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Comment Disagree with the parent and here is why (Score 0) 406

by gentlemen_loser (#45610221) Attached to: Why Engineers Must Consider the Ethical Implications of Their Work
To be clear, I like the place the article is coming from (personally). However, what the author is asking is akin to saying why should we not question soldiers when they kill when we hold buddhists to such high standards.

In a utopian world, I would agree with the author. However, we do not live in utopia - we live on earth with governments of ALL countries employing as many engineers as they can afford to design better and more effecient ways to kill (and defend themselves). Some of those people are even the doctors the author is describing (building biological weapons).

For as long as humans have existed, there has been conflict. It is a basic human right to have the ability to defend yourself (as a person or community) from agressors and it is these problems that engineers are working to solve.

Comment Re:Well... this is going to be awkward... (Score 4, Insightful) 153

by gentlemen_loser (#43746403) Attached to: Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium

... I just switched back to Firefox after years with Chrome. The ol' girl has just gotten so good in these last few version; ...

Interestingly enough, I have just recently done the same. Don't get me wrong - Chrome is a great browser by all means. From a technical standpoint, I view them both as equals. However, given two equals, I will choose the browser that does not nag me to log into a Google account that I do not otherwise need "for a better experience".

Comment Re:Staying with gnome2 (Score 0, Interesting) 432

by gentlemen_loser (#41041857) Attached to: GNOME: Possible Recovery Strategies
Or you can try actually learning the new system - it really is better. I personally do not want to go back to the days of GNOME 2 or Windows XP. Have you actually tried it for any meaningful lenght of time? I mean seriously. You can get to all of your regular applications with a gesture to the left of the screen and a click. Another gesture gets you into a list of all of applications that you can then filter. Switching desktops is also trivial. Move forward, not back.

People put a lot of time into engineering and designing GNOME3 to be an elegant desktop solution that works great. What they did not account for was pig headed, stubborn, unwilling to learn users who wanted their knock-off of Windows XP back. Microsoft is going through this same backlash now for innovating with Windows 8. Same thing - you can now get to almost everything in a click - seemless UI. How do people react? "Give merh mah AXE PEE back!!!".

Seriously, people suck. I am grateful for both the GNOME and Microsoft people actually trying to innovate in the desktop area.

Comment Re:Put Dad's tools back where you found them! (Score 1) 671

by gentlemen_loser (#40951597) Attached to: CowboyNeal Weighs In On the Windows 8 "Metro" GUI

In down time it gets scary. You have a site that is losing 100K per minute because it is down. The old way takes 2-3 min to fix the issue. once your tools are hidden you are on a 30 minute google session to find out how to do what you have been doing forever. 3 million dollars out the window for a single admin on a single outage. I had a site that cost that when it went down. World wide, I would not be at all shocked if this causes more than a trillion dollars in hidden and obvious losses. I'm sure the R2 removal of classic did. It maybe that in the future we just have to change the windows UI from explorer to Powershell so our tools stop getting hidden every new version of Windows.

Are you an accountant for the MPAA or RIAA? I'd love to know where your calculations come from.

Comment Re:Japanese company (Score 1) 582

by gentlemen_loser (#37289228) Attached to: Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors

Seems to be. While working for a Japanese customer, they didn't take me serious 'til I brought our utility man along who was close to retirement and told them he's my superior. Everything went fine from that moment onwards. He didn't know anything about the matter at hand, but all he really had to do was to nod from time to time.

The really sad part about this is the fact that the only older person you could muster was the utility guy... Your company has no adult supervision?

Comment Not going to work (Score 4, Insightful) 201

by gentlemen_loser (#36231472) Attached to: Major Release of Miro Aims to Compete With iTunes
Any time any company or organization markets itself as "the [insert adjective] [insert proper noun] alternative for the [insert other proper noun]" the group is destined to failure. The issue is, at its heart, where the company is coming from. Rather than trying to invent a great music/video player, they are trying to invent an iTunes (or anything else) clone. Please STOP! Go invent a great, open source, cross platform music player without looking at iTunes and people will come.

Don't believe me? In the electronic music community, there is a synth called Zebra 2. Its from a company run and developed entirely by one guy who never advertised it. He never pitched it as the "something for the something else alternative." He just made a great fucking synth. After a short amount of time, word got out, all of the music rags covered it, and now it tops all of the "greatest synth" lists.

You will never get anywhere making a clone. You'll always be a step behind.

Comment Just talk to them (Score 3, Informative) 227

by gentlemen_loser (#35119614) Attached to: Are Flickr Images Abused By Foreign Businesses?
Knowing people who work there, I can assure you that this is not a case of an evil corporate monster trying to keep "the man" down and profit for nothing. They review licenses and probably used the image from the OP because it was CC and did not or mistakingly read the fine print. I know for fact that they avoid copyrighted material and email original authors and artists for permission to use materials. This is either an honest mistake or an individuals rushed negligence. Either way, simply email them and ask about it. There is no story here.

Comment Re:11 million years (Score 3, Informative) 306

by gentlemen_loser (#32887768) Attached to: Sun's Dark Companion 'Nemesis' Not So Likely

Well, average life-expectancy of a species is 5-million years. Homo Sapience has already doubled that putting us at the extreme end of the scale that gives this average.

How are you doing your math? The genetic evidence shows that Homo Sapiens can be traced back 200,000 years. Nowhere near the 5 million you are stating as an average for species longevity. If you are counting Australopithecus anamensis, that would get you back to 4 million years, but I would hardly consider it to be the same species as us.

Furthermore, the actual average longevity of a species is 1 million years, not 5 (as evidenced here. Just because 10 million years appears to be an extreme upper limit does not make the average 5 million.

Comment The story of our lives... (Score 1, Interesting) 511

by gentlemen_loser (#32764872) Attached to: Do Scientists Understand the Public?
People with technical or scientific training are always told they have to learn how to communicate with people without that training. This is bullshit.

How about the mouth-breathers actually use the muscle between their ears during high school math and science classes so that they are better equiped to understand what scientists are trying to tell them later in life? Truly, you do not need to be a scientist to understand articles written for general consumption. A basic understanding of high school science (biology, physics, chemistry) and math (algebra and statistics) will get you there. While we are at it, I distinctly recall the steps of the scientific method explained in detail (several times in middle and high school), as were the definitions of "theory", "law", and "hypothesis". Jesus Christ people, use your brains.

Comment Poor Adobe... (Score 3, Insightful) 272

by gentlemen_loser (#32535884) Attached to: Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux
A few days ago, there was a discussion here about how evil Apple was for trying to kill Flash. I said then, and will repeat here: Fuck you Adobe.

They took their sweet time porting their "cross platform" plugin to Linux, and in the meantime, we were stuck with the barely functioning (although I do not fault them for the effort) GNU implementation. Cross platform to Adobe means: Windows 7, Windows Vitsa, Windows XP, and Mac OS. Personally, I pine for the day that HTML 5 is able to displace Flash, and therefore Adobe, permanently. In my opinion, they have squandered any goodwill towards the open source community. I'll be the first one in line to dance on their grave.

Comment Re:That's very nice of you Adobe (Score 1) 515

by gentlemen_loser (#32335402) Attached to: Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards

If it comes down to Adobe Flash or HTML V5 H.264 I'll take Flash any day and twice on Sundays! At least Adobe doesn't act like douchebags and make you pony up $$$ just to have flash support in Linux distros. And SD Flash plays beautifully on this 1.8Ghz Sempron I use for a low power netbox, and with the latest Flash I can add a $50 AGP card and go full HD. From what I have seen HTML V5 is frankly a dog, and even in a window it runs like a slideshow.

People have VERY short memories. When I read TFA about how Adobe's sob story is that they offer a cross platform standard language that works in all browsers, I laughed so hard I cried.

Adobe took their SWEET time porting Flash to Linux. Getting it to work in different browsers was nearly impossible and the 64-bit version was a day later and a dollar short. The GNU alternative to Flash sucked, resulting in the same issue (things work on some browsers, but not others). Just a few short years ago, I hated Adobe with a passion for their piss poor Linux support.

I did not forget. I hope they die a slow death as more and more companies move toward a real standard (HTML5). In the end, I'll be there to dance on their grave.

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 458

by gentlemen_loser (#32327346) Attached to: Study Shows Standing Up To Bullies Is Good For You

My parents were evangelical nuts. They set me up to go be a victim in public schools, which I was. I have no idea what psychological ramifications that may have for me today...but I DO know that when I started training in martial arts in high school, the bullying stopped, and I never had to hit anyone (which actually kind of disappointed me, because I had a lot of anger I wanted to unleash on the next unsuspecting bully).

Chuck, is that you?

Comment Re:grand experiemnt (Score 1) 1590

by gentlemen_loser (#32018686) Attached to: Arizona "Papers, Please" Law May Hit Tech Workers

Arizona is embarking on a grand experiment, and as a free state it should be allowed to so do. We have heard the hypothesis that undocumented persons cause so much social and financial harm that any measure to thwart such persons from entering the state. Some would go as far as saying that even documented foreigners should be extremely limited as they take our jobs.

Is it accurate to say, then, that you feel that "Dey turk yer jerbs!?!"

Comment Re:Open Source is the real issue (Score 1) 377

by gentlemen_loser (#31455370) Attached to: IBM Stops Disclosing US Headcount Data
I very much disagree. Open source is not the issue. Companies like Apple and Google manage to innovate with it every day (operating systems, servers, programming languages, libraries, etc.) and even manage to contribute back to the the communities that they borrow from. Plain and simply, the issue is corporations and executives not being properly educated with regards to strategy, tactics, and long term planning. The only long term plan that IBM has is to move from country to country like a plague of locusts. Once India's costs are up, the next emerging market will be targeted and India will be left to burn as the US currently is.

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