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Comment On broken Fedora packages (Score 1) 44

A few years ago I had a problem with a broken official Fedora package in the main repository. It was weird considering the have a 3D printing SIG and it was a very common app for 3D printing. Like the official package *did not work*. IIRC I complained and got nowhere. I then traced it to an issue with a dependency, found a workaround, posted that to IRC or something and a few days later the package got fixed using the workaround. The whole thing made me realize that some of their maintainers are either not paying attention or don't have the required skills for the job. Given a maintainer shortage, it makes sense to use Flatpak or Snap so they don't have as many packages to maintain - because (and this annoys me) Flatpak and Snap are just ways to push the packaging job upstream and away from the distro - but in this case it begs the question: If upstream provides a Flatpak, why does Fedora have their own?

BTW I love Fedora, been using it since 2003. Yes there are issues from time to time, but everything has issues. It how they get resolved that matters.

Comment Re:Not all engineers are regulated - just civil (Score 2) 568

I believe only civil engineers have those requirements. I know a lot of people who design all kinds of things and none of them are licensed. That ranges from every day products to cars to people who have moved on to SpaceX. But yes, if you want to design a bridge you're going to be required to have certain credentials. Does that mean none of the other people doing engineering work are engineers? I think they are. Does that extend to software? IDK, does it matter?

Comment Re:You can't regulate away stupid (Score 1) 668

People will indulge in homeopathy, chiropractery and crystal healing.

I take exception to the inclusion of chiropractery in there. These people are actually helpful to a lot of patients. Insurance companies actually cover them too, so it would be nice if people looked into it rather than just calling them quacks and lumping them in with crystals and homeopathy.

Just sayin

Comment LSA is a problem (Score 1) 473

The Light Sport Aircraft category was supposed to help with the cost by creating a new category of plane that is a bit smaller and hypothetically cheaper. What I've noticed is a very large number of manufacturers in the market which seems good, but none can get enough sales volume to reduce cost.

The cheapest route of course is to build your own, put an engine on that can run car gas, and be your own mechanic. This is not appealing to everyone, and not everyone whom it would appeal to even knows it's an option.

Comment Especially (Score 3, Interesting) 534

Especially when a couple month ago we heard that they overestimated because the temperature increase has stalled over the last 10 years. Perhaps this accounts for the missing temperature rise? But then....

While infilling works well over the oceans, the hybrid model works particularly well at restoring temperatures in the vicinity of the unobserved regions

The method used works well over the oceans - is that where they omitted data and the used the prediction method? But it works "particularly well" where we have no actual data to validate it...

Comment Really Bill? (Score 1) 445

I am a devout fan of capitalism. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest. This system is responsible for many of the great advances that have improved the lives of billions—from airplanes to air-conditioning to computers.

Airplanes got invented by individuals - the french were gliding down hillsides and the Wrights read about that and said "fuckin' cool lets do that" and then did it better than anyone else. Only after did they try to commercialize it and capitalism caused some ugly things along the way. Air conditioning I'm not sure about. And Computers were invented for war, not capitalism. Of course business will take anything and try to market it to everyone in order to make a buck, so business does bring advances to the people. That doesn't mean it's the only way, but it was proven effective. In general it doesn't cause innovation. Shit, DOS was a personal project that Bill Gates bought from his friend (without disclosing who he was selling it to and hence got it relatively cheap) - point is that these things often come about due to interests other than capitalism.

Comment Re:Obligatory note: the USPS is intentionally brok (Score 1) 258

Oh, I didn't mean the USPS shouldn't be subsidized. I view it as a government provided service that we pay to use. The government part means it's available everywhere to everyone, while paying to use it makes it more fair. I don't expect it to make money - at best it should brake even, so government subsidy at times is fine. What I have a problem with is first class mail subsidizing junk mail. Without junk mail you'd still need a carrier to visit every day for pickup, but the stop will still be faster without a pile of crap to put in there. Or they could make the service run every other day, but that increases worst case delivery by 2 days. There are lots of ways to make adjustments, but having bulk pay well under 10 cents is really a bad joke since it still uses all the infrastructure that first class has put in place.

If they want to run it like a business and not a government provided service then they at least have to charge enough to pay their bills, and that includes ALL mail.

Comment Re:Obligatory note: the USPS is intentionally brok (Score 1) 258

Whatever their cost, they should charge appropriately. First class mail should not be losing money. Bulk mail should cost more but instead they neglect the delivery cost, claiming the mail person will be making the stop anyway. If USPS is losing money it's because it's used to subsidize marketing for business. If the low cost mail wasn't there I think I'd only get actual first class about 2-3 days a week, so those other 3-4 stops are really for mail that they charge next to nothing for.

Comment No such thing (Score 2) 178

Where are the hosting providers that make end-to-end encrypted email/web/VOIP/XMPP easy and automatic for all my clients?

It is up to the user and the mail client to do the encryption. If your hosting provider plays any part in that they will need the keys and can therefore hand them over to others - or do decryption for others and keep the keys. Any way you look at it, end-to-end encryption requires that it be done AT THE END which means on your own machine.

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