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User: wwphx

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  1. Re:Is LibreOffice vulnerable to the same exploit? on Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks · · Score: 1

    My PHBs wouldn't spring for something like Clipper. Still, we did some pretty amazing things with FB.

  2. Re:Oopsie! on What Fire and Leakage At WIPP Means For Nuclear Waste Disposal · · Score: 1

    Medical/industrial toxic waste is still dangerous and can be used for making dirty bombs designed to spread said nuclear waste over a large area. Not incredibly deadly, but very expensive to clean up, it must be carefully and properly disposed of. I remember reading about a dental x-ray machine that was improperly disposed of and was basically taken south of the border and dumped. Somehow the container of nuclear material burst or was broken open and little kids played with the powder inside. I never heard what the follow-on health problems were.

  3. Re:Shoot it to the sun? on What Fire and Leakage At WIPP Means For Nuclear Waste Disposal · · Score: 1

    Thank you, I've always wondered why these types of waste were not reprocessable. A friend of mine went to ASU in the '70s/'80s and they had an Indian physicist called Dr. Roy (no idea what the last name was) who claimed to have a method for safely disposing of nuclear waste, never heard of the program going live.

  4. Re:News for nerds..? on Bring On the Monsters: Tolkien's Translation of Beowulf To Be Published · · Score: 1

    If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die....

    Man, I'll bet those two decades of me and my friends playing Champions really gave her a headache.

  5. Re:Is LibreOffice vulnerable to the same exploit? on Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks · · Score: 1

    dBase III+ back in the '80s had a competitor called FoxBase. FB was crazy fast due to a very fast pre-compiler and a greatly improved indexing scheme. FB copied dBase's bugs because they had known workarounds in the programming community, and fixing the bug would break established code. Of course dBase was bought out by Borland, FB was bought out by Microsoft, and the world moved on to better implementations of the relational model.

  6. Re:Block all .RTF attachments on Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks · · Score: 1

    Thank you, Dissy. My last job (and probably my next) was in a Windows environment, our ERP-that-is-not-to-be-named abused SQL Server to the point that if you unplugged the server while it was doing a payroll process, you had to load a backup from before the start: the ERP-system-never-sufficiently-cursed did not use SQL Server's transaction log, all record updates were line-by-line using cursors through an application server so that their one pustulent code base would work poorly against SQL Server, Oracle, and something else like PostgreSQL.

    They could have written such a better system if they'd let me train their programmers in relational database and modern techniques, instead they forced them out in to retirement.

    Too many people think the solution is to drop in *nix, not taking in to account business cases. And we the damned are forced to make it all work.

  7. Re:WORD !! on Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks · · Score: 1

    But only if you have the power to point to it, I can give you access if you want.

  8. Re:The better solution is to buy Nikon on Open Source Brings High-End Canon Camera Dynamic Range Closer To Nikon's · · Score: 1

    In the '70s when I first started shooting, I was a Pentax guy. Black-body MX with a winder, great assortment of lenses. Made the mistake of selling the whole kit to get in to a view camera which I was not ready for. Went through OIympus, Canon, I can't remember what all. Found out that whatever it was I was shooting in the late '80s needed a complete rebuild, was whining about it to a friend who was working as a studio assistant to a pro who told me that people were dumping Nikons for Canon Eos. After discussing it with him, I rented a 630 for two trips to Santa Fe and San Diego, ended up buying it with a 35-105 Canon zoom, and have never looked back. I'm on my third film body, an Elan 7, my wife bought me a Digital Rebel which I've replaced with a T2i. Love their gear. I've also shot Nikon, I just never cared for the feel of their equipment and though I liked the image quality, never considered it worth the price to replace my kit.

    My dream is to find a nice used 5D Mk 2 for the full-frame sensor and the video capability. I hate not being able to get decent, affordable wide-angle.

  9. Vanguard currently, Elder Scrolls Online in April, on Ask Slashdot: What Games Are You Playing? · · Score: 1

    I've been playing WoW since before the first expansion and it just doesn't do it for me any more, maybe the new expansion will be interesting. There's a lot of stuff that I really like in Vanguard much more than WoW, but Sony is sunsetting it at the end of July. I was really interested in the Pantheon Kickstarter, but I doubt it's going to get funded as it's under $500K of an $800K goal with three days to go. So it's Elder Scrolls Online will be the next thing that'll interest me, especially since it's multi-platform and I run Mac.

    Standalone, I do a fair amount of Civ 5, though I find it easy enough, though tedious, to win. I'm planning on trying Sid's Pirates and Railroad games, just got them from the Humble Bundle sale. Tabletop, my fav far and above is Flash Point: Fire Rescue, I also received Game of Death which I'm really looking forward to playing. For RPGs, I'm loving reading up on Night's Black Agents, awesome game world.

  10. Re:Dead end on Plan 9 From Bell Labs Operating System Now Available Under GPLv2 · · Score: 2

    I use the yam fork, the GUI is less gooey.

  11. Re:"Soylent Green is people!" on 20,000 Customers Have Pre-Ordered Over $2,000,000 of Soylent · · Score: 1

    if you weren't rich.

    You want a truly great read, get the book. You want a horrible viewing experience, get the film.

    Totally OT, but by film club in Phoenix showed this at a member's house a year or two ago. I'm pretty sure it was on BluRay, and the guy's TV was a massive 5' screen. And it was too damn sharp. It was so bright and crisp, that it looked like a Made For TV movie, not at all the experience that I remember when I saw it on film or tape.

  12. Re:Having to carry two tablets on How To Play Quake III On iPad · · Score: 1

    Well, technically my wife and I do. We each bought half of an iPad two years ago for our anniversary, conveniently they fit together, and I got a Nook HD+ for my birthday last month. That's not one person carrying both, but it is one marital unit.

  13. Re:Warranty Shouldn't Matter on GPUs Dropping Dead In 2011 MacBook Pro Models · · Score: 0

    They were quite good about replacing the main board in my laptop several years ago when the GPU failed and said it wouldn't have mattered if it were in or out of warranty, in or out of Apple Care. A friend of mine had the same problem with HP laptops and lost three of them, HP told her to lump it and didn't lift a finger.

  14. Re:Why not a "Super Bowl"? on Why There Shouldn't Be a Chess World Champion · · Score: 1

    The thing that did not impress me about Blue beating Kasparov is that it was highly optimised to beat HIM. I REALLY wanted to see Deep Blue in a proper tournament like a round-robin against twenty high-level opponents. I don't think it would fare nearly as well.

  15. Re:Monitoring on Sorm: Russia Intends To Monitor "All Communications" At Sochi Olympics · · Score: 1

    You need to read today's XKCD.

  16. Re:many gov sites down but on Another Science Facility Bites the Dust, Temporarily · · Score: 1

    Kudos, sirrah. You win the internet for today!

  17. Re:Please ruin it like you did Star Trek on An Animated, Open Letter To J.J. Abrams About Star Wars · · Score: 0

    Except it wasn't a fresh idea. It was re-hashing a 25 year old idea that worked for its time.

    And that is my problem with the second JJ movie. I wasn't a huge fan of the first movie, and I finally realized what it was after a friend pointed out that Kirk was nothing but a frat boy. Abrams had a free remit to do anything, and he did a remake of a decent episode from 40 years ago and a fairly good movie for its time. I suppose his next Trek movie will combine ST 5 and Data and Quark along with the dog from Enterprise, or whatever.

    I'm thoroughly disappointed, and don't hold much hope for him doing Star Wars.

  18. Re:how long before he get's sued / page taken down on Austrian Professor Creates Kindle E-Book Copier With Lego Mindstorms · · Score: 1

    I just finished re-reading the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMasters Bujold, and Miles uses a similar technique to tracelessly access secure information from his cousins' office half a planet away. His cousin turned his secure console to face his non-secure console's camera so Miles could read the info that he needed.

    There is nothing new under the sun, or at least nothing new that isn't covered by at least a dozen patents.

  19. Good on 'em! on China's .cn Domain Servers Suffer DDoS Attack · · Score: 1

    Someone in China got my web sites suspended last week when they started scraping my photography web site. I guess I'd better hide those PayPal and Western Union receipts for payments that I made to the Ukraine.

  20. Re:My 3 least favorite things in one sentence on Workers at Chile's ALMA Telescope Strike Over Working Conditions · · Score: 2

    Good luck, SynFlood, to you and your co-workers. My wife is in charge of a 3.5 meter optical telescope, and the hours are brutal in the winter but much nicer in the summer: a typical shift is an hour or so before sundown to an hour or so after sunrise. Employees are expected to have side-projects (maintaining wikis, writing training materials, etc) to fill out a 40 hr week because no one works exactly 40 hours a week. People work blocks of time: three days on, ten days off (very roughly) because in the winter, those are very tough days. But we're at 9200' and no where near as cold as Chile, it's regularly below freezing in the winter but the telescopes are never open when the temperature drops below 0f (we had -20f for a few days two or three years ago). My wife's telescope has the advantage that they normally don't do post-observation work, that's the job of the scientist's team, the other telescope on-site does their own data reduction but has a much larger team.

    US law does not allow changing contracts, at least while the contract is in force. After the contract expires or is being renegotiated, then changes can be made but have to be agreed to by the parties involved.

  21. Re:It's news worthy but isn't at the same time ... on GPS Spoofing With $3000 Worth of Equipment and a Laptop · · Score: 1

    For sailing ships, they just need to take some sextant readings at night. Doesn't help during the day, though.

  22. Re:No wonder ... on The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same · · Score: 1

    Check out game designer Robin Law's book, Hamlet's Hit Points. He breaks stories down in to emotional beats, analyzing Hamlet, Dr. No, and Casablanca. The intent is application to RPG scenario/game design, but there's no reason why it can't be used elsewhere.

  23. Re:Minority Report on Retail Stores Plan Elaborate Ways To Track You · · Score: 1

    I wonder if an IR LED baseball cap would over-expose and foil retina cameras? I don't remember the time frame but there was a Slashdot article (IIRC) in the last year or so that cited a study that showed that our retina patterns change over time. Polarized wrap-around glasses would take care of that and might also fox facial recognition cameras.

    Of course, this is only one metric that can be used for tracking. This ByteLight thing where the LEDs interact with your phone's camera requires an app, so it's not a passive biometric that requires foxing. If you don't load and run the app, you don't get the messages that say X is on sale. http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2013/01/bytelight-indoor-mapping/

  24. Re:Going to the leave the phone at home on Retail Stores Plan Elaborate Ways To Track You · · Score: 1

    First go to the store manager and show him the text message, then tell him you're leaving and canceling your store credit card, regardless of whether you have one or not.

    And I totally agree. Though I am considering keeping a Faraday bag in my car for shopping expeditions.

  25. Re:And the story is...? on TSA Orders Searches of Valet Parked Car At Airport · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that the best way is to buy a starter's pistol. It can only fire .22 blanks, but it's still classed as a firearm. They're not as expensive as a junk gun and would serve the same purpose for locking up your equipment. They're also pretty darn small.