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User: Limecron

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  1. Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just on Nature Lover Vladimir Putin Flies With the Cranes · · Score: 1

    I was waiting for the day after CmdrTaco left that I'd stop reading Slashdot, and I think I've found it.

    Peace out, y'all.

  2. Re:Roku is linux on Netflix Touts Open Source, Ignores Linux · · Score: 1

    Why is this true? Open source implementations of plenty of encryption algorithms exist and that doesn't make them inherently less secure.

  3. Re:Incredible horrifying dial-up on Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation · · Score: 1

    Dialup is the norm? Satellite internet has been around for more than a decade and you can get 768k down for like $50/mo. Not significantly more than anyone would pay for cable or DSL.

    Sure, the latency is terrible, but it sure beats waiting days to download an update or a clip from YouTube.

  4. Re:Get an enterprise drive (SLC, not MLC) on Can SSDs Be Used For Software Development? · · Score: 1

    Or even more likely (c) human error.

  5. Re:Donate to At Home Projects on How Do I Put Unused Servers To Work? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not to burst your bubble on this, but the chances that you'll even come close to breaking even are highly unlikely.

    First off, even if you're only running 500watts in servers, which is not more than 2 decent ones under moderate load, you are paying about $450/yr to keep them on 24/7. Assuming you're lucky enough to get power as cheap as $0.10/kWhr.

    Unless you have some source of customers, i.e. you are a web-developer, or have lot of friends who want a sub-par web host, you'll need to advertise. The hosting market is incredibly saturated and Adwords on hosting keywords is very expensive. Expect to spend a few thousand per month for a few months to recruit your initial 100 users.

    Once you've got 100, you can probably turn it down to a few hundred per month to keep to user count flat to make up for those you lose in turn over.

    This also assumes that with that advertising you are actually able to sucker some users to pay $10/mo for static hosting on your cable modem, while they can get it for free from a number of providers like Google, or pay what amounts to a few bucks a month for hosting with an SLA, a real support staff and some level of redundancy and backup. There are a lot of suckers in the world, so we'll assume this is possible.

    Now, after you factor in the time you spend answering inane support e-mails from your customers, you'll see it's probably more profitable to get a second job at McDonald's. If only flipping burgers was as much fun as playing with servers. ;)

  6. Re:Wind? on Why Sustainable Power Is Unsustainable · · Score: 1

    Just because something is not found in plants doesn't make it a non-viable energy source... or do you really mean to tell me that because nature never found a way to burn petroleum or coal for energy that they aren't effective? Heck, almost nothing except for humans even uses FIRE for energy, and that one's dead obvious.

    Not to rain on your parade here, because I agree with your sentiment; But 'FIRE', being the combustion of a fuel with oxygen, is used to power every creature that has lungs or gills and many that have neither. Nearly all of the fuels we use to burn can be consumed directly by some organism. So I'd say that nature has that angle pretty well covered.

  7. Re:Carefully protected? on Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009 · · Score: 1

    The abbreviation used is URE, and so you're saying that URE stands for "Unreadable Read Error"? Err...

  8. Re:Carefully protected? on Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Unrecoverable" implies that it is not possible to read the data anymore.

    Also, data on the disk is addressed by sectors, so if one fails, this means you typically have at least 512 bytes lost.

    It's true that even that might not completely break some kind of large media file, but you have to remember that RAID5 is a layer below your file system data, so if an error occurs when its trying to rebuild itself, it will not be able to give you your data back.

    You might be able to recover a lot of your data from an error of this kind, but don't count on the RAID implementation to do it for you.

  9. Re:too little, too much on Inexpensive USB LCD With Linux Drivers For LCDproc · · Score: 1

    Amen to that.

    Staying out of the server room can also significantly reduce the chance of human error that can be caused by stupid or clumsy hands and feet.

  10. Re:Conformal Coating on Coating a Motherboard In Thermal Resin? · · Score: 3, Informative

    The amount of vacuum needed for most of these kinds of epoxies is pretty minimal (usually a few inches of water).

    Not that this is the recommended method, but we were able to successfully cure epoxy of this nature in a make-shift vacuum chamber. (A plywood box sealed with silicone and a shop-vac.) We even put a clear acrylic window on the front. Of course a real vacuum pump could probably implode our setup, but it was good enough for the epoxy and significantly cheaper than the alternatives.

  11. Re:No external antennas? Sue! on Best Terrestrial/OTA HDTV Setup For an Apartment? · · Score: 1

    You're right, it was Congress, not the FCC, who passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which by law allows a renter to install an antenna (satellite or terrestrial) in an outdoor area which they have exclusive use of.

    http://www.myrateplan.com/sat/condos.php

  12. Re:MythTV increasingly impractical (digital and HD on MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms · · Score: 1

    This was similar to my setup a few years back before I moved to the sticks and had to switch to satellite TV.

    An interesting thing that I discovered was that the On-Demand movie channels were broadcast in the clear on the QAM channels. (I also had a Dvico Fusion HDTV which could pull in the QAM channels, but it didn't work too well in Myth at the time.) The amusing part was the movie would stop and go backwards when the person watching it would pause it and rewind, etc.

  13. Re:I thought they were going green? on Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity · · Score: 1
  14. Re:You mention cellphones on What To Do When Broadband is Not An Option? · · Score: 1

    I'm writing this from satellite right now. I would trade 1/2 or more of my bandwidth for sub-100ms latency in an instant. Downloads are actually decently fast (~200kbytes/sec), upload is pretty bad (25kbytes/sec) but not intolerable. The download limits do prevent me from doing BitTorrent or streaming video, but I also consider that tolerable. (I just download to a friends box and then copy the files when they're finished.)

    What really pains me to pay more than 2x cable is the horrible, intolerable latency. For example:

    Pinging google.com [64.233.187.99] with 32 bytes of data:

    Reply from 64.233.187.99: bytes=32 time=3684ms TTL=239
    Request timed out.
    Reply from 64.233.187.99: bytes=32 time=1678ms TTL=239
    Reply from 64.233.187.99: bytes=32 time=3328ms TTL=239

    (This was just now, more on the worse side of things. At best it's between 800ms-1200ms.)

    Imagine browsing the web and having it take 5-20 seconds for your click to take effect while all the connections are established. Imagine using SSH with several seconds of delay before your keypress is echoed. It is almost enough to drive one mad.

  15. Obligatory on Google's Best Perk — Transport · · Score: 4, Funny

    We don't get French benefits?

  16. Arguably... on Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) -- the language which was created by Larry Wall is arguably one of the greatest programming languages."

    Hmm, kinda like George W. Bush is arguably one of the greatest presidents.

    Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

  17. Re:CentOS? on Fedora Core 6 Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    > Is there any reason to care about Fedora now that we have CentOS?

    Huh? Most desktop Linux users like running the latest and greatest which is clearly not what CentOS is intended to do. That's why Fedora and the Ubuntus exist, for desktop users to have all the latest versions before they're completely tested.

    Not to mention that Fedora is essentially the test bed for RedHat, which is what CentOS carbon copys itself from. So essentially, if you use CentOS, you need people to use Fedora to ensure your copy of CentOS is tested properly.

    > Also, I spent the day mapping configurations between Debian and RHEL. It was not fun.
    > Could someone please, pretty please, come up with some kind of XML file to abstract everything commonly found in a linux /etc, then write conversion tools for each OS to move from XML to /etc files?
    > Then we could have one configuration tool for the XML file, instead of having to use hundreds of tools (system-config-foobar, dselect reconfigure foobar) or learn hundreds of config file parsing languages.
    > 99% of configurations done in /etc/ are simple concepts that should not require looking up some random guy's BNF.

    Good idea. I nominate you.

  18. Re:Depends... on How Much Virtual Memory is Enough? · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is completely wrong.

    In Windows, your RAM is saved to a file called "hiberfil.sys" which is the exact size of your physical RAM. Your swap file stays exactly the way it is, otherwise you'd lose the data that was swapped to it.

    In Linux, it depends on what program you are using to suspend, but typically, it's a file in /tmp.

  19. Re:"Review" misses the point. on It Does Little and Not Very Well · · Score: 1

    If its' hardware is wonky, is it still OS's fault?

    That said, I don't see where the OP got that anyone blamed Linux in the first place. Poorly written kernel-level drivers or unreliable hardware will destabalize any OS.

  20. Re:Star Trekkin. on Star Trek's Synthehol Now Possible? · · Score: 1

    Somehow I think once you've mastered the technology of projecting life-lke holograms onto force fields, making some kind of automated clean up system would be trivial.

  21. Is it just me? on GPL 3 As Bonfire of the Vanities · · Score: 0, Troll

    Is it just me, or is GPL v2 or GPL v3 just another license, and not something one could compare to a religion?

  22. Re:Why? on Switching a College from Desktops to Laptops? · · Score: 1

    Haha, how much do you think your student loans would cost you per month when you are done with school?

  23. Re:Controlling Audio /Video Devices With the DS on Opera on the Nintendo DS · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't a WiFi-enabled PDA be better suited to something like this?

    Using a DS for this purpose seems like it would be cumbersome and rather unelegant. i.e. You have to flip it open, wait for it to boot, swap the batteries or hookup an AC adapter every so often.

    And heaven forbid someone want to change the channel while you're playing MarioKart.

    With a PDA you could setup the cradle in the living room (or wherever your setup is) and leave it charging when you're not using it and it would be an "always-on" type solution.

  24. Re:Not something to worry about on Fired for Solitare At Work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure there were also political motivations that would not be present in a normal corporate environment.

    If you work in a public office, you've got people coming in and out all day, many of which are ordinary citizens. All it takes is one person to notice and say, "Oh, I am paying for that guy to play Solitaire." Something like that may come out against you in an news article or in your re-election campaign.

    So yes, he looks like an asshole, but then again, he also looks like he's stongly protecting the use of NYC's tax payers' money. Of course, neither, either or both may be true. :)

  25. Re:Just because you can, doesn't mean you should on Fired for Solitare At Work · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not that I entirely disagree with you, but a guy who worked at the same job in NYC for 6 years and was only making $27,000/yr was not exactly part of their brain trust.

    Many entry-level retail employees in NYC make $27,000/yr.