Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Eisenhower said it (Score 3, Interesting) 214

I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of "emergency" is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.

there's nothing like a real life emergency in programming but business culture is "get this done yesterday." no one can do that. but some programmers are very fragile and can only function according to one set of requirements/ work environment/ speed, and if you mess with that they get angry/ stressed/ tune out/ burnt out. while the "rock stars" can react to sudden and dramatic changes of requirement and need and crank out the changes relatively adroitly (not necessarily quickly). a sort of suppleness of mind and eerie lack of stress that's more about personality than training. and i say personality, and not training, because their code is a reflection of their personality: you can throw a curve ball at it from any direction and it can adapt without falling to pieces when "little" things (it's never little) change

your code is a reflection of how your mind works. which is your personality. and certain chilly stress proof people can generate flexible durable code that is almost like the redundancy and flexibility of logistics in war

Comment Re:About D%^& time. (Score 5, Informative) 225

> Now if google would just announce no more flash allowed in ads, we'd be set.

If you are using Chrome you can set "Click to play" policy for all plugins in chrome://settings/content - as result you won't see any Flash ads (or any other plugins) without clicking on the placeholder. This way you get rid of Flash ads and it is also way more secure to just do not run plugins if you don't explicitly want to. You can also turn on plugins on a white list per site basis.

Comment Re:Ads (Score 2) 225

Ads are actually coming from Google's ContentID. ContentID scans uploaded media against signatures. The signatures are of licensed artwork like f.e. "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up" - so if you are Rick Astley and upload your signature video to Google then you can set policy if somebody f.e. posts video in which the licensed artwork is used and ContentID matches it. The policy can be AFAIK to: just inform you about match but do nothing; block the content entirely or display an ad before the content - the revenue from ads goes partialy to Google and to Rick Astley. So here is why sometimes you have ads on YouTube and sometimes not. IMO it is a fair system.

Comment Re:Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score 1) 339

So you are actually asserting that taxes after the money has been taxed once are unfair?
In the face of all the taxes that we have to pay after we've paid income tax and social security premiums which I removed from the list ( might have missed a couple )

#1 Air Transportation Taxes (just look at how much you were charged the last time you flew)
#2,3,4 Biodiesel Fuel Taxes #3 Building Permit Taxes #4 Business Registration Fees
#5 Capital Gains Taxes #6 Cigarette Taxes #7 Court Fines (indirect taxes) #8 Disposal Fees
#9 Dog License Taxes
#10 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)
#11 Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax
#12 Employer Medicare Taxes
#14 Environmental Fees
#15 Estate Taxes
#16 Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans
#19 Federal Unemployment Taxes
#20 Fishing License Taxes
#21 Flush Taxes (yes, this actually exists in some areas)
#22 Food And Beverage License Fees
#23 Franchise Business Taxes
#24 Garbage Taxes #25 Gasoline Taxes #26 Gift Taxes #27 Gun Ownership Permits #28 Hazardous Material Disposal Fees #29 Highway Access Fees #30 Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas) #31 Hunting License Taxes #32 Import Taxes
#33 Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes
#34 Inheritance Taxes
#35 Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses
#36 Inspection Fees #37 Insurance Premium Taxes #38 Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes #39 Inventory Taxes
#40 IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes #41 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax) #42 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) #43 Library Taxes
#44 License Plate Fees #45 Liquor Taxes
#46 Local Corporate Taxes #47 Local Income Taxes #48 Local School Taxes #49 Local Unemployment Taxes #50 Luxury Taxes
#51 Marriage License Taxes
#52 Medicare Taxes #53 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
#54 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you donâ(TM)t buy âoequalifyingâ health insurance under Obamacare you ill have to pay an additional tax)
#55 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income)
#56 Parking Meters #57 Passport Fees
#58 Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)
#59 Property Taxes #60 Real Estate Taxes #61 Recreational Vehicle Taxes
#62 Registration Fees For New Businesses
#63 Toll Booth Taxes
#64 Sales Taxes #65 Self-Employment Taxes #66 Sewer & Water Taxes #67 School Taxes
#68 Septic Permit Taxes
#69 Service Charge Taxes
#70 Social Security Taxes
#71 Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction
#72 Sports Stadium Taxes
#75 State Park Entrance Fees
#76 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
#77 Tanning Taxes (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)
#78 Telephone 911 Service Taxes
#79 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
#80 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
#81 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
#82 Telephone State And Local Taxes
#83 Telephone Universal Access Taxes
#84 The Alternative Minimum Tax
#85 Tire Recycling Fees
#86 Tire Taxes
#87 Tolls (another form of taxation)
#88 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
#89 Use Taxes (Out of state purchases, etc.)
#90 Utility Taxes
#91 Vehicle Registration Taxes
#92 Waste Management Taxes
#93 Water Rights Fees
#94 Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees
#95 Well Permit Fees
#96 Workers Compensation Taxes
#97 Zoning Permit Fees

---
Your position is unrealistic. The one thing most noticable about these taxes is that most of them are FIXED amounts. So they fall heavily on the poor, are burdensome to the middle class, but are miniscule to the wealthy. Almost all of them are extremely regressive taxes.

Comment Re:Early fragmentation (Score 1) 492

Turbo Pascal became insanely popular on single-tasking systems because it was much easier to use.

Many aspiring programmers were ruined by precisely this ease of use, getting into the habit of massaging compiler complaints out of their code base with their fingers instead of their brains.

In C, if your compiler complains about an unsafe comparison between signed and unsigned, one can eliminate that complaint pretty quickly by tossing in a cast operator. Eliminating a braino ... not so fast.

GUI-facing code often benefited from the rapid turn-around cycle of a "turbo" IDE, whereas algorithmic code typically didn't.

Comment NAS box +cloud sync (Score 2) 251

IMO the best (but not the cheapest) option would be to use personal NAS server with some level of mirrored RAID. Configure backup from all machines/data you wish to backup to the NAS server. Then sync it with cloud provider. Of course when picking cloud provider do check to have strong data encryption, 2F authentication, account/data access audit and DO backup your encryption case (in case you loose it there would be no way to acces your data) - just print it in plain text form and store somewhere safe.

If you do it right everything would be automated and you won't need to do any manual actions with it. Just monitor its status. And do test recoveries from time to time.

And YES - I've noticed you are against the cloud which is in my opinion silly. Decent cloud provider's DC will by much more secure (as in physical security, data mirroring) than any homegrown solution. What you are afraid of? If you are afraid of automated attacks like malware they will target your personal machine anyway, not your backup, backup is not the weakest link here. Also any profiled attacks on your person will target your client machine. So what is your practical point against using cloud storage?

Also worth mentioning that NAS server is not mandatory in such setups. Just it speeds up things a little and gives more control. Also it provides the "oops" factor protection (like incidentaly deleting something - which is satistically the most often case to need backup recovery anyway).

Still if you oppose to use cloud just exchange cloud option for offline media stored offsite (like safe at your friends house or bank). Which media to use is entirely up to you. As you haven't stated what your need are (like how much data, how often it changes, what would be your preffered policy as weekly, monthly etc.) I can't recommend anything. An uneducated guess would be to use external HDD drives in enclosures and rotate them. Or for the cheapest option BlueRay discs.

Comment Re:Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score 2) 339

Moving gold or large amounts of dollars from your basement when the country goes to hell doesn't happen. Over and over, wealthy people have had to leave their physical wealth behind when they fled for their lives.

So put it in electronic banks? Well -that "wealth" can be invalidated by an over turn in the government and new policies with the stroke of a pen. That also happens all the time in less stable countries.

It is very much in the wealthy segment's self interest to promote a stable happy society where they are currently based.

Most people don't need a lot of money to be non violent. Give them 3 squares, a roof over their head, some entertainment and a couple grand of spending money a year and they will never be a problem.

Once they lose faith in the system and lose hope, they are capable of anything. It is in every one's self interest to avoid letting people get to that state.

Comment Re:Escaping only helps you until a war. (Score 1) 339

China is making huge investments in their military. It is just obscured by low labor costs. They can build an aircraft carrier for half (or less) the cost the united state does. I think china is preparing for war or at least to be able to back down the U.S. in their corner of the world.

Their economic policy is really just warfare without guns too. I think china has a massive superiority complex laying over a foundation of an even more massive inferiority complex. Bad combination.

Comment Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score 1) 468

Actually, the population is about 200 million (give a current google).

So it's about 40 citizens killed by police vs 1240 citizens killed by united states poice.

The list of citizens killed in uk by police in 2014 is
Dean Joseph (5 September 2014 in London)
That's it.
We don't even officially track about 800 citizen deaths at the hands of united states police.

Thanks for the link! It was late- I was tired.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."

Working...