Posts by DNTP

Re: What about networked tablets?

"Hey, can I keep this?"

"No."

Repeat times the number of sales visits to client sites, times the number of representatives from each client you're presenting to.

Then:

"If I place an order do I get to keep this?"

Re: Interesting ......

I think Minecraft, despite running on Java, doesn't even register on Oracle's radar as a 'killer app' that drives people to install Java. Microsoft doesn't want distribution of Minecraft to be hampered by problems that users have with installing Java from a third party, and Oracle probably would prefer not to have to support users having problems with the backend of a mere *computer game*. So bundling a dedicated JRE, that one would expect to be streamlined, tested, and optimized for Minecraft, is really a win-win for both companies and hopefully end users as well.

As re: modding, I think that for better or worse that is really up to Microsoft, and not predicated either way by custom Java. Make it open, people will figure it out and have fun; lock it down, fewer people will figure it out, the community will be a bit less fun.

Re: "Better seals are being installed to keep the slugs out"

Killer whales to eat the seals, and then Seaworld to mistreat the orcas. Then you install the documentry filmmakers to run Seaworld into the ground, Republican voters to ban undercover filming of animal abuse in industry, deep fried candy bars to kill off the voters, New York City mayors to ban large serving sizes of food and drink… ok, I was kind of making this up as it happened.

Re: Bryant

Matt, I'm sorry that the post of mine that you're replying to was not clear enough for you in either content or tone. I'm not arguing here about what Snowden deserves for his actions, or whether what he did was legal or ethical, nor trying to draw parallels (that I don't believe exist) to Chelsea Manning's case. Rather, all I'm saying is that if the US government wants to confine him for the rest of his natural life, they don't have to bother with trumped up charges, black van abductions, or convenient aircraft accidents. The fact that they can do this to him while not even having to consider the ethical issues involved in disclosure and responsibility to report government abuse of due process is disturbing (and as you rightly point out, the addition of civil penalties), would further validate legal mechanisms for use in the suppression of ethical disclosure at any level.

Re: Consistency

I think the "damned consistency" problem is a subset of a greater BYOD problem, which is companies wanting something for nothing. They see BYOD policy as a way to avoid the expense and trouble of issuing company devices, complain about lack of standardization, security, and control they have over people's personal devices, and then run off to Google crying for new "business friendly" Android developments. Which basically means they want you to, as an employee: BYOD and then surrender it and all your privacy even outside of work over to the company.

Re: And here we run into the main problem ..

What's more likely, that the police will stop covertly abusing tools that violate existing laws, or that when the appeals go up, their handlers will advocate for new laws and interpretations that let them keep right at it?

Re: A warning....?

She already did, it's already incoming, our detection countermeasures have yet to spot it.

Why is this even a comment that people make about solar power? Every single generating plant connected to the grid fluctuates its output in response to factors that may be far less predictable than a simple day-night cycle, such as consumer demand, fuel price, unexpected failure/efficiency elsewhere in the grid… no giant solar plant is going to operate in isolation from that system, so the day/night cycle is simply another logistical fluctuation. In fact, demand for electricity at night drops off considerably, so Apple might just opt to run on grid overnight. Or they could generate excess power during the day to feed into the grid for power credit to use at night, or do esoterica such as pump water uphill, spin up flywheels, pump air into tanks, charge batteries- but massive local storage in any form is probably less cost effective/power effective than simply using the give-take of the grid.

Remember, the power grid itself is just as important to our use of electricity as a society as any generating source. Yet it is also largely outdated, haphazard, insecure, and non-redundant, an issue that has largely been ignored in energy politics. Spending money at the Federal level on modernization, upgrades, and maintenance is a surefire way to increase energy efficiency and create jobs- a solution should not be overlooked in the controversies about building different generation sources.

rouge WiFi access

I knew that hot little hotspot was trouble the minute she showed up on my network list. My brain said "no" but Windows had a mind of its own and connected anyway. She turned off network address translation and didn't ask me for a password- said she wanted it naturally, without protection- and that was when she took my heart and the admin rights. And that was also how I got this virus DAMMIT DON'T JUDGE ME IT WAS ONE TIME

Re: Emote-words Bingo

I'm curious about his target selection. Did he actually have a political agenda or was it just a matter of vulnerable targets? Anyway he's certainly more of a dick for DDoSing sites that operate to serve the public interest, funded by public money, than corporate sites. It's like the difference between prank calling 911 or the Microsoft Store.

Caption this picture:

"Tom Wheeler demonstrates how much cable companies care about customer rights by pinching his fingers tightly together. 'They care less than this much,' he says, making expressly clear through cunning use of an opposable thumb and four digits that he is suggesting a quantity already indistinguishable from infinitesimal."

Re: Good Bye

I remember the Boston store (the one on Comm Ave near Kenmore) as being great for stuff before I went to college, but then by the time I got into Boston University, they switched to basically cell phones and accessories.

The Microcenter on the other side of the river is much, much better. The staff there are actually really helpful.

Re: Don't do it!!!!

Lets try running this in either direction and see what happens.

1. The super rich move into an orbital space station run by robots and live an obscene life of luxury while the 99.9% starve hopelessly on a depleted Earth. After a few hundred years it's a statistical certainty that the rich will have blown themselves up through craziness caused by boredom, internal conflict, or space accident. But if that doesn't happen they genetic bottleneck themselves out of existence like those fucked up royal families in Europe. Civilization on Earth has to rebuild out of anarchy, overpopulation, global warming, and resource depletion, and either is set back by a few thousand years or just goes to hell.

2. An enlightened government strictly regulates economic activity for stable growth, to prevent any corporate block from gaining a runaway positive feedback loop. A basic standard of living is guaranteed unconditionally to every person, freeing every motivated individual to express themself through education, art, or innovation (since all the basic slog jobs are done by robots). Society enters a new golden age, although the 1% constantly complain about communism. A few super rich assholes engineer plots to overthrow the government but they keep getting stopped because literally everyone else has the time on their hands to engage in counter-revolution if they want. Name the book for an upvote!

Re: I applaud the Outward Urge, but...

Hey, don't be so cynical. If we found intelligences on Mars that we could go to war with for no discernable reason, pass laws allowing for the unregulated corporate exploitation of Martian resources, proclaim that everyone who emigrated could own rocket launchers, discriminate against women and all minorities, and refuse to vaccinate their children…

…why, we could be set up on Mars in a month!

Re: "This behavior is not only illegal but reprehensible,"

It's a sad state of affairs when there are enough people in this country who see nothing wrong with what this little slimeball does, that it would be difficult to successfully prosecute him before a jury. And these people would in fact lie and fight to get on a jury, for the express purpose of acquitting him, in the name of their stupid crusade.

Who wants to bet that when this pewling child of a criminal finally realizes he has to face the grown-ups of society who are sickened by his antics, he cries and begs the court to seal and expunge his record? That he begs Google and maybe the Reg to take down that picture and that article?

Re: Pointless

"cassettes which could only be listened to once"

"An hour or so later, I had invented a process for defeating"

So what's your explanation for how you didn't subsequently become a millionaire consultant for the RIAA?

A life sentence can arguably be considered cruel and unusual punishment, as being disproportionate for any given charge. That would make a higher court more likely to consider hearing an appeal. So instead, they peg the maximum at 100 years! That is OK! The system works!

Re: Love the last two paragraphs.

The reason why these three-and-four letter regulatory agencies exist is that unregulated corporations have never, in all of history, proven able to rise above anything more than ripping out the underbelly of representative society. The republicans don't want to let the dogs out to play, they want to set the wolves out to hunt and scavenge what they can of the rotting meat.

The same types are those enacting funding cuts to the EPA. Legislation and exceptions to reduce the financial penalties OSHA can seek for injuries and deaths. Immunities and bailouts for directors that loot investment groups today and run them into the ground tomorrow. Individually, easy to ignore, but collectively, all part of the same corrosive pattern.

I remember Musk explaining the "running out" part somewhere else- the equipment to recirculate the hydraulic-essential-media would have added more weight to the rocket than simply making the tank large enough, and hoping to estimate the correct amount of media they'd need. Guess what part of that went wrong.

Where you will go wrong is accidentally convincing the stupid that this is a good backup idea, then having to take a vacation day to drive to Rhode Island to hand-carry someone elses' broken drive to a data recovery service.

I wish more developers would realize this, and be all like, "Well, we are getting an adult rating for unrestricted web access and there's nothing to be done about that, might as well add in functionality that puts breast pictures onto everything."

Like when movie directors know they're gonna get an R rating because of two women holding hands or something, they are suddenly free to put in more swearing, explosions, and toplessness.

Re: Proof I'm Old

I welcome this opportunity to relive my IT media processing experiences of the 90s by shoving big slabs of electronics encased in thick plastic into slightly larger slabs of electronics encased in thick plastic. Hopefully they will release the second edition of this product soon, which will replace the opaque gray casing with a vaguely translucent graphite or blue case, with appropriate LEDs. Then there will be the internal mount version, where the connector is placed at an angle inside your case accessible only to Hounds of Tinados, or possibly trigger your OS to write system files to the removable disk causing your computer to hang when the drive is removed.

Seriously though, if they've put any thought at all into this thing it has to turn out better than the multitude of high capacity diskslab systems of bygone eras.

-Fuel, parts, munitions

-Hot single pilots/WSOs looking for hookups in YOUR flight radius

-Airwolf DVDs

-GEICO

Re: "Unexpected files"

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury: according to a survey of two hundred iPod devices in YOUR community carried out by our firm's agents, one hundred percent of them contained legally obtained files encoded in popular audio formats not purchased through plaintiff's service. Therefore, the presence of such files cannot in any way be called unexpected by any definition of the plaintiff. Further, the ability of the device to both store AND replay these files, with full functionality, shows clearly that the plaintiff did in fact EXPECT that users would place this type of file on said devices.

"Also, our agents have found that plaintiffs did offer Nickelback albums and songs for download through their music service. Can anyone willingly distributing these materials, possibly even to your children, be said to have a sense of ethics, morals, dignity, or judgement?"

1 is 1 to many

Technically this is correct grammar since the vast majority of people evaluate 1 = 1 as TRUE.