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  1. Make up your own mind on 'Super Steel' Sought For Fusion Reactors · · Score: 1
  2. Re:In General on Domain Key Identified Mail vs Phishing · · Score: 1

    Yes, the envelope From: has to match ...which is the From: that is usually not shown in the MUA. There are valid reasons for envelope and message From: to not match too, so have fun filtering. How big is the array of bank domains going to get before Perl keels over?

  3. In General on Domain Key Identified Mail vs Phishing · · Score: 1

    Technologies like SPF/SenderID and DKIM do address a number of senarios today, but unfortunatly they both suffer the same weakness in combating forgeries which pretty much dooms them to failure in the long run: They can't do anything to stop an infected client machine sending out perfectly valid and non-forged mails.



    Consider...

    1. Company/ISP Exchange Server/Notes/Sendmail/FooMTA is setup for authenticated relay via public key, username/password, or whatever (or for that matter Non-auth via authorized IP range relaying).
    2. Domain(s) of said MTA publishes SPF and DKIM key in DNS.
    3. Client of said MTA has FooClulessLuser who clicks on FooMalware.
    4. FooMalware utilises saved SMTP relay auth info and starts spewing en mass.
    5. Spew passes SPF and DKIM



    Yes, of course there are many ways of dealing with the resultant spew. But, what have either of the anti-forgery technologies really accomplished other than escalating the tech war between hammers and spammers?

  4. Re:Strange, 1p/10 mins more than 12pp/5 mins? on Comparing Memory Usage of Firefox 2 vs 3 · · Score: 1

    I see what you're saying. Still, I think with some due diligence the majority of all these little problems could be fixed...enough of them that popular opinion could be fixed in terms of it. IMO, it would almost be enough for the "team" to simply make an anouncment to the effect that yes the end-user experience is in fact suffering at the hands of various memory allocation issues and we are going to be putting a strong focus on fixing this in the next n builds. Put a bounty on it even...$100 bucks to the first AutoIT script that will put fooMozilla product at >=100MB private bytes (or whatever was deemed excessive).

    Perfect...of course not. But if they fixed even 80% of the RAM issues I would probably be less likely seen using Opera.

  5. Re:Strange, 1p/10 mins more than 12pp/5 mins? on Comparing Memory Usage of Firefox 2 vs 3 · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, I think the damage to Firefox's reputation is already done. There are many people who have had negative experiences with Firefox who keep on harping about the "memory leaks" and I don't see how Mozilla devs can change this public perception.
    It would be quite easy to flip the negative perception IMO. When they are sure it is all fixed (you can use the browser heavily for days w/o restarting etc...) then release the fixed version. Now, instead of the release notes consisting of "Security and stability fixes" there would be a nice banner saying something a tad less nebulous like, say "WOWZAAZZZ, lookee here we've finally gotten around to fixing that big RAM wasting issue everyones been bitching about for years! WOOHOO Download now and tell all yer friends!"
  6. Re:Vista needs the space on Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More · · Score: 1

    I've seen some pretty convicing reports that Dell pays somewhere around 50-60 dollars for their OEM copy of windows.

  7. Re:ob on Massachusetts Likely To Approve OOXML · · Score: 1

    A lot of people say it's not really open, but I don't see anywhere how that's the case. In fact, people following the link to wikipedia will not see any criticisms against open-ness. There is quite a bit of shouting about why this is not this way or that way however.

    So, there are two arguments I see people use to say OOXML is not open:

    First, people like to say that OOXML is patented. OK, yes, we all know that's true, just like it's true that ODF is patented in *exactly* the same way by another large and litigious company. Full stop, end of story. Really, it's time to throw this one out folks...

    Second, some people are concerned that OOXML allows documents that use proprietary image formats or other elements? I ask you, what moron (l)user in this day and age is going to use a WMF file instead of jpg, bmp, gif, or png when creating a word document? If an author does this in 2007, who is at fault for creating a proprietary document, Microsoft or the author (or maybe the company that hired the author)? The same goes for all the other alleged "non-open" parts. They comprise formats that no one has actively used for years or even decades.

  8. Re:IM re-queued or fallback to email? on Slashdot: Podcasts, IM, Improved Discussions · · Score: 1

    I think most people who use AIM know better than to trust it. IMO, they should have started with GTalk or Yahoo where offline messages are supported.

    So the hooks are in CVS...maybe someone will hop on it...

  9. Re:what? on Six Multi-Service IM Clients Reviewed · · Score: 1

    So true, why do people keep showing it the love

  10. Re:Miranda? on Six Multi-Service IM Clients Reviewed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Beats the bloated trillian hands down. Not only that, source is free =) I can't believe it wasn't part of the article

  11. Re:Write to your reps on Pro-ODF Legislation Loses In Six States · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Looks like the home/basic edition of office (contains word/excel) is selling for just over $100. IIRC, there are versions of the Word perfect suite for about the same price, if not less, that will open and edit all but the most complex MS word files without dificulty. Even the free Open Office will open most Word files... All but the first product works on Linux.

    Now that the MS office suite has totally open file formats your argumets go from being just somewhat, to compleatly disingenuous.

    I know it's popular to believe Open XML is not open... There's a nice cliff over there... I'm popular... Let's jump...

  12. Re:I'm not from America on Pro-ODF Legislation Loses In Six States · · Score: 1

    Those that can not afford a computer are welcome to visit their local library to read electronic documentsom the government.

  13. Re:ok for low end, not for high on Does ZFS Obsolete Expensive NAS/SANs? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if the Coraid ATA-over-Ethernet would be good enough? It ditches TCP/IP in favor of raw Ethernet frames so has much lower overhead than iSCSI and only major loss is no routing. http://www.coraid.com/

    BTW, I read recently that where 4Gb FC really excels is in large block sequential transfers and that small random access transfers are actually better over gigabit iSCSI. Check it out: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/columnItem/0,2 94698,sid5_gci1161824,00.html

    Plus you really have to think about other bottlenecks. How many disks need to be striped to consistently saturate the bandwidth of 1Gb Ethernet? 10Gb ethernet? What about the bus that the host adapter/NIC is on? Precious few boxes have 4x PCIe and then what about CPU overhead, managing all this streaming data? Just food for thought...

  14. Re:hmm on Microsoft XML Fast-Tracked Despite Complaints · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even funnier that these highly spun articles keep making it to the front page... One might start to believe that the OSS community has a bigger marketing budget than Microsoft does! Oh that's right I forgot, ther is no real OSS community anymore. It's all wrapped up in the whims of IBM, SUN, etc... politics.

    Has everyone forgotton that ODF was fast-tracked with no complaint period at all? I'm amazed that something as woefully incomplete and ambiguous as ODF is already a standard and no one seems to give a good rat's ass about that. That fact certainly isn't getting any press that I can see. ODF isn't any more "community designed" than OOXML. It's simply a partialy (and hastily) documented, previously application specific markup that happens to be plain text, released under a perpetually gratis license. It simply enjoys a slight headstart over OOXML.

    It's just all about beating MS at any cost (those evil mother F***ers, ruining our geeky free world!). Who gives a F*** about a standard's technical competance or compeating on technical merit? The funniest thing is the "high morals" of ODF. Yet, ODF is just as patented and closed as OOXML. If you dare point out any technical deficiancies in ODF you won't see anyone say, "why you're right, let's fix it!" Nope, all you'll see is some half assed and ignorent attack on OOXML lobbed back over the fence.

    I'd love to hate Microsoft as much as the next person, but all I see are well reasoned and technical responses in the face of the tantrums in the ODF preschool.

  15. Re:Why not OpenXML? on Texas Bill For Open Documents · · Score: 1

    OpenXML doesn't meet the criteria because parts of it are patented.
    You are aware that ODF is fully patented, right? http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.ph p ...and just like Microsoft, Sun has published a covenant not to sue: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-04-a.html

    Besides, even if it weren't patented parts of the "standard" essentially say "re-implement the behavior of Word" which, for obvious reasons, is entirely unreasonable and should also disqualify it.
    So what you're saying is the ability to load in converted documents from prior versions of MS Word is a bad thing? Have you read these parts of the spec.? If you had, you would remember seeing that these non-described tags are used to purposfully render documents in a broken way, such as positioning page footers incorrectly. By NOT implementing these tags, a compliant app will render documents like later versions of MS Office, which fixed the bugs

    "published without restrictions or royalties": OpenXML already fulfills this today
    No, you're wrong. Patents qualify as restrictions.
    You seem pretty sure of yourself there but don't offer any evidence that it is true. It would sure suck if you are right, because offhand, the only spec I can think of that would pass muster is the bastard child of xhtml/css/bmp and something tells me that there's some patents on bmp also. Too bad...
  16. Re:Why not OpenXML? on Texas Bill For Open Documents · · Score: 1

    This is not insightful; it's plain false!

    Check this out: ODF supporting applications write out proprietary and undocumented tags: http://blogs.infosupport.com/wouterv/archive/2007/ 01/27/Doug-is-Evil.aspx Read in the section titled "Open XML contains MS specific markup to maintain backwards compatibility"

  17. Re:OOXML and ISO approval on Texas Bill For Open Documents · · Score: 1

    Did you know that the ODF spec went through ISO on an even faster track known as the "PAS" process?

    The PAS process is basically the same as the fast track process except it allows the spec to skip the 1 month contradictory review and go straight into the balloting stage.

    Yes, you read that right...

  18. Inaccurate description on Texas Bill For Open Documents · · Score: 1

    Brian Jones, "father" of the OOXML format, appears to think that OOXML would meet the description of the TX bill just fine: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/02/ 06/texas-looks-at-the-interoperability-of-file-for mats.aspx#1619559

    So much for the mistaken religious fanatics around here who appear to think there's some kind of war going on between document formats... Everyone who's a TX voter, write to your reps and encourage them to approve this bill. Everyone on "both sides" will thank you, it's a win-win situation! ;)

  19. Re:FUD? on Graph of Linux Vs. Windows System Calls · · Score: 1

    Impossible to tell with the small pictures, though it's certainly believable. The graphs look similar to others I've seen. It would be nice to see instructions on how to create the graphs rather than the graphs themselves.

  20. Re:It's The License That Kills It on Microsoft Wins Industry Standard Status for Office · · Score: 2, Informative

    That whole mess has been superseded by the covenant not to sue (a long time ago now!). So no, the sky is not falling...

    See: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/08/ 04/688932.aspx

  21. So much FUD, So little time on OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard · · Score: 2, Informative

    OK, enough FUD, time for some cold hard facts:

    Open XML is *NOT* proprietary See for yourself: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45-M.h tm

    ODF is *JUST* as patent encumbered as Open XML is.

    The owners of both ODF and Open XML do not and will not collect royalties (both have published a covenant not to sue)
    Sun: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.ph p
    MS: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx
    Non-Legalese Explanation: http://www.bakernet.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC54A6B6-79E8 -4E0D-B290-C836D5F70867/0/OpenXML.pdf

    To implement either standard, a developer need not accept any kind of licensing agreement whatsoever.

    A user, using software that implements either standard, does not have to accept any licensing agreement that covers the either respective format's standard.

    Thanks for playing :)

  22. Re:Hmmm on OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard · · Score: 1

    You are aware that ODF is covered by patents also, right?

  23. Re:Hmmm on OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard · · Score: 1

    You are right and it would be nice if that happened too. There's a really nice discussion about this issue from September this year over at Brian Jones' blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/09/ 21/interoperability-of-the-office-open-xml-formats .aspx Both the comments and his posting mostly seem to be objective. The excuses given do seem somewhat apologetic so my weigh-in follows:

    My opinion from the functional viewpoint--I want to interact with people using older versions of office by using my Linux or OSX based desktop--is that this is a moot point (oh no, the binary format is undocumented). I believe this primarily because there is already a native freely downloadable add-on for Office 2000 and later that will let the user save to the new 2007 formats. I've tested it; it works great! Too bad it's not available for the mac edition of office :(

    What about people using even older version? Well, first, that's like running a Linux sendmail server in the year 2006 where sendmail is at version 8.8 and the kernel is 2.2.x ;) Doom on them and their public irresponsibility... If one uses MS office, then one obviously should have accepted the fact that one will happily pay money for software and will need to pay again and again every so often to upgrade. Otherwise they should be using OO.o in the first place :) Besides, OO.o will import most basic documents and spreadsheets just fine and from there save to ODF. Most businesses (the ones who actually use most of the advanced functionality) keep their software up to date which really makes this a non-issue. BTW, Apple is one of the companies on the Open XML board so I expect that future versions of writer will support docx, etc...

  24. Re:Can I load it in Word? on OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I continue to wonder why people here continue to view "The Open Source Community" and Microsoft as two opponents in some kind of imaginary war. There is no cabal; there is no war. MS does not care about ODF since it serves a different market and wishes only that ODF succeeds where it already is.

  25. Re:Microsoft? on OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard · · Score: 1

    I believe MS will be trying to get the Open XML format standardized by ISO as well so it wouldn't be in their best interest to do what you propose. Thanks for playing.