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Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

You know that you don't have to just add useless and uninteresting words to something that already had substance, right? At least borrow some quotes from Socrates' Dialogues to spice things up: There is admirable truth in that. That is not to be denied. That appears to be true. All this seems to flow necessarily out of our previous admissions. I think that what you say is entirely true. That, replied Cebes, is quite my notion. To that we are quite agreed. By all means. I entirely agree and go along with you in that. I quite understand you. I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned. If you're going to say _nothing_, at least be interesting about it, post anonymously, or risk looking more clueless / foolish. This is why the moderation system is in place, and mods typically don't listen to inanities like "Well said" when deciding on what to spend their points.

1. I'm too busy to sit around thinking up additional words to throw in so I can score "mod" points

2. The people I like on Slashdot are too busy to read a bunch of additional words I only threw in so I can score "mod" points

3. It's not in my nature to waste words, or to waste time

Comment Re:Great. (Score 1) 262

If other posts here on Slashdot are any indication, "Mr. Councilman" is just as likely to lose political points by supporting the poor.

Actually this particular councilman represents an extremely high-rent district--Manhattan's upper east side. I doubt there are many wealthier neighborhoods in the world. He's not doing this to 'score points', he's doing it to do the right thing.

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 3, Insightful) 262

It is my opinion that poverty is partially systemic. Our economic system depends on there being a pool of available workers (unemployed and underemployed). So as long as there is capitalism and a functioning free market, there will always be poor people. That being the case, we have a responsibility to make sure the basic needs of everyone are met. Increasingly in order to succeed in school and in life, Internet access isn't really a luxury.

Well said

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

shutup. just shut the fuck up. you neither know you are talking about, nor have any valid point to make. its not about solving the digital divide any more than the housing thing is about solving poverty. its been widely and clearly shown that there is an increase in opportunity and outcomes between homes with and home without internet access. you're essentially complaining about improving someones potential opportunities to enrich themselves and make their life better and maybe even get out of that housing you mock. but again, you have no valid point, so therefore theres little sense in talking sense, like pointing out to you that without subsidized housing many of these people would be on street, homeless, increasing both crime rates and homeless and deaths among the impoverished. Theoretically we are a civilized nation. But a civilized nation doesnt advocate intentionally making it harder if not impossible for those most disadvantaged to improve themselves, nor advocate for them to die quickly and get out of the way.

Well spoken, bro

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

The "digital divide" is a real thing. It's the difference between spoiled people like yourself growing up with a computer in your home, and inner city kids who have no computer access at home and have to wait on line at the public library to get a 15 minute time slot.

If you don't recognize that in this society those without computer access are at a disadvantage, you are as stupid as you are uncaring.

Submission + - Power -- And by that I mean Free Broadband -- To the People

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, are leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.

Comment EventBrite (Score 1) 104

Not happy with Eventbrite ticketing process (recent purchase of tickets). EventBrite emailed me some PDFs, and the event asks me to print paper tickets. But the PDF is in US Letter format instead of A4 (which the rest of the world uses). After a lot of fiddling with printer settings, I can print but the printout is one big black block – not enough lettering visible to identify it as a ticket. EventBrite have abused PDF format or just did it badly.
I would definitely DISrecommend Eventbrite to anyone who wants to run a pain-free event.

Comment "Proprietary vendor sets up to screw customers" (Score 1) 240

is this news? No. Surprising? No. How come it was so easy for them to set up? That's the interesting question. Who outside the company itself profited from the health industry's failure to create a single mandated standard? Poliician somewhere blocking the iniatives? What a surprise.

Comment Your sales people are cr*p... (Score 2) 159

..if they cannot sell in an atmosphere in which you are a trusted, open, and reliable partner. That is the most powerful position from which to sell.

Your problem here is lazy salesmen who don't want to be bothered dealing with the phoney issues the competition bring up - they just want an easy sell, or they are undertrained and scared salesmen who are afraid they don't know how to counter the phoney arguments....EVERY such issue is a selling point on trust that differentiates your company and your product from the competition. Your company is straight - the competition aren't, because they keep the truth hidden.

Can the sales people really prove that the openness is the reason why they can't win the sales? I doubt it very much - salesmen don't do numbers, don't do proof, it's all hearsay and presenting single anecdotes as universal truth.

And I say this because I was trained by the best, worked with the best, and sold software successfully when everything we sold was 15-20% more expensive that the competition - and we succeeded because we were trusted.

Your Plan B, if you can't get the bosses to back you: close Bugzilla to the public, open it to third-party and developers and (KEY IDEA) to the relevant IT staff at customers. You sales people MUST MUST MUST use the customer IT staff as recommenders - if they aren't, they are NOT doing their job properly.

Comment Re:How do we actually know? (Score 2) 203

I could harvest 5m gmail names from google searches, and then publish them with bogus passwords and create panic. Is there some statistic that says how many of these were real passwords?

Statistics, probably not. But to confirm they're not just all made up, I checked a few of the ones that were obviously a password for another site (one of the '+' addresses) and after 4 tries, found one that worked (on the 'other site', not on gmail). So they're definitely not just 'made up' passwords; they just aren't necessarily a password that was ever actually used for the email address they're associated to.

Comment Re:Probably a few sites were hacked (Score 1) 203

where are you finding the passwords? Im on the list and use KeePass for just about everything so should be able to nail down exactly where they got my password from.

The list with passwords was easily available for a while (and still is if you hunt around a bit - I found it without too much trouble).

Comment Re:Just people using same passwords (Score 1) 203

I'd guess it's just hacks of other sites, filter it on just gmail accounts and hope they used the same password for both

I'm pretty sure that's right. Actually, I'd say I'm around 5 nines certain.

My email is on the list (afforess@gmail.com, go check!) I use a password for gmail I have never used for any other site.

According to the list, the password is a 7 character string, lowercase, moderately common first name starting with c.

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