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User: Chandon+Seldon

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Comments · 3,874

  1. Re:i hope they keep up on AMD Loses $1.2 Billion and Its CEO · · Score: 1

    I don't think you understand the scales involved. Next you'll be saying that Microsoft is going to crush IBM, or that Greenland is going to invade Canada.

  2. Re:How about an example a little closer to home? on Warning Future Generations About Nuclear Waste · · Score: 1

    This would be more accurate if you said "there's this pit in the basement where I've been dumping toxic waste - half gasoline half ethanol - for 50 years, there's got to be a hundred thousand gallons down there".

  3. Re:I've expirienced this myself. on What Would It Take To Have Open CA Authorities? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is utter nonsense.

    There is no security benefit to having the browser flip out over self-signed certificates. In fact, it *reduces* security by forcing some sites that would have used self-signed certificates to stop using SSL entirely.

    The simplest non-wrong thing to do would be to simply treat self-signed SSL certificates just an insecure site. That way no one is being "tricked" by it, but the self-signed sites still get the security of being encrypted.

    The best thing to do would be to mark sites with self signed certificates differently than CA-signed sites (sort of like extra-validation certificates are marked green). Maybe Green with a lock for extra-validation, yellow with a lock for normal validation, and purple with a feather pen for self-signed.

  4. Re:Not the first one... on What Would It Take To Have Open CA Authorities? · · Score: 1

    And NO I don't want to hear crap about "Well, MyCrappyISP offers SSL certificates for $7 a year" - Google Checkout does not accept these - And Firefox doesn't unless you set up an "exception" - which in which the warning message with will confuse 40% of the users, and make another 40% think that "hackers are breaking into their computer".

    Lots of these companies (that sell SSL certs in the $8 - $20 range) are reselling for companies that Google has approved.

    Certificate authorities are bullshit, but there's a compeditive market of bullshit. The only organizations that are really making out like bandits are Webtrust and friends (who audit CAs for $50,000 - $75,000 a year).

  5. Re:The costs of patents on MSM Noticing That Patent Gridlock Stunts Innovation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    c) the number of decisions to NOT make a competing product due to patent issues

    This is damage that's basically impossible to measure. Some giant companies probably track the direct decisions, but even then there's no way to measure "bringing products to market in general is dangerous because of unknown patent risks" effects.

  6. Great source for $0 TV on Alternative Uses For an Old Satellite Dish? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Full size satellite dishes are still the best way to receive free television content, despite what the cable / pay satellite providers may imply in their advertising. If you don't have any place to put it yourself, it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone who would be willing to buy it.

  7. Re:Choice of file system on Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body · · Score: 1

    Ah, gotcha. Emotions. Maybe I've been spending too much time with machines - I'm starting to think like one.

    Wait... we can get people to think rationally just by getting them to spend more time with machines? This implies a rational course of action...

  8. Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources on Giant Snake-Shaped Generators Could Capture Wave Power · · Score: 1

    Illegal due to the fact that it breeds massive amounts of weapons-grade nuclear material we're not allowed to make due to treaties.

    True enough, and the law needs to be fixed. "OMG Nuclear Bomb" is not a valid reason to ignore the most effective solution to the energy problem - especially since current generation breeder designs don't produce weapon-usable output anyway.

  9. Re:Not So Funny: Threshold of Renewable Resources on Giant Snake-Shaped Generators Could Capture Wave Power · · Score: 5, Insightful

    enough energy to make chemicals to launch all waste into the sun and have all the energy we'll need left over!

    Will you please stop with this "nuclear waste" blather? "Nuclear waste" is just "nuclear fuel that we're too lame to recycle yet".

  10. Re:Download caps on In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped · · Score: 1

    Sure, not that many people in the USA today have 10 Mbps uploads yet.

    So the Car / Bicycle analogy isn't like the USA today (where everyone has a car) - it's like India in the 1950's looking at the USA (no one in India had a car, but they were pretty common in the USA). When it comes to high speed internet, the USA is a third world country with marginal infrastructure.

  11. Re:Download caps on In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped · · Score: 1

    This bandwidth cap is somewhat like setting a highway speed limit of 670616629 mph.

    No, it's more like they set the highway speed limit to 55 mph and you're complaining that you can't possibly go that fast on your 3 speed bicycle.

  12. Re:calculation time on In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped · · Score: 1

    Japan's population density is a LOT higher than the US, so having fiber in every house is quite simple to do.

    It's not just Japan and Korea with the silly population densities. They have decent speed (100Mbps up and down) connections in Sweden too, and they have a *lower* population density than the USA.

    It's simply a matter of having infrastructure provided by some mechanism other than a couple of huge companies with government granted monopolies.

  13. Re:Odin84gk on Dial-Up Users "Don't Want Broadband" · · Score: 1

    Some fraction of the population in comparatively rural areas will tend to be behind the curve on infrastructure access, news at 11.

    The difference is that in Europe that fraction is, at most, 20% while in the US it's much higher than that.

  14. Re:Unless the Gov't does it on Where To Draw the Line With Embryo Selection? · · Score: 1

    There are some things that are appropriate for individuals to personally chose to do but are unappropriated for the government to mandate. For example: the government should absolutely not be allowed to mandate bar code tattoos on everyone's forehead, but that doesn't mean that individuals shouldn't be free to get such tattoos themselves.

  15. Re:What's the point ... on Students Evaluate Ray Tracing From Developers' Side · · Score: 1

    Honestly, I'm not that impressed with the raytraced Quake Wars. Some nicer textures and higher res models could make it a lot prettier with a lot less horse power. Yes, the reflections are impressive, but reflections aren't that important really.

    Reflections (and various translucency effects) are all they were demoing. Raytracing probably doesn't have any special scaling problem with high resolution textures and models (I think it's an issue of "rays per pixel"), but that's not what they were worried about this time around.

  16. Re:As an employer, I abhor them on Non-Compete Pacts Called Bad For Tech Innovation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you have an employee that leaves the company and then takes a suspicious "personal vacation" to Shanghai or Shenzhen while taking along engineering samples of your products that he was not meant to take with him when he quit, expect your company to fail and fail quickly.

    Bullshit.

    If you aren't incompetent, you should be able to compete with a company that's late to market with a knockoff of your product.

  17. Re:Tight, but effective.... on Building an Effective Information Security Policy Architecture · · Score: 1

    That's oversimplifying in the other direction.

    If there are real security risks, the company is going to lose money either way. The question is very simple: What policy will lose the company the *least* amount of money. That probably means a security policy that occasionally inconveniences people, but not enough to be more costly than the security risks it reduces.

  18. Re:Tight, but effective.... on Building an Effective Information Security Policy Architecture · · Score: 1

    That's great, until you take into account that slowing down a senior technical person by an hour on some project costs the company hundreds of dollars every time it happens.

    Assuming that you're talking about network security for a business, security policy is a business decision. It's a business decision that requires extensive technical expertise to properly make, but it's really a tradeoff between various scenarios where the company loses money. A security breach isn't simply "we lose, game over" - it's going to cost the company a certain amount of money. For your "default deny, fire people who use work-arounds to get their job done" policy to be appropriate, security breaches with a less strict policy would need to be expected yearly and cost thousands of dollars per technical person who the policy inconveniences.

  19. Re:Stop the mind control on OEMs Looking to Ubuntu for Netbook Market · · Score: 1

    Or... maybe compromising accuracy and integrity for imagined publicity games is actually a PR mistake. It's possible that users like integrity.

    More realistically, It's likely that the only reason why this debate matters is the question of giving / not giving the GNU project attribution for their work on a free OS.

  20. Re:Stop the mind control on OEMs Looking to Ubuntu for Netbook Market · · Score: 1

    Otherwise GNU/Linux would just imply that you're just using the command-line interface.

    Not at all. It implies that you're using that OS that the guy who coined the term GNU/Linux refers to with that term. And that term definitely was intended to refer to all of the GNU project software including - for example - Gnome.

  21. Re:I still think that it's a waste on Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Launches · · Score: 1

    They can borrow/share for a while, but eventually you end up with a critical mass of players who don't have a 2nd/3rd/3.5th PHB and your group is forced to upgrade.

    Or you can buy the old books on the internet. That way your group can play whatever edition of whatever RPG you want.

  22. Re:Are you kidding? on Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Launches · · Score: 1

    DnD is a GAME not a representitive of real life.

    It's a game that to some extent represents a simulation of a fantasy setting. Attributes like "realism" vs. "game balance" and "simulation" vs. "abstraction" are design knobs that RPG designers play with - but any tabletop RPG tries to simulate a setting to some extent; it's a pre-requisite to plot and roleplay.

  23. Re:Hmmm, threw an exception on Software Update Shuts Down Nuclear Power Plant · · Score: 1

    Surely education levels haven't slipped that far.

    They easily could have.

    In a couple of common accents, the words are pronounced the same. Further, this is the internet - not everyone speaks English as a first language.

  24. Re:DNF cannot be completed on Duke Nukem Forever Preview On Jace Hall Show · · Score: 1

    Seriously, dude. Ask around. Almost no one finished that, because it was boring.

    You've got to be careful making claims about "everyone" or "almost everyone".

    I was running frequent LAN parties that would consistently get 10 - 15 people when Doom 3 came out. We didn't play any Doom 3 LAN parties (no 8/16 player multiplayer) but most of the attendees played it and enjoyed it.

    So either my data is a weird statistical fluke or you're talking out of your ass.

  25. Re:DNF cannot be completed on Duke Nukem Forever Preview On Jace Hall Show · · Score: 1

    I don't think anyone finished it. I was bored after about 4 hours.

    I finished it, and think it was an excellent game.

    You probably had one of two problems:

    1.) You expected something else and were too busy complaining that you didn't get it to enjoy what you had.
    2.) You didn't bother setting up properly. Either you were playing it on a system that couldn't run it smoothly or you were playing in a brightly lit room and couldn't the amazing-but-dark scene on the screen.