Posts by sisk 2456 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Mar 2010
Hundreds of thousands of comments were submitted at exactly midnight on four separate days in July
Cripes. They're not even TRYING to look authentic.
American Democracy
That's not a thing anymore. It hasn't been for a long, long time. They're keeping up the illusion, but the fact of the matter is that America is actually an oligarchy these days and the will of the people counts for exactly crap.
Sadly that is the case. But that's also true of a lot of security updates. Do you realize how many people are still running five year old versions of Flash? Heck, there are still millions of XP machines floating around that haven't gotten security updates of any kind for years. Unfortunately we can't protect people who don't know they need protection.
It's neither. They've owned the majority of the market since the 80s. From that kind of power position you can get away with a lot. And it doesn't hurt them in the least that 90% of their missteps never get any press outside the tech sector, so the guy buying a computer in Best Buy doesn't know to avoid anything with an Intel Inside sticker.
Putting the responsibility for fixing the bug on the customer like that is crazy. Anyplace I've ever worked would have fired the person who suggested it. The only thing I can think of to explain it is that Intel clearly doesn't care about security.
Add this to the list of reasons that I'm an AMD user.
Pork is banned as it tastes like humans
No, pork is banned because if you are using primitive cooking methods to cook a pig outside of the modern industrialized world you risk getting trichinosis.
Consider this for a moment: there was a study a while back about on how to identify animals that are safe to eat in a survival situation. I think it was done by the US Navy. That study mirrored the broad advice in Leviticus 11 (fish with scales and fins, all birds except birds of prey, and land animals with cleft hooves that chew cud).
Although Jesus himself replaced The Ten Commandments with The Two Commandments.
Say that at a multi-denomination religious event (like a Christian rock concert) and you'll find yourself at the center of a doctrinal debate that's been raging for centuries.
Some denominations hold that to be true. Others hold that the Two Commandments simply added to the Ten. And still others theorize that if you hold to the Two Commandments you will also be following the Ten whether you try to or not.
Since these symptoms are subjective and personal...
They're actually not. Most symptoms of the common cold can be concretely measured through things such as mucus production, swelling of certain tissues, and vasoconstriction. The only subjective symptom is pain. Furthermore, we know from prior research that measured those symptoms that both rhinovirus and influenza really do produce more severe symptoms in men than in women. I have not, however, seen anyone suggest a semi-plausible hypothesis as to why (unless you count "men are wimps" as a semi-plausible explanation fro more severe symptoms that is).
There's nothing new here. We've had research to show that the common cold and influenza both hit men harder than women - quite a lot harder in fact - for at least a decade now. Just because wives and girlfriends either haven't bothered to read it or don't believe it doesn't make it any less true.
I'm actually with you, but for good reason. Many moons ago I had a roommate who worked there and whose hygiene and general cleaning skills both left quite a lot to be desired. The whole apartment stank of rotten chicken grease. I finally told him to either do his damn laundry or at least keep his bedroom door closed so I didn't have to smell it. Ever since KFC has never been a place I go to willingly.
And yet it makes absolutely no headway against existing Word/Excel/Access users, particularly in regards to specific features (like scripts, formulae, et al) of the old guard. Since many of these are business-critical, you'll never get them to jump until you can assure them their custom jobs can go with them. There's also the matter of server (Back Office) infrastructure.
Never mind that those features are used by a vanishingly small percentage of MS Office users, right? No, the real reason that LibreOffice gains no traction is the same reason any other non-industry standard fails to gain traction: A replacement for an industry standard solution is never considered by most companies, and individual users are a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Don't say LibreOffice. It looks like a 1998 shareware application.
You clearly haven't used it in the last decade or so. It looks almost exactly like an older version of MS Office. Which is a GOOD THING because it doesn't have the damned ribbon. (Yeah, a decade on and I still hate the ribbon.) It's a polished, reliable, and full featured product that absolutely fulfills the role of an office suite. In fact, at one point in time, I kept a LibreOffice install around just to recover files that MS Office had corrupted (this was in the Office2003 era, that problem is far less common these days). Why wouldn't it count? Just because MS owns that particular market?
But, yeah, you're right. Linux lacks apps in a lot of other areas. Gaming is sparse despite the presence of Steam, and though Linux has at least one solid app in every category you could imagine it lacks most of the industry standard apps. KDen Live may be a spectacular video editing system, but it's not Premiere Pro. GIMP may be able to do everything Photoshop can, but it's still not Photoshop. That list could go on for a long time.
The trumpster will throw a hissy fit if they don't.
Irrelevant. The DOJ is under Trump's control, but the SCUSA is actually supposed to serve as a check and balance on his power. In other words, it's their job to tell him when he's overstepping his boundaries, and no amount of hissy fit he throws can affect them (in theory, of course).
- Americans rule the world (Doh!)
No we don't, despite how much the extreme right might wish it so.
Make America Great and them means that everyone else has to roll over and give them what they want
Judging by his actions in office so far I think "Make America Great" in Trumpese translates to "Make Donald Trump richer and more powerful" in English.
And there is already a law that proclaims that US Law applies everwhere on the planet.
So far as I know that law's never been challenged in SCUSA, and given that I'm pretty sure it violates international law I wouldn't expect it to hold up to scrutiny.
The law recognizes that legitimate law enforcement needs can outweigh personal privacy concerns.
Key word: legitimate. I absolutely agree that law enforcement should be able to gather evidence of crimes, especially in a system that places the burden of proof on them. The problem is that they've not limited their searches to areas where they have a reasonable expectation of finding such evidence. They have, in short, repeatedly and wantonly committed the very act that the Fourth is intended to protect us from.
Here in the US we have the reality of cops making the owner of a car stand out in the cold for hours waiting for their car to be searched simply because they're teens. And should the teen be aware of their rights and try to prevent it they'll bring over a drug dog and have it jump on the car on cue to give them probable cause. We live in a world where data on your laptop can be searched simply because you carried it through an airport with no reason to suspect you've committed any crime. We live in a world where every single email we send or phone call we make is probably being monitored by bots to flag suspicious ones.
He's right that we don't have an absolute right to privacy. Law enforcement has always been able to get warrants to search whatever they need to if they can give a good reason. But we do have a reasonable right to privacy, and warrant-proof encryption has become the only way we can enforce it in a world where law enforcement has developed a habit of skipping the warrant.
Ooh, downvoted by defensive christians.
Has it ever occurred to you that you got downvoted for being a jerk?
I've personally no problem with people who disagree with my religion. I've even debated the subject in a civilized manner with multiple people and have always walked away from such discussions with no hard feelings and a mutually improved understanding of the other person's point of view. But what you did above amounts to nothing more than an unprovoked textual jab at someone simply for having a different worldview than you do. It was stupid and petty.
You don't share my religion. That's fine. You're entitled to your own beliefs and worldview and I'm not going to cram mine down your throat. I don't think it's so much to ask the same courtesy from you.
Speaking as a Christian, I condemn this action. Vandalism is fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Christ. So are the hate and intolerance that so many non-Christians think are central to the faith because of a very loud vocal minority. This is just one more instance of some idiot who seems to have missed the important parts of Christ's teachings making us all look bad.
I am curious about all the evil things she has done.
Have....you not been paying attention? I mean, seriously, are you truly this clueless? You are talking about the single American politician whose name has come up in more scandals in the last decade than any two others. Whether you believe she was guilty or that she was just being targeted by political enemies feigning ignorance is silly.
Personally I believe the woman to be a corrupt sociopath, but I also consider "corrupt sociopath" and "professional politician" to be almost synonyms. Not that they're all sociopaths. Just the successful ones.
This isn't well-known in western countries, who are friendly with USA. This is like a blind spot for westerners and even for people who live in USA. Which isn't surprising.
Americans are well aware that we have more prisoners per capita than any other nation. The problem is that half the country doesn't recognize that as a problem and think we should be locking up even more "criminals". But to be fair most of our prisoners are in for drug offenses, so staying out of jail in America is as simple as not doing drugs (which, admittedly, is easier said than done for an addict). Our authorities simply refuse to recognize any other way of dealing with drug epidemics. A whole lot of them, when you point to countries that have successfully dealt with the problem, will say something ignorant about "dirty socialists".
IIRC, a device with a fingerprint scanner is a lot safer as you cannot be forced to unlock the device.
Fingerprint readers are stupid easy to defeat. I mean they weren't exactly difficult to get around to begin with, and then the Mythbusters went and did a bit on them and showed the whole world multiple ways to fool them in the process. And this is the Mythbusters. Yeah, they're smart guys, but they're not exactly security experts. If they could do it with minimal effort how long do you think it's going to take someone who's job description includes knowing how to defeat security measures?
I think it's a safe assumption that he had the private key. Despite rumors to the contrary the US authorities do know the difference. But aside from that I would imagine that they found BitCoin wallets known to belong to OxyMonster. You can rest assured that the brief summary of evidence in this article is far from a complete list of what they had against him.
Clearly a naughty boy, but what part of US law covers the sale and distribution of substances in Europe?
You clearly don't understand how US law works. It's basically impossible to get through a day without unknowingly committing a felony in the US. They've got an excuse to arrest anyone they damn well please here. Though, to be fair, most of those offenses would likely get thrown out via jury nullification.
If you carried $500,000 of dollar or euro bills across the border that you had earned from drug dealing, I think you would be arrested. No reason why bitcoins should be any different.
There's no law against carrying large amounts of money. They would have to be able to prove the money was from illegal activities to be able to arrest you, and even then unless you'd violated a law in the jurisdiction you're in at the time there's still nothing they can do about it. No reason why bitcoin should be any different.
I find it hard to believe that a company that has a commanding market share even while charging up to 3x what their competitors do for equivalent products has any kind of cash flow problems. They're cutting jobs because they think it's a good idea, not because, as is usually the case in these situations, they need to.
I actually do have a single key that sends a Ctrl-Alt-Delete (the advantages of a programmable keyboard are many), though these days it's more to get the login screen or lock my computer than as an interrupt. It's very convenient. I can see why Gates would want to turn back the clock on this one.
So he's claiming to have invented email based on a system he wrote in 1978......when email in a form recognizable as such by modern users has been around since 1973...and then slamming people for "false speech" for calling him out on it.
I believe the appropriate phrase from modern yoof culture would be "GTFO".
This is exactly what I was thinking. The guy's options were to either do as he was told or file for unemployment and have his employment record show that he was fired for insubordination. And if he went whistle blower on it and VW's legal team did their job well then he'd be dragged through the mud and his career would be effectively over.
The punishment certainly does not fit the circumstances of the crime in this case. If the judge wanted to make an example of someone then that "someone" should not have been the most junior member of the team who probably felt they had no choice in the matter. It should have been the most senior executive, the one with the power to tell the others "Do it or GTFO".
I was pulled up by a policeman who considered this suspicious behaviour. Apparently "normal" people get back in their car and drive to the parking lot of the store on the other side of the road.
I run into this all the time. A preference for walking is highly unusual in the US.
On a related topic, you should have seen my parents faces when I told them I was excited about moving closer to town because it would put me within cycling distance of a lot of places I frequent. They thought I'd lost my mind when they realized I considered a store just under mile away to be within "cycling distance". And I thought they were going to have me committed when I told them that it was actually within walking distance if I wasn't in a hurry.
I expect to see SSD replace HDD eventually, but it's not going to happen soon. Maybe (MAYBE) by 2030, but definitely not by 2020. There's just too much of a price difference between the two. It's going to take time for SSD technology to improve to the point that they can match the price of HDDs, and 3 years is not anywhere near enough time for that to happen.
Of course by 2050 we'll have kids who've never seen a computer with a HDD just like we've got kids today who've never seen a floppy disk.
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