Comment Re:Why not let him know what to do (Score 1) 279
If an employee has it in for you they'd be a damn fool to announce their resignation before they'd done anything.
Comment Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score 1) 198
This is the new ars, almost entirely unlike the old ars.
Comment Re:What are you saying? (Score 1) 158
Please, labour were just as quick to use the usual culprits, i.e. Accenture, Capita and EDS.
Comment Re:How is this new? (Score 1) 172
Even simpler solution: use a plastic squeeze bottle. No mess, and they're probably cheaper than the glass ones to boot. Also, if you get one that dispenses from the bottom, you don't have to deal with that liquid that tends to rise to the top.
Comment Muse score is very good (Score 1) 35
long time user of muse score, this is welcome.
Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology 126
An anonymous reader was one of many to point out that Boeing doesn't want to rely on a sad devotion to an ancient religion to protect aircraft and conjure up the stolen data tapes, but plans on using force fields instead. "Boeing's new patent may let the force be with you even in real life. The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage. Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film, Boeing's "Method and system for shock wave attenuation via electromagnetic arc" could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets. The downside: It won't protect from direct hits."
Comment Re:Metal Gear (Score 1) 42
Skip Thief 3 and play the new one. Terry Pratchett's daughter was involved in designing the city and it shows: you almost feel like you might be sneaking round Ankh Morpork at times.
Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US 1089
HughPickens.com writes CNN reports that when asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it's time to make voting a requirement. "Other countries have mandatory voting," said Obama "It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything," he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly. "The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups. There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls." At least 26 countries have compulsory voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Failure to vote is punishable by a fine in countries such as Australia and Belgium; if you fail to pay your fine in Belgium, you could go to prison. Less than 37% of eligible voters actually voted in the 2014 midterm elections, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. That means about 144 million Americans — more than the population of Russia — skipped out. Critics of mandatory voting have questioned the practicality of passing and enforcing such a requirement; others say that freedom also means the freedom not to do something.
Comment Re:At least (Score 1) 320
Better Access than an antiquated, undocumented rats' nest of VBA cruft in Excel.
Comment Re:Maybe for the English, but what about the world (Score 1) 107
People mainly use yyyy/mm/dd because sorting by name will also put entries in date order.
Comment Who or what is Gigaom? (Score 5, Insightful) 101
Until this story, I'd never heard of them. Would it have hurt to included a brief sentence or two in the summary as to why it's "a loss for the tech community"?
Comment Re:And the Spinning BeachBall of Death? Sad Mac? (Score 1) 61
Never mind the beach ball, what about Clarus?
Submission + - Ask Slashdot - Private-cloud file hosting software for linux, like Google Drive?
TarpaKungs writes: I'm Asking Slashdot because I *know* this is a growing problem, but I have failed to find a suitable soution. Here's hoping the collective intelligence of Slashdot will prevail :)
OK — you have lots of android devices and maybe a several Chromebooks: Google Drive is great — it works well, it has user selectable offline caching ("Keep on device") — and most importantly, it handles updates from multiple clients gracefully. The main problem with this is reliability (will the service stay there), security, privacy and cost.
"Cost" because I have several terabytes of data (mostly photos, but a lot of other important files and documents) on an existing linux infrastructure which is well maintained, raid-ed and backed up. A small fraction of this it would be nice to replicate to all my client devices. The rest would be nice just to have on demand, subject to a network connection.
"Privacy and security" because I have lots of data that I don't want to lose control of.
I have been searching for a long time and have yet to find any self hosted software that has the technical abilities of Google Drive or Dropbox. Adding to that, the ability to maintain a secondary sync'd full copy of specific shares on linux (eg on my laptop) would be cool — but not crucial. However a general access linux client is a must.
I'm not looking for the all singing all dancing features of Google Drive such as live spreadsheets in my browser or any of the ancillary features like email and calendars. Simply good honest robust file serving with client offline mode (aka local cached copy, user selectable file by file or folder by folder) and no issues with multiple clients updating files.
I've tried Tonido and Owncloud and neither play nice with POSIX user permissions — they seem to want to own the files and manage access at a server level. Owncloud free seems also to be limited to a single share and enterprise pricing on both products is very high (3 to 4 figures) with no hobbyist/home licensing tier.
Simpler scenarios like SFTP and SMB of course do play nice with the local user permissions, but are not so bright on the client side — ie no offline mode. I did look down the WebDAV route but again, I have failed to find any client apps that are smart about offline mode. I suspect Google and Dropbox add some additional stuff to their protocols to push notifications of changes to other connected clients and also to manage the concept of "who has the latest copy".
So I guess what I am looking for is either a whole server/client suite that works or at least an SFTP/SMB/WebDAV client that is a bit smarter. Here's hoping the collective intelligence of Slashdot will prevail :)
OK — you have lots of android devices and maybe a several Chromebooks: Google Drive is great — it works well, it has user selectable offline caching ("Keep on device") — and most importantly, it handles updates from multiple clients gracefully. The main problem with this is reliability (will the service stay there), security, privacy and cost.
"Cost" because I have several terabytes of data (mostly photos, but a lot of other important files and documents) on an existing linux infrastructure which is well maintained, raid-ed and backed up. A small fraction of this it would be nice to replicate to all my client devices. The rest would be nice just to have on demand, subject to a network connection.
"Privacy and security" because I have lots of data that I don't want to lose control of.
I have been searching for a long time and have yet to find any self hosted software that has the technical abilities of Google Drive or Dropbox. Adding to that, the ability to maintain a secondary sync'd full copy of specific shares on linux (eg on my laptop) would be cool — but not crucial. However a general access linux client is a must.
I'm not looking for the all singing all dancing features of Google Drive such as live spreadsheets in my browser or any of the ancillary features like email and calendars. Simply good honest robust file serving with client offline mode (aka local cached copy, user selectable file by file or folder by folder) and no issues with multiple clients updating files.
I've tried Tonido and Owncloud and neither play nice with POSIX user permissions — they seem to want to own the files and manage access at a server level. Owncloud free seems also to be limited to a single share and enterprise pricing on both products is very high (3 to 4 figures) with no hobbyist/home licensing tier.
Simpler scenarios like SFTP and SMB of course do play nice with the local user permissions, but are not so bright on the client side — ie no offline mode. I did look down the WebDAV route but again, I have failed to find any client apps that are smart about offline mode. I suspect Google and Dropbox add some additional stuff to their protocols to push notifications of changes to other connected clients and also to manage the concept of "who has the latest copy".
So I guess what I am looking for is either a whole server/client suite that works or at least an SFTP/SMB/WebDAV client that is a bit smarter. Here's hoping the collective intelligence of Slashdot will prevail
Comment Mostly I run at night. (Score 1) 304
Mostly.
Comment Re:its all about the $$$ (Score 4, Insightful) 93
To further improve the safety of red-light cameras, consider that almost all rear-end collisions are caused by people tailgating. If each red-light camera were turned into a combination red-light and speed camera, people would slow down when approaching intersections, so someone slamming on their brakes at the last minute would be less likely to be hit from behind.
Emphasis mine.
I don't think you were saying that rear-end collisions are the fault of the car in front, even when they brake suddenly, but I think it's important to say that any rear-end collision is the fault of the car behind. It doesn't matter how sharply the car in front brakes, you should never be so close that you can't also stop safely. Suppose that instead of a red light there's a child running into the road; the car ahead may brake very sharply indeed, but if you're behind and you give them another push you might just make the difference between near-miss and tragedy. Tailgating needs to be treat more severely than speeding if you ask me, or at least enforced... at all.
