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Comment NSAPI is required (Score 1) 465

NSAPI is required for some of the applications I need to support at work, so in order to make everything work, I installed Firefox 51 and disabled updates. In addition to installing Firefox 51, I made sure I downloaded the complete Firefox 51 installation executable so that I could install it anytime I needed it. Firefox 52 does allow the plugins to work, but you need to do some backend configurations, so I just stop at Firefox 51. This has been a real problem since Google Chrome disabled NSAPI a little while ago and all other major browsers do not support it now. I just say get Firefox 51 and disable all updates.

Comment Textbook Companies Fight Back (Score 1) 337

Textbook publishers seem to have the ability to provide all of their stuff with ADA compliance for the starting cost of only $100 for cheap stuff and hundreds more for high quality stuff. When the Open Educational Resources (OER) stuff starts to eat their profits, they fight back by pushing for laws that hurt small free alternatives. Seems like it should be cheaper and easier to provide ADA compliance.

Submission + - Twitter Releases National Security Letters (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Today, Twitter joined the ranks of Yahoo, Cloudflare and Google by announcing it had received two national security letters, one in 2015 and one in 2016. The NSLs came with gag orders that prevented Twitter from telling the public or the targeted users about the government’s demands. The FBI recently lifted these gag orders, allowing Twitter to acknowledge the NSLs for the first time. In the newly-published NSLs, the FBI asked Twitter to turn over “the name, address, length of service, and electronic communications transactional records” of two users. Twitter associate general counsel Elizabeth Banker said that the company provided a “very limited set of data” in response to the requests, but did not make clear exactly what kind of data Twitter provided. “Twitter remains unsatisfied with restrictions on our right to speak more freely about national security requests we may receive,” Banker wrote in a blog post. “We would like a meaningful opportunity to challenge government restrictions when ‘classification’ prevents speech on issues of public importance.”

Comment Re:Low hanging hack... (Score 5, Insightful) 264

After looking at those examples, it seems to me that C programmers can claim something is an "ugly hack" because it was not what they wanted or because someone else's code was messed up. The C code hacks where there because they could not see an elegant solution. Programmers for other languages probably do not even know that the code they are writing is ugly.

Comment MOOCs Reincarnated? (Score 2) 352

There was an idea to do something related not too long ago. Universities and Community Colleges panicked and thought all of their students would leave in the future and move completely online. MOOCs would traditional education.

The reality is that not all people want to learn that way. The Slashdot crowd might be able to be completely successful watching a screen and talking to an in-class "Tech", but most people are not like that. Many people attend community colleges and smaller universities because they can ask questions and get answers in a much smaller and personal setting.

If this idea had true mass potential, it would have happened already and community colleges would already be gone.

Comment First Sale does not apply :) (Score 1) 185

If first sale does not apply than Capitol Records must have sold their copyright. If they sold the copyright, then we can ignore this whole battle because they have no right to sue. Now, the owners can distribute the work as copies instead because they are the copyright holder. I like the direction Google is taking this.

Comment Re:Do you want a university or a trade school? (Score 3, Insightful) 583

Yes, but I believe the argument was basically about the math courses that really have little importance to Computer Science. Calculus is rarely used in computer science. When professors are asked why it is still in the program, a lot of them will respond with something about "maturity" or something else like that. If you need a lot of math for computer science, that is fine, but shouldn't it be the math that is more common to computer scientists?

Comment Re:Ridiculous (Score 1) 177

This ruling is ridiculous. Once a signal is openly broadcast why do the content providers think they can limit how you view the content?

The signal is not really open. If you lived in Japan, you would know that there is a law that allows NHK to collect money if you have a television or other device that can pick up the signal. You are required to pay money, even if you do not watch NHK. The funny part is that the law requires you to pay, but no one can do anything about it (except continue to visit and ask for money) if you do not pay.

I once paid for a Sony LocationFree box and had it hosted at a third party company so that I could watch Japanese television in the USA. What always confused me was that there was no good alternative to using Sony LocationFree, I wanted to have an Internet channel (also ruled illegal), not a box I paid for hosted in Japan somewhere.

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