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User: rafa

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Comments · 116

  1. Re:I'm 31 on Have I Lost My Gaming Mojo? · · Score: 1

    I approve of your exploration into Scotch. In my opinion, there's no better way to dive into Whisky than to join the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (www.smws.co.uk, local branches or their equivalent are hopefully available where you are at). The tipples they provide are unique, and they are very good at helping you find just the right one for you.

  2. Re:I2P vs TOR on Anonymous Network I2P 0.7.2 Released · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I believe .onion services can be created using tor as well, providing a similar service - but it's been a while since I last read about them.

  3. More achievements on Slashdot Launches User Achievements · · Score: 1
    I'd like to see some PvP achievements added to /.
    • Cutting retort modded funny.
    • Successfully goatsed someone with the /. badge.
    • Made another poster cry with a crushing, accurate observation.
    • Corrected the factual contents of a +5 funny post.
    • Followed up someone's +4 Funny with a +5 Funny.
    • Derailed a +N informative thread with a +M other.
    • Corrected another member's unix syntax.
  4. What about surprise and/or disgust? on Opera Launches Facial Gesture Capability · · Score: 1

    So, what does the browser do when the user recoils in horror after clicking a goatse link? Zoom? Laugh? Redirect to tubgirl?

  5. Re:What they SHOULD apologize for on More Lich King Details, Apologies For Burning Crusade? · · Score: 1

    Not to mention Son of Arugal - that one caused me an immense amount of frustration in the first weeks of my new life as a WoW addict. I've since gone back and killed him while pointing and laughing just to work out the aggro in my system.

  6. Re:Linode.com on Decent Co-Location or Virtual Server Hosting? · · Score: 1

    About VPSs, I use Rosehosting.com, and I'm very happy with their service. If you find their google ad, you'll get the monthly fee down to $20. Performance has been fairly good so far.

  7. Re:How about we take the easy way out? on The Future of Packaging Software in Linux · · Score: 1

    Lots of good ideas in this thread.

    It's possible to re-package an installed package with deb-repack (or similar, can't remember the exact name right now). When doing that it'll include the local configuration changes you've made, which is pretty convenient. It would however be even more convenient to be able to transform packages without having to either repackage them from an installed version - or producing local debs the traditional way.

    Some way of merging the repository debs with local modifications for installation to various local machines perhaps. Maybe a directory structure or something one could keep in svn. That way new versions would automatically be infused with my desired changes.

  8. Re:So on Google Releases Paper on Disk Reliability · · Score: 1

    That raises a good question actually - what are people's experiences with advance drive replacements?

    I've had several Maxtor drives fail, and I'm now wary of storing anything important on them*, but their advance drive replacement service has been fabulously good in my experience. My understanding is that the particular model I have has been prone to failures (The 80Gb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives). I wouldn't be adverse to purchasing other model drives from them again in the future, based on their drive replacement service.

    My experience with WD and Seagate drives are that in the case of the particular drives I've owned, reliability has been good. I also found Seagate's 3-year warranty to be a good reason for buying these drives. However, when one of my Seagate drives failed (Seagate Barracuda 7200.8, 250Gb drive, model ST3250823A), they refused me an advance drive replacement in Sweden, which I'm very unhappy about. They were also both rude and unhelpful when I called to ask if it was available. In addition to that, it took them three weeks to ship me a new drive. I'm very, very unlikely to ever buy another Seagate product, despite finding their hardware has performed well, and decently reliably.

    As for WD drives, I've never had one fail during their warranty period. Last I was looking for replacement drives they were still just offering 1 year support, so I didn't buy any.

    I now live in London, and hope it isn't too far out of the way for decent customer service. What manufacturers have offered good drive replacement service where you live, and which have not?

    *I do have backups of course, but it's still a pain to have the drive fail.

  9. Re:Beagle allready does this! on Spotlight Improvements In Leopard · · Score: 1

    I've recently switched from indexing with beagle, to tracker, which I find to be speedier, uses less memory, and is generally a treat to work with. I'd recommend checking it out. It doesn't need mono, and there's ubuntu debs available.

  10. Re:parallel gzip/bzip2/etc on Intel Pledges 80 Core Processor in 5 Years · · Score: 1

    Parallel BZIP2 (PBZIP2) and bzip2smp are parallel implementations of bzip2. I've not looked for any similar gzip implmentations.

  11. My two cents on Slashdot Discussion2 In Beta · · Score: 1

    I like D2, but there's a few UI details that I think could be improved.

    • Make threads collapse completely. I often click the title to collapse a thread I'm no longer interested in reading - but find that some child comments remain open and need to be clicked close.
    • Move the floating threshold menu to the right, it gets in the way, especially if one's removed /.'s left hand menu.
    • Explicit default thresholds in the preferences - resetting my preferred thresholds after having moderated (and thus having displayed all comments) gets a little annoying.
    • Write out the thresholds - I prefer to hide everything below score 2, but it's not obvious exactly how to click the menu to achieve that. I end up lookung up a score 1 and score 2 comment, then clicking until one dissapears.
    • Needs more speed, loading a larg set of comments often maxes out my cpu, and makes firefox unresponsive until the page has finished loading.
  12. Re:Math on Firefox Analyzed for Bugs by Software · · Score: 1

    I've got my music mounted off a soft mounted nfs share - when it goes down, amaroK removes the tracks from the collection, and refuses to re-add them even when I re-scan my music.

    I also wish there was a 'small' mode for amarok, like xmms' rolled-up interface (but, a little larger, xmms' controls aren't easy to hit).

  13. Re:Maybe archaic but... on Managing a Huge Music Collection? · · Score: 1

    Yep, same here. So, I don't have the monster collections some other people have been mentioning here - but I use:

    • artist/year-album_name/tracknumber.track_name.og g for albums
    • artist/live/date-venue/tracknumber.track_name.og g for live performances.
    • artist/other/track_name.ogg for tracks not in albums

    I use amarok, xmms(beep media player lately), command-line players and find it equally easy to find my music in any of them.

  14. Re:Will this ever succeed in full? on New "Dark" Freenet Available for Testing · · Score: 1

    Tor is definitley a nice easy-to-use (and recently on ubuntu, decently easy to set up as well) solution. My only real problem is that the switchproxy firefox plugin makes firefox a complete dog when opening new windows.

  15. Re:NBD? on NetBSD's Real-Time Network Backup · · Score: 1

    We had it enabled where I work - but it took a while to get it tweaked right. In the beginning we got massive lag-spikes on our nfs-exported home dirs. It's a good idea, and I hope the problems with it can be ironed out.

  16. Re:iTunes DRM Bites Hard on Songbird Flies Today · · Score: 1

    Hymn doesn't work with iTunes 6 either. At least it didn't when I looked at it this past week. My mother bought me a Tea Leaf Green album* as a Chinese New Year's present - and sent me the .m4p files, unfortuantely Hymn wasn't able to free them. I've asked her to burn me an audio cd with the music instead.

    * Yes, TLG even has flac available from their website, but my mother didn't know about iTMS' DRM.

  17. Re:My basis... on Brain Surgery Patient Trapped in a Mental Time Warp · · Score: 1
    Zyprexa: Caused me to lose colour vision temporarily

    While that sounds like it would have been an unsettling experience - it'd be fascinating to know what it was like. Hmm, phrasing "what did the absence of colour look like" doesn't quite get across what I'm curious about. Perhaps what I'd be curious to know is - what was there in place of where one would have seen a colour - only contrast?

  18. Re:Hard Drive Voodoo? on Seagate buys Maxtor for $1.9B · · Score: 1

    Their 5 year warranty was the reason the latest HD in my personal machine was a Seagate. While it lasted, it was nice - very quiet for one thing. Unfortunately, when it failed they declined me an advanced RMA - and the turnaround time on the replacement was 41 days!

    Needless to say, in the meantime I bought a replacement from another company, one that I know from experience provides snappy replacements and advance RMAs. Personally, I'm now reluctant to purchase another seagate product, but perhaps others have had better experiences with them.

  19. Re:Mechanic retraining on Steam Hybrid Car from BMW · · Score: 1
    Everyone rails on on slashdot about corporate actions in the computer world, yet in the automotive world, we love the things that are forcing the little local guy out of business or the do it yourselfer.

    I think that if you check past /. stories, you'll find plenty of stories that decry the automotive industries for making cars harder to modify yourself. Specifically, I'd look for the posts about proprietary interfaces to engine control chips. But, as for enjoying the new and shiny - sure, this is /., and yeah I certainly enjoy reading about new and innovative hardware (IT or not) as much as the next guy.

    As for your torx screws - they're becoming more and more common on computer equipment as well. I know my emergency computer kit includes a set of torx bits these days, just in case.

  20. Re:The reruns are going to be even worse. on TiVo Causes Increase in Product Placement · · Score: 1

    That's already happening - I watched Demolition Man on tv a while back here in Europe and noticed they'd changed all the refereces of Taco Bell into Pizza Hut. They'd even gone so far as to dub over Stallone as he's speaking - without much subtelty I might add. The wikipedia article I linked to also mentions this.

  21. Re:The Slowness Of Java on Quake2 Ported to Java, Play Via the Web · · Score: 1
    and yet azureus still a memory hog.
    PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    8216 anglerud 15 0 418m 80m 12m S 0.3 15.9 10:45.20 java
  22. Re:Control-R on Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips? · · Score: 3, Informative

    control-R is very useful, but you can complement it with some other goodies. For example, you can make bash automatically search in your history based on what you've already input. For example "ls foo" would get you to your previous command that starts with ls foo, even if it wasn't the last command you typed. In your .inputrc:

    "\e[A": history-search-backward
    "\e[B": history-search-forward

    If you just want to insert another option after the last command you wrote, but before the filenames etc (uses alt-o) put this in your .inputrc:

    "\M-o": "\C-p\C-a\M-f "

    Make tab-completion case insensitive, and make it stop matching hidden files (in your .inputrc):

    set completion-ignore-case on
    set match-hidden-files off

    Make your history immediately available from all your bash instances - in your .bashrc:

    shopt -s histappend
    PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'
  23. Re:Hexus = good reviews, shitty servers. on Thirty Four PSUs Tested - Is Biggest Best? · · Score: 1

    Use the add mirrors /. greasemonkey script to add mirror links to every link in the blurb.

  24. Re:OpenHardware anyone? on 3-Way Motherboard Shootout · · Score: 1

    Well, opencores is open hardware, and there is a lot of music licensed under the Creative Commons.

  25. Re:Buttons on the top on Prototype Rollable Paper-like Display Ready Early · · Score: 1

    When reading books on my visor on the way to work, I use it in landscape mode, and hold it just in my right hand. I toggle back/forward with my thumb.