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Comment Re:I remember that day well (Score 1) 74

I worked in IT during this lovely time. I knew about the virus. I sent out numerous company wide emails instructing people not to open emails with the "I LOVE YOU" subject line. I told specific people directly in person (the most likely ones to open it). Despite that we had several incidents. One secretary opened the email THREE TIMES in the span of a few weeks. The company I worked at chose (for reasons that simply cannot be explained) to expose all network storage to all employees with full write access, including the company's LIVE website. I LOVE YOU would scan through all available storage and replace any JPEGs with copies of itself... which led to our website getting nuked, and customers getting the virus when trying to figure out why the images were broken on our site. I had suggested that MAYBE having the corporate website mapped to a writable drive might not be the best idea... BUT anything else would make it hard for anyone to update it when needed. I was just an "intern", so all I could do was make suggestions and deal with the fallout. Fun times.

Comment Re:FFS just ditch Windows (Score 4, Interesting) 184

In my experience, Windows runs much more reliably and smoother as a VM with minimal apps installed anyway. For years I ran Word and anything else that was mandatory windows in a VM. If you aren't browsing, have an airtight firewall, and install minimal software, Windows is much happier. Recently though almost everything is cloud/browser based anyway (Google docs, Quickbooks Online etc) so desktop OS hardly matters. I haven't booted my Windows VM in over a year at this point. Been running Linux exclusively on desktop for over 20 years for work and home. The last 4 or 5 I have barely interacted with Windows at all.

Comment Patents are all about the claims (Score 1) 35

From a legal standpoint, the CLAIMS of the patent are basically all that matters. I think in many cases the title of the patent, the graphics, the body... it is all fluff to get some valuable (mostly as legal defense) claim onto the books. Most "inventions" aren't actually patentable, but they will usually have some novel claims that could have value. So ignore the weird titles, graphics etc... what are the claims behind these?

Looking at the amazon "people in cages" patent there are some pretty broad things in there around surrounding various parts of inventory control systems, tethering, and quite a few other types of safety strategies for automated systems in warehouses. The broadness of the claims means this could potentially cover all sorts of things in these subject area... definitely a lot more here than just "putting people in cages".

Comment paint it white (Score 3, Insightful) 194

A lot of ARM systems (even raspberry PI) will live life fine at 60C. You will need a nice passive heatsink inside your box (if it is large) or thermally couple the device to the box wall and put a passive heatsink on the outside. You'll need an active heater of some kind in order to operate reliably below 0C, but that is easy. Paint your box white too... that will help keep it cool in the sun. Good luck! Also post to an appropriate reddit rather than slashdot!

Comment Trackpoint (Score 1) 308

I may be the only person who does... but I have used Trackpoint for years and find it to be a million times better than any touchpads. I hate mice and touchpads. I used tiling window manager that has extensive keyboard bindings which is great... but there are still things that require a pointer. Particularly browsing. The trackpoint lets you point and click without taking your fingers off the keyboard. Best of both worlds.

If you have a computer with trackpoint and touchpad... disable the touchpad for a week. It takes a day to get used to it. You will never go back.

Comment um... right (Score 1) 566

Two years later I still have a headphone jack on my phone... still have only used it a handful of times in those two years. Occasionally nice to have as a fallback but otherwise who cares. All my Bluetooth stuff works great.

Apple does what they think people want. Android makers will just do what people buy. Honestly most people (including me) could care less at this point about the headphone jack. I'm sure there will always be Android phones will headphone jacks for the ./'er crowd who reminisces about the "good old" analog days.

Comment yup (Score 1) 597

Good thing I basically never use windows.

On the other hand one of the reasons I never have to leave my Linux machine is that most apps now are cloud. So my machine is almost like a thin client, and I pay for many of the cloud apps I use (at least the business ones). Regardless, I enjoy "owning" my own desktop OS from UI to source.

Like in the cloud world, businesses will probably be fine to pay for this (begrudgingly but they will) assuming they get regular updates and it improves security. Businesses will improve their cashflow and Microsoft gets recurring revenue (everybody kinda wins). Consumers won't though, either through lazyness, cheapness or just ignorance. The first time a consumer tries to boot their PC and it says "type in new credit card number to boot" they are going to throw it out the window. I wonder given Microsoft's Linux push whether they plan to develop some sort of "lightweight consumer Windows" that sits on a Linux kernel. It would reduce the maintenance costs (community kernel support) and give consumers something cheap that still bears the Windows brand name.

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