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Comment simple and effective: referencer (Score 1) 259

I use a little program called Referencer to manage images of bills and checks. I spent a /lot/ of time looking for a simple program where I can organize a stack of images (or PDFs) by applying 1 or more tags to each. THAT'S ALL. Referencer is made for generating bibliographies for TeX documents, but it is STILL the only simple program I know of that can manage a database of files and tags.

If anyone knows of a better one, PLEASE let me know. I have a feeling the app will soon be orphaned.

Submission + - Government Involved in a "Battle For The Human Soul" (zerohedge.com)

davek writes: From its very inception, the Leninist/Marxist ideology of the Soviet Union made it a central priority to dispel and subjugate religious and spiritual expression. The state was “god.” No other god could be allowed to flourish, for if the people were given license and freedom of belief in something beyond themselves and beyond the establishment, they would retain a sense of rebellion. The collectivist philosophy requires the utter destruction of all competitors; otherwise, it can never truly prevail. The New World Order, an ideal often touted by globalists and defined by their own rhetoric as a scientific dictatorship in which collectivism is valued and individualism is criminalized, seems to me to be — in its ultimate form and intention — a battle for the human soul.

Submission + - Most IT Pros Prefer Open Source To Proprietary Software

An anonymous reader writes: Business continuity and control eclipse cost savings are the top reasons why U.S. IT professionals prefer open source to proprietary software. According to a Ponemon Institute study, more than 70 percent of IT professionals in the U.S agree that commercial open source software provides more control and ensures better business continuity than proprietary software. This research shows that cost savings are no longer the hallmark of open source in the minds of IT professionals, with the ability to lower costs ranking below quality in importance. This viewpoint is echoed by IT and IT security practitioners in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Comment Re:Every book we read in school (Score 1) 410

Every book we read in school was on the banned book list. Apparently banned doesn't mean what the dictionary says it means. The books are readily available and are often required material in junior high, high school and college.

Pretty sure most of Mark Twain has been banned in US schools, because of gratuitous (if temporarily appropriate) use of the N-word. Not to mention all the hubub about books about "Intelligent Design" or those which question government policy on war or the environment. Make no mistake: censorship is alive and well in our schools.

Comment Re:Interestingly (Score 1) 50

The phone I carry is running Android Jelly Bean. Retailed for $49.

No kidding. A $100 phone would be an upgrade to me.

Side note: India is NOT POOR. Don't believe what you see in the media. At my last job, my Indian counterparts made enough to support a wife, multiple kids, car & apartment on one developer's income. Can't do that in this country, even with an engineer's salary.

Comment Re:What battle? (2010 wants its article back?) (Score 4, Insightful) 826

At the moment, just about every major distribution except Slackware and Gentoo not only supports systemd, but ships with it on by default.

So...what "battle" are we talking about? (Or did this post just fall forward five years from the past?)

Ubuntu is the largest distro I know of and it doesn't support it by default.

But you're right, all the arguments I've read against it boil down to Linus hating on one of the developers on the project and/or "It's too complicated and unmanageable!" I've yet to read something I'd consider a valid argument against it. A bunch of neck beards yelling "Get off my lawn!" is not and argument I can get any value out of.

When the neck beards speak, it's often prudent to at least listen.

I'm reminded of a myth, of when the Ancients were sitting down to design Unix, someone said "Why would we ever need a special file, that never contains any data, and always throws away everything written to it?" The Ancient replied, "Trust me, you'll need it." And thus, /dev/null was born.

Comment As true as "hybrid cars get 400 MPG" (Score 1) 461

If you cherry-pick data, you can get it to say just about anything. It's similar to how hybrid cards are allowed to use MPG data from when only the electric motor is running, making the clain that they get hundreds of miles per gallon. What did they /do/ with that electricity? Could it be stored and used when the sun went down? How efficient are they over time? I'm sorry, but nuclear power and continued prudent use of fossil fuels are the ONLY solutions for the worlds energy problems. It is physically and mathematically impossible to power the world with straight wind or sun power (which is not to say it couldn't be used as a catalyst in some yet-to-be-discoved process).

Sorry to rain on your solor parade.

Comment Re:Let's look at the Canadian example (Score 1) 222

Canada was openly ridiculed by the US for not deregulating its financial industry right up until the financial disaster. By an large, Canada escaped disaster that plagued the other G8 countries in the banking meltdown.

So, we have recent proof that strict financial regulation works and yet they want to keep doubling down on deregulation?

The argument of "See! It works in $OTHER_COUNTRY! Why is the US so dumb in not doing it the same way?" is getting really tired. Maybe if the US was full of 300 million Canadians, I might agree with you, but it isn't. Even if I stipulate that Canada "works" (which I certainly do not), what works there doesn't necessarly work here

Also, the Canadian housing bubble never really popped. Rest assured that it will. http://www.thefinancialblogger...

Comment Re:Ghash.IO is not consistently over 51%, yet anyw (Score 2) 281

Not yet anyways.

6 months ago GHash.IO promised they would
(1) Take steps to prevent accumulating 51% hashing power, including: not accepting new miners, and
(2) They would not attempt an attack, and (3) They would provide cex.io users an option to use another mining pool
(They have apparently not implemented (3) yet).

A DDoS against the pool was reported to occur yesterday, which adversely affected mining.
At one point... their hashrate was reported to have dropped to 7%.
Then BitFury pulled 1 PH/s out of their pool.

Excellent post. BTC haters gonna hate, and I don't understand why.

Funny thing about pooled mining, it's run by the users. User's don't like it? They go away.

Comment Re:DRM (Score 1) 76

Excellent post. Right on.

DRM has been a huge success in accomplishing what it was designed to do: NOT prevent piracy, but rather retard development, stifle innovation and new businesses and business models, and keep control of high-demand consumer products in the hands of a few individuals with infintely deep pockets.

Comment Re:Stocks? (Score 2) 404

something with intrinsic value, like stocks

Stocks have no more intrinsic value than our paper currency.

Incorrect. If I buy a share in PepsiCo, I then receive a tiny fraction of the profit of EVERY single Pepsi sold on earth. That's work. That's economic production. The share has "intrinsic value" because it gives me access to their profits. This is also why, at it's core, the stock market is not a casino (although government regulation and crony capitalism make stock purchases much more like a "bet").

I think the whole crypto currency thing will evolve into more of a stock market type of thing, with companies running their own block chains as a way of selling shares.

Comment Re:most useful? (Score 1) 77

try byobu, you will thank me

You can use screen as the backend of byobu too. But, in my experience, byobu doesn't really give you anything, especially if you don't like having status bars at the bottom of my terminal. ALL menus, status bars, menus, etc. go on the top. Always.

Comment Re:Neat (Score 1) 217

The new way of doing things is called a log splitter. You can get one pretty cheap now (especially if you can do with electric), and while it doesn't have that same rustic appeal, it works really damn well. Personally splitting and stacking was my chore as a kid (I'd guess I’ve split at least 60 cord in my lifetime), and I'm not planning to ever split a log by hand again.

I did also, but I never hated it. I always preferred to swing the axe rather than sit hunched over a giant piston. And as a teenager, wielding an axe to chop firewood is a MUCH better stress reliever than lashing out at parents or going to school with a gun. Very therapeutic, in my opinion.

Comment Re:Rewarding the bullies... (Score 1) 798

Here's the thing: Everyone has been bullied at some point in their life. Not all children are prone to it, but there is always a bigger kid prone to intimidation tactics when growing up.

Kids live by the law of the playground jungle when adult supervision and rules are absent from the equation. It is ingrained into us as some form of social stepping stone, the animal in each of us at work, attempting dominance and security for an insecure bully.

There is a time honored civil process in which we attempt to retrain our young into civilized little pricks. Picking on the weak is wrong, and you don't get to take advantage of a fellow human because you're physically or mentally able to do so.

Everyone is small and helpless early, and many are old and helpless late in life. These rules benefit us all, and what happened here sends precisely the wrong message.

To quote the movie Paranorman :

Neil: Nah. You can't stop bullying, it's part of human nature. If you were bigger and more stupid, you'd probably be a bully too. It's called, survival of the thickest.

Profound.

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