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User: spiffydudex

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  1. How in the... on Wheel of Time TV Pilot Producers Sue Robert Jordan's Widow For Defamation · · Score: -1, Redundant

    batshit hell does this constitute as being worthy of being posted to slashdot? What in the ever living fuck is this shit?! Definitely not news for nerds. More like news for crappy lawyers and armchair evangelicals.

    For what its worth GET OFF MY LAWN while you're at it.

  2. Re:Surface is crap, according to our real world us on I Want a Kindle Killer · · Score: 1

    Sounds like your company purchased too early. The original Surface tablets were utter shit, any half baked IT person would've seen the signs when it was first released. Dated processor, terrible battery life, and practically no storage unless you spent about $200 more for the "upgrade" to 128GB. I completely understand if the CEO thought he was awesome and purchased 10. Bleh...terrible IT decision makers.

    I just purchased a Surface Pro 2, and I replaced my troubleshooting/carry-around laptop. While I am not a huge fan of the Metro interface, it does make sense from a tablet perspective. I have a USB adapter with 3 USB ports when I need a Ethernet or multiple USB ports when I need connectivity, but it doesn't come out of my bag all too often. I average about 5-7 hours of battery life, but its hard to tell because the device quickly goes to sleep when not in use.

    I do wish that the keyboard cover contained an external battery and was weighted enough to hold the Surface without using the kickstand. Besides that I have yet to find any major flaws with the device.

  3. Re:Descent: Freespace! on It's Time For the Descent Games Return · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a Star Citizen purchaser...It'll be a while.....a long while and before you say anything...A dog-fighting module is not a game and provides no story or incentive to keep playing like Descent.

  4. Re:Forget ratings, measure ROI. on Obama Seeks New System For Rating Colleges · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Its been an interesting trend. When the Government offers more money, the tuition magically increases due to "higher costs". We all know that the costs have not increased that much. Fuel costs have stayed the same for roughly 7 years now. Why are institutions increasing the cost of education? Because they can and the government will gladly give out more student loads through Sally Mae. Plus with the added factor of the current "College Craze" the demand for seats is ever growing so there is really no stopping the bloated machine.

  5. Re:Strange Guy. on Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, Notch brought this upon himself. He asked for the attention and got it. Complaining about it isn't going to fix anything and this stunt will make the masses unhappy because he is a quitter.

  6. Re:Unless you have a 1st gen iPad ... on iOS 7 Beta 3 Now Available For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Sounds like you're not the intended demographic for Apple. You need more hipster or fanboi to properly appreciate the lost value of the Apple product.

  7. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. on Vine Launches On Android · · Score: 1

    The kids were nothing to look at either.

    Bad puns are simply that. Bad.

  8. I worked at a Rural Wireless ISP on Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Way To Become a Rural ISP? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I worked at a wireless ISP that serviced roughly 200 customers that were completely unreachable by traditional means. The location was set in the mild to medium forested areas of East Texas. We had a 30Mb pipe that worked quite well for our network we never saw it start to "peak" or be overtaxed. Being that we were on the 900Mhz spectrum, the fastest anyone could run at was 1.5Mb/s - 2Mb/s.

    Here area some of my thoughts regarding setting up your own ISP.

    1) It is completely doable. However, there are two roads to take. You can do it on the cheap, or you can do it the way that will stand time. My company chose the method that stood throughout time. What I mean is, we were not using off-the-shelf radios. We rolled out the network using the 900Mhz Motorola Canopy equipment. We used outdoor rated cable that had separation of twisted pairs and grease filled interior to prevent water issues.

    Our main competitor, who worked on the north and west side of the city went the opposite route. He chose to use cheaper 2.4GHZ equipment, primarily PTP bridges.

    2) The technology is out there, you just have to find it at a price that you are willing to pay. When I was servicing the radios, they would cost roughly $350 new from Motorola just for the endpoint Subscriber Module. We instead purchased refurbished models for almost half the price at $200-225. The Access points and other major equipment will set you back, IT IS NOT CHEAP.

    3) Backbone and network structure. We may have over engineered our network, but we felt it was necessary to keep subscriber information private. We had a small cisco switch that at each access tower that would assign VLAN to each subscriber module. On the internal side of the switch, the VLANs were removed and went into a bulk VLAN that was specified for that tower. No other subscriber could see any other one without first going to "The Internet". We also created a Management VLAN, so we could service and access the management interfaces on each of the Backhauls and APs. Latency across the network averaged about 50-150ms.

    4) Please for the love of all that is holy, do not, run your own Email server. It is a absolute pain in the ass. I was the person who was in charge of ensuring that the systems in place stayed running. This meant, DHCP, DNS, HTTP, Email Services, and Management interfaces.

    Remember Virtual Machines are your friend. Buy one or two hefty servers and backup the VMs to each other. That way if you have an outtage, you can get the VMs back up in running in about an hour.

    DHCP - Since we had a bit of a robust network, we had different subnets for each of our towers. In total we had about 18 subnets that each had different purposes. This tool helped like the charm that it was. http://phpdhcpadmin.sourceforge.net/ At the time the logout system was broken, however, I patched the code to disable the login/logout functions and wrote a script that would automatically give me the next available IP address.

    DNS - No fancy tools here, I mostly just let it roll and didn't touch it. I only touched DHCP when we added a hosted website.(which later went to rackspace)

    HTTP - Simple, run Apache, set and forget.

    Email Services - Complete Pain In The Ass. No really, I'm not joking. At the time, the powers over me, decided that we would give our customers up to 5 email addresses. So I setup a linux server in that ran Postfix, Dovecot, ClamAV, Squirrel Mail. It provided IMAP, POP, SMTP and SSL(if wanted). At the time, when I arrived the server was already in place and running. However, fast forward, 3 months, and someone decided to run "updates" on the server. Breaks all of the packages, settings, the whole shebang. Not a fun week at all.
    Besides that, there were also issue with SPAM. We would constantly get blacklisted by various servers.

    Management Interfaces - This was where the heart of out network lay. I have one word, Cacti, http://cacti.net/ For wireles

  9. Bsecure Online on Ask Slashdot: Good Low Cost Free Software For Protecting Kids Online? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My father uses this software, BSecure Whole Home Filtering. Its great, you can customize the filters to your hearts content. Plus you can cover all the computers in your network by changing DNS servers on your router.

    Link: http://www.bsecure.com/

  10. Re:Start Scubbing on Political Campaigns Mining Online Data To Target Voters · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I know what you mean. Overall though, if you can keep most easily identifiable information out of the limelight, the better. For the most part, Names don't bother me too much, its addresses, phone numbers, etc that I try to keep scrubbed. Such is the world of the internet...

  11. Start Scubbing on Political Campaigns Mining Online Data To Target Voters · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those of us who wish to use social networking and other friendly but intrusive aspects of the web...If you haven't already, you better start scrubbing your visible online information. Reduce your online presence.
    A good place to start viewing your publicly available information is http://www.pipl.com/

    From there you can decide whether or not it is acceptable information and take the appropriate measures.

  12. Re:I've used a fair variety of mobile OSes now... on HP Touch Pad Still Popular ... With HP Employees · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree, the interface is great for doing everyday tasks. Love the simplicity in the email client. The only thing I did was disable the logging and increase the CPU to its standard 1.5ghz. The Pad is rock solid and for around 250$ you can get a 32gb model second hand. Great Deal in my opinion. Some may comp,ain about the lack of apps. Yes, the WebOS store is young. However, Games aside, I haven't found an app that wouldnt do what I needed productivity-wise. Now with Cyanogen claiming they want to be able to dual boot WebOS and Android, its just icing on the already delicious cake.

  13. I fail to see why Apple REQUIRES a CC on Apple Faces Class-Action Suit For In-App Purchases · · Score: 1

    This has perplexed me since I first bought an IPod 4th gen. Why on earth are you required to attach a credit card to an account? I fail to see the need for it. As far as kids racking up bills...That would immediately solve the problem. All the kids would have access to are the free apps. Heck, even something similar to the way Android handles app purchases.

    I've owned an iPhone 3GS and now I am using a Samsung Captivate. Personally, I know iPhones are "Hip" but, if I were buying a phone for my kid I'd take the Android system. Simply because of the way Google handles app purchases and transactions.

  14. Re:SF writers never saw this coming on Artificial Clouds To Cool Qatar World Cup Stadiums · · Score: 1

    It's getting close to what a SF.writer would call a weather machine.

  15. Re:privatize on US Contemplating 'Vehicle Miles Traveled' Tax · · Score: 1

    Obviously you haven't driven on a toll way in a long time. Most toll roads now are close to being 100% electronic. They implement a "Toll Tag" or "Zip Cash" system to have a completely cashless system. The NTTA around Dallas, TX went 100% cashless in December 2010.

  16. Re:Horrible. on Slashdot Launches Re-Design · · Score: 1

    Why not?

  17. Touchscreen keyboard? on Ubuntu 10.10 Multitouch Support Demo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing that wasn't mentioned in the article text or accompanying video that I am curious about, how does text input work? When a text bar or area is activated does it bring up a keyboard?

  18. and... on Steve Jobs Tries To Sneak Shurikens On a Plane · · Score: 3, Insightful

    this makes the front page why? Its common knowledge...don't bring sharp objects into airports unless you are checking the bag.

  19. Soon to be Grad. on Tech Sector Slow To Hire · · Score: 1

    The numbers being spread around for unemployment are quite unsettling to me. I can only hope things turn around enough to get a decent starting job this spring. Several of my friends could not find internships this past summer due to companies decreasing the amount of students they hire. I myself could only get several odd jobs scraped together to give me a reasonable income for the summer.

  20. Gmail? on Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? · · Score: 5, Informative

    While not open source, Gmail has a good search engine that isn't sluggish. Plus it has roughly 7.5 gigs of space to store data. Use IMAP to push all of your emails to the server and then use that Gmail account for archive email only.

  21. Re:Just go to a religious school already on Louisiana, Intelligent Design, and Science Classes · · Score: 1

    "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

    Oh please use your brain for a moment...and try not to distort historical context with your own personal ideologies.

    One can only wonder for 2 seconds why this is in the first amendment. One of the main reasons the Puritans left England was because the English government was corrupting the church and bending it to fit the will of the king.
    Anyone remember the issue with King Henry? He had problems getting his wives pregnant with sons and therefore would get an annulment sanctioned by the Pope. Well finally the Pope said "No More Annulments". Henry was like "up yours Pope, I'll make my own Church." Thus the Anglican Church of England was born. The puritans didn't like this and felt that religion should not be controlled by a government but by the will of God. So they got a charter to move to the new land of America and left England.

    The whole reason for that section in the first amendment is to prevent the U.S. government from controlling a church. There is nothing related to religion being in school. In fact the puritans were actively involved in keeping a life in line with their religious beliefs and actively promoted faith based education. The Puritans prospered because of it, especially when compared to their fellow colonists in the Chesapeake Bay area.

  22. Re:I wish... on Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily · · Score: 1

    Oh, and yes I passed :)

  23. Re:I wish... on Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily · · Score: 1

    Haha, Google was like my primary teacher. I am predominantly an auditory learner, so while Google was good for providing information. I wasn't able to fully grasp the concepts that were being taught. I spent many a nights on various websites trying to understand the material.

    The book that I had for the class seemed to expect full knowledge and understanding of the concepts before they were brought up in the book. It didn't make much sense to me.

  24. I wish... on Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had knowledge of this site sooner. My Linear Algebra professor was horrible at giving lectures.(I wasn't the only one who thought so) After reviewing some of the linear material, Khans videos are helpful even after several weeks of summer. In fact the videos on the Gram-Schmidt helped explain what I completely missed the first time.

    I congratulate you Khan for your hard work to help educate the people of the world. I know it will serve me well in the upcoming year.

  25. Re:Brave new world indeed on Mark Zuckerberg, In It To Change the World? · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Making loads of money, check this site out. Already received 2 payouts.

    http://bit.ly/cPR0vr