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User: jmauro

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  1. Re:Found happiness elsewhere on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't You Running KDE? · · Score: 1

    The distros should be maintaining thier own packages for deployment in the distro. I mean it's really the main function of the distro. For instance Red Hat has a staff who's sole purpose is to make and maintain packages for RHEL (with security pathches etc). On the non-commercial side, Debian has rules on what goes in what goes in the stable and unstable packages and enforces those rules so the packages are only updated when needed. Other distros have other rules, including as you indicate outsourcing the package maintance to a third party outside of the distro's control.

    If a distro has outsourced the package construction to a third party outside of their control, it was their choice to do so. A consequence of that choice is that they're at the mercy of the third party, but this doesn't mean that they didn't have this choice to begin with.

  2. Re:Found happiness elsewhere on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't You Running KDE? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Something you probably don't get though, is that distributions have no choice.

    That is wrong. Distributions actually have all sorts of choice in the matter. There is nothing preventing them from keeping to ship the older versions KDE3 or Gnome 2 while all the upgrade chaos goes on. It's open source so if the upstream maintainers don't want to do it there is nothing that prevents them from maintaining the older version themselves, getting together as a group to maintian, or even just leaving as is and not following the upgrades.

    They instead choose to foist all this on their users for reasons that escape me (though being the path of least resistances for them might be why). To say they have no choice in the matter is just wrong.

  3. Re:Translation ... on NASA Gets Two Military Spy Telescopes For Astronomy · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article indciates that these are just the mirrors and the shells. There are no instruments and they're currently sitting in a warehouse instead of being in space. NASA would need to equip them and launch them before they could even be used for anything, but it would shorten the timeline (over the Webb Telescope) since they're similar to the existing Hubble telescope.

  4. Re:We're trying to leave... on SpaceX Brownsville Space Port Opposed By Texas Environmentalists · · Score: 1

    You've never been to Douglas, AZ have you? It's not exactly flat, I doubt they could get enough open, flat space to build a pad.

    It's also not near anything and makes Brownsville look like a bustling metropolis.

  5. Then the requester is not likely looking for a laptop at all. The reduced 80-key keyboard has been standard on laptops for a long time and the market for a laptop with a full 101-keyboard is likely at or around one person so there is no money in anyone making a decent one.

    If the requester that hung up on a full keyboard, they should just by a USB keyboard and carry that with them. They're not going to find any laptop with a keyboard anywhere close to that one that will make them happy.

  6. Re:Brilliant! on Cringely Predicts IBM Will Shed 78% of US Employees By 2015 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's called a death spiral. It's something that happens to a lot of companies actually where they start jetsoning their "underperforming" business lines but not realizing that the underperforming business lines are covering some of the fixed costs of the "good" business lines. Once those costs are re-allocated to the "good" lines, they are not underperforming and need to be jetsoned off. Eventually there is nothing left in the organization that can cover the fixed costs and it goes under.

    It's one of the things they teach you to watch out for in business school. Why it keeps happening over and over and over again, I have no idea.

  7. Re:By "Site" what are we talking? on Ask Slashdot: How To Share a SharePoint Site? · · Score: 1

    You can do the same thing with SharePoint solutions now. Granted there are still some quirks.

    Why it took Microsoft 7 years to make them functional enough to use after the launch of SharePoint I have no idea.

  8. Re:Comcast's memo in reaction on Netflix CEO Accuses Comcast of Not Practicing Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    Turn down the encoding of the YouTube videos. At some point they started trying to stream everything at 1080p which is awesome, but the bandwidth usage is too high for pretty much most links. They'll stream just fine if being viewed at 720p or 480p once the bandwidth is dropped and look fine since very few of them are actually recorded at anything higher than 480p anyway.

  9. Re:Its like it costs Comcast less to stream their on Netflix CEO Accuses Comcast of Not Practicing Net Neutrality · · Score: 3, Informative

    At a certain point the peerage costs would be equal or greater to just going to the big content providers (Netflix, Youtube, etc) had having them host a cached version on the internal Comcast network that Comcast subscribers would hit first before trying to go out over a peered link (which should then not count against the cap since it's internal).

    Since they're not doing that but directly trying to drive customers to the Comcast Xfinity and away from being paying customers of their competition (both in services and in content). They've kind of crossed a line methinks.

  10. Re:Meeting in slow motion? on VA Court To Review "Official" Email Rules · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What you'll find though is the well connected interest groups would then rule the roost and pretty much run roughshod over everyone else, all so the connected groups can make the most profit at the expense of everyone else. And by the next election it's usually too late to overturn the decisions (and if it's really controversial they'll just run someone else who'll keep the machinery flowing to the right connected parties.)

    We tried the closed meetings, get things done way before and it was so bad laws like the Open Meetings and Sunshine laws since keeping things secret and getting things done led to things like general corruption and machines like Tammany Hall. Having everyone gum up the works (i.e. having all sides voices heard) is a feature of the system, not a bug.

  11. Re:Meeting in slow motion? on VA Court To Review "Official" Email Rules · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The issue is that meetings should be public so the public can know what's being discussed, can be there to watch, and be able comment on the proceedings since the board members actually you know work for the public. Doing the meeting via email does keep a paper trail, but it doesn't allow the public to weigh in on the decision. That is the issue.

  12. Re:I don't get it on Paramount Claims Louis CK "Didn't Monetize" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's the problem the studio is complaining about not being allowed to take their cut, mainly because they were cut out of the process entirely.

  13. Re:Recourse? on Up To 1.5 Million Visa, MasterCard Credit Card Numbers Stolen · · Score: 4, Informative

    They dropped them from the list of "secure" providers. Global Payments is still authorized to handle VISA credit card payments.

  14. Re:the phone on IETF Attendees Reengineer Their Hotel's Wi-Fi Net · · Score: 1

    At this point cell phones have pretty much killed charges for room charges from the phone. I don't think I've used a phone in a room in like 15 years.

    Having bad WiFi is one of the things that can drive business customers from staying there, and business customers are usually the most profitable customers for a hotel.

  15. Re:Werent we supposed 2 run out of ips a while bac on Akamai To Offer IPv6 To All In April · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or buy them on the secondary market. The current price is around $12 per IP.

  16. Re:OOH! SCARY STORY! on North Korea's High-Tech Counterfeit $100 Bills · · Score: 0

    They're just talking about removing the $50 and $100 for circulation (likely through attrition). For the most part these are not used in normal day to day transactions. At one time we had $10,000, $5,000, $1,000, and $500 bills in circulation, but with the advent of electronic banking it became clear that these denominiations weren't needed for day to day purposes (i.e. bank to bank transfers) but were increasing being used for fraud and tax avoidance. As such they were withdrawn by the Fed and live continued as normal.

    I honestly think it's been 5 years since I've even seen a $50 or a $100. Most banks and ATMs give out $20's now. If the $50 and $100 my guess is 99.9999% wouldn't even notice.

  17. Re:Likely be faster... on Apple Intern Spent 12 Weeks Porting Mac OS X To ARM · · Score: 2

    Other way around. iOS uses some of the user space GUI components of Mac OS X, but the kernel is entirely different. Android is the other way around in that they use the Linux kernel but completely re-implemented user space.

  18. Re:IPO of Net ventures on Facebook Expected To Go Public Next Week · · Score: 1

    I believe it's less of that, but the fact that Facebook has enough investors (I believe the number is 500, but don't quote me) that it's pretty much reached the point where it needs to file all the paperwork with the SEC as if it was a publicly traded company. As such it really makes no sense not to do it since at least they can raise extra capital since they'll be forced to file the paperwork anyway.

  19. Re:These things were too successful. on Researchers Find Slew of Flaws In SCADA Hardware, Software · · Score: 1

    shutting off a single power plant is not going to cause a major systemwide blackout assuming the high voltage electrical protection was designed correctly

    Brave assumption..

  20. Re:pilot error as in hiding a bug in airbus autopi on World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say · · Score: 1

    Trained yes. Always succeed, no.

  21. Re:Fucking ground this fleet. on World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say · · Score: 1

    Depends. There are parts of the wing that are actually not load bearing, but exist for the safety of the ground crew or to further improve fuel efficiency. A crack in one of those parts would not be life threatening. Without knowing where the crack is it's hard to say whether it's superficial or not.

  22. Re:Get a clue Big Sis on Vanity Fair On the TSA and Security Theater · · Score: 2

    Yes, there is. You have to remember that the incident you link to above was over in like 2 minutes before anyone could react, but the hijackings to Cuba were continual and on the TV over and over and over again, so the default "hijacking" scenario was the plane goes to Cuba and then everyone gets released.

    It was common enough that it was considered a normal thing to put on the TV as a sketch comedy skit.

  23. Re:Then there's the problem of WiFi on Hotel ISP iBahn Denies Breach By Chinese Hackers · · Score: 1

    I'd rather just have it unencrypted as an access point, there is less trouble that way. If you're using a 3rd party for your network transit you can pretty much assume that it's insecure. If you're really worried run a VPN over it.

  24. Re:Plead the 27th on US Senator Proposes Bill To Eliminate Overtime For IT Workers · · Score: 1

    Memebers of Congress in their function as officals of the US Government sued and were told that they don't have standing. Since the amendment just covers Congress and no the Executive the AG cannot sue either.

  25. Re:Plead the 27th on US Senator Proposes Bill To Eliminate Overtime For IT Workers · · Score: 1

    Yearly COLA adjustments. This is what members of Congress sued over and were told by the Supreme Court that they have no standing.