Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Presupposes that all children are good (Score 1) 1388

by Roadmaster (#42535951) Attached to: Smart Guns To Stop Mass Killings

"disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child or someone holding a child.". This is absurd, what if it's an evil child? or what if someone is holding an evil child to prevent it from escaping and yelling "take the shot before he runs away!!" ? What about dwarves? this wouldn't work against e.g. minime.

Simplistic heuristics will not cut it when you're talking about, literally, a life-and-death decision.

Comment: Not really (Score 2) 732

These neoliberal politicians seem to live in an entirely different country, and Frenk is no exception; no wonder he's now run as far away from Mexico as possible and is now teaching elsewhere, standing, no doubt, on his alleged achievements while being the secretary of public health in Mexico.

As any mexican will tell you, his boasting is far from the truth; while he may have instituted a program that supposedly provides coverage for people not otherwise under any sort of health care plan (i.e. those who are not, as workers, covered by the mexican institute of social security (IMSS), or as government workers, covered by ISSSTE), he did so without increasing health spending significantly (from 2003 to 2005 it only increased 0.2 percent and it has remained constant ever since: http://corta.me/7mz). So how can you cover 50 million more people without increasing spending? very poorly, that's how. Understaffed and underequipped hospitals, lack of medication, soul-sucking bureaucracy and hoops to jump through, I don't think that's anything to boast about; as befits his neoliberal lineage, Frenk instituted these policies for the macroeconomic "bottom line".

IMSS is supposed to provide coverage for workers and their families. However this entails people working on a stable, formally constituted company which has the obligation to cover fees for employee coverage. It's not a privilege, it's a right that companies must provide to their employees. However, since Mexico has had near zero growth in the past two decades or so (and more so since 2000, when the disastrous, conservative PAN party arrived in power), job creation has stagnated, and even receded in some cases. Millions of people have to resort to the "informal economy", since there's no company through which they can have access to IMSS, this popular insurance thing was created to give some semblance of health care coverage to the 50 million poor and underemployed in Mexico. But make no mistake; this is not the glowing achievement that Frenk would have the world believe. It's really the government hastily trying to fulfill, in a half-assed way, their constitutionally mandated obligation for health care (Mexican Constitution, 4th Article). This has been there since 1983, so actually Frenk's implementation means a 20-year lag for the government to fulfill its obligations.

Comment: Linux is not Windows (Score 4, Insightful) 448

by Roadmaster (#40789543) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: the Best Linux Setup To Transition Windows Users?

I'd start by reading this (and if possible, having them read it as well):

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Bottom line is, they *have* to want to change. If, as you say, they will latch onto any differences to decry the fact that Linux is not *exactly* like Windows, then, well, you're screwed and may as well not waste your time, because the fact is, Linux *is* different from Windows (the very reason why e.g. I use it).

One thing I've always found funny is that these same people have possibly gone through many changes in Windows and MS Office, always without complaint, because it was fed to them by Microsoft as "the next step". It will probably be the same once they get Windows 8 on a computer; they may think "this is hard to learn" but they will learn it without complaint. But put them in front of Linux and they'll cry foul and refuse to use it because "it's different". This mentality is very hard to beat; I stopped trying a few years ago and just let them writhe in their malware-infected sewers while I continue being able to work on Linux.

Comment: Redmine (Score 4, Informative) 221

When I need to set up a self-hosted project and bug tracker, I normally use Redmine, which is very easy to use. It's written with Ruby on Rails, and so should be relatively easy to get a local SQLite-backed copy running on Mac OS using Rails' built-in mini web server.

This post is overly complicated but some of its information may be useful:

http://www.redmine.org/boards/2/topics/2768

Comment: Why am I not using KDE? (Score 1) 818

by Roadmaster (#40284511) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't You Running KDE?

I was actually a KDE 3.x user under Debian. I then tried updating to KDE 4.something and the system became unbearably slow and unusable. At that point it was easier for me to just install Ubuntu with GNOME (which I hadn't used in years), and it was good enough so I stayed there.

Recently I had a chance to use a more-recent KDE desktop and I found it cluttered and confusing. I'm sure that given a couple of days I'd get used to it and not have any problems. But I won't migrate just for the sake of migrating, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with my current (Ubuntu 12.04) desktop, Unity and all (yes, I actually like Unity!).

So that's why I'm not using KDE.

Comment: What do they use? (Score 1) 212

by Roadmaster (#39589529) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Recommendations For Linux Telecommuting Tools?

Most people in my organization telecommute, and we mostly use Google+ hangouts (with extras) whenever we need some face time with people elsewhere. It's worked well for us, but it has some limitations and it *is* controlled by a third party. We also use Google's Docs and Calendar tools heavily, so Google hangouts were a natural evolution. This works well in Linux and in both Firefox and Chrome.

That is on a technical level; in reality you are the one who needs to adapt. If you can dictate a solution, the one I propose is not bad. But you may have little choice because it's easier to change *you* than the rest of the organization if need be.

Comment: Anonymous reader? (Score 1) 179

by Roadmaster (#37647670) Attached to: Kernel Bug Means Linux Power Usage Remains High

I'm not so sure about this. I enabled the fix as proposed by Phoronix and saw a 15% battery life improvement; I'm now getting almost 5 hours, which is pretty good for this system.But 15% was not "significant" really. So "to regain much of their battery life" seems like an exaggeration in par with the alarmist tone of the articles in Phoronix. Sure, there's a problem, and I certainly appreciate Phoronix's efforts to pinpoint the cause and offer a workaround, but it's certainly not as bad as they've been making it look.

Google

Old Media Says Google Will Destroy Film & Music 336

Posted by samzenpus
from the back-in-my-day dept.
SirWinston writes "A Daily Mail editor has written perhaps the most Luddite attack on Google ever, reading just like a 19th-century manifesto against looms and factories. 'Google has become a global predator ruthlessly gobbling up potential rivals such as YouTube and 'stealing' the creative work of writers, film makers and the music industry... Google has granted these piracy sites a licence to steal... It undermines investment in the very creative industries that have become such an important part of our national prosperity, and employ hundreds of thousands of people.' The article lionizes brick-and-mortar business and traditional media, and reads as a funny anachronism--except that these may be the attitudes of European regulators now shaking down Google and new media."
Education

Is Software Driving a Falling Demand For Brains? 622

Posted by timothy
from the tell-me-when-neo-takes-his-pill dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Paul Krugman writes in the NY Times that information technology seems to be reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers (reg. may be required), because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing. One good recent example is how software is replacing the teams of lawyers who used to do document research. 'From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,' says Bill Herr, a lawyer at a major chemical company who used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. 'People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don't.' If true this raises a number of interesting questions. 'One is whether emphasizing education — even aside from the fact that the big rise in inequality has taken place among the highly educated — is, in effect, fighting the last war,' writes Krugman. 'Another is how we [can] have a decent society if and when even highly educated workers can't command a middle-class income.' Remember the Luddites weren't the poorest of the poor, they were skilled artisans whose skills had suddenly been devalued by new technology."
Internet Explorer

Even Microsoft Wants IE6 Dead 285

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the is-this-really-happening dept.
Tarmas writes "Microsoft has launched a website intended to persuade people to upgrade their browsers from Internet Explorer 6. In Microsoft's words: 'This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.' About time?" Of course they want you to upgrade to a newer Internet Explorer.
Space

Rogue Satellite Shuts Down US Weather Services 202

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the ambush-backstab-vanish dept.
radioweather writes "On Sunday, the drifting rogue 'zombie' Galaxy 15 satellite with a stuck transmitter interfered with the satellite data distribution system used by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), effectively shutting down data sharing between NWS offices nationwide, as well as weather support groups for the US Air force. This left many forecasters without data, imagery, and maps. Interference from Galaxy 15 affected transmissions of the SES-1 Satellite, which not only serves NOAA with data relay services, but also is used to feed TV programming into virtually every cable network in the US. NOAA's Network Control Facility reports that the computer system affected was NOAA's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) used to issue forecasts and weather bulletins which uses the weather data feed. They also state the problem is likely to recur again this month before the satellite drifts out of range and eventually dies due to battery depletion."

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

Working...