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Comment Re:How about "no thanks" .... (Score 2) 218

No, it doesn't work.

The canonical example was quicktime player (around version 4) having a volume control which was a graphical representation of a thumb wheel, so if you wanted to adjust the volume, you clicked on the wheel and dragged it up or down. Because that was a way volume controls worked on physical objects, right?

There are a lot of requirements on physical objects that don't apply to user interfaces, and accommodating them does not "work" in any useful sense.

So, yes. You are misinformed. You're using the word which means "making the user interface look just like a physical object", and using it as a malapropism for "make the user interface be complicated".

Look at your browser window. See that search input field? That should be gone, in your world, because a physical newspaper wouldn't have a search bar, and skuemorphism means we shouldn't have user interface elements that don't look like real things. No scroll bars, either, because you should physically reach over to the lower-right corner of the window, click the little corner-thing, and drag it up and left so it "turns the page".

Sound stupid? Yeah. It does. And that's what your post is saying.

Comment HR lies. (Score 4, Insightful) 309

Okay, real simple:

HR people put things on "job requirements" which are not actually required.

This is an intentional thing, done to try to find "highly confident" people.

Basically, they think they are selecting for confidence and zeal. Mostly they are selecting for dishonesty and "can't follow simple instructions". Anyway, just send the resume in anyway. Don't lie on it or anything, just send it in anyway. When they realize that there is no such thing as an "entry-level" person with "2 years of experience", they'll look at the rest of the pile.

Comment NetworkMangler "user friendly"? (Score 3, Informative) 533

Uh.

What?

I remember I used to have these horrible connectivity problems with it, which turned out to be a result of a "feature" wherein it couldn't be used with a wifi network with a non-broadcast SSID, because it would scan for broadcast SSIDs, not see the one it was trying to be connected to, and turn the connection off. I spent a month or so trying to get it to use a WPA2 VPN and eventually gave up and went to wicd.

I have never previously heard anyone describe NetworkMangler in any positive terms whatsoever, let alone suggest that it was in some way "friendly".

Comment Re:Heartbleed was very shallow, fixed as soon as i (Score 1) 113

I have a couple problems with the implication that "short time to find/fix" is so acceptable.

1. Some amount of damage was done (and no one really knows for sure) through this bug. A fix was identified rapidly after the bug was -discovered-, but that's a long time after the bug was -introduced-.

2. For some systems, particularly those like SCADA systems where we really have deep information assurance concerns, patching software is not easy! Not everything can use "grab the patched source, rebuild and reinstall" or even "download the patch and install" repairs.

Thus the emphasis Has To Be on preventing these kinds of problems, then defending against them. Fixing them after the system is deployed is by far the weakest strategy. (Thus I salute with a full hand the initiative announced today, and discussed on a related SlashDot thread: http://news.slashdot.org/story... )

Comment Re:What kind? (Score 4, Insightful) 115

So far as I can tell, DRM-free means "no DRM".

FWIW, I actually find Steam really annoying. I usually use a couple of computers at once, and I sometimes have a slow-paced game on one and want to play something faster on another while, say, waiting for turns to process or something. I can do this with even the most draconian DRM schemes, but not with Steam. Yes, I'm aware of Offline Mode. Valve Support has told me that it is in fact prohibited to use Offline Mode to run another copy of Steam, even if I'm using it to play a different game.

Comment Why? (Score 4, Insightful) 200

Seriously, just... Why?

Why should we read on for Bennett's "thoughts"? He's a twit. Why do you guys keep posting this garbage? Someone teach him how to use a blog, since what he's got here isn't "news", it isn't "stuff that matters", it's "some guy writing badly about things he doesn't really think through".

Comment Re:Not your problem (Score 1) 186

No, not all churches operate that way. Many churches are religious organizations that may or may not even be structured enough to need a legal existence. Only one "church" I've ever heard of specifically claimed not to be religious until the tax consequences showed up.

Your other points are, well. You didn't do any research and you didn't say anything coherent. Try again?

Comment Re:Hipster PDA + emacs orgmode + cyborganize (Score 2) 170

I got as far in the "cyborganize" page as "your brain works just like everyone else's" and stopped reading. There's a whole lot of similarities, but there are huge differences, too. For instance, the rate at which you forget things, that they so proudly identify as precisely worked out? Highly variable. The gap between, say, an autistic person who doesn't have ADHD, and a non-autistic person with ADHD, is going to be large.

Maybe the system is independent of these variances, but in general, if someone says everyone thinks the same, I dismiss them as not having made even the most casual effort to comprehend the field.

Comment Re:How is this different than christianity? (Score 2) 186

There's a lot of very good material already written on the topic. Quick summary:

1. The people who founded Scientology explicitly stated that was not a religion, but a scientific practice. They changed to calling it a "religion" solely for tax/legal purposes. That's an official statement from Hubbard himself, not speculation.
2. Fairly dangerous and abusive. Look up Lisa McPherson, or Paulette Cooper.
3. Lots of very shady practices, like pressuring members to have abortions so they won't be wasting money on kids that they could be donating to the organization. Yes, really.

Plenty of stuff here you could look up. It's not so much about the specific beliefs as about the organizational structure and practice.

Comment Re:But is their criticism of Psychiatry wrong? (Score 1) 186

I think there may have been a true statement somewhere in there, but it was too subtle for me to find. The anti-ADHD stuff is pure Scientology spin, promoted aggressively precisely because the benefit of ADHD medication for most people is so very, very, obvious. Similarly, the "not much better than placebo" claim is a massive overclaim. There's some specific drugs that are pretty unreliable, but the key is that that's averaging over a general population; if you look only at the people who react well to them, and you move other people to something else, it actually works pretty well.

The claim that "no real disorders have been detected yet" is just plain stupid. Talk to people who are doing neuropsych, there is a ton of very nice, concrete, research being done on various cognitive abnormalities.

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