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Comment Re:Terrible names (Score 5, Insightful) 378

Charms bar? Continuum? Names used to be fairly intuitive, and even when they weren't completely intuitive their names were derived from their technical function. I'm thinking "context menu", "start menu", "task list", "quick-launch menu", and "system tray". Now they're just marketing doublespeak.

Hey Microsoft!

Pick a UI and stick to it! I'm getting very tired of having to relearn the entire UI whenever you make a new release.

Comment Re: He'll win in a landslide (Score 2) 120

Fraud by ineligeable voters is a ridiculously inefficient and costly way to rig an election.

You sound like you think that either party would consider that a reason not to do something.

Nope, I'm thinking from the point of view of someone who wants to win an election. Counting on ineligeable voters to show up is risky, and if I wanted to make sure my guy came out ahead, I wouldn't bet all the marbles on that scheme. I'd mess with the machines or the accounting software. Much cleaner and, if done right, leaves no trace. Or, I'd take advantage of defects in the voting system itself (hanging chads, for example).

Whatever you might think of political parties (and I probably share your feelings, but perhaps not about the same party), they employ some very smart people. Smart enough to realize that "voter fraud" is and always has been, a non-issue. Voter ID laws are about one thing and one thing only: raising the bar high enough so the people you don't want voting...can't. It's literacy tests all over again. To claim otherwise is to insult the intelligence of the people you're talking with.

Comment Other old tech (Score 2) 28

Occasioned by a weekend trip to the (bitingly frigid cold) Sunday River ski area this past weekend, I learned that TELSTAR 1 is still happily orbiting the earth. The US ground terminal was in Andover, Maine, not too far from Sunday River. It's now just a few equipment shelters and some dishes, but back in the day, there was a huge horn antenna inside a radome. The regional high school is named Telstar. I wonder if the students (or the administration, for that matter) realize the history behind the name...

Comment Re:More US workers == offshoring?? (Score 1) 484

Explain to me how allowing more foreign workers to come to the US under H1B visas will increase offshoring? Surely not allowing people to work here is going to cause work to be sent overseas, not the other way around.

Every H1B worker I've met (including myself) wants to get a green card so they can live and work in the US permanently. At which point they are just as much part of the US tech workforce as a citizen who was born and raised here.

H1B workers are a boon to employers. They work for lower wages because they can't legally change jobs. So the employers can get a better deal - longer hours, fewer perks, than with US workers, who are free to demand more and leave if they don't get it. It's a scam, everyone knows it, and our elected officials, by continually increasing the H1B cap, show exactly who they work for...and it's not the US tech worker.

The US has plenty of good engineering schools and plenty of graduates from those schools are looking for work. There is no shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, they're just asking for more money than the employers are willing to pay.

Comment Re:5 stages of handling a PR problem (Score 1) 341

1. Profess shock 2. Start an investigation 3. Promise to do better 4. Apologize and abase yourself to every aggrieved group you can find 5. Throw some money at anything related, esp. self-appointed "community spokesmen" Looks like Intel has hit stage 5.

6. Claim that there are not enough qualified graduates in the US and ask for yet another increase in H1B visas. Remind us that the US can't stay competitive without being able to hire H1Bs.

Comment Re:Slowed to 1bit/year without NN (Score 1) 41

That's completely not true. Comcast is working hard on improving transmission speeds over their slow speed lanes. They're going to have facilities on the peaks of mountain ranges that transmit the information via semaphore flags.

I believe they're in full compliance with RFC1149. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc11...

Comment Re:Additional background (Score 2) 293

A few things are worth noting about the original case. Marriott agreed in a plea deal to have improperly used "containment features" of FCC-licensed equipment to block Wi-Fi hotspots, and this was performed in conference facilities, not the hotel. https://www.fcc.gov/document/m...: "Marriott Hotel Services, Inc., will pay $600,000 to resolve a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks established by consumers in the conference facilities of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in violation of Section 333 of the Communications Act. The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses, and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network."

"containment features"??? You mean "illegal jammers", don't you, Marriott? Because, unless the FCC has drastically changed the rules, intentional jamming of legal signals is absolutely illegal, no matter what the reason, unless of course, they have prior FCC authorization. Which I highly doubt. Sauce for the goose, etc...

Comment "The theory is that 'something' should be done" (Score 2) 216

Politicians aren't the right people to be handling this. You can legislate all the laws you want, but they don't fix the problem. It's illegal to burgle houses, but it happens all the time. Sony got burgled. Better luck next time. Buy better locks, build a more secure IT infrastructure, and be thankful that nobody died. Nobody even lost real money, as I read it, except, of course, for the costs of the cleanup.

Although the thought of all those Sony employees filling out paper forms with typewriters is kinda humorous...

Comment Oh, shut up, for God's sake. (Score 1) 183

I'm tired of politicians beating the {jihadi|pedo|copyright} drum. You can use a pipe wrench to provide clean water or you can beat someone to death withit, but that's no reason to outlaw pipe wrenches.
You can also use telephones to arrange contract killings. Let's ban them.
On second thought, maybe we could use our phones and internet servers to get rid of annoying politicians.

Comment from the Institute of the Blindingly Obvious (Score 4, Insightful) 454

"Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor..."

Gee, you think?
Seriously, as a working engineer, the fact that this hasn't been emphasised this has annoyed me for years. There is no shortage of bright, hard working engineering talent in the US, and the our schools are (and have been for years) capable of turning out as many well-educated engineering graduates as the industry requires. It's just that they want to make enough money to live a good life (and pay back the cost of their education). Graduates from the Farkistan Institue of Technology are *so* much cheaper. And they don't ask for raises or threaten to change jobs...because they would get sent home.

Do you seriously believe that a foreign H1B with an MS, working for $35k is equivalent to a US graduate?

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