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User: frooddude

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  1. Forgot some of them... on Ask Slashdot: What Distros Have You Used, In What Order? · · Score: 2

    Started with Slackware in 93/94 (I think, just remember a ton of floppies and I definitely used Slack back then, just don't know that I started with a distro, this was kernel .98alpha or so)
    I know I played with Yggdrasil (that became SuSE, right?)
    After that everything is pretty hazy, but I spent many years on Debian then switched to Gentoo a couple years ago.

    On the other hand I professionally support RedHat and OL (and any other enterprise flavor should something broken come up).

  2. I would've liked Chrome... on Ask Slashdot: Life After Firefox 3.6.x? · · Score: 1

    If it weren't for it's complete inability to deal with Roaming Profiles and magically ignoring the fact that it's pinned to my task bar.

    So I switched back to Firefox and w/ v10 it's not too shabby. I miss the multi-threading of Chrome, sometimes it'd be nice to go to another tab while waiting for the 'script is eating your CPU' dialog to come up. It's nice to have search actuated by / again, although I didn't miss it quite enough to hunt down a solution for Chrome. I also think the bookmark tools are a little better in Firefox.

  3. Where's Waldo? on How Much Stuff Can Timothy Jam Into His New Hoodie's Pockets? (Video) · · Score: 0

    Apparently this is his day job: 'Where can I stuff all my crap, and more crap no other person would ever carry in their own pocket.'

    Please god, no more Timmy vids.

  4. PXE w/ Clonezilla and DBAN on Ask Slashdot: Networked Back-Up/Wipe Process? · · Score: 1

    PXE booting is not difficult to set up and Clonezilla is dead simple to automate after that. DBAN also has instructions to PXE boot, but I've never used it that way. Extra points for setting it up to do both in 1 pass. Clonezilla also has the nice feature of verifying that you have a good backup.

  5. Wifi tethering - requires rooting on Ask Slashdot: Which Android Phone (and Carrier) For WiFi Proxy Support? · · Score: 1

    I just looked into wifi tethering and got it working on my Samsung Fascinate last night in about 20 minutes. Open Garden is what I went with. I had already rooted my phone quite a while back to get a newer version of Android so that requirement was no problem for me. It was interesting to find that some wifi tether apps require you also to use a modified kernel. Neither Barnacle (mentioned above) nor Open Garden require a different kernel.

    I passed 25MB down / 6 MB up over the course of a couple hours on the road browsing the web and reading email. No overheat issues, the phone was plugged in at the time. Overall the connection was far snappier than my experience trying to browse using the phone. The laptop I used runs Linux and I was using the latest Firefox and Thunderbird.

  6. Offer them a support/transition contract on Ask Slashdot: Does Being 'Loyal' Pay As a Developer? · · Score: 1

    If they really mean something to you, offer them nice terms on a transition contract. Make sure the contract doesn't F you tho.

  7. Sure, if you're a rules lawyer or have some OCD on How Game Makers Like EA Mine for Tax Breaks · · Score: 1

    "Since filling out even a simple return can be rather game-like, maybe they're just doing what they do best."

    So is this the new real-time strategy game you want to sell to our future accountants? Personally I tend toward games with the fewest rules, they're more entertaining.

  8. Mini isn't really a good idea... on Ask Slashdot: Passively Cooled Hardware For Game Emulation? · · Score: 1

    Small spaces make quiet cooling difficult. Bigger fans are quieter at moving the same amount of air. The more air you move over a given heat sink the better the cooling (with diminishing returns, see various HSF reviews). So go for something larger with good airflow and some very quiet fans.

    My HTPC has a PSU with a fan that I've never heard since it's temperature controlled and I'm not abusing it. The HSF is a Scythe Ninja something or other with a Panasonic D12SL 120mm fan, can't hear it. Graphics card is an MSI N460GTZ Cyclone. Sounds like a loud card, right? Well it's dead silent on movies (good for those quiet scenes) and none of the games I play have "quiet" atmosphere so when it does get cranking I still can't hear it over the audio of the game. You can always get aftermarket coolers for real silence if that's where you want to spend your money. All that packed into an Antec Solo with a cheap 64GB SSD, although when I had the 320GB single platter spindle in there you couldn't hear it at all.

  9. I want my free encryption on Ask Slashdot: Does SSL Validation Matter? · · Score: 1

    I want my free encryption because I don't trust some 3rd party to tell me whether I should trust the web site that I am visiting. Encryption and identity should never have been tied together in the first place. It's unfortunate that this business method has succeeded as long as it has.

  10. Processor architecture differences... on Oracle Shuts Older Servers Out of Solaris 11 · · Score: 1

    The unsupported processors all have virtually indexed caches. This isn't in the new processors or x86 and due to the architecture of a new virtual memory subsystem due to land in Solaris 11 it would be a bitch to write a workaround. The old procs are all EOL anyway!

  11. Nuka Cola Caps? on Pepsi Creates a Social Network Vending Machine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This begins to explain the idea behind bottle caps as currency I suppose....

  12. Cable free for 7+ years on Ask Slashdot: Are You Streaming-Only For Home Entertainment? · · Score: 2

    Ditched cable when we bought a house. We've had Netflix the whole time, wife does the CNN dance on her laptop. Netflix is mostly DVD, not much streaming. There's nothing on cable worth watching that I'd pay 1 month's price for the entire year.

  13. When it was a ~50 man biotech... on Where Does IT Fall Within Your Organization? · · Score: 1

    IT (me and the dba) reported to the VP of development. His job (and his underlings) was to develop algorithms to deal with the data produce by the DNA analysis systems run by the research group. Since they were the primary "real" server users it was a reasonable match. Back office and desktop support were my problem as well, but I reported those issues directly to the Pres/CEO since that's where my budget came from and the VP of dev didn't care if the secretary at the front desk couldn't get her email.

    "real" in this case meaning the DB and data crunching systems, the stuff used for product development. As with a much larger organization that side of IT got a completely separate budget from standard services and DT support.

  14. I like/use IMatch from Photools on A File-Centric Photo Manager? · · Score: 1

    Yes it costs money, but it does a ton of things. It keeps a database for your tags/whatever but you can have it apply any and all info it knows about your pictures to the EXIF/IPTC fields. There's a ton of scriptability and you can export the DB to tons of formats (and define your own format). Hey just looked at the website and it supports XMP as well (another metadata in the file thing).

    http://www.photools.com/

    No I get nothing for this (haven't even looked to see if I could). Satisfied customer.

  15. Let's not forget Escrow on Recent Sales Hint That Tape For Storage Is Far From Dead · · Score: 5, Informative

    The business I work for goes through tapes like they're used to make coffee. Primary use: legal escrow of source code.

  16. Re:Use the Coax as a wirepull for the cat5 on Suggestions For a Coax-To-Ethernet Solution? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Looks like paying a pro to run Cat5 would be cheaper than these things all over the house.

  17. Re:command mode baby.. on IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? · · Score: 1

    Better yet try :200 it works from anywhere in the file.

  18. Bathing the cosmos?? on NASA WISE Satellite Blasts Into Space · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Seriously coondoggie, that's not how it works. This is an IR detector. Speed of light limitations, not to mention power requirements for umping enough IR into the sky to see any reflections, I mean... wow.

  19. Re:Cheap Printer? on What Do You Do When Printers Cost Less Than Ink? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What company sells full cartridges as replacements ?

  20. Another rsync like option on Synchronize Data Between Linux, OS X, and Windows? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unison from UPenn http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

    Works on all the platforms you mentioned... It can synchronize 2 disparate directory trees (you made updates to files A, B, C on one system and D, E, F on another system and want to merge them) and when it can't figure out what to do it asks you.

  21. Re:What is PAS? on EMI Sues Beatles Usurper Off the Net · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since psychoacoustic is explicitly mentioned in regard to audio compression tech (like MP3) I think he just invented a term for "I ripped it to MP3"

  22. Re:You KNOW It's "Open Source" on Ubiquiti Announces RouterStation Challenge Winners · · Score: 1

    Well, it's a windows app and it's not open source... BUT!

    It's free as in beer and damned easy to setup/use: http://www.solarwinds.com/products/freetools/free_TFTP_server.aspx

  23. fat32 and tarballs or loopback ext3 on Which Filesystem Do You Use On Portable Media For Linux Systems? · · Score: 1

    fat32 works well enough for storing tarballs should I need to go Linux->Linux with permissions and all that. Most of the time though the UID/GID clashing isn't worth going so far as a tarball unless I need permissions preserved. I rarely transfer mixed permissions files, it's usually some form of document or media so again... fat32.

    I'd use a loopback ext3 if I really needed to not use tar for some weird reason.

  24. Was it Linux that did them in?!? on Does Your College Or University Support Linux? · · Score: 1

    So because investment banks have a craptacular business plan and fail miserably after they saturate the market with impossible financial instruments their use of Linux to get the job done isn't a recommendation?

    Linux didn't screw up their business, their business plan (which probably never mentioned Linux) is what screwed them.

  25. At that age? (mine are 5.5 and 3.25) on Tomorrow's Science Heroes? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bill Nye, my kids have the theme song memorized.

    Sid the Science Kid. Not bad really, drives the whole "it's not magic, figure it out!" thing.

    And just to throw in some non-TV things:

    Lego for the fine motor skills and figuring out how to make something cool

    Find a sport your kid is into. I can't stand baseball and I like soccer (playing at least), I don't know if it's genetic or what, but my son is much the same. Sports are cool because of things like gravity and all his friends.