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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:It's called automation. (Score 1) 203

10 years ago, SHA1 was something you could sensibly store your passwords in.

Uh? No. SHA1 has been vulnerable to faster-than-brute-force attacks since 2005

NIST and most other real security professionals were recommending against using SHA1 since 2010/2011-ish.

Unlike you, I do not claim to be a security professional, but even I know SHA1 has been unsafe for a far longer than a decade.

I feel sorry for your clients.

Comment Re:Not up to us now (Score 1) 147

rich western nations, which at this point cannot producing meaningful CO2 reductions *snip* Well except Germany of course, fuck you

CO2 (metric tons in 2020) per capita:

Germany's: 7.72
US: 13.68
Australia: 15.22
Singapore: 9.45

But Germany gets the fuck you? I don't think I'd hire you for your critical thinking skills.

Comment Re:Growth (Score 1) 156

The problem is that this mentality encourages them to constantly spend every penny to pursue growth. If the company isn't growing, it's failing. As growth cannot continue forever, this means the company has to "fail" at some point.

Dividends are healthier for companies, because they give an option other than constant growth for you to measure their success by. Which means that instead of constantly taking risks to pursue this impossible infinite growth they can instead invest in shoring up their current holdings, making for a more stable company.

Comment Re:Growth (Score 1) 156

I think the big issue is that many companies have stopped paying out dividends, so investors only see profit if the stock goes up. Stock price could stagnate and you'd be happy as long as you were still getting dividends. But with companies who have stock price driven value, it forces the company to constantly expand - which as you said requires constant growth, which is not sustainable.

Comment Re: So Sad (Score 1) 156

Well, how about we just look at what they're paying for popular shows that move from the broadcast networks and use those as comparison points. Streaming services are paying billions for Friends and Seinfeld episodes, so it should be easy enough to compare viewership numbers on those and what they're paying, and compare that to viewership numbers on the streaming-first shows and give them a similar compensation.

Comment Re:So Sad, Sustainability (Score 2) 156

The difference is that the pay rates are calculated differently for those industries. Basically, the residuals have long been considered part of their compensation in the entertainment industries, so the up-front pay is lower. Now the residuals are being cut out, but the up-front pay isn't being increased - and the studios are instead just keeping all that extra cash for themselves.

Think of it this way: The residuals are part of the benefits package. You take a lower-paying job because the benefits package is better, so while you get less cash up-front than at the other job, the better benefits makes it come out about the same. But suddenly the benefits package goes away - while on paper your pay didn't change, in reality the loss of benefits significantly changes your actual compensation for the work.

Comment Re:So Sad (Score 1) 156

It's not 100% cut and dried like that, but it does make a difference. If service A has 10 shows I want to watch, but service B has 20 shows, I should always pick B, right? But what if 5 of those 10 shows on service A are shows that I am really, really into for some reason, but the 20 shows on service B I'm lukewarm about? Now it's service A I'm going for.

Comment Re: So Sad (Score 1) 156

I think the broken thing here is that any mandated episode count causes problems. Some shows are better with shorter seasons, and some need longer ones to tell the same story. But even that is all artificial - in any show that is meant to go multiple seasons, the season breaks are nothing more than where a book decides to end before starting the next book.

In the case of Babylon 5, the seasons were crafted to have certain plots and story arcs play out over full seasons, and others play out over half seasons (to line up with the mid-season hiatuses.) This structure would not have worked nearly as well with only 6-10 episodes per season, and needed to be around 20 episodes per season for the pacing to work out properly.

Other shows, like TNG, could have easily been 6 episode seasons since there were seldom any long-running plot arcs. For that show, does it really matter if it had been 7 seasons of 26(-ish) episodes per season, or would it have been fine if they instead released it as 30 different 6-episode "seasons" (with multiple seasons released per year)? Honestly, I think TNG would have been better as a bunch of mini-seasons, as it may have encouraged them to have a little more structure in their storytelling and tried to do more and longer multi-episode arcs (were there any that went longer than 3 consecutive episodes?)

I think a lot of shows don't need these huge seasons, as it leads to less cohesive writing and far more filler. Shorter seasons just work better a lot of times, especially since many places that have this as their primary structure don't limit shows to a one season per year model.

Comment Re:So Sad (Score 1) 156

Yes, there is no secondary distribution on these. There will be no reruns on other channels. In the case of something like Stranger Things, Netflix owns it, and they have no reason to let anyone else ever show it. Putting it on old-school broadcast TV goes against their "streaming is the only thing that matters" message, and letting another streaming service have it would be giving something to their direct competitors. And in both cases it sends the message that if you're patient you can get the show without going through Netflix, which is again not what they want. The only way you'll ever see another service/network get shows anymore is if they outright buy it from the current owners, or the current service closes down and the pieces are sold off.

The only secondary distribution you'll see these days is DVD/BluRay sales, and that's because it doesn't directly threaten their primary business model, and it makes a lot more money per show than their subscription model does.

Comment Re:Misinformation (Score 3, Insightful) 160

"Jacob Blake was unarmed"

I think the actual quote most people used was "Jacob Blake didn't have a gun".

But I guess him having a knife was justification enough to shoot him seven times in the back? Or was it because he was a scumbag? Was that enough justification to shoot him in the back & leave him a paralyzed burden on his family & wider society for the rest of his life?

Sci-Fi

Pentagon Official Floats a Theory For Unexplained Sightings: Alien Motherships (politico.com) 118

The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth. Politico reports: In a draft paper dated March 7 (PDF), Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be "probes" from an extraterrestrial "parent craft." It's unusual for government officials, especially those involved in the nascent effort to collect intelligence on recent sightings, to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although top agency officials don't rule it out when asked. After Loeb posted it online, the paper gained notoriety from a post on Military Times and has also circulated among science-focused news outlets.

More than half of the five-page paper is devoted to discussing the possibility that the unexplained objects DoD is studying could be the "probes" in the mothership scenario, including most of the page-long introduction. One section is titled: "The Extraterrestrial Possibility" and another "Propulsion Methods." Kirkpatrick's involvement in the academic paper demonstrates that the Pentagon is open to scientific debate of the origins of UFOs, an important signal to send to the academic world, experts said. But they add that his decision to attach his name to a theory considered in most academic circles to be highly unsubstantiated also raises questions about AARO's credibility.

The paper explains that interstellar objects such as the cigar-shaped "Oumuamua" that scientists spotted flying through the galaxy in 2017 "could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to Earth." The paper goes on to compare the probes to "dandelion seeds" that could be separated from the parent craft by the sun's gravitational force. It examines the physics of how the smaller craft could move through the Earth's atmosphere to reach the surface, where they could be spotted by humans. The paper notes that the "probes" could use starlight to "charge their batteries" and the Earth's water as fuel. It also speculates on the motive for aliens to send exploratory probes to Earth. "What would be the overarching purpose of the journey? In analogy with actual dandelion seeds, the probes could propagate the blueprint of their senders," the authors write. "As with biological seeds, the raw materials on the planet's surface could also be used by them as nutrients for self-replication or simply scientific exploration."

Slashdot Top Deals

"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_

Working...