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  1. Re:How to remove all Oracle vulnerabilities... on Oracle Exec: Stop Sending Vulnerability Reports · · Score: 1

    If you need a large scale database, MariaDB is not a reasonable choice. Look into PostGreSQL. MariaDB is a near clone of MySQL, and not a large scale database.

    (I don't guarantee that PostGreSQL would suit your needs, but it has a much better chance.)

    OTOH, if you're using Oracle because that's what your CSO knew, then MariaDB might well suit you.

  2. Re:cat videos for enthropy on Linux Servers' Entropy Pool Too Shallow, Compromising Security · · Score: 1

    There was one with a bunsen burner, too. I think that one generated more entropy, but, of course, it also burned more gas.

  3. Re:Standard shite on Anti-Piracy Firm Sends Out Wave of Takedown Notices For Using the Word 'Pixels' · · Score: 1

    I don't purchase anything with either the MPAA or the RIAA mark on it, but you know what? That doesn't stop them from bribing congress, because SOME people don't care, and others can't refuse their kids. Boycott isn't sufficient in this case.

    Matter of fact, in this case I'd hardly oppose burning them at the stake. (By "them" I mean the boards of directors of the MPAA & RIAA member companies and all their C-level executives. And the folk in congress that took their bribes.)

  4. Re:Standard shite on Anti-Piracy Firm Sends Out Wave of Takedown Notices For Using the Word 'Pixels' · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and Walt Disney studios wrote Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast.

    They did an excellent derivative work, but that shouldn't give them any rights over the original, its name, its storyline, or anything else that they didn't explicitly create. Even then 20 years is excessive...and it's been a long time since it was 20 years.

  5. Re:Renewables at 4X current electricity rates on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    Personally I won't have anything to do with MSWind after reading the EULA on the 2000 edition. There's still one computer in the house with MSWind95 on it, and an old Mac (10.3...the edition where *they* started using an unacceptable EULA). The Mac hasn't even been powered up in the last year or so, but has some files I'd rather not lose, but which are in proprietary formats. The active computers are Linux.

  6. Re:Renewables at 4X current electricity rates on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    Try 2000, as that's the year when I was actively pricing solar panels. Battery backup was then grossly unaffordable, if you could get a decent grid connection.

    Now maybe battery prices have plummeted, but if so I haven't noticed, except for things intended for cell phones, etc. Lithium and other high end batteries have, indeed, dropped in price, but that's not what you want for a backup to a "grid replacement" power system.

    OTOH, yes, solar panel prices, and the prices on the associated electronics have plummeted. But you need sufficient battery backup, and that can double the price of your system. (Or it could in 2000. Given the way prices have been changing I'd expect it to be closer to tripling the cost. For a home user. As you get larger there are better options up to the scale of a small town. Once you get above that level, backup becomes more expensive again unless you use the grid.)

  7. Re:Fun question: on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    PG&E has experimental solar electric plants that are doing quite well. I'm less convinced that off-the-grid makes any sense within cities...unless it's the entire city that goes off the grid, in the sense the the city maintains its own grid.

  8. Re:Renewables at 4X current electricity rates on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    I think you aren't including sufficient battery backup. But they aren't much more expensive.

    The real problem is the the stability of the US dollar is subsidized by petroleum only being sold in dollars. It's my belief that that's why there's such a US military presence in the middle east. (IIRC, the invasion of Iran coincidentally happened after the prior government agreed to sell oil in euros. Then there were these WMDs discovered (which turned out to be faked). Just coincidentally.

  9. Re:Fun question: on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    I don't have your faith in the "well running market", but I generally agree with your approach. The problem is that the "well running market" is a myth because of temporal lag in feed-forward loops. (They aren't relly feedback loops, because of time not standing still. But if you use a linearized simplification you can think of them as such.) You need governers in place to limit both positive and negative reinforcement of trends and to act as friction for rate of change.

    Unfortunately, I know of no way to accomplish this. E.g., regulatory capture is an unsolved problem, because those in power don't *want* it solved. The simple way to solve it would be to cut the feed forward, i.e., forbid economic interactions between the regulators and those regulated not only during their term of office, but also afterwards, and, ideally, also before appointment. But that would require the development of expertise in an apprenticeship, which would promulgate whatever culture the regulatory agency adopted.

  10. Re:Consider the source - a pathological liar on Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable · · Score: 1

    Well, I'm not sure that you could consider the "plan" a lie. I do, however, doubt that we could trust her to do what she promissed. There are too many easy excuses for not doing it.

    The odd thing is, while she was chiefly Pres. Clinton's wife I had quite a good impression of her. Since then.... not so much so.

  11. Re:So 30% of 4% is 1.2%. What is attractive here? on Want To Fight Climate Change? Stop Cows From Burping · · Score: 1

    Farmers also operate on a thin budget, so if it increases their expenses they're likely to give it a pass, even if they approve of the idea.

    OTOH, if this is cheap and easy to add, then it may be successful. Depending. How many farmers still grow their own feed? How many buy commercial feed? (OTOH, why are dairy cattle being fed corn? That's generally a bad idea. It's usually reserved for beef cattle being held in feed lots to put on fat.)

    That said, my grandfather often added molasses to the alfalfa he fed his dairy cattle while milking them. So if it could be mixed into a formula of molasses, this stuff, and various other minerals it could easily be added, if not too expensive.

    OTOH, my grandfather was operating on quite a small scale. (3 cows is the most I remember.) Perhaps the problems/benefits are different for larger operations.

  12. Re:interstitial on Google Studies How Bad Interstitials Are On Mobile · · Score: 1

    Well, it should mean something like "between the walls", but in context I've no idea...except that other people seem to be implying that it means you need to install a program to read the content of a web site. Truly a bad idea. So I guess that, say, Flash is an interstitial.

  13. Re:Won't allow forwarding? on Gmail Messages Can Now Self-Destruct · · Score: 1

    The filter would send the automated request of a clean version of the email.

  14. Re:Fred? on Tortoise Gets a new 3D Printed Shell After Forest Fire · · Score: 1

    Is it realy Germanic in origin? I thought it must certainly go further back than that considering that derivitives are common in Spanish, English, and German. I'm not sure about Italian. My suspicion is that the Lombards carried it into Spain, and they were hardly Germanic. (Of course, perhaps Ferdinand isn't really Fred, but I suspect that it is.) Various web sites list differing dirivations, but as many go back to Gothic roots as to Germanic, so my suspcion is that it goes to a common ancestral tongue. Do remember that dialects can change pronunciations, and small slips are to be expected rather than surprising.

  15. Re:horrible thing to do on Tortoise Gets a new 3D Printed Shell After Forest Fire · · Score: 1

    I was wondering if, over time, his natural shell would underplate the artificial shell until it could just be allowed to weather away. Of course, this might well take awhile.

  16. Re:Interesting on Eye Drops Could Dissolve Cataracts · · Score: 1

    Actually, it doesn't cause far-sightedness OR near-sightedness. It causes inflexibility. If you tend to normally be far-sighted, this will make you unable to see closely. If you tend to be near-sighted (as I am) this will make you unable to focus at a distance.

    FWIW, I still don't wear glasses to read, but I do wear them to use a computer. If I were to drive, I'd need a second pair to drive with. Inflexible. I do not find progressive lenses tolerable, I find them essentially useless. My main use of glasses is while using a computer. Progressive lenses would render much of the screen unreadable. (I know that's technically not true, and that one only sees clearly out of the foeva, but moving the entire head is a lot different from moving just the eye.)

  17. Re:So glad its a HTML 5 standard on HEVC Advance Announces H.265 Royalty Rates, Raises Some Hackles · · Score: 1

    Sorry about that unclosed tag. I hit submit when I was reaching for preview. And there's no way to edit after submission.

  18. Re:Burning question on Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law · · Score: 1

    Quite possibly. The comment I was replying to implied that the local library might reasonably be expected to have a copy. I've heard this incorrect implication made often, and *that* was what I wished to disagree with. I also expect that I could find a copy in the local University law school (which might be easier to access). But it's still a significant barrier.

    You don't need to make something impossible to access to effectively deny access. Just make it difficult enough. Then you can always claim that there really *is* access. (And have you actually read any of those laws. They have more subroutine calls [or, if you prefer, indirect jumps...that might be better as there is no return statement] than most programs.)

  19. Re:So glad its a HTML 5 standard on HEVC Advance Announces H.265 Royalty Rates, Raises Some Hackles · · Score: 0

    ??? Only recourse??

    FWIW, I don't have flash installed AND,/B> I don't have html5. And most places I don't have javascript. (Actually, I may have some parts of HTML5, but not most of it.)

    What recourses you have depends on what services you consider essential, and I don't consider playing videos to be essential, and even consider it detrimental.

  20. Re:Burning question on Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law · · Score: 1

    Most libraries that I have seen do not have a current copy of the state law. Granted, in my state that would fill several shelves from floor to ceiling. I've seen one copy of an abridged printing of the corporate law (not current at the time). It filled 4 bookshelves floor to ceiling.

    What is being discussed here is not just the state law, but an annotated version, which is pretty much guaranteed to be considerably longer.

  21. Re:The article should use "ridiculous" 0 times. on Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law · · Score: 1

    ???

    I'm sorry, the logic of that proposition eludes me. You must be assuming postulates that I am unaware of. (Not one's I reject, that wouldn't confuse me, but perhaps one I have never heard.)

  22. Re:The article should use "ridiculous" 0 times. on Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law · · Score: 1

    Ok. So a stopped clock is right twice a day.

  23. Re:Private Laws on Georgia Lawmakers Sue Carl Malamud For Publishing Georgia Law · · Score: 2

    Because the courts appear to use the annotated version for making decisions...and if your crowdsourced annotated version was the same as the other annotated version it would violate copyright.

    FWIW, if the courts use the annotated version to make decisions, IMNSOH opinion, it should be considered the effective law, and therefore not copyrightable.

  24. Re:Genesis! on Four-legged Snake Fossil Stuns Scientists, Ignites Controversy · · Score: 2

    You are talking about one part of religion, and considering it as if it were the whole. And the part that you are considering is the most dubious part.

    I, personally, happen to be a sort of gnostic, though not a gnostic christian. It *is* possible to have direct experience of the holy, which one and easily interpret as superhuman, though I consider that a mistake. I feel the the "gods" are a subset of the Jungian archetypes. Do *NOT* make the mistake of thinking that this renders them ineffective. They are the shared substratum of (almost) all humans. And they act powerfully, though indirectly, in the physical world because of that. Their actions are normally invisible because we don't notice them, not because they aren't present. Without the gods no machine would be built, and no language would be possible. Normally we call the "gods" instinct, if we notice them, but that badly downplays how powerfully they act. We don't tend to notice them because they are almost universal among humans. We are more likely to notice their absence, which we give names to like "sociopath", or "autistic". The eruption of a god into a full encounter with consciousness is quite rare, and generally needs to be managed with great care. It can also be quite destructive, so one should usually avoid this. Of course, it's more destructive if you don't notice that it's happening, and also if you have a great deal of trust in them. Be warned: The gods make mistakes. We do not live in the environment that we evolved for, so even when they act in ways that would be appropriate in that environment, it may be mistaken...and they would even make mistakes in their evolved environment.

  25. Re:Genesis! on Four-legged Snake Fossil Stuns Scientists, Ignites Controversy · · Score: 2

    If you take it as a compliment, that's fine. But you *do* need to be aware of the full significance of that "symbol". You may find partial enlightenment at the nearest meat packing plant. (You'd find more in raising sheep, but that takes a lot longer.)