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User: kbahey

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  1. Why is systemd bad? on GSOC Project Works To Emulate Systemd For OpenBSD · · Score: 1

    Why is systemd bad?

    The issues posed by adopting systemd to various distros are listed on the site: Boycott systemd.

    Spread it around so people know ...

    Mod this up!

  2. Did it a long time ago ... on The Frustrations of Supporting Users In Remote Offices · · Score: 1

    I had to deal with a remote customer whose person on site does not speak English, by getting him to enter UNIX shell commands. His native language (and mine) was Arabic.

    What I did was to tell him what Arabic key to press so that the English equivalent would be the one sent to the shell.

    We were lucky that his Arabic keyboard layout was the same as mine. That was not a given in those days (Late 80s, early 90s), but we lucked out.

    He was describing to me the output in English (vertical bar, vertical bar with a circle at the bottom, ...etc).

    It worked out and we solved the problem in less than an hour.

  3. They store credit card data with the transaction on Banks Report Credit Card Breach At Home Depot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Home Depot stores credit cards with the transactions.

    I know this because when you go to return something I bought, they don't ask you for the credit card, and sort of highlight that this is a convenience that is unique to Home Depot.

    I complained more than once to the cashiers about storing credit card numbers (it is not their fault, it is management and IT). The cashiers would say: "Don't worry, we don't have access to it!"

    My response was: it is not you whom I am worried about.

    Now we know that storing credit cards is a bad idea, and why ...

  4. Typing this on a recliner on Ask Slashdot: What Recliner For a Software Developer? · · Score: 1

    I work from home, and have been using a recliner as my only "desk" for about 6 years and have the following to share ...

    - My recliner is a La-Z-Boy. Can't remember the model since it is has been many years, but it is not something fancy. I tried leather for a little while, but it can be sweaty and sensitive to even your finger nails. So I have been using fabric.

    - If you recliner has a wall behind it, then move it away from the wall a bit so it can recline back.

    - Your LEGS (calves and feet) will feel better on a recliner.

    - Use a pillow or something to support your NECK. It will feel better.

    - Watch for your BACK. Put a stiff-ish wide pillow below you if you feel like you bottom is sinking in the chair. Also, put another stiff-ish wide pillow behind your lower back. Experiment with different pillows until you find the right combination.

    - Avoid any FANCY back support that curves your spine too much. These are the most common ones on the market in my experience. This includes the wire frame lumbar support mesh thingies (they aerate well, but will hurt your back because of too much spine curvature), or those cylinder shaped hard pillows.

    - Use a LAPDESK (those foam filled sacks with a vinyl covered plywood surface).

    - Get a table that is level with the arm rests beside you so you can easily sip your beverage of choice, and have some handy items too (pens, paper, mobile phone, ...etc.)

    - You will be absorbed in whatever you are doing, so interaction with the wife and kids will be mostly "huh? what did you say?" or "later, I am focusing on something else here" ... Not quality time ...

  5. How timely ... on Ask Slashdot: Life Beyond the WRT54G Series? · · Score: 1

    How timely. I am doing a presentation at the local LUG (KWLUG) on OpenWRT in a couple of days.

    There are various options out there that are supported by OpenWRT.

    In this day and age, you want the most memory and flash that you can get, gigabit ethernet, Wirless N dual band (2.4GHz and 5GHz), as well as USB.

    I use The D-Link DIR-835, which has 128MB RAM, 16MB flash (the most memory and flash that you can get for a reasonable price) and all the above features . It goes for ~ $80 in Canada.

    There are other options that support most of the above, but with a bit less RAM or flash sometimes, but perhaps 2 port USB, ...etc.

    They are:

    TP-Link WDR-4300 ~ $70
    TP-Link TL-WDR3600 ~ $55
    TP-Link TL-WR1043ND ~ $50

    All of the above are supported on OpenWRT development snapshots (soon to be a stable release, Barrier Breaker).

  6. Re:Why the Australians? on Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 · · Score: 1

    For AF447, wreckage was spotted 2 days after the plane went missing, and bodies of passangers were recovered 4 days after that. That gave a rough area to search for the black boxes.

    Not a single piece of wreckage from MH370 was found to give a clue on roughly where it went down.

    The area is vast, so it is a mind boggling task.

  7. Berserkers on Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of the Berserkers in Viking stories, who went into battle and fought in a trance like frenzied state.

  8. Re:Tiny Tiny RSS on Google Reader: One Year Later · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Another Tiny Tiny RSS user here. I run it on the home server, and never looked back.

  9. Wrong reason ... on Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Web Language That's Long-Lived, and Not Too Buzzy? · · Score: 1

    I am no fan of Perl, but if you have an application that is mission critical, has lots of legacy code, and just works, then you do not go about rewriting it just because there is some dislike for the language.

    If it was something related, such as difficulty of finding suitable candidates for developer positions, then I would understand. But just because "perl is ossifying" does not cut it as a valid reason.

  10. Dedicated camera button? on Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone' · · Score: 1

    There's a dedicated physical button on the side of the phone that will turn it on and put it into camera mode when pressed.

    What?

    I've had that since 2013 on my Sony Xperia ZL.
    And even before that on the Sony Xperia Arc.
    And even before that on the Sony Xperia X10 since 2011.

  11. Market share predicted to be 0.3% by 2018 on Amazon's Android Appstore Coming To BlackBerry · · Score: 1

    Blackberry's market share is predicted to fall to 0.3% by 2018. And they will ship 50% less handsets this year than the past.

    Here is the link.

  12. Re:Holy crap! on Docker 1.0 Released · · Score: 1

    The proper way is to install gdebi:

    sudo aptitude install gdebi

    Then, you install a downloaded .deb using gdebi:

    sudo gdebi packagefile.deb

    Gdebi will search for dependencies for that .deb and install them for you automatically.

  13. I had tonsillectomy on General Anesthesia Exposure In Infancy Causes Long-Term Memory Deficits · · Score: 1

    Reverse anecdote ...

    I had tonsillectomy as well, when I was around 5. Yes, in the 1960s it was very common.

    But never suffered from memory loss. On the contrary, I was always told I had good memory.

    No problem with muscle coordination too

  14. Toronto's Pearson on Free Wi-Fi Coming To Atlanta's Airport · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile in the north, we have had Wifi for many years at Toronto's Pearson airport ...

  15. Re:I have seen this ... on On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google · · Score: 1

    But the point is, I am in Southern Ontario, and searching on just the restaurant's name does not get me Restaurantica results at all on the first page. And, it used to be that Restaurantica did show up by searching just the restaurant's name, in the first couple of results.

    Google has been "going local" for a while, showing you results in your area first. But this is the exact opposite.

  16. I have seen this ... on On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have seen this in a few sites I run. One is a business site, another is a special interest with specific demographics, and the third is a blog.

    It all started with Google shuffling their algorithms, with Panda then Pengiun.

    I saw traffic drop on all three sites. Some coninciding with Panda, and the other coninciding with Pengiun.

    One site was the top site for certain search terms for many long years. Not anymore. That site saw a 7.5X drop in pageviews per month traffic. Another site saw 3.5X drop, and the third was 2.5X.

    What is weird is that Google de-indexed one site because of "un-natural links". When I contacted them, I asked what the links are, so I can remove them. They never came back with any definitive information, and sent the same template email saying site de-indexed because of un-natural links. It took 3 or 4 tries, and then they reinstated the site back in the index. They never told me what the links are, and never explained why they de-listed the site nor why they reinstated it.

    Another thing of note: some sites no longer show up in Google searches. For example, here in Canada we have a restaurant review site called Restaurantica. It used to show up in the first few searches for restaurants in the area (Southern Ontario). Now, I don't see it at all on the front page. Seems Google decided that Trip Advisor and Urban Spoon are the authoratitive ones for restaurant, and Restaurantica is third class or something.

    I also noticed that the search quality for Google has gone downhill starting in 2011. Really stupid matching of terms, some partial strings even. I've never seen Google's search that bad before.

    They are for sure dumbing things down, a general trend in the industry in the name of "user experience" and such. You see this in Firefox with the dumbed down Australis, which requires Classic Theme Restorer to undo some of the damage.

    Sigh ...

  17. Re:Procedural generation anyone? on Game Industry Fights Rising Development Costs · · Score: 1

    Or, perhaps it is the generation that can't understand procedural [programming] that is the issue ...

    [/sarcasm]

  18. Credit Card payments on Why Mobile Wallets Are Doomed · · Score: 1

    This e-wallet stuff is not their main source of revenue.

    Square is advertising on TV about how one pays with a credit card, using the plain old magnetic strip, using a card reader that plugs into the mic socket of a mobile phone.

    Here is how it works.

    Also, they are opening an office in Kitchener, Ontario, within the Kitchener Waterloo technology hub.

  19. Evidence elsewhere does not support it ... on Norwegian Infectious Disease Specialists Have New Theory On HIV In Africa · · Score: 2

    Evidence elsewhere does not support this theory.

    Egypt for example, has one of the highest Schistosoma infections rates. Even its other name, Bilharzia, is after the guy who discovered it in Egypt in the mid 19th century (Theodor Bilharz).

    My own father died from complications of Schistosoma. This is because in the 40s and 50s, the treatment involved antimony injections, and they used to stand up patients in line, and inject them all with the same glass syringe one after the other. This caused Hepatitis C virus to spread, even before they diagnosed the virus.

    Back to the theory: Egypt has a very low AIDS incidence rate, so that seems to negate the finding.

    However, there are many species of Schistosoma, so there may be variations there. And this vaginal version is something I have never heard about before. So perhaps the species they found over there is the cause.

  20. Classic Theme Restorer on Mozilla Ditches Firefox's New-Tab Monetization Plans · · Score: 1

    Just install the Classic Theme Restorer extension. A bit of configuring and you have a better Firefox than either version 28 and Australis.

  21. Re:Sounds like my old comp-sci professor. on Erik Meijer: The Curse of the Excluded Middle · · Score: 1

    To be fair, APL was a wonderful language, and perfect so long as you didn't want to actually /do/ anything.

    I worked with a guy in the mid 1980s who used APL for everything. He came from the mainframe world, but had APL for MS-DOS on floppies. When he was contracted for writing an MS-DOS application in RM-COBOL, he used APL to write a full screen text editor so that he would not use edlin and such.

  22. Re:Is it going to break the API? on Firefox 29: Redesign · · Score: 2

    I've got 8GB on my machine, and every day or so I need to shut down Firefox to reclaim the memory it's been leaking. Firefox starts at around 300MB of RAM, and grows to 1GB if I let it.

    I had 4GB and upgraded to 8GB, and have 1200+ tabs open in 19 windows. Firefox is fast, and the whole laptop is smooth.

    Just install NoScript and don't enable Javascript for any but the sites you use more often. This way Flash ads will not play, and memory usage will be far less.

    And make sure you disable Firebug as well as YSlow if you have them.

  23. wrtbwmon on Ask Slashdot: Which Router Firmware For Bandwidth Management? · · Score: 1

    If you want to know how much each device uses by hour, day, month, then you need wrtbwmon.

    It is a simple shell script that uses iptables, and runs on OpenWRT just fine.

    wrtbwmon shows a graph for each device by MAC address. if you configure OpenWRT to use a fixed IP address per MAC address, then you see the device name that you assign on all graphs.

    The original is here. There is also this fork.

    I have modified it to run off of a USB memory stick, and store its data there as well. It does not use much storage, barely 85 to 100 kilobytes per day. So even an old 512MB USB stick should last for many years.

  24. Security agencies told the CRA on RCMP Arrest Canadian Teen For Heartbleed Exploit · · Score: 1

    According to the statement on the CRA web site, it was security agencies that told the CRA that 900 SINs were stolen:

    Regrettably, the CRA has been notified by the Government of Canada's lead security agencies of a malicious breach of taxpayer data that occurred over a six-hour period. Based on our analysis to date, Social Insurance Numbers (SIN) of approximately 900 taxpayers were removed from CRA systems by someone exploiting the Heartbleed vulnerability. We are currently going through the painstaking process of analyzing other fragments of data, some that may relate to businesses, that were also removed.

    So, are the security agencies monitoring traffic to government web sites, so that they are so specific? What else are they monitoring?

  25. Condy's words still fuel conspiracy theories on Double Take: Condoleezza Rice As Dropbox's Newest Board Member · · Score: 1

    Back in 2008 when Israel attacked Israel because of foolish Hezbollah misadventures, Condoleezza famously said:

    What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growingâ"the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East.

    Here is the source.

    To this day, the words "New Middle East" is believed by a vast majority over there as a USA conspiracy against Arabs/Muslims. When the 2011 revolution broke out, the first explanation by many was : "It is the USA conspiring against Mubarak, Egypt, Arabs, ...etc."

    Now both sides of the political divide in Egypt (pro-Military, pro-Muslim-Brotherhood) point to the other party as an accomplice or agent for that conspiracy.

    It is so powerful and pervasive .. no thanks to that ideologue of a Condy ...