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User: perlchild

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  1. compromised channels? on Al-Qaeda Web Sites Go Offline · · Score: 1

    Sheesh, I mean if the journalists know about them, I know I'd try to use something else...

    Let alone waiting for the journalists to write public articles about it...

  2. amazing! on Linux As a Model For a New Government? · · Score: 1

    One system of party democracy gets suborned, and people want to go back to dictatorship...

    Talk about misunderstood.

    Instead of admitting the faults might lie more in the area of the small number of parties, the mechanism in which that democracy can be subverted, etc...

    People just to accusing democracy of having failed.

    I blame the voters. Just because you think you can have a government that represents you doesn't make it so.

    I'd also state that democracy hasn't failed till the armed rebellion has...

    I don't see any plans in that direction, so the 700 million plan can't be that bad...

  3. not tried by someone else... on Do Software Versions Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't so much care that it's called 6.0, as much as I'd ask for users of version 5.0(and 5.1) for how quickly bugs were fixed, etc... Especially if it's enterprise software. No way I'd risk being the lightning rod for my users unless I know which way the lightning blows... A company that would have a "first version" called 6.0 would be branded as "1.0 and a bunch of liars to boot" ending in the worse of both worlds. I doubt it's a rare attitude in enterprise software buyers/influencers either...

  4. Re:this guy didn't do any research on 10 Forces Guiding the Future of Scripting · · Score: 1

    And perl1.0 was released on Dec 18th, 1984...

    Some numbers just seem so way out there...

  5. Re:Books by crooks on Yahoo Hacker 'Mafiaboy' Eight Years On · · Score: 1

    I do feel comfortable(but I won't buy it... saving on dead trees at the moment), but on the other hand, just because I buy the book, doesn't mean I feel obligated to believe what's in it...

  6. Re:No soft is know it all: change the paradigm on Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool · · Score: 2, Informative

    With IE being embedded into several applications(Intuit's come to mind) a bunch of users to whom this tool is aimed at might think _wrongly_ that they don't use IE. Better fix it... Kinda hard for the tool to guess if a perf problem is due to a third party app calling a part of the os in embedded mode is causing a slowness of the app...

  7. Re:1 in 7 at risk? on Baldness Gene Discovered — 1 In 7 Men "At Risk" · · Score: 1

    The one in seven is over the entire human race... Quite a few populations have less hair loss than caucasian males, for one.

  8. The only language you can teach to someone who doe on How Should I Teach a Basic Programming Course? · · Score: 1

    The only language you can teach to someone who doesn't know how to browse the web is LOGO, and even then... it's a stretch

    It teaches people you can program, it does not teach them how to do so. No best practices, no structured/object oriented/functional programming...

    On the other hand even if you teach a programming course, pick a language. Just because you know more than one way to do something doesn't mean showing them alternate paths is a good way to get your feet wet. Picking the best language for a job is an intermediate-level programming task.

  9. Re:Microsoft catching the attention of hackers? on Microsoft Programming Contest Hacked and Defaced · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, I find it funny that either
    a) Microsoft doesn't use their own security products(the ones I see advertised on slashdot all the time, as going ninja on security flaws)
    b) those same tools don't work as well/aren't as easy to use as advertised

    Please, if you're looking for a star developer, can't you at least hire a regularly-competent sysadmin to run the tools you're advertising?

    Seems to me Microsoft wants to hire one star, but can't be bothered to build infrastructure...

  10. Re:The obvious answer on Will ParanoidLinux Protect the Truly Paranoid? · · Score: 1

    "Trust no one" and "I want to believe" made such a nice dichotomy too...

  11. Re:iReport - News? Or citizen journalism? on Jobs Rumor Debacle Besmirches Citizen Journalism · · Score: 1

    People go to CNN for verified, or at least News that CNN stands behind, it's their business model. I just don't see why they had to put their citizen journalism in the CNN brand in the first place, precisely because of the potential for confusion, but I expected the problem to be less clear-cut than this. It's more a branding issue than anything, except fot the SEC angle.

  12. Re:Compressed images on Encrypted Images Vulnerable To New Attack · · Score: 1

    I was actually thinking the compression headers and other well-known features of such formats would be used as cribs for decryption...

  13. Re:Offtopic: Can we mesure the weak magnet field? on Dispelling Myths About Geomagnetic Reversal · · Score: 1

    each individual iron atom was said to have its own tiny field in one lecture I had... I would think it would certainly be possible to have a "Secondary field" but how do we tell if it's pernament, or just an effect of the iron atoms lining up in large groups, without the "straightening" influence of the main field.. I have no clue. And I'm not sure we know how that all works yet either(why a secondary field, but no tertiary field? is the secondary field a mechanism that happens in the mantle, but just the result of the magma having mobile magnetic particles? [Think what happens when you melt a floppy drive... it has a field, it's good enough to be "read" until the support melts, now project that to a medium that's molten magnatic media in suspension...]) Bunch of unanswered questions, and we don't have a working model, although a 25 ton molden "mantle" sounds like a start...

  14. Re:Unknown on Dispelling Myths About Geomagnetic Reversal · · Score: 2, Informative

    Considering we have to look for evidence of the previous switches in three-quarter-of-a-million year old sediment, any data we have on effects is going to be open to interpretation. It's not like we had reporters back then.

  15. Re:Being in the database at all on Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What I read from the summary was that there was a warrant erroneously entered, and that the correction hadn't made it back in time...

    On the other hand, I see you haven't seen "playing devil's advocate" in my post either...

    Going back to my argument...

    "How do you know it's an illegal search?"

    The prosecution might be punished if they used erroneous information to get a conviction... But they aren't held onto admitting they had information in the first place...

    How do you know what's erroenous and what's not?

    What kind of reviews are in place? I'm sure most concerned citizens want to know this... Those that aren't... might well become interested through misfortune.

  16. Re:Better approach? on Optical Character Recognition Still Struggling With Handwriting · · Score: 1

    And if the OCR has a mistake, you gotta look for the original? Sometimes having the starting point being wrong leads you in the entirely wrong direction, but you don't know it's wrong. Since these would be people for whom english is a second(at best) to foreign(at worse) language, wouldn't that make them especially vulnerable?

  17. Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft on "Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, you could say that they increased the choice of consumers, as having say, two phone lines in one house, you'd need the higher reliability only on one, and would wish to pay for just one, not two.

    Oddly enough, sounds like the higher reliability was not wanted, and people wanted not to have to pay for it, unless they felt it was warranted. When everyone had only one phone, it was unthinkable... Now with almost everyone with a cell, it's certainly more of an option.

  18. Re:Being in the database at all on Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Playing devil's advocate here....

    What's to keep the police from having faulty information in the database, either on everyone, or a modifiable "Error" they can just put on people they don't like?

    What kind of audits are in place for this information?

    I'm sure the jury's still out on whether any country is a member of the "Free world" until the answers are out on this.

  19. Re:microsoft has lost its tracks on Maine To Skip Vista, Go Directly To Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    When the administrator privileges are actually checked, perhaps?

    I mean just asking for the user to click a button, consdering users in windows are all but trained to click buttons just to make windows disappear just so they can work is the worse possible scenario...

  20. Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour on Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A case could be made that it's a trademark of the opensource initiative, and/or software in the public interest...

    That Microsoft got their Microsoft Public License accepted by the OSI as an open-source license certainly indicates they know who defined the term... Then they go back and misuse it...

  21. Re:I work at Yahoo on Was the Yahoo-Google Deal a Ploy To Weaken Yahoo? · · Score: 1

    I thought their MS OFfice product line was the really profitable one... Especially with the vista fiasco

  22. Re:2010 with glowing hearts on IOC Trademarks Part of Canadian National Anthem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It will stop when passing legislation this stupid can land them in jail, and not a second before.
    I sure hope the estate of Callixa Lavalee(author of the anthem) is listening, and has contacted their lawyers...

  23. Re:I just ordered one!! on Run Mac OS X On Non-Apple Hardware, With a Dongle · · Score: 1

    Actually, some people do like to be able to add or change out parts(without replacing the pc), it's just unrelated to the PC manufacturer's decisions...

  24. Re:Can't Imagine why Consumers Need This on "Pull" Barcode Scanning Could Be Android's Killer App · · Score: 1

    I was thinking the same thing about inventory. Bunch of hp servers coming with barcodes for serial numbers especially.

  25. Re:selinux on New Approach To Malware Modifies Linux Kernel · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, it's strong where selinux is strong(the applcations etc.. are well known... and the context restricted. While I had hope for an approach that required a kernel mod to work, to actually be able to secure that open moat of computing ... the shared hosting server...

    Seems all the work is going in applications server, where the hardware is dedicated and the resources are already plenty... And almost no work is going into securing the already at risk segments... (Think the resold cpanel server market)