOffice (OpenOffice.org / branding squabbles with Oracle)

  10. Re:MBA Owner! on When You Really, Really Want to Upgrade a Tiny Notebook · · Score: 1

    Daddy? Can I have an MBA of my very own for Christmas? I promise to keep him fed and optimized!

  11. Re:Haha on Reuters Ends Anonymous Comments · · Score: 2

    $hit.

    That comment creates an endless loop.

  12. Re: ___ years on It's Time To Build the Analytical Engine · · Score: 1

    There's a mistake here.

    He was only "100 years ahead of his time" because, er, well, 100 years passed. But he need not have been. Scientists say that sometimes "the mood of an age" is right for certain things to appear. So if some soft factors had gone the other way, he'd have only been 30 years ahead of his time.

  13. Re:Analytical Engine: No Definitive Design Exists on It's Time To Build the Analytical Engine · · Score: 1

    You mean he anticipated Versioning!

    "There is no Definitive Firefox! They keep changing it!"

  14. Re: Web X.0 on Twitter To Start Selling Followers · · Score: 1

    Hallo.

    You've hit on a topic I've pondered for a long time now.

    Following the version concept, I think we're well past 2.0 now, right? Wouldn't "2.0" be "Look, it's free! * "
    Your choice if we're at 2.2, or 2.6, or something, but now "free * " is now clearly known as "but we'll do stuff with your data". People still like Facebook, but I'm pretty sure most of the users now have a vague inkling that they're being marketed to, even if they can't figure all of it out.

    (Facebook, the movie!? http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2021322,00.html?xid=rss-topstories )

    I like to think Web 3.0 might be a pro-privacy backlash, however long it takes to get here, and however short lived.

    (Thank you for just now making me wonder what Web 4.0 is!? )

  15. Re:Canon on Software Theft a Problem For Actual Thieves, Too · · Score: 1

    The Vatican called. They want your unauthorized copy of the Canon back.

  16. Re:Jolly Wally Binginton: AKA 'Old LeadBottom'... on Copyrights and CD-Rs Endanger Audio History · · Score: 1

    Awesome answer.

    More precisely, I'm trying to find Pre-2000 examples of events which were sorta small by themselves but blown into vicious campaigns. Discounting Vietnam, and even my own Pearl example, of your list I'd pick:

    Korean War
    Panama
    New Grenada
    1st Iraqi war(Kuwait)
    Murray Bldg. in Oklahoma

    The only one I'd put close would be the 1st Iraqi/Kuwait war, because I was Young & Impressionable and remember that the event made its way into parodies. I definitely don't recall multi-year blather about a "post_____ world" about the others.

  17. Re:holy shit REALLY? on Copyrights and CD-Rs Endanger Audio History · · Score: 1

    Double Holy $hit REALLY -

    Next year will be the 10th Anniversary! The politicians are close to their death-lock on forever with that meme.

    5digit types, I need to know, were people still proportionally this freaked by Pearl Harbor in the 1950's?

  18. Re:Facebook on Google URL Shortener Opened To the Public · · Score: 1

    "BTW cr4p brings you to facebook - how appropriate."

    So does http://goo.gl/tOmH

  19. Re: Common Carrier on UK's Two Biggest ISPs Rip Up Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    Hiya.

    Oh-yeah they want to trash "common carrier" status so that they can play the whole suite of nasty business tricks. But they'll find a way to whine about "not being responsible" or something that normally comes as part of being common. I like to call these kinds of ploys "division by zero style tactics". In other words, if you allow a formal logic error in your argument, after it's dressed up you can pseudo-prove anything.

  20. Re:make rule up on Browser-Based Deep Space Nine MMO Coming In 2011 · · Score: 1

    Hmm. I can't find that one here:

    http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

    Therefore it might be:
    (The unwritten rule) When no appropriate rule applies, make one up.[15] VOY: "False Profits"

  21. Re:And? on UK's Two Biggest ISPs Rip Up Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    You're missing that this gives them a chance to complete the MAFIAA chain. "Torrents? Who the hell legitimately needs a torrent? That will be $750/Gig, thank you. HTML can go at a Dollar-Per-Megabyte". When you ask to audit then they can wave their hands and call it proprietary.

  22. Re:first contact team on United Nations Names Ambassador To Aliens · · Score: 1

    They Rollin' they Hatin' - Tryin' to catch you Spacin' Dirty!

  23. Re:Still stupid on Pentagon Makes Good On Plan To Destroy Critical Book · · Score: 1

    Wizards of the Coast called. They want to help institute Type 2 for publishing.

  24. We need some art on that. To be efficient, the judge wouldn't just drop the gavel and then waste time *looking* for the next case. It would be all lined up, maybe on some kind of assembly line or server.

    Let me add an Insightful link to what that those trials would sound like complete with advise to noisy courtroom spectators.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9698TqtY4A&feature=related

  25. Re:Warehouse 13! on In France, Hadopi Reporting Begins, With (Only) 10,000 IP Addresses Per Day · · Score: 1

    "Only two guys made it through to commenting, and one lost his way."