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  1. Re:An inherent limitation of the form factor? on Ask Slashdot: Scripting-Friendly Smartphones? · · Score: 1

    The N900 wouldn't work on Rogers, though... they use 850/1900 for their HSPA bands. It's quad-band GSM, so it'd work at GPRS/EDGE speeds on Rogers' network, though, which *should* be plenty fast enough for SSH type work.

  2. Re:An inherent limitation of the form factor? on Ask Slashdot: Scripting-Friendly Smartphones? · · Score: 2

    If you're *really* going to go that route, though, why on earth wouldn't you use a tablet instead of a cell phone? Archos makes some 10" tablets in the $200-300 range which are extremely Linux-friendly. Ok, so the tablet itself is somewhat underpowered by current standards, but how many tablets have officially manufacturer-supported Linux images (debian-based in this case) you can install in place of the Android that ships from the factory without voiding your warranty?

    Tether the tablet to your cell phone via wifi, if you really want to brag about doing it via cell phone, but use the right tool for the job. I've done SSH from my cell phone as well, but I've never actually *written* a script over the cell phone, just called a script that's already written or done a reboot. If you need to do anything more complex than that, then you should be able to get your hands on a laptop or in a pinch, a tablet. (admittedly, I'm probably in a different demographic than you, in that it's socially acceptable for me to carry a purse with enough space for a tablet, but even a 7" tablet would be a better platform for the work than a cell phone).

    Besides... I dunno about you, but usually I can't even hear my cell phone at a party, and that's assuming it's even turned on in the first place.

  3. Re:Screwed over on Google Releases Jelly Bean Updates For the Nexus S · · Score: 1

    The customers who get screwed are learning: if you want updates, buy a Nexus.

    If the Nexus had an SD slot, I would have. But it doesn't. (or at least, the Nexus S, which was the current version of the Nexus when I bought my phone, didn't).

    It still comes down to features. Getting software updates is a feature, yes, but if the phone you're using does everything you want it to do, then why buy a new one just to get updated software? Most of the features for Jelly Bean can be had from apps on the market anyway.

  4. Re:Unbundle this.. on Canadians To Get Unbundled Cable TV Channels · · Score: 1

    It's $7.99/mo in Canada, and pretty much every series it has is complete. They're not all old series, either... just yesterday, I was watching Mad Men, where they have the current season. They've got the current Top Gear (UK), and they just added the current Torchwood and Breaking Bad series, too.

    If you want to watch current seasons of stuff though, Netflix has never been the place to go. Just go to the website for the appropriate station, and stream it from there.

  5. Re:Content bundling on Canadians To Get Unbundled Cable TV Channels · · Score: 2

    The difference is that it's been proven that the content producers are much more powerful than the cable and sattelite providers in dictating terms.

    Except that this is Canada we're talking about, where with the exception of a couple of independent stations, the content providers are all part of the Shaw, Bell, Videotron, or Rogers media empires, and where the cable/satellite providers are Shaw Direct, Bell TV, Videotron, or Rogers.

  6. Re:Private information? on 2.4 Million Ontario Voters' Private Info Compromised · · Score: 1

    Now, if that should be considered publicly available info is up for debate

    It's a matter of public record.

    http://www.ontario.ca/en/ontgazette/STEL01_033657.html
    http://www.gazette.gc.ca/index-eng.html

    Each province has their own equivalent of the Gazette. If you know the name of somebody and the province they were born in (and seriously, there's only 10), you can find what year they were born in by searching by name. All births, deaths, and name changes are published as part of the vital statistics act. You *can* have something like that be non-published (I did a name change a few years ago that was non-published), but there's a *very* strict set of criteria under which it's allowed, and it's done by special request only.

  7. Re:Does the server need to know the password? on Unbreakable Crypto: Store a 30-character Password In Your Subconscious Mind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or, it can contact an authentication server, which deals with both the exact challenge to be sent, and verifies the response.
    In some apps, this may be a valid way to do things.

    Not really... if I want to crack your password, all I have to do is send a few requests to the authentication server, and look at the challenges it responds with. Find the sequence of 30 characters that's repeated in all of them, and there's your password.

  8. Re:LOL on EPIC Files Motion About Ignored Body Scanner Ruling · · Score: 1

    She, and no it doesn't... I think drugs should be legal and regulated. If you're illegally importing the drugs, that takes the opportunity to tax them away from the government.

  9. Re:LOL on EPIC Files Motion About Ignored Body Scanner Ruling · · Score: 1

    A real conservative would insist that all would-be passengers get both, of course.

    Actually, a *real* conservative would see it for what it is: a colossal waste of money with a marginal, at best, success rate. They'd advocate something that has a proven track record and costs a fraction of what the body scanners do: dogs. Make everybody go through a metal detector, and get a once-over from a drug dog and a bomb dog before they're allowed on the plane... everybody's actually safer, everybody feels safer, and you don't have to let a high school dropout look at a naked picture of yourself.

    A fiscal conservative would say that, at least. Being a fiscal conservative, I can vouch for that. Being as socially liberal as they get, however, I guess the ultra-right wing neocons would lump me in the same category as the left-wingers. (gasp, you mean the government can actually *save* money by spending on education and social services? the devil, you say!)

  10. Re:Use a Lupo engine on Asking Slashdot: Converting an SUV Into an Hybrid Diesel-Electric? · · Score: 1

    I'm not going to repeat what's already been said, but....

    - They stopped making the Crown Vic, that means 3 child families must use SUVs and Vans.

    They still make station wagons, and full size sedans can easily fit 3 children comfortably in the back. Some of them can fit 3 adults comfortably in the back. And as has been said, Minivans are still a better option most of the time.

    - Modern cars are often rather small, making them worthless for big trips with young children (try to fit two decent strollers in the trunk of something that isn't a Crown Vic, I dare you)

    I have no problem fitting a mountain bike in the trunk of my car, if I fold down one of the seats. Given that strollers collapse, I have no problem believing that I could fit two of them in my car.

    - Modern cars have small engines. This is great around the town, but on the highway, mileage suffers horribly. SUVs get much better highway mileage (not better than cars, but not all that far away) because they often put an appropriately sized engine in them.

    Not sure what kind of car you've been shopping for, but I'm driving a 2011 with a 270hp 2.5L 4cyl engine. It's certainly *not* underpowered by any stretch of the imagination, and even though it only has a 65L tank, I had no problem driving from London, Ontario to Ottawa, Ontario, a trip just over 600km (about 400mi for the Americans in the audience) on 3/4 tank, and I was not paying much attention to speed at all. (I was taking the country highways instead of the superhighways, and had the cruise control set to 95km/h). I would like to see the SUV that could make a 400 mile trip on 10 gallons of gas.

    - Some modern cars (not all) do not support roof racks. So you can't even use it to bring a bicycle with you (since you can't tow with it, either) on a small fun trip.

    As I already said, I can fold down one of the seats in my car and have no problem putting my bike in the trunk. Actually, I can fit two bikes in there, if I take the front wheel off and put it in the back seat. I also have mounts on the roof for a rack, but I don't have one installed.

    - If you like to do your own repair work, modern cars are hell on earth due to their cramped engine compartments, unibody construction, and independent suspension (of course, most SUVs have that nowadays too, but not *all* are terrible to work on the way it generally is with cars).

    *shrugs* it's under warranty, and most soccer moms don't do their own repairs. I think that's a moot point for most people, and while it is a valid point some of the time, I've never heard my mechanic complain that he doesn't like working on the car. I've heard of trucks that are a pain in the ass to work on, too, because of bad design, so the problem isn't unique to cars anyway.

    - They quit making station wagons (give or take) so those customers bought SUVs (which are now being downsized to CUVs, which I guess is the modern day station wagon).

    No they haven't. further reading

    - It sucks ass getting a flat in a car on a long trip, since most modern cars have a toy tire, or worse, tire goop and an inflator ("clown shoes" as I like to call it). Many SUVs offer a full size spare--extremely handy!

    My car came with a donut, but the space for it is big enough for a full size tire. I keep one of my winter tires in there as a spare in the summer, and the inverse in the winter.

    - Stop using gasoline, use LPG or CNG and all of a sudden driving a V8 doe

  11. Re:Two steps forward, one step back on Dell To Offer Ubuntu Laptops Again · · Score: 1

    I have a Vostro V131n... it was $400 for a 13.3" laptop that tips the scales at just over 3lbs. And because it came from the business line of product rather than the consumer line, it included 1 year of next business day onsite hardware support at that price.

  12. Re:Get a car that lasts 50+ Years on Another Elon Musk Bet: Half of All Cars Built In 2032 Will Be Electric · · Score: 1

    with the replacement cycle perhaps extending to 30 years or more.

    That depends on where you are... if you're in a northern climate where they use a lot of salt on the roads, it's exceedingly rare to keep a car on the road beyond about 15 years, and most of them have had multiple owners by that point. Around here, it's not uncommon to retire cars that are mechanically perfect, but still undriveable because the body has rotted away from the road salt.

    EV's also need to make some enormous improvements in battery life/efficiency to make a big splash in northern climates... batteries lose their efficiency when they get very cold, and you could find yourself going from a 50 mile per day range to half that. Considering that 50 miles/day would be barely enough to get me to a carpool/park&ride lot and back, losing that range would leave me stranded. Give me an EV that can do 200km on a charge, factor in the cold and it becomes 100km in the winter, and I'd consider buying it. If you can't do that, then I'm going to stick with fossil-fuel burning cars or a hybrid.

    Unless somebody comes up with an electric with an on-board generator (screw hybrid drive trains, engines are *much* more efficient if they're running at fixed RPM... hook it up to an alternator or dynamo and generate electricity to power the purely electric drive train), my next car will be a turbodiesel. Diesel requires much less energy to produce than gasoline, it's ubiquitously available, and it allows much better efficiency than most gasoline cars on the market (and some hybrids).

  13. Re:I wanted to post this on Another Elon Musk Bet: Half of All Cars Built In 2032 Will Be Electric · · Score: 1

    Before you want to stake that claim of yours, I would advise you to do a more thorough research on the total energy input in producing biofuel

    Really depends on the biofuel you're using, and what other purpose it has served. Making fuel ethanol from corn, you're absolutely right... it's hugely inefficient, and the only reason the industry exists at all is because the US government is subsidizing corn growers, artificially lowering the price of corn.

    But if you look at something like biodiesel, there's no reason it can't be made from oil that's already been used for something like cooking. It becomes a *much* more efficient process, because you're essentially using the same product twice, in different ways.

  14. Re:Fill me in, eh on Canadian Supreme Court Entrenches Tech Neutrality In Copyright Law · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're kidding, right? It's virtually impossible to alter the Canadian constitution.

    It's been done several times in my lifetime, and there's a bill before parliament right now to read "gender identity/expression" into the list of protected classes in section 15 of the Charter (which is part of the Constitution Act). That particular bill has been put forward/failed a few times under Harper, but this time it was put forward by a Con, and has passed 2nd reading, and many provinces have already made such alterations to their own human rights legislation, so it's kind of moot at this point for most Canadians.

    It's nearly impossible to *buy* a change to the Constitution, but it's a bit disingenuous to say that the Constitution can't be changed, when it's already been changed several times in the last 30 years. Just that most of the changes that've been made have to do with equality rights, and are about increasing the rights afforded to people, not decreasing them. The real problem (or advantage, given the current discussion) is that even if a modification gets passed, the provinces can still invoke the Nothwithstanding clause.

  15. Re:we are on Canadian Supreme Court Entrenches Tech Neutrality In Copyright Law · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    There probably still are, but not for long if the Cons have their way.

  16. Re:You were correcting someone? on The Web Is Not the Internet · · Score: 1

    WRONG! I don't give a shit what they teach at the MSCE classes or where ever you heard such a thing but my computer does not automatically configure DHCP. Even if I decided to use such a service (which as mentioned previously has security risks so most servers that are internet facing don't use these services) my OPERATING SYSTEM would use such a service, not my Computer.

    Goodie that "YOU" don't use static addresses, but don't claim that the rest of the world is the same as you.

    QFE. And to paraphrase... Goodie that "YOU" don't use DHCP, but don't claim that the rest of the world is the same as you.

    And I would still be *extremely* surprised if you're not using some combination of DHCP and/or RADIUS as part of actually connecting to the Internet in the first place... if you have discovered an ISP that will allow its residential customers to configure their systems with a static IP address with no need to refresh configuration data from the centralized system, please do share it with the rest of us, as I'm sure there's some people here who would love to find out about it, for one reason or the other.

    It was not a complaint and not a red herring, unless you take things way out of context, it was a statement of fact. My point with SMTP and HTTP is that you are claiming they are required services for the internet to function. My answer is the same, no they are not required. No more required than IMAP or POP. Those are SERVICES and service are not REQUIRED for the internet. Protocols are the only requirement for the internet to function. Do you get the difference? I'm guessing not.. but hell I'll try one more time

    The Internet is a system to facilitate the exchange of information. Pray tell... if there's no information being exchanged, and no way to exchange said information, is there an Internet in the first place?

    Also, the P in all of those acronyms you listed stands for Protocol. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol, Internet Mail Access Protocol, and Post-Office Protocol. We'll throw in FTP, File Transfer Protocol, and for good measure, we'll also throw in BTP, though that's not what most users refer to it as. Perhaps, just maybe, their creators felt that they were protocols and not services. The service is the application listening on the open port you connect to (which is itself part of another protocol). These protocols are the language used to transfer information once you're connected.

    I corrected your mistakes

    You didn't, though. You squirrelled the discussion into something completely unrelated to the point I was making and made some false assertions, and when I called you on the bullshit, you proceeded to make ad hominem attacks. Incorrect ones, at that. I gave you an opportunity to avoid the ad hominem attacks, and in your next post, you continued with more of the same. My turn: you're either a troll or an idiot, and you're wasting my time.

  17. Re:You were correcting someone? on The Web Is Not the Internet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe you should RTFA since you are wrong on many issues.

    You claim, in your signature, to be a senior systems engineer/architect... perhaps you'd best do some research into the architecture of the Internet before you spout off.

    Briefly... when you turn on your computer, you send a DHCP request to your router. While it's possible to manually configure your system, we get to the router's configuration... *very* few ISPs in the world actually provide static configurations to their customers, because most of them have more customers than IP addresses. This brings us to the next step: your router will use some combination of DHCP and/or RADIUS to connect to your ISP. Most cable ISPs use straight DHCP coupled with a lease based on your MAC, while most DSL ISPs use RADIUS to authenticate before handing you over to DHCP. For FTTH installations, I've seen either configuration.

    So by this point, you haven't even sent your first DNS request (or direct IP, since you seem hung up on the idea that the majority of Internet users could simply memorize the IP addresses of their favourite sites and don't need DNS to surf), and you've already communicated with at least one DHCP server, possibly more, and possibly a RADIUS server.

    Now, it's true, usually, that you can simply communicate with most servers by putting the IP address in the address bar, but in all seriousness, do you believe that the majority of users have memorized the IP addresses of every site they visit? Unless you really want to be pedantic on the point, we can dismiss it as fucking ridiculous, because it is. Even if you want to be pedantic, and suggest that people actually can memorize that crap and not need a ghetto DNS in the form of writing down the IPs and keeping a piece of paper beside their computer, they still need to be able to access DNS so they can click on that picture of a cat that somebody posted on Facebook, and which is hosted on a server they've never heard of before.

    You claim that servers don't use DHCP, but I'm guessing you've never set up a server in colocation. I haven't had an actual static IP in a datacenter in almost 10 years... most of them will ask you for the MAC address, and configure their DHCP to give you the appropriate information. My server's IP hasn't changed in years, but it's still DHCP.

    Your contention that webmail doesn't require IMAP is true enough, but that doesn't change the fact that every webmail service I've ever used actually is using IMAP in the back-end, and that if you know the server names you can configure your mail client to connect through IMAP instead of using the webmail interface. There's no point in reinventing the wheel, and IMAP natively supports folders, filters, and search functions that most webmail relies on. You *could* implement something as feature rich without running IMAP, but it'd be a colossal waste of time. And then you reject the notion of there being a database because "the user will never see it". Bullshit. The user sees and uses it on a daily basis, they just don't realize they're using it, which was kind of the point I was making, if you'd actually read it.

    You then complain that if SMTP and HTTP didn't exist, somebody would invent something else... that's a red herring. The protocols do exist, and people use them. If they didn't exist, there would still be a need to transfer that kind of data. You essentially make my argument for me, at this point, by proclaiming that http isn't necessary, by virtue of the fact that if http didn't exist then something else would. That's how the internet works, at the end of the day... *many* different ways to send information around from system to system.

    I'm amused by the strawman you try to make at the end of your post, too, btw. I'm tempted to respond in kind, but honestly, what would it accomplish? The people reading this will draw their own conclusions. My point about "average" users stands, though... I deal with them on a daily basis at work, and I have seen their eyes glaze ove

  18. Re:And 2+2=4 on The Web Is Not the Internet · · Score: 1

    How much work on the internet do we do outside normal HTTP/HTTPS protocols? Most of our email clients are now Web Based. Cloud Applications tend to communicate via Web Services, On your local intranet at work, most of the stuff is Web Based...
    So if I found someone who mixes Internet and World Wide Web I am not going to correct them, unless we are talking in a very technical level.

    The e-mail gets from gmail to yahoo to hotmail by way of SMTP, and your web-based e-mail client is usually an IMAP4 front-end supported by a database back-end... usually SQL or some variant of it (mssql for hotmail, mysql for yahoo, and I'm reasonably sure that gmail, while it used mysql in the past, is now using a home-grown nosql variant).

    Every cloud-based "application" is also supported by a database back-end.

    You also have DNS, without which you can't get into the web-based frontpage in the first place, and if we're going to start talking about low-level stuff like that you almost certainly go through a DHCP server and/or a RADIUS server before you are even able to do the DNS request.

    The average user may not be aware that the technologies exists, and they almost certainly don't care, but the Internet as it's known today can't exist without them. That being said, trying to argue technical nomenclature with a non-technical person is a bit like holding back the tide with a thimble. At the end of the day, you're standing waist-deep in water with the fish nibbling at your toes, still trying to stop the water from reaching the shore.

  19. Re:And 2+2=4 on The Web Is Not the Internet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're going to argue that 2.9 is a large value of 2, and not a small value of 3 (in other words, if you're going to truncate rather than round), then you need to do the same action to the result as well. trunc(5.7) is 5, not 6.

  20. Re:is it real on Man Physically Assaulted At McDonald's For Wearing Digital Eye Glasses · · Score: 1

    He could have actually, you know, tried the number and found out that way that yes, they do speak English at the McDo head office in Paris. The language of business is French, but the languages of service include English.

  21. Re:is it real on Man Physically Assaulted At McDonald's For Wearing Digital Eye Glasses · · Score: 0, Troll

    He claims McDonald's doesn't publish contact information, either...

    http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts

    Didn't try very hard, did he? There may not be an e-mail address there, but there's a phone number, in Paris, that he can call and speak to a human being who would be very interested to find out the details of the alleged assault, and would almost certainly give him an address where he can send the photos.

  22. Re:Treatmen woo! on Chemical That Affects Biological Clock Offers New Diabetes Treatment · · Score: 1

    honestly, there need to be some serious efforts made to show people how much they actually need to eat. there's such a thing with alcohol, (not that many abide by it) with the "standard drink". perhaps instead of stupid coloured boxes with percentages on them, a meal could be given a simple "1.5 standard meals" and be done with it.

    The problem is, where do you define the standard? The last major attempt to define "standard" nutrition rules in the US is the reason that so many people are obese in the first place. You had people crusading against saturated fats, and replacing them with trans fats which we now realize are significantly worse for you than the saturated fats they replaced, and you *still* have people crusading for high carb diets, even though those carbohydrates metabolize into glucose as a natural part of digestion (some of them, faster than table sugar does), and trigger insulin production which, among other things, is a hormonal cue for your body to start storing energy in fat cells. 40 years later, they're *still* teaching this crap in schools. You want to know why people are fat, it's because they've been fed bad information for their entire lives.

    or we could just eat less.

    Losing weight isn't difficult, but it's not as simple as eating less. In other words, it's not simply a question of calories in versus calories out: You have to eat the right food, too, or you could find that you're *still* gaining weight. There's a reason that Atkins actually worked for most people: he advocated getting rid of carbohydrates in your diet... big surprise, as soon as people went back to eating so much bread, the weight went back on. Now, you need a small amount of carbs in your natural diet, but humans did not evolve to eat a diet based on grains, we evolved eating high fat and savory foods like meat, nuts, and legumes. Mother nature isn't stupid... there's a reason you crave fatty foods. They're more filling, and they take longer to digest, and because of that they promote weight loss.

  23. Re:Treatmen woo! on Chemical That Affects Biological Clock Offers New Diabetes Treatment · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't you rather he just be able to take a pill?

    I think his point was that with a little willpower, diabetes can be managed with diet alone. No need for injections. Now, replacing the injections with a pill would be a huge advantage for most people, but they'd still need to monitor their blood glucose levels so they can treat urgencies with an injection.

  24. Re:Sun is the same way on Is Pluto a Binary Planet? · · Score: 2

    Most people would consider the radius of the Sun to end where the mass of burning fusion ends, which is fairly constant except for solar flares... though I do get your point. If we include the atmosphere in our calculation of the solar radius, then Jupiter is actually within the heliosphere.

  25. Re:No, it'll just be an OPTION on Will Speed Limits Inhibit Autonomous Car Adoption? · · Score: 1

    It'll be an option until everybody has one, because it won't be completely safe until everybody has one. (and even then, there will be circumstances where automatic control is bad)

    But the entire premise, and your interpretation of the implications, is flawed.... It's not that people don't like to go slow, it's that people don't like to waste time. If my car can drive itself, I can sit in the back with my laptop, connect to mobile data, and actually get stuff done (even if that "stuff" is playing Angry Birds for an hour >.). It's human nature to want to be doing something "productive", and has nothing to do with a person's personal level of wealth.

    (In other words, poor people hate being stuck in traffic as much as rich people do.)