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User: JohnConnor

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  1. No wonder so many contracts go to Microsoft on Canada Waives Own Rules, Helps Microsoft Avoid US Visa Problems · · Score: 1

    After a move like that, is it any wonder that Microsoft gets so many contracts with the government of Canada? It's another sad day for open source in Canada when it is so obvious that the GoC is in Microsoft's pocket.

  2. Bury the lede on NFL Players To Use Tablet Computers During Games · · Score: 1

    That's funny. I had not read the linked story and up to this point I had assumed that it was Microsoft that was paying $400M. What kind of a deal is that? Microsoft is getting a lot of publicity, telecast rights and video game content with a lot more money that a few thousand tablets should cost. Not to mention that their "market share" will seem to go up with this deal, which I'm sure they're desperate for at the moment.

  3. Re:Toilet paper? Really? on Man Tries To Live an Open Source Life For a Year · · Score: 1

    Washing with water would be open "source" (french word for a water spring). Many cultures do it this way already. Once you get passed the cringe phase because you're not used to it, you realize that it makes much more sense to wash off the stuff than smear it across your ass with a pieace of paper...

  4. Pron on A 3D Display You Can Touch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can imagine the new porn that will come out... literally!

  5. Females on Spider Spins Ant-Repellent Silk · · Score: 5, Funny

    Old news... Cobwebs at my place have been repelling all kinds of females for a long time, not just my aunts.

  6. Re:What the hell? on Canonical To Divert Money From GNOME · · Score: 1

    Your operating system is Linux, not Ubuntu. You operating system is not worrying at all about how you should be buying mp3s, you can rest assure. Ubuntu is much more than an operating system, it's also a whole set of applications, a way to integrate them together and extra services as well. I doubt that you only want basic OS functionality, but if you do just install the server version of Ubuntu and your problem is solved.

  7. Re:That Article's Title Should Be... on Solaris No Longer Free As In Beer · · Score: 1

    Oracle did not kill OpenSolaris, Sun did. OpenSolaris will die because Sun did not make it truly open source. Had all the code of OpenSolaris been open, Oracle could not shut it down, it could happily fork and continue living.

  8. Unbreakable solaris on Solaris No Longer Free As In Beer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's not surprising at all that Oracle would shut down a free competing product to its unbreakable Linux. In fact it would be crazy for them to allow internal competition between two OSes to happen. What I am really disappointed about is the fact that *open*solaris was not really open and that now it will die. That's what sucks about the various half-assed open-source licenses and practices of former Sun. Had openSolaris been a complete open-source prject, not dependent on binary blobs, the closing of solaris itself would not be such a problem.

  9. Perfect platform for this on New Super Mario Bros. Wii To Include Official "Cheat" · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is a good idea for the Wii. This platform is not supposed to be for hardcore gamers and the focus is more on the general public. Take myself as an example: I play the Wii but unlike my kids I don't have time to repeat a game sequence hundreds of times until I get it right. If I get stuck somewhere in a game I don't waste my time and I move on (read I drop this particlar game). I'm looking forward to be able to skip a frustrating part and get on with the rest of the game. I am not playing to get frustrated

  10. Re:Social Engineering first on Man Arrested For Taking Photo of Open ATM · · Score: 1

    He should have softened them up first with a base level social engineering attack something like:

    I completely disagree with you.
    My first point is that you shouldn't lie to do something that you are perfectly allowed to do. You don't have to, you don't want to be that kind of person and you don't want to contribute to create a society where lying is better than not.
    My second point is that by lying you are putting yourself in a position of wrongdoing. Now that you are lying, there is a case to be made that you are acting in bad faith. Your original intention when you were taking the pictures will then rightfully be questioned.

  11. Look at the problem differently on Cross-Distro Remote Package Administration? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think that you are not putting your efforts where it matters.
    What is important is that the critical services run properly on each server. Sure that can be affected by patching but also by many other factors. So don't focus solely on the patching, focus instead on making sure all the services are running properly.
    You should have your own scripts that check that each server is responding as required. Make your test suite as strong as you can and improve it each time a new problem crops up that wasn't caught by your spying tools.
    Once you have this in place, you can safely do daily automatic updates and stop second guessing the package maintainers. You will have a more reliable system and you will save yourself a lot of work too over the years.

  12. Re:Great! on Cross-Distro Remote Package Administration? · · Score: 1

    Oh, what a clever sig!

  13. Re:Slashdot meets 21st century!? on Sun Puts Data Center Through 6.7 Earthquake · · Score: 1

    Considering that this piece of news is over a year old, I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

  14. Re:wow on Mythbusters Accidentally Bust Windows In Nearby Town · · Score: 1

    I shouldn't be notified that my windows may explode unexpectedly?

    It's common knowledge. That's why most of us use Linux!

  15. Re:Civil America extinct on Amtrak Photo Contestant Arrested By Amtrak Police · · Score: 1

    Natives in Canada are treated by far better over the course of our nation's history than they have ever been treated in the US.

    You know that's a really bad point to make. Natives in Canada have been treated horribly throughout our history. Just because someone else might have done worst than us doesn't mean we should be proud of ourselves!

  16. Re:nothing wrong with corp. support for OpenSource on IRS Looking at Google/Mozilla Relationship · · Score: 1

    I like firefox, but I don't feel that it is worth $100M in development.
    Am I the only one amazed that $20,000,000 a year over half a dozen years doesn't get us more than firefox and thunderbird?

  17. Re:Silly. on Oldest Skeleton In New World Discovered · · Score: 1

    Maybe you would be reading this in the future, laughing at both creationism and evolutionism as we fathom it today.

    In any case, I never understood why creationism and evolutionism are always considered incompatible. Couldn't life have been created (by god, gods, Q, space and time anomalies or whatever) with evolution built in? Like everyone else I don't have the answer but you'd think that if you were able to create life, the self-update sub-system would not be terribly difficult to make. In fact, who knows, the evolution bit could have been the actual reason why life was created in the first place. To see where it goes perhaps? Or as a self adapting algorithm to solve a particular problem, in a way similar to ANNs.

    I always thought my neighbor looked like a science experiment!

  18. Re:Bad for Environment--Bad for Intel--Bad for Use on A Chinese Challenge To Intel · · Score: 1

    They have a government with over a billion people in it? There is room for cuts I'd say!

  19. Re:Can anyone clarify? on Microsoft To Buy $100M More SUSE Support Vouchers · · Score: 1

    Well, whatever M$ intentions may be with the Novell deal, you can't see their utilization of only one Linux vendor as proof of bad faith. Remember that they tried to get other vendors involved as well, like RedHat for example. In fact M$ HAS to use Novell and no other vendors, for the following reasons:
    1) It makes financial sense since they have worked out a good deal with Novell. M$ is a business and they have to do what's good for them.
    2) They have no business deal in place with another Linux vendor, so that really limits their choices...

  20. Re:Apple may or may not do something next week on Apple Expected to Demo Leopard Successor Next Week · · Score: 1

    Oh, *snow* leopard. I though it was slow leopard. My bad.

  21. Re:Give 'em away? on What To Do With Old Laptops? · · Score: 1

    That's basically my point. A small modern distribution a la xubuntu or tiny linux is a way safer toy than an old distribution. It's also going to be more rewarding for them because the bundled applications will be more polished are likely to work better on a modern distribution than on a 10 years old one.

  22. Re:Give 'em away? on What To Do With Old Laptops? · · Score: 1

    I find that older Linux distributions - or anything no longer supported for that matter - is not a good idea unless you are SURE that the laptop won't be networked.. You're giving someone a laptop full of know security holes.

    I have Ubuntu LTS (the previous one, not 8.04, but too lazy to check what it is) running on a P1 150MHz with 48MB RAM. Sure I had to trim the kernel a bit but it runs spectacularly. I used it for several years as a samba printer server.

  23. Re:Slow to about 8 kilometers per hour. on NASA Phoenix Mission Ready For Mars Landing · · Score: 1

    It's a verb too:

    to treble (third-person singular simple present trebles, present participle trebling, simple past and past participle trebled)

    1. (transitive) To multiply by three; to make into three parts, layers, or thrice the amount.
    2. (intransitive) To make a shrill or high-pitched noise.
    3. (intransitive) To become multiplied by three or increased threefold.

    From: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/treble

  24. Brand placement on NASA Wants its MMO Created for Free · · Score: 1

    Read all about it on NASA's new web site: yahoo.com/freeweb/~mynasa

  25. Re:20 bucks? on Lenovo Delivers SuSE Linux-Based ThinkPads · · Score: 3, Informative

    > Does that mean MS only charges $20 per license to OEM's?

    No that's not what it means because SLED 10 is not cost free. In fact it is more expensive than Windows because it carries a yearly subscription price tag of $50. Add it up over the 5 or 6 years that Windows Vista will last and I don't think that you will find that SLED is cheaper. Of course it includes more than the OS, as do all Linux distros, and it guarantees that the machine is well supported by Linux, so well worth the initial cost. SLED is a really good enterprise desktop, and it makes sense to keep it for business. For personal use I would replace SLED by openSuse and get the same hardware compatibility and a more modern OS with extra features.