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User: Detritus

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Comments · 6,170

  1. A Pox on Both Your Houses on More Attacks on Linux than Windows · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's rather sad to see two octogenarian, congenitally deformed lepers, who think perfume is an adequate substitute for hygiene, arguing about who is more sexy. "Oooh, but I've still got both of my ears and most of my fingers, unlike that tramp."

    We have two operating systems, and their associated applications, implemented in unsafe languages, with broken and/or archaic security models, competing for how many weeks they can run before getting rooted by a new exploit.

    How pathetic.

  2. Re:If only domains told the truth... on Collateral Damage in the Spam War · · Score: 2, Funny
    The single biggest complaint has been that MTA documentation is in English (perhaps Spanish and French) and not in their native languages.

    There is Sendmail documentation in English?

  3. Death of Organizations on Digital Dark Ages? · · Score: 2
    I've seen large amounts of data disappear when companies went bankrupt, "downsized" large numbers of employees, eliminated departments, reorganized the company, cleaned out their archives/warehouses, dumped obsolete computer systems. There is often not enough money to store the data, let alone migrate the data to more modern media and systems.

    A more modern threat is lawyers. Many corporations are putting record/email retention policies in effect that intentionally destroy data so that it can't be subpoenad in a future legal proceding.

  4. Re:Nothing is THAT Important on Uptime Realities in the Internet World · · Score: 2
    If some systems fail, people die.

    I've worked on systems where a failure results in a hearing before an investigative board.

  5. Support on Windows 2000 - Nine Months to Live · · Score: 2

    I use NT 4.0 and Office 97 at work. The problem is that Microsoft is ending support for these products. What happens when the next critical security bug is discovered and no patch is available?

  6. Standardization on Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"? · · Score: 2
    My pet peeve is the lack of standardization in devices that perform identical functions.

    For example, credit/debit card terminals are now installed in almost all of the grocery stores, drug stores and convenience stores in the area where I live. The problem is that each chain of stores uses different hardware and/or software, resulting in a unique user interface for each store. The number of steps to perform a transaction differs, as do the queries, prompts, and locations of buttons. On some terminals, YES and NO are on the top row of buttons, under the display. One other terminals, YES and NO are on the bottom row of buttons.

    All of these terminals are used for the same limited number of functions. There is no good reason why they could not be standardized.

  7. Re:Consumers are stupid on Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"? · · Score: 2
    In the good old days (ha!), there were individual knobs on a television for adjusting the tint, saturation, brightness, and contrast. A very straightforward user interface.

    Today's television sets are likely to be much more complicated. Knobs and switches cost money, so the penny-pinching engineers remove as many of them as possible. You can't do much of anything without the remote control, and then you have to figure out the user interface for your particular model of television set.

  8. Re:Beat them at their own game on Legalities of Rewrapped Games? · · Score: 2
    What planet do you live on?

    I've never seen a retail operation that only paid 10% of MSRP for their goods. Markups vary quite a bit between different industries.

    Retail operations also have high costs. If it was easy to make big bucks in retail, there wouldn't be so many bankruptcies.

  9. Re:What about on Do You Have The Time? · · Score: 1

    NTP uses UDP, not TCP.

  10. You're NOT the New York Times on News Sites Getting to Know You · · Score: 2
    I registered for the New York Times. Their staff writes a lot of good and original content. It's worth it to me.

    For the L.A. Times, and other second-rate newspapers, listen up, you're NOT the New York Times. Don't kid yourself, your "product" is not that valuable. Maybe if you spent more money on reporters and less on nose candy for the marketing department, you would have a first-rate newspaper.

    I do like the idea of polluting their demographics. Maybe I will register and show them how important the 97-year old Eskimo demographic is.

  11. Re:The real issue on Cable Firms Limit Users' Freedoms · · Score: 2

    That's closing the barn door after the horse is gone. The cable company has a de facto monopoly. The barriers to entry for a second cable company are high, assuming they could get the local governments to negotiate for right-of-ways in good faith. In my neck of the woods, the incumbent cable company bribed the local politicians to get their franchise. Now that their system is built out, and deregulated, they can jack up the rates and tell the local governments to go to hell.

  12. Re:Geez on Canadian Government to Jam Radio Signals · · Score: 2

    Most remote detonaters require that the RF carrier be modulated with one or more tones. An unmodulated carrier will not trigger the detonater.

  13. NANP on Internet Routes Around South African Gov't · · Score: 2

    The North American Numbering Plan (NANP), which defines the structure of telephone numbers, and assigns area codes to regions, is not "owned" by any government. It is something like the DNS of the public telephone system. The NANP has been run by AT&T, Bellcore, and now Neustar.

  14. Re:sweet on 10-Gigabit Ethernet Standard Approved · · Score: 2

    10/100BASE-T switches are cheap. 1000BASE-T switches are still expensive.

  15. Re:not obsolete on 10-Gigabit Ethernet Standard Approved · · Score: 2

    Ethernet is not Aloha. See Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality, Boggs et al.

  16. Re:sweet on 10-Gigabit Ethernet Standard Approved · · Score: 1

    The NICs for 1000BASE-T are affordable. The problem is the lack of cheap switches.

  17. GNAT on Bounds Checking for Open Source Code? · · Score: 1

    GNAT, an open source Ada-95 compiler, support those checks.

  18. Re:Limiting privately-spent design money? on Inside the Joint Strike Fighter Competition · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's in the taxpayer's interest for there to be multiple companies capable of designing and building weapons systems. A competition that kills the losing companies would be bad for future procurement. There has already been an amazing amount of consolidation in the military aircraft industry. We will be in deep trouble if LockMart is the only company capable of bidding on military contracts.

  19. Re:cabletheft.com on Comcast in Court, AT&T Gets Greedy · · Score: 2

    It may sound silly but it is true. Leaky cable systems can interfere with aircraft communications and navigation, and with othered licensed radio services. What they didn't mention is that the FCC cracked down on cable system operators over this issue because of the poor installation and maintenance practices of many cable systems. They bought cheap coax and equipment and refused to maintain it properly. It isn't a problem of "pirates", it's a problem of poorly installed and maintained video distribution systems.

  20. Re:Wishful Thinking on The Music Biz Is the New Book Industry · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ticket sales are revenues. What are the profits? Many bands lose money while on tour.

  21. Hewlett-Packard on RTFM = Read the Funny Manual? · · Score: 2
    Hewlett-Packard used to have wonderful manuals for their programmable calculators. The quality of the writing declined a bit over the years. It really went bad when they closed down the Corvallis calculator operation. The manual for the HP-49G is terrible.

    These days, I'm surprised if I get a decent manual with a software package or a piece of hardware. The usual excuse is that they are "saving the environment". Fuck the environment! The reality is that some bone-headed manager is too cheap to spend the money on good documentation. I spent $500 on Microsoft Office for Mac OS X and all they gave me was a pamphlet on how to install the software. Bastards.

  22. Re:Poor Equipment on Wireless Congestion · · Score: 2
    You can have good or cheap. Good microwave equipment is expensive.

    This is also the reason that most microwave bands are regulated and licensed. Frequencies need to be coordinated. Equipment needs to meet certain minimum standards. Power levels need to be set at the minimum level that provides a reliable link.

  23. Re:What?!? on Wireless Congestion · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's bullshit.

    Yes, we can greatly increase the efficiency of spectrum utilization for some applications if we toss out all existing models of spectrum use and their associated equipment, spend huge amounts of money on software defined radios, develop new suites of protocols, and mandate cooperation between all users.

  24. Wave of the Future on USMC Shows Off New Toys · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It looks like technology is starting to catch up with science fiction. When I was a soldier, I wished that someone would invent a small, remote controlled, video camera that could fly like a helicopter. I was never a big fan of detecting the presence of the enemy by getting shot.

  25. Maintenance Costs on Iridium May Have To Reinvent Itself Again · · Score: 2
    I've always wondered what Iridium planned to do when it became time to start replacing the existing satellites. Satellites and launch services are insanely expensive.

    It reminds me of a used Porsche I almost bought. After some calculations, I found that I could afford to buy the car but I couldn't afford to keep the car on the road.