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User: qxcv

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Comments · 155

  1. Re:From TFA on Internet Explorer Market Share Drops To Almost 15% · · Score: 1

    Well, I hear that up to 80% of statistics are made up on the spot.

  2. Re:Yes, you are- on Quake 3 Source Code Review · · Score: 1

    The gamecode is open source as well. id just chose not to release the art assets necessary to create a functioning copy of Q3 for free.

  3. Re:Own email server on Gmail Takes Largest Webmail Service Crown · · Score: 4, Informative

    I do, because I still run my own, as plenty of power-users do. Of course, the masses never ran their own e-mail servers, even before webmail, they just used POP3 or IMAP.

    I don't. Google Apps is free for 50 users, almost never goes down, configures itself automatically and does a better job of protecting my data than I could. I don't even use the web interface, I just hook my mail client up to it and away it goes. "Fire and forget".

  4. Re:why i no longer contribute on Wikipedia As a "War Zone," Rather Than a Collaboration · · Score: 1

    perhaps th next gen wiki will fix this and the copy left part

    You've actually read Wikipedia's page on licensing, haven't you? They (where "they" is anybody with a business plan) *can* sell your work, but it has to be under a Wikipedia-compatible licence and they have to credit you (directly or indirectly) as an author. It's not exactly a bottomless pit of money.

  5. Re:Trusting them as root CA doesnt mean that... on Ask Slashdot: What's Your Take On HTTPS Snooping? · · Score: 1

    Yes they do. It was mentioned in the summary.

  6. Re:"Hopeful" language on Fly Your Own Experiment In Space · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the reply, and also for adding the GPS question to the FAQ - sorry for jumping to conclusions original post, it's just that most things on the Internet which sound too good to be true usually are.

  7. Re:"Hopeful" language on Fly Your Own Experiment In Space · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is A-grade linkbait, they're just spewing buzzwords and hoping certain news outlets (*cough* Hack-a-Day *cough* *cough*) will pick up on it and direct their readers to the Kickstarter page. Just looking through their writeup, it seems like they have absolutely no idea how they'll *actually process* the data; for example, they claim that they'll put a camera onboard, yet assuming that this camera uses one byte per-pixel channel and has a resolution of 160 * 180, they'll need (3 * 160 * 180)/1024KiB = 84KiB of memory to store a single frame and probably even more to process said frame. Yet the Arduino has only 1KiB of memory, and their downlink is unlikely to be able to transfer a whole frame in a reasonable amount of time (so no live video). That's only one of the big holes in their plan, here are some of the others:

    • They plan to put a GPS onboard, but commercial GPS receivers shut off when they reach 60, 000ft and 999kt. The satellite will exceed both of these limits mere seconds after it leaves the launchpad
    • They haven't explained *how* they plan to launch the satellite into space, or why it's costing them a mere $35, 000
    • As pointed out above, it's unknown what advantage there is to running code *onboard* the craft when you could simply analyse the data on the ground
    • None of their sensors are designed to operate in space. How will their pressure sensor work in a vacuum? Is their temperature sensor rated to work at extreme temperatures? It doesn't sound like it.

    tl;dr parent is right and this is a giant load of bullshit.

  8. Re:CEO has to mark his Territory on Yahoo Kills Flipboard Competitor Six Months After Debut · · Score: 2

    Their iOS app.

    That's right, because the only way a web service can be successful is if it has a thin wrapper over its API in the form of an iOS app so poor users don't have to open Safari.
     
    Also, I don't think you should be measuring other companies against Instagram. There's no greater proof that we are in the middle of a second tech bubble than the fact that a company whith no discernible monetisation strategy managed to be bought for $1 billion.

  9. Re:I Hope they would make him... on Assange Stands 'Real Chance' of Election In Australia · · Score: 1

    He could only become Minister for Foreign Affairs if he was in the House of Reps (he's running for the Senate), in which case it is entirely possible that he would be offered a position in the ministry of a hypothetical minority Governmnet attempting to use independents to win a majority.

  10. Re:Take it off the Internet? on Americans More Worried About Cybersecurity Than Terrorism · · Score: 1

    ...like sticking USB sticks into power plants/mission-critical gadgets.

    Wait, what? The last USB-spread virus I heard about outside the Windows world (where viruses spread via autorun, which can be disabled) was a Ubuntu file manager bug which was quashed within a couple of minutes of being disclosed. Apparently it only affected Ubuntu users who had both an infected USB and had disabled AppArmor. Is "oh yeah, somebody stuck a USB stick in it" really a valid excuse for a major security breach?
     
    You're right about not needing a "cybersecurity military", but I don't think we need to "train" users either - sane security defaults can fix that for us. Follow the principle of least privilege and you will be fine.
     
    PS: My apologies if you were joking, I'm not sure if you've been modded up as insightful or funny (or both!).

  11. Re:Ubuntu Sucks on Google Talks About Its Ubuntu Experience · · Score: 1

    Arch breaks often in it's update and is seriously not recommended in production environments.

    Ironically, my experience has been that Arch actually breaks less than Ubuntu does with updates, especially when you throw the horror that is dist-upgrade into the equation. That said, the reason I stopped using Arch was the fact that they symlinked /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python3 for no discernible reason other than "OMG 3 > 2 SO WE MUST USE IT". This promptly broke all my third party Python 2.x apps + libraries and forced my migration to "greener pastures".

  12. Re:A good thing on Australian Government Backs OLPC · · Score: 1

    But seriously, it always makes me angry when I see the notebook computers that some schools force their students to use. Big heavy 15" models are stupid to be carried every single day even by adults, let alone small children. You would think that inexpensive, small netbooks should be a no-brainer.

    Netbooks are out of the question because they are almost impossible to work with on a day-to-day basis (particularly for students with vision problems). That only leaves small, inexpensive laptops, which as I understand it don't exist yet. Ideally you'd be looking at a 12-13" laptop, but they're too damn expensive when you put them up against the 15-17" monsters. To be honest a 15" laptop isn't that big a deal, I have one sitting on my desk which is approximately 1.2kg with the battery in, vs. 1.1kg for an average size maths textbook. Hell, I've got a soft-cover physics textbook which is 2.1kg, and a couple of hard-covers which are presumably much heavier.
     
    Oh yeah, and just for the record here is an approximate cost breakdown of current secondary laptops in Australia (figures given to me by a tech guy from a high school):
      Hardware: $1500
      Software: $1500
     
    To be fair, that is for a Dell machine rather than the Acer which the State Government were pushing, but in any case the OLPC reduces hardware cost to $234 and software cost to $0.

  13. Re:Prices are what the market will bear on Aussie Parliamentary Inquiry Into Software Pricing Announced · · Score: 1

    Also, you wouldn't torrent a BMW.

    FTFY

  14. Re:So will there be a Boeing app store? on Boeing Preparing an Ultra-Secure Smartphone · · Score: 1

    And Boeing provides the friends list.

  15. Re:When will governments learn? on Anonymous Hacks UK Government Sites Over 'Draconian Surveillance' · · Score: 2

    They probably already have 2) down pat if they're doing their jobs properly. Remember, all that happened here was a DDoS - there were no gaping holes found in the defences of the websites. Anonymous just happened to have more resources than the Government websites did and thus managed to make the sites unresponsive for a couple of hours.
     
    But of course you already know this since you're the kind of discerning Slashdotter who reads linked articles and has at least a basic understanding of the topics on which they comment, right?

  16. Wait, what? on Larry Page Issues Public Update On Google Changes · · Score: 1

    ...one might wonder why Google has to push their own social network instead of working on open protocols for sharing.

    Could it be because they tried working on open protocols for sharing and it didn't work? Hate to reign in the $MEGACORP bashing here, but Google really HAVE tried in this area - G+ looks like a last-ditch attempt to gain some traction amongst the big players in "social".

  17. Re:Another example of Microsoft copying ideas: on How Linus Torvalds Helped Bust a Microsoft Patent · · Score: 2

    If you read the actual patent it becomes even clearer they stole the idea from that engadget comment.

    Because "stealing" is the only logical explanation for two people coming up with similar ideas at different times, right?

  18. Re:I'll start a service of my own on Can Translucency Save Privacy In the Cloud? · · Score: 1

    Because of how much more efficient it is to break into an organisation's database of contact hashes, hope like hell the contact hashes are unsalted and then run each of them through your rainbow tables just to get a single email address than it is to write a web crawler in 10 lines of Python which finds emails based on a regex. Your approach is great if you're trying to phish gullible Sony customers but not so great for anything else.

  19. Re:fuck the raspberry pi on ModMyPi Raspberry Pi Case Offers 5% Back To the Foundation · · Score: 1

    At the risk of implying a consideration of the long term effect or *shudder* morality into capitalist economics, it is cheaper to have a local manufacturing base than rely completely on some rights-ignoring nation half way across the world.

    Uh-huh. Because the rest of the world is local to $YOUR_COUNTRY, and it's cheaper to produce electronics in $YOUR_COUNTRY because Anonymous Coward says so. Convincing.

    We're still waiting for them to point-out the specific clause. No-one else seems to be affected by it.

    Except all of the electronics manufacturers who are doing their production in $OTHER_COUNTRY and also seem unable to justify producing their electronics in $YOUR_COUNTRY.

  20. Re:Kinda digging Python on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    ...with just a slight altercation...

    This is the real problem with Python, the amount of violence.

  21. Re:Kinda digging Python on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    Welp, that looks horrible. Here's a pastebin of my original post: http://pastebin.com/uuj5Awpv

  22. Re:Kinda digging Python on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    Oh my. Udacity is certainly *not* the best way to learn Python. They tend to try and keep it simple, but often this is to the detriment of readability. Here's an example from CS373 (most of the example code is like this):

    if x2 >= 0 and x2 =0 and y2

    Which could have been written like this:

    if 0

    Or another example:

    next = open.pop()
    x = next[1]
    y = next[2]
    g = next[0]

    Which could just as easily be:

    g, x, y = open.pop()

    Hell, even

    for i in range(len(delta)):
        x2 = x + delta[i][0]
        y2 = y + delta[i][1]

    is nicer as

    for dx, dy in delta:
        x2 = x + dx
        y2 = y + dy

    And your example

    if(a > 0) { return a + 1; } else { return a -1; }

    ==

    return a + 1 if a > 0 else a -1

    Udacity's approach is great for teaching theory, bad for teaching Python. If you want to write idiomatic Python, do some research on iterators, generators, functools, list unpacking, etc. Sorry if the code samples here screw up, but /.'s markup system blows hard.

  23. Re:Entertainment Center = Fewer Games on The Consoles Are Dying, Says Developer · · Score: 2

    You can get the Red Ring Edition for under $20 second-hand, I'm told.

  24. Re:How about no? on Iran War Clock Set At Ten Minutes To Midnight · · Score: 1

    How about we just stop playing world police? I don't want to send our youngsters out there to die in another shithole just because of overly paranoid people in government.

    The millions of people screaming "KONY2012!!!!" at the top of their lungs disagree with you.
     
    America is going to be the world police as long as Americans keep demanding it be. If you don't like it, become a history teacher.

  25. Re:What about the parents? on School District Sued By ACLU Over Student's Free Speech Rights · · Score: 1

    Expel her.