Slashdot Mirror


User: Sancho

Sancho's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
5,182
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 5,182

  1. Re:Here we go.. on Why Lenders Overlook Warning Signs of ID Theft · · Score: 1

    The credit card companies should allow merchants to check ID, then. Comparing a signature is pointless. It only takes a few minutes to learn to forge something that's passable to untrained eyes.

    Though some merchants ask for ID anyway, the merchant agreement usually forbids requiring ID to complete the transaction. This is pretty much there because the credit card company wants to make using the card as easy as possible. They don't want any negative implications to the card. It's the same reason that you can allow a cash discount, but you cannot charge a fee to use the card. The semantics are wholly within the perception of the consumer.

  2. Re:Inevitable, really on Geohot Brings Other OS Support To PS3 With Custom Firmware · · Score: 1

    I agree. I also think that the PS3 started out its life with people who were more affluent. They could afford more, so piracy was probably not even a thought. And I've heard that a lot of people bought them mostly with Bluray in mind--for a long time, it was the most affordable Bluray player, and it has always been one of the most fully featured ones.

    There are a lot of reasons that piracy is not rampant on the PS3, but I think a lot of them really do have to do with its popularity. Popularity itself is inextricably tied to things like game quality and quantity, number of exclusives, etc. Some of the reasons likely have to do with the market, too.

  3. Re: proving them right on Geohot Brings Other OS Support To PS3 With Custom Firmware · · Score: 1

    "Don't buy their products" is hardly a useful response this long after the fact! Most people I know with a PS3 purchased it YEARS ago, and are just now dealing with this firmware issue.

    Sony has a history of screwing with their customers. This history began before the PS3. People decided to buy a PS3 anyway.

  4. Re:Ha. on Geohot Brings Other OS Support To PS3 With Custom Firmware · · Score: 1

    But you didn't really get homebrew with the OtherOS feature. You got severely restricted access to the hardware. Sure, there were GPL games you could run, and you could write things (that would run on just about any Linux installation on Earth), but you could have done that anyway using a PC.

  5. Re:Ha. on Geohot Brings Other OS Support To PS3 With Custom Firmware · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You also lose the ability to play some NEW games, as frequently, games require the most recent version of the firmware (at the time of the game's release.)

    Which is a pretty big deal, frankly. Because PS3 games aren't advertised as "Sony PS3 with Firmware XX.YY" games. They're advertised as PS3 games.

  6. Re:Americans on Japanese Guts Are Made For Sushi · · Score: 1

    Interestingly, if a Straight man said the same thing about sex with women, they'd be considered intolerant.

  7. Re:Installation Instructions? on Google Gets Quake II Running In HTML5 · · Score: 1

    Flash sucks, no doubt. But the development tools are great. That's where Flash really shines--any idiot can build a flash game.

    When there are tools to easily build JS+Canvas+Websockets+audio+HTML5, then you may see the beginning of the end of Flash.

  8. Re:Could have done it for real... on YouTube, Now In Text Mode! · · Score: 1

    I found several where there isn't a text option. Try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVRHOhLP-aA

  9. Re:Zelda - Ocarina of Time (N64) on Gaming in the 4th Dimension · · Score: 1

    We don't know much about this game yet, so it's hard to say. However it's not hard to envision a scenario where there's some sort of time limit to completing the 4D puzzles. With the Zelda game, there was no real time limit to most of the puzzles, and when there was one, the puzzle was wholly within one of the time periods.

    Majora's Mask actually dealt with time more similarly to the way we experience it. The game takes place over the course of three in-game days, and events happen at specific times and places. You might miss events if you aren't there at the appropriate time. Now imagine one of those events entails going into the 4th dimension in order to get through a wall. You would then have a 4D game where time might be considered yet another dimension. Now the distinction between a fourth spatial dimension and time becomes relevant.

  10. Re:So Many Questions on Gaming in the 4th Dimension · · Score: 1

    Super Paper Mario for the Wii works like this.

  11. Re:Good thing on New Litigation Targets 20,000 BitTorrent-Using Downloaders · · Score: 1

    I'd be happy to pay $20-$30 for that. The issue for me is DRM. Will I be able to play the movie in a year? 5 years? 10 years? Without esoteric, old hardware/software? That's a big deal to me.

  12. Re:Somebody violated the first rule of usenet on Newzbin Usenet Indexer Liable For Copyright Infringement · · Score: 1

    More importantly, copyright infringement can apply even if you haven't made a complete copy. Getting pedantic about percentages is pointless.

  13. Re:The airing of political views on New Software For Employers To Monitor Facebook · · Score: 1

    It's more like people publishing their opinions in the local newspaper. Like it or not, sending things out onto Slashdot, Facebook, etc. are publishing them.

  14. Re:Backlash? on "Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3 · · Score: 1

    The important thing to realize is that one way or another, Sony is taking away a feature. Either they're taking away Linux on the PS3, or they're taking away the ability to play any PS3 game.

    It's irritating, but it's just an example of why you can't trust corporations.

  15. Re:Greedy idiot kids on "Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3 · · Score: 1

    I was actually just wondering about something related to this. Was OtherOS advertised by Sony? I know it wasn't available at launch, but was added as a firmware update.

  16. Re:Sorry kids on "Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3 · · Score: 1

    The damage this will cause now is marginal. Slim PS3s (the only ones currently being manufactured) don't have the Install Other OS option, anyway. There was a story a while back about a government buying up old stock of fat PS3s so that they could expand their clusters in the future.

    The only way this will affect military security is that it is presumably hard to go back to flash revisions, so hostile governments trying to buy used PS3s for computing clusters would be thwarted.

  17. Re:WTF? Just ask the patient. on Could Colorblindness Cure Be Morally Wrong? · · Score: 1

    Absolutely. And if I decide to walk around all day with my eyes closed and earplugs in my ears, I fully expect the government to make accommodations so that I can live a normal, happy life.

  18. Re:WTF? Just ask the patient. on Could Colorblindness Cure Be Morally Wrong? · · Score: 1

    I think that his point was that the world should operate with colorblind people in mind, and therefore things like capacitors should be marked with colors that colorblind people can distinguish. I think this is what he was saying due to his reference to the deaf population who would rather everyone else change their behavior than they be given a cure.

    One of the extreme fears in this vein is that if we gain a cure for deafness, then suddenly deafness becomes a choice. The world no longer needs to accommodate the deaf any more than they need to accommodate people who voluntarily walk through life with their eyes closed. Things like the ADA and frankly a whole lot of liberal policies go right out of the window, and there's a considerable power shift. Of course, all of this is masked in the "We want people to be individuals and have choices" rhetoric.

    It's a valid fear, to an extent. When you've got what most of us would call a disability, you're special. When people have to make accommodations for you, you have power over them. There's no question that power brings about a surge of positive emotions and feelings in most people. Then there's the sense of community and camaraderie of being in a group of people like you. Both of these could contribute to a deaf person's desire to remain deaf rather than receive a cure. Being well on our way to universal health care, cost may once have been a factor but is not likely to be one for long.

  19. Re:Well, why don't we change it? on Could Colorblindness Cure Be Morally Wrong? · · Score: 1

    Begging the question. Most people are irrelevant.

  20. Re:email? on College To Save Money By Switching Email Font · · Score: 1

    http://3430.online.fr/computing/electricity_power_consumption.html

    According to that, the negligible power difference is actually in favor of showing white images on LCDs in most cases. It makes sense that unless the screen dims when showing dark colors (as you see on some TVs), there is extra effort required to change the color from its natural state, light, to dark.

    With CRTs, the opposite would be true. Black should require less power than white.

  21. Re:DNSSEC has a similar attack against it on Government Could Forge SSL Certificates · · Score: 1

    This is, technically not true with self-signed certificates. Anybody can be a CA. Just self-sign a certificate and use that to sign the certificates of others. The problem is that you're not included by default. Of course, there are some sites that have their own CA, either for business reasons or because they can. They have an internal CA that they use to sign certificate for business purposes. These CAs are verified and pushed to machines, either by Active Directory at Windows sites or some other mechanism. There's no reason that an individual can't do the same when they generate certificates. The problem is that the fingerprint of CA certificates needs to be validated out of band in order for you the avoid a man in the middle attack when distributing the CA certificate to somebody else. This sort of distribution of SSL certificates would not require a trusted third party, but you would need to be able to identify the person or organization giving you the fingerprint and judge their trustworthiness.

    But if you still trust the third-party CAs, then this is still subject to the same attack. Even though you've added your CA to the trusted list, a third-party could coerce another CA to sign a certificate for your domain, and then perform a MITM attack on you.

    The only way to be sure is to trust no one but your own CA.

  22. Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010 on Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta · · Score: 1

    I'm talking about a general case. Most people will probably prefer an icon for that reason. Incidentally, it also doesn't require a plug-in and requires one fewer click (or doesn't require that you click-drag--I forget if you can use a right-click--drag--release sequence to open context menus in Gnome.)

  23. Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010 on Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta · · Score: 1

    But now you can't open a terminal unless you can right-click on your Desktop or a Nautilus window? The toolbar will be visible more often, I'd think.

    Personally, I just use a keyboard shortcut for opening the most common programs I use.

  24. Re:f1rst p0st on Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that's a big fucking deal.

    I've been using Linux for years. Back when I was in school, I didn't mind tinkering and spending hours getting things working just right. Now that I'm in the real world, I don't want to spend my free time making sure that my home computer is functional. I want something that works. Careful hardware purchases mean that you can get a computer (I stick mostly to laptops) where all of the hardware is supported by Linux. Then, if your distro supports it all, you're golden. If not, you might have to hunt down drivers, obscure patches, etc. to get everything working.

    The poster who said that they want the OS to be out of the way was dead-on. Ubuntu was great because it autodetected and configured most of this for me, leaving me to worry about interface customization and getting actual useful things done. It still does that to a degree, but the changes that they're making and the long-standing bug reports that go unanswered degrade the overall experience.

  25. Re:Auto accident insurance isn't required on House Passes Massive Medical Insurance Bill, 219-212 · · Score: 1

    And most states allow you to post a bond essentially proving that you can pay in the event of a collision. So if you can pay, you don't need insurance. If you can't pay (who here could afford to just drop, say, $10k in repair bills for someone else?) then you need insurance.