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Comment Re:Failed to prevent? (Score 0, Flamebait) 98

You are an idiot shooting off his mouth ignorantly at best

And, as usual, you're a hot headed asshole, and I don't give a fuck to read any of the rest of your bullshit.

You consistently act like a childish idiot, so go fuck yourself.

You want to use your big-boy words and act civil, great. Otherwise go back to fucking your sister.

Comment Re:At least Flash is easy to block. (Score 4, Insightful) 79

Which is why Javascript also needs to be much more tightly controlled than simply running any damned thing on the page.

Your average web page has 10-20 3rd parties, all of which want to run javascript, flash, set cookies, and do a host of other crap. Advertising has pretty much fucked up the permission model of the internet by saying "you need to let every asshole run anything they want because you have no idea if it's part of the functionality of the site or an ad, but we just assume you'll let it all run".

Yeah, sorry, no. Flash is straight up disabled or uninstalled. I'll selectively whitelist sites who I trust, or at least temporarily do so. But almost no 3rd party scripts or content are EVER allowed ... because I don't want ads, and because I don't trust random web pages to run scripts. Because they're not trustworthy.

If Javascript has only one big namespace, then maybe that needs to be fixed? Security holes like cross-site scripting and other stuff are enabled by web sites insisting they be able to write the most presumptively insecure code and then let it be the user's problem.

This stuff needs to be sandboxed, treated like it's potentially hostile, and locked down from being able to do anything to the host computer. Instead what we have is stuff running which we have no idea what it is, which may or may not be malicious, and which can actively impact the host machine.

It's time we stopped treating web pages like they're trusted by default, because so much of the web these days simply can't be trusted.

Stop letting the advertisers tell us how the internet should work, and stop letting them be the ones who cause the damned thing to be insecure in the first place.

Comment Re:Failed to prevent? (Score 4, Insightful) 98

Why the heck should Uber be preventing free people from working?

Right, that way if some crazy guy goes on a shooting rampage or starts raping female passengers they can just say "why, we just let free people work and if passengers want safety and assurance we're not sending out psychopaths they're free to conduct their own background checks".

Sorry, but people do kind of expect when they request a cab -- oh, sorry, an illegal car-for-hire pretending it's an unregulated ride sharing service to which laws don't apply -- that a fucking serial killer isn't being sent to them.

See, one of the many fucking laws Uber claims don't apply to it are things like criminal background checks to protect the public safety. Oh, and commercial licenses, proper insurance, vehicle inspections, and shit like that.

Uber's entire business model is basically saying "you know all those laws places have enacted to ensure passenger safety and the life, well, none of them apply to us".

In this case, Uber straight up lied about the safety assurances they could give about drivers, and mislead passengers into thinking they conducted their background checks to a higher standard than other companies, and actually used terms like "safe" in their marketing.

So, yeah, when you lie to the public about how safe you are, and fail to do the level of background checks you suggest you do, people find out about it, and your dumb ass gets fined.

Comment Re:You were warned (Score 3, Interesting) 69

Funny, I use the back button for sites requiring Flash.

The only things I truly need Flash for are work related training, which periodically requires I re-enable it. But I won't even run my work browser with it enabled.

No way in hell I'd ever consider running Flash by default ... the idea of letting random websites let random third parties run arbitrary code is so utterly moronic as to defy belief.

To me Flash is primarily an ad platform. If there are useful sites requiring Flash to work, I'm afraid I've never seen them, or don't consider them useful. I don't use video on the intertubes, because I don't care.

It seems like Flash has had at least one major security exploit every month for over 15 years, which tells me the entire platform and its security model are so defective that it has to be in the "don't trust by default" category.

I have no interest in letting advertisers, or anybody else, have access to anything which runs arbitrary code on my machine just because I visited a web page.

Comment Heart broken ... (Score 1) 69

Not a zero day exploit in Flash. Why, I'm utterly traumatized by this, my faith in humanity has been utterly ruined, why I ... oh, fuck it ...

Yawn, yet another zero day exploit in a steaming turd of a technology which has been an endless series of security holes for almost 20 years now.

And, having been largely Flash free for at least 15 of those years, all I can say is "enjoy your quality software, suckers".

Honestly, the only thing which has cumulatively had more security holes than Flash is Windows. I honestly don't know why people keep trusting it, because it really has been a terrible security risk forever, and disabling it is usually the first thing I do in a browser.

Comment Re:This says more about the buyers than the rocks. (Score 1) 49

Once we become a space-faring civilization, this rarity value attached to non-Earth rocks will seem very quaint.

What a strange way of thinking of it ... so we have a Venn diagram, and then it's Earth and non-Earth. That's a little too simplistic.

In your scenario, we'll have Earth, Mars, Venus, Alpha Centauri, Vulcan, Ceti Alpha V, and what have you. But they'll all be boring because they're "not Earth".

They may not be universally valuable, but like people collect souvenirs, they'll have some sentimental attachment. Or they'll be sufficiently rare as toe have a degree of uniqueness.

Even if we were space faring, a rock from the furthest planet in the universe is worth more than the one you're standing on, because it's harder to get another one.

The reality is, there's a relatively small amount of material we call "non-Earth" which we can access. You're right, they are deemed special because they come from someplace else, and not everybody can have one.

But you'd have to be a space faring species who can instantaneously travel anywhere in the universe to say that rocks from further away and harder to get won't have some cachet to them.

It's not like we'd become a space faring civilization (assuming we ever actually do before we go extinct) and suddenly all sense of distance and place of origin disappears.

But you sounds jaded about space rock to an extent that seems to imply you figure you'll have access to rocks from the entire universe within a few weeks. Right now, here on planet Earth, in any meaningful sense of the word ... "space rocks" are very rare, and to people who really want them, quite valuable.

But it will always be true that the further away it's from, and the harder to get it is, the more value people will assign to it.

Comment Re:Perverted Market (Score 1, Troll) 153

The Free Market relies on the fact that is a product is overpriced, consumers will pass it up.

No, the free market relies on suckers who don't know any better getting hoodwinked.

And then makes the absurd claim that a sufficiently large number of suckers will fix the problem of lying bastards hoodwinking suckers.

There is not, never has been, and never will be a free market -- informed consumers making intelligent choices based on good information will simply never happen ... and hoping that industry players aren't lying, thieving assholes who do their utmost to deceive, hide information, and collude to rig the game ... well, that's simply impossible.

The impossible premises of a free market defy logic, human nature, and reality. You might as well believe in the tooth fairy.

People who talk about the free market are either part of the con game, or have been so utterly conned as to think they're making sense.

Comment Hmmmm .... (Score 2) 26

The links will look like "m.me/yourusername" and let anyone quickly add you in Messenger without looking up your Facebook account

So, any random idiot will be able to spam you without trying hard?

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong on that one ... sorry, you should have to look it up to prove you're allowed to send to me.

The usernames and profile links will also be available to businesses, which are starting to use Messenger as a way to deliver customer support and let you buy things through chatting.

Just any old business gets this because they say so?

Yeah, whatever, yet more crap from Facebook to ensure gets blocked so I don't have to deal with it. Just like I don't consent to being tracked by these assholes, I don't see why I would want any form of interaction with this.

I'm betting the amount of unwanted messages will be epic.

Comment Re:Should of also gone after loan abuse with schoo (Score 2) 153

By American Vernacular English, that's not wrong. People frequently substitute "should of" in place of "should've".

Please, don't confuse illiteracy with 'vernacular'.

"Should of" is NOT 'vernacular', it's making random meat noises to approximate language and failing to grasp something they taught you fairly early in school.

It is hearing sloppy speaking, turning that into a sloppy understanding of the words you're using, and then using that in a written form which demonstrates you think the incoherent mumbling you do in the real world corresponds to speaking the language.

"Should of" is so wrong it defies belief.

Comment Re:Linux on the desktop is great! (Score 0, Troll) 565

Linux on the desktop is almost perfect now, and certainly leagues ahead of Windows and macOS.

Do you sincerely believe that crap? Or have you convinced yourself of it and need to convince the rest of us?

It certainly isn't leagues ahead, and there are things where the ability to manage via GUI is pretty much non-existent.

I've been using Linux since the mid 90s, FreeBSD since the late 90s, and Windows (grudgingly at first) since the early 00's ... I've used Android, iOS, and others ... and unless Linux has jumped forwards in the last few years by huge amounts, it is in no way "leagues" ahead of anything, and the absence of certain things except in a toy OSS version which may or may not work is a big limiting step.

I can't take you seriously as someone who isn't a raving fanboi. Because the last I saw, the Linux desktop still has some glaring holes and stuff you can't do from within a GUI, doesn't do auto-detection of things nearly as well, and still requires you to drop down to being root in a command line for many things.

When you can put my mother in front of it, and every admin task she could ever need to do is intuitive, easy to find, and accessible via GUI, and she can buy something at Staples, plug it in and use it withing 15 minutes ... Well, I might believe you.

Until then, you're way over stating the facts.

Comment Re:Quality was never the problem (Score 5, Interesting) 565

Sometimes what it lacks is functionality.

Not so long ago, on an Ubuntu VM (I think), I was trying to change some system configuration or another.

There simply was no interface to edit whatever it was I was trying to do. You just sort of ran off the end of the earth, and then you were on your own.

Sometimes what Linux (or even FreeBSD) desktops lack is the actual ability to fully control the machine from the GUI, and then you rely on someone being able to drop to the command line and do the real magic -- which is fine if you can do it, and useless if you can't.

What is still needs is to have all of the functionality, instead of most of the functionality. It needs to stop being something you build in a kit or have to endless search the interwebs for trying to solve how to do it.

And, like it or not, it needs better support from software vendors ... I've used the same tax program for over a decade, I rely on that ... don't tell me to use Penguin Tax 0.1 because it's kind almost the same thing and doesn't work in my country and hasn't been updated in 4 years ... don't tell me I can use a web interface, I'm not submitting my fucking tax information on a web interface to a company I don't trust.

The photo editing software which came with my Canon camera ... I want to use that. Not some abandoned piece of crap which kinda sorta does some of what I need. The software to control my TomTom and do updates? Or update the GPS I use for golf? I need all of those things. There is no Linux version.

Computers are tools, not toys. I have some tasks I need to do, and either the platform does them, using the tools I want, or it doesn't. And I don't wish to spend hours trying to re-discover some arcanum I knew in the late 90s about UNIX.

For a good chunk of ordinary desktop stuff, sure, Linux has most of that covered. But as soon as you go off the path, or into something which requires commercial software (which exists and gets used no matter what your ideology tells you) ... then it becomes a largely useless thing.

I still keep VMs around to play with, or because I can shred through some data better with a UNIX command line than with anything else.

But I have yet to be able to rid myself of Windows entirely, which means my Windows machine is more likely to be where I run my Linux VMs

Comment Re:How long until you update your anthem? (Score 5, Insightful) 194

Seems to me you guys end your anthem with something about "land of the free"? I think it's pretty safe to remove any references to that one.

For the last 15 years it's been the land of the scared and desperate who will happily give up their rights and freedoms and believe that is helping protect their rights and freedoms.

The extent to which the average American seems to accept "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is absolutely alarming.

They'll still tell you they're free, because you won't get hauled off for criticizing the government (yet), but they're ignoring that the FBI et al have decided the Constitution is just too damned inconvenient, and that the only way to have a "free" society is to live in a police state.

And pretty much all political parties are pushing for the massive surveillance society to protect them from the terrorists. Sadly, if the goal was to destroy the way of life, the battle has been lost.

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