instead of enforcing tax law to reap a trivial amount of tax from middle and lower class americans, how about eliminating tax holidays for major multinational corporations and reforming tax law for conglomerates that often pay no tax in the state through creative chicanery? I mean granted it means your political class is going to suffer underfunded elections, but it would be a refreshing change of pace to have a legislative body that didnt operate to serve the allmighty dollar.
Listen, as one of your duly enshrined plutocratic oligarchs its my duty to insist upon you coding. Code. Do it. Come one come all and learn the code. Seriously it wasnt this hard to get you to start eating fried processed chicken "nuggets" or pick up another credit card, and yet here we are toeing the line again. Weve installed "code" into all your pop culture, even the prince, in a very transparent attempt to get you start doing this for us. We've even taken the initiative to market gender-specific coding pitches to males and females, as you've grown so fond of for everything from food to deodorant. Code is in your movies, your TV series, your cartoons, and your social media. The faster you start coding, the faster we can get to shuffling "programmer" and "system engineer" back to the bottom of the dung heap of salaried wageslave positions.
Im serious. im getting really tired of dealing responsibly and reasonably with employed programmers and sysops just because they have 4 job offers at any given time to pick from. I want..no..I need a world where I can get up at 10 AM, shit on a man for screwing up an egg mcmuffin, and then turn around and with the same disregard for humanity shit on a man for arguing the need for patching before features. Its just what ive become.
the whole point of Linux was that you didnt have to make any fucking pledges. Linux is about choice and freedom, something that after your UI fiat to developers and branding ecosystem pitch im sure you know nothing about. Further, the nature of open source code itself discourages the kinds of back-doors and underhanded application programming that most Linux users are familiar with in proprietary closed source operating systems. operating systems that are beginning to seem a lot like Ubuntu.
"We don't do encryption to hide things; we do encryption so we can choose what to share"
As a greybeard, Fuck your cloud and the sharing economy it rolled in on. When i choose what to share, I make it explicitly publically available in a format that may, or may not be encrypted. when you recontext my privacy in terms of what im willing to "share" with people it debases the very real need for encryption to circumvent things like warrantless wiretaps, blanket government surveillance, and invasive advertising. stop treating me like a toddler for using cryptography.
"We will never backdoor Ubuntu; we will never weaken encryption"
maybe you will, maybe you wont, but again, the point of linux is that I dont need a 60 million dollar corporation to reassure me about privacy. if you do it --like you screwed developers with contributor agreements and the UI-- ill just switch to a different distro or ill fork yours.
driving around in a pickup truck with hundreds of gallons of gasoline might not be safe.
Look im checking my blindspots at every intersection and im using my goddamn blinkers at every single turn so I dont understand what more you want from me. Christ. you sound just like my wife when I was shoveling cheap chinese fireworks into the passenger seat. It was a good idea 5 redbulls ago, and its gonna be an even better idea for an internet app 5 more from now.
for those of us still installing slack and gentoo to servers or BSD, the additional disk requirements are really rather simple.
soundcard support: nothing like rockin out in the datacenter to the latest skrillex mix. soundcards are critical for todays infrastructure, and drivers should be available.. bluetooth support: how else are you going to sync your contacts or hook up your wireless mouse? datacenters are prime real estate for the mingling professional on the go, so youll need bluetooth drivers to support that bluetooth headset. art.:perfectly kerned fonts, glorious artwork, and rich icons make your desktop experience immersive when youre ssh'ing into the server at 4 AM to fix the build. youll need the full sound effects pack too if you want to make the tablet experience really pop when youre executing stack traces. pets: whatever asinine garbage Lennart Pottering demanded 20 minutes before the CI kicked off surely has to be part of this weeks image. And dont forget the piss-ant libraries for the manbaby developer that needed his special snowflake status validated in the reimplementation of a C library in a ruby wrapped R executed python enabled SPARK ada routine to properly align the cursor! unless you include that you really arent building an OS at all...seriously...his package is a dependency everywhere...for no real reason.
In 20 years our kids wont know cellular mitosis, because the theory of evolution was in such crisis and open to such broad religious interpretation that no state cared to endorse it. Our kids wont understand how to cook a cup of rice or plan a meal because betty crocker shuffled our home economics classes out the door with the sheer brute force of nutritionally bankrupt processed meals in a cardboard box. They wont understand US history because the budget folded it into gym class, which in turn wont be attended because curricula from the sixties hasnt taken into account a predominantly obese student body. These kids wont understand suffixed consonants and proper nouns because its hard to concentrate when the cafeteria is forced to define a french fry as a vegetable portion and pizza sauce as well. And the kids wont know how to wire a doorbell or build a simple circuit because the last known attempt at simple electronics turned into a witchhunt for improvised explosives.
oh but dont worry, theyll all be able to code so long as the OS is windows, the IDE is visual studio, the curriculum centers on industry goals, and the teacher is vetted and approved by an appropriate industry partner. the GPL and BSD kids at the back of the class however will do as they always have: shoot spitballs, trade mp3s, and work on cool projects they like until the bell rings and they can go back to hanging out on irc and pretending they wont spend their senior year expelled for a zero tolerance offense.
the country whos four major banks wound up in the panama papers is entirely trustworthy with the worlds data. the country with an open-ended sysiphean mission to question Julian assange about a rape that cant produce a victim is a mindful steward of privacy. The country whos historic purpose has been a tax haven for the worlds wealthy elite is also unaccountably a safe and neutral place to house data.
Call me a skeptic, but unless sweden is a CNAME for a BSD machine on my network, I dont think so.
What fords doing is also reducing their patent liability in the event --the likely event -- they come out with an electric car as well. Chances are great theyve torn down a nissan leaf and BMW's electric offering as well to avoid uncomfortable litigation similar to what they experienced when they inadvertently infringed on Toyotas hybrid synergy drive and ended up licensing it for their hybrid vehicles. Future ford vehicles will have to be carefully designed so as not to infringe on a wealth of other vehicles that made it to market first while detroit was busy cranking out another SUV with an electric tailgate for soccer moms.
companies that do this often times end up pretty exhausted. it takes thousands of human hours and a lot more than the cost posted to analyze these vehicles. In most cases major auto companies just suck it up, license the technology, and rebrand it accordingly. Chevrolet is an example of a company that tried to dance around the battery vehicle market and likely ended up frustrated enough to just add an engine to get around litigation with the Volt.
The question is best asked, "why do you subscribe to cellular phone service?" among the providers listed most are indiscernable from one another outside their limited branding. each network has a coverage determined by the wavelength and spectrum allotted the towers by the FCC. each network has a set of plans, terms, conditions, contractual obligtations, fees and fines associated with their services. And finally, each network of cellular systems is susceptible to outages or failures due to interference, underprovisioning, and "act of god." The cellular service must therefore be defined in terms of the lifestyle it offers, not the service.
the question is why or how do these services differentiate themselves in the consumer mind at all from one another? What the CEO was doing was a simple market identity and brand association test performed every single day by hundreds of corporate focus groups from proctor and gamble to general electric. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint collectively spend multiple billions of dollars each year to promote their product in different ways. AT&T's advertisements may focus on connectivity and family, while Verizon may focus on selling their customers on the perception of advanced or modern living through a superior network and handsets. It doesnt matter the theme, however assuming the target of the question is being genuine and not a paid actress, its a telling statement. Perhaps T-Mobile has spent too much advertising focus on low-cost plans. another common problem, one that marketing and advertisers are keenly aware of, is demographic. Too much diversity in your advertisements and many middle income white suburban consumers will subconsciously associate your product with the negative minority stereotypes utilised by other marketing teams to sell things like music, movies, and clothing. The question the CEO asked to the participant elicited a tacit admission that the participant felt either alienated or confused by the networks product as she hadn't been properly exposed to the correct advertisement for her demographic which, depending on your marketing alignment, can be a sign of trouble.
there are more than 200 cancer treatment centers in the US alone, not counting the inumerable rise of "alternative" treatment centers that forego the scientific method in favour of wreckless naturalism and holistics. Do we need yet another branded expression of a rich mans ego masquerading as anything more than fleeting concern for a personal interest in a likely singular event of cancer? very little attention is paid to the environmental factors --equally inumerable-- that act as either cancer suspect agents or outright carcinogens themselves. Strides have been made in ablating BPA and Lead from our food chain, but more can and should be done to reign in things like Acrylamide and the carte blanc appropriation of nearly every organic and inorganic chemistry development to the amorphous Generally-Regarded-As-Safe (GRAS) monicker so often championed by chemical companies. 250 million dollars applied to strengthening the EPA, the FDA, and legislation designed to protect consumers would do arguably much more to prevent cancer. Reforming the harbingers of the largest cause of preventable disease in the world --major multinational fast and processed food conglomerates-- would surely act more immediately than a pet research institute.
A team of elite system administrators --transcended of devops and cloud -- inhabit the 65 story monolith known only as "the shard." in this cloistered structure they work tirelessly, endlessly, pounding away on their Model M keyboards and furiously working to maintain the harmonious balance of man and machine. Clothed in tattered sackcloth, a single manager ascends the structure in search of the one. She arrives, breathless and pensive with anticipation as she approaches a lone icarian figure draped in golden silks atop a mighty Aeron chair. Her steps echoing cavernoisly against the server room floor until stepping unthinkably on a lone malted milk ball. Aware, the admin directs her heavenly gaze downward upon the lowly thought leader who stands frozen, crucified in awe.
"yes?" speaks the godlike sysop..
"My laptop is frozen....i cant...." replies the manager, and as she struggles to form her next few words the admin places a single hand upon her tear soaked cheek and in a soothing voice speaks
"Have you tried turning it off....and then on...again?"
Upon this revelation the manager becomes enlightened and overwhelmed with this knowledge ascends into the afterlife, purified in the wisdom of the admin.
or more likely the whole thing smells like old cheese, the lights are perpetually shut off, pizza delivery staff die from exposure, and theres a copy of userfriendly propping up a two wheeled crash cart full of old mcdonalds bags and taco bell wrappers.
Ev Williams is not a fan of the increasingly homogenised media he currently sees
Its his fault. companies like twitter, facebook, and reddit decided long ago their cash crop -- users -- had to be reigned in. certain topics and discissions could never be permitted on boards or by users. they did this ostensibly at the behest of maximizing brand value and appeal to brands and marketing.
A lot of journalists who want to do great stuff are dissatisfied.
because nearly every major news outlet is the brainchild of a media corporation, they are beholden to certain standards and practices designed to maximize brand value and attract marketers. this drives advertising revenue and shareholder value. its why medicine shows like Dr. Oz are successful, while investigative journalism into pharmaceutical corruption arent.
Advertisers and brands are dissatisfied.
by what? how would you know? Advertisers and brands are sated so long as their product or brand is consumed. they are only dissatisfied if a pitch or blitz didnt go as planned, or if an expensive viral campaign had no effect. Brands dont care about content, or topics, so to say they are dissatisfied with media is to say they are dissatisfied with the returns on investment they have made in platforms like Twitter...which has never really had a return at all.
with the idea that people consuming media means that's what they want
because we're driven to want it, you blithering imbecile. You dont think Proctor and Gamble spend two billion dollars a year on marketing campaigns like Terry Crews screaming "odor block" or Nike just conveniently happens to make shoes that 90% of the NBA enjoy do you? Public discourse, the free and open expression you seem to allude to, is all but dead in favour of whatever pseudo-hispanic consumable Taco Bell has excreted this month or how redbull helped an athelete conquer the very fabric of reality. The solution to the existential epiphany youre expounding upon from whatever golden shitter youre perched upon with iphone in hand is paradoxically to destroy or limit the very thing that sustains you. As you float about on your mega-yacht, take for a moment to consider this: the answer to your prayers for something other than internet bullshit already exists. Its called adblock, noscript, and and Tor. but, you want a golden goose. something thats unique, original, and can be monetized through advertising.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are all applications in which you arent the consumer, but the product. Poultry farms routinely de-beak their chickens in order to prevent them from harming other birds or their handlers. Pig farms will remove the teeth of aggressive hogs to ensure the productive health of their herd. cattle farms will often segregate and destroy downed or overaggressive bovine. Facebook and Twitter will remove shitposts and cull aggressive users to ensure their cattle remain copacetic and the product --you-- performs to the liking of their consumers.
stop. stop this. Waterboarding is by an overwhelming concensus a formal example of torture. the united states has in the past engaged in torture, full stop. it still engages in torture to this day at Guantanamo Bay without independent oversight and enjoys freedom from media coverage. In this regard the US is no different than north korea and iran.
even if ordered to by a future president.
but there was no formal order from the bush administration. the bush team crafted a doctrine by which terrorism became "enhanced interrogation" and through this clever violation of the geneva convention the techniques described in the CIA's handbooks stopped being torture entirely. You technically never tortured anyone before, and refuse to do so now.
President Obama banned the practices in his first few days in office with an executive order.
Its hard to put on the Nobel prize when youre the leader of a nation that runs a secret torture prison. Obama made a concerted effort to close this prison, but largely failed when congress and senate majorities handed him a non-stop shit storm shutting down the government twice and attempting to repeal healthcare reform more than 45 times.
Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture
And Martha Stewarts dog died in a propane explosion. Neither of these considerations is relevant to the topic. the point is Brennan is making a clever distraction from the actual problem. The united states under the Bush doctrine legally authorized torture by changing the definition of the word and then unanimously arguing theirs was a legally consistent and correct one. The judge that wrote the defense of this argument was later promoted in the administration in what was largely seen as a quid pro quo move by leadership.
uh, for what? identifying markers for genetic diseases, phrenological alternative, neat T-Shirt designs? because if you're talking about identifying criminals its still nowhere near an exact science and depends very greatly on the disposition of prosecution and the care taken during collection as well as a wealth of other environmental factors.
and we know we can pull out DNA.
dial it back there Kafka. your job is intelligence, not the blanket collection all mankinds genetic marker for some clandestine plot point to a steven king movie. Why do you need this DNA, how are you going to use it, are you even going about this legally?
DevOps was invented as a way to unite developers and IT operations (system administrators) to help them find a common ground.
devops was invented as a means to staunch bleeding from companies with 50% or better turnover rates due to rushed products, shit management, and poor work-life balance. the idea being if you could get devs and ops to do eachothers jobs youd invent a new third commodity that could become more resillient to 90 hour work weeks and bullshit feature-before-fix code releases. It failed because devs arent great ops, and ops arent great devs.
The old model of throwing the code over the wall to system administrators who would deploy it stopped working with agile processes and continuous deployment practices.
this process stopped working because of the inclusion of draconian, conflicting, confusing, and often times lip-service change management processes that fit the quarterly management meeting and not much else. CM's gave project and team leaders the sensation of doing something every monday morning when they rubberstamped some code push, but otherwise made life hell when they left for vacation/hangovers. when a code push failed and had to be rolled back, management pushed again to have it rolled forward broken and defied often times their own decrees. In the same breath, theyd crucify you for updating a package or rebooting a server without 15 hours of review and objection from a guy who didnt know TCP from BBQ.
And when I say the cloud, I really mean managed services.
sure, maybe one buzzword killed another but it sure as shit wasnt the latest incarnation of thin clients, hosted services, SAAS, or PAAS, which we now call "Cloud." clouds are just other peoples hardware, so when your devops bullshit went down in flames as a transparent attempt to milk skilled professionals for free overtime and flex-goals, they all quit and submitted their CV's to the cloud. You didnt have to worry about devops for your precious service, but they in turn didnt have to worry about you anymore either unless you skipped a check for the month.
Apple provided assistance in accessing such devices earlier.
this took place largely through secret FISA court orders and wasnt a huge problem until the FBI pulled the wig off the fat lady. Apple would love to continue secretly unlocking phones, but its no longer an option when americas darling tech company has been directly implicated in bed with the US intelligence community. the biggest threat to the cloud based sharing model of internetworked gadgets and services that companies like Apple offer is the inability to keep the devices secure and away from prying eyes. It doesnt matter how many surveys come out declaring $countrymen dont care about privacy, the proof is in the pudding. Apple understands losing this mark of privacy could mean the death of the brands top sellers.
the government said it's going ahead with an appeal of a judge's order denying its request for Apple's help.
thats fine. thats how bureaucracy and legal processes work. this is a win for everyone because it didnt happen in a secret court.
The battle between the world's most valuable tech company and the U.S. over encryption and data privacy has sparked a national debate
theres no debate. the government wanted apple to cave in and erode the first amendment by unlocking a dead mans phone to prove a case that was already solved. this effort was very transparent to anyone paying even cursory attention. Apple fought back with a powerful attorney and in order to avoid setting a precedent for losing a first amendment case, the government pulled the legislative equivalent of a teenager scoffing and mumbling what-ever under her breath.
with dozens of companies and organizations siding with Apple
correction, with google pussy-footing in under pressure and other companies wringing their hands like spinsters at a bar fight. the only real opposition other than Apple was the FSF.
there is no new round. Whatever chicanery the government used to crack the phone has now been its own killing blow. Apple will do as the borg, and in a few iterations of IOS you'll soon see a phone that is not only unsucceptable to the present exploit, but cannot become succeptable to third party intervention without the sand of brute force time.
I hadnt paid close attention, but it seems like matter from space is far more popular than I'd assumed. In light of the recent Christies auction, im prepared to auction a nearly endless supply of unique matter formed from the very carbon from the stars that formed this galaxy. thats right...
Space turds.
Im prepared to offer one a day and while I understand this may sound extraordinarily generous to some I ask you to please hold your applause. I can ratchet this up to 4 auctions per day using exotic manufacturing facilities like taco trucks and even common run-of-the-mill local festivals and carnivals. And if im granted access to Arbys beef-and-cheddar technology augmented with arbys "sauce" then the skies the limit. So dont wait, slashdot. reserve your ancient space turd now.
The project promoted greater, open collaboration between companies and individuals.
thats not what companies want. its been my experience as a security researcher that if and when you discover a vulnerability for $product, the parent vendor typically wants to:
1. STFU: stop reporting the issue, stop investigating the exploit, and dont touch the product ever again. Ive had cease and desist orders and gag orders show up at my door for finding pretty massive issues with PCI and point of sale vendors in particular.
2. get lost: fork over what you know, sign a nondisclosure form, and fuck off. if we see you at a conference, we will set you on fire. You were never here and we never spoke to you. medical vendors are pretty good at this.
3. go straight to jail: I once had an amusement park pull this shit over a SCADA report. Yes, i had to hire an attorney. No, they didnt
'win.' Yes, it wrecked a solid 4 months of my life.
the industry DGAF about what you found or how you found it. outside of devops darlings and well known players in cloud and open source, most companies would rather you drop dead than engage in any sensible reporting on their products vulnerability to common exploit.
upbeat marketing droneSo, Fiorina dropped out of the race without a snowballs chance in hell, I got great parking this morning, and we just invented a laptop thinner than the christgods at apple.... PHB: hey we need to logo the new brochures for third quarter what should we- upbeat marketing drone: the one that kicks more ass than Popeye on bath salts. PHB Ok steve we'll use...the lines...but honestly i swear to god no more coffee for you.
If you have a penis, use the boys room. If you don't you'll make everyone else in the womens room uncomfortable.
there are many people with a penis that would look entirely inappropriate in a boys room.
What if some regular schmuck decides for the lulz to dress up as a women for a day and go all perv in womens room?
then hes committed a number of already existing criminal infractions such as disorderly conduct or sexual assault at worst. men already do this. this law wont fix the problem
At this point why not make all restrooms communal or unisex?
Here in West Hollywood, we kinda did. instead of passing a law that stated gender normative restrooms had to be enforced we did the opposite. we made a law that states all restrooms have to be accessible by both genders. Some smaller bars and restaraunts just made both their restrooms locking unisex. Larger night clubs and hotels converted to an architectural model that provides a fully closed rack of stalls, and around a corner enclosed urinals with privacy partitions.
for those who think this isnt an egregious concern for the state of North Carolina, they very much do have a lot to lose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Research Triangle Park (RTP) is one of the largest research parks in the world, but its been largely a pearl in an otherwise very salty oyster. Its home to Cisco, Redhat, Microsoft, and NetApp among others. Governors and statesmen are wrecklessly gambling with this research park in the hopes that pandering to ten million North Carolinians with rhetoric from the culture war is a sustainable or responsible approach to governing their state.
PayPal has made it very clear: there are 49 other states that will gladly accept our proposition to employ hundreds of high skilled knowledge workers. Your tax incentives are by no means exclusive to the state.
Firstly: to anyone who owns a nest and is counting their fleeting blessings that this will never happen to them, see you on the front page in a few years.
now, for the rest the slashdotters. stop with the internet of things, synergy of disruptive technology, cloud based "AAS" marketing hootenany and put the cool-aid back. These companies have no vested interest in anything but their shareholders. when Sergei buys a new island, when Tim buys a new ultra-yacht, when Satya or Ballmer or Gates or whoever runs the redmond money choo choo these days buys a new public school system and turns it into a mandatory code camp you can be sure they dont care about you or any of the products you use. Kindle, Nest, Facebook, and Google all exist solely to capitalize on your inability to understand your role as the product of these services, not the consumer. putting it "in the cloud" or buying into a "sharing economy" or whatever some ginned up marketing thirty-something spun across her blog is just fancy buzz jargon for giving up freedom.
You cant recall my books just because a publisher rubs you the wrong way, because they sit on my shelf after I buy them. You cant recall my email because some sender became non-commital about it, because it lives on my server now. And you can spin it all you want, but you cant do anything about the fact that I use a VPN and adblocker when I surf your "free" wireless. I dont get to experience your SRVFAIL redirection landing page because my DNS queries are my own. And until this cloud based abortion you call the future takes my rights and freedoms into consideration, I'll just exist as one more user you cant track, cant optimise, and wont target properly whos "experience" is "degraded" because I chose something besides serfdom on the internet I was promised would revolutionize the future youre slowly ruining.
"listen, if students cant tell the difference between an accredited higher education institution offering meaningful and relevant education in computer technology in the 21st century from a ponzi scheme im not sure what we're trying to do. Its very plainly obvious that ITT, the corporation, is an exemplary behavior modification experiment and economic simulation as is clearly stipulated in our.06 font disclaimer on the toilet tissue contracts we distribute. how, i ask you, how would any pioneering facility other than ITT have made as much headway into determining the proper amount of disciplined disregard and callous hatred for the betterment of mankind required to summon satan himself?"
--ITT headmaster/man gnawing on unidentifiable femur.
Being an avid bookworm I cant say I like or hate the kindle one way or another. I just dont really understand them. The kindles largest competition, at least for me, is the fact that amazon sells thousands of titles I want to read for a penny plus shipping used. Why buy new when you can get a perfectly good used title from a reseller?
Sure, sure, kindles hold thousands of books, but so does my bookshelf. for my heavy duty questions theres the internet and a laptop, and titles licensed under Creative Commons fit just as well on it as they do the kindle. if i break a kindle, its going to cost about a hundred bones to replace...but if i break a used copy of Dune or leave it on a plane I can just reorder it from my phone with oneclick or finish it at the library. And if i finish a title on a flight or on a vacation I can trade it at a local book store for credit, and pick up something else Id like to read. In all seriousness: can you trade kindle books? I dont know.
Then theres the batteries and charging. I know kindle runs for quite some time on a single charge, but I've got books older than 70 years that I still thumb through with ease. Whats the total life of a kindle? Do they trade them in/up? can you swap the battery like a smoke detector? Lastly, what happens if i sell my kindle? can you sell them? do the titles transfer?
Slashdot Mirror
instead of enforcing tax law to reap a trivial amount of tax from middle and lower class americans, how about eliminating tax holidays for major multinational corporations and reforming tax law for conglomerates that often pay no tax in the state through creative chicanery? I mean granted it means your political class is going to suffer underfunded elections, but it would be a refreshing change of pace to have a legislative body that didnt operate to serve the allmighty dollar.
Listen, as one of your duly enshrined plutocratic oligarchs its my duty to insist upon you coding. Code. Do it. Come one come all and learn the code. Seriously it wasnt this hard to get you to start eating fried processed chicken "nuggets" or pick up another credit card, and yet here we are toeing the line again. Weve installed "code" into all your pop culture, even the prince, in a very transparent attempt to get you start doing this for us. We've even taken the initiative to market gender-specific coding pitches to males and females, as you've grown so fond of for everything from food to deodorant. Code is in your movies, your TV series, your cartoons, and your social media. The faster you start coding, the faster we can get to shuffling "programmer" and "system engineer" back to the bottom of the dung heap of salaried wageslave positions.
Im serious. im getting really tired of dealing responsibly and reasonably with employed programmers and sysops just because they have 4 job offers at any given time to pick from. I want..no..I need a world where I can get up at 10 AM, shit on a man for screwing up an egg mcmuffin, and then turn around and with the same disregard for humanity shit on a man for arguing the need for patching before features. Its just what ive become.
"We don't do encryption to hide things; we do encryption so we can choose what to share"
As a greybeard, Fuck your cloud and the sharing economy it rolled in on. When i choose what to share, I make it explicitly publically available in a format that may, or may not be encrypted. when you recontext my privacy in terms of what im willing to "share" with people it debases the very real need for encryption to circumvent things like warrantless wiretaps, blanket government surveillance, and invasive advertising. stop treating me like a toddler for using cryptography.
"We will never backdoor Ubuntu; we will never weaken encryption"
maybe you will, maybe you wont, but again, the point of linux is that I dont need a 60 million dollar corporation to reassure me about privacy. if you do it --like you screwed developers with contributor agreements and the UI-- ill just switch to a different distro or ill fork yours.
driving around in a pickup truck with hundreds of gallons of gasoline might not be safe.
Look im checking my blindspots at every intersection and im using my goddamn blinkers at every single turn so I dont understand what more you want from me. Christ. you sound just like my wife when I was shoveling cheap chinese fireworks into the passenger seat. It was a good idea 5 redbulls ago, and its gonna be an even better idea for an internet app 5 more from now.
for those of us still installing slack and gentoo to servers or BSD, the additional disk requirements are really rather simple.
soundcard support: nothing like rockin out in the datacenter to the latest skrillex mix. soundcards are critical for todays infrastructure, and drivers should be available..
bluetooth support: how else are you going to sync your contacts or hook up your wireless mouse? datacenters are prime real estate for the mingling professional on the go, so youll need bluetooth drivers to support that bluetooth headset.
art.:perfectly kerned fonts, glorious artwork, and rich icons make your desktop experience immersive when youre ssh'ing into the server at 4 AM to fix the build. youll need the full sound effects pack too if you want to make the tablet experience really pop when youre executing stack traces.
pets: whatever asinine garbage Lennart Pottering demanded 20 minutes before the CI kicked off surely has to be part of this weeks image. And dont forget the piss-ant libraries for the manbaby developer that needed his special snowflake status validated in the reimplementation of a C library in a ruby wrapped R executed python enabled SPARK ada routine to properly align the cursor! unless you include that you really arent building an OS at all...seriously...his package is a dependency everywhere...for no real reason.
In 20 years our kids wont know cellular mitosis, because the theory of evolution was in such crisis and open to such broad religious interpretation that no state cared to endorse it. Our kids wont understand how to cook a cup of rice or plan a meal because betty crocker shuffled our home economics classes out the door with the sheer brute force of nutritionally bankrupt processed meals in a cardboard box. They wont understand US history because the budget folded it into gym class, which in turn wont be attended because curricula from the sixties hasnt taken into account a predominantly obese student body. These kids wont understand suffixed consonants and proper nouns because its hard to concentrate when the cafeteria is forced to define a french fry as a vegetable portion and pizza sauce as well. And the kids wont know how to wire a doorbell or build a simple circuit because the last known attempt at simple electronics turned into a witchhunt for improvised explosives.
oh but dont worry, theyll all be able to code so long as the OS is windows, the IDE is visual studio, the curriculum centers on industry goals, and the teacher is vetted and approved by an appropriate industry partner. the GPL and BSD kids at the back of the class however will do as they always have: shoot spitballs, trade mp3s, and work on cool projects they like until the bell rings and they can go back to hanging out on irc and pretending they wont spend their senior year expelled for a zero tolerance offense.
the country whos four major banks wound up in the panama papers is entirely trustworthy with the worlds data. the country with an open-ended sysiphean mission to question Julian assange about a rape that cant produce a victim is a mindful steward of privacy. The country whos historic purpose has been a tax haven for the worlds wealthy elite is also unaccountably a safe and neutral place to house data.
Call me a skeptic, but unless sweden is a CNAME for a BSD machine on my network, I dont think so.
disclaimer: im an automotive engineer.
What fords doing is also reducing their patent liability in the event --the likely event -- they come out with an electric car as well. Chances are great theyve torn down a nissan leaf and BMW's electric offering as well to avoid uncomfortable litigation similar to what they experienced when they inadvertently infringed on Toyotas hybrid synergy drive and ended up licensing it for their hybrid vehicles. Future ford vehicles will have to be carefully designed so as not to infringe on a wealth of other vehicles that made it to market first while detroit was busy cranking out another SUV with an electric tailgate for soccer moms.
companies that do this often times end up pretty exhausted. it takes thousands of human hours and a lot more than the cost posted to analyze these vehicles. In most cases major auto companies just suck it up, license the technology, and rebrand it accordingly. Chevrolet is an example of a company that tried to dance around the battery vehicle market and likely ended up frustrated enough to just add an engine to get around litigation with the Volt.
Why do you have T-Mobile?
The question is best asked, "why do you subscribe to cellular phone service?" among the providers listed most are indiscernable from one another outside their limited branding. each network has a coverage determined by the wavelength and spectrum allotted the towers by the FCC. each network has a set of plans, terms, conditions, contractual obligtations, fees and fines associated with their services. And finally, each network of cellular systems is susceptible to outages or failures due to interference, underprovisioning, and "act of god." The cellular service must therefore be defined in terms of the lifestyle it offers, not the service.
the question is why or how do these services differentiate themselves in the consumer mind at all from one another? What the CEO was doing was a simple market identity and brand association test performed every single day by hundreds of corporate focus groups from proctor and gamble to general electric. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint collectively spend multiple billions of dollars each year to promote their product in different ways. AT&T's advertisements may focus on connectivity and family, while Verizon may focus on selling their customers on the perception of advanced or modern living through a superior network and handsets. It doesnt matter the theme, however assuming the target of the question is being genuine and not a paid actress, its a telling statement. Perhaps T-Mobile has spent too much advertising focus on low-cost plans. another common problem, one that marketing and advertisers are keenly aware of, is demographic. Too much diversity in your advertisements and many middle income white suburban consumers will subconsciously associate your product with the negative minority stereotypes utilised by other marketing teams to sell things like music, movies, and clothing. The question the CEO asked to the participant elicited a tacit admission that the participant felt either alienated or confused by the networks product as she hadn't been properly exposed to the correct advertisement for her demographic which, depending on your marketing alignment, can be a sign of trouble.
full disclosure: I work in marketing.
there are more than 200 cancer treatment centers in the US alone, not counting the inumerable rise of "alternative" treatment centers that forego the scientific method in favour of wreckless naturalism and holistics. Do we need yet another branded expression of a rich mans ego masquerading as anything more than fleeting concern for a personal interest in a likely singular event of cancer? very little attention is paid to the environmental factors --equally inumerable-- that act as either cancer suspect agents or outright carcinogens themselves. Strides have been made in ablating BPA and Lead from our food chain, but more can and should be done to reign in things like Acrylamide and the carte blanc appropriation of nearly every organic and inorganic chemistry development to the amorphous Generally-Regarded-As-Safe (GRAS) monicker so often championed by chemical companies. 250 million dollars applied to strengthening the EPA, the FDA, and legislation designed to protect consumers would do arguably much more to prevent cancer. Reforming the harbingers of the largest cause of preventable disease in the world --major multinational fast and processed food conglomerates-- would surely act more immediately than a pet research institute.
A team of elite system administrators --transcended of devops and cloud -- inhabit the 65 story monolith known only as "the shard." in this cloistered structure they work tirelessly, endlessly, pounding away on their Model M keyboards and furiously working to maintain the harmonious balance of man and machine. Clothed in tattered sackcloth, a single manager ascends the structure in search of the one. She arrives, breathless and pensive with anticipation as she approaches a lone icarian figure draped in golden silks atop a mighty Aeron chair. Her steps echoing cavernoisly against the server room floor until stepping unthinkably on a lone malted milk ball. Aware, the admin directs her heavenly gaze downward upon the lowly thought leader who stands frozen, crucified in awe.
"yes?" speaks the godlike sysop..
"My laptop is frozen....i cant...." replies the manager, and as she struggles to form her next few words the admin places a single hand upon her tear soaked cheek and in a soothing voice speaks
"Have you tried turning it off....and then on...again?"
Upon this revelation the manager becomes enlightened and overwhelmed with this knowledge ascends into the afterlife, purified in the wisdom of the admin.
or more likely the whole thing smells like old cheese, the lights are perpetually shut off, pizza delivery staff die from exposure, and theres a copy of userfriendly propping up a two wheeled crash cart full of old mcdonalds bags and taco bell wrappers.
Ev Williams is not a fan of the increasingly homogenised media he currently sees
Its his fault. companies like twitter, facebook, and reddit decided long ago their cash crop -- users -- had to be reigned in. certain topics and discissions could never be permitted on boards or by users. they did this ostensibly at the behest of maximizing brand value and appeal to brands and marketing.
A lot of journalists who want to do great stuff are dissatisfied.
because nearly every major news outlet is the brainchild of a media corporation, they are beholden to certain standards and practices designed to maximize brand value and attract marketers. this drives advertising revenue and shareholder value. its why medicine shows like Dr. Oz are successful, while investigative journalism into pharmaceutical corruption arent.
Advertisers and brands are dissatisfied.
by what? how would you know? Advertisers and brands are sated so long as their product or brand is consumed. they are only dissatisfied if a pitch or blitz didnt go as planned, or if an expensive viral campaign had no effect. Brands dont care about content, or topics, so to say they are dissatisfied with media is to say they are dissatisfied with the returns on investment they have made in platforms like Twitter...which has never really had a return at all.
with the idea that people consuming media means that's what they want
because we're driven to want it, you blithering imbecile. You dont think Proctor and Gamble spend two billion dollars a year on marketing campaigns like Terry Crews screaming "odor block" or Nike just conveniently happens to make shoes that 90% of the NBA enjoy do you? Public discourse, the free and open expression you seem to allude to, is all but dead in favour of whatever pseudo-hispanic consumable Taco Bell has excreted this month or how redbull helped an athelete conquer the very fabric of reality. The solution to the existential epiphany youre expounding upon from whatever golden shitter youre perched upon with iphone in hand is paradoxically to destroy or limit the very thing that sustains you. As you float about on your mega-yacht, take for a moment to consider this: the answer to your prayers for something other than internet bullshit already exists. Its called adblock, noscript, and and Tor. but, you want a golden goose. something thats unique, original, and can be monetized through advertising.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are all applications in which you arent the consumer, but the product. Poultry farms routinely de-beak their chickens in order to prevent them from harming other birds or their handlers. Pig farms will remove the teeth of aggressive hogs to ensure the productive health of their herd. cattle farms will often segregate and destroy downed or overaggressive bovine.
Facebook and Twitter will remove shitposts and cull aggressive users to ensure their cattle remain copacetic and the product --you-- performs to the liking of their consumers.
which critics call torture
stop. stop this. Waterboarding is by an overwhelming concensus a formal example of torture. the united states has in the past engaged in torture, full stop. it still engages in torture to this day at Guantanamo Bay without independent oversight and enjoys freedom from media coverage. In this regard the US is no different than north korea and iran.
even if ordered to by a future president.
but there was no formal order from the bush administration. the bush team crafted a doctrine by which terrorism became "enhanced interrogation" and through this clever violation of the geneva convention the techniques described in the CIA's handbooks stopped being torture entirely. You technically never tortured anyone before, and refuse to do so now.
President Obama banned the practices in his first few days in office with an executive order.
Its hard to put on the Nobel prize when youre the leader of a nation that runs a secret torture prison. Obama made a concerted effort to close this prison, but largely failed when congress and senate majorities handed him a non-stop shit storm shutting down the government twice and attempting to repeal healthcare reform more than 45 times.
Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture
And Martha Stewarts dog died in a propane explosion. Neither of these considerations is relevant to the topic. the point is Brennan is making a clever distraction from the actual problem. The united states under the Bush doctrine legally authorized torture by changing the definition of the word and then unanimously arguing theirs was a legally consistent and correct one. The judge that wrote the defense of this argument was later promoted in the administration in what was largely seen as a quid pro quo move by leadership.
There's no better identifier than DNA
uh, for what? identifying markers for genetic diseases, phrenological alternative, neat T-Shirt designs? because if you're talking about identifying criminals its still nowhere near an exact science and depends very greatly on the disposition of prosecution and the care taken during collection as well as a wealth of other environmental factors.
and we know we can pull out DNA.
dial it back there Kafka. your job is intelligence, not the blanket collection all mankinds genetic marker for some clandestine plot point to a steven king movie. Why do you need this DNA, how are you going to use it, are you even going about this legally?
DevOps was invented as a way to unite developers and IT operations (system administrators) to help them find a common ground.
devops was invented as a means to staunch bleeding from companies with 50% or better turnover rates due to rushed products, shit management, and poor work-life balance. the idea being if you could get devs and ops to do eachothers jobs youd invent a new third commodity that could become more resillient to 90 hour work weeks and bullshit feature-before-fix code releases. It failed because devs arent great ops, and ops arent great devs.
The old model of throwing the code over the wall to system administrators who would deploy it stopped working with agile processes and continuous deployment practices.
this process stopped working because of the inclusion of draconian, conflicting, confusing, and often times lip-service change management processes that fit the quarterly management meeting and not much else. CM's gave project and team leaders the sensation of doing something every monday morning when they rubberstamped some code push, but otherwise made life hell when they left for vacation/hangovers. when a code push failed and had to be rolled back, management pushed again to have it rolled forward broken and defied often times their own decrees. In the same breath, theyd crucify you for updating a package or rebooting a server without 15 hours of review and objection from a guy who didnt know TCP from BBQ.
And when I say the cloud, I really mean managed services.
sure, maybe one buzzword killed another but it sure as shit wasnt the latest incarnation of thin clients, hosted services, SAAS, or PAAS, which we now call "Cloud." clouds are just other peoples hardware, so when your devops bullshit went down in flames as a transparent attempt to milk skilled professionals for free overtime and flex-goals, they all quit and submitted their CV's to the cloud. You didnt have to worry about devops for your precious service, but they in turn didnt have to worry about you anymore either unless you skipped a check for the month.
Apple provided assistance in accessing such devices earlier.
this took place largely through secret FISA court orders and wasnt a huge problem until the FBI pulled the wig off the fat lady. Apple would love to continue secretly unlocking phones, but its no longer an option when americas darling tech company has been directly implicated in bed with the US intelligence community. the biggest threat to the cloud based sharing model of internetworked gadgets and services that companies like Apple offer is the inability to keep the devices secure and away from prying eyes. It doesnt matter how many surveys come out declaring $countrymen dont care about privacy, the proof is in the pudding. Apple understands losing this mark of privacy could mean the death of the brands top sellers.
the government said it's going ahead with an appeal of a judge's order denying its request for Apple's help.
thats fine. thats how bureaucracy and legal processes work. this is a win for everyone because it didnt happen in a secret court.
The battle between the world's most valuable tech company and the U.S. over encryption and data privacy has sparked a national debate
theres no debate. the government wanted apple to cave in and erode the first amendment by unlocking a dead mans phone to prove a case that was already solved. this effort was very transparent to anyone paying even cursory attention. Apple fought back with a powerful attorney and in order to avoid setting a precedent for losing a first amendment case, the government pulled the legislative equivalent of a teenager scoffing and mumbling what-ever under her breath.
with dozens of companies and organizations siding with Apple
correction, with google pussy-footing in under pressure and other companies wringing their hands like spinsters at a bar fight. the only real opposition other than Apple was the FSF.
there is no new round. Whatever chicanery the government used to crack the phone has now been its own killing blow. Apple will do as the borg, and in a few iterations of IOS you'll soon see a phone that is not only unsucceptable to the present exploit, but cannot become succeptable to third party intervention without the sand of brute force time.
I hadnt paid close attention, but it seems like matter from space is far more popular than I'd assumed. In light of the recent Christies auction, im prepared to auction a nearly endless supply of unique matter formed from the very carbon from the stars that formed this galaxy. thats right...
Space turds.
Im prepared to offer one a day and while I understand this may sound extraordinarily generous to some I ask you to please hold your applause. I can ratchet this up to 4 auctions per day using exotic manufacturing facilities like taco trucks and even common run-of-the-mill local festivals and carnivals. And if im granted access to Arbys beef-and-cheddar technology augmented with arbys "sauce" then the skies the limit. So dont wait, slashdot. reserve your ancient space turd now.
The project promoted greater, open collaboration between companies and individuals.
thats not what companies want. its been my experience as a security researcher that if and when you discover a vulnerability for $product, the parent vendor typically wants to:
1. STFU: stop reporting the issue, stop investigating the exploit, and dont touch the product ever again. Ive had cease and desist orders and gag orders show up at my door for finding pretty massive issues with PCI and point of sale vendors in particular.
2. get lost: fork over what you know, sign a nondisclosure form, and fuck off. if we see you at a conference, we will set you on fire. You were never here and we never spoke to you. medical vendors are pretty good at this.
3. go straight to jail: I once had an amusement park pull this shit over a SCADA report. Yes, i had to hire an attorney. No, they didnt 'win.' Yes, it wrecked a solid 4 months of my life.
the industry DGAF about what you found or how you found it. outside of devops darlings and well known players in cloud and open source, most companies would rather you drop dead than engage in any sensible reporting on their products vulnerability to common exploit.
upbeat marketing droneSo, Fiorina dropped out of the race without a snowballs chance in hell, I got great parking this morning, and we just invented a laptop thinner than the christgods at apple....
PHB: hey we need to logo the new brochures for third quarter what should we-
upbeat marketing drone: the one that kicks more ass than Popeye on bath salts.
PHB Ok steve we'll use...the lines...but honestly i swear to god no more coffee for you.
If you have a penis, use the boys room. If you don't you'll make everyone else in the womens room uncomfortable.
there are many people with a penis that would look entirely inappropriate in a boys room.
What if some regular schmuck decides for the lulz to dress up as a women for a day and go all perv in womens room?
then hes committed a number of already existing criminal infractions such as disorderly conduct or sexual assault at worst. men already do this. this law wont fix the problem
At this point why not make all restrooms communal or unisex?
Here in West Hollywood, we kinda did. instead of passing a law that stated gender normative restrooms had to be enforced we did the opposite. we made a law that states all restrooms have to be accessible by both genders. Some smaller bars and restaraunts just made both their restrooms locking unisex. Larger night clubs and hotels converted to an architectural model that provides a fully closed rack of stalls, and around a corner enclosed urinals with privacy partitions.
for those who think this isnt an egregious concern for the state of North Carolina, they very much do have a lot to lose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Research Triangle Park (RTP) is one of the largest research parks in the world, but its been largely a pearl in an otherwise very salty oyster. Its home to Cisco, Redhat, Microsoft, and NetApp among others. Governors and statesmen are wrecklessly gambling with this research park in the hopes that pandering to ten million North Carolinians with rhetoric from the culture war is a sustainable or responsible approach to governing their state.
PayPal has made it very clear: there are 49 other states that will gladly accept our proposition to employ hundreds of high skilled knowledge workers. Your tax incentives are by no means exclusive to the state.
Firstly: to anyone who owns a nest and is counting their fleeting blessings that this will never happen to them, see you on the front page in a few years.
now, for the rest the slashdotters. stop with the internet of things, synergy of disruptive technology, cloud based "AAS" marketing hootenany and put the cool-aid back. These companies have no vested interest in anything but their shareholders. when Sergei buys a new island, when Tim buys a new ultra-yacht, when Satya or Ballmer or Gates or whoever runs the redmond money choo choo these days buys a new public school system and turns it into a mandatory code camp you can be sure they dont care about you or any of the products you use. Kindle, Nest, Facebook, and Google all exist solely to capitalize on your inability to understand your role as the product of these services, not the consumer. putting it "in the cloud" or buying into a "sharing economy" or whatever some ginned up marketing thirty-something spun across her blog is just fancy buzz jargon for giving up freedom.
You cant recall my books just because a publisher rubs you the wrong way, because they sit on my shelf after I buy them. You cant recall my email because some sender became non-commital about it, because it lives on my server now. And you can spin it all you want, but you cant do anything about the fact that I use a VPN and adblocker when I surf your "free" wireless. I dont get to experience your SRVFAIL redirection landing page because my DNS queries are my own. And until this cloud based abortion you call the future takes my rights and freedoms into consideration, I'll just exist as one more user you cant track, cant optimise, and wont target properly whos "experience" is "degraded" because I chose something besides serfdom on the internet I was promised would revolutionize the future youre slowly ruining.
"listen, if students cant tell the difference between an accredited higher education institution offering meaningful and relevant education in computer technology in the 21st century from a ponzi scheme im not sure what we're trying to do. Its very plainly obvious that ITT, the corporation, is an exemplary behavior modification experiment and economic simulation as is clearly stipulated in our .06 font disclaimer on the toilet tissue contracts we distribute. how, i ask you, how would any pioneering facility other than ITT have made as much headway into determining the proper amount of disciplined disregard and callous hatred for the betterment of mankind required to summon satan himself?"
--ITT headmaster/man gnawing on unidentifiable femur.
Being an avid bookworm I cant say I like or hate the kindle one way or another. I just dont really understand them. The kindles largest competition, at least for me, is the fact that amazon sells thousands of titles I want to read for a penny plus shipping used. Why buy new when you can get a perfectly good used title from a reseller?
Sure, sure, kindles hold thousands of books, but so does my bookshelf. for my heavy duty questions theres the internet and a laptop, and titles licensed under Creative Commons fit just as well on it as they do the kindle. if i break a kindle, its going to cost about a hundred bones to replace...but if i break a used copy of Dune or leave it on a plane I can just reorder it from my phone with oneclick or finish it at the library. And if i finish a title on a flight or on a vacation I can trade it at a local book store for credit, and pick up something else Id like to read. In all seriousness: can you trade kindle books? I dont know.
Then theres the batteries and charging. I know kindle runs for quite some time on a single charge, but I've got books older than 70 years that I still thumb through with ease. Whats the total life of a kindle? Do they trade them in/up? can you swap the battery like a smoke detector? Lastly, what happens if i sell my kindle? can you sell them? do the titles transfer?