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User: kableh

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  1. Re:Just fine by me on Only Thieves Block Pop-Ups · · Score: 2

    There are no hidden games. I'm not trying to secretly track you, or steal your e-mail address. I am, however, obviously trying to show you advertising, and you are actively trying to block it. That's the action that is at least unethical, and in my opinion, theft. Notice I'm not saying that it is illegal, since laws do not exist that address this point.

    You may not be trying to secretly track me, but the advertising companies sure as hell are. The same companies that pay you for ads are the companies sticking a million cookies on everyone's machines to track their whereabouts, sell their demographic information, etc. If I could browse the internet with Javascript/cookies/popups wide open, I would, but too many companies insist on using less than ethical advertising techniques.

    You want to talk about ethics? Tell that to my friends whose machines I have to clean up. Their machines run dog slow, every site they visit pops up 3 or 4 windows, their information is being sold off to every other marketing company on the face of the planet, their machine might even be calling an international number because some scummy site surreptitiously installed DUN connection. Advertisers call it "creative marketing", I call it a virus.

    It is a shame that it affects webmasters like you, really, but the advertisers are getting what they deserve. Cry me a fucking river.

  2. Re:So what? on RadioShack Stops Being Nosy · · Score: 2

    I tell them no every time, and almost every time the clerk acts rude and gives me a hard time. It isn't that hard to say no, but it really ticks me off when I politely refuse and am met with a sneer.

  3. Re:Because on Using PDAs for Dictation? · · Score: 2

    I've used IBM's ViaVoice on my iPaq 3870, and it works fairly well. The vocabulary is somewhat limited, but I believe you can program it to open just about any program you want. The version I was using was a freebie that came with the iPaq. The only training it required was for the names of your contacts, and that worked fairly well too.

    I think a big limitation is the mike in the iPaq. It is acceptable for VoIP use, but for voice recognition I think the SNR is too low.

  4. Re:yea but... on An Informal Study Of K12 Classroom Software Costs · · Score: 3, Informative

    I started using Linux around Slackware 3.0 or so, on my blazing fast 486 dx2/66. I didnt have a clue what I was doing at the time, so I spent probably 3 days dual booting between 'Doze 95 and Linux just to get X working. Most of the help I got was from IRC too, though later I started using USENET to find answers. I think the channel was #linuxhelp or #linux on EFNet, and there were plenty of talented Linux users in there to help me out. The only questions that got an RTFM were people who came into a channel and demanded help using a command when they could have just as easily typed 'man command' and gotten the answer. Yes folks, sometimes there ARE such things as dumb questions =).

    And yea, trolls are funny like that =). I think the perfect troll is one which is glaringly obvious, yet impossible not to reply to!

  5. Re:Rule 1: Screw the customer on Microsoft vs. Modded Xboxes · · Score: 1

    Bleh. Bill can have his XBox Live, I have XBConnect to play Halo online =)

    I really have to wonder, though, if cheating is really what they are trying to stop. Having played CS for a couple years I really loathe people who cheat online. Is it that hard to develop some semblance of sk1llz?

  6. Re:Too Liberal on Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials · · Score: 2

    And now that Bush has pushed through his absurd "Homeland Security" bill, don't you feel that some of that Dubya-bashing was jusitfied?

    Frankly, I liked Salon a lot, though I found some of their writers to be ridiculously left. However, with the bigger stories they always seemed to have multiple writers with opposing viewpoints writing about the same subject. I found Salon to be mostly objective.

    And I make it a point to read some conservative sites too, if only to remind me why I need the hell out of this godforsaken country.

  7. Re:Rule 1: Screw the customer on Microsoft vs. Modded Xboxes · · Score: 2

    Problem with that is that if you have a non-original hard drive in there it won't boot with the MS BIOS. And frankly, that is the only reason I modded my box. Halo loads like 3-4 times faster off the hard drive.

    *sigh* Good thing I just bought GTA3: Vice City =)

  8. Re:There's a choice besides Micros? on Restaurant POS Systems? · · Score: 2

    My former employer used Micros for their point of sale too. It was deployed at 50+ locations around the world, with frame relay back to our home office. The servers (in the computer sense!) ran SCO, which made remote management very easy. Eventually we started importing the data via some scripting and throwing it all in an Oracle database. Was a really impressive project.

    One thing though, do NOT attempt to use their NT based product. My coworker at the time who supported this stuff, and who was a former Micros employee, had to touch the stuff a couple times and it wasn't pretty. The UNIX stuff just stayed up for months at a time. Definitely one of the places UNIX shines.

  9. Re:Microsoft better be concerned on Microsoft Responds to Leaked Memo · · Score: 2

    While my only other comment on this thread was bitching about Win2K SP3's EULA, I really do like 2K and XP, on the desktop. I've been using Win2K since it went gold, like others in this thread, and it really is a good OS, especially on the desktop. That said, I prefer XP with all the GUI crap turned off, as it fixes a lot of gripes I had with 2K. That, and ClearType makes text look almost as good as a Mac!

    I could list all sorts of gripes I have with 2K, XP, and Windows in general. I could do the same with Linux. But from a purely technical standpoint, Windows sucks. The VM system in Linux spanks any Windows, and from what I can tell its I/O system does too. Windows is passable on most counts, but when you start to do several somewhat intensive tasks at once it croaks. Microsoft has made a tidy profit selling something that is "just good enough".

    At this point, I just want a dualie PowerMac. Now if I can just find someone to buy this spare kidney...

  10. Re:Microsoft better be concerned on Microsoft Responds to Leaked Memo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You obviously haven't read the EULA for SP3. Many users have more than stability to be concerned about.

  11. Re:When will you people learn? on BMG Stops Producing CDs · · Score: 1

    Heheh, DuJour...

    Josie and The Pussycats rocks. And Racheal Leigh Cook, yummmmm

  12. Er, you don't say... on FBI Bugging Public Libraries · · Score: 3, Informative

    This was one of the nastier provision of the Patriot Act, and as I recall there was an uproar on /. when it first started getting press. <OB KARMA WH0REING>Related /. stories here and here.</OB KARMA WH0REING>

  13. Re:lawyers on GPL Issues Surrounding Commercial Device Drivers? · · Score: 5, Informative

    My company uses Linux in some of our embedded products. Before doing so, and before we had fulltime counsel, we hired a lawyer to go over the GPL and tell us if it was going to present a problem. This lawyer seemed to think that anything compiled with GCC would fall under the GPL, which is incorrect. There are specific exceptions that allow it to be used to produce non-free software.

    I'm not saying he should ignore the lawyer, but that his lawyer could quite possibly be wrong. The GPL is 'viral' in a sense, but not in as devious a way as Microsoft FUD would indicate, and at least they are up front about being a bunch of commies =)

    See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html for more info.

  14. Re:Lets see some real test data on Possible Big Boost in WiFi Range · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I saw a company that had a product that did this at CTIA, though I don't remember the company name right off. They had an antenna that looked like an oversized hockeypuck with a cable coming out of it. From what I gathered it is a phase array setup, and they use a processor in the antenna itself to seek out and lock onto the strongest signals. All this processing is done in the antenna itself, so the enduser just sees it as a high gain antenna that points itself. Ingenious if you ask me =)

  15. Re:Soft-mesh? on Embedded Linux Wi-Fi Mesh Router On Sale · · Score: 2

    Its shipping as I type this. I think a lot of people are just confused about what products we have. The soft client that works on any 802.11b card has been available for months now, but it didn't work as well as we had hoped. It took months to get access to a real miniport SDK from the 802.11 vendor we wanted to use, but that step was necessary to get access to the 802.11 card at a low level, essential for doing the routing algorithms we do. The product that we have now was available to a select few clients, who were presumably under NDA. Its shipping, but it is pricey, since we arent exactly building big lots of this stuff.

    And that is the problem. We never intended to manufacture this stuff, rather we were supposed to license it to manufacturers. Things have changed as of late, and now we're shipping product.

    The other product line is a proprietary chip, which we've had for months, but haven't been selling in volume. The chip is dirt cheap, but the supporting PC card board is costly for us to make, and consequently, the cards are ridiculously expensive.

    And I'm good friends with our sales guys. I find it hard to believe they weren't itching to selling it to ya =). Mail em, sales at meshnetworks dot com.

  16. Re:Soft-mesh? on Embedded Linux Wi-Fi Mesh Router On Sale · · Score: 2

    Yup, that's more or less what my company does. We have a software product that sits on top of 802.11 cards and allows you to hop through other users back to our AP.

    We've deployed it around the office and it is suprisingly effective. Multihopping also gives you other benefits, like better throughput. For example, instead of communicating directly with an AP at 5 Mbps, you can hop at 11Mbps and get double the throughput.

    It really is cool stuff, but it isnt as open as this Locustworld stuff. Each has their place though.

  17. Re:Urgh.. don't remind me (OT) on Programming Marathons? · · Score: 1

    Try Adobe GoLive. Generates the cleanest HTML I've seen to date.

    I used to write HTML by hand too. Don't base your opinion of all WYSIWYG editors on FrontPage (yuck). My roommate is the best web designer I've ever met, and he uses nothing but GoLive.

  18. Re:College versus not on Overspecialization in the Computer Field? · · Score: 3, Funny

    So what you're saying, is that employers just look down at all of us? =) Sounds about right...

  19. Re:The Screen Savers... on Top Ten Mac OS X Tips for Unix Geeks · · Score: 2

    No kidding. I've never been able to get into Screen Savers because it is just Slashdot and Fark, only 4 or 5 days late. And with obnoxious pseudo-geeks talking about it. Bleh.

    I work with enough engineers, I don't need to hear any more bad puns.

  20. Re:Problems? on Tom's Investigates Hard Drive Warranty Changes · · Score: 2

    Regarding the 75GXP drives... I've had a couple of them for going on 2 years now. They were the 30GB models, and were fairly new at the time. They've been running great in a home server until this point. I can certainly believe that heat would be an issue. These drives sit in a HUGE Supermicro (SC750 I want to say) case with 2 80 mm case fans, and I think that has made all the difference.

  21. Re:ok... on The Nation of Macintosh? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "recovering Mac addict" part bugs the hell out of me, though to each his/her own I suppose.

    I've been playing around with some old Macs for the past few weeks. I'm trying to get Linux on a 6100 but having a hell of a time. But in the process, I've had to load OS 7.5 on this thing a dozen times, and even this antiquated OS impresses me. It is clean. Easy to use. The Drive Setup tool, the Mac answer to fdisk, is easy enough my grandma could use it. Yet this kind of stuff eluded the Windows realm for years.

    I also finally got OS X on an old G3, and it is the coolest OS I have ever used. All my UNIX utilities are there. So are some gorgeous GUI apps. It is clean, simple, and that is just the way I like it. I love the CLI in Linux because I like simple, and I can get what I want to do done, and quickly. OS X is the GUI answer to that.

    As far as I'm concerned, anyone who uses Windows is a masochist.

    And as far as the hardware debate, yea, Macs are more expensive. It is economies of scale. But even this old 6100 uses SCSI! And the layout is well though out, with one fan for the entire computer (the PSU fan).

  22. Re:He's Right on Dealing with the RIAA? · · Score: 3, Informative
  23. Re:Their music? on Dealing with the RIAA? · · Score: 2

    So I'm supposed to pay for music, ostensibly so the artist gets a chunk. Realistically though, most of the cost of that CD will go to pay Hilary Rosen's fat paycheck, and the rest of it to pay for lawyers and lobbyists who are doing their best to legislate my fair use rights away and brand me a criminal.

    I didn't used to worry about it back when I was buying records every week, because most of the labels I was buying stuff on weren't RIAA members. Since Prodigy hit it big, the RIAA labels bought up all the good techno labels, and I CAN'T pay for music without subverting my morals.

    I'm a thief, Hilary. Come and get me. You can pry my 160 GB Firewire drive out of my cold dead hands.

  24. Re:Oh, give it a rest. on Camcorder Jamming Devices Announced · · Score: 2

    Actually, my big concern is that this will degrade the quality of the film. The DV to film print of SW Ep 2 I saw was AWFUL.

  25. Re:Overlooking the obvious on Stopping NetBIOS Spam? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Give me a break. Install Redhat 7.2 on PC, then plug that straight into the internet and tell me how long it takes to get r00ted. It took me all of 2 minutes at my last job.

    A good start would be a decent software firewall. Tiny Software used to offer theirs for free for personal use, but seem to have taken it down from their website =(. If you scour the net, you might be able to find it for download from one of those shareware sites.

    A reinstall also would be prudent. When I'm doing a fresh install I try to keep the machine behind a device doing NAT until I have proper firewall software installed and my box patched.