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User: Alan+Cox

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  1. Silliness aside cvs and www are seperate on Gnome.org Compromised? · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Gnome team didn't mix all the web sites (where user custom shell scripts are always a risk) with the cvs box.

  2. Re:Ebay has let users work to close these fakes do on eBay Fraud Vigilantes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ebay don't seem to care about reported fake auctions. They do jump pretty qucik on reported copyright/trademark infringements (including sometime screwing up and stopping legit auctions), but they don't seem to care about hoaxes. You'd think they would at least spend some time on that, and on working with the legal people to follow back frauds to the original source.

  3. Re:Why? They're only blind. on Apple to Add Free Screen Reader to Mac OS X · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seconded. At least one kernel developer is blind, and I never found this out until we met in person. Sun in particular have done a ton of work on Linux accessibility - screen readers, input alternatives for people with physical impairments. Not currently any accessibility for audio (which isnt that daft an issue - consider a deaf quake player and presenting them with an 'audio radar' HUD)

    Also wonderful stuff like dasher, which I'm still not sure isnt really a game disguised as an access tool 8)

    Good to see the Mac people will also get these kind of tools - they need to become commodities and cheap for all.

  4. Re:$0.99 ?? on Audio Lunchbox: Music with no DRM · · Score: 1

    With magnatune you can listen to the whole lot first, or just point your audio player at their streaming 'radio' feeds and see what pops up that you like.

  5. Re:Lieberman on New RFC Considers .sex TLD Dangerous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that you have to decide what it means to be "adult content". Even between the UK and France you can find the same film labelled "12" in France, while cut and labelled "18" in the UK

    At least the ICRA content rating model put the value judgement in the hands of the viewer.

    I can see xxx.us working (kind of), and maybe xxx.randomcountry. Personally I'd rather there was a reliable register of adult URLs rather than a bunch of companies all trying to make sure they alone own the filter lists. ".xxx" is addressing that problem but the wrong way IMHO.

  6. Well if you really want to know .... on Audio Lunchbox: Music with no DRM · · Score: 1

    It depends on the friction of the transaction and also on the elasticity of the demand. There is actually an optimum price for a piece of music, finding it is fun 8)

  7. Magnatune include FLAC on Audio Lunchbox: Music with no DRM · · Score: 3, Informative

    Magnatune have a whole collection of non-mainstream music, with a particular emphasis on classical stuff (which suprised me a little initially). They offer FLAC encoded audio providing you actually pay up (the mp3/ogg are try before you buy too).

    Perhaps audiolunchbox can be persuaded to go the same way. Its certainly nice being able to burn full quality CDs of the music I bought online.

    http://www.magnatune.com

  8. Re:OK so they get fined and told how to distribute on Microsoft and EU Talks End · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unfair in EU law generally includes things like

    Overcharging for a monopoly product to fund goods sold under cost price into another market in order to destroy the competition in that market and become a monopoly there

    Using your monopoly position to leverage other advantages (eg the if you ship windows you license us all your patents' type stuff)

    The EU is generally happy for monopolies to exist providing they are not abusing their position too much and we have monopoly suppliers in various business areas that have existing as monopolies for a long time without being convicted in US courts, fined in EU courts, raided in Japan and so on.

  9. Re:Drivers could be a problem for a long time. on Fedora Prepares For Xorg Instead of XFree86 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Its worth remembering that people like NVidia don't just sit around on proprietary drivers, but in the 2D space are active contributors to XFree86. They have their finger pretyt much on the ball, they are not as clueless as some people seem to think.

    I wish they and ATI would do open source 3D but thats not going to happen for the later cards until people like Intel simply commoditze them and turn them into the next version of the SGI graphics division or until software gets so fast that we don't care about 3d accelerators any more 8)

  10. Re:smp? on SMP On OpenBSD, Coming Soon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    SMP is so old a technique that almost all of it is so old that any patents have expired twenty years or more ago. The one exception in the Linux case is RCU, which is a scaling technique patented by IBM for which GPL use rights were granted but not I believe BSD use rights.

    Bad SMP can be done in a couple of weeks by anyone, good SMP is a little harder and its nice to see OpenBSD joining in the game as SMP is now at the on processor level so it is becoming important.

  11. Re:Hmm... on USDTV Announces Low-Cost, Localized Digital TV · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its what we've been doing in the EU for several years now. And as the previous post says it is not without cost or limitations (less bandwith than satellite for example).

    In fact our big pay-to-view digital terrestrial tv company went spectacularly boom and nearly took out half of the soccer world with it, so that we had only free-to-air digital for a while, although a new player is now attempting to make pay to view digital terrestrial work again.

    And if they hit the target for analogue switch over (unlikely as lots of voters have analogue only tv's still) then there will be lots more room to grow the digital tv space.

  12. Corrections on Fedora Prepares For Xorg Instead of XFree86 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Umm ok

    First its based on XFree86 4.4 just before the change, with the non-contaminated further changes added and other stuff not in XFree 4.4

    Secondly it has a _lot_ to do with X.org. The wheel has turned full cicle from when years back OpenGroup/X.org tried to change the license and XFree basically told them to go away to today where X.org is doing the same thing the other way around and keeping it free. X.orgi is part of this now.

    NVidia and ATI drivers may work. The Nvidia ones at least are reported ot do so, although they have chronic problems working with the preferred kernel build settings like 4K stacks.

  13. Re:Morph on OED Science Fiction Database Updated · · Score: 3, Informative

    In the UK at least every small child knew the world "Morph" back in the 1970's. Morph was a plasticine animation who would indeed turn into other things.

    I've no idea where the "morph" of sci-fi came from but perhaps too much BBC childrens TV ?

    (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=1438)

  14. Keep everything on paper and signed on A Family IT/Tech Business?? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd be worried about the way family members trust each other rather than have formally signed contracts and business agreements. This is great until something goes wrong then its horribly horribly messy.

    I've actually provided evidence in one case where that happened and the halves of the family were sueing each other in court including some Linux related matter.

    So stick it all on paper then at the end of the day if bad stuff occurs everyone knows where they stand.

    The other arguments I've seen about family business are really about diversification - if you and your girlfriend both work for the same company you can both lose your job at the same moment much more easily.

    In the UK lots of people employ family members just to improve their tax position. Hiring children to create tax efficient ways to provide university funding, hiring wives to use their tax allowances etc.

    I guess the US has similar "opportunities"

  15. Re:SSI? on Interview with Matthew Dillon of DragonFly BSD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And to a great extent also things like MOSIX, which go back to V7 unix as well as Linux. Also for that matter OpenSSI (openssi.org)

    The commercial world is full of SSI systems although its never been clear if transparent SSI is the right answer to any problem except "I need it to work now", because coding good apps for SSI setups is hard.

    Dragonfly looks a good project, and looks like it has old BSD folks who actually knew what they were doing working on it.

  16. Re:Freedom comes at a price on U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You too can fight and die for .. the DMCA, 70 year copyright extensions, the RIAA, the MPAA, 1$ a gallon gas and the right to pollute the world... 8)

  17. Re:Hello DOD on DARPA Aims to Redo the Internet Protocol · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It does have "clueless" all over it, from the idea of reliable delivery (little hint - its provably mathematically impossible even with two way links) outwards. And the idea of non packet networks would be fun on a wireless link to say the least

    Ad-hoc secure networks are an intriguing little problem area and I can see them wanting those to work. You want instant communication between vehicles but you don't want anyone else joining in. Sounds a lot like the mesh-net stuff like locust already does really..

    Non von neumann machines are already big research areas, including quantum and analog computing of course.

    Unfortunately its hard to tell whether someone took good information and "moronized" it for mass consumption, or it was provided by the DOD in clue free format originally.

  18. Re:Read the article please on Microsoft Customers Get No Bang for Buck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Still doesn't make customers very happy. Mind you who on earth would buy a subscription to "We might send you some magazines this year, but maybe not"...

  19. They are already going... on 'They Can Sue, But They Can't Hide' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And not because healthcare doesn't work when provided by the state (that it doesn't is mostly a myth pedalled by the people who make all that lovely money overcharging US citizen s for medical insurance and drugs), but amongst other things because you are better off being paid a state wage than paid a US wage and having to pay for the insurance.

    Remember the problem with central planning is not usually quality but inefficient allocation of resources. I might have to share a doctors waiting room with such "horrors" as poor people. I might effectively pay a little more if I choose to see a doctor privately 'right now', but that is a lot better than having someone swiping my credit card before he'll scrape me up after an accident.

  20. Re:Gamma World on Chernobyl...18 Years Later · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The film of it ("Stalker") is also well worth watching btw. It takes a slightly different angle than the book and its perhaps a little slow but its very good.

    Another short story on a similar theme is "Flying Dutchman" about a post holocaust world where nothing is left but robot systems still bombing each other

  21. The secret code 8) on British School Offers Elvish Lessons · · Score: 5, Informative

    Welsh has lots of vowels. The secret is that 'w' and 'y' are vowel sounds in Welsh. Its actually fairly phonetic so learning to pronounce Welsh place names isn't too hard, even if "cwmtwrch" initially looks as terrifying as Polish.

  22. Re:angelfire? on Chernobyl...18 Years Later · · Score: 1

    Its just creepy. Its like "The Zone" in Tarkovsky's "Stalker" (aka the book 'Roadside Picnic').

  23. Just a few files on Microsoft Mail Worms Gang War? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the problems with the destruction of files is that it implies this virus author isn't interested in commercial games (as such people want their virus well hidden). Thats worry because they are then not trying to hide within a system (like a well evolved natural virus) but can be quite happy to kill the host.. and all it takes is a bios erase or randomly setting the IDE disk password on all modern IDE hard disks and its factory return time.

  24. Re:RMS doesn't like it? on XFree86 4.4 Released · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually I think the unfortunate thing is that people have spent a year being pseudo-nice to each other instead of just forking the tree when Keith got kicked out. Thats probably done more harm than good.

    The problem with the license is one of changes. You can't go around springing new licensing suprises on people without expecting them to be upset - whatever the license (as MS themselves have found ...)

    Now its over everyone can back to work sanely and Dave Dawes can go and do his own thing in Dawes-space, or throw in the towel and contribute to the X.org tree. I still hope the latter because I don't think Dave Dawes did anything maliciously or without belieiving he was doing the right thing for X, he just seems to have been wrong.

    Alan

    Alan

  25. Re:So they stick to the new license... on XFree86 4.4 Released · · Score: 5, Funny

    ex-Free86 8)