In other news today...
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
@tharpa said in In other news today...:
The word "prude" comes from the word "prudence",
Yeah, no.
meaning level-headedness, well-consideredness, sobriety, etc
Yeah, no.
Brought to you by the letters 'Theresa May,' 'Humpty Dumpty,' and the number 'Brexit means Brexit.'
Right, those definitions are in no way synonyms for level-headedness, well-consideredness, sobriety, etc. Absolutely not. Not at all.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@tharpa said in In other news today...:
these views that you detest.
Now I think you're projecting a bit there.
Right. You don't detest those views at all. Not at all. No minimization there.
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@tharpa said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@tharpa said in In other news today...:
these views that you detest.
Now I think you're projecting a bit there.
Right. You don't detest those views at all. Not at all.
Damn, you're working it.
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@tharpa said in In other news today...:
Right, those definitions are in no way synonyms for level-headedness, well-consideredness, sobriety, etc. Absolutely not. Not at all.
I note you didn't address the bit where you were blatantly wrong, and instead decided to nit-pick on the bits where you were, if you squinted your left eye, and tilted your head a bit, possibly right.
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@tharpa said in In other news today...:
@PJH said in In other news today...:
@Tsaukpaetra said in In other news today...:
Why is sex education so avoided?
Generally, either religious prudery, parental embarrassment, or both.
The word "prude" comes from the word "prudence", meaning level-headedness, well-consideredness, sobriety, etc. I think it says a lot about modern times that these commendable qualities are now considered an insult.
Aside from @pjh disputing that etymology to begin with, you might as well argue that it says a lot about old times that such awful qualities were considered “level-headed”.
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I thought this was interesting, because in the U.S. medical establishment fax machines are still a staple. Just today, my wife's pharmacy at an internationally held grocery chain sent a fax to her doctor to get a renewal of a prescription.
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TFA:
"We've got to get the basics right, like having computers that work"
Good luck with that.
"Email is much more secure and miles more effective than fax machines. The NHS can be the best in the world – and we can start with getting rid of fax machines."
"What's shocking is how often digital innovations fall over," she said. "It doesn't mean we shouldn’t do it, but what it does mean is we have to be realistic about with the time scales for this."
I recommend logarithmic time scales.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
Good luck with that.
Of course, the stupid thing is when the only reason the various hospitals, doctors' practices, pharmacies, etc. are using faxes is because they know that other hospitals, doctors' practices, pharmacies, etc. are using faxes. This is the sort of thing where a politician saying “Fuck it, no. You will change.” can actually be helpful.
The capacity for epic fuckups is still there, but it was there before too.
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@tharpa said in In other news today...:
I thought this was interesting, because in the U.S. medical establishment fax machines are still a staple. Just today, my wife's pharmacy at an internationally held grocery chain sent a fax to her doctor to get a renewal of a prescription.
One advantage of a fax over email seems to me to be security. Sure, "anyone" can grab a piece of paper, but they need actual physical access. With modern technologies like data breaches, however, the information in your email can be shared worldwide in nearly an instant!
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
@tharpa said in In other news today...:
I thought this was interesting, because in the U.S. medical establishment fax machines are still a staple. Just today, my wife's pharmacy at an internationally held grocery chain sent a fax to her doctor to get a renewal of a prescription.
One advantage of a fax over email seems to me to be security. Sure, "anyone" can grab a piece of paper, but they need actual physical access. With modern technologies like data breaches, however, the information in your email can be shared worldwide in nearly an instant!
It's not too hard to build a document distribution system that is both secure, and doesn't fall over when someone looks at it wrong. It requires someone halfway competent to build it though, so it's never gonna happen. Emails it is.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
It's not too hard to build a document distribution system that is both secure, and doesn't fall over when someone looks at it wrong. It requires someone halfway competent to build it though, so it's never gonna happen. Emails it is.
I'm not sure I believe you about how easy it is, if I'm being honest here. If for no other reason than that it will be operated by people who will find a way to foil any security measures you thought up. Not that it couldn't be better than email.
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@dkf
I have this moron thing I'm thinking that the purpose of technology is to improve, not to replace. I know I'm wrong, but I can't help it.It's being said that faxes waste paper and supplies. But then so do people who print their emails. Especially fun when it's a long chain of replies.
Then there's whole set of concerns about:
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reliability
Wasn't it NHS that was hit with Reply All one or three years ago and was down for almost half a day? -
delivery
E-mail client ate my mail, your mail was identified as spam (while actual spam went right through), forgot to add the attachment, people using e-mail generally being incoherent fucks - perhaps it's a neurodegenerative condition UCLMS should take a look at? -
security
People syncing them to their personal devices, holes being poked in the networks -
storage
And I mean not some shed at Crapita, but for 10, 20 and 50 years.
And it's working so well right now:
(https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/04/nhsmail_outage_accenture_fine/)NHS certainly hasn't had a good track record of reliability, losing actual ink-on-paper patient records left and right, among other things. I'm just afraid that, having noted the concerns above, the capacity of fuckups will be multiplied.
And that "you will change" policy... how is that pushing emergency services to 4G radios project coming along again?
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@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
It's not too hard to build a document distribution system that is both secure, and doesn't fall over when someone looks at it wrong. It requires someone halfway competent to build it though, so it's never gonna happen. Emails it is.
I'm not sure I believe you about how easy it is, if I'm being honest here. If for no other reason than that it will be operated by people who will find a way to foil any security measures you thought up. Not that it couldn't be better than email.
Yeah, never underestimate the ingenuity of users with regards to doing it wrong...
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Bad habit, gambling
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In completely unexpected news:
In case you don't want to read the article, here's the gist:
"Running into problems" means "Doesn't catch even a candy wrapper worth of plastic."
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
The capacity for epic fuckups is still there, but it was there before too.
Adding computers just makes the capacity even more epic.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
The capacity for epic fuckups is still there, but it was there before too.
Adding computers just makes the capacity even more epic.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/paul_r_ehrlich_128388
For some reason I always thought that was a Douglas Adams quote.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
I'm just afraid that, having noted the concerns above, the capacity of fuckups will be multiplied.
There are other types of fuckup that happen with paper.
That said, I live in an area that's been trialling the sort of system that replaces the faxes (and post!) that was there before, and it's actually quite good since it means that there's much less screwing up with failing to synchronize the file of notes between hospitals and GPs. Having seen the consequences of bad record keeping directly (when someone is allergic to aspirin or another basic drug, it's vital that hospitals don't lose track of this basic fact) I'm definitely in favour of doing things that improve matters in this area. And we're not talking doing the complex thing: just the basics of secure messaging and data transfer (a very understood area).
There's a whole lot that can be done between Nothing At All and outright Boiling The Ocean.
And that "you will change" policy... how is that pushing emergency services to 4G radios project coming along again?
I definitely didn't say it always works.
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@HardwareGeek said in In other news today...:
Adding computers just makes the capacity even more epic.
Not when you can have a fire or a flood in your records department and end up losing everything… especially as with paper records you usually need to minimise copies to keep the veracity problem under control.
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@dkf said:
the basics of secure messaging and data transfer (a very understood area)
Understood, but often neglected in favor of convenience.
There's a whole lot that can be done between Nothing At All and outright Boiling The Ocean.
I suppose... alright. I'll cede on the grounds that I should rage less about things when my only source is El Reg.
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
I assume that’s the application for the visa waiver program
Yup.
But Mr Stevenson mistakenly answered a question on the Esta visa form, which asked if he was a terrorist, by declaring that he was one.
Apart from catching stupid (and old) people out, what's the exact purpose of those questions?
It's both similar and different to some of the questions on various kinds of security clearance and Public Trust applications and federal job applications. They ask you about your use of illegal drugs, including marijuana. (This may or may not have changed somewhat in recent years.) It seems to me that these kinds of questions mostly serve to exclude honest people.
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@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
In completely unexpected news:
In case you don't want to read the article, here's the gist:
"Running into problems" means "Doesn't catch even a candy wrapper worth of plastic."
Not sure if it's because I just haven't been very informed about this project or because my already pretty high level of cynicism still hasn't reached yours, but I didn't see this as "completely expected".
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There's a funny juxtaposition of details here:
"They said that they were from Publisher's Clearing House and that I had won one of the top prizes. I was going to be getting 1.5 million dollars," she said.
The woman said the caller told her, in order to receive the prize, she simply needed to go to Walmart, purchase three $300 gift cards and read back the numbers and pin on the cards. The woman said the caller told her the gift cards would be used as a way to verify her identity when they showed up to her home with the prize.
And then
"Just the way it was presented, it was very polished. It was very professional," she explained.
The woman said she is vigilant, and often times warns her own family and friends of fraud and schemes she reads about.
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
There's a funny juxtaposition of details here:
"They said that they were from Publisher's Clearing House and that I had won one of the top prizes. I was going to be getting 1.5 million dollars," she said.
The woman said the caller told her, in order to receive the prize, she simply needed to go to Walmart, purchase three $300 gift cards and read back the numbers and pin on the cards. The woman said the caller told her the gift cards would be used as a way to verify her identity when they showed up to her home with the prize.
And then
"Just the way it was presented, it was very polished. It was very professional," she explained.
The woman said she is vigilant, and often times warns her own family and friends of fraud and schemes she reads about.
I'm not surprised that a non-techie could be caught by this. She undoubtedly assumed that giving the caller the information from the cards was not the same as giving them the actual cards. You can tell someone the serial numbers from twenty dollar bills and that's not the same as giving them the money. Just because she was caught by this one doesn't mean that there weren't other scams she dodged, and warned others about.
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@tharpa said in In other news today...:
She undoubtedly assumed that giving the caller the information from the cards was not the same as giving them the actual cards.
Yeah, that's why you shouldn't be afraid of giving me your credit card number
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
@tharpa said in In other news today...:
She undoubtedly assumed that giving the caller the information from the cards was not the same as giving them the actual cards.
Yeah, that's why you shouldn't be afraid of giving me your credit card number
No problem:
3566002020360505
CC numbers are like Belgium, right?
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@TimeBandit I lost the link, but I read yesterday that John Romero is releasing a brand-new fifth episode for the original Doom. Finally a "new" game I can be excited about!
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The new and improved Notepad now has better Unicode support, defaulting to saving files as UTF-8 without a Byte Order Mark
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
There's a funny juxtaposition of details here:
"They said that they were from Publisher's Clearing House and that I had won one of the top prizes. I was going to be getting 1.5 million dollars," she said.
The woman said the caller told her, in order to receive the prize, she simply needed to go to Walmart, purchase three $300 gift cards and read back the numbers and pin on the cards. The woman said the caller told her the gift cards would be used as a way to verify her identity when they showed up to her home with the prize.
And then
"Just the way it was presented, it was very polished. It was very professional," she explained.
The woman said she is vigilant, and often times warns her own family and friends of fraud and schemes she reads about.
That is a good scam.
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@TimeBandit said in In other news today...:
Doom turned 25
The Lore is top notch btw in the new game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UF6ashzkw
I love this game so much. It is a game e.g. you can just shoot your way through or you can do that and find the secrets and read the lore.
Why can't Bethesda be looking towards this success rather than ripping players off with Fallout 76.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
The new and improved Notepad now has better Unicode support, defaulting to saving files as UTF-8 without a Byte Order Mark
Finally an update that benefits the common man.
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
@TimeBandit I lost the link, but I read yesterday that John Romero is releasing a brand-new fifth episode for the original Doom. Finally a "new" game I can be excited about!
What’s the fourth?
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@boomzilla Now they just need to change Excel not to put one on its CSV exports. Or at least add a toggle somewhere. I'm on Mac (yes, I know that there's my problem) and it bit me hard. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out why another import was missing a column, ended up having to add a sacrificial blank column to absorb the BOM.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@mott555 said in In other news today...:
@TimeBandit I lost the link, but I read yesterday that John Romero is releasing a brand-new fifth episode for the original Doom. Finally a "new" game I can be excited about!
What’s the fourth?
Huh. Apparently my Doom CD is some kind of expanded one with a fourth episode the original game didn't have. I never knew that.
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@dcon At least it's not Notepad 3D.
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@dcon At least it's not Notepad
3D.Quick - edit that post! Don't give them ideas!
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Found it!
Sigil is a pack of nine levels that are an unofficial, but probably as official as we’re likely to get, fifth “episode” of Doom.
“I wanted the levels to feel like they belong to the original game as if they were a true fifth episode,” Romero told himself. “There’s more detail in the levels than episodes 1-4, but not overly so. The boss level is terrifying. There’s a massive room in E5M6 that is the coolest room I’ve created in any map.”
Many will remember the synth-metal soundtrack to the original, and to match that Romero tapped legendary metal guitarist Buckethead to contribute a song to Sigil.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@dcon At least it's not Notepad
3D.Quick - edit that post! Don't give them ideas!
Don't worry, in a few years Notepad will be flat again.
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@mott555 said in In other news today...:
Found it!
Sigil is a pack of nine levels that are an unofficial, but probably as official as we’re likely to get, fifth “episode” of Doom.
“I wanted the levels to feel like they belong to the original game as if they were a true fifth episode,” Romero told himself. “There’s more detail in the levels than episodes 1-4, but not overly so. The boss level is terrifying. There’s a massive room in E5M6 that is the coolest room I’ve created in any map.”
Many will remember the synth-metal soundtrack to the original, and to match that Romero tapped legendary metal guitarist Buckethead to contribute a song to Sigil.
Love me a good wad.
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@sweaty_gammon It's not one or the other: They're doing both.
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@Polygeekery do you live in Vermont?
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@Polygeekery do you live in Vermont?
Negative. Also, the neighbor I did not get along with apparently died or something so the neighborhood is peaceful. For now.
Of course I cannot help be haunted by someone telling me, "Every neighborhood has a batshit crazy person. If you think everyone is batshit crazy or that no one is batshit crazy, you are the crazy one". I kind of hope some loony bastard moves in to the house once it is done being remodeled so I feel better about this situation.
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@Polygeekery said in In other news today...:
the neighbor I did not get along with apparently died
In a house fire?
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@TimeBandit I wrote about it in the neighbors thread.
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@Polygeekery said in In other news today...:
@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@Polygeekery do you live in Vermont?
Negative. Also, the neighbor I did not get along with apparently died or something so the neighborhood is peaceful. For now.
Of course I cannot help be haunted by someone telling me, "Every neighborhood has a batshit crazy person. If you think everyone is batshit crazy or that no one is batshit crazy, you are the crazy one". I kind of hope some loony bastard moves in to the house once it is done being remodeled so I feel better about this situation.
“Apparently” “died”.
Sure sure. Any signs of burn marks?