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Comment Re:No Patch Info (Score 2) 140

I don't use and don't need patches for One-Note, IE, Windows Media Centre, SQL Server. Privilege escalation bugs don't bother me, if you've been compromised that far then you're probably f**ked anyway.

Uh you don't have to be compromised initially to fall victim to a privilege escalation bug. And you should care about bugs in IE or any other piece of software that is installed (and cannot be removed) from your system. Gone are the simple days of black hats using a single bug to take control of your system. They will chain together vulnerabilities until they can get to your unimportant privilege escalation, and that could very well take advantage of some bug in IE that you neglected to patch because it is unimportant to you.

Comment Re:NT is best (Score 1) 190

Have you asked anybody about your iPhone problem? Mine just runs and runs and runs (provided I keep the battery charged). Did you do anything unusual with it?

Haven't bothered. It's a somewhat common problem. I know about a half a dozen people that have rebooting iPhones. In fact, when I was at WWDC I had to manually reboot my iPhone throughout the day because it would stop working all together. It had never done that prior and has never done that since. I am assuming it was just overwhelmed by the reality distortion field at the event. No one else I know was having that problem. I'll probably just wait until the warranty is running out and just take it into the Apple store and complain.

Comment Re:NT is best (Score 2) 190

If constant reboots and BSODs are still your impression of Windows, you should give it another try with a more recent version. Things are quite smooth these days, thanks to the NT6 kernel.

Err! Win NT6.0 was Microsoft Windows Vista and we know how everyone loved that. Even with NT6.1 (Microsoft Windows 7) you still could get constant reboots and BSODs (first hand experience). Still NT6.2 (MS Win 8) and NT3 (MS Win 8.1) may me stable to you but that GUI IMHO looks like something designed by a 5 year old.

Over 7 years ago I switched to a Linux distro and have never looked back.

I get more BSODs and reboots with my iPhone 5S (and kernel panics) with Apple products than I do with my two windows Machines. My iPhone 5S reboots itself about 3 times a day (blue screen and all, yes its true, you can youtube to see for yourself). I get a kernel panic on my work MacBook pro about twice a week, and have to reboot my personal MacBook pro about once every week or two. Meanwhile my two Windows 7 machines get rebooted at most once a month when patch Tuesday rolls around. So I guess it just all depends on your hardware and what you happen to be doing with those machines.

Comment Re:[citation needed] (Score 1) 200

Ok here's a nice little chart from the CDCthat shows that not only is ADHD diagnosis on the rise, but its also more common in some states than others. Unless there is some environmental factor (other than poor parenting) to consider, I would say that culture and poor parenting is a strong indication of an ADHD diagnosis. In fact, if you look at the states with some of the highest diagnoses, you'll see that they're southern and midwestern states. I grew up in the West and live in the South now and I definitely believe that the parenting here in the south is sub par.

Of course, that is obviously speculation on my part, but how do you explain such differences in ADHD in the country?

Comment Re:American car companies... (Score 1) 426

The major problem that I've heard reported is that the ignition would go to the "accessory" selection and would lock the steering wheel. If true, almost no one wold be able to recover from that.

The other problem (for many) would be the loss of power steering and power brakes. The power brakes might have some hydraulic pressure left initially, but that would go quickly.

Power brakes might as well be called "brake assist". You can stop just fine without power brakes unless you're driving a big truck towing a huge trailer, you should not have any serious difficulty. Well, grandma driving a huge Cadillac might kill a few pedestrians...

Comment Re:[citation needed] (Score 1) 200

It's kids being diagnosed with ADHD when the correct diagnosis is really poor parenting.

You're not a parent are you? I'd have a hard time calling anyone that didn't beat their kid a bad parent. That'd be like calling someone that fell off a bridge a bad sky diver. You do what you can, there's no way to do it right, and they landing's going to hurt no mater what you do.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to abuse a child. Beating a child is not the only way to abuse it. There is mental abuse, neglect (which is another form of mental abuse), etc. I dated a high school ESE teacher for years and I can tell you right now that most of the parents though their precious little snowflake could do not wrong, even when the kids were being hauled off to jail for possession with intent to sell, burglary, rape, and a myriad of other crimes. Others had parents that couldn't be bothered to show up to meetings, and tried to throw money at the child's problems. I also helped raise a niece with autism and ADHD. It was only for a few years, but it was very stressful and I thought it would be the death of me.

Comment Re:[citation needed] (Score 1) 200

I'd be interested in the basis for the claim about misdiagnosis being "common". I have known a number of people with ADHD who were misdiagnosed with something else. I don't think I've ever met anyone who got a misdiagnosis of not having ADHD.

The quality of the anti-ADHD-diagnosis rants can be pretty much summed up by the fact that people are claiming that a stimulant drug which makes people twitchy is going to "drug people into zombified submission". It really is that blatantly stupid; there is nothing remotely like "zombified submission" on the table.

It's kids being diagnosed with ADHD when the correct diagnosis is really poor parenting.

Comment Re:Remove old apps. (Score 1) 249

There are apps that were put up years ago, presumably were not much of a success, and remain, never updated. All they do is clutter the store up, and make it harder to find the good, up-to date stuff. They should be removed

Says you. I have a crossword puzzle app that was first published when the original SDK became available. It had a lot of updates the first year and has had maybe 2 updates since. Why? There really isn't much to update about it. I know lots of people who still use it. Tons. It's stable, doesn't really need any new whizbang features from iOS 7. The two updates since iOS 4? One for retina devices and one for the new layout of iOS 5. Why should this app be removed just because it doesn't have bugs that need to be patched every 3 weeks (read Facebook)?

Comment Re:Now this is funny. (Score 1) 109

Sorry I worked for a company that built Stenomachines and wrote software for Court Reporters. 1. Learning to write Steno is hard. It is very hard. A lot of full time students never break 180, 225 is what you need to graduate.

I've often wondered how fast I could type with a steno machine. When I was in college I used to do transcription for a law firm. I can burst up to 250WPM on a QWERTY keyboard and average about 170WPM. I would do full speed transcriptions for that law firm and got through a 6 month backlog of tapes in a couple of weeks. But I imagine that switching to the steno machine would be such a huge pain in the ass for me that I would completely lose my mind and give up and switch right back to the QWERTY keyboard. Same reason I never went with Dvorak.

Comment Re:Why the Australians? (Score 3, Interesting) 92

It took 2 years of searching before the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 were found, and during that period there was a massive amount of speculation and doubt about what happened, leading to total uncertainty about how to prevent another crash. Airbus took a beating as everyone assumed it was an aircraft fault which led to the crash.

When they found the black boxes, the real problem turned out to not be a systems fault (although there was a momentary loss of air speed data due to icing, it didn't cause the crash) but a crew training problem so spending the time and money to find and recover them after 2 years has lead to small systems changes but significant pilot training changes.

So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide, there is always that element of doubt because we really don't know what transpired until we have evidence - so what happens if that assumed 0.001% chance of this particular crash being caused by something else, something mechanical or systems related, comes real and it causes another crash?

There is a serious control fault with the Airbus that did result in the crash of AF447. One pilot was nosing the plane up as hard as he could. The other was nosing it down as hard as he could. There was absolutely no feedback from one pilot to the other indicating that they were fighting each other. Instead, the control system took the stronger force and allowed the plane to continue to try and climb and eventually stall and fall from the sky. Was there a huge mistake on the part of the pilots? Absolutely. But you can't deny that there was a critical problem with the controls in the aircraft as well. A problem that so many people try to say doesn't exist.

Comment Re:So, which is it? (Score 4, Interesting) 151

Is it as Ruben Santamarta says, that the plane's satellite communications system can be hacked into via the plane's wifi? Or is it as the manufacturers say, and the hacker would have to have physical access to the hardware and couldn't do much of anything anyway? There's two very different points of view here and I'm not sure how they're supposed to meet up.

Any airplane manufacturer that is stupid enough to link their passenger wi-fi system to ANYTHING else, deserves to get a few planes stuffed into the ground. Same with auto companies. If true, the whole thing is about as lamebrained as it gets.

Volkswagen hooks up their audio systems to the CANBUS on cars. Those audio systems may have bluetooth enabled. This may allow a hacker to get onto the CANBUS via BT. I haven't tried, but it's definitely something that one could attempt. Other manufacturers do this also, such as GM and Chevy.

Comment Re:Tom Clancy thought of it first (Score 1) 409

Actually, it is Executive Orders I'm thinking of. The Gulfstream in question is traced to Iran, who had weaponized Ebola from the patient. Rainbow Six involved eco-terrorists who wanted to decimate the human race by spreading a bio-weapon via an Olympics (in Australia, IIRC).

Ah you're right. They had a lab form of Ebola and didn't need to smuggle the victim out for Rainbow Six. Been a long time since I've given those books a read and the later ones weren't as great as the cold war ones to begin with.

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