Slashdot Mirror


User: ndecker

ndecker's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
52
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 52

  1. Re:Well...a little of both? on Did Humans Evolve? No, Say Americans · · Score: 1

    From evolutionary point of view we ARE better than apes. Because we are much more successful in taking evolutionary niches. Heck we are better than anything evolution created so far because we expanded so successfully ( driving to extinction hundreds of thousands of other species on the way) .And we continue to do so. Our evolutionary advantage is our brain which allows our to create effective tools and maintain sophisticated society . this advantages turned out to be a revolutionary .We are now indeed the king of all species and the most successful product of evolution on earth so far.

    I would not be so fast to declare humans the fittest species for survival. Look at all the insects. I dont have the numbers but i think insects account for many times the mass of all humans on earth. We try to kill them and after a few generations they are resistant to almost anything. Who is successful in surviving?

  2. Re:Strategy? on First Look at Apple's Intel Developer Macs · · Score: 1

    Well, most linux software runs on OSX, but it will work differently. I tried working on OSX for a week, but i am used to a special window manager. ( ion3 ) I can run ion3 under OSX, but it only manages X11 windows. Every native OSX application is totally alien to the X11 window manager. Trying to find many apps ( OO.o, Firefox, .. ) copiled for X11 on OSX is harder than just installing debian.

    So OSX looks nice, is really nice, but not for everyone.

  3. Re:RTFA on Absentee Ballots by Email? · · Score: 1

    The process of opening the envelope is supervised by officials from each party. Just like the counting of the votes themselves.

  4. Re:RTFA on Absentee Ballots by Email? · · Score: 1

    Absentee ballots are NOT secret ballots. They never have been. What do people expect when they fill out a form, sign it with their name, then send it with their return address on the envelope?


    There can be secret absentee ballots. Here in germany, we put our vote into a small envelope. This envelope goes into another envelope together with the signed form.
    At the voting office, the form is checked, and if it is valid, the sealed envelope is put into the ballot box.

  5. How is this going to help? on Cooling Toronto Using Lake Ontario · · Score: 1, Funny

    They just heat the drinking water from cooling the buildings, just to put the now warmer drinking water in to the fridge?

  6. Re:Impressions? Or bad reviews? on Windows XP SP2 Impressions · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let the extreme P2P kiddies relax the rules manually. On the majority of desktops (not SERVERS) out there, an inordinate amount of outbound traffic is a sign of something bad, like a backdoored spam relay or the machine has been taken over as a DDoS drone.

    What is stopping the DDos software from relaxing the rules itself?

  7. [OT] generic sandboxing on New Alliance Hopes To Standardize Web Plug-Ins · · Score: 1

    Some posts talked about the browser beeing only as secure as the least secure plugin.

    The unix security model protects the system from its users. But the user has no protection for his data from malicious programs. Chroot is only allowed as root and isnt easy to use.

    It would be great, if i could create sub-users, that have limited privileges.

    create-user myuser-browser --allow-readwrite ~/.phoenix --allow-createfile ~/downloads --allow-gui

    runas myuser-browser mozilla-firefox

    Mozilla should then have normal access to the system, like nobody, only limited access to my $HOME and the right to open an X11 window, but no way to send events to other applications, grab the screen or keyboard, ...

  8. What is so hard about voting? on California Grills Diebold Over E-Voting Foul-Ups · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I don't understand whats so hard about Voting. There is a proven, scalabe, fault tolerant and fast method already available: Use paper ballots!

    Here in germany we draw marks into circles next to the names of the candidates. The votes are counted by hand. The results are faxed to a central bureau where they are aggregated.

    This system has several advantages:

    • Results are availabe fast: The poll closes 6pm. First counts are ready about 8pm, the last ones maybe around 2am. Everything is ready the next morning.
    • Linear scalability: For every 1000 voters you need x voting offices and about 10 people per office to do their duty to democracy.
    • The people in the voting offices are randomly chosen. To commit fraud, you have to bribe or threaten those 10 people.
    • There is no class break for voting offices. You need to bribe twice as many people to fraud another voting office.
    • If you are higher up the chain, you cant commit fraud by changing the numbers you receive. The voting offices fax their results to the media too. Any difference would ring the bells in our computers fast.
  9. Re:It needs to be there on Cisco Products Have Backdoors · · Score: 1

    The problem with this backdor is, that it can be used remotely.
    If you need to reset the password, use a jumper. Everyone who has access to the jumper can mess up the system anyway; so no harm there.
    If you put a secret password into the software and tell nobody about it, somebody will read your ROM, reverse engineer the software and find your backdor.
    Given the popularity of Cisco products, i wouldnt be surprised, if somebody already did reengineer their software. Somebody is going to be pretty sad about this going public.

  10. Re:How about a distributed wireless network? on Industry Threatened by Innovation at the 'Edge'? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see one problem with a completely free network. This creates a limited resource ( by the number of nodes, ... ) that can be used by anybody as much as they want without charge. This is very much like Air. If there were no environmental regulations, every factory would blow out any dirt they can because it is a little bit cheaper for them.
    In a shared wireless network there would be leechers that modify their access points to use all the bandwith of their neighbours making the network useless for others.

  11. Simplifies geek dating on And They Shall Know You By Your Books · · Score: 1

    Just enter a mall and scan for females carrying at least two volumes of Knuth.

  12. Re:blank lines? on Back To SCO · · Score: 1

    I will release a line with 4 spaces under GPL tomorrow. To replace SCOs code use sed -e 's/^$/ /'

  13. Re:Is there a market still? on New High-End HP Calculator? · · Score: 1

    I've seen a scheme iterpreter for palm about a year ago. Might be a start...

  14. Re:Can't Wait!!! on Transparent Screens on the Horizon? · · Score: 1
    Do you know if any computer monitor has this focusing ability ?

    No, monitors dont have the required optics build in. But you can buy the required lenses. These lenses have to be between your eye and the monitor. Results are best if the lenses are close to your eye.

  15. Parent is funny on If I Had My Own Distro... · · Score: 1

    The parent post should have been modded funny...

    The author suggests using the Windows filesystem layout, only changing \Windows to /System and \Program files to /Apps.

  16. Samples? on Web Server Packed into RJ45 Connector · · Score: 0

    Do they ship samples?

  17. DSL is not always T-DSL on International Connectivity · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are a lot of posts about T-DSL from the Telekom. While T-DSL is available almost everywhere in germany, there are quite a few local carriers in bigger citys. For example i am a customer of Hansenet, a local carrier in Hamburg.
    Hansenet gives you a 2048/192 DSL flatrate for about 55EUR/month including ISDN and free local calls to all Hansenet customers. ( Most of my friends are )

  18. Re:I wonder... on 419 Scam Costs Britons 8.4m GBP in 2002 · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the "Schwarzbuch der Steuerzahler" (PDF, german, Page 6) ( A yearly publication of a german taxpayers union ) there was a german city called Enningerloh which gave a loan of 285000 DM ( ~ 140000 EUR/$ ) to a poor pensioner so he could complete his financial transaction with nigeria. They expected part of the profit in return.

  19. Re:Government on OSS Officially On Microsoft's Financial Radar Screen · · Score: 1

    How is forcing to use an open source program any different then a closed source program?

    Nothing stops Microsoft, Lotus, Corel or whoever to implement the document format of openoffice since it is openly documented.

    If Microsoft would completely document its office document formats, they could be used too.

  20. Re:Government on OSS Officially On Microsoft's Financial Radar Screen · · Score: 1

    One of the reasons to prefer open software is, that the government decided, that it cannot force the citizens to use a specific commercial program.

    Thus open standards are an important issue in choosing the best package.

  21. Re:Internet Voting on Swiss Town Holds First Internet Vote · · Score: 1
    Who can give a guarantee that nobody tampers with the results or creates a database with citizens voting information?

    Who can guarantee that doesn't happen with regular voting?

    Controlling a non-electronic vote is a lot of work, because every single peace of paper needs to be accounted to a person. Using electronic voting it is possible to build such a database within seconds for every voter. There only needs to be one security hole in the election protocol.

    If the traditional voting system fails, the failure is limited to a small unit ( e.g. a voting office ). A failure of the electronic voting system would imply a failure of the whole election.

  22. Different DNS infrastructure needed? on More Info on the October 2002 DNS Attacks · · Score: 1
    I dont think, it is possible to defend against DOS attacks. The servers could be flooded with DNS queries, making filtering impossible.

    A much better solution would be some form of secure DNS. ( Quick googling turned up DNSSEC, but i dont know anything about it. )

    If every DNS record was signed by some authority, every DNS server could provide trusted answers to queries. This way, every ISP could provide its own DNS server to its customers. This server could cache the root zone and maybe even all TLDs. The changes in the zone files could be distributed easily via any public service ( news, ftp, ... ) making a DOS against all distribution methods much more difficult.

  23. Re:Damn... on Speech Synthesizing the Linux Kernel for Arts Sake · · Score: 1

    They could just read the diffs

  24. The 4th sequel on Domino Day '02 Ends with a New World Record · · Score: 1

    If i remember correcly, this was the 4th time "Domino Day" was on RTL ( German television station ). There will probably be one next year too.

  25. Re:Get rid of the file system completely - simplif on Yahoo Moving to PHP · · Score: 1
    Scripting languages have their uses, but at the moment they tend to be used for everything. But everytime i use them in a bigger project, i miss a strong typechecker. Having the compiler check all types in a programm catches most bugs and reassures/verifies design decisions.


    ( I have used Haskell a bit, and since then i wish there was a powerful mainstream language that is *completely* typechecked at compile time. )