The Vent and Rant Thread

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Agreed knowledge is key to staying safe in day and age of technology. Her case was a trojan installed that her AV failed to catch. She probably got it from ads maybe even Facebook not really knowing about ad blockers to keep herself safe.

My mom Facebook account got hacked last month. I can't convince her this guy isn't interested in her and isn't who he says he is. I reported him but Facebook did very little.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Facebook investigates and promptly gets rid of romance scammers. It's easy to prove, just TinEye their images. I do it all the time. Send same to Facebook. I also post the information about the scammer ("here's the Tineye, showing the images on the scammer alerts, here's who he's posing as, etc.") on my Facebook pages. May not save anyone. Might save someone.

I mentioned a book here--was it KK's mom? No, someone else's, right on this thread--last year. "Who's The Real Man Behind The Screen?" by...damn, can't pull the name from my brain-pan. Diana something. Available on Amazon and NookPress, at least. It's an eye-opener. Get it for her, also available in print.

Hitch

[Blossom]

What is Tineye? I want him gone. I'll look for the book thanks.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I am dealing with a variant of that elsewhere. Incompatible open source licenses which won't permit code intended to be reused because it has a different license than the project that might use it make my irony meter peg offscale.

Not really. The point of the GPL is that you very specifically want copyleft.
Open-source is not just about letting other people use code -- it's also about politically controlling what they can do with it.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The code hasn't diverged that much. Both will still handle MS Office files, which is the normal reason they get picked.

There is a bit more to it, I think, than just "does it open MS Office files".

LibreOffice has more developers and a bigger active community, so it gets developed (and bugfixed) faster.
LibreOffice has better support for importing MS Office formats, and actually supports saving to MS Office formats.
They also got rolling with Coverity and apparently spent quite some time systematically fixing every bug it reported.
IME LibreOffice starts much faster and runs more smoothly.

So yeah, the code has diverged enough to be a meaningfully different product. Just because it is a HUGE project based on the same codebase and hasn't changed enough to be completely unrecognizable, doesn't mean it hasn't changed.

I run Libre Office under Windows and Linux on the desktop. On Android, I run Open Office, because there's an actual working port. Libre Office is still in early alpha state on Android.

Hmm, well, I guess that is actually a good point.

[ApK]

At some point, after using both for a while, I switched from OO to LO, and stayed there. I really can't remember why, but I think eschwartz probably hit on some of the reasons.
(Like many things I can't find permanent space for in my brain, I only remember that I had a good reason at the time, not the details of what those reasons were.)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Not really. The point of the GPL is that you very specifically want copyleft.
Open-source is not just about letting other people use code -- it's also about politically controlling what they can do with it.

The Free Software Foundation is a political movement these days. If I did anything I'd release as open source, I would not apply the GPL to it. I'd use something like a BSD or MIT license.

I gave up on the GPL when GPL v2 and GPL v3 were incompatible with each other. Should opportunity permit, I'll be delighted to tell Richard M. Stallman "Congratulations. You are now part of the problem.", and ostentatiously walk away in disgust.

There is a bit more to it, I think, than just "does it open MS Office files".

How much more depends on who you are and what you do.

LibreOffice has more developers and a bigger active community, so it gets developed (and bugfixed) faster.
LibreOffice has better support for importing MS Office formats, and actually supports saving to MS Office formats.

OO does too, the last I looked. The sticky point for folks I knew was compatibility with MS Word's Track Changes feature, as they were writers whose editors expected to get Word docs as submissions and used Track Changes for line edits. I know a couple who would be perfectly happy with LO or OO, but kept Honest to God Word around specifically to be sure they wuld be compatible with the editor.

They also got rolling with Coverity and apparently spent quite some time systematically fixing every bug it reported.
IME LibreOffice starts much faster and runs more smoothly.

I run it here, and intend to continue. I began back before Oracle turned the code base over the the Apache foundation, because I didn't trust Oracle's long term intentions.

So yeah, the code has diverged enough to be a meaningfully different product. Just because it is a HUGE project based on the same codebase and hasn't changed enough to be completely unrecognizable, doesn't mean it hasn't changed.

My point was only that if all you wanted was something you could use instead of MS Office to read and write Office files, either would do.

Hmm, well, I guess that is actually a good point.

I'll be delighted if LO reaches the point of having a comparable Android port. There's an Android LO viewer app out there, with experimental editing support, but it's still what I'd call alpha code.

The OO port actually works, but you better have over 300MB of free app storage to install it.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ApK

At some point, after using both for a while, I switched from OO to LO, and stayed there. I really can't remember why, but I think eschwartz probably hit on some of the reasons.
(Like many things I can't find permanent space for in my brain, I only remember that I had a good reason at the time, not the details of what those reasons were.)

I switched for the same reason the LO fork was created in the first place. I didn't trust Oracle's longer term intentions for OO. I just wish they'd turned it over to the Apache Foundation far earlier, so the fork wouldn't have occurred.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't even try to fix stupid. I just do my best to avoid it.

I had a conversation with an old friend a while on the issue. She said "The problem is, we're smart, and we surround ourselves with people who are also smart. It can be hard to comprehend that some people simply aren't smart." She was quite right.
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Dennis

One time I got asked how I got so smart and why does it sometimes take me 10 minutes to answer her questions.
Yes that was one question.
The quick answer to that was I try to surround myself with people smarter than me.
And on the 10 minutes because I have to find the answer.

Oh and in an embarrassing situation, I learned that physics is math based.
I told a physics professor that I didn't think he could help me with an algebra problem.
Oh yes, he shared that goof with the entire math and science departments.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

One time I got asked how I got so smart and why does it sometimes take me 10 minutes to answer her questions.
Yes that was one question.
The quick answer to that was I try to surround myself with people smarter than me.
And on the 10 minutes because I have to find the answer.

I get occasional rolled eyes because it takes a bit for me to answer a question. It's not a matter of finding the answer. It's a matter of giving the background so the person will understand the answer. I usually don't know how much the questioner knows about the topic, and err on the side of assuming not much.

Oh and in an embarrassing situation, I learned that physics is math based.
I told a physics professor that I didn't think he could help me with an algebra problem.
Oh yes, he shared that goof with the entire math and science departments.

I don't recall ever not knowing Physics was math based. I'd love to know how you managed to miss it.

I got accosted on my block a while back by a tween boy and girl with an interesting question: My choices were English, Math, and Science. Which two would I pick as musts to know?

I said "That's easy. English and math. Whatever you wind up doing, you'll be working with other people, and need to communicate at a high level verbally and in writing. So you must speak, read, and write English very well.

And math is a requirement for science. If you have math, you'll understand science. If you don't have math, you won't understand science. Every science uses math somewhere, even if it's something like Sociology where the math is statistics."

The girl said to the boy "You see? I told you!" I was tickled at having the conversation. I felt more optimistic about current kids as a result.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Blossom

What is Tineye? I want him gone. I'll look for the book thanks.

Tineye is a reverse image search service. Feed it an image, and it will try to identify where it came from.

See https://www.tineye.com/
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Dennis

[ApK]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Tineye is a reverse image search service. Feed it an image, and it will try to identify where it came from.

See https://www.tineye.com/
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Dennis

The logic here being if faux-prince charming used a fake profile photo from the GQ site, this will find it as proof of deception?

"You caught me," he said. "I'm really a GQ model."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ApK

The logic here being if faux-prince charming used a fake profile photo from the GQ site, this will find it as proof of deception?

"You caught me," he said. "I'm really a GQ model."

More that the source picture, won't match any of the details of the fake profile.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I get occasional rolled eyes because it takes a bit for me to answer a question. It's not a matter of finding the answer. It's a matter of giving the background so the person will understand the answer. I usually don't know how much the questioner knows about the topic, and err on the side of assuming not much.


I don't recall ever not knowing Physics was math based. I'd love to know how you managed to miss it.

I got accosted on my block a while back by a tween boy and girl with an interesting question: My choices were English, Math, and Science. Which two would I pick as musts to know?

I said "That's easy. English and math. Whatever you wind up doing, you'll be working with other people, and need to communicate at a high level verbally and in writing. So you must speak, read, and write English very well.

And math is a requirement for science. If you have math, you'll understand science. If you don't have math, you won't understand science. Every science uses math somewhere, even if it's something like Sociology where the math is statistics."

The girl said to the boy "You see? I told you!" I was tickled at having the conversation. I felt more optimistic about current kids as a result.
______
Dennis

I tend to err on the side of giving background too.
Funniest one I ever got into was when I needed to reinstall a game on a computer.
The couple had been playing this game during a lightning storm.
Their kids said we can fix this. We are computer experts.
Well when it wasn't done in 10 minutes, the guy called his neighbor who really was an expert (taught computers and computer repair at the college). Neighbor said well I could fix it but my rate is $75 an hour but if you call Cindy, she is only $25 an hour.
I went over and the guy made his grown kids get away from his computer.
I started with the basics. Scan for errors. His kids are all what are you doing to dad's computer? Are you sure you know what you are doing and assorted other insulting questions. I told the dad well since your kids don't trust me I can leave. He ran his kids out of that room.
Then he asked politely what are you doing? I explained that I was looking for errors.
Got that all done, then reinstalled the program and put the icon on the desktop so they could find it easily.
He asked his kids why hadn't they put the icon there. They had to admit they didn't know how.

Oh and on physics, I don't think they offered it at my high school.
I figured it was like chemistry.

Off topic but on things I didn't know: I didn't know Liberace was gay until I read Behind the Candelabra. I just thought he was flamboyant.

[wodin]

I keep repeating myself, sorry 'bout dat.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I get occasional rolled eyes because it takes a bit for me to answer a question. It's not a matter of finding the answer. It's a matter of giving the background so the person will understand the answer. I usually don't know how much the questioner knows about the topic, and err on the side of assuming not much...
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Dennis

There is no question that I can't answer.

Spoiler:

The caveat is that I don't guarantee my answers to be correct.

Spoiler:

And NO!! is an answer,

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

There is no question that I can't answer.

Spoiler:

The caveat is that I don't guarantee my answers to be correct.

Spoiler:

And NO!! is an answer,

People periodically preface questions to me with "May I ask you a question?" This is a signal the topic might be sensitive and they aren't sure how I'll react. My answer is "Sure. If I know the answer, I'll say so and tell you what it is. If I don't know the answer, I'll say so, and suggest how we might able to find out. If I know the answer but don't want to tell you, I'll say so and say why. But I won't get upset at getting asked. Ask away."
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Dennis