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Comment I Stream only. (Score 1) 697

I have not had cable service in four years and more. I still had a set, but I used it for games and Netflix. News was easy to come by via Radio and internet. Only thing I "kinda" missed was football. This last Christmas, I bought a Blu-Ray player with integrated Wi-Fi, and as I was already a subscriber to Netflix, I had streaming first day. I have a 1000% better experience _commercial_free_ from a combination of Netflix streaming and occasionally buying my own DVD's or BD's from Amazon than I have from a hook-up to the Cable company.

Comment Re:Ready or Not? (Score 1) 2288

My problem is the steps in Celcius seem to me to be too big. When I lived in China the 1-2 degree C tolerance on the AC was too wide and I would alternate between freezing and sweating all through the night. Couldn't get used to it. If the same 1-2 deg in F, I could live with that kind of tolerance much more easily.

Comment Because it's convenient. (Score 1) 2288

Imperial is more "humanly" practical...

- For inches to feet, 12 is a really nice number. You can halve it, quarter it and third it. With base 10, you have a hard time with thirds -- and even quarters are not integers. Such measures are better for building.

- Miles are 8 furlongs (a furlong being the amount of distance an ox could plow before taking a rest), and the mile is also roughly equivalent to a roman measurement of 1000 paces -- that's a nice way to think about how far you should walk before taking a sip from your canteen. Sorry, but kilometers don't do it for me.

Imperial is simple for a human being to "visualize"...

- Inches are about a thumb-width -- it's a nice physical measure, and a nice rule of thumb.

- There are about 4 inches in a hand -- which is roughly knuckle to knuckle.

- There are three hands to a foot.

- The measure of a man's arm from fingertip to elbow is approximately a foot and a half -- a measure also known as a cubit.

- Yards of cloth in stores used to be commonly measured by hand -- by stretching out the cloth an arm-width away from the center of the body... When I was young I saw women at the cash register measuring out cloth by hand -- it was common-place.

- Teaspoons are teaspoons -- is there an convenient equivalent measure in metric for a sip of something?

- Tablespoons are tablespoons -- same again as teaspoons... Is there a ready replacement even on metric kitchen tables?

Imperial is better on the human stomach.

- A cup is a nice amount for your coffee. I don't want to ask for 225ml (or whatever) measure of coffee -- I want my darned cup.

- A pint and a quart are really nice measures for beer in the tummy. I DON'T WANT a Liter of beer. I want to "mind my pints and quarts."

- An ounce is a nice shot of liquor. I know three of them will put me down for the night.

Submission + - Skynet Becomes Aware, Launches Nuclear Attack (singularityhub.com)

kkleiner writes: "Hide ya kids, hide ya wife! According to the Terminator franchise, at 8:11 PM today (April 19th), the military-designed artificial intelligence system called Skynet will become self-aware and turn against its creators (read: us). If that doesn’t have you shaking in your boots our world will be overwhelmed by a legion of killer robots in approximately 48 hours — a time known as Judgment Day. I, for one, welcome our new robot overloads."

Comment The throne for a tech king (Score 1) 111

List of requirements for true geek's king throne:

0) Must be in a room full of monsters.

1) When looting while confused, must exchange gold for randomly generated throne room monster.

2) When sitting, should respond with "You feel very comfortable here" or should do one of the following:

________a) Grant a wish or increase your luck.

________b) Allow you to genocide something.

________c) Identify things in you are carrying.

________d) Make you feel much better by healing you completely, curing you from sickness, blindness, and wounded legs.

________e) Gain the ability to see things that are invisible, magically form a map of the entire floor in your mind, or completely confuse you.

________f) Gain some random attribute.

________g) Loose some amount of a random attribute, but gain hit points!

________h) Shock you, and make you lose hit points!

________i) Forcibly take away all the gold you are carrying.

________j) Make a lot of monsters appear around you.

________k) Either blind you or randomly curse what you are carrying.

________l) Either wake all monsters on your floor, or teleport your naked butt somewhere random on the floor.

________m) Turn your mind into a pretzel.

Whereupon the said throne may vanish in a puff of smoke.

Upon kicking it, depending upon how lucky you are, you would either destroy the throne, breaking loose 200GP, and exercise your dexterity... (well you could possibly fail to do so and injure yourself), or if you are lucky dislodge some gems and gold... and/or trigger a trap door.

That, my friends, would be a true geek's throne, in a true geek's throne room.

Comment At what point... (Score 1) 386

At what point are people going to say enough is enough? How long is everyone going to kow-tow to bureaucrats for a false perception of "security" (whatever that may mean).

Personally, I think this is offensive, and oppressive impingement upon our freedom to a basic right to walk around freely without threat of being accosted at every corner by government. The scanner situation is a poster child for bureaucracy run amok and going way too far. Government bureaucrats are not free to do whatever they want and spend our money willy-nilly as they please especially with the express purpose of looking up our skirts at every available opportunity.

At what point are we going to start making decisions either at the ballot, or with our feet?

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Adds Selective ActiveX Filtering to IE9 94

An anonymous reader writes "A post on the IE blog details the new ActiveX filtering feature in the IE9 release candidate. Microsoft's Herman Ng writes, 'ActiveX Filtering in the IE9 Release Candidate gives you greater control over how Web pages run on your PC. With ActiveX Filtering, you can turn off ActiveX controls for all Web sites and then turn them back on selectively as you see fit. While ActiveX controls like Adobe Flash are important for Web experiences today for videos and more, some consumers may want to limit how they run for security, performance, or other reasons.' My favorite quote from the article is one of the image captions: 'ActiveX content may prevent you from having a good experience viewing a Web site'"
Internet Explorer

Submission + - Microsoft Agrees ActiveX Content Should Be Blocked (msdn.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A post on the IE blog details the new ActiveX filtering feature in the IE9 release candidate. Microsoft's Herman Ng writes, 'ActiveX Filtering in the IE9 Release Candidate gives you greater control over how Web pages run on your PC. With ActiveX Filtering, you can turn off ActiveX controls for all Web sites and then turn them back on selectively as you see fit. While ActiveX controls like Adobe Flash are important for Web experiences today for videos and more, some consumers may want to limit how they run for security, performance, or other reasons.' My favourite quote from the article is one of the image captions: 'ActiveX content may prevent you from having a good experience viewing a Web site'
Security

Anatomy of the HBGary Hack 220

PCM2 writes "Recently, Anonymous took down the Web sites of network security firm HBGary. Ars Technica has the scoop on how it happened. Turns out it wasn't any one vulnerability, but a perfect storm of SQL injection, weak passwords, weak encryption, password re-use, unpatched servers, and social engineering. The full story will make you wince — but how many of these mistakes is your company making?"

Comment Re:Ethical Behavior or "Feel Good" Behavior (Score 1) 826

Of COURSE managers count in all of these things -- and all things being equal (and perhaps some less so) Cost usually wins, because Cost usually wins over everything else with their customers. "Cost at a reasonable level of quality" probably also matters most to you too -- in the way you select your Car, your TV, your Internet service, your Cell Phone carrier, and even your toilet paper. Do you go out of your way to choose American TP -- Cause, "Damn-it, it's gotta be Americans wiping my Butt!!?" And if you are honest with yourself, that personal efficiency metric that you have in your head is what "really" matters to you -- not this religious fanaticism. And, It's the same efficiency metric that the managers in the companies you buy from will work towards no matter how painful it is to them or anyone else.

The reason that /currently/ I maintain my job in the states is that it /can't/ reasonably be outsourced right now. Otherwise, with the taxes and hostile attitudes of the government on business here in this country -- damn strait -- they would.

Comment Ethical Behavior or "Feel Good" Behavior (Score 2) 826

People talk a good talk about being charitable to the poor people in other countries, but darned if they will truly give poorer countries something truly valuable -- and train those other people in other countries to make their own living. Because, darn it... it's just unethical to do that! This guy in his Utopian universe of social/political correctness just lost a good job because he preferred his dream world to real life.

People... Listen... this is not a Zero Sum Game. One job at least was created here... a high skilled training job... and one with a lot of opportunity. The guy turned down a really, really good opportunity to help people -- both people overseas, and -- believe it or not -- his friends. You see, his friends were obviously doing a job that wasn't valuable in his home country any more. The sooner they got out of that job, the better!

We in America tend to think that we should keep as many jobs as possible here, no matter how crummy. And yet we complain about the monotony of some jobs, and the poor pay of unskilled labor locally. And... the bar is being raised ever higher. Software Engineers, IT, Help Desks, and Call centers... It's tough... But we have to realize -- and quickly -- that we are "competing" in a global labor economy. If there is another group of people in the world that can do the same job for less money, and the government structure is more favorable to business... then we better be a lot more efficient, offer some tangible benefit that the overseas people can't, or be prepared to go to war. That's just life!

On the other hand, developed countries have a lot of opportunity, and people ought to learn quickly to take advantage of that. People ought to educate themselves or start a business (thus managing/directing the cheap labor overseas). If people want low skilled labor jobs, especially, the school of the world tells us that they will have to compete now with unskilled labor from other countries -- and that's tough, but that's it. Wake up, people & don't be a victim! Learn to take advantage of the cold hard facts.

For the ethics part... He should have taken the job, or he should have gotten out of the business and started another. He's got to feed himself and his family. He's got to slap himself in the face and wake up and smell the Coffee -- It's a dog-eat-dog world -- not some dream world utopia he's locked his mind in. On the other hand, he also has a responsibility to tell his peers as quickly as possible that their jobs will be outsourced so that they can plan for the future.

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