Posts by bombastic bob 10841 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
The millenial ADULT-CHILDREN, who view everything through social media on a 4-inch screen, had way too much influence on the project. Fat-finger-friendly spacing, hamburger menus, all of that. BLEAH.
If I want to view a PDF file I'll download it first and use 'evince'. That should be an easy option to set up. But it's not.
(yeah I have my list o' plugins, too)
"No wonder most people seem stupid."
this will get me *hated* by many, but it's true: when you have an I.Q. that is high enough, EVERYBODY in the 100 range looks "about the same" to you, quite possibly anyone between 85 and about 120. You get used to dealing with people in this range, and probably treat them with reasonable respect, though you might get really intolerant at times. (and of course, 100 being average, there's as many BELOW 100 as ABOVE it, and chances are, if you're in this forum, you're above, and maybe WAY above, the average of 100).
But of course, someone with a 120 I.Q. would CERTAINLY recognize someone with an 85 I.Q. as being "not as smart", maybe even slightly ~handicapped~.
Kinda makes you wonder, ya know?
(ever read 'Flowers for Algernon'? Or see the movie 'Charlie' that was based on it? At both ends of the I.Q. spectrum Charlie was equally isolated, but when he was at the low end, he wasn't unhappy about it)
"teaching to the test."
Surprisingly, I've seen specialized military schools that LITERALLY do this. reason? You're supposed to MEMORIZE all of the information that will be on the test. They throw information at you at a speed that causes a dropout rate of up to 50%, and expect you to maintain a good average (or be placed on 'mandatory study hours' to get you back on track). And you can't even be accepted into the school unless you are in the top few percentile of intelligence. Oh, they 'teach to the test' allright. And your notes are part of that. If you study your notes, which can't leave the building [because they're classified], you should be able to pass the test. It's actually testing your ability to absorb information and retain it, as well as understand it, explain it, and recognize normal vs abnormal equipment behavior when you're operating the *kinds* of gear this school is oriented towards.
(the course was designed by M.I.T. if I remember correctly, a crash course in nuclear physics, materials science, basic chemistry, mathematics, and general power plant engineering - I graduated something like 10th in my class, 2nd highest overall for my rating, only because I'm lazy and didn't want to be #1 because it requires too much work)
I suggest that "teaching to the test" isn't a bad idea, not if you mix it with "the reasons behind the answer" and get the students to think and remember effectively.
"Overall, people are less capable of rote memorization"
just as well, since THAT is probably the DUMBEST way to memorize things (by rote? YUCK!!!), unless you have a completely linear way of thinking.
Non-linear minds, like for engineers, artists, musicians, and create people in general, really don't work "that way". If you have a non-linear mind and want to memorize, use a "key" that's easy to remember, and associate that 'key' with what you want to memorize. There are many techniques that are well described, but your brain and your memory (particularly non-linear minded people) work like a database, where the 'key' is something that's associated with the things you want to remember. 'Keys' are associated with items, events, emotions, humor, fear, doing an activity, and so on. (and if you remember the key, you remember the things associated with that key. So simple!)
As an example, let's say you want to memorize a shopping list. We'll use your own body as an example. We will have 8 items to remember: Eggs, milk, ground beef, pork chops, broccoli, cheese, coffee, and oatmeal.
Think of eggs broken on top of your head. Then think of milk up your nose (or in your eyes). You're chewing on a WHOLE COW, to grind that meat into hamburger. And you're wearing pork chops around your neck. Looks kinda stupid, doesn't it? Next, you've got BOOBS made of BROCCOLI! don't forget the pasties, as they're made of CHEESE. Then, someone stuck a bunch of COFFEE in your UNDERPANTS, and finally, you're standing in a BIG PILE of OATMEAL.
OK - here's the test (cover up the above):
a) on top of your head is:
b) your nose has:
c) you're chewing:
d) you're wearing what around your neck?
e) what's on your chest? [2 items]
f) someone stuck what in your underpants?
g) what are you standing in?
Apply as you like. Good technique for NON-LINEAR (i.e. CREATIVE) minds. At one point, the CREATIVE, who couldn't just 'memorize by rote', were considered, uh, DEFICIENT, because they had some kind of DEFICIENCY - you know, ATTENTION DEFICIENCY [something WRONG with THEM]. OK my agenda is showing. The best and brightest of us don' learn by rote, WILL NOT learn by rote, because it's not only BORING it is NAUSEATING.
But a technique such AS the one I mentioned above, which is far more taylored to a non-linear mind, may be the difference between a 2-digit IQ and a 150 IQ, when properly applied and practiced. Yeah, think about THAT one.
I do think the world is becoming more non-linear, though. I base this on the fact that "the geeks" will inherit the earth that is basically run by computers with intelligent humans driving them. And computer-human interaction nearly always requires non-linear thinking to be successful.
Yeah, back to the topic at hand, "what is I.Q. exactly" and if it IS going up, I think it's because of what I just said.
" I think humanity as a whole is getting dumber and dumber thanks to companies like Google, Facebook etc."
I agree that the world as a whole is getting dumber, but for different (philosophical) reasons. think politics. yeah. And you'd probably downvote me. So now you know without me saying another word...
"Who decides theses stupid new GUIs that are either extreme of like newspaper or SciFi?"
CHILDREN decide this. More explicitly, MILLENIAL CHILDREN, aka the "4 inch" crowd, who live with their parents until they're 30+, and view EVERYTHING on a 4 inch phone screen. They are generally content CONSUMERS, not content creators, consuming Facebook and other social media like tobacco, and FEELING instead of THINKING. [there are some exceptions to this rule, but it's a generational nightmare shift from hell that's behind a LOT of this].
It's "their turn" now, and THEY are going to have things THEIR way, since all of the previous generation has either retired or gone on extended vacation or something (so not enough of "us" left to STOP it). CHANGE is always GOOD to them, even if it's change for the WORSE. And there's NO CHOICE, either, for THEY are "the elite" and know BEST. They will SHOVE it up your down your throat!
anyway THAT is who "decides". Am I right or what?
" have indeed used Linux. Mint is nearly there but the graphical style and feel is a little bit lacking."
did you try the Mate desktop?
"Ubuntu is horrible as are plain Gnome and KDE"
Ubuntu/Unity you mean? yes, it's like Windows APE meets MeeGo. KDE is an acquired taste, I must admit. And gnome 3 is *REALLY* sucky, which is why _I_ use Mate.
You needed to give Linux a better chance. Try going in with the knowledge that the default desktop for the distro is probably NOT the one YOU want. And Mate seems to have most of that ironed out, in my opinion. It was forked from Gnome 2 by developers who *DISLIKED* the direction things were going a few years back, which ended up giving us Unity, Windows "Ape", Win-10-nic, and (the real offender) Gnome 3. I'm in agreement with them. Had they not done it, I would have probably done it myself. (Linus became very angry about gnome 3 and went with a more lightweight version, LXDE I think, and you can install that one, too).
most of these desktop options will be available to you as a package, and then the startup/login screen should let you pick from the window managers you've installed [if it's using something like gdm anyway].
"The bigger evils in my book are applications who believe they're so super important that they have to raise themselves to the foreground and/or insist on stealing focus from the entire desktop."
I used to call that "Arrogance of the Application" or "Arrogance of the Software Developer". There were several key entries in the qualifications for such a description. If I listed them all it would be TLDR. Most of them describe Win-10-nic.
And of course, having to resolve externals for 400 shared libs while dancing a splash screen around your monitor (for more than a few seconds) would qualify as ONE of those "application arrogance" qualifiers...
[2 words: static linking. solves MOST load time problems, as well as midnight phone call problems when some stupid freeware CRapp (or windows update) updates shared libs and breaks YOUR application and it's YOUR fault now]
"For 25 grand you could just buy a hell of a lot of beers and see which one you like the taste of."
or spend a lot of evenings at a local 'craft beer' cafe tasting the many microbrews they have available. As I recall, one such place in my area used to have 100 different beers available, and even had a card you could fill out to indicate which ones you've already tried...
or maybe Frickin' Lasers to take out the cameras
The drone owner shouldn't be spying on little girls anyway. After all, what kind of world is it when a (presumed) teenage girl can't sunbathe in her back yard...
[so why am I thinking of Bathsheba at the moment?]
(pellet and BB guns would work, too, but with somewhat limited range)
"Because a good IDE makes you much more productive"
which is why I've been working on one, off and on, for several years [using native X11, meaning a simplified C language toolkit to manage basic UI elements]. money would make it go faster.
Until then, there's pluma (or gedit on gnome 2) for the code, gimp for graphics images, and 'whatever tool' (including hand-coding) for HTML and dialog layouts. When you look at the older Visual Studio versions, where hot-keys quickly got you to the thing you needed to change something on a dialog box (or add a variable, let's say), the IDE _WAS_ more productive. Since 2000-something, though, it's gotten all "property sheets" and "mousie-clickie-mousie-clickie" where it JUST! GETS! IN! THE! WAY!!!
in short: if you have to remove one hand from the keyboard to operate a mouse more than a few times per hour, there's something wrong with the IDE.
And DevStudio is one of the _WORST_ at that (post DevStudio '98 anyway)
"It's slow and not very useful. I've tried it, but I wouldn't consider switching from Geany."
I just use pluma (or gedit if gnome 2 is installed). Works well enough, highlights code elements, few irritating features (other than having to occasionally strip ending white space off of code lines, but a lot of editors cluelessly let that happen these days...) and it DOES NOT HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES that I can tell (even in a VM).
"People moving out of California isnt new news, recently its started being described as a stampede."
I've been considering Texas for a while, now... still liking the weather in San Diego, paying the "sunshine" tax and dealing with "the !@#$%" coming out of Sacramento. So yeah, it's not "bad enough" quite yet [but close].
"the employee's disposable income is greater than had they been living in the aforementioned Bay Area closet"
this is WAY more significant than may be obvious.
a) "progressive" income taxation means you might have to DOUBLE someone's salary for him {proper grammar} to get an increase of 25% in actual post-taxation spendable income, more often the case at the high income end than at the low end, for sure.
b) When you factor the DOUBLED (or worse) living expenses in Silly Valley, it's even MORE outrageous of a difference, for sure.
In short, the extra cost of telecommuting could easily be offset by happier employees that are more productive, more dedicated, and get "just as much" spendable income at a LOWER COST to the company. It's a TOTAL WIN.
Why aren't more people doing this? IMPROVE that BOTTOM LINE, accountants, and AUTHORIZE MORE TELECOMMUTING!
They have to make ALL robo-calls illegal, first. You know, like the ones from POLITICIANS...
(politicians NOT exempting themselves from robo-call restrictions - yeah THAT will happen)
I'm on the 'do not call list' and get several hangup calls per week. Part of this is my answering machine message which is something like "Hello... [pause] Friends and family thank you for calling. For the rest of you, this number is on the national do-not-call list" (and it ALWAYS goes to the answering machine)
It's amazing how many hangups happen after that message finishes. The 'hello' followed by the pause is deliberate - it's supposed to make their robo-dialers "detect an answer". Yes I'm screwing with THEM. Then, when a human hears "do not call list" he _SHOULD_ recognize the colossal waste of time of having my number on their lists. well, 'dumb and dumber' reference in the article notwithstanding...
" I would expect high quality ripping to be a problem for Netflix."
if it can be displayed on a TV screen, it can be ripped. You know, HDMI 'wye' adaptors, extra cables and a DVR. right? I could purchase the gear for under $200 on amazon.
but most people would just buy the DVD or Blu-ray when it comes out.
latency goes up when you use geosync satellites. best sync would be to multiple ground stations underneath the expected path of the ISS, almost like cell towers [with frickin' laser beams, OK couldn't resist either, heh]
really, though, a design of a laser with less than a 1 degree cone might do the trick, then have the response laser modulate the original "carrier" [i.e. reflect it back with interferometry involved, let's say]. targeting a laser within one degree shouldn't be too hard. existing weapons systems might already have similar capability...
whole point would be for the ground-based laser not only to send data, but to power up the received signal as well. A laser has a cone-shaped propagation pattern, more or less, and so disperses a little bit [especially from atmospheric interference]. Then it's just reflected back with modulation by the I.S.S..
yeah, it could work... (with frickin' laser beams)
not using (...) and not allowing unsigned integers to 'wrap' is short-sighted...
the implications of 'printf'-like utilities, as well as gcc format checking pragma, were pointed out in the comments. But there are use cases for wrapping an unsigned integer, SUCH AS the calculation of a time interval on a 32-bit unsigned value that calculates milliseconds or microseconds, and wanting to schedule events based on elapsed time. When you EXPECT a wrap-around, you can code around it.
example:
uint32_t lTick = millis(); // # of milliseconds since start, using 32-bit unsigned value
...
if((int32_t)(millis() - lTick)) > my_interval) { do something; lTick += my_interval; }
this pretty much works universally, and is similar to what the Linux kernel does when scheduling things based on 'jiffies'.
(and in some cases I'll even truncate the math down to 16-bits to make code work faster, such as on a microcontroller like Arduino, where this example might be used a LOT)
so... maybe NO UNHANDLED unsigned integer wrapping?
(yeah a FEATURE, not a bug - I like to work WITH the system's limitations, not against them)
"Suggestive differences included that the lower risk of myocardial infarction in heavy drinkers was attenuated in current smokers"
so let's add some stats that include smoking as a factor, and see where THAT leads...
FYI niacin, vitamin B3, which is needed for proper nerve function and can help deplete excess cholesterol, is "nicotinic acid". However, nicotene from tobacco tends to plaque things out in your arteries (maybe because it's a similar yet distinct-enough chemical). So yeah, it's a factor that would very likely affect the benefits of alcohol for cardiovascular disease studies.
Now, I want a beer.
"What is the cause/mechanism that gives 'never drinkers' a worse outcome than moderate drinkers?"
it has things to do with arteriol sclerosis last I checked. Apparently small amounts of alcohol have a cleaning effect, like occasionally pouring some drain cleaner down the sink.
(taking niacin, using aspirin, and things like that are probably similar)
So do the combo - take niacin and aspirin every day as vitamin supplements, and then have a couple of beers in the evening to wash away the daily stress.
"Surely most people have an adblock running for Youtube these days any way?"
no 'ad block' per se, but a possible alternative method:
a) special non-priv login for youtube browsing
b) minimal plugins to avoid security and content view problems [but include movie downloaders, etc.]
c) download before you view [so you can skip things and/or get non-stuttery content with limited bandwidth]
d) make sure the browser CLEARS EVERYTHING (i.e. history, cache, cookies) when you close it.
e) always view anonymously (no logins)
f) NEVER use a flash plugin
yeah, works ok for me.
"I think it's primarily intended to annoy pirates!"
like 30 seconds of anti-piracy warnings with law enforcement symbols, filling my entire TV screen, at the begining of NEARLY! EVERY! DVD! I! OWN! (and I own quite a few)
Notable exception, Excel Saga, which actually lampoons it.
"I guess now Fedora and Debian must start working on another browser that excludes DRM"
resurrect 'iceweasel' - that's what it was, a few years ago, before debian merged it back with firefox (for 'pure open source' reasons). So we've been there before.
"What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?"
one that doesn't know how to configure apache...
(i.e. make your OWN P2P/cloudy web service, and just copy the files there, etc.)
using https and self-signed certs, naturally [and a free dynamic DNS service can help a lot]
Yeah, WHO NEEDS ONE DRIVE???
"Microsoft has a long history of playing dirty."
that, and rifling through our content stored in OneDrive.
(Micro-shaft - WORLD POLICE!)
"Claiming that downloaded files were actually child porn is also shaky without the files, download logs show only file size and name and those aren't by any means unique."
also, if they were "downloaded by accident" [and you could legitimately claim this], they wouldn't be proof of having "downloaded child porn" [or else people who occasionally see such content on image boards, before the moderators delete it, would be guilty as well].
as for the main topic...
This judgement basically upholds that the defendant can be held in contempt if an order from a judge compels him to decrypt his external hard drives, and he refuses to comply with the order. I guess it would be like giving up the key/combination to your safe.
Anyway, taking the hit for contempt is like taking a penalty in US'ian football, to avoid having your opponent score (like obvious 'pass interference' next to the goal line to stop a touchdown). It's really the strategy of someone who _IS_ guilty, and doesn't want a conviction on the greater charge.
" am quite certain Google has the means to identify the majority of viewed content that promotes hate speech, terrorism, misogyny etc."
using "political correctness" definitions? Or *REALISTIC* definitions?
Remember, "political correctness" definitions of RACISM include disagreeing with Obaka, and definitions of MISOGYNY included NOT voting for Mrs. Clinton.
Do you REALLY want P.C. to take over on internet sites that would NORMALLY just let you spew whatever vomitous speech you want to [and look like an idiot while doing it, so that it becomes obvious to everyone]?
We don't need POLITICAL CORRECTNESS in ANY form, and ad-boycott-driven CENSORSHIP won't stop with jihadists and racism...
"There has to be some kind of product validation or security certification (to start with)."
if it's inexpensive [such that it doesn't crowd independent engineers from selling their wares on the intarwebs] it _MIGHT_ work... but consider the cost of F.C.C. and CE marks, ALREADY a road block for startup businesses to get a product into the market. It's bad enough that Micro-shaft, Apple, and others are INSISTENT on some kind of "approval" or paid-for certification for software, which helps to *KILL* open source (and independent developers).
Do you REALLY want "these kinds of roadblocks" IN THE WAY of TECHNOLOGY? I don't.
If the liability laws are such that the manufacturer of a device can be held liable for flaws that RESULT in a DDoS, you can bet those flaws will be PROPERLY FIXED. If that means (for their insurance, for example) that they MUST have some kind of cert, they'll get it. At the same time, a PUBLIC project for an open source OS for IoT stuff (let's say) would NOT be hampered, but would need to "self certify" (through proper testing and documentation during development, let's say) in order to get people to use it.
So yeah, gummint would have to be involved a little bit, legislating the liability laws that would basically put some pressure on IoT makers to make sure their devices have some basic protection in place to prevent being "negligent" and therefore liable for damages.
"what moved the needle on seat belts (at least in the US) was a government mandate"
sadly this is true. It also brought the cost down when EVERY car maker had them.
If it takes a gummint mandate, I suppose that's what we'll end up with. Fortunately, however, we still have some time for a PRIVATE SECTOR solution.
My own belief is that SOME gummint (i.e. liability laws) coupled with MOSTLY private sector (software that limits risk) would be the best overall solution, and help to prevent "gummint oversight" from literally *KILLING* the technology while it's still an infant.
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