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User: Nazlfrag

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Comments · 1,709

  1. Re:Yes and no. on Are AV False Positives Hurting You? · · Score: 1

    If only every virus scanner would identify the malware that is Windows.

  2. Picture books? on PHP 5 in Practice · · Score: 1

    So instead of pages of useless screenshots this book decided to go with content? What a gaping flaw! There are many books on PHP full of screenshots and little else if that's your thing. I see it as a bonus - if you want to see the screenshot you'll have to start doing some coding. Personally, I like PHP for a quick and dirty script, but would not recommend it for a project that was larger than around 3 lines of code.

  3. Re:Pedantry on Cosmic Rays and Global Warming · · Score: 1

    A correlation, say, between petrochemical and coal pollution and CO2 levels?

  4. Re:Simple spend $25mln for lobbying for Kyoto! on $25M Bounty Offered for Global Warming Fix · · Score: 1

    So the #1 greenhouse polluter (USA) and it's sycophant underling (Australia) refused to sign because infrastructure would be crippled. Why then did every other developed nation in the world sign up? Perhaps because they saw we have more to lose by sitting idle than we would by 'crippling' infrastructure. The vested interests of major corporations bribing, er I mean lobbying the US government had absolutely nothing to do with it, I'm sure. At least you didn't claim global warming is a myth.

  5. Re:All this talk... on Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War · · Score: 1

    Indeed, changing tapes halfway through a movie was never a big sell for Betamax either. Especially when, well you know...

  6. Re:Yes, better security... on One Laptop Per Child Security Spec Released · · Score: 0, Redundant

    To be fair, you can get porn on your mobile too, it just looks a lot like the porn you used to get on your C=64.

  7. Re:Change the name on Ogg Vorbis Gaining Industry Support · · Score: 1

    Yet Motion Pictures Expert Group 1 Layer 3 just rolls off the tongue.

  8. Re:That's easy on Want to Take On An Open/Unsolved Problem? · · Score: 1

    Where is the inherit evil in anarchy? Ever consider it might be the pinnacle of goodness?

  9. Re:Agreed.. but why? on Google Admits China Censorship Was Damaging · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well evil is in the eye of the beholder. To the Chinese regime, uncensored net access is evil. To 'do no evil' in China, they must agree to the Chinese governments definitions of evil and good. This of course goes against the principles of the founders of Google, but not against the principles of the Chinese regime. I'd say the Chinese people are far better off than they would be if all of Googles servers were blocked by the government. It seems they chose a lesser of two evils, which also allows unfiltered content from outside the Chinese servers.

  10. Re:18%? on At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies · · Score: 1

    This is a good point - like MAME keeping alive arcade games that haven't been produced for decades, Bittorrent lets me find obscure TV shows that never made it to DVD (Starcade springs to mind) as well as videos I haven't seen in a rental or DVD shop for decades (like Wargames and Buckaroo Banzai), not to mention the Creative Commons and other licenses for titles like Star Wreck: the Pirkinning. Not every Bittorrent download is hitting Hollywood in the hip pocket, and the convenience and extra features that come with most DVDs makes them still competitive as a medium.

  11. Re:Switching XP - Amiga on AmigaOS 4 · · Score: 1

    Would a 1 gig flash drive suffice?

  12. Re:Birthday attack on Two Snowflakes May Be Alike After All · · Score: 1

    Indeed. Take for example a game of global thermonuclear war.. we all know that the only winning move is not to play at all is 100% true.

  13. Re:The `threat' on Chinese Prof Cracks SHA-1 Data Encryption Scheme · · Score: 1

    Well with military bases in around 130 countries having hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed in them, constant interference in world affairs, continual invasions under the guise of freedom, a planetwide surveillance network and renewed plans for space-based weaponry, some would say Americas relevance in world affairs is already worrisome enough. Look at China as the Yin to your Yang, a balancing force that will work out for the benefit of the whole.

  14. Re:Sweet, sweet freedom! on Blizzard Hints At New StarCraft, Launches Burning Crusade · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yep, they certainly can suck you in. I still play FFXI and others in small doses, though I kicked the habit for months first. I was taking these games FAR too seriously. Sucks all the fun out of it really, like alcohol addiction.

  15. Re:Automatic tagging on The Need For A Tagging Standard · · Score: 1

    You got it in one. A standard is needed, one that appends a slashdot: or iloveponies: before the tag would enable coders to distinguish the meaning and context accurately based on the community it came from, and makes more sense than standardizing the input field.

  16. Slightly off topic.. on PCI SIG Releases PCIe 2.0 · · Score: 1

    Radio frequency bluetooth style bus architectures with decent range set up in a fashion to share resources with nearby devices creating mainframe style computers for all to use. This should be the new standard for bus architectures, whaddaya think?

  17. Political hypocracy on XXX Top Level Domain May Still See Use · · Score: 1

    US politicians are happy to have free speech when it comes to accepting large bribes.. ahem lobbyist donations, yet seem to forget about it when it comes to simple things like allowing the internet to self-regulate without huge messy bureaucratic nonsense with little social, ethical or technical merit. The responsibility is on parents to protect their kids, not some worldwide standards organization.

  18. Re:Better yet on Flying To the US? Pay In Cash · · Score: 1

    It's not 75 Euros is it? Which was the real cause of the invasion, ahem I mean 'War' in Iraq. Hang on, didn't a war used to need two to tango? I still can't remember where Iraq threatened American sovereignty.

  19. Re:Better yet on Flying To the US? Pay In Cash · · Score: 1

    American culture is definitaly more than starlets and harlots. Things I object to are the "allure of the Wild West ("Cowboys & Indians")" as glorifying genocide, "Dodge City" as glorifying brothels and casinos as well as mercenary bloodshed, "Boot Hill" as glorifying cold-blooded murderers, "railroads in the great westward expansion" mostly made by Chinese labour, who were persecuted and ridiculed after their great contribution to such a project. American culture stands tall as far as those who oppose the status quo and appeal to basic human rights goes. Unfortunately, the US as a whole hasn't been like that ever except in closed circles of discontents who never appeal to the majority. It's high time we stopped teaching our kids to kill the locals through the 'fun and games' of Cowboy vs. Indian. Or at least acknowledge the fact that the Cowboys were the criminals and crooks, and the Indians the noble lawful ones.

  20. Re:speaking of wiping data on Memories of a Media Card · · Score: 1

    I get what you're hinting at. The papers I referred you to are at least a decade old, and with new high precision drives the data is stored more accurately. The problem is, it is still stored in an analogue form and interpreted in digital form. This has not changed. As quoted elsewhere, a signal of 0 overwritten by a 1 ends up as signal voltage .95, yet a one overwritten by a one has signal voltage of 1.05. Modern densities overcome any overlap analysis, yet still fail on this basic analogue test. The data is recoverable precisely because it is an analogue signal of a digital medium. I too would like more modern references, but the fact that it is an established recovery method for hundreds of companies specializing in the field of data recovery is plenty enough for me. BTW my reference was from the solid state paper, not the magnetic media one.

  21. Re:Changing Formats on Do Syndicated Columnists Have a Future? · · Score: 1

    Crikeys success probably rests on their charging for a full edition, and using the funds to employ professional journalists. Their main benefit is to often cover stories weeks before traditional press, or the ones that they won't touch, and do so in an authoritave manner. To do this, a local subscriber base is needed to pay for professionalism, much like traditional press. A good paper needs a good editorial staff above all else, and you could get away with amateur journalists (students, bloggers etc.). If your editorial staff is professional and competent, your publication will generally be also. Before you try this, realise it needs an income stream to pay for experts in the field, otherwise you have just another blog. Crikeys annual turnover is in excess of a million dollars, thanks to paid subscriptions and advertising. They employ over a dozen professional journalists, and associated staff. To avoid these costs, try looking for disaffected journalists like the OP if you're starting up, but try to budget a couple hundred thousand for high quality editorial and public relations staff. No mean feat. Perhaps just set up a livejournal, and hope for the best.

  22. Changing Formats on Do Syndicated Columnists Have a Future? · · Score: 1

    Newspapers are dying out, but quality journalism will still be in high demand. An alternative to traditional print and blogs are publications like Crikey which mix the old with the new. They offer traditional newspaper articles in a daily email and website format. Crikey's only real problems are getting respect and recognition from the traditional industry, probably because of their numerous criticisms of it. Expect to see all major newspapers follow this lead, especially after Rupert Murdoch's endorsement of this plan. In short, as newspapers die out, their websites will become like Crikey and become the new home of professional journalism.

  23. Cost & Profit on Wal-Mart Is Pushing Compact Fluorescent Bulbs · · Score: 1

    Finally a win/win for the company, consumer and environment, unlike the usual win/screw you situation. Of course this is profitable for them, plus free publicity to boot. It is also profitable to everyone who buys them, they cost a little more at the counter but save a significant amount of your power bill and last longer. Everybody wins, yet Wal-Mart is evil for this? A strange world we live in.

  24. Re:speaking of wiping data on Memories of a Media Card · · Score: 1

    You can see some real world applications the 75 references in his paper, ie. [41] "Ottawa firm rescues data from Swissair black box", Pauline Tam, The Ottowa Citizen, 21 March 2000.

  25. Re:speaking of wiping data on Memories of a Media Card · · Score: 4, Informative
    Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory is a good insight into magnetic memory issues, and his followup paper covers solid state devices. It's by Peter Gutmann, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland. His homepage has more good info.

    In a nutshell, for hard drives, "If commercially-available SPM's are considered too expensive, it is possible to build a reasonably capable SPM for about US$1400, using a PC as a controller". So it is in the reach of the hobbyist to recover up to around the last 20 items recorded on any magnetic media (easier for floppies, harder as drives become denser). On solid state memory, I believe an electron microscope is needed for analysis. Still, data that has been in one location in RAM for more than five minutes is in theory recoverable.