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According to TSA, the administration has concluded that non-use of the full watch list does not constitute a security vulnerability; however, TSA did not explain the basis for this determination. Also, DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties emphasized that there is a strong argument against increasing the number of watch list records TSA uses to prescreen passengers. Specifically, the office . . . noted that an expansion of the No Fly and Selectee lists could even alert a greater number of individuals to their watch list status, compromising security rather than advancing it.

It's a bit of a stretch to stay that implementing that functionality would be rewriting the OS. Calling toolbarWindow.setZValue( Z_FRONT ); isn't a bloat-enhancing idea.

GIMP is a graphics editor, not a window manager; and it sticks to what it knows, which is editing graphics. If you want your windows managed differently, use a different window manager.

Why should I have to change my window manager because of one program that behaves backwards? I like metacity, and like you said, GIMP is a graphics editor, not a window manager. Dictating that users should change their entire workflow/window manager because of a graphics editor is silly to me.

Check out GIMP's brainstorm site for the UI redesign every other suggestion people make is for a more sensible window handling. I don't think think should throw out the baby with the bathwater and go to MDI, but they could at least make an attempt to resolve what's been the largest complaint about the program.

There's a nice article about this on RoughlyDrafted: Daniel Lyons: Fake Steve Jobs and the SCO Shill Who Hated Linux

It is fairly obvious that if Daniel Lyons suddenly professes a love for Linux, the only reason is to attract more pageviews. Using his alter ego "Fake steve jobs" he still likes to call Linux users "freetards" as much as ever.

Anyway, his articles (written as "Fake" Steve Jobs) about the music industry are still very entertaining and spot-on: The music industry nobs have finally figured out [Apple is] doing. But with regards to Linux or anything even remotely touching free software, I'd mostly ignore his comments.

This makes this possible.

Truth can be stranger than speculation :)

The concept of a tradeoff between transmissibility and virulence is not universally accepted for influenza, due to the ability of carriers to transmit asymptomatically, as I mentioned in another post. Here is a good explanation of the reasons.

He's probably better known these days as the guy who writes the "Fake Steve Jobs" blog. He wrote it anonymously for more than a year, picking up a not-inconsiderable audience (including both the real Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), until his identity was uncovered this past summer. Forbes rolled writing FSJ into his portfolio, and he has a Fake Steve book coming out this month.

This isn't the first time Verizon's billing has screwed their customers. Check out this blog with audio of several phone calls where numerous accounts people and managers are completely unable to understand that 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents are, in fact, different quantities. This was also previously posted on Slashdot

There is not one recorded/public example of someone breaking out of the isolation of a virtual environment! I dare someone to demonstrate otherwise, and I will eat my words.

How do those words taste?.

From the link: "It could allow a malicious hacker to sidestep the virtual machine and exploit the underlying operating system.".

Anyway I think that you do make a point. Exploiting the underlying OS isn't as much as exploiting the guest OS in the virtual instance. Interesting stuff like Blue Pill (which is hotly debated in security circles ATM), poses unique risks to virtual environments.

Still, I would say Theo is dead on. Virtualization makes a lot of sense, but that doesn't mean you should assume you gain anything from a security perspective. Think of it this way. Every layer of complexity in your environment adds another attack vector... Virtualizing an operating system provides an additional complexity over running the same operating system native. Makes sense to me that there would be additional security concerns. Even Intel VT itself has been proposed as a source of potential security concern.

No, things haven't changed that much. Do a little searching and you dig up all of those great ads for cigarettes that have "Doctors recommend Camel cigarettes" and "Good for your 'T Zone'" bylines. Go back further and you find that radium will cure what ails you even when scientists already knew it caused illness. The case of New Jersey vs Radium Corp (and the slap on the wrist they got even when internal documents and practices showed they knew it was toxic) really stands out.

This comet orbits between 2.2 and 5.2 AU and it's last closest approach to the Sun was in May, 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17P/Holmes. An AU is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Comet crusts, the dark stuff that is left over after the ice sublimates, are thought to conduct heat slowly. One theory on why we see outbursts as comets move away from the Sun, as this one is doing, is that the warming pulse from the closest approach takes time to sink down to a reservior of carbon monoxide gas which then sublimate internally and blows off fairly large chunks of the comet. Another theory is that the same thermal pulse reaches a reservior of amorphous water ice, which is more common in space than crystalline ice and thus might be present in comets since their formation. When amorphous ice is warmed, it will become crystalline and release energy because the ordered state of crystaline ice is a lower energy state. This can lead to a chain reaction of further crystallization and energy release that could lead to enough warming to cause sublimation in the interior and then do the same kind of thing as in the carbon monoxide scenario.
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Get your power from the Sun for what you already pay now: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

Do we get the significance of that? The list is of names, not individuals. Remember Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy's little problem with the list?. Or how about this vicious 4 year old terrorist?

God help you if your name is John Smith, but it's probably even worse if your name is Mohammed or a variant of it. Oh, wait a second; most Islamic men's legal birth name is Mohammed.

If you want to fly without hinderance, you should probably just go ahead and change your legal name to your social security number, as it's the only way you're likely to get a unique one.

If I understand what you are saying, then it is already possible (minus managing maximized windows). In fact, I submitted a description of my setup, which is very similar, here.

One thing to add, after I submitted that I discovered the window hint setting in the preferences (file -> preferences -> window management). If you set the main dock and the other docks to "utility" then they will usually be kept above the images and will not appear in the taskbar. (I have only tried this in xfce, I don't know if it works in windows. I'd be interested in knowing, though, so please reply if you test it)

I suggest posting some of your ideas here. They already have some analysis up on the first submissions. It seems like they are open to just about any new idea, but they are generally looking for a consensus among submissions. A lot of people complaining about toolbox clutter, for example, has prompted them to look into alternative ways of organizing it. I noticed a few people suggested a Blender-like gui, but I think that is pretty unlikely to be adopted. They might take some aspects from it, though.

I suggest posting some of your ideas here. They already have some analysis up on the first submissions. It seems like they are open to just about any new idea, but they are generally looking for a consensus among submissions. A lot of people complaining about toolbox clutter, for example, has prompted them to look into alternative ways of organizing it. I noticed a few people suggested a Blender-like gui, but I think that is pretty unlikely to be adopted. They might take some aspects from it, though.

If you have actual ideas for the GIMP UI go mention them at http://gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com/ rather then just complaining here. They are aware the UI is generally disliked, they just need the best ideas of how to change it.
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Did the Ancient Egyptians play stone, papyrus, scimitar?
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> The United States has been slipping on the technology front, and this is another outwardly visible sign of that.

          No, it is not. What this is is an example of China catching up to our technology, not that we are falling behind. The US is still far ahead of China in space technology.

http://mrsquid.blogspot.com/

The GMail Team has finally officially commented on the addition of IMAP to GMail on the public About GMail "What's New" page.

Also, the Official Gmail Blog has more information on the Gmail IMAP implementation and how it works across devices.

The GMail Team has finally officially commented on the addition of IMAP to GMail on the public About GMail "What's New" page.

Also, the Official Gmail Blog has more information on the Gmail IMAP implementation and how it works across devices.

I'll eventually have to use Vista for gaming purposes,

They recently sped it up:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-gmail-storage-coming-for-all.html

Yes, it is related. Lotus Notes apparently uses the same port as some P2P applications, and Comcast is mistaking it for P2P traffic and playing the same game with RST frames:

http://kkanarski.blogspot.com/2007/09/comcast-filtering-lotus-notes-update.html

Dunno about your VPN sessions, though.

In short, if I were on Comcast's Internet service, I would be paying them to deliver network packets, that's all. At best, Comcast has engaged in an egregious breach of contract by deliberately interfering with my ability to get packets from A to B. At worst, they are guilty of deliberately and secretly impersonating someone they're not, and if I'm not mistaken, that's a crime. They might be lucky if they can get out of this with just a class action lawsuit.

I wonder if this is why they have terminated my Internet account. And other's I've spoken to in my area and out of state. Some have run P2P and other's haven't. But it sounds like more and more may have been running P2P when they were terminated for "using the Internet too much".

And no, there was no limit. In fact the CSR said they had no service limits in the residential or business plan (I upgraded to business earlier this year). In fact the advertisement even said "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee". What on earth does unlimited use really mean to these guys?

Sure makes you wonder if this is the motivation for terminating people's access.

synthespian (563437) got the picture right. For those of you who love Brazilian music, here is a site where you can download rare and unprocurable music ripped from collector's original records. Ah, there is even .flac versions! http://loronix.blogspot.com/

There was a report showing that Comcast was also interfering with Lotus Notes traffic.

Which begs the question, why don't people use words and language the ways in which they were intended? I say we decimate the lot!

Okay, I'm just trying to make a point here, of course. I'm not saying I entirely disagree with you, but we'll forever fight uphill battles if we hold too tightly to original Latin, and so forth. ;)

$0.0393CND or 3.93c

arghhhh I made the same mistake as Verizon

The official Google Lat Lon blog gives some more info, but also interesting are the Google Earth Blog showing us how to overlay the smoke plumes in Google Earth using MODIS and GOES data and here's more and even a time animation which illustrates the spread of the fire.

>> Yep; Gentoo is a distribution that makes no sense at all. Mostly a whole bunch of people
>> who think burning CPU time to compile stuff, verses stuff compiled by someone else, is
>> actually going to benefit them somehow.
> You don't think so?

I know so; no, it doesn't matter.

> So, compiling specifically for my laptop, my P4 desktop and my P3 router doesn't matter?

No, it does not matter. Other factors are going to constrain the performance of any commodity hardware before the minor (and often theoretical) CPU specific optimizations will be able to present themselves. On a modern desktop or router the ~1-3% performance bump you might get isn't even going to be noticeable and certain isn't pragmatically worth the effort of having to install an entire development environment (now there is a real loss; empty filesystems are faster then ones with more stuff in them).

> My applications contain support for ONLY what I require.

And the catalytic converter on my car is orange, and the one on my neighbors car is blue.

The sophisticated virtual memory logic in any current OS makes the "don't link to that library to save me memory" argument bogus, and it has been for quite some time. This is the same as people looking at ps output of an app like evolution and seeing 196Mb and going "OMG! What a bloated cow! This thing should be modular!". Only Evolution, and GNOME, is highly modular and that size in ps doesn't mean anything like you've actually 'lost' anywhere close to 196Mb by running evolution.

http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html

Most "bloatware" is only bloated between the viewers ears.

I very much enjoyed reading your blog entry about your info-pad idea. Here's my own idea, worth what you just paid for it: How about a low-tech device that operates as snazzy e-book reader on-the-cheap? E-book readers like Sony's crud are too expensive (though Sony's problem is stupid marketing - not their e-book price). They take cheap e-ink that could be used to paint huge signs, and they cover them with low-yield expensive thin-film transistors. It's a bastardized hybrid, like mating a man and an ape. Instead what if we made a very nice scrolling page device that opened like an old-fashioned window blind? As you pull out the page, the e-ink would run along a thin long write-head in the scroll that would write the image onto the page. If you focused on making the device a pleasure to play with just to open and close, it might sell well if coupled with free books and a reasonable e-book site. If you could get it to display color, then you could also use it as a portable photo album, which would just be too cool for words.

As in, the fact that they aren't revealing them means that they aren't anything to write home about. Refresh rates are going to keep this technology confined to ebook readers and advertising posters. I want stuff like this.

George Deutch is his name, here is a brief comment on his resignation.

With all the crap we customers are putting up with (constant rate increases, lousy service, high prices, lack of privacy, ridiculous usage filtering), the only way Comcrap is going to lose customers is if there is some sort of competition.

Currently, they have, essentially, a monopoly in most areas. In my neighborhood, DSL only became available recently and really only through SBC (hiding behind the AT&T name). The "service" is an 1/8th of the speed for barely any less monthly rate.

Believe me, if there was any way to get decent internet without paying Comcrap for it, I'd be doing it. And I'm sure a LOT of other folks would, too.

Believe me, I feel your pain.

I'm one of those fortunate to finally be free of Comcast. DSL so far has been excellent. I haven't noticed much change in my service but you're right. We need competition. This is why in my area I'm pushing for Utopia fiber to the home. I've also been speaking with Politicians. Both local and Federal explaining my story with what happened with Comcast.

I believe it's important the Government create an infrastructure that anyone (yes, even the evil Comcast) can join and provide services through. It's no different than when the Government was running power lines when electricity became available. I'm learning that power companies wouldn't run power to everyone so the Government did it. I'm trying to learn more but If true sets a precedent here.

The only way this will work is if we stop expecting private industry to do it for us. Otherwise we'd still be waiting to get rid of our out houses :-)

Thanks for the update on all that. It's definitely NOT my area of expertise, but I was relaying my feelings from thirty years ago compared to what I read now. I'm glad to hear so much is coming up soon.

I never really left, though my posting is sometimes more than others. I moved my journal off of Slashdot, so you won't see me post to it often. The sex stuff went on my AFF blog, where it probably belonged in the first place. I think the sexy Slash journal cost me that job with the Thai LinuxTLE team (though in retrospect, I'm glad, since FLOSS in Thailand is dead now). The Linux stuff went onto my Ubuntu blog, and the weightlifting stuff went on another Blogspot blog.

Still in Asia, and about to hit eight years here. Some days are good. Korea (3/12 years now) sucks compared to Thailand, but I don't know how I'd live with less than 10Mb/s to the house if I left here. (I was just offered fiber with 100Mb/s for 30K won = US$35).

Cheers

Thanks for the update on all that. It's definitely NOT my area of expertise, but I was relaying my feelings from thirty years ago compared to what I read now. I'm glad to hear so much is coming up soon.

I never really left, though my posting is sometimes more than others. I moved my journal off of Slashdot, so you won't see me post to it often. The sex stuff went on my AFF blog, where it probably belonged in the first place. I think the sexy Slash journal cost me that job with the Thai LinuxTLE team (though in retrospect, I'm glad, since FLOSS in Thailand is dead now). The Linux stuff went onto my Ubuntu blog, and the weightlifting stuff went on another Blogspot blog.

Still in Asia, and about to hit eight years here. Some days are good. Korea (3/12 years now) sucks compared to Thailand, but I don't know how I'd live with less than 10Mb/s to the house if I left here. (I was just offered fiber with 100Mb/s for 30K won = US$35).

Cheers

The think about fuel for aviation is that you realy do need high energy density in both volume and mass. Hydrogen is a good fuel in terms of energy per unit mass, but it is difficult to get teh volume down. In current engine designs you want to watch the flash point as well as low temperature behavior. This is a big question alternative fuels. Developing alternatives is considered to be a military necessity owing to potential supply disruptions. This group is looking at synthetic fuel production form a mix of coal and biomass.
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Soar away from rising prices with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html

Have you seen the rumour that Fake Steve is stirring up?
Leading PC maker (HP?) begging to become OS X licensee because of anger with Vista.

Agreed. And this isn't something new. The two major road data providers, TomTom and Tele Atlas, already have their "crowdsourcing" tools to improve the maps of their GPS Nav systems (and any other other of their customers, such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!). See MapShare and MapInsight, their official tools. Of course, OpenStreetMap is could be considered another pertinent project bridging GPS and crowdsourcing. Oh, and by the way, you have real-time traffic in Google Earth too you know. And we discussed p2p networks for road traffic some time ago.

And now, totally off-topic, I would have liked /. to discuss the last Microsoft Virtual Earth release this week. It's really major. My story submission about it was rejected. There's even a Google SketchUp competitor in there and many features we won't see anytime soon on Google Maps / Google Earth (and other few worthy competitors).

Please take a good look at http://www.wdef.com/node/5296 , http://network.bestfriends.org/newjersey/news/15290.html , or http://shootingmessengers.blogspot.com/2007/05/black-football-players-stick-up-for-dog.html

The above poster made me laugh

I'd say most of the problem was MS development process, which seems totally disorganised.
According to one of the developers working on the Vista shutdown dialog a team of 43 people were working on the feature for a year without ever getting close to finishing it:

http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

Rats have morals. Is that proof enough that morals have nothing to do with religioh?

http://csharris.blogspot.com/2007/06/moral-superiority-of-rats.html

Actually, to be completly accurate, it is empathy that rats have, but I don't think it is difficult to see the connection between empathy and morals.

Turns out these fonts need a little leg work to get hold of, if you aren't using Vista. This page explains how to get hold of them 'legally':

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/03/download-windows-vista-fonts-legally.html

Since the downloads are in .exe format, you will need to use something like Wine or Crossover, if you don't have access to a Windows PC.

You could just disable it temporarily on that one port.

http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-with-linux-iptables.html

That was linked from the first result (a Digg article) for "iptables DROP RST".

Source quench is an ICMP message, similar to destination unreachable but less severe. It's a way for a host to tell another host (or router) that it's sending data too fast for it to process and should back off. It was an early attempt at preemptive traffic control to throttle back before something has to start dropping packets.

There's not a whole lot of equipment that sends them, but pretty much every OS I've come across honors the messages to some extent. I don't know if the cheap NAT routers that many people use pass them along or not, though NAT in general tends to be fairly broken when it comes to ICMP.

If a man in the middle were to spoof ICMP source quench packets that looked like they came from either of the p2p nodes that were communicating, the effect would be that they would start sending data more slowly to each other. The connection would still be open, they just wouldn't transmit as fast as they could.

After reading the article it became clear that what Comcast is doing is much more evil. They're setting RST flags on packets (or maybe spoofing new packets in the right segment range with it set), which causes the entire connection to abort rather than just be slowed down. It could cause a lot of grief if their filter misidentifies something as p2p and starts shutting down the connections, as apparently happens to Lotus Notes traffic.

That last link has some good packet dumps of it happening.

I've posted this before, but it's pertinent and bears repeating, it's not just P2P traffic that Comcast is filtering. A sysadmin I know has been blogging on Comcast filtering corporate e-mail traffic as well.

http://kkanarski.blogspot.com/2007/09/comcast-filtering-lotus-notes-update.html

Let's ignore for now the fact that you seem to have a serious conceptual misunderstanding of what evolution is and just deal with your computer example. The computer game of life is a very good example of starting with a random pattern, applying a few simple rules, and ending up with objects that behave in non-random ways. so, yes, order can emerge from disorder in computers, just like it does in biological systems.

http://mrsquid.blogspot.com/

I do not just think that. And yes, for the moment this is not going to happen in (most of) America.

muslims inside england use terror to avoid evolution in biology lessons :
http://forums.muslimvillage.net/index.php?showtopic=37975

in france:
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/02/france-muslim-anti-evolutionist.html

This is in Turkey, the most moderate muslim nation existing (where both islamists and atheists massacre eachother, creating a balance) :
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17book.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

If you thought Christians are trouble when it concerns evolution, you're in for a rude awakening. Christians don't kill you. Don't threaten you. And they don't gang up on your family just because you don't "respect" creationism. Muslims do.

But you're cowards, so simply lamenting that the universities of ankara or teheran or baghdad for example preaches creationism, you just don't do. Because doing it, might get you actually hurt. Ok brave guy, get your facts straight: Ankara is in Turkey, a secular country where religion and state are separate. Women with Islamic head garb are not allowed into universities, let alone preach creationism at institutions of higher learning. Until we (americans) moved in, Baghdad was in a secular country, with a definite anti-religion bent. It's only because we f**ked it up that worthless religious leaders found the ability (and the arms and the encouragement) to kill people who do not think like them. Read this for a heartfelt, first-person account of what it was like before and after americans moved in. Tehran is a mess where creationism is indeed taught in universities. True secularism is probably a very foreign concept to most Americans, as the usual middle-class American experience is to belong to a church or synagogue from a very early age. That kind of education colors your thinking (and non-thinking) for life. But you just wanted to engage in bashing muslims. Too bad your xenophobia was coupled with ignorance (not very surprising). You picked 3 examples, and 2 were outright wrong. I'm sure you'll try your muslim-bashing again, in another thread. Better luck next time!

Okay, you're right. But even the product page didn't make it especially clear, IMHO.

I'm finally convinced by comments from the developers on Ari's blog, wherein they indicate that they had to sacrifice the internal card and full-sized SD slot due to the smaller form factor. It's a bit of a disappointment, but I don't think the n810 is sufficiently improved to warrant buying to replace my n800; seems it may simply be intended as an "alternate design" n800.