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User: JThaddeus

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  1. So says Canada Bill Jones on Voice Phishing Scams Are Getting More Clever (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 1

    "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money."

  2. Re:overcast on Apple Has Ruined Its Podcasts App (slate.com) · · Score: 1

    Agreed. My wife and I both switched to Overcast over a year ago when an iOS update rendered Apple's podcast app incapable of reordering the playlist. WTF? Why remove a working feature? I find Apple's dumbing down of an otherwise barely adequate app are inexplicable.

  3. So what's the big deal? on Let's Encrypt Criticized Over Speedy HTTPS Certifications (threatpost.com) · · Score: 2

    It's not like I ever saw a serious attempt at verification from VeriSign, Thawte, or GoDaddy in the 15 years I had to get code signing certs. It's a racket.

  4. I wonder if that's covered by AppleCare on Macbook Saves Man's Life During Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting (chron.com) · · Score: 1

    This is why I should purchase extended warranties.

  5. Just like James Bond on Internet of Things Set To Change the Face of Dementia Care (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    I may be old, but just like James Bond/Daniel Craig (Casino Royale), I may one day have a chip planted in me. And when I'm picked up wandering the neighborhood, the shelter can wand me and call my family... Who might just leave me for 7-days to be put to sleep.

  6. Amen! So a OS maker is not supposed to take steps to secure their OS? Nonsense, Kaspersky.

  7. Resend old emails bug? on Gmail's iPhone App Now Has 'Undo Send' and Faster Search (mashable.com) · · Score: 2

    Since upgrading GMail late this afternoon on my iPhone and iPad, over a dozen old emails--I mean well over a year old--have been resent. None were in Drafts or elsewhere than the Sent Mail folder, and I can detect no pattern to it. Has anyone else seen this?

  8. Seriously.

  9. You say... on Code Quality Predicted Using Biometrics (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    "...happen to be naked" as if it's a bad thing.

  10. KDE just didn't work on What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong · · Score: 1

    I had good luck with SuSE and OpenSUSE running KDE 3, but KDE4 was a disaster. Right away, things failed, like being unable to write to an iPod 5 or below. As upgrades came along, things got worse--spurious console errors, UI elements not drawing, etc. The final straw was KDE4's "semantic search technology" which never worked on any machine I tried, and which I blame for rendering 12+ years of email totally unsearchable other than by find and grep in a terminal session (maybe Nepomuk was not it; maybe it was other lousy bit of software; the results were that all attempts to index mail died).

    When my home Dell box died, I took is as a sign. I'd never liked Gnome, so after 15 years of Linux as my personal OS and longer as my work OS, I went back to Mac. There are things I miss about Linux, but with my Macs stuff just works. I certainly don't miss KDE. And my mail is once again searchable.

  11. Is anyone else reminded of King Canute? on Japan To Build 250-Mile-Long, Four Storey-High Wall To Stop Tsunamis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar,
    And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore;"
    --William Thackeray King Canute

  12. Maybe I have a claim on Study Shows Agent Orange Still Taints Aging C-123s · · Score: 1

    I'll have to check my jump log.

  13. Math is a language. on The Neuroscience of Computer Programming · · Score: 1

    Thank you, Professor Kugler.

  14. Hey! on Telegraph Contributor Says Coding Is For Exceptionally Dull Weirdos · · Score: 3, Funny

    I resemble that!

  15. New Heart Device Allows Cheney To Experience Love on Dick Cheney Had Implanted Defibrillator Altered To Prevent Terrorist Attack · · Score: 4, Funny

    One of my favorite headlines fromThe Onion:
    http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-heart-device-allows-cheney-to-experience-love,2294/

  16. Think of one 8GB thumbdrive... on Never Underestimate the Bandwidth of a Suburban Filled With MicroSD Cards · · Score: 1

    ...and a play ticket to Hong Kong (with transfer to Moscow).

  17. Couldn't find me on What Marketers Think They Know About You and What They Really Do · · Score: 1

    Huh? They can't find anything with data provided. I don't think these guys are gonna challenge Google or win many NSA contracts.

  18. Selectively administered on Feds Seek Prison For Man Who Taught How To Beat a Polygraph · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Polygraphs are one reason I left classified work for greener pastures. I believe they are nearly worthless, used just as much to harass as anything else.

    In my last classified job, my employer hired a new security officer. After several months on the job she was sent for her polygraph. She returned the same day, the test unadministered because she had a heart problem. The problem was manageable, but it made it impossible for an "accurate" test. Despite this she remained in her job. With access to far more material than myself and others--sensitive material covering many programs--she was excused. Obviously the intelligence community doesn't believe in polygraphs either. I'm glad to be out of that world.

  19. Witchcraft on Feds Seek Prison For Man Who Taught How To Beat a Polygraph · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft." --Senator Sam Ervin

  20. server comparison (BSD vs Micro$loth) on Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers. So What? · · Score: 4, Funny

    I attended the first ApacheCon in 1998. One of the top brass at Yahoo (founder? CEO?) spoke on open source software. I don't recall all the details, but I remember him saying that they had about 450 servers running BSD.

    During the Q&A, someone asked what version of BSD they were running. As I recall he said that over half were running the latest, another 30% or so were on one version earlier, and the rest--15-20%--were on an older version. This caused a mummer from the audience, and an ASF panelist asked for elaboration.

    Oh, replied they Yahooligan, why the old OS? Well it doesn't seem to make much sense to reboot a server that's run for over 18 months without a problem just to upgrade the OS.

    At this point the president of the ASF, Brian Behlendorf, stepped to the mic and said, "Let's hear Microsoft say that ."

    The crowd went wild (except for the two MS reps in front of me).

  21. Fix Akonadi, Nepomuk, etc. on What's Going On In KDE Plasma Workspaces 2? · · Score: 1

    Lord, how I miss KDE3. It worked, simply worked. It didn't lock up. When my Linux box was running KDE3, I don't recall ever having to telnet in to restart a frozen machine. It happens all too often with KDE4. And KDE4 ruined, utterly ruined, KMail, once the best email program I ever used. KDE4's efforts at a "semantic desktop" and a "personal information manager" rendered over a dozen years of email archives unsearchable by anything but find and grep. Restarting, clean-up and reinstalling, etc. never worked. Hello, Thunderbird. You ain't all that great, but at least you let me search old emails. Farewell, KDE. Farewell SUSE. Farewell, Linux. My personal workstation has been Linux since 2000, but it looks like you've driven me back to my first love, the Macintosh.

  22. Re:Thunderbird works on Ask Slashdot: Current State of Linux Email Clients? · · Score: 1

    KMail was always my favorite but the axis of evil that is Akonadi, Nepomuk, and Strigi have ruined it. Not long ago indexing just shut down rendering twelve years of KMail archives about as searchable as the spiral notebooks on my shelf. And that was a good day. On a bad day some filter kicked in and removed the message body from all incoming emails.

    No amount of Google searching, no amount of reloading and resetting, no amount question on the KDE boards helped. Indexing might start, but it always froze

    Screw KDE. I switched to Thunderbird, finding a Python script that moved all my mail archives from maildir to mbox. I hated to give up maildir, but at least now my email is usable.

  23. Re:MySQL, PostgreSQL not the only options on Ask Slashdot: Which OSS Database Project To Help? · · Score: 1

    I'll second the various recommendations for Firebird.

    About 10 years ago our senior engineer asked me to look into open source database systems as a back end for our product. The idea was to target customers who didn't want or couldn't afford Oracle, Sybase, etc. MySQL was out since it can't be use commercially without fee. PostgreSQL (at that time) lacked a robust transaction management system. Firebird was in its infancy, still known as Borland's Interbase, but it was fully open source and had the transaction management chops I needed.

    In just a few weeks I had ported over 13K lines of Oracle embedded SQL to Firebird|Interbase. It worked very well, and was easy to install. It's speed, simplicity, and reliability quickly made it our go-to database for inhouse use. When Macintosh went Intel and db vendors stopped supporting Mac, we began using Firebird commercially. It's a champ.

  24. Unless they involve minors, misdemeanor charges--DUI, shoplifting, simple assault, etc--are matter of public record. Why should these charges be an exception?

  25. The first computer I ever used on Bill Moggridge, GRiD Compass Designer, Dies · · Score: 1

    I fell into CS by accident. My first job out of the Army was to perform analysis and studies for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the Army Reserves misplaced my file and could not confirm my clearances. While I was being recleared, to keep me off overhead I was put on a project that was developing computer systems for tactical units. In November 1982 I was given one of the first GiRDs and told to "think of how you would use this if you were back in the infantry." Shortly after that I was learning SQL and Pascal. So long ago...