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User: lewiscr

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  1. Re:So will verizon FIOS now open port 25? on FCC Finalizes US Net Neutrality Rules · · Score: 1

    Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. I added in a standard dose of internet snark, and interpreted your comment as "What's wrong with you?". My apologies.

    So far, I haven't figured out how to manage the multiple connections well enough to do anything. I usually get timeouts before I can get the secondary connections established (after I remember to put the connection in PASV mode). When I want to do something low level with FTP, I find it's faster and easier to write a debugging client with Perl's Net::FTP module. I know that a good chunk of the problem is practice, because I had the same problems with all the other layer 7 protocols. I eventually got past that with SMTP, HTTP, POP3 and IMAP, but haven't managed to get past it with FTP.

  2. Re:DBAN is unnecessary. on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives? · · Score: 1

    I prefer to zero the disks, not my entropy source.

    I've found dd with the default block size (512 bytes) to be very slow. I generally run
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

    There's probably a more optimal value, but 1M is close enough to optimal that it was a waste of time to refine it more.

    Disclaimer: Don't cut and paste shell commands off the internet without understanding them.

  3. Re:So will verizon FIOS now open port 25? on FCC Finalizes US Net Neutrality Rules · · Score: 1

    telnet is the debugging tool I use when a daemon isn't working right. I've used it to see the HTTP headers returned (in the days before browsers made this easier). I've used it to test postfix plugins. I'll occasionally use it to send email when my local MTA is offline. I've used it to get more insight into SMTP, POP, and IMAP configuration errors. It's usually for debugging, but sometimes for bootstrapping.

    The only thing I don't use telnet for (anymore) is remote logins.

  4. Re:So will verizon FIOS now open port 25? on FCC Finalizes US Net Neutrality Rules · · Score: 1

    telnet is a pretty good web client, smtp client, and port scanner. I haven't quite figured out how to use telnet as an ftp client though.

  5. Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything on Amazon Folds In California Sales Tax Deal · · Score: 1

    I bought that database as a startup, before the VC funding. If you have a single person drawing a salary, $2500/year is a pittance. Hiring even a minimum wage slave to manage it for you will cost 6x that. And if that source got uppity about the price, there were plenty of other sources.

    My point being: Yes, it would be wonderful to have a flat nationwide VAT. In the mean time, the problem is not as onerous as everybody is making it out to be.

  6. Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything on Amazon Folds In California Sales Tax Deal · · Score: 1

    Should Amazon have to invest in the development staff to build a rules engine that keeps every city and county tax in the country up to date?

    No, they should just buy it from somebody that already does this. These databases aren't expensive. I used to subscribe to one that cost me $50/State/year for the US. IIRC Canada was the same price, $50/Provence/year.

    Yeah, we paid $2500/year, plus a couple engineer days writing the code to use it, plus a couple engineer days per year resolving customer questions. Way easier than hiring a full time team to do it ourselves.

  7. Re:Amzon isnt dodging anything on Amazon Folds In California Sales Tax Deal · · Score: 1

    Zip code is not enough information. Some zip codes exist in multiple cities and counties, and so end up with different rates.

    I've always been able to resolve those issues with a zip+4. But this was in practice, and I didn't search for counter examples.

  8. Re:Migration on Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors · · Score: 1

    At some age you just get tired of all the learning, you get bad at remembering all those new things, or you just want to cruise out your final years.

    I'm starting to see the allure, but I recognize the trap. Not just career wise, but personally. Many studies show that the key to growing old gracefully is to stay somewhat mentally and physically active. I'm NOT saying you need to go out and start doing Quantum Physics while Rock Climbing. I AM saying you need to keep learning as a person, whether it's related to your career or not. If tech isn't your cup of tea anymore, go take up cooking, or learn to tie fly fishing lures, or learn quantum physics, or .... Me, I'm branching out into cooking, brewing, and massively distributed programming. I'm sure you can find something, the list is endless. If you don't love tech anymore (she is a demanding bitch), find a new love.

  9. Re:Different World? on Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors · · Score: 1

    The glue languages will never go away. Batch, Shell, Perl, etc. These languages are the duct tape of programming.

  10. Re:C programmers? Wanted! on Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors · · Score: 1

    15 years in COBOL and 10 years in Perl is changing too often?

  11. Re:Replacement Content? on Starz To Pull Content From Netflix · · Score: 1

    No, it's not just you. I'm happy with NetFlix; there's plenty of older material I haven't seen that NetFlix does stream. Even if NetFlix loses half of it's current content, it's still a much better deal than cable.

  12. Re:It's like a religion on Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination · · Score: 1

    In general, if I have limited information to make a decision, I prefer the option that let's me change my mind later.

    When my daughter was young (she's 9 now), we chose not to vaccinate, because we could always get her vaccinated when she was older. While gathering as much information as we could, we found a large number of potential side effects in young children. That alone convinced me that my decision to delay was correct, even if the decision to vaccinate was still unresolved.

    When the follow-up studies concluded that Thimerosal wasn't a risk, we had all the children vaccinated. It was a bonus that all of my children were old enough to avoid the age-based potential side effects.

  13. Re:I'm sorry, but on Panda Poo Yields Key To Cheaper Biofuels · · Score: 1

    Part of the problem with bio-fuels is that we've only figured out how to convert useful stuff into fuel. Corn, sugar, etc. The real break-through will come from stuff that isn't (currently) useful, and doesn't need as much attention as modern crops. Stuff like Switchgrass and Bamboo.

    Besides, solar power and the electrical grid aren't always an option. There will always be a market for a dense and easy to transport fuel. Think diesel generators in McMurdo Station in Antarctica, or the Canadian Diamond mines. Hopefully that market will be much smaller than it is today, but it won't go away.

  14. Re:Poor planning and bad arguments on Sixteen Years Later: GNU Still Needs An Extension Language · · Score: 1
  15. Re:even stupider ideas exist... on Ask Slashdot: Could We Deal With the End of Time Zones? · · Score: 1

    Degrees are unnatural, use Radians (preferably in tau, not pi). Then to make things easier, we can subdivide tau into 24th pieces, and everybody can say "The time is currently 12 tau twenty-fourths." Then the lazy sods will probably create an abbreviation for tau/24, probably something silly like "o'clock".

  16. Re:Sea Statue on Mysterious Object Found In Seabed · · Score: 1

    It can't be a BLUE HADES colony, it's only 100m deep. It could be a ship though...

  17. Re:2 simple and one complex solutions on DIY Dropbox Alternatives · · Score: 1

    Yes, cygwin + at/cron. If you're not a windows admin, it takes a little bit of work to get crond running as a windows service. Once the service is running, the rest is unix. I have a simple rsync cron running on windows, pulling offsite backup.

    In the grandparent's case, a slightly complex script that does rsync and some remote md5 commands should solve the problem. If you need bi-directional transfer, I've scripted unison the same way.

  18. Re:Is it time to disconnect from Google services? on Google+ Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire · · Score: 1

    I have to relay all outbound email through my ISP. I read my ISP's email client setup, and used the outbound SMTP server.

    postfix has a single config (relayhost) to do this, although I ended up using the more configurable transport map.

  19. Re:Tired and Flawed Reasoning on Google+ Growing As a Social Backbone · · Score: 1

    Picasa online had face recognition before the PC version.

  20. Re:Multi-Step Approach on TSA Announces Pilot of Trusted Traveler Program · · Score: 1

    Or let people play FarmVille while they're waiting in line.

  21. Re:Neat on Sub-Centimeter Positioning Coming To Mobile Phones · · Score: 1

    Depending on his soil type, the tractor might be running a muck, while running amok.

  22. Re:While we're at it on The Future of Time: UTC and the Leap Second · · Score: 1

    Wake up an hour earlier.

  23. Re:Statute of Limitations? on Ask Slashdot: How Do I Scrub Pirated Music From My Collection? · · Score: 1

    Then they'd try to claim re-duplication every time you copied the .mp3 into RAM.

  24. Re:I love you on Hackers Expose 26,000 Sex Website Passwords · · Score: 1

    My ISP (Time Warner) blocks outbound 25, except to smtp-server.roadrunner.com. I configured postfix to use that machine as an outbound relay.

  25. Re:FFS, it's not an "internet tax"! on California Assembly Approves Internet Tax · · Score: 1

    I haven't be following too closely, but I believe it's related to marketplace and affiliate sales, when the seller has a California presence. I'm not entirely sure though, because I've already been paying CA sales tax when I've purchased from a marketplace seller located in CA. The word "affiliate" seems to come up a lot in these discussion, so maybe it's related to those affiliate-link kick backs Amazon does.