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User: Dr.+Evil

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Comments · 2,657

  1. Re:Oh no.... on FCC to Allow Wireless Access on Planes · · Score: 1

    I think he was saying he had a bad trip.

  2. Re:PuTTY OpenSSH/Windows on XLiveCD: Cygwin and X For Windows On A Live CD · · Score: 1

    PuTTY has a few other command line utilities which come with it that let you do this stuff.

    Oddly, I've found myself needing PuTTY on Linux to use SSH to reach dozens of remote systems which did not have public/private key enabled... PuTTY lets you break the rules and put your password on the command line.

    The app has improved over the years.

  3. Re:How would patents apply on Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright · · Score: 1

    IMHO, I don't think patents will work for software (at least in this form)...

    You do know that software patents exist and that software is currently protected by both copyright and patent law?

    If you independently develop something which infringes on a patent, the patent holder can elect whether or not to allow you to continue to use the patented process. This doesn't always involve money, they can actually just say "no, you can't use our patent, go file for bankruptcy or see us in court."

    There is little incentive for a patent holder to attack a GPL'd software project because all they can do with their patent is stop it dead. No less, no more. No room for profit in that act unless the GPL'd project is a competitor, and you had better hope that IBM, Novell or Redhat don't pull out a patent war chest on you for doing so.

  4. Re:20-30 bugs per 1000 lines??? on Linux Has Fewer Bugs Than Rivals · · Score: 1

    I was once trying to demonstrate a minimal clump of code to generate a core dump by declaring a pointer, pointing it to some insane value, "0x01" I think, and reading from it.

    gcc saw that although I read the value, I never used the variable, so it optimized it out and it ran flawlessly :-)

    Now it is a good demonstration of the interesting side effects of compile-time optimization.

  5. Re:I love LEGO but... on LEGO Star Wars Video Game · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Libera maintains that donated supplies amount to sponsorship, but the company says it never gave him the authority to use its name or logo as an implied endorsement. Ambeck-Madsen, the Lego executive, said the faux packaging is so realistic that a Jewish organization in Sweden threatened to organize a boycott of Lego because offended members believed the company had manufactured the boxes."

  6. Re:Is this really a big deal? on Cell Phones In The Air? · · Score: 1

    The conversations in foriegn languages always sound so much more sinister.

    ...und keine Eier!

  7. The top post is citing... on Green Energy Almost Cost-Competitive with Fossil Fuels · · Score: 1

    ... a theory I've heard a few times but haven't read into http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0387 985468/104-8908824-8125543?v=glance

  8. Re:I think I've solved it. on New Vulnerability Affects All Browsers · · Score: 1

    I was looking at this bug, it appears to be really really lame. It just executes an onclick event which targets a named window which you've opened with the "target" parameter of the anchor tag.

    And here I thought they were doing something clever like targetting a window by guessing the name of the target window. I mean, I'm pretty sure that any site at any time can guess "hey change the content of the "citibank" window!".. so if some dumb site creates a popup where name="securelogin", and some malicious site, say "hotmial.com" includes a link wiht javascript which tries to load a different page into the "securelogin" window, then you could confuse people. But no, nothing quite so fancy.

    If you right click or middle click, if I recall your browser would be ignoring the "target" tag and would create a new window with a new, unique name. It's been a while since I've done web design stuff, but that's what I recall from the 3.x days.

    I wonder if you could randomly generate a page name and store it in Javascript, or worst-case, depend on cookies to store the secret.

  9. Re:This is a surprise? on China Bans Game Recognizing Taiwan Independence · · Score: 1

    I think you misread my comment. But I think I misread my comment....

    If I were saying anything at all, I suppose that U.S. democracy is merely a dictatorship with a special system to peacefully manage the overthrow of the sitting leadership.

  10. Re:This is a surprise? on China Bans Game Recognizing Taiwan Independence · · Score: 1

    Flawed democratic systems like that of the U.S. at least protects against behaviour which is overwhelmingly and obviously harmful to the population.

    Unfortunately the population has been getting their news from the same corporations who are sponsoring government candiates.

    The Chineese leadership might be less willing to squash demonstrators in a democracy, but by the same token, democracy hasn't stopped the U.S. from throwing random people into prison without a trial.

  11. DMCA on 1-Click Blooper Playback for Original Trilogy DVD · · Score: 1

    By communicating circumvention methods for author content controls, isn't everyone in violation of the DMCA?

  12. Re:Another issue: Netiquette on The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail · · Score: 1

    CC lists change on memos. When in an environment where people are deluged with communications, it's good practice to strip people out of CC if you think they'll no longer be involved. Sometimes they get put back in, so you wind up sending the whole thread back and forth. It sucks, but as long as people don't assume everyone has carefully read the thread, it's o.k.

    On that note... I've been cc'd action items before. I hate that. If I carefully scanned every memo I was cc'd for an action item, I'd spend half my day reading email.

    Another horrible practice is to assume your new recipients will read your over-quoted thread when they cc you. You know what I mean, those 20-page long memos with senior management forwarded with comments like "yeah", "for your action", "I approve"... then after reading through the most recent replies, you realize that you'll have to start from the very beginning of the thread in order to mentally diff for a final action item... then ask all parties involved for confirmation of your action item... A wonderful waste of time when the last person involved could just summarize "hey, put the config change on the widget servers"

    Must run though... email to read.

  13. Re:How they become? on The Illiteracy of Corporate American E-Mail · · Score: 1

    Your example of the comma preceeding the word "and" is one of the trickier aspects of English grammar.

    If the context were ambiguous, I'd reword the list so that the posessive word "my" appears at the end of the list.

    "Ayn Rand, God and my parents."

    If somebody were to make a mistake like that in an email, I would interpret the meaning of the sentence from the context.

    Not that I disagree, just that I think there are far more serious problems with English usage these days.

  14. Re:PTC on Lone Activist Group Submits 99.8% of FCC Complaints · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Who of us wasn't victim of a flying beesting, elbow, bodyslam, leglock or suplex?

    You're just not a geek if you weren't targetted by kids in gradeschool.

    I personally think wrestling is worse than the old cartoons, the roadrunner doesn't scream and bleed... but then... I don't think cartoons are bad... just that if 10 were instant child corruption, and 1 was an oratory of math puzzles, then cartoons would be somewhere around 5, wrestling around 6, a coke commercial around 7, and child targeted advertisements for junk food or fad-toys a certain 10.

  15. Are you joking? on Weather Data Available in XML · · Score: 1

    Plenty of absurd database links, I can't help but to think everyone is just joking, but most of those replies look very serious.

    The traditional way to determine your latitude, longitude and altitude would be to use a map. Any mildly geeky geek should have a pile of these ancient scrolls.

  16. Re:What is it with the five days thing? on Live to be 1000 Years Old? · · Score: 1

    If you put figurative wishy-washy interpretations into Revelations, the end of the world might come and go and nobody will notice :-)

  17. Re:Just Thinkpads on IBM Thinkpad -- Sudden Laptop Death Syndrome? · · Score: 1

    It depends on the model and the OS. My Thinkpad can't suspend or Hibernate right now, the OS will crash, but I'm quite certain that it is because of some bad VPN drivers which I'm using.

    My desktop suspends beautifully, it even knows when not to... i.e. if idle, the screen shuts off, then a few minutes later it suspends. But if it's doing something which might seem idle, like playing MP3s, recording video etc, the screen shuts off and it never suspends until that activitiy stops.

    Those are Windows machines. My Linux machines never need to suspend, they're always doing stuff.

  18. Moving might be better than staying on How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree? · · Score: 1

    ...You'll have contacts from both universities.

    Education and reputation-wise, only one thing matters in regard to "where" you went to school... if the hiring manager also went there.

    Unless you're thriving where you are, pack up and move.

  19. Re:strings on the graphic on SCO.com Defaced · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Always drink your ovaltine.

  20. Re:in canada on Buggy Voting Machines · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think that's actually a large source of the ballot problems. The questions which the state poses can also skew the election. E.g. Are you in favour of Gay marriages? Do you support abortion?, now that that's out of the way, which candiate would you like? Bush or Kerry?

    If you wanted to skew in the other direction, you could include a question about manditory military service.

    Are the ballot questions designed to prevent this kind of creative skewing, for example, by having the ballots reviewed by all parties?

  21. Re:Evolution on Scientists Give Human Organs to Lamb · · Score: 1

    Not at all. Valuable time which could have been spent passing our genetic information to future generations has been wasted.

    Damn you Slashdot!

  22. Re:TV piracy is next? on TV Piracy is Next · · Score: 1

    How oddly appropriate that the only product they successfully advertised to you was directly related to the program itself :-)

    The interruption based advertising model MUST DIE!

  23. Re:In a Yugo.... on ZAP Smart Car Approved for Sale in the US · · Score: 1

    The Smart was introduced in Canada this year. I'm curious to see how they perform in the winter.

  24. Re:It's either the infrasture.... on Fuel Cell Powered Scooter · · Score: 1

    As others have said, hydrogen is not an energy source, it was never intended to be.

    What it does do is localize the pollution into areas where it can be controlled. You can burn coal in your car, but you probably won't be investing in new scrubbers for the exhaust. Now if your old clunker burned hydrogen, it would be very difficult for you to find a way to cause it to pollute... all the while, the hydrogen producing plant invests in the latest technologies. They can burn coal, use off-peak energy from nuclear, set up solar generators, wind, hydro, burn biodiesel or ethanol, or adapt to any new technology which comes along, all without changing distribution or the engine in your old hydrogen clunker.

  25. Re:You almost got it. on Recycling Gone Wrong: The AOL Throne · · Score: 1

    Oh my word. That's the first time I've heard "reuse" to mean "reuse the recycled materials" Ugh. If it was taught that way, yeah it makes sense. I've heard a lot of variations, it's bizzare.

    "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", as I was taught was the idea that you reduce your consumption of materials which produce waste, you reuse whatever waste you can... from keeping old margerine containers, bringing shopping bags back to the grocery store, using scrap paper... finding creative uses for stuff which would have been thrown out, like dead computers, or choosing to buy reusable stuff instead of disposable stuff, like a metal travel mug instead of a paper cup... then finally if you can't avoid producing the waste and you can't find a use for the waste, then recycle it.

    Every township seems to have rolled out recycling at a slightly different time. Recycling hit my local area around 1989.

    Generally accepted U.S. propaganda is currently in support of my flavour of brainwashing:

    http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/reduce.h tm

    Now I'm not saying all this to try and get into a dick-waving contest with you...

    Sure you're not.... *backs away slowly*