Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Fix (Score 4, Interesting) 91

I have a 100% fix for the last mile problem.

Local Utility Company, that owns and maintains fiber.

All fiber brought back to a COLO facility where Vendors offer their services to the local utility customers, directly AT the COLO facility. Choice to the Consumer. The COLO and Fiber are maintained with fees extracted as part of the rental agreement between the vendors and the local Utility CO.

A consumer purchases service from the vendor(s) of their choice directly, based on their desires and needs. No Government needs to be involved. Increase Options creates competition.

Its a wonder smart people haven't figured out that Government Franchise Agreements has stagnated the status quo into doing nothing.

Comment Re:In-house can be practical (Score 1) 70

Is it online somewhere?

I have not shared it with the world, which I think is what you're asking. Nor do I plan to, at least anytime in the near future. This reduces the attack surface and the support loading.

Otherwise, yes, it's online — it's a networking WAN application bringing together people from widely disparate locations.

Comment In-house can be practical (Score 1) 70

The real question is where will everyone go now that Discord is enshittified?

After putting up with Slack... slacking... for a while, Ryver ignoring bugs and getting worse over time, I wrote my own system from scratch. No ads, no randos, no spam, no cost. I am running independent family and business instances.

It's got a decent set of features, including a broad range of text formatting (it does _x_ and *x* and emoji :) markdown-like formatting too, but that's just for the comfort of our oldies), audio/video media, wide image support, file and image user libraries, various carefully designed bots, a full range of emojis, post previewing, search, and an integrated to-do system.

Sometimes, if you can, you just have to say "nope" and put your nose to the grindstone a bit.

Comment Re:Neurosis Theater (Score 1) 395

There are lots of non-pretty people who dislike that more-pretty people can make an easy living by marrying wealthy partners.

There are lots of non-athletic people who dislike that more-athletic people can make an easy and wealthy living playing sports. Should we then ban the use of photos of athlete's faces?

There are lots of people who can't act and/or aren't good-looking that dislike that actors can make an easy and wealthy living playing roles. Should we then ban the use of photos of actor's faces? Should I go on? Models? Politicians? Firemen? Cats ?

Who will protect our feline friends from the outrageous exploitation of the fact that they are cuter than almost any human who ever lived?

I mean, honey, you may be cute, but cats have you beaten like a grievously dusty rug in that department.

The entire trend of "oh no, can't see / say / look at / admire / leverage" [a photo of a face] is absurd, and would actually be funny if it wasn't so outrageously wrongheaded.

Comment Re:Neurosis Theater (Score 1) 395

Imagine a big lab where male researchers put playboy pictures on the wall.

That's not even a remotely reasonable take or example for what's happening here. This is a woman's face . It's a "Playboy picture" only in the sense that yes, it appeared in Playboy. It's not a nude. Pictures of, just for instance, Peter Sellers and Steve Martin have also appeared in Playboy. Should we now ban crops of these gentlemen's faces from those photos from appearing in an image processing example? I mean, seriously. It's puerile. Stupid. Regressive. Ridiculous.

Do you think that is professional ?

If a person's face, even, OMG, a handsome man or beautiful woman or other, should be used for an image processing example? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Is it professional? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. I'm not in the least offended by the idea, nor should I be. It's a picture of a face. As for beauty, again, not offended regardless: male, female, trans, androgynous.

Do you think female researchers would feel comfortable working there ?

With pictures of people's faces on the wall? Even, OMG, women's faces? Well, if they don't, they need some therapy. What they don't need is for the walls to be sanitized so they can pretend that good-looking people don't exist, aren't interesting to others, and are somehow offensive in and of themselves.

What about people who fear cats? Should we then ban all pictures of cat's faces from lab walls and studies? How far do you want to take this? What about agoraphobics? Would you have us ban pictures of the outdoors from lab walls and studies? What about amathophobics? Should all labs have privacy walls so no one sees powders on the bench? What about, OMG, a picture of a pile of powder on the wall? JFC, call the Powder Police immediately.

Look, if you — or whomever — don't want to appear in Playboy or some other publication, I'm 100% behind you. Don't. Don't sign a contract that gives them rights to any photos. As for what other consenting adults have chosen to do, just fuck off, please. The only one in need of your take is you. As soon as you start telling me what I can do with a picture of someone's face, presuming copyright issues are squared away, I'm going tell you to fuck right off.

And what is triggering you ? Are you afraid they're going to come for your porn ?

Quite aside from the neurotic absurdity of the anti-adult-porn movement, no, this is something else entirely. This is moving normal things into the realm of moral panics. It's a bad thing. Entirely. On its own.

Trump and his american taliban allies are the ones you should be afraid of.

I am about as anti-regressive and anti-Trump as you can get. Lefter-than-left in almost all social and economic aspects, conservative only where it seems to me to be logical to conserve already-achieved progress. An outlook that includes conserving the achievements of separating personal liberties from absurd moralizations insofar as we have managed that thus far.

The problem here, what makes it worthy of comment, is that this particular moral panic in-a-teacup is straight-up regressive.

Comment Neurosis Theater (Score 1, Troll) 395

The thing is there is a moral panic

A perfect storm of toxic feminism and neurosis.

The copyright holder is okay with it, and they own the rights to the image. The researchers using it are okay with it. The only "offensive" thing [cough] about this image is that she is beautiful, and that is what is actually triggering these people.

Comment Not everything is political (Score 1) 119

Iâ(TM)m seeing a LOT of R vs D finger pointing, and what little is actually about truancy, as opposed to other culture war topics, still misses an obvious explanation

I get at least one letter each year from my local school district over absenteeism for my kids. (Got this years first one just last week) It warns me about possibly being visited by a truancy officer if one of my kid misses too many more days.

Iâ(TM)m not poor, discouraged by the quality of the local education, afraid of them being indoctrinated, or any of the other culture war explanations Iâ(TM)ve seen. My kids miss more school than they used to because our school district has a stay home policy that results in an extra day home (on average) every time they get sick.

Used to be they stayed home if they looked sick in the morning. Now, if they have a fever at any point within 24 hr before first bell, they are supposed to stay home. That means if they are sick Monday morning, and they are not recovered before the bus comes, then they are expected to stay home Tuesday as well. Every 1-day absence due to illness almost automatically becomes a 2-day absence. Apply that to every family and student in my district, and we appear to have suddenly developed an absenteeism problem.

Now, I donâ(TM)t know if the policy actually changed, or if it is more a matter of the school being more insistent with compliance post-COVID, but the net effect is the same. Each time one of my kids gets sick, they have a full day at home with no symptoms during which they would have gone to school pre-2020

Comment Re:Copyright owners can change the license (Score 1) 120

Free Enterprise.

More regulation rarely fixes the problems and creates more problems that only large multinational government tied corporations can comply. Example, the repeated problems with the Banking industry, one of the most regulated industries that has been repeatedly bailed out of bad banking by taxpayers. Filed under "too big to fail"

Slashdot Top Deals

Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker

Working...