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  1. Re:Firefly? on Groening Confident on Futurama Relaunch · · Score: 1

    What? As far as I can tell, Serinity isn't on the top of any lists at Amazon, and sure isn't in the top 20 by sales (though Firefly is #16 - not #6). In fact, going through all of the top 100, Serinity isn't even in the list, let along on top. I can't imagine that there was a run on all of those (Carmen Electra's Fit to Strip and Chappele's Show?) in the less-than-24-hours since this was posted, so I'd sure appreciate a pointer to the "sales list" that Serinity is topping at Amazon... The only list I found it on was the "SciFi editors picks" list, where it's just #4, right above "Star Wars: Clone Wars, the animated piece of crap" - and that's just what the Amazon editors liked, regardless of sales. Well, it's also on "sec127's 'Movies I will buy on DVD'" list, but it's not even top of that list. Titanic is above Serinity there.

  2. Re:In the words of Zapp Brannigan on Groening Confident on Futurama Relaunch · · Score: 1

    "You sunk my Battleship!"

  3. Re:Appropriate Family Guy Quote on Groening Confident on Futurama Relaunch · · Score: 1

    Titus probably would've done better if it had started *after* the American Chopper / Monster Garage / Rides / American Hotrod / etc shows got real popular. Maybe. *I* liked it, anyway...

  4. Re:AdBlock on Graphics Coming to Google Ads · · Score: 1

    In case you were actually talking to me: my main page is valid HTML 4.01 strict w/ valid CSS and some sub-pages use some banner-style elements for additional identification of the user's location within the tree, though those are in a folder called "images" typically. If my site doesn't look right in your browser, it's because your browser is broken. Users are welcome to view my site using a non-graphical browser if they so choose, I don't particularly care - in fact, I verify my site's important functionality using links and my cell phone for just that reason. On the flip side, though, I'm free to think that users are idiots if they're using over-zealous regexps that accidentally block valid content as well as ads (my site has no ads - *I* pay for my bandwidth). Yay freedom!

    BTW, the world has changed, but you missed it. Web developers like me are the minority - most sites are designed and run by people whose experience is primarily in the print realm, and they do everything they can to make fixed layouts. I'll bet you can count the number of users you and I know with custom style sheets / Grease Monkey / similar on one hand. Every day, some new idea comes out which is designed to restrict your ability to view content the way you want to. Wanna archive your CDs as MP3? The law thinks that someone with a large MP3 collection is probably a criminal who downloads music from Napster. Wanna back up your DVDs so you don't scratch up the original? The place where you get the software to shrink an 8GB DVD to 4GB looks a lot like a warez site. Wanna do that on Linux? Gotta get the "illegal" libdecss or similar. Wanna edit a PDF? Adobe doesn't want you to do that - you might steal someone's IP. Wanna look at a web site on a high resolution monitor and have it not look like crap? Too bad the developer only designed for IE at 800x600, and didn't plan for text reflowing. Plan to complain? Your response will sound more like "your browser sucks, fix it yourself", not "ohh, sorry, we forgot that the consumer is in control".

  5. Re:Simple: Ensure that your "trusted" sites really on Evolving Phishing Attacks Using Web Vulnerabilities? · · Score: 1

    Ok, so after a little bit further research, it appears that the signature is actually based partially on the contents. That makes sense, as it'd be stupid to do it any other way. :) The recipient isn't taken into consideration, though, so one could still redirect a message to an unintended recipient, potentially with some modified headers.

    Alternatively, It'd just take a fake, self-signed key with some nonsense @ebay.com address to fake out people who would just click "OK" wen the program warned them of an unrecognized/new key, accompanied by a message noting the new key eBay's using to notify users of account fraud. Then we're back to the same uneducated user problem... The encrypted message route woudl require the recipient to have sent a key to the sender first, at least, and would require some pre-phishing just to get to the point where more phishing would happen. :)

  6. Re:AdBlock on Graphics Coming to Google Ads · · Score: 1

    Huh, I would've escaped the period for clarity, but it seems that [.] does just match a period in most all implementations (though it's often not documented that way in the little bit of research I just did).

    The example in question uses Javascript regexps as implemented in Firefox, which I tested out at this handy site to verify Firefox's behavior - which you're right about. However, I'll point out that the final / is the delimiter for the regexp (as in, /regexp/) so it would match /ads/blah.gif - so we've both got a "wrong" point to our credit. :)

  7. Re:AdBlock on Graphics Coming to Google Ads · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Yeah, what kind of idiot would put all of his banners in a folder called banners? Surely that's way stupider than blindly blocking all folders called banners... Sigh.

  8. Re:Simple: Ensure that your "trusted" sites really on Evolving Phishing Attacks Using Web Vulnerabilities? · · Score: 1

    Perhaps because it's trivial to forge a signature? It's just the public key stuck on the end of the message - if spammers can forge a few Received-by: headers and make links like http://ebay.comlt/a&gt ;, how much harder would it be to also add a couple more headers and a fake signature to their spam?

    The "right" way to do it would be for everyone to send eBay their key once and then for eBay to send out encrypted mail using that key - but that'd increase eBay's procesor load for sending mail, and there'd just be more phishing attacks trying to get people to upload their key to the spammers. Fat chance of any of that happening, though.

    Ah, for the days when it was only the elderly getting scammed by magazine subscriptions and phone calls...

  9. Re:AdBlock on Graphics Coming to Google Ads · · Score: 1
    Doh - I didn't notice that the rule was /.*ads?.?/ (well, [./]/ is the same as .?/ with a couple extra chars and IMHO less clarity). That also matches things with ad/ads followed by another char, too, like grade, trade, Ramada, upgrade, Canada, aficionado, landlady, avocado - a total of 235 words in my standard dictionary file (with only ~45.5K words to draw from).
    [danny@midnight devel]$ egrep -c 'ads?.?$' /usr/share/dict/words
    235
  10. Re:AdBlock on Graphics Coming to Google Ads · · Score: 4, Informative
    It blocks anything that ends with ad, ads, ad., ads. Are you telling me that no valid words end with the combination ad or ads?
    [danny@midnight devel]$ egrep -c 'ads?$' /usr/share/dict/words
    147
    Some of those words include "uploads", "threads", "download", etc. Yeah, I'm sure there's probably nothing I'd ever likely want to see in a directory called "threads" or "downloads". I mean, gingerbread and keypad, probably not, but the Mardis Gras sites would suck without beads and redheads!

    Also, "advert" matches "inadvertant", and Yahoo! puts some of their navigational graphics on *.a1.yimg.com as I found when I blocked that site (though I still block it).

    There's a good reason that those banner blocking proxys, etc, use hostnames and more specific rules, and why in general you want regexps to be as specific as possible. It's not because people like excessive busywork.

    As a service to those who would say "fine, what would *you* do," here's the relevant part of my squid.conf, which blocks a big chunk of the annoying ads on sites I regularly visit (including a big chunk of the google ads that I got pissed off at a while back):
    # junk ads
    acl junk dstdomain .tradedoubler.com
    acl junk dstdomain .doubleclick.net
    acl junk dstdomain .fastclick.net
    acl junk dstdomain .advertising.com
    acl junk dstdomain .atdmt.com
    acl junk dstdomain .a1.yimg.com
    acl junk dstdomain .mediaplex.com
    acl junk dstdomain .valueclick.com
    acl junk dstdomain .cj.com
    acl junk dstdomain .pointroll.com
    acl junk dstdomain .m7z.net
    acl junk dstdomain ads.wunderground.com
    acl junk dstdomain banners.wunderground.com
    acl junk dstdomain .falkag.net
    acl junk dstdomain .ru4.com
    acl junk dstdomain .eyewonder.com
    acl junk dstdomain .casalemedia.com
    acl junk dstdomain .pennyweb.com
    acl junk dstdomain .2o7.net
    acl junk dstdomain ads.autotrader.com
    acl junk_url_paths urlpath_regex ^/ads/.*
    acl junk_urls url_regex http://./\.priceline\.com/banners/.*
    acl junk_urls url_regex http://./\.googlesyndication\.com/pagead/.*\.js
    a cl junk_urls url_regex https?://a.*\.akamai\.net/.*!(shopnbc\.com.*)
     
    # block requests to junk domains
    http_access deny junk
    http_access deny junk_urls
    http_access deny junk_url_paths
     
    # replace the junk ads with an image from my web server
    deny_info http://www.myinternalsite.com/images/icons/thumbs_ down.gif junk
    deny_info http://www.myinternalsite.com/images/icons/thumbs_ down.gif junk_urls
    deny_info http://www.myinternalsite.com/images/icons/thumbs_ down.gif junk_url_paths
    Using the thumbsdown icon I can see that it's working - I like that a little better than my previous use of a 1x1 clear .gif. The list is getting big enough that I should probably just put that stuff in an external file (at least the rules) which I include, rather than putting it in squid.conf directly, but I haven't felt the compulsion to do so yet. Also note the akami.net rule has an exclude for shopnbc.com - it was blocking product images on something the wife wanted to look at. It may block other useful imagery, but so far I haven't noticed - but I may not notice, either. Though, one could argue philisophically about whether or not something I didn't notice was important to begin with, I suppose...
  11. Re:The other alternative on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    Who needs a coffee maker when they can just use... ;)

  12. Re:I used sort through candidates. on Asking the Right Questions to a Future Employer? · · Score: 1

    Did he say "take your space opera and shove it up just past your crappy job?" :)

  13. Re:You forgot redistricting on Defending Against Surveillance? · · Score: 1

    I've never understood how that works. If you move the borders around so that you have, say, more Democrats in one district, then you're by definition moving Republicans into another district, throwing the balance off there, so you end up with a majority where there may not have been one before. I guess if you group all of the Republicans into a couple of districts, then you can get more Democrat districts, but it seems like the effect would be minimal as long as places are weighed on population. Maybe if there's one "vote" per district, and you corrall all of "party a" into just a couple of districts while you spread "party b" across more?

    Stupid 2-party system making that even close to possible...

  14. Re:Security risk? on Ham Hears Mars Orbiter 45 Million Miles From Earth · · Score: 1

    But they sound kinda similar, like "sawzaw" and "Milwaukee Reciprocating Saw" do when the people you hang around don't know how to talk...

  15. Re:The other alternative on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    Whatever. I'm sure Hitler would have forced the Nazis to use bicycles to crush cans, if they had the foresight to actually *use* canned beverages. That makes your bike-riding Nazi kind just as bad as Hitler.

    Besides, what's this garbage about crushing cans as soon as they're emptied? What kind of self-respecting geek wants to emerge from his dimly-lit cave dwelling every time a Mt. Dew or Jolt has been finished off? At best, I wouldn't expect to be wasting productive IRC and MUD time to crush cans more than once a day, and that ordeal could easily take *hours* using the primitive bicycle interface. Feel free to waste hours on your Hitler-mobile - I'm gonna maintain my pasty complexion with an *efficient* crusher.

  16. Re:Sod Gnome & KDE on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    Pfft, what would you want to change anything locally for? If it's such a good idea, make it global! ;)

    I just use "run command" anyway. It's qucker than finding the right menu option.

  17. Re:The other alternative on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    I don't have any false preconceptions, nor did I criticise any of its features - I've used emacs, and I didn't particularly like it. The bazillion things it does are almost universally done better by other dedicated programs, and I dislike lisp. I could care less if other people use it, though. I just think it's funny that someone's complaining about people using emacs as a text editor, especially since the emacs main page says "Emacs is a text editor and more" - note that the only function specifically mentioned is *text editor*. You think emacs is great. That's fine. You think emacs isn't mainly a text editor. That's simply wrong. Even the name means "editor macros", from its design as a set of macros who create an editor. I can edit text and run programs from within bash, and do all sorts of neat stuff with shell built-ins. That doesn't negate its primary purpose as a *shell*, much like emacs' news reader plugin doesn't make it any less of a text editor.

  18. Re:The other alternative on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    Poppycock! The bicycle can crush *at most* two cans at a time, and even then it requires precise alignment and significant effort. For a person of light weight, it may well take two or more passes to get a can crushed. The use of bicycles limits can crushing to only those with significant weight and mountain-style tires whose usefulness in an urban setting are dubious at best. Atop those problems, if a can were to become misaligned, it may well end up pinned to the tires of the bicycle. And what about one of those big Arizona Tea, Fosters, or Heineken cans? Bicycles aren't gonna crush *those* any time soon.

    With even the cheapest economy car you can crush at least 4 cans at once. It requires almost no effort, and alignment is much less critical. A car user could even line up a few cans in a row with little concern of missing any cans. That's easily 8 times the cans crushed in the same or less time it'd take a bicycle user to do it. You could bring a couple of friends along for the crushing, as well, and you could travel to distant cities to crush cans for friends and family while visiting - try that on a bicycle. I tell you, you'd be thrown off of my property in a minute if you showed up, all sweaty and stinking from your long hippie ride to my home. I'd be forced to resort to the use of a hammer or my feet for can crushing rather than benefitting from the miracle of technology, all because of your inconsiderate, short-sighted choice of a bike. Don't forget, it doesn't even take an engine to crush cans with a car - a few neighbors could easily get to gether and push a rolling car chassis over all of their cans, creating a newfound sense of unity in their neighborhood. Yes, you separatist bicycle crushers are all the same, with your grand talk of "saving the world" - you'd throw away a functional society just to save a buck. Screw bicycles! Long live the automobile can crusher!

  19. Re:Hear Hear! on Coca-Cola's Coffee Soda · · Score: 1

    This is precisely why my wife jams a meat thermometer into ever piece of chicken we eat - "pre cooked" or not. With beef, you can pretty well look at it and tell if it's cooked enough or not (if it's not well done, it's not cooked. Period) - but you just can't tell by looking if chicken's done or not. I'm pretty sure I've developed IBS simply from aging, but who knows. :) Ten years ago, I could eat most anything. Now, I *do* eat most anything, but I pay for it a few hours later. I don't drink, though, so I call that *my* hangover - I just spend it sitting on the throne in the evening rather than kneeling before it the next day. ;)

  20. Re:Non-selfish reasons / Difficulty of Adoption on Miss Digital World 2005 · · Score: 1

    Didn't get me in a temper - I was just curious if you were in the militant "no kids = no marriage" camp or one of the (apparently) more common "moderate" Catholics. It wasn't quite clear from the post. *I* don't think I'm being selfish (though, having more toys for myself is certainly not and unpleasant side effect)... :)

  21. Re:Selfishness and Children on Miss Digital World 2005 · · Score: 1

    Oh, shit. I'm Catholic, but am avoiding babies because of the detrimental helath impact it would have on my wife (she'd most likely die or lose the baby - something like >75% odds - and would likely pass along the dominant gene for her condition to a child either way). I guess it's a good thing I didn't get married in a church, so the church probably doesn't recognized my marriage as valid anyway. That way I can get a divorce without having to get the annulment, and find a specimen more physically suitable for the Catholic marriage God wants me to have.

    Perhaps that makes us selfish bastards, with our terrible view that the intentional creation of a child with a debilitating disease, no mother, and a subsequently depressed father (due to losing his wife prematurely) might not be the best idea. Or maybe Catholicism's views aren't universally perfect...

  22. Re:Real Identity? on No More Internet Anonymity · · Score: 1

    Gah! TMP is the directory where TeMPorary files are stored, and is an abbrev. for TeMPorary in general. TPM is the Trusted Platform Module. I send TMP data around all the time, but don't intend to send any TPM data anytime soon.

    This is like listening to my dad talk about the PVC valve on the car. You know, the one that's for Positive Crancase Ventilation and is not made of PolyVinyl Chloride? :)

    Not that this has anything to do with your point - which is the same as what I think every time someone thinks they're gonna put hardware IDs in my computer.

  23. Re:Sod Gnome & KDE on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just out of curiosity, what do you do with your computer where animated backgrounds and eye candy are the most important features - more important that ease of use, stability, or generally predictable behavior?

    BTW, the Gnome menu's not hard to edit unless you're afraid of a text editor. ;)

  24. Re:Sod Gnome & KDE on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1

    But wait until next month, when the next incompatible version is coming out with all those features that are broken in this version, as well as whatever else Raster thought was cooler to reimplement for the bilionth time when he should've been writing some stinking documentation. :)

    BTW, Raster, please look at the emoticon at the end there before reponding. It's a joke. At least DR-16 has some docs (though DR-17...)

  25. Re:The other alternative on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sorry, did you just *complain* about people focusing on text editing in Emacs - which is a text editor whose main "problem" is bloat / feature creep? That's awesome.

    On a similar note, people aways talk about whether they should be driving a car or riding a bike to work, but they never stop to think about what a great aluminum can crusher a car is. I mean, have you ever tried to crush a bunch of aluminum cans with a bicycle? It doesn't work. A car not only crushes a can flatter, but the wider tires can crush even a sideways can. Who cares about getting to work in the rain or saving gas - what about crushing all those soda/beer cans? :)