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Comment: Re:Don't worry, Romney... (Score 1) 836

by DesScorp (#41250777) Attached to: Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim

Is that the mantra? Is there some reason we shouldnt be going after someone committing this kind of blackmail: "Give us money or we put your private info (potentially including SSN) out for the world to see?" Wow, what heroes.

The SSN was never intended to be a secret number, just unique.

As for tax returns, many countries see this as public information

The United States isn't "many countries". It's the US. How much money someone makes or how much they paid in taxes is none of your business here. Speculate all you like, but unless the IRS starts asking questions, Romney's tax returns are his business and his business alone. If you don't like that, tough, because the majority of Americans like it that way and don't want to give some Internet asshat access to their tax info.

Comment: Re:boo (Score 1) 307

by DesScorp (#41229559) Attached to: Estonia To Teach Programming In Schools From Age 6

Computer programming is not such a fundamental area of study that it deserves to be elevated to the level of "math", "reading" and "writing". To a large extent this is a zero sum game. To teach programming in primary school necessarily crowds out something else. History? Foreign language? Music? Some subject other than "computer programming" is getting the shaft.

Hopefully it's religion.

In what US public school is "religion" taught? I don't know about your country (Ireland?, judging from your nick), but in the US, courts have pretty much chased any religious studies whatsoever from public schools. Instead, we spend half our time doing essential courses badly (English, Math, etc), and fill the rest of the time with feel-good nonsense fad courses, that come and go according to fashion.

Here's my prediction: any requirement for a programming education at public schools will come at the expense of the "essentials", and the fluff will remain. Which means that in all likelihood, "programming" will be as bad as many other subjects.

Comment: Re:Obama should... (Score 0) 164

by DesScorp (#41229491) Attached to: Partisan Food Fight Erupts Over NASA, Commercial Space

...come out and endorse doubling NASA's budget.

Then the Republicans will do an about-face and claim that Obama isn't supporting private space initiatives and they will claim to double their support for Space-X and whatnot.

Republicanism is party before country and "whatever it is, I'm against it."



Too bad he's never going to do that, eh? He's going to continue to spew platitudes about space. And nothing else. He's going to be "for it", without spending on it. Obama doesn't give a rat's ass about space, NASA or private sector either. Second, aren't Democrats always bitching about "investment" in the government? So backing NASA spending doesn't prove their patriotism, but, say, spending on light rail would?

Or, are you just another hypocrite on the Internet that bitches about how the other side is evil?

Comment: Re:minimalist (Score 2) 505

by DesScorp (#41196233) Attached to: The True Challenges of Desktop Linux

Perhaps Linux needs a minimalist leader. Throw everything out. Then step by step, bring back features and see what works, and what doesn't. In the process make sure that everything has a consistent look and feel.

Linux on the desktop hasn't happened for one reason, and one reason only: Linux is fractured. There are several desktops, window managers, package systems, even kernels. This isn't the case with OS X or Windows, where you have a single API and standard to develop for. No commercial developer is going to write software for a chameleon operating system with a half dozen desktop packages.The same thing that caused Linux to take off with hobbyists and adapt so well to the server room is the same thing that will prevent it from ever being a major desktop OS: choice to the extent of almost chaotic proportions. Apple in particular succeeded because they in fact limited choices in some spheres for the sake of consistency and unity. And it worked for them.

Everytime the Unix community... Linux included... has tried to bring things together into a single standard of some kind, the result has either been something that looks like it was put together by committee *cough*CDE*cough* or lots of end users went "Nope, I'm gonna fork it", and produced so many variants that one standard never catches on.

There will never be a "Year of the Linux Desktop" because there will never be a single Linux.

Comment: Re:Unless you can give everyone birth control.... (Score 1) 190

by DesScorp (#41192505) Attached to: Promising New Drug May Cure Malaria

... they'll all die of starvation anyway.

This is silly and absolute Malthusian nonsense. It's not how many kids a country or region has, but how well they support themselves and use their resources and grow their economies. Some parts of Africa are doing quite well, thanks, feeding growing populations as they learn modern agricultural techniques and develop markets for foodstuffs that increase production and efficiency and lower costs. The United States went from a population of around 15 million to over 300 million in just over two hundred years. And even our poor people are fat. More people does not necessarily equal starvation. In free economies, it's actually the opposite case. Instead of handing out condoms, you'd be better off teaching modern agriculture and encouraging development. Economies and wealth (and food production is very much a part of wealth) are not a zero sum game.

Comment: Re:Willful Frame Jobs (Score 2) 166

by DesScorp (#41192369) Attached to: The Case Against DNA

That is what is so terrifying about the police having DNA samples on hand apriori: NO MORE UNSOLVED CASES!! Contaminate the evidence with someone's DNA you already have on hand (if you don't like them for racial, political, or personal reasons, that's just gravy), and bingo! Instant conviction by idiot juries who can't spell GUILTY without using the letters D, N, and A.

Also, isn't casting doubt on DNA based evidence also a double edged sword? You've got groups like the Innocence Project that rely almost entirely on DNA as a means of proving their client's innocence. If you can cast doubt on DNA evidence when trying to convict someone, you can also cast doubt on that evidence when trying to prove someone innocent.

Comment: Re:apple just doesn't want to touch that (Score 1) 234

by DesScorp (#41186971) Attached to: Apple Rejects Drone Strike App

Apple has just become Big Brother in their 1984 Superbowl Ad

. The irony.

Well, in a way, yes. Because Steve Jobs, after years of experience with the first Mac and at NeXT, decided that maybe Big Brother existed for a good reason, was actually necessary, and that he was doing the world a favor by being a better Big Brother, and that the world would love him for it. And you know what? After billions in sales and millions of devices sold to adoring fans... the vast majority of which had never purchased an Apple product in the pre-comeback era... the world proved him right.

Comment: Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score 1) 454

by DesScorp (#41186945) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Should a Unix Fan Look For In a Windows Expert?


Also stay away from people who have all the certifications.

I wouldn't say that. What I would say is "stay away from people who have certs but not much in the way of real experience". Really, it's not that hard. Ask for references and work history. Check on those references, and call former employers. Ask "does he know his stuff?" If he does, and has a good work history that satisfies you, hire him. Anything else is minor. Despite all the mockery here at Slashdot, most Windows admins aren't dummies, and do a good job and know their stuff, and they know stuff beyond Windows. If they're good, they'll learn everything they need to know about a mixed shop soon enough.

Comment: Re:You can still fly this way if you want to (Score 1) 382

by DesScorp (#41056857) Attached to: When Flying Was a Thrill

Just buy a ticket for business class.

This is basically what it comes down to. If you don't wanted to be treated like freight, then don't pay freight prices. All that glamorous air travel of the past? Hey, I romanticize it too... especially the flying boats that worked Pacific routes. But when the article says that it was expensive, I dont' think you get the picture of just HOW expensive it was: "In 1939, a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Honolulu cost $278, and a one-way ticket to Hong Kong cost $1,368. In 2010 dollars, these were $4,317 and $11,803.

Even paying for first class is nothing like that today.

The fact is, when something becomes cheap and common, then it loses its glamour.Flying was glamorous preciesely because only a few could do it. Space tourism is much the same way right now. If it ever becomes common and affordable, in 100 years you'll read stories on Slashdot's MegaNet page about how much the Space Travel Security Agency sucks, and how they groped grandma and held up her sub-orbital flight to Europe, and what a ripoff it is to charge for blankets and Tang on a 15 minute flight.

Comment: Re:If Obama's BIRTH can be an issue (Score 2, Informative) 571

by DesScorp (#40972933) Attached to: Let the Campaign Edit Wars Begin




Comment: Re:Two can play at this game (Score 2) 638

by DesScorp (#40965933) Attached to: White House Pulls Down TSA Petition

That wasn't true of the US from WWII to about 1960. Truman and Eisenhower were modest people. Truman ran a hat store. Eisenhower was a night supervisor at a creamery before he got into West Point. That period was probably the most successful in American history.

It's easy to be successful when the rest of the world is still digging out of the rubble, and you live in the only place that went both untouched by the war on your mainland, and also had the last major center of industrial production intact on a large scale. You're giving people credit for all the wrong reasons here.

Comment: Re:Two can play at this game (Score 5, Insightful) 638

by DesScorp (#40965897) Attached to: White House Pulls Down TSA Petition

You've got it all wrong. People are actually inherently good, and their altruistic motives are mostly hardwired.

And just what proof of this do you present? Because I present, for my case of man being inherently flawed and evil unless taught not to be and enforced with laws and social codes, the entire history of the human race. You're essentially using Rousseau's "noble savage" argument, that man, until corrupted by civilization, is inherently good. But it fell out of favor because common sense triumphed, and we re-discovered that, shockingly, savages tend to be... savage.

Comment: Re:And you thought the Win8 UI was ugly.... (Score 1) 757

by DesScorp (#40959249) Attached to: Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate

This seems to be the political equivalent of Microsoft's forthcoming release of Windows Vista 2.0... Pretty, but dysfunctional... sleek but pointless, rich but morally and ethically bankrupt.

Dysfunctional? Are you that much of a hypocrite?

Ryan worked for a long time on a budget, with a real plan, with actual numbers that he'll argue and defend. He has ideas. His opponents on the other side of the aisle... they don't even have the courage to produce an actual budget. How long as Congress gone without a budget? How long has the country been running on "continuing resolutions"? Four years now. Where's your criticism of that. I don't want to hear about "morally and ethically bankrupt" from such people. It's like getting a lecture on ethics from a mugger.
