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User: Marsh+Jedi

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  1. VIdeo Game Style passwords? on Tinfoil Hat Linux: A Distribution for the Paranoid · · Score: 1

    Clearly:
    Up,Up,Down,Down,Left,Right,Left,Right,B, A

  2. Re:Yes it is possible on RPG Ports from AS/400 to Linux? · · Score: 1, Funny

    Parent was a thinly-veiled reference to a Beowulf Cluster. Don't think you can just sneak hat stuff by....

  3. Re:Full Metal Jacket on USAF Readies Laser of Death · · Score: 1

    No. You are wrong. A wounded infantry soldier takes several people to carry / care for him. A dead soldier is just meat, and can be left for several days, if necessary, on the field of battle. Therefore, wounding the enemy is statistically more attractive than killing him outright.

  4. Shades of South Park....Love Gravy. on Will Barry White Songs Help Sharks Get Down? · · Score: 1

    I seem to remember a potbellied pig, an elephant, a chef, and Elton John.

  5. At least Sun is brutally honest. on Java2 SDK v. 1.4 Released · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Jesus, Sun's PR corps must have flipped their collective shit when they read Karen Tegan's remark. While in general I find that kind of bluntness refreshing, a director of Platform Compatibility spouting off and essentially saying, "Well, that sucks for you, but we make money off of compatibility testing. We give everything else away for free, so cut us a break." is really a testament to the Sun Micro (brutally) plain-talking attitude.

    Deeper, though, I think, is the need to rein in Java a bit....It has achieved ubiquitousness, and I think Sun knows it. Watch. If .NET takes off, they will loosen up to benefit from a little more old-fashioned agrarian innovation and buzz.

  6. Lat. / Long. of Fenwick Island, please? on Low-Budget Home Weather Stations? · · Score: 1

    Aside from a tourist-trap in Delaware, google does not believe in Fenwick Island...:)

  7. U.S. Army. on Discarded Strontium-90 Found in ex-USSR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I seem to remember something about the U.S. Army being given a portable nuclear generator at one point--I mean, it sounds like a great deal....wheel one out into a theater and you have a portable power supply. Just add a water-driven cooling system and a radiator.

    Of course, it took just one near-disaster to elucidate the relative foolhardiness of allowing grunts to operate thermonuclear devices beyond relatively no-brainer artillery shells.

    So now only the Navy gets nuclear power plants--the army is stuck with diesel.

    I wonder if this Soviet thing was from some sort of portable genny their military used?

  8. Flight delayed, laptop hacked. on Free Wireless Networks at Airports · · Score: 5, Funny

    The number of people who leave open shares on their Wintel laptops is ridiculous, as they are used to being behind NAT firewalls and other hard-shelled security, deep in the corporate intranet. Then they move these absolutely defenseless laptops into a completely unsecured network via an Orinoco WaveLAN card--Hilarity ensues.

    A public wireless network with a revolving roster of addled sales execs is a veritable shooting gallery, the proverbial barrel full of fish!

    Anyway, I will not be surprised when suits rush back to the home office after a stopover in Minneapolis, their laptops having mysteriously come down with the clap.

  9. Flying on Mars is very, very difficult. on Microflyers on Mars · · Score: 2, Informative

    Mars has about 1/10th the amount of air earth does. That means you have to travel at multiples of whatever your takeoff speed is on earth to generate enough lift.

    So let's say your drone's stall speed is 20mph on earth? Try 200 mph on Mars. Suddenly your 12 inch model plane needs a several hundred foot runway, at the very least.

    Okay now, so let's talk about turning--remember you need 200 mph of speed minimum to stay in the air.

    You only get one-tenth of the air over your control surfaces, meaning one-tenth the maneuverability.

    Finally, landing must be done at 200 mph for something that only needs 20mph on earth.

    Tailhook, anyone?

  10. Troll. on History of Software Patches? · · Score: 0, Troll

    Why send out 'broken software'? Is it purely financial?

    This entire story is a troll.

  11. Damn Macs and their excellent video support! on New iMac Announced · · Score: 1

    Where can I get a 14' display for my computer???

  12. Pretty easy cribs for this. on Email Clients with Encrypted Archives? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am no cryptographer, but one of the issues I have seen with this kind of a system is the fact that you can put fairly easy cribs in the messages themselves that weaken the encryption somewhat. For example, if the system keeps the mail headers, simply send emails with known strings, such as a long X-header, like
    X-crack-this-poor-dope's encryption: SOMEVERYLONGSTRING.
    The odds are, he'll never see it, and now you have a known cleartext string to look for.

    I have got to say, an encrypted fileseystem is probably the best, as at least you don't know where you are supposed to be looking for this string, then.

  13. Re:Don't confuse OO techniques and languages on Can OO Programming Solve Engineering Problems? · · Score: 1

    Um, okay...

    If this were true, then why did we _need_ all these other languages? Caprice?

    If people invented / adopted new languages only when a program cannot be implemented effectively, perl or another kitchen-sink language would have long ago swallowed the Earth.

    Many languages reason for being is that that their inherent features make design cleaner.

    Do not tell me that Emacs would have the same design if it were written in Java.

  14. This seems to be a faulty premise. on Using Relational Databases as Virtual Filesystems? · · Score: 1
    I think you may have a faulty assumption here or there--you don't like centralized filesystems, but want to use a relational datastore to back up a distributed filesystem?

    A relational database provides three things:

    • Relational access to data. This is what you pay Larry E. money for.
    • (Sometimes) transactional support. This is what you pay Larry E. more money for.
    • Persistence. This is handled by the datastore underneath the RDBMS. In 99% of cases, this is a (relatively) centralized filesystem. Everything eventually ends up as bits on a big disk somewhere, be it my hard drive or a networked RAID array.

      If you are using a database to back up a filesystem, wouldn't it be easier to just go with a centralized filesystem, and forego the Relational Layer and transaction support which you:

    • Don't seem to need, and
    • Are paying a lot per CPU for?

      Why don't you just a hardware redundant centralized filesystem in the first place?

  15. Re:XML could result in humourous XSLT translations on XML Schema for Theatrical Scripts? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I had that Mamet-ize link wrong.

  16. XML could result in humourous XSLT translations. on XML Schema for Theatrical Scripts? · · Score: 1
    For one, someone could write something to Mamet-ize a script.

    I also seem to remember a ghetto translator at one point in particularly poor taste. (no link)

    Another cool approach, and the one I see moving forward, is something that generates an MP3 of a performance, with scratchy Dr Sbaitso-esque (remember Dr. Sbaitso from SoundBlaster?) voices for all the actors, with some pitch modulation to differentiate between the dramatis personae.

    Seems lame, I know, but this is precisely the kind of tech that gets better and better.

  17. Re:A Modest Proposal for making ID Chips palatable on Microchips For Human Implantation As ID · · Score: 1

    Yes, Dr. Mengele....an electric shock .

    Wouldn't a simple vibration be sufficient? You know, like one of those new-fangled mobile phones they invented?

    I also think it might be nice to be able to _turn it off_.

  18. Re:No way... on Microchips For Human Implantation As ID · · Score: 1

    I agree. Before, if someone wants to mug you, they bop you over the head and take your wallet. Here they would dig a chip out of your jawbone with a sharp spade.

    Earth sucks--I wanna move.

    Of course Heinlein had something smart-ass to say about cultures that need identity cards to function being a warning sign. Does anyone have that quotation?

  19. Re:squidish on New Deep Sea Squid · · Score: 1

    I saw that, but did not like it.
    A caveat for any other documentary fanatics:

    Beware all documentaries entitled "Search for the (something)". . .it by and large means that they didn't find it

  20. Re:Not a squid on New Deep Sea Squid · · Score: 2

    Uh, I would trust the scientists, dude.

    Yeah, from the video alone, you could be right, but a quick look at one would probably scream chordate-- CNS, circulatory system, etc.

    Once you've got that, a cephalopod starts looking like your only option.

    C'mon. A Nautilus is pretty fsck'd up looking too--it looks like a bad guy from Metroid more than anything else.

  21. Re:Will Get Faster then More Popular on Linux On the Desktop: 0.24 Percent? · · Score: 1

    IANACP, but I heard that this has to do with the proprietary way Microsoft decided to implement vtables and ye olde message pumpe in Win32. Broke C++ but good, but results in pretty fast GUI calls.

    Does anybody have more info on this?

  22. Re:No longer a svelte youngster? on Planning For 80-Year Old B-52s · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I do think that defense requires a somewhat paranoiac, Stalinist perspective--that is, making sure that you have something over everybody else--you _make_ other countries your allies or neutral by your own strength, and otherwise they go in the "threat" category, no matter what is said on TV. While this is somewhat Macchiavellian flamebait, I think it is also fairly true.

    I therefore think that the F-22 is worth it.

    Imagine if the Chinese started buying some of the new thrust-vectoring Sukhoi's from Russia, and then we got dragged into a war for Taiwan. I would prefer our boys be flying something hard to shoot at, as opposed to the venerable F-15.

    Really, the situation is comparable to the U.S's decision to replace its carrier-based light bomber (the A-6) with something multi-mission capable, (the F-18). While the predecessor had an honored record, it was out of date.

    The B-52, on the other hand, is used in wars where we already have Total Air Superiority. It is a bomb-bus with wings that can be maintained by a 17 year old with a ball-peen hammer. It serves in this capacity beautifully.

  23. Shades of PCU on University offers 'Simpsons' as Philosophy Class · · Score: 1

    Droz: Yes! That's the beauty of college these days, Tommy! You can major in GameBoy if you know how to bullshit!

  24. Re:We hate spam, Saudis hate porn. Too bad. on Spam Under Legislative Attack in Europe · · Score: 1

    Again, the pressuring of people's ISPs is precisely the type of strongarm tactics we condemn in Great Britain. I think I missed my point in my previous post--yes, you can eventually legislate, sue, and arm-twist to get your way on the net--I just laugh at the hypocrisy, that's all.

  25. We hate spam, Saudis hate porn. Too bad. on Spam Under Legislative Attack in Europe · · Score: 4, Flamebait

    We spend hundreds of kilobytes yammering about the great firewall of China, in particular laughing at the futility of it--legislation that stops the flow of information seems to be something we protest when implemented, and deride when proposed.

    This is of course, while we upgrade our procmail recipes and secretly wish for a legally-mandated X-this-is-spam header.

    In the end isn't stemming the flow of unwanted spam essentially the same thing? Going with the datahaven theory, eventually all your spam will come from the countries that _do_ allow spamming. And then all your bulk-marketing companies will set up branch offices there.

    It starts making draconian black hole lists start seeming like the only viable solution. Because legislation sure don't work.