It has been forever since I have posted here. Well, 3+ years anyway. Slashdot has worked hard to drive away the user base, but even so I am still here, plodding along (quietly most of the time).

Windows 10 is here. It's pretty. It's friendly. It's nefarious software that now shows ads on the lock screen unless you burrow down to turn it off. It saves your passwords to third-party websites on a centralized server somewhere (which I found out when I got a new computer a few days ago and logged into Amazon and it auto-filled my email address and my password for me even though it the the first log-in ever from that system). Tablet mode blows. I actually did not mind Windows 8 and 8.1 (I think I am one of 3 people that was ok with it on a touch-screen laptop). It's fast (kinda) but it blue screens just like every other version of Windows.

My old system is getting a transplant and I am making some computing changes. No more Windows on the Dell - period. I'm dropping in an SSD, loading up CentOS 7 and calling it a day. I can do everything I need on Linux with only a couple of exceptions, and that is why I will have the new system standing by to run Windows â" to support the few apps I cannot work without. Once I get CrossOver working with those apps or I find replacement apps that fill the same need and work the same way, the new system gets redone as well.

The password thing is a special headache. Now that I know for sure that Microsoft is saving all of my log-ins from the Windows machine, all of those passwords need to change. This thrills me to no end.

So, where am I these days? Still on the east coast, still working in Linux full-time and still baking bread. I am no longer a slave to the same s**t company and the douchebag manager I served last time I posted and I have been in a much better role since the spring of 2014. Kiddo off to college, another on a competitive basketball team.

All is well, I suppose.

Folks' Linksys WRT54Gwhatever shat itself recently. I had set them up with what seemed to be the equivalent of mine, at the time. Mine's the black model with the green lights; theirs were blue for some reason. Mine's older, but still going. Although a couple of years ago I had to start resetting it every day. I switched off its DHCP and assigned static IP's to my few devices, and that worked around the problem evidently. Maybe it was just getting bombarded at the time, and I could go back to dynamically-assigned IP's now, but whatever.

Anyways, it's dissappointing that theirs didn't last very long. I think these were about $60 routers (which bought you just wireless A/B/G, at that time). The wireless light was off and all four network port lights were flickering (even though only one had something connnected to it), not responding at its admin web address even after unplugging it for a minute. So definitely not salvagable, at least at my knowledge level.

So it seemed to keep it reasonable at under three figures, today's choices are $45 wireless-n routers and $90 wireless-ac ones. The "TP-Link Archer C5 Wireless-AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Router" seemed well-reviewed, so I picked one up at the local Fry's. It has two external antennae, which I figured was a plus. It's got gigabit ethernet ports, which might possibly come in handy when Time Warner Cable bumps up its Internet speeds. It supports wireless-ac, which mom's iPhone could use, but also wireless-n that is the fastest that dad's netbook uses.

I'm not an expert, but of course I don't use the "dummy button" (WPS), which auto-sets up God-knows what defaults. Their admin screens were unfamiliar, having only used that formerly ubiquitous Linksys system, but everything was findable. Apparently wireless-ac and wireless-n operate on different frequencies or bands or whatever, so you actually set up two access point names. It auto-switches its admin addy to 192.168.0.1 when something else is taking 1.1, which is nice, as they had called cable guy out while I was at work, and he replaced their cable modem with one that had built-in wireless capability and took up 1.1. (I initially tried that address, and got web pages for the vendor of that device, which was my first clue.) I don't think our old Linksys models do that.

The results: Crap. Wireless-ac signal was so weak that mom's iPhone would switch over to cellular downstairs. (Wireless light was off on the cable modem.) Wireless-n signal is better, but still not all bars or whatever. Seriously, this is all of a 1200 sq ft two-story duplex home. One room down and one room over, and wireless-ac was paltry. I have a 1000 sq ft townhome of similar configuration and with wireless-g I get full bars from anywhere in my place, and a least a few feet outside my garage.

So basically I paid $90 for low-power wireless-n, because I had to switch her iPhone to that. So what then I'm wondering about is, are the later wireless technologies only theoretical, laboratory tech? These houses are just wood and drywall. I thought by getting the $90 router my folks would be ready if they ever wanted to stream movies some day. What good is wireless-ac if you basically have to be in the same room; it'd be faster to just do a wired connection then.

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One good idea from the Dem debate tonight, from Bernie, was to de-militarize the police. I don't recall there being much in the way of specifics, beyond something about them not looking like an occupying force. But it got me thinking, thusly:

1) Make it illegal for the federal government to sell military gear to non-military entities, and make it illegal for civilian police forces purchase surplus military gear. (Whatever private individuals are allowed to buy would be unaltered.)

2) Remove SWAT teams from police forces and transfer them to each state's National Guard. Police would request SWAT assistance from them, with the idea that deployments would require more justification.

3) Remove military gear from non-military federal government agencies such as the DEA, ATF, and whichever others have them. I would include in this the overstocking of bullets; massive stockpiling of ammunition is quasi-military to me.

In short, no military-style operations on US soil. I don't care if it's under the guise of the WOT or the War on Drugs or any other war. All law enforcement business should be conducted as civilians dealing with (fellow) civilians.

An explicit, strict "Separation of Military and Police" doctrine. A separation between the two needs to become one of our national values. Maybe such a consciousness would change mindsets in police forces and cut down on brutality and lethality.

p.s. I think it was in a George Will column around Christmas where it was said that more monetary value was stolen by law enforcement in the country in 2015 than by criminals. So asset forfeiture laws are also obviously corrupting influences on police/policing forces and deserve to be looked at.

p.p.s. From the I-Told-You-So Dept.: "The Democratic [sic] Party in the United States worked since Harry Truman to get the Affordable Care Act passed. We finally have a path to universal healthcare." -- Hillary Clinton tonight

p.p.p.s. Currently playing in my head these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOrXKiSy8ZY

Unfortunately the mix in the journal community long ago ceased being what it had been, so I've done the long-overdue thing and switched my new JE notification from web to email.

I haven't been regularly visiting /. these last several months. I got a dog, a 2 year old Golden Retriever, and have been breaking him in to life with me. That and I have to get up at a time in the morning that begins with a "4" lately, AKA "oh-dark-thirty", so I hardly ever even turn my computer on during the week. Pre-pooch, I must've just been doing it cuz I was bored. Okay, that didn't sound right. But then again, Slashdot really is mostly just people making faux-intellectual love to themselves.

Anyways, for some real intellectual stimulation, ponder the interesting notion ole Bernie (half-heartedly) offered in the last Dem debate: He was asked that wouldn't raising the minimum wage put some workers out of work. The interesting idea was, that the workers who got to keep their jobs would now have more disposable income, and buy goods and services that they are not now, that would then mean new jobs for those who lost them in the minimum wage hike.

I have absolutely no head/intuition for economics, and as such can't figure out for myself if there could be anything to that or if it's obvious (except to me) utter poop.

At lunch time MSNBC was questioning Trump's idea to deport illegal immigrants. The questions raised that I'm able to recall are:
1) How can it be done humanely?
2) How can they all be found?
3) What about the separation of families?

What popped into my head was: Q: How is it done for any other lawbreakers?

A: We apprehend them, and then we transport them.

You put them in handcuffs, to keep them from trying to elude authorities once captured. If they spit or bite, you put a mask on them. If they kick, you hogtie them. Going back for a sec, if they resist cuffing, you taze or pepperspray them. We already know how to do this humanely.

Put them in a vehicle, tell them to watch their heads as they get in, make sure their feet are in before closing the door (i.e. what seems to be perfectly routine policy, for law enforcement agencies from all over the country, from watching the show "Cops"), and then drive them to where they're told to take them.

Imagine a crew of people who'd pulled off some bank robberies. We'd do the obvious; pick them up at home, at work, at the grocery store, or whereever we had the element of surprise/had more likelihood of successfully taking them into custody without them being more prepared to escalate it into more violence.

On rounding every last one up, for lawbreakers in general, we can't find them all now. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Or that we should legalize bank robbery.

And we already separate lawbreakers from their families. If we avoided doing anything at all that had any side effects or downsides whatsoever, we wouldn't do anything.

It seems like on a practical level we'd probably want to try to get a couple of things done first:

I) Settle the "anchor baby" thing, Constitutionally. The kids should be considered just as illegal as their parents, and better to deport the family as an intact unit, than the kids going to wherever the government puts them when there's no parent left in the home.

II) Build the wall. Whether that be a physical wall, or a virtual wall implemented via technology, or sections of both. But it makes less sense to begin seriously bailing water out of the boat before you've plugged its holes.

As to where to transport them to, what are we doing with Syrian refugees? Apparently we've picked out 190 cities in this country where they'll be dropped off at. So pick 190 cities in Latin America.

And give the deportees their choice, as presumably many would want to be placed at or near where they came from or where extended family is located. We don't owe them that, but we're a generous people, we just don't want to be taken advantage of anymore. Give them a few bottles of water, some military rations, and some pesos in their pockets.

And possibly, for some, literature on how to apply for legal citizenship (and some idea of how long the wait might take). But legal immigration is a topic unto itself. Such as the purpose(s) of it. And how much truth there is behind "jobs Americans won't do".

From http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/07/quentin-tarantinos-anti-cop-comments-came-revolutionary-communist-rise-event/, on one reason why no one mentioned that one little factoid:

It's an excellent point. Smitty's in denial. Bill O'Reilly outright lies about it (he's smart enough, and connnected enough, to know). The Left has made it impolite to call a communist a communist. It's been made to be like saying someone is like Hitler.

We've been suckered into obeying an imposed cultural norm of not speaking truthfully about certain truths. The GOP tells us that Islamic terrorism is our greatest threat. Fox News happily reports things and blissfully leaves out what it all means or the why, as if no one knows/it's some big mystery of the universe.

The Right wing goes along with perpetuating the Left's equivalent of the Devil's greatest con. Even the emperor's rivals are afraid to admit the obvious. We are truly the Left's bitches. It's amazing what asses Americans have let them make of us.

And what are we really talking about here. Are we calling those who want to demolish the American system abruptly "communists", and those who are doing it slowly "socialists"? As if only the former are who we should be worried about?

Even breitbart.com wimpily avoids the real issue. Communist orgs are relatively small and a dime a dozen. I remember seeing, quite some time ago now, on C-SPAN ole Democrat Sen. Tom "we passed this right [to health insurance] for the American people" Harkin speak at a Communist Party of America rally. So Tarantino spoke at a Revolutionary Communist Party event. Whatever.

The vast majority of the Left know America won't be brought down via revolutionary uprising by the proletariat, or blacks, or any other. What's been eating away at America the last several decades is the work of Leftists *within* the system. But there's too much social pressure to point out what's happening, and certainly too much to talk about why/what's behind it.

"Independent" Sen. Bernie Sanders is at least honest about himself, and no one bats an eye about it. He got a question in the debate something to the effect of is America ready for its first socialist president. Since we're already having ours, what they really meant is our first openly socialist president. And what would be meant by openly in this case is not just openly acting and sounding like a socialist but calling themself that.

Obama won't call Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorists, and the Right wing won't call communists(/Leftists/liberals/Marxists/Progressives/whatever) communists. Both are full of shit.

Lefties love to thump on teh evil corps buying influence with Congress to, seen today in particular, not have to act responsible financially. Gotta love the gall:

1) First of all, Congresscritters are still subject to periodic elections, AFAIK, so citizens, not corporations, still have the ultimate say in how our reps behave. I've never understood the frequent human deficiency of ignoring the disease and getting fixated on one of the symptoms. It's just being really, really dumb. If one's kid was habitually misbehaving in twenty different circumstances, only an absolute moron would think to approach the problem by trying to change the circumstances. Individually.

Now look, of course I know that Lefties attack just certain symptoms typically not because they're actually delusional that it's the most effective way to go about solving the overall problem, but that eradicating certain things in particular is part of their religious views and therefore ranks higher than solving the overall problem. But human beings in general -- those without ulterior motives -- frequently lose track of the root problem and wander around believing the effects are it.

2) But even more to the point, what do Democrats do to be given and granted more power? They a) purchase favor with the public, b) by offering levels of goodies only financially feasible in magic fairy land.

So lemme get this straight: The very people who are complaining that those guys over there are a) purchasing favor so that they can b) act fiscally irresponsible, are they themselves in favor of other people doing both a) and b). So it's not a) nor b) that Lefties are actually against. It's just those guys over there (capitalists).

Lefties play into the human tendency to forget the forest for the trees, and act like it's these particular actions they're up in arms about. When really if they were ever honest, they'd say look, it doesn't matter that corporations buy influence, because we'd still be against them. What we're really against is private enterprise, because we think it's immoral because it leads to inequities.

p.s. BTW, I wish America would just make a decision on this stuff. I wish our next president, upon their January inauguration, would as their first task address the nation and declare 2017 a year of national discussion and debate on which direction we're going to go as a nation. Compare and contrast the moralities of capitalism vs. socialism, and then have some kind of national referendum. Send the Census Bureau around or something. But just fucking pick something; I'm tired of the trickle down, into national bankruptcy (although Obama has at least accelerated it, but surreptitiously). It's like Chinese water torture. Either open the faucet all the way (and empty the tank and let it be over and just kill us all), or turn the damn thing completely off. Drip, drip, drip... Another trillion in debt, another trillion, another trillion...

Very surprisingly, CNN actually put on a pretty darn good GOP debate. (I didn't seen the JV's, earlier in the day.)

Sure, CNN is still a Left-wing network of course, so there were a few questions about things Right-wingers don't recognize or care about, like Global Warming. Which would be fine in a D vs. R candidate debate, but completely doesn't belong in a GOP-only debate.

And of course they're still trashy/sensational like FNC, so it started out with several "so-and-so said this about you, take a moment to react" questions. Which might only be marginally useful to voters, as far as seeing how, both accusor and accusee, cope with aggression and pressure.

But what was fabulous about it is two-fold:
1) The thing was about 3, blessed, hours long. To a political junkie, that's not long, considering there were 11 (why not the "top 10"?!) candidates participating.
2) The moderator(s) did less talking, and there was responses and re-responses and re-re-responses from the candidates (vice just a bunch of interrupting with "we gotta move on"). In fact, the two co-questioners didn't get to ask hardly any questions, so their role was dubious. (Which is fine by me.)

Readily apparent was that everyone came with more energy this time, to the point of making Trump look somewhat demure. He's going to have to start coming out with details now (I think he said he'll have specifics of an economic plan to release in the next couple of weeks) to stay competitive. Everyone has ideas that are cringe-worthy (like Carly's "I won't talk with Putin, I'll just arm up" brinksmanship strategy for foreign policy), so it should be safe for Trump to start getting specific. (That is, I don't think something akin to mere "hope and change" -- his "I'll make America great again" -- will work, for a Republican.)

So what made this debate a gazillion times better than the FNC's is that I actually learned some things about the candidates' positions on things, and a little on how they differ. Unfortunately that's probably the best one there'll ever be.

p.s. It was good to see Rand Paul back to being his thoughtful and articulate self, unlike the prior debate where he didn't talk issues, just got into petty tit-for-tats with Trump and Christie.

p.p.s. I'm absolutely elated to have heard something to the effect that the three "outsiders" in the race are the top three in polling right now for the GOP.

So I'm sitting here watching the women's finals of the U.S. Open (tennis, not golf; i.e. the boring stuff, not the really boring stuff! ;). BTW, in the men's finals tomorrow, world ranked #1 and #2 are playing each other, unsurprisingly. But on the women's side, #1 and #2 lost in the semis to #26 and an unranked player.

This would be unheard of on the men's side, because 1) there's a significant difference between a top 3 and a top 10 ranked player, let alone a top 30 player, and 2) they're a hell of a lot more consistent; excepting Serena Williams (who looks to be part man herself, BTW!), the women flop around from #1 to nobodies, like musical chairs.

Anyways, both of these players have never been to the finals of a grand slam (I guess one of the big* four tournaments of tennis in a year) before, and for such people nerves can be a factor, typically, and to some degree. This is broad generalizing [pun not intended :)] just assuming this much, which leads me to the point of my JE.

*I think I heard last night that the winner's payout was now up to $3.3 mil.

IBM is one of the sponsors of the tourney, and they're always trying to reinforce their marketing angle of being thought of for data analytics, and they had a feature during a pause where the sports announcers told us that nerves would affect one of the players 55% to 45% for the other player.

WTF?!? It boggles the mind to imagine just how impressive in number and cocksurety the assumptions must have been that went into such a concoction.

But we believe that computers are impartial, and don't(/can't) lie, so it must be true. What people don't know of course is that, assuming a bug-free implementation of a model, the output is only as trustworthy as both the model and the data.

I tell my non-technical extended family members that computers are not magical soothsayers, they can only, basically, do what they're told to do. And a computer model is just, broadly-speaking [there I go again], telling the computer what to do with the data.

It may be more data than a human being can readily sift through to determine what their assumptions would amount to, but that's all the computer does, takes human beings' assumptions about things, and crunches data sets, small or large, in terms of them.

So the tennis match is over now. They announced the winner does indeed get $3.3 mil. And she announced that she's retiring. People were shocked to hear this, apparently even her coach. But she's 33 years old, which is prime retirement age from the game. And she has a fiance, so she probably wants to start a family, as most women do.

She said she's known the fellow Italian she played against today since they first played at about age 9. So she's had a long career, and even though she also said after the match that she made the decision to retire after this tournament a month ago, she might have been thinking about retiring soon anyways. And the why not go out on this high. But did IBM's Watson, Tennis Version*, know all of this? She probably wasn't hardly nervous at all, given all of that.

*They've been advertising versions of "Watson" for health care data and other areas, in addition to the Jeopardy version that originally made the name famous.

p.s. I just sprouted an "eye migraine" (a painless, developing "shimmering" in my direct field of vision, in both eyes/in my brain) a few minutes ago, so apologies if some of my last few edits are mangled.

Ran into something today. Found the answer:

4. INSERT queries that use SELECT with ORDER BY to populate rows guarantees how identity values are computed but not the order in which the rows are inserted

Mentally masticate on that one for a minute. You carefully craft an ordered query for output to a web page view. But you need to return other resultsets based on it, so you INSERT that SELECT into a table variable, use it to produce your other resultsets, and then finally SELECT from the table var as the last resultset to return.

But then you find your ordered query is ordered, just not your order! Would've never seen that even coming. So I slapped an IDENTITY column on the table var and sorted on it for the final resultset. Whatevs.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-christie-calls-donald-trumps-immigration-plan-too-simplistic/

"The idea of, you know, building a wall, kicking everybody out, and ending birthright citizenship all sounds appealing in some respects to some folks. But I just think it's a very complicated problem. And it needs someone who understands how to do a complicated and nuanced solution to that problem," Christie said [...]

Fuck nuance. And fuck those who are relativists and excuse-makers who try to use the concept to moderate on what is unequivocal. dam_reservoirs and fussycrackwitch are obviously commies. ISIS is obviously an Islamic terrorist organization. We obviously can build a fucking wall. Trump is popular right now because about a sixth of us in this country are tired of mealy-mouthed pussies.

"Appealing in *some* respects"?!? In what respects is it *not* appealing, to build a wall, kick out the illegals, and stop the madness? Presumably he means such things are unappealing to Leftie Republicans.

"Now what I said was if we wanted to have comprehensive immigration reform, I'd be willing to listen to anything. But the truth of the matter is that that's not something we should be being focused on. That's an applause line," he added.

When two paragraphs up he said:

And I think the difference here in my approach is they know that I'm a guy who knows how to enforce the law," he said.

Umm, what good is it to us that you know how to enforce the law, when you think it's not something worth focusing on?

And everybody knows by now that "comprehensive" reform is code for shifting the policy Leftward. In this case, an all-of-the-above approach of giving us both amnesty and not securing the border.

Why is Christie running? (Or Jeb for that matter? Or fucking Lindsey Graham?) Why is he even in the GOP? Mark Steyn said something to the effect that Republican establishment candidates are good choices because they give such great concession speeches. So Christie's big plan is to alienate the Conservative base and appeal to the big donations class of the party? I.e. raise a lot of money and get no general election votes? I guess how that strategy and inevitable outcome is a good thing is "nuanced".

p.s. Megan Kelly *is* a bimbo. I saw (part of) some segment when Dinesh D'Souza was on, talking about some of the very real shit that was happening to him. That guy has been watching and writing about Leftie trends in America going back to at least the 90's "Illiberal Education". As I recall he basically said what everyone knows, that amounted to saying that Obama is basically an American communist. And then Miss "hee hee look at me I have my own TV show!" immediately laughs and says that's crazy. Dinesh was floored. He's a (admittedly biased) researcher, she's a fake-blonde airhead "TV personality". I guess Roger bumped mutt-faced Greta out of prime time because she's not a breezy enough blonde. Next he should ditch the ditz and put Shannon Bream in that spot. She's guest-hosted the Brett Bair nee Brit Hume news hour and done so credibly.

p.p.s. I got side-tracked there. What I want is someone who'll forget about how "complicated" or "nuanced" a problem is and just start doing the obvious things to address it. And it's 2015 in America, Constitutionality is no longer a problem, when we have assholes like Roberts and Kennedy who'll lick their fingers and stick them in the wind to decide what would be best for whichever way the country is veering at the time.

I was tipped off, in another's journal, to the line of thinking involved here. Obama simply thinks that "there is a bit more nuance at work".