Re: Prevaricating?
I thought that line was hilarious because I thought that by "prevaricating" he meant "lying"!
5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015
"Nope avoidance is the standard meaning in British English."
Yes, I understand that now. This is a meaning that I'd never heard before. My only point is that "prevaricate" does indeed mean "lying" as well -- perhaps only in the US, but it still has that meaning.
I don't understand the downvotes I got, though. It's easy for me to recognize and and understand that a word I've heard and used to mean one thing my whole life has a different legitimate meaning somewhere else. Why is it so hard for Brits to understand that as well?
Interesting. I'd never head it used to mean that. And after checking a number of dictionaries, that appears to be a rare use (although, as another commenter mentioned, perhaps this is a US/UK difference -- I'm in the US). Most definitions don't include it, and those that do don't include it as the primary definition. The primary definition is "lying".
Regardless, thanks for the clarification. I was honestly confused about what that sentence was trying to say (and I had looked up the word before I commented in the first place!)
Hmm. Perhaps we're talking about different things here. I see the options as being MS Office, Libre & Open. I don't know anything about Softmaker, though, so that might count too. Apple's stuff doesn't count because that's Apple-only, Googles (or Microsoft's) online stuff doesn't count to me at all (a web service does not adequately replace a native application of this sort), and the Gnome and KDE toys don't even come close -- they are good, but really aimed at an entirely different use case.
I'll admit that I haven't done a comprehensive survey of options, though, so I'm likely simply ignorant of them. LibreOffice meets my needs very well, so I have no motivation to look at alternatives.
"When it comes to Office software packages there is quite a choice"
Is this actually true? It doesn't look like it from where I sit.
"not sure I really follow the logic of wanting to keep the split going for that reason"
I wasn't proposing that as a strong reason, merely a sufficient reason in the absence of a good argument for merging them. What you say here approaches being a good argument.
""factually incorrect" comes to mind"
Really? I expressed an opinion. I did not state a fact.
However, I stand by my opinion. Microsoft's relationship with Linux may (or may not -- we'll see) have changed, but it's never been true that every single thing that Microsoft does is bad.
On the whole, when I consider what Microsoft has been doing over the past several years, I see no indication that it is any different than they were before. The only thing that's changed is the tone of their rhetoric. Their actual behavior isn't so different to my eyes.
There is a real, legitimate reason to allow people to set the caller ID. If you are calling out from a place that has many trunk lines, the phone # attached to a particular line is likely not one that can be called. The primary reason to be able to set the caller ID number is to allow call centers and the like to be able to set it to the right number for people to return the call to. That's 100% valid.
The problem is that this ability is being abused.
If the solution is to prevent this ability, then all that has to be done is to get rid of CID entirely and use ANI instead. ANI cannot be blocked or spoofed, but the number provided is not always useful aside from for billing purposes.
" The then use that number as a display for the call. He also said that they can make any number appear to be making the call that they want to. "
This is true.
"It has nothing to do with the phone company, in fact the phone company don't know any thing about what number is being used."
This is not true. When you're setting the caller ID, you're sending the data to the phone system. The phone company has full visibility of it (they have to, because they have to move that data to the phone being called).
But the industry that would hire him is also toxic, so I'm not sure that matters too much to them.
Regardless, even if it does, they'd still hire him -- they'd just give him a meaningless title, an office, and no responsibilities. They'd have to -- if they don't follow through with the promised bribe, then their promises of bribes in the future wouldn't work.
" But if the President vetoes the bill, Congress needs a 2/3 majority to override. And this is difficult in a country equally split between parties."
The bigger problem is that Congress doesn't want anything to change. They're sitting pretty -- the FCC is acting the way they want, and Trump/Pai is getting all the blame.
If Congress really wanted to fix this problem, they would legislate and let Trump veto (even if they can't override). That would bring the issue front and center to the citizenry and would be a good step towards ultimately fixing the problems. They simply don't want to -- Congress is on the same page as the FCC (and other agencies these days): they want to benefit the rich and powerful to the greatest degree possible and couldn't care less about anyone else.
"It is nice that systemD might help laptops with their (de)hybernation issues."
I've been using Linux on laptops from long before SystemD existed, and have never had problems with hibernation. I'm not saying other's didn't have issues, but I do think that this implies that such issues can be fixed without the likes of SystemD.
"He seems to want social unity"
Isn't it odd, then, that he behaves in a way that guarantees the exact opposite of that?
"*I'm thinking of Jon McCann's argument back in 2011 that GNOME should depend on SystemD even if that meant nuking support for all non-Linux kernels."
I remember that. That statement is what changed my thinking about Gnome form being a DE that I dislike on aesthetic and usability grounds to one that I dislike because it represents an active threat.
"His justification is that someone who gains a PhD must have done some original work, whereas an MD just learns what is already known."
I'm not so sure he's correct here, but it may depend on the institution awarding the MD. In my quick survey of the stated requirements from a number of medical schools, they have all stated something like this (taken from Cornell's program):
"It is expected that MD-PhD students have submitted original research articles of which they are first author by the time they defend their thesis. It is advised that all research articles relating to the thesis research be submitted before the students begin their clinical training."
" I hate the idea that a process I write will fail so I probably spend an inordinate amount of time writing handlers, backup and correction routines that will try everything possible before giving up and apologising to the operator/user that process X has failed."
I'm with you here.
It's amazing how many battles I've had to engage in just to convince some engineers to do comprehensive error and condition checking. The argument "Yes, it's a problem if users do X, but users will never do X" comes up a lot. Decades of experience has taught me that if it's possible for a user to do something, no matter how ridiculous, then sooner or later a user will do it -- and if the program fails as a result, that's a legitimate bug.
"Journos must bear a lot of the guilt for that."
Indeed they are. In fact, it's so bad that every researcher I've worked for has considered them harmful and avoided talking to them as far as possible, because they usually report studies in a way that seriously misrepresents the study, thus actively misleading the public.
You can see it for yourself pretty much every day. The next time that you see an article about "Scientists prove X", take the time to actually read the paper that the article is talking about. There's a 90% chance that the paper doesn't say what the article says it does. And there's a shockingly high chance that it says the opposite.
"this is why the use of "coding" or "code" rather than "programming" or "program" always troubles me"
In my opinion, "coding" is a specific subset of the larger task of "programming". The act of programming includes design (when you aren't actually writing code). Coding is what you're doing when you are actually typing computer instructions.
I have to admit -- I'm keeping an eye on these devices because if the price point drops low enough, it can become more economical to buy it in order to use the parts for other projects over buying the parts directly. There are a few other things I do this with.
"Why the paranoia?"
Why do you call it "paranoia"? Paranoia is irrational fear of a nonexistent threat. I don't think this qualifies -- the threat is real and is demonstrated on a regular basis.
"I say this because we use Alexa a lot."
And that's fine -- if it's worth the tradeoff to you, I'm not going to say that you're wrong for making it. But, equally, others aren't wrong for not finding that tradeoff worthwhile. And an even larger set of others aren't even aware that they're making a tradeoff at all.
"I wonder what the point is at all."
The point is to avoid having to trust Google, etc. That seems reasonable as it's clear they can't be trusted.
A full security audit (including long-term traffic sniffing) is well-advised (not as well-advised as just not using these things, but still...), but not something most people can do.
" Pritotyping a good multi-timer might make a good Raspberry Pi project."
It would. You could even still have it able to respond to voice commands without having to call into the cloud! Limited-vocabulary speech recognition has been solid on low-power hardware for a very long time.