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Comment Re:Paper, and physical equivalents (Score 1) 208

A paper record is good. So is a plaintext file well organized and placed on a USB flash drive. Both can be mailed and locked in a safety deposit box, which is about as secure as you can get. Both require physical access, which means any other encryption or security is more likely to confound your subjects than actually secure your data.

In addition, you could encrypt the plaintext file with a well-known algorithm (you can even specify which one and the parameters) using a very strong password contained in your will, to prevent unwanted disclosure.

You could then apply Base64 encoding to the encrypted plaintext file, and print the result in a large font to enable scanning and OCR to recreate the digital file and decrypt it. This should be reliable enough - I don't think any of these technologies are going to go away any time soon.

Comment Re:Oh, good (Score 2) 135

this is most probably so if editors who are caught doing stuff when being paid for it and not disclosing it can have all that they have done removed without the need to do a investigation if what they wrote is truth or not

They should also black-list the payers of this type of activity. A week or two for each infraction. There's one important aspect about Wikipedia and that is it isn't about marketing and selling shit. They have the rest of the entire Internet for that, so it shouldn't be tolerated.

Perhaps a dire warning should appear in banner form at the top of any article about a company that pays shills to edit Wikipedia stating that it has been caught doing so, and that information about that company on Wikipedia portraying it in a positive light can't be trusted.

Comment Re:Makes a lot of sense (Score 1) 173

SteamOS via Linux has to provide some credible benefits to the user. Unless Valve develops something exclusive for SteamOS that you can't get on regular Windows Steam, then there is nothing that benefits the USER as opposed to Valve's benefit of not relying on Windows or buying Windows licenses for each SteamOS console.

The other potential benefit to Valve is higher game performance. Remember all those reports about framerates improving just by switching to Linux? You have to look at it from Valve's perspective. The PC game market is a small fraction of the console video game market. Here's what consoles offer:
-guaranteed compatibility
-low system maintenance
-general ease-of-use
-single-screen multiplayer for social/casual games ("couch use")
-simple software distribution and installation

Valve has already taken care of that last one, and figured a customized PC OS could take care of the others while adding the advantages of a PC platform, primarily:
-greater hardware capability
-upgradeable components
-software flexibility and user control

The key to "couch use" is a controller, and I'm sure Valve considers this essential to making non-console games work in a console-like environment, hence the delay while trying to get it right. Once enough games are ported and the controller is done, I think the machine has a valid shot at success. After all, we've been seeing consoles adopt more "PC functionality" over the last 10 years with web browsers, media players, Netflix-type video streaming, etc. Valve just figured they could succeed if they made a device that could run their games and removed the last few restrictions of consoles. The ability to stream from a Windows PC is just icing on the cake.

Comment Re: Linux didn't made much sense for the consumer (Score 1) 173

Oh it's not the worst ever. Consider Microsoft Bob...

Hey now, don't you go insulting Microsoft Bob that way; its interface made sense! Each room was a logical collection of programs, customizable with objects you could add that represented applications. It was customizable, the groupings were logically connected (rooms in a house are an easy-to-grasp metaphor), the theme of the room corresponded to the type of applications present (parlor, office, etc.), and once launched the applications ran as normal.

Plus there was that adorable dog!

The only problem with Bob was that it was just a glorified launcher, not really different to Program Manager with groups titled "Accessories", "Games", "Productivity", etc., so there wasn't much point to it.

Comment Re:Valve delivering on Valve-time (Score 1) 173

- linux games (currently, steam OS works better as a light box to play your game on the living room's big screen/projector by *streaming them* out of a Windows war machine somewhere else in the appartment, rather than playing them directly there. Porting takes time).

So instead of just simply using Windows and only needing one computer you need 2 computers to stream the games? Are you for real?!?

To be more clear, what GP was saying was that although some games do run natively on Linux, Steam OS achieves maximum utility by streaming games from a Windows machine. That's why it's not already widely in use, because its usefulness is limited by needing another capable machine with Windows (which all current Steam users already have). Once the controller is done and more games are ported, the whole package will make a lot more sense. However, the OS does in fact function and it does the things it's designed to do, it just hasn't yet reached its full potential.

Comment Re:They're not trolls (Score 1) 144

Ugh. Slashdot fail. I am so smart. S-M-R-T.

Anyway, to illustrate the above, image a Venn diagram with two circles, the left one being "Deliberate attempt to elicit angry response (trolling)", and the one on the right is "Likely to cause a flamewar (flamebait)". There is some overlap, which on Slashdot could be modded either way, but flamebait that's not trolling is either naivety or sincerity, and trolling that's not flamebait isn't necessarily intended to start a heated argument between other parties.

Comment Re:They're not trolls (Score 1) 144

Sometimes the difference between Troll and Flamebait is impossible to determine, as it depends on the intent of the author. If someone posts on Slashdot saying "Mac sucks", it would be trolling if the primary reason they posted it was to get a rise out of people. If, however, they have used Mac computers and genuinely hate them, then it may not be disingenuous, and therefore is not trolling, but it is still flamebait since it's inciting yet another Mac vs. PC vs. Linux holy war.

So the GP is correct in that deliberate flamebait is a form of trolling, but there are instances of flamebait where someone didn't specifically intend to get a reaction, but nevertheless posted something controversial in a confrontational way that is likely to elicit hostile responses (usually out of naiveté).

(AC to preserve mods)

Comment Re:Lest we forget... (Score 1) 207

I'm with you on the term "4K". I can't believe Slashdotters are complicit in this marketing nonsense. There's nothing "4,000" about it. We've been using lines as shorthand for display resolution for quite some time now, and it makes zero sense to switch to columns now, and it isn't even 4K columns.

Resolution: 3840x2160
Pixels: 8.3M

1280x720 is 720p/HD
1920x1080 is 1080p/FHD (Full HD)
2160x1440 is QHD (Quad HD)

Therefore 3840x2160 should be 2160p, QFHD, UHD, or 2K. 4K is utter nonsense. Calling it "Mega 8.3" would even be better.

It's like if Chevrolet said the new Corvette Z06 made over 1200 HP, because they started measuring torque in half-foot-pounds.

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