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Comment Re:Tyranny (Score 1) 252

If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen [...]

Wikipedia donation requests are very targeted. I saw the donation request while browsing in my corporate VPN (the gateway to internet happens to reside in GB) and wanted to donate some money, but the system did not allow me to enter a credit card address outside of GB, so I gave up. When browsing at home, I have never seen a donation request, probably they think there would be no point in putting one up for my country.

Comment Too rigid (Score 1) 876

by paavo512 (#46193951) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Are We Still Writing Text-Based Code?

At a minimum wouldn't that eliminate time dealing with syntax errors?

It seems to be a general concept that if one cannot make any mistakes using a system, then the system is not flexible enough to achieve anything interesting. And syntax errors cannot be clearly distinguished from semantic ones, when you make a system where every combination of tokens is syntactically valid, then there will be either a lot of semantic errors (think of writing machine code directly - almost any bit pattern is a valid opcode, so no syntax mistakes), or the system would be too rigid to be useful.

Submission + - Slashdot Beta Woes 16

Submitted by s.petry
s.petry writes: What is a Slashdot and why the Beta might destroy it?

Slashdot has been around, well, a very long time. Longer than any of it's competators, but not as long as IIRC. Slashdot was a very much one of the first true social media web sites.

On Slashdot, you could create a handle or ID. Something personal, but not too personal, unless you wanted it to be. But it was not required either. We know each other by our handles, we have watched each other grow as people. We may have even taken pot shots at each other in threads. Unless of course you are anonymous, but often we can guess who that really is.

One of Slashdot's first motto's was "News for Nerds" that Matters. I have no idea when that was removed. I have not always scoured the boards here daily, life can get too busy for that. That excuses my ignorance in a way. I guess someone thought it politically incorrect, but most of us "Nerds" enjoyed it. We are proud of who we are, and what we know. Often we use that pride and knowledge to make someone else look bad. That is how we get our digs in, and we enjoy that part of us too. We don't punch people, we belittle them. It's who we are!

What made Slashdot unique were a few things. What you will note here is "who" has been responsible for the success of Slashdot. Hint, it has never been a just the company taking care of the servers and software.

— First, the user base submitted stories that "they" thought mattered. It was not a corporate feed. Sure, stories were submitted about companies. The latest break through from AMD and Intel, various stories regarding the graphic card wars, my compiler is better than your compiler, and yes your scripting language stinks! Microsoft IIS has brought us all a few laughs and lots of flame wars to boot. Still, we not only read about the products but get to my second point.

— User comments. This is the primary why we have been coming here for as long as we have, many of us for decades. We provide alternative opinions or back what was given in the article. This aspect not only makes the "News" interesting, but often leads to other news and information sharing. It's not always positive, but this is the nature of allowing commentary. It also brings out the third point.

— Moderation. Moderation has been done by the community for a very long time. It took lots of trial and error to get a working system. As with any public system it's imperfect, but it's been successful. People can choose to view poorly modded comments, but don't have to. As with posting anonymous versus with our own handle it's an option that allows us to personalize the way we see and read what's on the site. And as a reward for submitting something worth reading, you might get a mod point of your own to use as a reward for someone else.

Why we dislike Beta and what is being pushed, and why this will result in the end of an era if it becomes forced on the community.

1. Bulky graphics. We get that Dice and Slashdot need revenue. I have Karma good enough to disable advertisements, but have never kept this setting on. I realize that Slashdot/Dice make money with this. That said, the ads sit away from my news and out of the way. I can get there if I want it (but nobody has ever gotten a penny from me clicking an ad... nobody!), but it's not forced into my face or news feed.

2. Low text area. I like having enough on my screen to keep me busy without constant scrolling. Slashdot currently has the correct ratio of text to screen. This ratio has never been complained about, yet Beta reduces the usable text area by at least 1/2 and no option for changing the behavior. I hate reading Slashdot on mobile devices because I can't stand scrolling constantly.

3. JavaScript. We all know the risks of JS, and many of us disable it. We also have an option of reading in Lync or non-standard browsers that many of us toy with for both personal and professional reasons. This flexibility is gone in Beta, and we are forced to allow JS to run. If you don't know the risks of allowing JS to run, you probably don't read much on Slashdot. Those that allow JS do so accepting the risk (which is admittedly low on a well known site).

4. Ordering/Sorting/Referencing. Each entry currently gets tagged with a unique thread ID. This allows linking to the exact post in a thread, not just the top of the thread. In Beta this is gone. It could be that the site decided to simply hide the post ID or it was removed. Either way, going to specific posts is something that is used very commonly by the community.

5. Eye candy. Most of us are not here for "eye candy" and many have allergic reactions to eye candy. Slashdot has a good mix currently. It's not as simple as the site starting with a r-e-d-i-t, which is good. That site has a reputation that keeps many of us away, and their format matches my attitude of them (s-i-m-p-l-e-t-o-n). At the same time, it's not like watching some other "news" sites with so much scrolling crap I can't read an article without getting a headache. The wasted space in beta for big bulky borders, sure smells like eye candy. Nothing buzzes or scrolls yet, but we can sense what's coming in a patch later.

The thing is, the community cares about Slashdot. We come here because we care. We submit stories because of that, we vote because of that, we moderate because of that, and we comment because of that. At the same time we realize that without the community Slashdot loses most of its value. We respect that we don't host the servers, backup the databases, or patch the servers. Slashdot/Dice provide the services needed for Slashdot.

It's a give give relationship, and we each get something in return. Slashdot gets tons of Search hits and lots of web traffic. We get a place to learn, teach, and occasionally vent.

Look, if you want to change default color scheme or make pre-made palettes for us to choose from, we would probably be okay with that. If you want to take away our ability to block ads by Karma, or move the ads to the left side of my browser window, I would be okay with those things too.

If you want to make drastic changes to how the site works, this is a different story all together. The reason so many are against Beta is that it breaks some of the fundamental parts of what makes Slashdot work.

User input until recently has not been acknowledged. The acknowledgment we have received is not from the people that are making the decision to push Beta live. We told people Beta was broken, what it lacked, and we were rather surprised to get a warning that Beta would be live despite what we told people. People are already making plans to leave, which means that Slashdot could fade away very soon.

Whether this was the goal for Dice or not remains to be seen. If it is, it's been nice knowing you but I won't be back. A partnership only works when there is mutual respect between the parties. A word of caution, us Nerds have good memories and lots of knowledge. The loss of Slashdot impacts all of Dice holdings, not just Slashdot. I boycott everything a company holds, not just the product group that did me wrong.

If that was not the goal of Dice, you should quickly begin communicating with the user base. What are the plans are to fix what Beta has broken? Why is Beta being pushed live with things broken? A "Sorry we have not been communicating!", and perhaps even a "Thank you" to the user base for helping make Slashdot a success for so many years.

Comment Re:Touch-screen desktop PCs are a fad (Score 1) 513

by paavo512 (#46024741) Attached to: HP Brings Back Windows 7 'By Popular Demand' As Buyers Shun Windows 8

For example, there could be two ways to reboot your PC:

1) Pull the side-window thing over, go to Settings, then Power, then Reboot

2) Click Start, click the Arrow beside Shutdown, then click Reboot

Why so complicated? I press:

3) [Windows] [Right-arrow] [Space]

This used to be Windows-U-something, but OK.

Submission + - Source code for 22nd IOCCC winners has been released (ioccc.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The source code for the 22nd IOCCC winners has finally been released. Many entries exploited bugs in the size check program, making the 2013 entries possibly the most featureful submissions ever.

Submission + - Anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy now says her kid may not have had autism (hollywoodlife.com)

Submitted by latuZimZactly
latuZimZactly writes: This is priceless, except of course for the thousands of children who weren't vaccinated because of FUD like this.

Celebrity, and former Playboy centerfold (so I heard, I only buy it for the articles), now says oops.

For the backstory, read one of many takedowns by Phil Plait.

Maybe Phil could replace her on The View. His hair isn't as nice, but he has a great smile.

Submission + - Edward Snowden Does Not Deserve Clemency 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, writes at Slate that if Edward Snowden's stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the domestic surveillance by the NSA, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing. But Snowden did much more than that. "Snowden's documents have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA’s interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what’s going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide,” an effort that 'allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.'" Kaplan says the NYT editorial calling on President Obama to grant Snowden “some form of clemency” paints an incomplete picture when it claims that Snowden “stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency’s voraciousness.” In fact, as Snowden himself told the South China Morning Post, he took his job as an NSA contractor, with Booz Allen Hamilton, because he knew that his position would grant him “access to lists of machines all over the world [that] the NSA hacked.” Snowden got himself placed at the NSA’s signals intelligence center in Hawaii says Kaplan for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents and gained access to his cache of documents by lying to 20 to 25 of his fellow employees to persuade them to give him their logins and passwords, turning them into his unwitting accomplices. "It may be telling that Snowden did not release—or at least the recipients of his cache haven’t yet published—any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China, even though he would have had access to the NSA’s after-action reports on the hundreds or thousands of hacking campaigns that they too have mounted over the years," concludes Kaplan. "If it turned out that Snowden did give information to the Russians or Chinese (or if intelligence assessments show that the leaks did substantial damage to national security, something that hasn’t been proved in public), then I’d say all talk of a deal is off—and I assume the Times editorial page would agree."

Submission + - Estonia sharing its ID-card based eGovernment solution with Finland

Submitted by paavo512
paavo512 writes: For the last decade or so, Estonia has developed a national electronic data exchange layer called X-Road. Is is based on national electronic ID cards and allows creation of common electronic services like founding a company, declaring taxes or e-voting. Every day, over 800,000 enquiries are made via X-Road (the population of Estonia is 1.3M). According to the PM of Estonia, the solution is saving 2% of national GDP annually.

The Estonian ID card technology was originally imported from Finland; however, it appears Finns have for 10 years failed to come up with any significant e-services making use of them. So it is now agreed that Estonian X-Road solution would be expanding to Finland as well. From the article:

Sharing and joint development of X-Road solution is prescribed by cooperation memorandum, signed [on Dec 10] by Estonian and Finnish prime ministers. To our knowledge, this was the first international agreement in the world which was signed digitally.

Submission + - NSA wants to reveal its secrets to prevent Snowden from revealing them first

Submitted by binarstu
binarstu writes: According to a recent report by Tom Gjelten of NPR, 'NSA officials are bracing for more surveillance disclosures from the documents taken by former contractor Edward Snowden — and they want to get out in front of the story. ... With respect to other information held by Snowden and his allies but not yet publicized, the NSA is now considering a proactive release of some of the less sensitive material, to better manage the debate over its surveillance program.'

Comment Re:About the authors (Score 1) 250

by paavo512 (#45231779) Attached to: How I Compiled TrueCrypt For Windows and Matched the Official Binaries

It matches the timezone of most of Europe during winter and half of Africa all the time. Right now the Czech Republic (along with most of Europe) is currently GMT+2 (UK and Ireland are GMT+1 for another two days, then we revert to GMT).

The timestamp studied in the article was from February, so no summer time in effect this time.

Comment About the authors (Score 1) 250

by paavo512 (#45231513) Attached to: How I Compiled TrueCrypt For Windows and Matched the Official Binaries
The authors of TrueCrypt have decided to remain anonymous. However, the timezone (GMT+1) of a TrueCrypt developer machine identified in the article matches the timezone of Czech Republic, mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt: "The TrueCrypt trademark was registered in the Czech Republic under name of "David Tesarik"". Does not conclude anything, but it is a bit reassuring to know it might be developed a bit away from NSA and other large 3-letter organizations.

Comment Huh, universal quantor again (Score 1) 142

by paavo512 (#45167727) Attached to: No, the Earth (almost Certainly) Won't Be Hit By an Asteroid In 2032

chance of an impact will certainly drop

If it would certainly drop, then it would be already zero today. The reason why the estimate is currently 0.00002% is because it is not known at which side the real value is. Actually, a defining criteria of a proper estimate is that it is located in the middle of the probability distribution, meaning that the actual value might lie on either side, with equal probability.

Note that the original article uses "likely" instead of "certainly".

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