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User: knorthern+knight

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  1. It was well known... as HMA on Ask Slashdot: How Many Employees Does Microsoft Really Need? · · Score: 1
  2. GNU/Linu-x not GNOME/Lenna-x on X.Org Server 1.16 Brings XWayland, GLAMOR, Systemd Integration · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is Lennart paid by Redhat or by Microsoft?

  3. The submission is outright wrong on The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record · · Score: 1

    > The Heartland Institute skews the data by taking two points
    > and ignoring all of the data in between, kind of like grabbing
    > two zero points from sin(x) and claiming you're looking at a
    > steady state function.

    Totally, 100% false. I'll give the poster the benefit of the doubt, and assume they don't know what they're talking about. Check for yourself...
    1) download the file of monthly anomalies from ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly...
    2) import into a spreadsheet
    3) take the slope() function for the 3rd column for the range Sept 1996 to June 2014

    You get a very slightly negative result.The slope() function uses *ALL THE POINTS FROM THE START TO THE END*. I repeat, the submission is flat out wrong.

  4. Because a fully-charged machine is so safe... on TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes · · Score: 1
  5. Oriental knowhow and cheap American labor on China Starts Outsourcing From ... the US · · Score: 3, Funny

    The ultimate combination

  6. Re:So how is that going to work on Chinese Vendor Could Pay $34.9M FCC Fine In Signal-Jammer Sting · · Score: 1

    > I throw people out of the theatre all day long for using
    > their cell phones... There are places it should be legal
    > and my business or home is one of them.

    Try covering the walls of the theatre room with aluminum foil or tin foil. It's not exactly a new idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
    > In 1836, Michael Faraday observed that the excess charge on a charged conductor
    > resided only on its exterior and had no influence on anything enclosed within it.
    > To demonstrate this fact, he built a room coated with metal foil and allowed
    > high-voltage discharges from an electrostatic generator to strike the outside of
    > the room. He used an electroscope to show that there was no electric charge
    > present on the inside of the room's walls.

  7. People have short memories on Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History · · Score: 1

    I'm a fan of pre-Beatles oldies rock music. Every so often, somebody comes up with a "Greatest Hits Of All Time" list, and it usually seems to go back no further than 10 or 15 years before the list was published. Similar for history. Many such lists are better described as "the most influential people of recent times".The most influential people are founders of major movements religions (Jesus, Mohammed, etc) and political ideologies such (Karl Marx, etc)

    And then there are leaders of states/empires, who led their empires to triumph/defeat. Too numerous to mention, going back to Biblical times through today

  8. Re:Behind the curve on Seattle Approves $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage · · Score: 1

    > Point is, if you don't just grab the cheapest item on the shelf, there is a surprising
    > amount of domestically-produced goods in Walmart (excluding clothes).

    One thing I've noticed about Walmart is that they seem to be almost the only place here (Toronto, Canada) where you can get neutral-coloured T-shirts that you're not ashamed to wear to work. All other stores have "branding" splattered all over their T-shirts, e.g. Nike "checkmark", Tommy Hilfiger, AeroPostale, etc, etc. I do not want to be a walking billboard for a manufacturer. At least not while I'm paying them for their product.

  9. Re:This "nightmare" rigns a bell on The Coming IT Nightmare of Unpatchable Systems · · Score: 1

    > Total BS. Phones should last 20 years. The old land line ones last 20+ years.
    > The only thing in a modern phone that doesn't have a 20+ year life span is the
    > battery and that is not through not trying.

    I got a Nokia 6015i "Candy Bar" phone in 2006. http://nokiamuseum.info/nokia-... Back then, it could talk to the network (Virgin Mobile Canada) over 3 protocols; analog, 1XRTT, and I forget what else. Now the display only shows 1XRTT active.

    I rarely use it, so I don't need anything fancier. I'll keep it until my carrier no longer supports it. They've already sent me an offer of a "low-cost upgrade to a faster phone", but I ignored it. With all the buzz about 3G, 4G, 5G, etc, etc, and VOLTE, I don't think 1XRTT will be around several years from now, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

  10. Re:Amazon "lose $ on each book, make it up on volu on Fiat Chrysler CEO: Please Don't Buy Our Electric Car · · Score: 1

    > How can the state of California guarantee that without price controls, then.

    The same way they guaranteed retail electricity prices in 2000/2001 without guaranteeing wholesale prices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... Oh... wait.

  11. Here's the source data... on Rising Sea Level Could Put East Coast Nuclear Plants At Risk · · Score: 1

    Source data is at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ The graph shows an average rise of 3.2 mm / year. You can download the data in ASCII format, suitable for plotting at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/f...

    Note that this includes a fudge-factor called GIS (Glacial Isostatic Adjustment). They give a long-winded explanation. tl;dr they've added a 10% fudge factor. From http://sealevel.colorado.edu/c...

    > We apply a correction for GIA because we want our sea level time series
    > to reflect purely oceanographic phenomena. In essence, we would like
    > our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes.
    > This is what is needed for comparisons to global climate models, for
    > example, and other oceanographic datasets.

    So they talk out of one side of their mouths about how much sea level is rising. Out of the other side of their mouth, they admit that their numbers aren't really sea level rise.

    Another question... what type of effing idiot approves nuclear reactors located such that a sealevel rise of a few inches, let alone a few feet, would cause problems? Anybody ever heard of tsunamis (like at Fukushima)? They're rarer in the Atlantic, but they do happen.

  12. How to "defeat security".in these apps on Take a Picture: Snapchat Settles With FTC Over "Dissapearing" Claims · · Score: 1

    * Receive email from Snapchat's/whoever's servers
    * Plug in a USB connecter
    * Read contents of your inbox
    * Transfer a copy to your PC
    * Decode copy at leisure

    Unless Snapchat has a client-side app that totally takes over your smartphone/tablet there is no way to protect against this attack.

  13. Re:20 years? on Take a Picture: Snapchat Settles With FTC Over "Dissapearing" Claims · · Score: 1

    > Maybe trolling comment, but doesn't anyway suspect something
    > going on here? Facef**k buys them out as their being investigated
    > by the FTC. And the Facef**k monopoly manages to buy off [buy off,
    > maybe a little strong, but the realty is they own or can buy off Federal
    > regulators] the FTC to get Snapchat off the hook.

    No need to do that. Fecesbook buys Snapchat, and shuts them down. With the shutdown of Snapchat, the 20-year agreement dies along with the corporate shell. Then Fecesbook offers "a new service" which "just happens" to be very similar to Snapchat, but has a much more wide open EULA that protects them aginst FTC investigation.

  14. The Glib-Lib-Rename-Game on Let's Call It 'Climate Disruption,' White House Science Adviser Suggests (Again) · · Score: 1

    This isn't just with global warming

    It's discrimination against white people...
    No wait, it's "reverse discrimination"...
    No wait, it's "affirmative action"...
    No wait...

  15. Re:EFF testing new Privacy Badger tool on Opting Out of Big Data Snooping: Harder Than It Looks · · Score: 1

    > Problem with IP tracking is that on CGNAT systems, it fails spectacularly.

    In that case, I can see a great corporate push coming to move to IPV6.

  16. Re:I block... on Facebook Data Miner Will Shock You · · Score: 1

    > I block:
    > 127.0.0.1 facebook.com
    > 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
    > 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.net
    > 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.org
    > 127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net
    > 127.0.0.1 static.ak.facebook.com
    > 127.0.0.1 s-static.ak.facebook.com
    >
    > Suggestions?

    I block by IP address ranges

    31.13.24.0/21 aka 31.13.24.0 - 31.13.31.255
    31.13.64.0/18 aka 31.13.64.0 - 31.13.127.255
    66.220.144.0/ aka 66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255
    69.63.176.0/20 aka 69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255
    69.171.224.0/19 aka 69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255
    74.119.76.0/22 aka 74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255
    103.4.96.0/22 aka 103.4.96.0 - 103.4.99.255
    173.252.64.0/18 aka 173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255
    204.15.20.0/22 aka 204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255

    You can get the raw info from the command...

    whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS32934' | grep ^route ...and you still have to clean up that output a lot.

  17. Would this make regular security illegal? on DOJ Pushes to Expand Hacking Abilities Against Cyber-Criminals · · Score: 1

    It's not just a matter of using Linux versus Windows. I get the occasional spam with poisoned executable attachments inside zipfiles. I view zipfile headers, and often see stuff like the following 2 examples...

    PK^C^D^T^@^@^@^H^@^Y^?|DT^Z^F^[¾`^G^@^@\236^@^U^@^@^@OrderDetails.pdf.scr

    PK^C^D^T^@^@^@^H^@^\WzD~\224®ÂM^\^@^@^@J^@^@;^@^@^@~apbnet00~50~44b76b05-3e01-414a-8469-04f234689df3~Email.exe

    ".scr" is executable in Windows http://filext.com/file-extensi... so I assume that's a trojan-planting attempt. One possible legal defense is that it's impossible to tell whether you're blocking a trojan sent by police or by foreign criminals.

  18. Better idea; resupply the shuttle on The Rescue Plan That Could Have Saved Space Shuttle Columbia · · Score: 1

    The report deals with a tragedy 11 years ago (Feb 2003), and how it could've been handled 11 years ago. Fast forward to February 2014. Let's use today's tech. We've got SpaceX and other commercial entities capable of launching supplies into orbit and rendezvouing with with ISS or a shuttle.

    If any similar missions are undertaken in future, pay SpaceX/whomever, to have a launch vehicle with emergency supplies on standby. In a worst case, send up enough oxygen/water/rations/etc to allow the orbiting shuttle crew to survive longer on the orbiting shuttle. This would buy enough extra time to do a proper and safe inspection+launch of the rescue shuttle. In a best case, they might be able to carry out the necessary repairs and safely land the orbiting shuttle.

  19. Re:Ain't no body got time for that on 'Google Buses' Are Bad For Cities, Says New York MTA Official · · Score: 1

    > How is building a vast company campus green
    > compared to using already constructed buildings?

    Are those "already constructed buildings" new, with sufficient electrical capacity to power your racks of servers, plus everybody's PC plus all the laser-printers in the building. And do they have efficient office layouts?

    Or are they 19th-century "heritage buildings" that you can't legally knock down? In many cases, it's more expensive to gut the interior of a building and modernize it, than to simply knock it down and build a new one.

  20. What about the following sites? on Why Your Online Impersonation of a 16-year Old Girl Won't Last Long · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The "dialectizer" http://www.rinkworks.com/diale... "translates" English to Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, or Hacker. And there's an English to Ebonics translator at http://joel.net/EBONICS/Transl... so it won't be that difficult to get a translator that outputs 16-year-old-girl talk.

  21. Even better; release Windows 7.1 on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    Include latest service packs and drivers, etc. That might make people forgive them... maybe.

  22. Re:My computer illiterate little sister... on Windows 8 Metro: The Good Kind of Market Segmentation? · · Score: 1

    That's great *FOR TABLET USERS*. But it sucks for desktop PC users. MS doesn't seem to understand the difference.

  23. Re:Probably the home router... on Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis? · · Score: 1

    > NAT is an ugly hack that breaks shit.

    Well... don't write shit programs. FTP "active mode" is an example of said shit. And don't be surprised if someone implements NAT on IPV6.

  24. Knowing how to USE versus Program computers on Should Everybody Learn To Code? · · Score: 1

    > At the very least, everyone needs to understand that their phones don't
    > run on magic. And maybe fewer people would look for source code by opening
    > an exe in Notepad.

    And now for the "Obligatory Car Analogy". Does every driver really need to understand the Carmot Cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... which is the basic theory underlying heat engines, including cars? Answer *NO*. Except for engine designers, most people only need to know how to *USE* their car...
    * If it's a manual transmission, don't push the engine RPM past the red line on the tachometer
    * If the "engine light" comes on, pull over to the side of the road and stop as soon as safely possible
    * etc, etc.

    Similarly, people need to know how to *USE* computers for their jobs, and at home. Just as everybody has "safe driving" pounded into their head, "safe computing" should also be taught.

    Learn the basics of spreadsheets, word processors, email, etc. Scripting languages, spreadsheet macros, etc are nice. But VBA and Visual Basic and C++ for everybody is not necessary, nor possible.

  25. Re:I think you're thinking too hard and the author on Ask Slashdot: Are Linux Desktop Users More Pragmatic Now Or Is It Inertia? · · Score: 1

    I have a 24 inch 1920x1080 LCD monitor. I only go fullscreen if I'm watching HD video, or working on a large photo in GIMP, or working on a honking big spreadsheet. I often have two web browsers side-by-each at 960x1080, or 2 or 3 xterms open.

    I run icewm with multiple work areas, grouped by tasks. The taskbar enables me to launch stuff, and then it gets out of the way.