Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment And then there's the hypocrites... (Score 1) 231

I know someone who is rabidly anti-privacy and calls anyone who disagrees with him 'deluded wingnuts' and other less savory terms.
He thinks the government should have full access to you all the time to "stop crime".

Yet he posts videos on YouTube with his face blurred out and his voice altered so he doesn't get fired from jobs.
It's okay for HIM to have privacy, but he doesn't believe anyone else should have it.

Comment Re:That was a near miss (Score 3, Interesting) 66

I actually managed to get my refund back from BFL, shocking as it seems.
When I ordered the Monarch there was no "6 months before you can request a refund policy", but they still denied me the refund at first. And then immediately flagged my forum account as moderated.
When I used info from their site to contact the AGs in Kansas and Wyoming (they claim to be a Wyoming Corporation on their site, though Wyoming says they don't exist as an entity there at all) I posted it to see what the moderator would do. Instant ban.
Still, on the day the 6 months was up I requested my refund and two days after they said it was wired I got it back.
I was fortunate. There were other fellows on the BitcoinTalk forum out as much as 60K versus my 2K.

Comment Re:that's sorta the problem (Score 1) 192

Maybe if it was explained with a less technical product they'd get it.

It's like when you go into Bulk Barn and there are broken chocolate bar bits for less than the cost of a wrapped, branded chocolate bar.
They are still yummy, but not able to be sold for full price. So they sell them at a reduced price to get some return on them.

Now I'm craving chocolate.

Comment Re:That guy just wasted his time (Score 2) 314

By what strange theory does Slackware support systemd? And how is the conversation being "held back"? At least on LQ, I think it's been discussed to death to the point where there's really nothing new to say about it.

I can say one thing for certain: you do not know that anything concerning systemd in Slackware is likely or not. Hell, *I* don't.

Comment Re:wow (Score 5, Insightful) 185

...it strikes me as almost surreal that they are floating the idea that consumers should 'trust them' in their ability to produce this technology safely and bug-free.

Please feel free to name any tech company that can produce bug-free systems. I'll wait.

I would be more worried about getting into a car made by a tech company that is used to a constant cycle of development and patching. A car running software by Adobe or Oracle? You couldn't pay me to drive in that. Even the majority of complaints against recent Ford cars is due to bad software for their Sync system... written by Microsoft. What if every bug in software written by Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. got the media attention of an auto industry recall? We'd be inundated...

You have to remember that 1 recall = 1 bug in the auto industry. What other major industry (besides aerospace) has such a low instance of issues in their products that operate in horrendously harsh environments and temperature ranges are designed to last 10+ years?

Comment Re: The world we live in. (Score 1, Redundant) 595

There's no doubt that they are used but the prevalence is likely as exaggerated as "stranger danger".
In the UK 75 cases of suspected dosing were investigated and only one person turned out to have a date-rape drug in their tox screen. The other cases appeared to be people drinking to excess.
This doesn't put the blame on the victim instead of a rapist. We should also be aware that the regular old issue of people getting shitfaced is still a real contributor to creating vulnerable targets for predators.

Comment This doesn't compute...or does it (Score 1) 113

The original creator comes up with the idea, usually among many ideas. Then they have to decide which one to go with. Then you have to design and implement, refine, and see what works, until you have something worth releasing.
Then you might have to put the effort into social media or advertising.
Then you might become popular.
Then someone else looks at what you created and breaks the concept down into components that are easily reproducible in a day or two, while their artist copies your art. They flood the store with them.
The only real counter to something like that is to create a game that's complicated enough that reproducing the game mechanics that make it popular takes long enough that the clones don't come out in time to bite into the profit during the critical first week/month.

Comment Re:The problem's not finding things on the interne (Score 1) 191

I bought Dark Souls on Steam during the summer sale last week. I mentioned this on Facebook. The next time I went to Kotaku to read a story it recommended a story about Dark Souls to me. Not the new sequel, but the one from years ago that I just bought. The article was from 2011. So it's not like it's a coincidence that a recent story matched up to my posted content.
Gives me the creeps.

Comment Correlation does not imply causation (Score 2, Insightful) 211

More pseudoscience. They say that they're not sure whether this means that porn shrinks your brain, or if the shrunken brain causes porn viewing. But, this leaves out the very real possibility that this correlation means nothing whatsoever. The site below collects correlations that look pretty convincing in the graphs, but quite obviously are unlikely to be cases of causation in either direction:

http://www.tylervigen.com/

Comment What's in my TrueCrypt volume? (Score 4, Insightful) 566

The only things in my TrueCrypt volume are password lists, tax info, etc.
And those are encrypted separately before being put in the Truecrypt volume.
That way if my machine were to be hijacked while I have the volume mounted, I wouldn't lose all the data to nefarious purposes.
And if the device is stolen, there's two layers of security to get through. (Which around here would just be the thieves deleting everything and selling it for Oxy)

Slashdot Top Deals

New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman

Working...