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User: CaraCalla

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  1. Does it always have to be military? on Interviews: Ask J. Michael Straczynski What You Will · · Score: 1

    Why are so many SciFi shows about the life of military officers? I enjoy SciFi, but I'm through with ranks, military discipline, honour and all that crap. Can't there be more shows about space-faring civil society?

  2. Easy on How Should I Teach a Basic Programming Course? · · Score: 1
  3. Re:Basically, We're Doomed on Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy? · · Score: 1

    "Yeah Right" - Sarcasm Recognition for Spoken Dialogue Systems

    You're toast, man!

  4. Re:Bobby Tables is at it again (obligatory link) on SQL Injection Turns BusinessWeek Into Viral Replicator · · Score: 5, Informative
  5. Re:No, it doesn't! on Kaminsky DNS Bug Claimed Fixed By 1-Character Patch · · Score: 2

    It is indeed an issue: The injected record is trusted because it orgiginates from example.com, but the evil bits are in the glue record, which goes ahead hijacking the www.example.com record. Without really knowing bind, I assume the patch does not work in that case.

  6. No, it doesn't! on Kaminsky DNS Bug Claimed Fixed By 1-Character Patch · · Score: 1

    It does not fix the case where the attacker first tries to poison aaaaaa.example.com, aaaaab.example.com, ... , fc4dss.example.com until he succeeds with the glue-record being the real evil. In that case there is no previous cache-entry to rely on.

  7. Re:Why the heat sink? on Atom-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard Available · · Score: 1

    Okay, okay - just figured myself: The activley cooled component is the north bridge. The Atom CPU is the small heat sink below. What a shame, really.

  8. Why the heat sink? on Atom-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard Available · · Score: 1

    If the TDP of the Atom CPU is 4W, as the article states, why does the board in the picture have such an impressive heat sink and fan? With that thing you could keep 60W nice and cool. For 4W you wouldn't need a heat sink at all!

  9. Re:Build a prototype on Getting Accurate Specifications for Software? · · Score: 1

    You don't even need a full, working prototype. Build mock-ups. Sit down with your prespective users and watch them try using your mock-ups. Understand what they are going to do with your product, is it really software they need? Understand what the guy who pays for the project wants. Return of investment?

    You really need to start thinking more like a designer, than a code-monkey. If you like being the code-monkey and if you like coding/engineering to specs, you should probably find yourself another job. Go for a really big company, with design process, and all.

    Should you stay with your current job, you should think about redefining your role. From what you write its unlikely you will ever get something remotly similar to specs from the sales people.

  10. The Microsoft Tax on Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    I resent the fact that they manged to effectivly tax nearly all forms of doing business in the industrialized world. They are the only private entity ever having achieved that. Its tax like, since virtually every business in the world pays them. Its unlike a tax however, since only a moderate percentage of the money payed serves common interrests.

  11. Re:Yes but.. on No WINE Before Its Time · · Score: 1

    cygwin on wine on linux is underway. See http://www.winehq.org/?page=fun_projects (about halfway down the page, under "Virtualisation Projects")

  12. Re:WINE on Windows on No WINE Before Its Time · · Score: 1

    I kid you not. Wine does run on Windows. This is to ensure that the api test cases in their test suite return consistent results across both platforms.

  13. Re:Obsolete model? on No WINE Before Its Time · · Score: 2, Informative
    You certainly have a point there.

    But:

    • Try running a graphic intensive application (eg. a game) inside VMWare.
    • More generally, there will always be applications which require the latest and fastest hardware. In that case you do care about emulation overhead.
    • You still need a Microsoft License.
    • While in VMWare's case integration between native and emulated apps is pretty good (filesystem, clipboard), its not even close to being on par with Crossover Office and wine.
    • Wine is not an emulator :-)

    --
    sig: no sig

  14. Re:Don't complain... on Practical Method for Getting Oil from Oil Shale? · · Score: 1

    I'd rather accept a lower economic groth for a couple of years and promote ecological change than continue burning fossiles at the current rate until change is being forced on us.

    People who predict the end of entrepreneurship once energy prices are up, which is probably the case given the rules of todays economy, tend to forget that it will be a very different economy then.

  15. Don't complain... on Practical Method for Getting Oil from Oil Shale? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't complain about 3 Dollars. In order to have some decent effect agains global warming it should be IMHO closer to 20 Dollars!

    Why don't the big networks talk about that in the long term it could be cheaper do seriously do something about global warming than give up a third of the northamerican continent due to increasingly hostile climat?

  16. Starcraft was and still is "genre-defining" on Genre-Defining Games? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    • It was originally released in early '97. The original CD dosn't even feature copy-protection. Can you point me to any other 8 years old game which is still played by thousands of gamers?
    • The mere fact that it still runs on todays hardware proves its technical excellence, a feature rarely found in games.
    • It was the first RTS game to feature three well balanced races.
    • As pointed out above: "Genre-defining" doesn't imply "first ever", it rather means "The one every other candidate is compared to".
  17. What? Where? on Microsoft Eases Licensing On Office 2003 Formats · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... so what are the terms of this new licensing model?

  18. Re:This might be an unpopular opinion here ... on U.S. Cancels Fusion Program · · Score: 1
    > How is fusion increasing the use of natural resources?

    We are currently hitting an upper limit to production (and thus consumption) due to shortage of oil. Ok, its not a hard limit yet, but we are experiencing the first signs of oil getting more expensive due to increasing shortage. If we had a power-source like fusion, production could continue to grow for another 100-200 years until we reach some other barrier. This would have devastating effects on the biosphere.

    > Hydrogen?

    Is just a mean of energy distribution, doesn't change the basic problem that we are consuming too much too fast.

    >So what is your plan to consume less?
    • Enhance overall efficency. Better refrigerators, better heat-insulation of houses. Make cars which consume less. Make trains faster and cheaper. More efficent computer power supplies,....
    • Discourage shipping goods half way around the globe and back by creating more localized markets. Make human labour cheaper compared to energy.
    • Invest in "green" technologies.
    • Encourage birth control.
    • Change capitalism from "more is better" to "the same using less resources is better".
    > Plan on going back to preindustrial revolution?

    Well, Earth, the biosphere, evolution all have a way of dealing with species who unbalance the natural equilibriums. If we continue to ignore the cybernetics of the biosphere this choice might be forced on us sometimes in the future.

  19. This might be an unpopular opinion here ... on U.S. Cancels Fusion Program · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ... but is anyone here actually aware of the fact that fusion, should it ever work, is not going to solve any of our problems?

    • It produces even more radioctive waste than fission, because you have to transform the all the neutreons and other radiation coming out from the reaction, to heat.
    • The number one problem of humanity is that we are consuming too much natural resources. The availability of a power-source like fusion would increase our consumption even more instead of reducing it.

    Please everybody stop dreaming of fusion and use your resources (intellectual and monetary) on techonlogies like solar power, ....

    My 2 cents.

  20. A REALLY black-hat one would be healthier on Slate On Worms That Plug Security Holes · · Score: 2, Interesting
    If someone came along to write a really nasty one, that could have certain beneficial side-effects
    • zero-day remote hole
    • replicate for 24 hours
    • then really mess up the filesystem, destroying most of the data
    That would teach most people to patch there systems.

    The Big One, anyone taking?

    no sig

  21. Re:Voip Gotchas - Power consumption on Switching from Phone to Voice-Over-IP? · · Score: 1

    And don't forget to count in the power consumption of any additional devices you need. My own (rather old) cable modem draws 30W, thats 250 kWh a year, or (depending on the cost of electricity) up to 80$.

    Cheers
    Edgar

  22. Beware of Linux Kernel-Samba on What is the Best Remote Filesystem? · · Score: 2, Informative

    I advise against Linux Kernel-Samba, at least if you want your Clients (be it Workstations or Servers) to have some uptime. After some days, possibly weeks it randomly stops working, all programs having open filedescriptors on the samba-share hanging. If you kill (-9) them, or the smbmount-process, they go zombie. Any other program which tries to access the former mount-point immediatly goes zombie as well (Your shell checking whats wrong, updatedb,...) After several more days I have seen those zombie-processes disappearing again, however not always.

    If you reboot daily anyway there shouldn't be any problem.

    All in all not a satisfactory situation.

    Tested with:
    - Samba 2.2.3a (Debian Woody) as Server
    - Kernel-Samba 2.4.* as Client

    But perhaps I missed something...

    Edgar

  23. iptables on Blocking MSN Messenger? · · Score: 1

    Iptables (as well as any decent firewall) can match packets containing arbitrary strings. Tcpdump a couple of Messenger handshake sequences and look for some common ids.

    Edgar

  24. Re:i think its already in the SMTP protocol on Reviving the Finger Protocol to Fight Spam? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The VRFY command is for the client to check wether the user exists on the server it is delivering to (and to get some additional information which is the reason it is deactivated on most servers).

    It is NOT for the server to check back politly with the client wether the email is originating from a valid user.

    Anyway, what is a "valid user"?

    Edgar

  25. unfortunatly not helpfull on Reviving the Finger Protocol to Fight Spam? · · Score: 1

    Finger is unfortunatly not helpfull since spammers would be happy setting up some one-time finger server and account to get out their x million spam-emails. Unless of course finger-information would be required to bear a signature. But then we could sign the email in the first place.

    Edgar