Any reasonable person knows that there is no good reason from this point for the GOP to push the Benghazi conspiracy any further. They have assembled another committee in the house to investigate the attack. However, if impeachment is their goal - and it certainly appears to be - then they have basically zero chance to achieve that. The reason I say that is because the time has already run out for that to lead to a successful impeachment of President Obama before his presidency ends in 2017. There is no chance that the committee could come up with sufficient charges in time for the pre-trial and trial to happen before then.

This means that in the most favorable - by which I mean most damning possible conclusions from the house committee - situation, the GOP will still be wasting taxpayer time and money when the 2016 election happens. In the - more likely based on what previous investigations have shown - scenario where the committee does not produce something worthy of an impeachment hearing, the GOP will have to face the fact that they wasted millions (if not billions) of taxpayer dollars and a great amount of time on what is clearly a political witch hunt.

Similarly, while conservatives are almost uniformly (and mostly alone) convinced that Obama himself somehow caused the Benghazi attack (presumably as part of his NWO aspirations, by use of his time machine and weather control technology), they also seem convinced of one other thing - that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee for POTUS in 2016. Frankly I am not convinced that she will win the nomination, but that is a different matter. More so I am left to wonder if the GOP fears Clinton so much that they have actually decided to throw the 2016 election in the interest of trying to start framing a better 2020 campaign now.

(Aside from the normal level of pissing me off they do every time I have to go into Word or Project.)

1) In IE 11 they got rid of the ability to quickly test your web page with js disabled, by removing that feature from the browser's developer tools window. Now you have to drill down in menus and dialogs and past confirm prompts and change it like a normal user would in the regular browser UI. Why?!?

2) In Visual Studio 2012 they got rid of the ability to record a quick macro to for example play back a series of repetitive editing tasks, by removing the entire macros feature completely. In an IDE? Are you fucking kidding me?!? Now people are saying ya gotta get Notepad++ and copy and paste into that and back. I'm not familiar with that tool, but... WHY!!!!???

3) In Security Essentials for Windows XP they've programmed it to pop up nag screens several times an hour, ever since the OS has gone out of support. It doesn't just pop up once, and its window is always on top so it can't just be ignored. There's apparently no way to disable it and still have the protection aside from installing the previous version if you happen to have a copy of it laying around. So XP is out of support, so no more patches, but why basically force people to uninstall the security suite as well? To get XP machines pwned even faster? Why?!?

In short, WhyTF actually *remove* functionality? It costs virtually nothing to just leave it there.

p.s. I'm in no hurry to upgrade my XP-based netbook, esp. sans any real carrots from MS (and I don't respond well to sticks). So I'm not sure what to do about that, except not use it for anything serious on the WWW. Accepting all serious suggestions (from those who are visible to me here, that is). I don't have a portable optical drive with it.

p.p.s. So MS knew about a remote code execution vulnerability in IE 8 for at least 6 months, and chose to do nothing about it? Hmm, and IE 8 is the latest browser you can install on XP. Ya know, it's almost like they were dropping support for XP early.

I see the "Linux Sucks" video made the front page (a few days late) here on slashdot today. Along with many others, I chimed in that the trend of videos instead of text is fucking stupid (and honestly an insult to our intelligence). I was happy to see that many others made similar complaints over the matter.

Not that I expect it to make a difference, as people still seem to get jollies posting videos of themselves saying crap on youtube regardless, but it is good to see that I'm not alone on the matter. I'm just waiting now to see if this hack is running for office and got the shitty idea that way.

So nerd Lefties are getting their panties in a bunch over Mozilla supporting DRM content.

This is because to them DRM is like so-called "closed source" software, and what Mozilla has done is gone with a permissive license model instead of the GPL.

That is, zero tolerance for that which is opposed, no matter how much that marginalizes your entrant in the market, and therefore also how much you're in a position of power to effect change, does not seem to be the path for the Firefox folks.

Maybe like MS's "embrace and extend", it's "accept until it can be changed". The question is, when is it smart to compromise principles and when isn't it. (Where by "compromising principles" I don't mean "selling out" or something unseemly like that, but just biding your time and/or choosing your battles wisely.) Especially when they're very strongly-held principles.

First a parenthetical caveat: I plan on getting the Windows 8 *Phone* OS.

I've been on the lookout for a flagship-model Nokia Windows phone. I still have a flip/dumbphone, and at least for my first smartphone I want a top-end model, to explore, until I learn what I don't need/never use. A Nokia model because I was an adv amat photog in a previous (i.e. film) era, and their emphasis caters to that interest.

And I've been on AT&T (and its prior incarnations for my area) since I got my first, mini brick phone, and the call quality has always been borderline unusable. So it's going to be a Verizon smartphone, and they got a flagship Windows Phone model, the Lumia Icon, earlier this year.

So basically I'm just waiting a little longer until Nokia's "Cyan" software update gets pushed out to people with that model, which will include the OS upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1, and then I'll give it about a month and see if people are reporting success and if there's any problems.

And then I'm just hoping it won't be for mobile what I think is happening on the desktop. And that is, MS technically supporting unpopular OS versions, but not really working at it or giving a shit.

And this is what pisses me off. I bought a new PC (because I fried my previous one, and needed one) with the much-maligned Windows Vista OS, about the time SP 2 for it was being released. So of course I didn't have any problems with it. Yes I did it because I was in a pickle, timing-wise, and had to, but still, I got Vista x64 Ultimate, their most expensive version, at a time when they were probably hurting for sales.

And what thanks do I get? A shitty patch last month that screws my whole system. Works fine on all the Windows 7 systems that I've seen. So I believe the problem is that Vista is purportedly down to less than 3% marketshare, lower than even the paltry %-age that desktop Windows 8 and 8.1 have. I believe that, like Windows XP and IE 6 before that, MS wants Vista to just go away and be a mostly-forgotten bad memory.

Great, so I bought your product in good faith, and I get short-shrift support. I wasn't one of the ones decrying the OS. So what am I supposed to do then. It looks like one can no longer get Windows 7. And I'm sure as hell not going to get Windows 8.x, since people are stupid sheep and irrationally bagging on that bigtime, so MS will probably treat it like Vista as soon as Windows 9 comes out and all the morons flip-flop their tune.

So, there is no way I would get a new Windows version until 9 comes out (some time next year, is expected). That is, unless bad luck, such as an unrecoverable bad patch, befalls me again.

Luckily this one was recoverable, barely. I.e. I was still able to log in via the admin account. And while uninstalling the update didn't do anything, rolling back to the restore point it created before installing it did the trick. But I did a lot of fretting and Google searching, with no success, and was applying last month's patches individually after rolling the whole set back, to track down which one(s) was the perpetrator. I.e. a huge PITA way of spending my time that I don't need.

As it turns out, all just to fix an issue with paths that should be unreachable if someone tricks you into running a .bat or .cmd file off the Internet. I think I'll manage without this patch. I might have to set that update "hidden" in Windows Update, to not be bugged about it every month.

Regarding this subthread:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5159777&cid=47006419

my sentiment boils down to:

Learn the language; don't be a lazy ass and whine about it.

If something's part of the language, but you're not familiar with it, that does not constitute it being "confusing".

Americans these days can't cognitively separate their perspective and the more general one. If I find something hard, then it just must be hard, right? I mean, a whole host of other people couldn't possibly have a completely different experience. That's unfathomable to today's human beings.

I've decided that I don't need to live in a big house. Therefore no one does. Therefore there's no moral problem with passing a law that forbids anyone from living in more than a 1032 sq ft abode (like mine). My experience must the universal one.

I should fucking market a line of t-shirts and baseball caps with "YMMV" with a red circle and slash over it. Because no one is capable of the concept donning on them anymore.

Smitty has recently linked to a Heritage Foundation page trying to distance itself from the mandate in the health insurance act of 2010. It isn't a surprise that they would want to try to make it look like the mandate wasn't their idea, as it is wildly unpopular with their base. What is surprising, though, is how epically they failed in distancing themselves from it.

For example (from the actual article):

That rather plainly shows that indeed people in the Heritage Foundation wanted a mandate. Reading on...

Isn't that the same kind of "herd mentality" that they are demonizing the democrats over right now?

And the supreme court ruled that the mandate in the 2010 bill is, indeed, a tax. The stick analogy does not hold here.

... same as above.

So in other words, the Heritage Foundation acknowledges that the mandate in the Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010 is a facsimile of what they wanted. They can pretend that they somehow did not have a role in the crafting of this lousy bill, but they cannot show that they have not advocated for what it does.

The GOP is succeeding in ramping up silly rhetoric and wasteful spending on Benghazi. Yet roughly 30 years ago we faced multiple terrorist attacks in Beirut. As the New Yorker Points out the situation is rather similar; the white house belonged to the opposite party of who held the US house, amongst other things. In Beirut, far more people died, including diplomats, CIA employees, and marines. One CIA analyst was tortured and murdered.

But was Reagan - dear, St. Ronnie - threatened with impeachment? Were members of his cabinet subpoenaed? Was there a whole series of "investigations" launched when the party in the house didn't get what they wanted from the ones released?

No. As the author of the article put it:

... because, you know, it's all exactly the same, right?

The only surprise is that this isn't on the front page here on slashdot ... yet.

This is worth bringing attention to . Bill Dog, you used to do much better than that.

I just realized that the underlying joke my friend was making was actually about faith. Some people like to make decisions based on what can be proven, while others prefer to run by what they know cannot be proven. We have seen the results of the latter for a long time in this country, I really wish we could try for the former for a change.

Just imagine if the federal government - specifically those elected or appointed by those elected- actually reflected the spiritual diversity of our country.

This is not counting fakes.

• Won't share their sources or read yours - this type will insist that the sources they use are "so obviously available" that they don't need to offer them to you for reading, regardless of how nicely you ask for them.
• Will share sources, but won't read yours - this type will share sources (albeit from only a very short list of sources) but has no interest in any sources beyond the ones they find acceptable, so don't bother giving them yours. Similarly, they aren't interested in discussing the sources they share.
• Will share sources, won't read them, won't acknowledge yours - this type likes headlines and doesn't care if their interpretation of the headline matches the text of the source. Forget about sharing your source with them as they likely won't read your reply anyways.
• Only one source period - this person adheres to conservatism as a religion that defines all truth. They will quote their one source endlessly and provide you links to unhelpful un-transcribed youtube videos to support their claims. Suggesting that their source is in any way less than 1000% accurate is blasphemy that leads to immediate excommunication, so don't even bother replying to them.

I'm not aware of any currently extant types on slashdot that I have missed. We had some earlier varieties in past years that seem to have since gone extinct, including:

• Will share their own and read others' sources - last seen in the wild around 2010 or so. Rumored to still exist though no record exists to support that notion.

I must say, I am impressed at how thoroughly at least one fake has infiltrated the camps of at least the first three types. I would not have expected that to be possible.

Act I

A FA on the front page laments that more potholes have gotten fixed in wealthier neighborhoods in some city because their residents were more likely to own smartphones and download the report-a-hole app.

My thinking of course was, yeah, the squeakiest wheel tends to get the grease. That's just how it is, if there's not the gumption or resources to proactively/preventatively frequently attend to every wheel. Such as in city services.

I would think there'd still be a phone number to call to report them, since smartphones haven't always existed, and most everyone has at least a land line. So those who are bothered by them the most get them fixed first.

Doesn't sound terrible, but it's only a meant to serve (and does so very poorly) as just one example of a greater, overall concern: Data analytics could end up reinforcing inequities in housing, credit, employment, health and education.

Act II

I'm reminded of a popular, smarmy retort of the past to the accusation of Left-wing bias in the media: Life [itself] has a Liberal bias! The implication intended for conveyance, but not really believed by the utterer, of course, was that Left-wing slant in the content of reports about things in life was not actually injected, but innate. I.e. it's not a problem, it's what's normal.

Well, then: Life reinforces inequities.

Act III

But if all these naturally-occurring inequities are bad, shouldn't all naturally-occurring inequities be bad?

How about some we never hear about:

1) The number of news sources

The Left occupies 90-some percent of the news dissemination sources in the country, from news networks (like CNN) to non-news networks (like Comedy Central). Given that probably about 1/3 of the country is solid Left, that should be their quota on programming that distributes news. Or at most 2/3rds of all news-distributing media outlets, since you can also argue that the political middle has been lost to the Left.

2) Positions in (public) education

Leftism is grossly over-represented in academia. Why is diversity in the student body so important but not in the faculty?

3) Voter registration

At least in this state, even in so-called Republican areas the # of registered D's easily outnumbers the # of registered R's. And around here I've heard something to the effect that we've gotten rid of runoff elections being between the highest vote getting D and the highest vote getting R, to just the top two highest vote getters. Which will probably take that disparity and tend to make it even worse.

Maybe Democrat registration should be effectively capped at the current level of Republican registration in a district. For example lets say a city has 4 million residents with 45% registered D and 30% registered R. That's 1,800,000 expected D voters and 1,200,000 expected R voters. To make things more fair, shouldn't the number of D votes counted be stopped at 1,200,000? This still wouldn't guarantee equitable outcomes but it could be a start. Then it would be a matter of absolute turnout, on a level playing field.

4) Intelligence (that is, you never hear about this except from "racists")

Inherited wealth must be confiscated, for redistribution by the state, because it's too much of an advantage those of future generations. Well intelligence is passed down as well, and that's an even bigger factor. Maybe mandatory IQ testing should be performed at an early age, with forced dope ingestion in formative years to "equalize" the IQ of those more gifted.

5) Work Ethic

Cultural and home-life attitudes towards achievement also greatly factor in to outcomes in people in life. Jewish and especially Asian households are guilty of placing expectations and pushing their children to successes in life. Public school alone is insufficient in completely counter-acting this parental-instilled drive.

Maybe Child Protective Services' mission should be expanded. Not only do children need protection from their bad parents, but they need protection from others' good parents, who in raising their own children puts others at a disadvantage.

Some type of mandatory foster care in addition to public schooling might do the trick. Say state-run boarding schools, where you have to send your kids to go live 2 years for every 1 year they live with you, or whatever ratio is needed to eradicate the unfairness.

This is a new record for consecutive attempts - and attempts per second - on my server. Some idiot using a Chinese IP address made at least 150,000 attempts on my system (all as root) in less than 4 hours. This was, of course, completely pointless as my system does not allow root logins and returns the same fail to the user who guesses the password correctly as to one who does not.

I'm not real sure why this person gave up, I'm sure they could have let their random password generator run longer. A few times they made 8 attempts per second on my system.

I know, there are plenty of things I can do to prevent this from happening in the future. I could also take the futile action of reporting them to their ISP. Instead I will just leave things as they are and keep laughing at them. I don't have nearly enough bandwidth for them to crash my server with too many requests, and my logs auto rotate in such a way that they can't fill up my hard drives with logs of their attempts either (although it might be time to increase the turnover cutoff by another factor of 10).

A fossil of the earliest known Pterosaur flying reptile was found recently in China. Named Kryptodrakon progenitor, it was described in a paper published yesterday in the journal current biology (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2900322-4) (paywalled by Elsevier). A less restrictive summary of the findings is in National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140424-pterodactyl-pterosaur-china-oldest-science-animals/).

Possible ancestor to the rest of the Pterosaurid family.

For some reason I cannot submit this to the front page; I tried the submit tool and it tells me I have to wait 5 minutes.