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User: Tottori

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Comments · 48

  1. It's Funny. Laugh. on Human-Mouse Hybrids? · · Score: 1
    Unless using blastocysts from immunologically crippled mice, there would most likely be a recognition of non-self by murine immune cells not educated ...
    This is disturbingly reminiscent of an article on bridge I wrote 8 years ago.
  2. Re:Not really that exciting on Stippling As Fast 3D Technique · · Score: 1
    As long as we're reporting on low-level algorithms, I have a new algorithm I came up with for drawing borders on the silouette edges of cartoon renderings efficiently. Do you want to hear about it?
    Yeah, actually. It'd probably be a lot more interesting than the article.
  3. Have you seen that show? on Farscape Fans Produce Commercial · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's dreadful! I can only assume the target audience are junkies. Thank God it was cancelled.

  4. Re:Debian Security mirror on University of Twente NOC Destroyed · · Score: 3, Informative
    I don't want to besmirch Essent or anyone else, but please don't install security-critical software from a mirror some guy posted on Slashdot. apt-get doesn't check signatures, so if you put a compromised or malicious mirror in your sources.list, it's game over.

    Debian haven't released a security advisory since yesterday, so it's deeply unlikely you'll need an update before they get a new security.debian.org online tomorrow.

  5. I heard a "ping"! on Meet The Leonids · · Score: 1

    Twice last night when I saw a meteor I heard a pinging noise. I thought it was just a combination of a windchime and coincidence, but maybe not!

  6. Re:Pamela Anderson-Lee on Canadian Arrow Taking Applications for Astronauts · · Score: 1

    That was disturbing.

  7. Re:We don't need no stinkin' kite! on Kite Aerial Photography · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the link. That ruled.

  8. Re:Pah on Bind 4 and 8 Vulnerabilities · · Score: 1
    According to Todd Miller, yes, but... . Under OpenBSD BIND is chrooted to /var/named, which means its potential for damage if infected is highly limited.

    Note that even if your BIND is chrooted, it can be used to attack other name servers. Unless it's carefully firewalled, it can also be used to perform DOS attacks, or as a staging area to attack other services on the same machine or subnet.

    Be a good Internet citizen. Upgrade.

  9. Re:Upgrading to BIND 9 on Bind 4 and 8 Vulnerabilities · · Score: 1

    It's also worth noting that BIND 9 is about a million times easier to run in a chroot than BIND 8. You can just use the default compile! This makes me happy.

  10. Altavista is toast on Altavista Renewed · · Score: 3, Informative
    Compare Altavista search: Wil Wheaton with Google search: Wil Wheaton.

    Looks like Altavista have redesigned their home page, but their search is still the same old rubbish.

  11. cut scenes? on LOTR Director's Cut Reviewed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does anyone know if these are game-engine, or pre-rendered?

  12. Re:Driven underground, but not dead. on Latest Salvos in the Ongoing Battle Of Webcasting · · Score: 1

    Uplink underground, uplink underground. If you say that one more time, I'll uplink your ass, and you'll be underground!

  13. Talk about mobility! on Bluetooth Enabled External Harddrive · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Do I have to?

  14. Is this a test? on Shop Till It Drops · · Score: 1
    Unlike the typical machine, this one is 18 ft wide and takes up 200 square ft.
    Nobody told me there was gonna be a maths test!
  15. Dear Mammoth... on How To Clone A Mammoth · · Score: 1

    Someone has told us that they are attracted to you! They said:

    * That you are sensitive
    * They think you are "cute"
    * You have really big tusks
    * That they would like to spend more time with you

    To find out who this person is, all you have to do is be re-animated from extinction!

    As a result we are making you a one-time offer, if you reply to this email within 50 years, to be re-born into the 21st Century! Our scientists are standing by with a rack of test tubes and a willing elephant Mom, just waiting to make your re-emergence a reality!

    Just think, you could:

    * Experience the wonders of modern technology
    * Travel the world
    * Procreate with other artificially un-extinct creatures (or your close genetic relatives if you prefer)
    * Go on a rampage and destroy Tokyo

    What are you waiting for? Call now!

  16. Re:Not just release scheduling on DVD Region Encoding on Verge of Collapse? · · Score: 1
    In practice, this is the main reason that people want to bypass region coding--cheaper discs from other regions.

    Is this really true? I've only ever imported DVDs of films that weren't available here. Generally the extra shipping costs offset any price savings (though this would be different for people who buy *a lot* of DVDs). Do the kind of people who would wait a week just to save a few quid even own DVD players?

    I do agree that the studios major motivation in this is price-fixing, along with of course the usual control freakery.

  17. Warp 7.6!! on HyShot Scramjet Test Declared a Success · · Score: 1

    So when do we get to seek out new life?

  18. Amy Grant on KDE 3.1 Alpha1 is Here · · Score: 1
    Ba ha ha ha! Aside from that, it looks cool.

    Just one thing: does it support no-click ripping? The one reason I kludged together my own script is that all the other programs I tried required me to dig up the window and click something just to say I actually wanted to rip the CD I just put in. When you're doing 10 in a row, that's really annoying.

  19. Let's play spot the difference on Milestones in the Annals of Junkmail · · Score: 1
    From http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/k95.html:

    The Kermit Project
    Columbia University
    612 West 115th Street
    New York NY 10025-7799
    USA

    From the postcard:

    KING GEORGE II
    KERMIT PROJECT
    612W 115TH ST
    NEW YORK, NY 10025-7721

    Now, I'm willing to believe that software might exist that can canonicalise a street address and correct the zip code. It's even not utterly outside the realms of possibility that it could pull a person's name off a completely different page on the same site and include it in the address. But why oh why would it remove the word "The" from "The Kermit Project"?

  20. Re:Time to rebuild the airports on Boeing Blended Wing Body Aircraft · · Score: 1

    Every airport I've ever been to has had buses and ramps so that passengers can be loaded in and out of planes out on the tarmac if necessary. Some airports even do it this way most of the time. It's actually more efficient, but passengers don't like it.

    So if necessary, passengers could be loaded into the new planes via buses during the transitional period. Obviously if the planes become popular, terminal buildings will be refitted to suit.

  21. Re:BestBuy on Slashback: Livermore, Privacy, Nixieness · · Score: 1
    My local PC World has a big sign on the door (big as in about 3' by 2') saying "Please do not bring bags into the store", clearly visible, and in PC World red and yellow colours.
    Wow. I haven't seen that here, but then I haven't been to PC World a year or so. I guess we're screwed after all. I'm sure somebody somewhere is happy that we have the same levels of customer abuse worldwide.
  22. The trouble with testing... on Properly Testing Your Code? · · Score: 1

    Is that it liberates programmers from the responsibility for getting it right in the first place. After all, any problems will be found in testing, right?

    Wrong, actually. Testing tends to find the surface problems. Sometimes in the process of fixing the surface problems the deeper problems are revealed, but just as often they become even more deeply hidden.

    There is no substitute for reading the code and making sure it makes sense. In an ideal world, this would be done by someone other than the original programmer, but doing it yourself is better than nothing. Yeah, it's really boring. That's what those paychecks are for.

  23. Re:BestBuy on Slashback: Livermore, Privacy, Nixieness · · Score: 1
    "We don't have bestbuy her (UK), but from all their problems, its a wonder people still shop there..."
    Yeah, but we do have Dixons, Comet, Currys, etc. and they operate similarly. What's disturbing is that people from my parents' generation seem to have a deep-seated expectation that the salespeople really will know what they're talking about, so they tend to get taken in in spite of themselves.

    The only thing we don't have in the UK is the whole receipt-checking thing. I've seen the alarms go off in many stores in the UK, and most of the time noone pays it any notice. I'd like to believe that UK shoppers wouldn't stand for indiscriminate bag searches, but I'm not really that optimistic.

  24. Re:Gopher support shouldn't be in IE on Slashback: Gopherectomy, Portacinema, Disunity · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why should IE continue to support Gopher?
    Because IE is supposed to be a web browser. The original concept of a web browser was to provide a unified interface to Internet resources.

    Naturally, this is an invitation to software bloat, although if the browser is modularised it needn't be so bad. But arguably the user interface benefits are so compelling as to compensate for the conceptual ugliness.

    By removing Gopher, Microsoft are moving away from the concept of a web browser and towards the concept of a proprietary content viewer.

  25. Daft on Security Through Obsolescence · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Our webservers get probed for ancient software vulnerabilities all the damn time. Crackers have very good reasons for automating their probes, and once a probe is automated, they can keep running it for ever. Sooner or later they'll hit a machine that hasn't been updated since 1995.

    Seems like a lot of people here need a refresher course on why security through obscurity is bad. It's not bad because it relies on the attacker not knowing something--most security relies on that. It's bad because the thing that it relies on the attacker not knowing is poorly defined.

    Take the common example of the "secret URL". Noone could possibly guess the secret URL to my admin page, right? Maybe, but it's a moot point, since they don't have to. Your browser doesn't know the URL is supposed to be secret, and neither does your webserver. It can leak out via literally dozens of paths. I find "secret" pages virtually every time I take a look at my webserver referrer logs.