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User: philip.paradis

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  1. Re:KDE FTW! on Kubuntu Announces Commercial Support · · Score: 1

    I've got a VM running Windows 3.11. It's finished, and for what it does, it works. Want me to ship you the VMDK?

  2. Re: Sounds good to me on U.S. Gov't Still Fighting the Man Behind Buckyballs; Guess Who's Winning? · · Score: 1

    As for what a minority of people want. I don't give a flying fuck. That is what thermoses and microwaves are for. Still not good enough, brew your own fucking coffee.

    Ah, I see. So when a minority of people wanted the right to vote, you wouldn't have given a flying fuck. When a minority of people want to get married, you wouldn't have given a flying fuck. See how this works?

    Political definitions are terribly difficult to get right, but if pressed I'd have to identify myself as a "conservative with serious libertarian leanings" as a means of expressing my personal belief system. I happen to fully support the "minority rights" I detailed above in virtually every historical and contemporary sense they're commonly discussed. In other words, I believe in personal freedom, personal responsibility and letting others make their own choices, coupled with a healthy measure of attention to fiscal accountability at all levels of government.

    I'll add in the fact that I have two daughters and a third child on the way. I also appreciate the value of firearms. Would you care to guess the best way to prevent accidents with guns in any given home? You might start by drilling it into your children that weapons are not toys, followed by careful instruction in their proper storage and operation. You might be amazed by the results. As for idiots who don't treat things that can harm them with extreme caution, well, this is called natural selection, and it's the way our species managed to get where it is today.

    You sound like the sort of person who gets a hard-on at the mere thought of government pushing every citizen into nice, neat little boxes for their own good and that of their comrades, no matter how utterly fucking stupid they or their comrades may be in their failure to exercise due caution with materials that might just cause physical harm if improperly applied to human tissue.

    In short, go fuck yourself, you asinine, jackboot licking little piece of shit.

  3. Re:OS X Upgrade Fear on Inside OS X Mavericks · · Score: 1

    A "one for one" copy means a "bit for bit" copy, as in the kind of images I routinely make of physical and virtual hard disks. This kind of copy isn't influenced by partitions or filesystems present on a disk. You get an exact replica of the disk in a file.

  4. Well, at least the United States, with our established accessory laws, hasn't quite risen to the level of prosecuting people for merely encouraging the commission of a crime. Otherwise, you could be just as well be fucked.

    I'm trying to look on the bright side here. It's difficult, but I'm trying.

  5. Re:As usual. on Measles Outbreak Tied To Texas Megachurch · · Score: 1

    I see what you did there. You changed the checkboxes to radio buttons, implying only one item may be chosen. That's funny.

    I'd be more interested in observing people who selected both items. They might be okay with vaccinations, but are also preparing to do something fantastically interesting that results in their demise.

  6. Re:Tired... on Inspired By the Peter Principle: the Peter Pinnacle · · Score: 2

    He'll spend the rest of his life serving on the boards of various corporations.

  7. Re:Tired... on Inspired By the Peter Principle: the Peter Pinnacle · · Score: 2

    The best part is that this isn't even a story. The linked post, in its entirety, is as follows:

    I asked this on Facebook:

    "Google would know and I'm afraid to ask her because she always says no, but did I just invent the term 'Peter Pinnacle?'"

    Facebook friends assured me that I deserve the neologistic credit, whatever credit it might deserve, although there is apparently at least one person whose name is Peter Pinnacle. Sheesh.

    So what does it mean?

    It's a logical extension of the Peter Principle, meaning to get promoted so high and to be so unqualified for your job that the company tells you that you can name your price just to go away.

    That's it. Nothing else. It's a blurb on a blog, not a story. This is an awesome example of /. editors not even bothering to click on a submission link before posting it to the home page.

  8. Re: SPOILERS on Don't Fly During Ramadan · · Score: 1

    The GP is correct; the claim wasn't that India is majority Muslim, merely that it has the third largest Muslim population on the planet. India does indeed have the third largest Muslim population in the world. As of 2010, there were 177,286,000 followers of Islam in India, which equated to approximately 10% of the planet's Muslim population.

  9. Re:As soon as the smart car counts as the driver on Concern Mounts Over Self-Driving Cars Taking Away Freedom · · Score: 1

    Reviewing this thread again, I think you actually do understand probability, and were trying to explain it better. If that's the case, it would have been clearer to prepend "by your logic" to your first sentence.

  10. Re:As soon as the smart car counts as the driver on Concern Mounts Over Self-Driving Cars Taking Away Freedom · · Score: 1

    I will also add that in the next 50 days I am far more likely to get attacked by a tiger than in the past 50 days.... because I didn't get attacked by a tiger in the last 50 days.

    Along with others in this thread, you've handily demonstrated your utter lack of understanding of probability. Unless your local tiger presence increases or you change other factors in your life to increase your likelihood of encountering a tiger above your present likelihood, your chances of being attacked by a tiger are no more and no less than they were yesterday.

    If I were to toss a penny ten times and have it come up heads nine of those times, what are the odds of it coming up tails in the next toss? Unless I'm tossing an altered penny, the odds are 50/50 no matter how many times I toss it, and unless I subsequently alter the penny again and again between rounds of tosses, the odds don't vary between those rounds. Past tosses don't affect future tosses.

    Please educate yourself.

  11. Re:Hormone therapy? on Bradley Manning Wants To Live As a Woman · · Score: 1

    I've known several transgender people myself, and none of them have ever objected in the slightest to the term "tranny." Maybe the people you know are a tad on the overly sensitive side.

  12. Re:not surprising on Misinterpretation of Standard Causing USB Disconnects On Resume In Linux · · Score: 1

    Yeah, she's a nerd, and she actually likes Debian :).

  13. Re:not surprising on Misinterpretation of Standard Causing USB Disconnects On Resume In Linux · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Oh heavens, it must be happening again. I'm obviously experiencing a relapse of those terrible hallucinations that have plagued me for years. Oddly enough, they seem to be at their worst when I'm at home. I've had visions of a beautiful woman in my house, with two beautiful little girls running around as well. I know, I should seek medical attention immediately, as this could be a sign of a serious condition. Speaking of conditions, my sense of reality is so distorted that I've come to believe my fictitious wife is pregnant with our third child! I've obviously taken a head first dive off the deep end.

    Oh, wait, she's real after all. There she is, sitting on my couch, with her laptop running Debian 7, eating the steak I just cooked, wearing a shirt from my employer, grimacing at the thought of me putting this on Facebook. I guess I only stretched the truth a tad by putting it on /. instead.

  14. Re:not surprising on Misinterpretation of Standard Causing USB Disconnects On Resume In Linux · · Score: 4, Funny

    THe other one is my wife's so it isn't running Linux.

    My wife's laptop is running Debian 7. What's up with your wife? :)

  15. Re:Been doing it for 2 decades now - love it on Experiences and Realities of an Homesourced IT Worker · · Score: 1

    Let's examine the sentence you're insisting on continuing to pick at:

    I'm an iOS developer (and used to do OS X) who has worked at home for over 2 decades now

    Where did the poster say he's spent his entire working life on OS X? 10.0 was released on March 24, 2001, which was over 12 years ago. He's an iOS developer now, has worked on Mac OS X in the past, and didn't say that was the only thing he's developed on in his entire life.

    If we assume the poster entered the professional IT workforce at 22 and spent his first 3 years or so working conventional office jobs, adding 20 years of working remotely would make him 45 now. I've known plenty of guys who have spent over a decade working remotely (I've done the same thing off and on), and I'm 32. I've known other guys who kept part time coffee shop jobs and worked from home for other folks doing consulting for 40 hours a week. In light of all this, Nothing about anything the poster said seems unreasonable to me.

    You probably thought your sarcasm came across as some kind of demonstration of wit. In truth, you just looked like a bit of an idiot, and you're entirely too old to be excused for acting like that.

  16. Re:nowadays on New York's Financial Regulator Subpoenas Bitcoin Companies · · Score: 1

    The obfuscation you've described is about as effective as a simple letter substitution cipher, given the fact that mapping relationships between entities and aggregating transaction data to discern correlated value flows between any number of points over time is far from an insurmountable task for anyone with adequate interest, programming skills, and access to a couple dozen dedicated CPU cores. I know this because it's something I'm working on now. Tumblers don't do what people think they do, at least not without actors performing the equivalent of a "buried treasure" routine wherein they abstain from ongoing transactions for several years. There's a ridiculous amount of signal in the noise.

  17. Re:Looks promising. on Effects of Parkinson's-Disease Mutation Reversed In Cells · · Score: 1

    Are you aware that Lyme disease is real, and is frequently difficult to treat unless diagnosed relatively early?

  18. Re:nowadays on New York's Financial Regulator Subpoenas Bitcoin Companies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Currencies don't enable scams. People enable and perpetrate scams. By your definition, the United States dollar has an incredibly long history of being the currency of choice for massively greater widespread scams and atrocities. What we're seeing here is nothing more than the preparatory work required to execute a good old fashioned regulation, taxation, restriction, and asphyxiation power grab. Governments get pretty pissed off when private entities engage in commerce of any kind outside of government control.

    Have you ever held a garage sale? Did you make sure to report every penny of your earnings to the IRS?

  19. Ah, a fellow Z80 fan :). I think there's still two Sinclair ZX81s sitting in a box somewhere at my dad's house, likely with the old cassette deck as well. The one I used had a little black and white security monitor/TV hooked up to it for video, with a luxurious full size keyboard from an industrial floor spliced into it to provide relief from the horrendous membrane keyboard.

    I've got to admit that I greatly preferred moving to an AT&T PC-6300 8086 box. It felt like a supercomputer by comparison, and was also the first machine I wrote any C on. Good times.

  20. Re:What?? on Linus Torvalds Celebrates 20 Years of Windows 3.11 With Linux 3.11-rc5 Launch · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hey man, don't rain on the parade. Better late than never, right? I mean heck, I call Linux finally getting networking a win. If you're gonna be such a Debbie Downer, you should just put a sock in it. I bet there's a stack of users rejoicing right now.

  21. I feel old on Linus Torvalds Celebrates 20 Years of Windows 3.11 With Linux 3.11-rc5 Launch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've got many memories of evenings spent with Windows 3.11, although I spent far more time in DOS back then. Later on, I spent a few few years with Linux (starting with Mandrake) as my primary desktop OS, and wound up with Mac OS X for the last few years.

    I'll still raise a toast to over a decade of Debian or FreeBSD on the server side for anything I care about.

  22. Re: This is why encryption isn't popular on Ask Slashdot: How Do I Request Someone To Send Me a Public Key? · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up. I'm genuinely curious what particular brand of idiot would wake up saying "hey, since the government provides me with this awesome crypto, I'll use it for everything" instead of generating his own keys for anything personal in nature.

    I mean, heck, one might almost believe that such an individual were receiving telepathic communications from Edward Snowden detailing how to link up with Julian Assange in Afghanistan or Iraq to be schooled in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices for a doctoral thesis on violence while watching television coverage of congressional hearings with Senators and the president, all while pundits drop bombs online so to speak with regard to hypothetical tactics for the handling of terrorist threats in urban areas such as Boston, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, and other high value targets.

    I know, it's all just so crazy.

  23. Re:Try Zabbix, it's free on How To Build a Simple Open Source Server Monitoring Solution With Mobile Support · · Score: 2

    It seems Zabbix isn't well suited for the use cases you care about. That's fine, but it should be noted that your preference for SNMP-based offerings is far from universal. I've dealt with environments where thousands of systems across several continents were constantly monitored without SNMP, and things worked very well.

    You seem quite interested in forcibly proclaiming your preference for certain modes of monitoring. Are you equally prepared to discuss the security implications of those choices? Are all devices under your control operating exclusively over trusted networks and exclusively utilizing SNMPv3? If you're going to speak forcefully about these things, let's go ahead and have a frank conversation that includes different considerations and use cases.

  24. Re:Security and Business competition on Snowden Gave 15,000 Documents to Glenn Greenwald; Obama Cancels Russia Summit · · Score: 1

    Let's be perfectly clear on one point. All wars are rooted in economic objectives, regardless of any hand waving to the contrary. Analysis and debate of the ethics, morality, wisdom, etc of such conflicts are left as an exercise to the reader (along with any attempted associated bettering of society), but in the final analysis everything traces back to fundamental human nature. Humans are a beautiful species in many respects, but also a very nasty one; the global dominance of homo sapiens is backed by this nastiness.

  25. Re:Why use HTTP Compression? on BREACH Compression Attack Steals SSL Secrets · · Score: 2

    I believe you missed the key phrase "where it is most effective." The first sentence of the linked article:

    Amdahl's law, also known as Amdahl's argument,[1] is used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved.

    The reference was to the utility of compression in this case, not the mechanics of it.