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Comment Re:Massively overblown issue? (Score 1) 135

Or they should require the user to re-enter the credentials during the restoration.

Technically, that's what happens. Safari doesn't store any credentials itself, they're stored in the system keychain and Safari asks the keychain whenever it needs a key. The keychain itself has a master password and its contents are encrypted.

On the other hand, by default the keychain password is set to the login password and is automatically unlocked when the user logs in. Further, most users choose to have their computers automatically log in at boot - so there is no effective protection if someone gets ahold of their computer.

You can change those defaults to be more secure. Apple chose not to make that the default as most people simply don't care.

Personally, my keychain password is different, my computer doesn't automatically log me in, and the keychain locks itself after 15 minutes or system sleep. This is annoying as I have to authenticate myself every time an application needs something from the keychain - something a regular user wouldn't put up with.

Comment Re:Fireworks in 3...2...1... (Score 1) 1251

This is horrible, I'll agree, but wouldn't this situation have been easily averted by simply having a will in place? I understand that for many younger people they might not have one as they don't think they're going to die in an accident anytime soon, but a couple that's been together for 30 years (making them probably over 50) really should have thought of that, I'd think. You don't need legalized gay marriage to write a will giving everything to your partner if you die. I'm not saying gay marriage shouldn't be legal (I believe in equality for all; I also believe in legalized plural marriages between consenting adults), but this doesn't seem to be a very good example to me.

This response always comes out from the more rational people who are hesitant to engage in a legislative solution to equality. Essentially, it boils down to "they have the same legal recourse via different routes, so why change anything".

And yes, upon initial glance same sex couples do seem to have the same rights. But when you dig into the details, you see that things aren't the same at all. Taxes don't work quite right. Insurance and medical rights are different. Extra effort has to be made in order to accomplish things that are automatic to heterosexual couples.

Considering most of those situations tend to come up at traumatic and unexpected points in a person's life, anyone who hasn't been playing the game of "look out for the unexpected edge case" perfectly can be blind sided. It's not equality if different people have different requirements to fulfill in order to have the same rights.

Personally I find it to be similar to telling African Americans in the 50's that they had plenty of equal access to their own special water fountains.

Comment Re:someday soon the crazy anthrax people (Score 1) 189

are going to throw a party all over this country. once drones are the accepted process, anyone with a radio and a look alike amazombie will be able to deposit malicious packages just about anywhere, fly it into a river, and be out of there before something blows up. I will feel slightly better receiving a package that i know was at least exposed to one other person before me.

How is this any different than throwing on some brown shorts and shirt, grabbing a clipboard and doing it yourself?

Taking something mundane and adding "... with a drone" doesn't automatically make it novel.

Comment Re:End of the Epidemic (Score 1) 163

This is known as Genre Blindness. I would say that Zombieland did a good job of inverting this trope; the characters (especially Columbus) seem painfully aware of the fact that they are living in The Zombie Apocalypse.

Well then - maybe I shouldn't have skipped that one. Thanks for the suggestion!

Comment Re:The "news for nerds" on this.... (Score 1) 961

This right here is the reason I still come to Slashdot despite watching the overall quality decline.

I could get the same news anywhere else - and have it better delivered. But there's no other place where it will be followed up by insightful elocution on the physics behind suspension tuning in the comments section*. I just love that I can get a technical take on just about any subject out there delivered by someone who spends their life being passionate about that subject.

Thanks for teaching me something today, Scootin159.

*Oh man, I almost exploded just thinking about 'comments section', 'other sites' and 'insightful' at the same time.

Comment Re:End of the Epidemic (Score 1) 163

You are also assuming that everyone knows exactly what is going on and how to 'kill' the zombies.

What has always struck me the most about any zombie movie I've seen is the fact that they all take place in an alternate universe that has never created any zombie movies.

Never once in one of these movies has anyone ever said "Oh shit! It's a zombie outbreak! Well, this should be pretty straightforward." No, it's always "Oh God, what's going on?! Let's spend the first act figuring it out!"

Comment Re:Good advertising? (Score 3, Informative) 324

Lately, I've found that Amazon usually meets or beats Newegg's pricing for most things I buy, with free 2 day shipping (for Prime members).

This was when I stopped using Newegg as well - the moment my wife signed us up for prime. We actually did it for the video and kindle, but once you experience free shipping like that it's pretty hard to accept anything else.

Add in that they allow me to pay using my Discover card rewards right at checkout and it's a dangerous combo.

Well played, Amazon.

Comment Re:Its a black ugly box. (Score 1) 310

Better a nice black box, than something that looks like a toy, or is trying too hard. Most audio-visual equipment is just black boxes..

That's not really all that true any more. Even the 'normal' A/V equipment these days comes in slightly varying form factors, forcing you to play Tetris trying to get everything to fit in the console.

I don't have a ton under the TV, but the only thing that's 'standard' sized is the old receiver I bought 10+ years ago. The cable box is close, but deeper. The Bluray is some idiotic wide but shallow size (wtf, why? You're mostly air! Be a better shape!). The 360 is somewhat close to the cable box, but again, different. The Wii? The Roku? Just shove those little things into whatever voids you can find.

Give me square, standard sized boxes I can stack (with vent space, naturally). None of this 'ha ha, try finding a place for this Wii under there' bullshit. Manufacturers can stand out by making a solid product. I don't need the 'branding' that the shape of your product brings to my living room.

Comment Re:America is fucked ... (Score 1) 455

I would think this might push the Oregon-ians, to do like CO did, and just decriminalize pot use for recreational use, and therefore bypass the need for a medical prescription?

It was tried in the last election and was narrowly defeated (47% approved, if I recall). It might have passed if it wasn't heavily lobbied against by, ironically, the medical marijuana industry.

I expect as more people see Washington and Colorado not degrade into a lawless wasteland of stoned out degenerates, future attempts will prove more successful.

Comment Re:Apple makes money either way... (Score 4, Informative) 348

64 bit is no advantage on a device with less than 4 GB of non-upgradeable RAM.

How this keeps getting trotted out as fact every time there is a story about these phones I'll never know. And of all places, here on slashdot where people should know better.

There are many other reasons why a 64 bit architecture is helpful. You may not know of them, but they exist. Many of them apply to game development, which was a big push if you watched the initial product announcement.

Comment Re: "Board game designer"? (Score 1) 140

That was actually the GOAL o the nun that designed Monopoly. It was to show how Capitalisim would inevitably move all of the wealth to one guy that had everything and would sit on his wealth.

I never knew this about the game. It's an interesting experiment from a philosophical perspective and casts the game in a slightly different light. It's too bad the lesson it intended to teach (it's no fun to play an economic game rigged against you) was applied to tabletop games instead of being taken as political commentary.

Comment Re:so besides all that (Score 1) 161

ps - why is one a "motor" and another an "engine?" What's the difference?

According to MIT, not really anything these days.

They both came to describe the same thing from two different linguistic directions. It seems the only distinction between the terms these days is more rooted in nomenclature within a specific discipline and less on overall semantic accuracy.

Comment Re: "Board game designer"? (Score 3, Informative) 140

Believe it or not, some people do still buy and play board games.

And believe it or not, they've been gaining in popularity lately.

It's been a long time coming, but the Monopoly Stigma is slowly dissipating. I think Monopoly was the Mt. Saint Hellens of board games. It blew up, left a swath of scorched earth and desolation in a generation of people who grew up thinking games were stupid, pointless and nothing but dumb luck followed by three hours of a runaway winner forcing everyone else to keep playing. Over time, that desolation becomes fertilizer for the next generation.

If you're interested in giving a post-Monopoly tabletop world a look, there are a couple of key resources:

Tabletop

A bi weekly show hosted by Wil Wheaton showcasing a host of "gateway games". He gets three other internet famous (and sometimes proper famous) people to come play a game with him. He lightly goes over the rules, and they play.

A lot of effort goes into showing the fun interactions between the players that happens over the table - truly the best part of tabletop gaming. These are 30 minutes each, professionally produced and great fun to watch with the whole family. Overall, it's a great resource for finding something that may appeal to you and your friends/family.

The best part is watching Wil repeatedly lose episode after episode.

Board Game Geek

An extremely thorough, mature and self-built resource of pretty much all things tabletop game related. The community here is one of the best I've ever seen on the internet. Seriously, flame wars so germane and polite that they're helpful. Games are well reviewed, well discussed, and ranked overall.

The rankings are generally pretty spot on, but there is an overall tendency to devalue lighter games making it a bit difficult to find good gateway games. Be careful with this one if you have a tendency to lose hours whenever you land on IMDB, Wikipedia or TVTropes.

You almost always have to go to a solid game shop to get decent ones, but they exist.

I have yet to need to do anything other than order things from Amazon. Granted, if you're looking for some obscure Euro that's out of print, Amazon probably doesn't have it (or it's $300) - but then again, neither does your Friendly Local Game Shop.

Comment Re:Hormone therapy? (Score 1) 784

So, if I'm uninsured and facing major narrowing of the arteries, I can go smoke a joint in a police station and get free heart surgery?

So this has been the Obama Health Care plan all along?!

  1. 1. Progressively strip rights away from the citizens criminalizing almost everything.
  2. 2. When a medical situation arises, simply arrest and treat.

Bam, single payer public health care!

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