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Comment Re:More spectrum? (Score 1) 152

You mean like the 5GHz band? I'm finding it just perfect, I need 2 APs (one for each floor) but I get good coverage out to the porch and balcony without the signal going too much further. My network's harder to spot and there's less interference with other people so we can cram more networks into the area. Of course I'm also a proponent of wired networking for fixed-location computers so I've usually already got ports near where I want an AP.

Comment Re:I much prefer 'Message Recalls' (Score 1) 95

Because Sendmail and other MTAs don't have the message by that point. It's in the recipient's mailbox, and it's probably an IMAP server that has it at that point. Assuming their mail client hasn't downloaded it. The general rule is that only the user gives orders about their mailbox, so you aren't going to be able to order it to delete their messages. Their mail client definitely isn't going to comply without at least asking them first, and many people set them to refuse such requests to avoid complications.

Bluntly put, don't expect to have any control over what happens to a message once it leaves your hands because you're no longer in control of it.

Comment Re:Complete BS! (Score 1) 381

More like they've decided their salary's necessary to keep a roof over their family's heads and food on the table, and they aren't willing to risk that when the boss says "Work however much I tell you to or I'll replace you with someone who will.".

Comment Telemarketing (Score 1) 292

The pollsters can blame telemarketing for this. The ban on recorded/automated calls and restrictions on other calls to cel phones came about because those calls cost the cel-phone owner money (either real money or minutes they paid real money for) to receive and telemarketing calls were chewing up too large a chunk for most people to just shrug off. People ignore or hang up on polling calls because at the start they sound indistinguishable from recorded/automated telemarketing calls and it simply isn't worth the time to listen long enough to separate the two when most of the time it'll be a telemarketer anyway. The laws came about because the telemarketers insisted on calling in such numbers, at such inconvenient hours, despite all protests by the public that it finally reached an intolerable level.

As usual, a small bunch of greedy, inconsiderate jerks screw things up for everybody else.

Comment I just ignore my ISP's email service (Score 1) 269

Why tie your email to your ISP? I ignore my ISP's email service except for email from them about my account. If I were you I'd set up an email account with another service and use that as my primary email. That way when I change ISPs (and I will, whether because I moved or because I got fed up with crappy Internet service) I don't have to worry about changing my email address everywhere. In fact it might not hurt to have accounts at more than one email service, so you have an established backup in case it's needed.

Comment Re:There is no way to prove... (Score 1) 233

Not technically, no, but the way things work in practical reality if the customer isn't the commenter it's someone else in that household and the customer will very likely be able to point the finger at them. The only problem might be if they're running open WiFi, otherwise all the methods you describe involve way too much effort and/or technical chops for a random person to put into just making a comment like this. When option A is 95% likely and option B is 5% likely, B might happen but that's not the way to bet.

Comment Re:Counting pages (Score 1) 172

It'd be too easy for authors to set up an alternative Kindle store, for one thing. The DRM's well-understood and there's many options around for stripping the DRM off AZW* files, if it can be decoded it can almost certainly encoded as well. The only thing different for the customer would be having to enter the serial number of their Kindle by hand rather than having the Kindle upload it as part of the registration process like it does with Amazon. Or you can go the Baen route and publish without DRM. It wouldn't take Goodreads or other index sites much to add pointers to author stores, and then all that Amazon has to offer is a single checkout.

Note that Amazon already does this for Android: they don't like Google's restrictions on apps so they built their own app store and version of the Play Store app and sell apps directly to users. They already know how easy it'd be for authors to cut them out of the loop entirely. And amusingly enough the authors would probably use AWS instances for their sites and stores, so Amazon would be in a way helping the authors to cut Amazon out of the loop.

Comment Counting pages (Score 5, Informative) 172

This isn't going to affect the majority of books. It's strictly for the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Online Lending Library portions, where customers can read the book without buying it. Simply don't make your books available through those programs, or limit them to initial books in a series or those likely to hook readers into wanting more of your works. Basically juggle the benefits of KU/KOLL exposure generating additional sales vs. the potential cost in royalties.

Comment Re:counting a second twice (Score 1) 233

That's easy enough to deal with, and the schedulers involved should already deal with it. It's not like the difference between level-triggered and edge-triggered events is something new or novel, how do you think those same schedulers handle the twice-yearly DST transitions that involve adding or dropping an entire hour to/from the clock? Just as handling those transitions involves discarding the misconception that a day is always 24 hours long, dealing with leap seconds correctly involves discarding the idea that a minute is always 60 seconds long. In the process you'll also realize why Unix cron schedules at the start of an interval, not the end (events trigger at the start of an hour, day etc., not on the last second of the hour/day/whatever).

Comment Nice idea for certain types of applications (Score 1) 186

Universal Apps are good for tablet-oriented apps that would be useful on a desktop. They could, with a bit of tweaking, be used to allow some phone apps to run on the desktop, but the form factor demands UI differences that make them awkward to use with desktop conventions. The problem isn't making the applications portable. That's the easy part. The hard part is dealing with the fact that phones and tablets demand a different type of UI than a desktop PC to deal with the drastic difference in physical screen size and available types of I/O.

I'm wondering how long it'll take for the Android version of Skype to disappear...

Comment Mostly similar (Score 1) 146

Mostly my list of desirable qualities is similar. I disagree about the "meaningless" part though. The one about "Any particular process artifact is probably irrelevant." is instantly clear to me. He's saying that it's the result of process that matters, not the specific bits that go into it, which is something more managers need to grasp. You need to use what works for the way your team works together, and you can't get so attached to one particular thing that you can't throw it out and replace it if it's not going to be a good fit with your team. The goal, after all, isn't to fit a set of specific methods together in a certain order, is it? No, it's to get the software done on time, to spec and without errors.

Comment Re:Consumer ISPs are the bottleneck (Score 1) 595

Sometimes that can be a good thing. Cox hasn't said they have IPv6 active in San Diego, but their head-end in fact advertises an IPv6 network prefix suitable for autoconfig. The problem is, it's only got connectivity within Cox's network. They're lighting pieces up as they go, but the whole thing's not ready yet so you're not supposed to be using it until they say to.

Comment Consumer ISPs are the bottleneck (Score 1) 595

As long as consumer ISPs aren't enabling IPv6, it's a catch-22-22: services won't switch until there's demand for it, consumers can't demand it because it doesn't work for them, and ISPs won't spend the money to get it working because there's no services that require IPv6 that consumers are threatening to quit over.

Windows 7 and up, Mac and Linux are all ready today. Most consumer routers are ready (seeing as how they're mostly based on DD-WRT) and just need a checkbox checked, same for most of the WiFi routers consumer ISPs are giving to customers. If you don't have NAT to contend with, there really isn't any configuration needed on consumer equipment and it's not that complex on the upstream side (at least not for a competent netadmin, I won't speak for places where their admins got their MCSEs from a certification mill). Even my smartphone's using IPv6 when it's operating on T-Mobile's LTE network, I can see the connections via IPv6 addresses on my own servers. But the consumer ISPs won't spend a penny on infrastructure that they could take in profits unless someone all but literally holds a gun to their heads. They may not have a choice much longer, though. IANA's exhausted, the RIRs are exhausted or all but (ARIN will hit exhaustion on 20-Jul-2015, AFRINIC has 2.5 /8s left, the rest are on empty). The only chunk that can be recovered would be the unadvertised blocks (basically public IP addresses that companies are using internally or have reserved for future use), the largest set of those are in ARIN (North America) and the Opportunity rover will hear the screaming if you start telling large corporations that they're going to have to renumber their internal networks to use the private netblocks because you're taking any public netblocks that they aren't publicly using back.

Me, I've given up on my ISP. Hurricane Electric's IPv6 tunnels work just fine, and I'll worry about the state of Cox's network when they get around to telling me my head-end's got IPv6 active. If they ever get around to it. I'd say I've got better things to do than worry about it like washing my dog, except I don't have a dog. Maybe I can convince the coyote out back he'd like a good scrub...

Comment Re:Intention is the key (Score 1) 308

There's one special case: if you clear the cache after having learned that you're under investigation. That's because once you know you're under investigation, you have an obligation to preserve any evidence relevant to that investigation (regardless of what that evidence is or whether it's exculpatory or incriminating) including the obligation to evaluate anything for relevance before you destroy or dispose of it. Before you know of an investigation the prosecution has to prove intent, but after you know of it they only have to prove relevance and that you did it. This applies to civil as well as criminal cases, that's why companies are so uptight about document retention policies and control of e-mail and computer files. Believe me, after years in the software industry the words "legal hold" are one of my banes.

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