Posts by Alan W. Rateliff, II

Re: Block all email from vanity TLD's

Yup... I was just about to post the same thing. I have yet to see a single legitimate email come from any of these TLDs to any of my customers.

Re: Oh you optimist

I am happily ignorant to change with a new 1080p projector to give me any size screen I want, a $40 OTA DVR with HDMI output, and an Intel NUC. All-in cost under $1,000, including the going-out-of-business sale HDMI switching receiver.

DVDs and BluRays play on the NUC but most are already ripped to the NAS (with the exception of some ornery ones which refuse to be ripped.)

Re: Improvements?

As for Older hardware, I've got a Mac SE that's still going strong ~30 years on. It's quite a while since I felt the need for more speed from a PC and I'm only running an i5 2500k. If I want it to go fasterer, I'll overclock it.

Right, as an Amiga user running AmigaOS 3.9 on a 50MHz 68060 I understand the argument against the need for speed. However, the browser and many other programs I use cannot handle TLS 1.2 easily. (Though an update to AmiSSL was recently released which seems to have eased this quite a bit.)

A Mac SE would support OS7.5, maybe 8, correct? Out of curiosity, what kind of development has happened in this sphere to help these operating systems keep up with modern Internet security and performance requirements? Has yours been upgraded beyond the 68000? I know my 7MHz 68000 Amigas were damn near useless for browsing even in the late 90s and it took an upgrade to a 40MHz EC030 to moderately mediate the issue.

Re: IQ tests

Absolutely, I see that as a huge benefit in training, in particular when you need to absorb a skill as quickly as possible and you can learn incidentals and out-of-the-box scenarios on-the-job. I do not, however, see a place for this type of training in primary education, if only for two reasons: the minds being taught are different at the ages indicated and a majority of students cannot think and remember effectively when taught to the test, and the expected results of the education at these two points are different whereas one is expected to lay the groundwork for skills and knowledge which can be broadly applied and the other is meant to be very focused on a particular function.

As a case in point, while a student in education I observed two grade levels preparing for the FCAT. First, I would note that a number of these students were absolute emotional wrecks with the weight of the school on their shoulders, these being the lower-performers who could "bring the school down." But more importantly, they were missing particular aspects of each subject being taught. I worked with one student trying to grasp the area of a rectangle, the formula for which is L x W. But when presented a square he stumbled on the notion of which was the length and which was the width, because both were equal. Yes, from our perspective this is a non-issue, but, again, these were not necessarily the high-performers with whom I was working.

Now, right there on the same page as the L x W formula was the S x S formula for squares. I remember being taught this, not necessarily that squares were different than rectangles, but that the formula was more suited to the square as every side is equal. I pointed that out to the student and he informed me that he had not been taught that formula. I inquired of the teacher and she told me the formula was not in the school's curriculum because it was not on the FCAT.

Re: What no Geneve?

Likely because the Geneve out-right replaces the 99/4A as a much more capable machine. It is compatible to a large degree being able to run pretty much everything from the old console, including "ripping" cartridges, and use the same hardware expansions. The Geneve is like the SuperCPU of the TI world, but a little easier to find, and I just picked up one at last year's Chicago TI Users Group Faire but like with all things time is my worst enemy.

While a massive upgrade for the 99/4A, almost all of the major development in the forum is directed solely at the 4A console, even down to the bare-bones 256 bytes of CPU RAM and 9918A, only -- no 32k, etc. This is changing, though, to require 32k now that the nanoPEB and 32k sidecar expansions are pretty prevalent. Games and demos by Rasmus and a few others all require 32k, as do numerous Extended BASIC (following tradition of the Old Days when XB and 32k went pretty much hand-in-hand.)

Maybe a future article could delve into the Geneve world and the salivating anticipation for the FPGA-based Geneve II. There are several experts on and developers for the Geneve around to help with that.

Re: Humanity fail.

I have more general issues to address here than the "Gamergate" situation.

"Only about 1 in 3 rapes are ever investigated, and less than 1 in a hundred are prosecuted."

This is misleading on a several points. First is the assumption that all rapes reported actually occured, and second due to the ever-changing and broadening definition of rape which in some surveys include feeling guilty afterward, while intoxicated, or other ambiguous or dubious terms, including the bureau of justice statistics were "attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape" and sexual assault "also includes verbal threats."

Your "1 in 100" prosecuted should actually be your "1 in 3," but even so the number of prosecutions is misleading because, again, we have to take into account what constitutes rape as well as mistakes by investigators, retractions of false allegations, presence of exculpatory and necessary inculpatory evidence for prosecution, and the fact that majority of criminal cases get plead-out or settled before ever making it to prosecution.

"...the FBI's criminal statistics division... is a voluntary program, and for obvious political reasons, most police departments want to downplay the instances of violent crime in their precincts. As a result, rape is severely under-reported."

This is also misleading and calling upon the presumption of an "obvious political" slant on the part of law enforcement. The UCR is voluntary but strongly suggested, and law enforcement agencies which do not participate are generally smaller forces and most often covered by some sort of state open-records law. The under-reporting of crime happens /before/ law enforcement is contacted.

"rape is severely under-reported. Most women don't even bother reporting it because they know -- from their friends and family -- that it is largely futile."

What exactly do they know? They know how a woman's allegations alone are treated as fact? How the current approach of "the seriousness of the allegation is most important" has ruined careers and lives even after a claim has been proven false?

"dismissed by authorities and the -- male -- public"

Yet analysis of these instances show that women are more likely to be dismissive than men.

"what you are matters a lot when it comes to criminal investigations, public sympathy, and credibility."

In the public eye rape, harassment, and violence are taken very seriously and given great credibility even when not deserved due to being inaccurate or blatantly false. What you are matters when you are telling the truth, when you are fabricating, and when you are lying.

"The statistics are so depressing it makes me hate the very concept of numbers. Just look down and to the right of this post at the number of thumbs down"

I infer, then, the negative reaction to a post spewing anecdotal account of numbers or alluding to statistics which are proven to be misleading or inflated, is enough to prove the post in the first place.

"Most women have bigger balls than you'll ever have. It takes guts to walk out the door, every day, and endure this with a smile, to never let it show that it bothers you. It takes courage that most men cannot comprehend, and it is shameful that men have allowed themselves to become this weak and pathetic that they won't stand up for others."

Men have a higher likelihood of being assaulted and "bullied" than women do, including on-line where analysis shows that over half of the on-line harassment women experience are from other women.

Even the FBI's uniform crime reports statistics historically dismisses male rape and sexual abuse. Sexual assaults on men are ridiculed and joked about as "you can't rape the willing" implying that men are just walking erections looking for a hole. Men who complain about assault and battery are derided as wimps, pussy, not man enough, etc. So do not for one second think that women own the market on rape, assault, and harassment in the dark figure of crime.

"no different than being upset with muslims because some of them are terrorists. Why won't you do more, you ask. It's a muslim problem, so it's okay to discriminate because they haven't done a good enough job policing their community."

Here we are given a false equivalency: the assumption that men are inherently indiscriminately violent and mysoginst, compared to a religion which within its scriptures and doctrine preaches the death of those who will not submit and the destruction of other cultures and has never, unlike others, undergone reformations called for by prominent figures.

There is a problem in this world with a religion which teaches world domination as a tenant which outsiders have no power to correct; there is not a problem in this world in which men are taught from day one to hate and disrespect women. At the very least the "bad guys" in the religion are instructed to hide their true nature during their march toward domination, while the "bad guys" in both genders actually stick out like sore thumbs.

Men are, as a whole, well-adjusted and taught to respect and love women, both by the very nature of their mothers and by a well-adjusted father. We are taught to be protective and defensive of women as we would of our own mothers and sisters, and most of us will take a beat-down or a bullet to do so.

"Well men... what are you doing to police yours?"

We police our community quite well, thank you, including putting a beat-down on those who are disrespectful and abusive to women. Otherwise there would be no stories of men coming out to take on another man abusing a women in public, or the long walks in the woods or behind the shed given to men who are secretly abusive, or the beat-downs put on other men for transgressions against women. For that matter, ask any pedophile or rapist how well they fare in prison.

Re: Blame the EU?

Ah, "Lifeforce," the movie in which Mathilda May ruined my adolescence. I actually saw Patrick Stewart in "Excalibur," first.

Re: Chinese now?

And through which servers does OperaMini proxy its connections?

"symptom masking drugs"

There is not much reward in trial-and-error diagnosing (troubleshooting) to find and treat root causes of many ailments, so treating the symptom meets peoples' expectations of immediate resolution (because they saw it done on TV in an hour including commercials or just out of desperation) and the system's expectation of funneling patients through as quickly as possible with as little cost as possible.

"at price gouging prices."

This is a legitimately confusing point for me. As I understand, the NHS has price controls on care and medications, so the cost for patients should ostensibly be minimal.

This being the case, irrespective of whether the drug treats a symptom or the cause, development takes resources which need to be recouped. So, when faced with one outlet with price controls which cannot meet the cost of R&D (and regulatory compliance and investment expectations, both which can be abusive,) then the price for the other outlet must compensate.

I can because I live in a terrorist state that started a bloody revolutionary war against being ruled by people like this and so have pretty near absolute freedom of speech.

Yet, here we come full-circle.

Re: I call bullshit on that marketing exec

So this marketing exec purchased a brand new laptop from a vendor, opened the packaging on the laptop and less than 15 minutes later walked into a meeting with said laptop and tried to do a customer presentation with it? Riiiiight.

Not an unreasonable nor unheard-of scenario by any means. I can see this clearly: the computer the exec would normally use which was carefully set up and configured by ITS has barfed up (yet, again) because of all of the things this user has done to it. The user decides the computer is a piece of crap, and since every time he or she calls ITS he or she is told that his or her preferred usage of the computer is the cause of all problems, aforementioned user, having read plenty of tech blogs and threads on the matter, decides the only solution is to obtain a replacement machine immediately. Again, ITS is obviously incompetent as it takes at least several hours for the request for a replacement machine to be handled, so a quick run off to Worst Buy is the ticket, and there will be JUST enough time to run in, be talked into the completely wrong thing by the Blue Shirt, and dash back, open it, pop in the USB stick and once again shine as PowerPoint Hero.

FTFA:

"...a marketing executive who purchased a new notebook and registered it against the company's network using the provided cloud-based mobile device management service, as she had been instructed."

Yes, there were instructions, and while you have the pithier parts of what supporting a marketing exec is like, you have conveniently ignored that said marketing execs will almost always ignore the important parts of the instructions which give the caveats as these are not "action items" but rather "informational items" which are seen as optional -- read that as, "items not to be read" no matter how bold or what color the print.

Re: But are you...

No... Banana Man!

Re: DAT tape?

But dat tape, tho.

Re: It might not have been War Games...

Covering up for the fact that uni professors use shitty passwords, and use the same shitty passwords for everything?