Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Intel launches AMD FX-9590, but way too late (Score 2) 89

AMD already beat you to this punch a long time ago with the FX-9590. Sure, the Intel chip is a newer chip so it's going to be a lot faster, but that 8-core 5 GHz nerd wank crown has long since been claimed. I don't see why anyone would spend $500 on a CPU like this when the price-to-performance ratio is massively better on other chips such as, say...AMD's high-end chips.

Comment I used those tools to bypass XP deactivation (Score 2) 34

Back in the bad old days, XP would sometimes get deactvated and you could not run anything outside of Safe Mode. That meant that if you needed to download and install a driver to get activation over the internet working again, you were out of luck. I used to hit Win+U, then the "help" link for the tools would let me open IE, then I'd "download" C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe and run it, then I'd do whatever I wanted from there. Windows XP would still kill all programs after a period of time, but I could run Explorer and Device Manager and do whatever I needed to in that window.

It's nice to know that these "ease of access" tools are still such lovely security risks!

Comment TenFourFox (Score 1) 94

Safari? I'm confused. Who isn't using TenFourFox on their PowerPC iMac G5 or G5 tower these days? Come on guys, get with the times.

Seriously though, TenFourFox runs astonishingly well on a late G4 or any G5. I'm a little blown away by how well it works considering some of the hardware I'm running it on is older than Vista *puke*. I mean Vista *puuuuke*. I mean Windows 8's grandpa.

Comment Re:Built In Self-Destruct (Score 1) 21

I have several machines from the Vista era (typically from 2007-2008) that can run Windows 10 and, with nothing more than a SSD upgrade, perform just fine for most basic needs. The power of computers exceeded the power needed by normal humans a long time ago. Today's generations of computers are even more amazing; for example, I have a $140 Celeron N4000 11.6" notebook that can cut 4K video thanks to the Intel Quick Sync hardware on the Intel UHD graphics chip and the software that uses those features to encode/decode video. It can't do color correction or other heavier effects with even remotely reasonable speed because it's still a relatively weak PC, but ignoring the GPU features that make it possible to do simple cuts to 4K video in real-time, it's on par with Core 2 Duos of the past...the same Core 2 Duos that originally ran Vista and that I still use today.

Comment Duplicate post? Duplicate comment: "links" are BS (Score 1) 118

These sorts of studies always end up being observational studies (and meta-analyses of largely observational studies) which cannot determine causation, only correlation. On this magnificent website, you'll see that:

  • U.S. spending on science, space, and technology correlates with suicides by hanging, strangulation, or suffocation;
  • the divorce rate in Maine correlates with per capita consumption of margarine; and
  • Japanese passenger cars sold in the U.S. correlates with suicides by crashing of motor vehicle.

Correlation does not prove causation, and observational studies only find correlation. They are not a completion of the scientific method, only a starting point. Most studies about health and especially diet are questionable because it's extremely difficult to properly isolate and control for confounding factors due to the complexity of the human body and how much we still don't understand about it. Even ignoring that, you basically have to lock people in a facility and strictly control their diet and exercise for long periods of time to conduct a proper study in the first place, and you'd need to do it on thousands of people for the results to be statistically significant. Even after all that, the results of even decently designed studies can be interpreted very differently.

Be skeptical of any study that "finds a link" in the health field. The implied causation may or may not exist. More work needs to be done to confirm causation when you see such a study, but they make fantastic clickbait and media outlets like The Guardian eat it up and present it in the most "stimulating" way possible. It doesn't matter that the most obvious "common sense" confounding factor would be that people who drink soda are much more likely to make bad choices regarding food and exercise.

Comment These "link" studies are bullshit. (Score 1) 229

These sorts of studies always end up being observational studies (and meta-analyses of largely observational studies) which cannot determine causation, only correlation. On this magnificent website, you'll see that:

  • U.S. spending on science, space, and technology correlates with suicides by hanging, strangulation, or suffocation;
  • the divorce rate in Maine correlates with per capita consumption of margarine; and
  • Japanese passenger cars sold in the U.S. correlates with suicides by crashing of motor vehicle.

Correlation does not prove causation, and observational studies only find correlation. They are not a completion of the scientific method, only a starting point. Most studies about health and especially diet are questionable because it's extremely difficult to properly isolate and control for confounding factors due to the complexity of the human body and how much we still don't understand about it. Even ignoring that, you basically have to lock people in a facility and strictly control their diet and exercise for long periods of time to conduct a proper study in the first place, and you'd need to do it on thousands of people for the results to be statistically significant. Even after all that, the results of even decently designed studies can be interpreted very differently.

Be skeptical of any study that "finds a link" in the health field. The implied causation may or may not exist. More work needs to be done to confirm causation when you see such a study, but they make fantastic clickbait and media outlets like The Guardian eat it up and present it in the most "stimulating" way possible. It doesn't matter that the most obvious "common sense" confounding factor would be that people who drink soda are much more likely to make bad choices regarding food and exercise.

Comment Re:all the hallmarks of fascist ideology (Score 1, Flamebait) 244

No. No it's not. Not even a little. A reasonable liberal ("Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty and equality") democratic ("of, relating to, or favoring government by the people") response to a flood of firearms and [what you refer to as] hateful divisive political incitements to hate flooding a civilization (also known as "free speech") is...to further encourage free discussion so that good ideas can surface and overtake bad ideas, and to realize that the gross quantity of firearms does not have any relationship to hatred or violence. What you're doing here, however, is called "making shit up." You do not understand the fundamentals of the philosophies of liberty and equality. You attempt to conflate several issues and implicitly craft negative associations to muddy the waters so that you can choose an escape route via "clarification" through situationally manufactured "facts" when someone who doesn't buy your bullshit tries to call you on it publicly.

You see, the irony is that someone (such as the nebulous person you're crafting with your comment) who wishes to curtail the guaranteed rights of freedom of speech and bearing of arms is someone who "undermine civil liberties and universal human rights." Your theoretical Paladin here fits the exact criteria you are expressly against. Your attempt to reassign these traits by saying "hard-right" falls sorely flat.

In short, you and your "not fascist" mythical creature are, in fact, the fascists. The only people who fall for this hilariously poor narrative are those that gleefully occupy the left half of the intelligence bell curve. If you are keen on bashing the fash, start with yourself. Your ideas can't win in the free marketplace of ideas without rigging the markets, because if anyone is the Nazi today, it's you and yours. The sad part is that we probably agree on quite a few political things, but your hatred blinds you so much that you only see "muh alt-right" while reading this, despite it being written by a left-leaning hard libertarian. I will never agree with curtailment of my right to conduct my life as I see fit and the right of others to do the same. It is that right which allows you to advocate for such curtailment in the first place. Feel free to set the example for all of us by curtailing your commentary at this time.

Comment Plex doesn't work without an internet connection (Score 1) 29

I have a Plex TV app and a Plex server on the same LAN. If the internet goes out and I don't already have Plex running and linked, I can't use the Plex app to access the Plex library. Yes, I've whitelisted no-account access over any LAN IP in Plex Media Server, but the TV app still requires the ability to phone home to Plex's authentication service to access LOCAL Plex servers. It's bullshit. If they weren't literally the only service that worked well on the TV for accessing media stored on a computer on the LAN, I'd dump them. All I want is the stupid TV to support direct playback over SMB/CIFS, but that's not ever happening because fuck users amirite? So Plex is the only workaround that doesn't require HDMI or really laggy glitchy Miracast. Plex could easily make this work, but they choose not to. Complaints about this have been on their user forums for years.

Comment Re:Wrong Move! (Score 2) 78

YouTube's claim system is NOT a DMCA claim system, it's a YouTube claim system. The first claim is not a legal DMCA takedown, it's just an internal YouTube thing. After the first claim/counterclaim cycle ends in the claimant "confirming" the complaint is legit, YouTube forces the claimed party to give up all their personal info to counter the claim again. The problem is that this process is still a YouTube thing, not a DMCA thing. The claimant is not required to give up all their personal info to confirm the complaint, so only the claimed party is vulnerable to doxxing and swatting attacks after defending themselves.

Comment Re:Perjury, too? (Score 5, Insightful) 78

Not true. The DMCA requires that the claimant state under penalty of perjury that they believe they have the rights to the work being claimed. They don't have to actually have the rights, they only have to say that they genuinely think they do. A lot of people think the DMCA claim itself is made under penalty of perjury, but that's not what the law says. It's way, WAY more toothless than people think.

Slashdot Top Deals

"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!" "Oh, my God... You've.. You've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!" -- Doonesbury

Working...