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User: Mouldy

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  1. Re:The catch... on 1Gbps Fiber Optic Network For Rural Britain · · Score: 1

    IIRC, the gov's target was 2Mbps broadband to every household. It's pretty good going if Google can give 1Gbps in the same budget.

  2. Re:Why not ? on Judge In Oracle-Google Case Given Crash Course in Java · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You would need to be some sort of mechanical or engineering background information, however, to determine if party B's mechanical system is different enough from party A's mechanical system to rule on some sort of patent issue between the 2 parties. To one person, an engine is an engine. They don't care if it's petrol, diesel or rocket fuel. It's the loud bit that makes vehicles move.

    Someone determining whether or not the latest engine by VW (for example) is too similar to an engine previously made by Alfa Romeo is going to need to know more than "an engine is the loud bit that makes vehicles move" - somebody is going to have to explain the details behind the mechanics. Based on this information, they might decide that the engine as a whole isn't a rip-off, but maybe the odd way the valves are set up is suspiciously similar. It would be unfair to make a judgement without the extra technical knowledge.

  3. I wouldn't want to be working there now on Google Ties Employee Bonuses To +1 Success · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "...every Google employee..." -- Really?

    If the projects I was working on at Google had absolutely nothing at all to do with +1, I'd be pretty pissed if my bonus was riding on whether or not somebody else's project did well.

  4. Re: If the battery fails on Electromagnetic Automobile Suspension Demonstrated · · Score: 1

    Granted, I didn't rtfa. But I would imagine that the car's alternator would be able to keep the suspension going even if the battery did fail. Plus, if your battery is that knackered, you probably won't be able to start the car at all.

  5. Regarding question 1 on SSL Cert Weaknesses Exposed By Comodo Breach · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why the hell shouldn't someone from Iran be able to buy a SSL certificate? Seriously. Racist summary much.

  6. Re:I want to be a public figure. on Facebook Kills Mark Zuckerberg Action Figure · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or, except when I don't get money for it or unaffiliated companies use my image and reputation to make a quick buck without asking permission or setting up some sort of royalty agreement.

  7. Re:Awesome! on Drupal 8 Development Begins — 15 Bugs At a Time · · Score: 1

    Modules is why I think this is a bad idea. During the 3 years that Drupal 6 was the latest-and-greatest, a lot of great modules were developed for it. If 7 has a shorter amount of time as the latest-and-greatest, it follows that there will be less amazing modules for it.

    If they're going to speed up the release cycle, they should maintain compatibility with older modules. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with lots of versions of vanilla drupal (which in itself, is quite bland) and not many modules that make it as powerful as Drupal 6.

  8. Re:Paywall sites are going to be hit pretty hard on Google Goes After Content Farms · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A trick I learnt with experts exchange is that the posts are actually accessible. You just have to scroll past the "GIMMER ALL YER MONEY" messages and you get to the original text. Experts Exchange's paywall is a simple example, but if Google's indexer can read past the paywall, there's no reason why you can't. Sometimes, if a site serves different content to people than to spiders, you can just click on the "cached" link in Google's results page to see the version that Google indexed.

  9. Re:The money on HTC Invests $40 Million In OnLive · · Score: 1

    Is HTC's spare change a lot to OnLive? If OnLive were previously only sitting on $10m of funds, a boost of $40m gives them a huge incentive to make sure their service works well on HTC smart phones.

  10. Re:Hello Slashvertisement on Half of .gov Sites Fail DNSSEC Test · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Who better to judge the state of affairs? Sure, this is probably just an attempt to drum up more sales - but that doesn't discount the fact that "Half of .gov Sites Fail DNSSEC Test".

  11. Makes sense on Bill Gates Is More Admired Than the Pope · · Score: 1

    Unlike the Pope, Bill Gates spends a lot of his riches on charity research. Wikipedia states that he's donated $28 billion of his own money to charitable causes (mainly the Bill & Melinda foundation). He has also agreed to give at least 50% of his fortune (currently valued at $54 billion) to charity.

    I'm not particularly down with the Vatican kids, so I ask you; What has the current Pope actually done? I doubt very much that he has the means to even equal Bill Gates' contributions.

  12. Re:Legal ramifications on Record Labels To Pay For Copyright Infringement · · Score: 3, Informative

    Probably not. It was settled outside of courts, so AFAIK, you can't use that in other court cases.

  13. They handled it well on Mozilla Posts File Containing Registered User Data · · Score: 1

    But that doesn't excuse the fact they messed up in the first place. What mozilla have done is plain careless. I know, 'accidents happen' - but I'd rather they didn't and I don't trust companies not to keep making mistakes with user data.

  14. Re:Why only ASCII? on The Case For Lousy Passwords · · Score: 1

    Surely using obscure or old systems for the sake of security is the flawed principle of security through obscurity.

    All you can achieve using that method is reduce your chances of being subject to a random attack. An attack that is crafted specifically for you is likely to work. You said it yourself, the machines were easily hacked a few years ago. If someone specifically wanted to target x company for whatever reason - they would be committed enough to dig up a 10 year old text book. Your average botnet has more generic fish to fry, so aim at the pond with more fish. Your single fish in a small barrel isn't more secure than those other fish.

  15. Erm...what? on USCG Sues Copyright Defense Lawyer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, according to these USCG clowns, providing a working defence to the opposition is illegal?

  16. Re:I wish we did that here. on UK Law Body Targets RIAA-Style Settlement Letters · · Score: 1

    That hard evidence is not actually that hard. It doesn't have any weight behind the idea of who committed the act using the IP address. Consider this scenario;

    A teenager, Bob, downloads a few albums off the web. Bob's dad, John, is the account holder with the ISP. When lawyers go poaching and tell John's ISP that xyz IP address was used to download copyright content, the ISP gives them John's details. After getting a letter from the lawyers, John, denies downloading the content. Because he didn't. Or maybe the letter asks John who was downloaded the material x months ago at 20:32. John says "How tf am I supposed to know?" - maybe he has a few kids. Maybe he has a wireless network that isn't properly secured. Maybe the time in question is so long ago that it's unreasonable for John to know who was using what.

    Saying an IP address downloaded something illegally is one thing. Pinning the crime onto an actual person is a very big leap and leaves lots of room for reasonable doubt imo. I'd love to hear of one of these cases going to court and someone tries the "I'm sorry, but I don't know who was using the computer then" defence.

  17. Ask the people you're working for/with on Best IT-infrastructure For a Small Company? · · Score: 1

    Servers;
    You say the media server will have a shed load of files in an archive. Does this mean it won't be regularly accessed? In which case, just get a bare-bones box and shove a million hard drives in it. You don't need extreme CPUs to just store stuff.
    In house webserver. Development or production? How much traffic? Do you have client's work hosted on the webserver? IMO, internal's fine for development or even staging environments - but production is best handled by a company who know what they're doing - so use one of the million reputable hosting providers out there.
    Do you actually need a server for user management? One company I worked for had a brilliant, simple solution. Everyone had their own seat in the office, so their PC was 'theirs' and they had an account for that PC. They also had a folder on the in-house webserver (development only) that they could call their own and were advised to save all their work there because only the server was regularly backed up, the individual PCs weren't.

    Clients;
    Ask the work force. Ask the managers. Don't think that "Oh yay! Laptops mean people can do work outside the office" - if those machines are contain sensitive material, the management probably don't want people to do work outside the office. Some people also just don't like working on laptops. I for one would hate to use a laptop for a long period of time (ie, 9-5). If there's not [i]need[/i] for laptops/thin-clients, save the company a buck & get what they actually need.

  18. Re:Pulling it between layers of abstraction. on Traffic Jams In Your Brain · · Score: 1

    The UK's pretty similar. One example that always gets me is that we buy petrol by the litre, but measure fuel efficiency in miles per gallon.

    We also buy our booze in pints unless we're buying bottles. Milk tends to also be in pints, but they've also started putting the litre equivalent on some bottle labels now. Meat is often bought by the kilo, but burgers are usually "1/4 pounders" and steaks are usually measured in oz. People, like Canada, are usually measured in feet and stone...unless you're at the doctors,in which case it's usually metric.

  19. Speed benchmarks are all very well and good... on Comparing Windows and Ubuntu On Netbooks · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...but TFA fails to mention anything to do with user experience. How are well suited is the OS to small screen real estate?

    For example, On Ubuntu, ccsm, doesn't fit on the screen (Image). Little like things like that crop up often with Ubuntu and it's really annoying.

    I've no idea of Windows has similar issues because I don't have it installed, so perhaps somebody else will comment.

  20. Re:What is F#? on Microsoft Open Sources F# · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've never used it personally, but IIRC from my functional programming unit at University, F# is MS's language for the functional programming paradigm. Similar to Haskell (which is what we did study). I *think* it also has elements of other programming paradigms too, but don't quote me on that (:

  21. Re:Any good? on Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat, Now Available · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've installed it on my Acer Aspire One netbook and for the most part it has been good. The new Unity interface has some severe performance problems in my experience though. Also, Unity doesn't currently let you do much in the way of customising it via GUI tools. Adding a custom launcher, for example, is quite long winded.

    I'm using the standard gnome interface on my netbook now. I think Unity's got potential to become something really quite good, but I don't think it's ready yet.

  22. Re:Digital on Oxford Expands Library With 153 Miles of Shelves · · Score: 1

    Yeah. Lets spend years scanning everything and save it as a PDF/Word/Whatever file that probably won't be readable a few versions down the line. While we're at it, lets store it on Tape/CD/DVD/BluRay/HDD that also won't be readable in years to come. I think just getting a bigger book case is probably the best option as far as long term storage goes.

  23. Re:Doesn't that describe... on Narcissists, Insecure People Flock To Facebook · · Score: 1

    Not quite. It includes people who love themselves and people who hate themselves. Not people who are "average with themselves". That being said, the average person has 1 testicle and 1 boob, so maybe people who are average with themselves don't actually exist.

  24. Re:flaw - proven guilty in absence on Woman Wins Libel Suit By Suing Wrong Website · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why should TheDirt waste their money, resources and time to defend something that has absolutely nothing to do with them. Yeah, it probably would have just been a 5 minute "You've got the wrong website" statement, but that's still money that they shouldn't have to spend. IANAL, but I doubt TheDirt could claim all of their costs back from this daft cheerleader - especially considering the ridiculous method that's used to calculate costs. It's kind of depressing that "innocent until proven guilty" goes out the window when they can shoot for "proven guilty in absence".

    They should counter-sue/appeal/whatever-it-is the cheerleader into oblivion for slandering their website.

  25. Re:Uh, going dark? on Google To End Google.cn Redirect · · Score: 1

    Google need an IPC license to continue to operate 'in the light' - these licenses are given by the Chinese government. Google's license is up for renewal (which they applied for today). They're hoping that by making the redirection to Hong Kong servers manual they'll be on right side of the law and so get a their license renewed.

    The original blog post makes the mention of "going dark" - but that's only if Google's IPC license isn't renewed by the Chinese government.

    The BBC have a good article on this too.