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Comment This isn't a victory for Behring-Breivik. (Score 3, Insightful) 491

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

Comment Re:Just TODAY (Score 1) 159

his opinions on Meyer's efforts: "DOA.".

YHOO was mostly "DOA" indeed when Mayer took over. However, with her initial efforts in being overly meticulous with the redesigning of the logo (the 30 days of logos), the bombardment of press releases concerning their Weather app and her Flickr changes, there was proof she was overly (too much?) involved in new projects. But then there was YHOO's Daily Fantasy product being released and that's when you knew Mayer had checked out and YHOO was dead under her leadership. In an industry that's raising 100s of millions in VC, YHOO was poised to potentially take over a multi-billion dollar market because of their unique position - YHOO already had a huge fantasy sports community, already had fully functioning real-time data feeds, the server infrastructure and the engineers to blow away the "frat boy" level technical efforts of FanDuel and DraftKings (FanDuel was storing user password in plaintext as recently as Dec 2014). YHOO could have undercut the "vig" so dramatically on their product and still been profitable and could have gained market share rapidly.

Instead, YHOO rolled out a half baked idea where users couldn't even select a username, basically stole the interface from FanDuel and they let the project rot most of the 2015 football season. Their product was seen as a colossal failure and was universally described as underwhelming. It wasn't built right from a technical perspective, it wasn't marketed properly and was built with zero consideration to the user. (Yes, you could argue that the current DFS legal landscape could be a reason for the poor development efforts, but the end result will be regulation, not banning.)

TL;DR - YHOO seems totally uninterested in putting in the requisite effort to make itself a technology company again under Mayer's leadership even when well positioned to assume control of a multi-billion dollar industry. All YHOO wants to be now is a company trying to avoid it's BABA tax burden.

GNOME

The GNOME Foundation Is Running Out of Money 693

An anonymous reader writes "The GNOME Foundation is running out of money. The foundation no longer has any cash reserves so they have voted to freeze non-essential funding for running the foundation. They are also hunting down sponsors and unpaid invoices to regain some delayed revenue. Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can become a friend of GNOME."

Comment It's the People (Score 2) 529

My boss telecommutes sometimes. All you need to know is this -

He billed 40 hours "General" time from home one week.
The week of Hurricane Sandy.
When his house didn't have power for 10 days.

If he was in the office, he'd be working on his personal e-commerce websites or looking for apps for his phone.

Yes, Mayer did it so she can fire people and cut costs. Yes, VPN is a crappy metric to use although I'm sure that isn't the only metric she used. Yes, telecommuting works for a lot of people and can be a huge cost saver for companies.

But please, let's spare me the "telecommuting is the Holy Grail" for all employees and for all businesses. Fact is every company has terrible employees and they will game the system no matter where they are.

Comment Garmin Forerunner (Score 1) 327

Other than the Garmin Forerunner models, where I can definitely see the iWatch being a drastic improvement over the terrible Forerunner UI, I don't know how many markets this really disrupts. However, I do think the bigger loser would be Garmin as I don't know anyone who would buy their watch products as long as the iWatch improved battery/data collection life. /perspective of an ultrarunner

Comment MobileIron (Score 4, Interesting) 510

We are actually in the midst of going through something similar at my company (a very open, not secretive environmental firm). We recognized through employee surveillance and traffic logs that cell phones were a huge security risk at our firm and the decision was made to control as much as we could while still maintaining our "Mom & Pop" company feel.

We switched all of our cell phones from one carrier to ATT and we purchased the MobileIron software (VPS and Sentry) to control all the aspects of the company phones that enter our buildings. In addition, for the people who chose the monthly subsidy as opposed to a company phone, we prevent them from getting WiFi access from within our offices as best we can (MAC whitelisting isn't foolproof but helps with 99% of our users). We don't allow the non-company provided phones to work if they are plugged into workstations via USB cable. With MobileIron I can control basically every aspect of their smartphones including camera control, data usage, app installs, etc.

Now, we don't have this fully running in production yet so I can't comment on the pitfalls I'm sure to face, but the short answer is workplaces don't necessarily need to ban smartphones as that could actually cripple some business processes; however, they are definitely a security threat that need to be managed just like other corporate and employee owned devices.

Comment Rough on the Adult (Score 4, Informative) 101

I'm a 33 year old homeowner with a full-time job and a LLC to do small consulting projects under. I have a fiance, a husky/samoyed/malamute mix and about a half acre of property to maintain now that it's spring time here in New York. I also have two small entrepreneurial ideas I am trying to subcontract out to some friends as a side project. I'm really well scheduled with my time and I decided to try and do 2 courses at once - Algo I and Cryptography.

I made it two weeks.

A problem set, a homework and at least 4.5 hours worth of video without even looking at the suggested texts that were outlined in the first set of videos - and that was one course (Algos). With 1 week deadlines, there is a serious time crunch that doesn't allow for much in the way of "unexpected happenstance" like when I needed to do some electrical rewiring in my kitchen or assemble 3 pieces of outdoor furniture. I fully admit that I bit off more than I could chew signing up for two courses. I also fully admit that I probably need to sacrifice something on my list above in order to free up more time, but I'm not sure I can bury the fiance in the backyard legally. However, I fully understand now why people say it's _really_ (read - not impossible) difficult to continue schooling once "real life starts".

I wish the deadline schedule was a little more lenient although I do understand its purpose and I realize my outside commitments account for a large chunk of my problems. A little more leniency in the schedule would have really helped me "find the time".

Comment Re:Perfect american corporate business practice (Score 4, Insightful) 231

But they didn't do anything illegal. They're basically just using their own download application that comes with extra stuff.

Yes, but Download.com still assures users that they will never bundle that "extra stuff". Their Adware & Spyware Notice says:

In your letters, user reviews, and polls, you told us bundled adware was unacceptable--no matter how harmless it might be. We want you to know what you're getting when you download from CNET Download.com, and no other download site can promise that.

Also, they make it look like a download link for the real installer (which it used to be), and then the user gets this CNET crap. But they still used our name liberally in the trojan installer as if we were somehow responsible for or involved in this abomination. I've got screen shots on my Download.com fiasco page.

Also, this "apology" rings hollow because they aren't fixing the problem along with it. In particular:

1) He claims that bundling malware with Nmap was a “mistake on our part” and “we reviewed all open source files in our catalog to ensure none are being bundled.” Either that is a lie, or they are totally incompetent, because tons of open source software is still being bundled. You can read the comments below his post for many examples.

2) Even if they had removed the malware bundling from open source software, what about all of the other free (but not open source) Windows software out there? They shouldn't infect any 3rd party software with sketchy toolbars, search engine redirectors, etc.

3) At the same time that Sean sent the “apology” to users, he sent this very different note to developers. He says they are working on a new expanded version of the rogue installer and “initial feedback from developers on our new model has been very positive and we are excited to bring this to the broader community as soon as possible”. He tries to mollify developers by promising to give them a cut (“revenue share”) of the proceeds from infecting their users.

4) You no longer need to register and log in to get the small (non-trojan) “direct download” link, but the giant green download button still exposes users to malware.

5) The Download.Com Adware & Spyware Notice still says “every time you download software from Download.com, you can trust that we've tested it and found it to be adware-free.” How can they say that while they are still adding their own adware? At least they removed the statement from their trojan installer that it is “SAFE, TRUSTED, AND SPYWARE FREE”.

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