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User: phorm

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  1. Re:Great... on Satellite Images Show Russians Shelling Ukraine · · Score: 1

    Let's agree on this.
    * Bombing people with nukes is bad.
    * Shooting civilian aircraft out of the sky is also bad.

    No amount of excuses are going to make the above good, and neither one of those unrelated incidents justifies the other.

  2. The AMD-deoptimizing Intel compiler? on Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken" · · Score: 1

    Ah yes, the Intel compiler. Wasn't that also known as the compiler that "cripplied" performance for many AMD systems, by ignoring capabilities flags and instead looking for a "GenuineIntel" processor...

    Yeah, that sounds like a great alternative to GCC.

    See also many other links. I'll stick with GCC, thanks. At least the GCC team doesn't have a vested interest in f***ing over other hardware vendors.

  3. Re:BlackBerry... on Private Data On iOS Devices Not So Private After All · · Score: 1

    I own a Z10 as well. Not sure what you're raving about battery-wise. It will (barely) survive a weekend with basically no use, which is better than other phones but still not saying much.

  4. Re:1 or 1 million on Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE · · Score: 1

    Unless they're using logic similar to internet /w Netflix, in which case the towers may be congested due to being poorly maintained/upgraded (to be fail, cellular infrastructure seems better in this regard)

  5. A certain internet company in eastern Canada appears to have already done that, except back in the days of torrents. If you torrented, suddenly yours speeds dropped dramatically (regardless of whether the torrent was anywhere near to using your capacity).
    That was annoying enough, but then when most torrent streams started getting encrypted etc, they started doing it for SSH traffic on non-standard ports.
    Everything would be working just fine until I opened an SSH connection/tunnel to work, and then suddenly *all* my connections would plummet in speed.

  6. Re:So a victim gets sued by victims? on Sony Agrees To $17.75m Settlement For 2011 PSN Attack · · Score: 1

    If your security consists of
    a) A poorly maintained barb-wire fence
    b) A gate manned by a 75-year-old semi-dead/blind security guard named fred

    And records are stored in a big box just inside an unlocked door easily accessible to anyone, then yes... they would be responsible.

    It's not that they weren't a "victim" of hacking, it's that their terrible data retention and security practises put customer-data at risk and enabled the hacking.

  7. Dry eyes on Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 Years Later · · Score: 1

    A common (generally mild) side effect is dry eyes, especially recently after the surgery, but often for longer time periods as well. I have enough issues with dry eyes due to allergy/hayfever, so I'd really hate to aggravate the situation. Of course, I'm lucky enough to only need glasses for driving in the later hours, so I'm not wearing them constantly anyhow.

    The second would be that it would screw up my near-vision for reading in the future, meaning I'd need reading glasses (probably more often than I need driving glasses). One solution would be to only laze one eye , but that takes longer to adjust too and I'm not sure it's worth it.

  8. PXE boot on GOG.com Announces Linux Support · · Score: 1

    One of the reasons these would be awesome on Linux:
    * PXE boot game environments

    There are a surprising number of people who enjoy playing nostalgia games. I have a PXE server which - through some custom scripts - loads the appropriate fglrx/nvidia driver and the loads a custom GUI with various games. There are some native linux games but most are loaded through wine and do a lot of trickery involving COW filesystems and a remote DB to get a unique (legit) serial key loaded on individual machines for net-play.
    The linux-native games tend to be a lot easier to get up and running, and have less issues than the wine games. Thus far I've got BF1942, C&C3, UT4, DN3D, iWAR and various other "classics."
    I'd love to see these games with native Linux support so I can avoid all the complications and bugs with wine. It would make "classic game night" so much more fun...

  9. Re:The golden question.. on Raspberry Pi Gameboy · · Score: 1

    Yeah. Emulators for disc-based systems will often read original disks (although to be fair, they often do tend to work better with ISO's).
    For a GB hack, it would cool to see this with something like a USB/serial interface to the original cart slot.

  10. Re:Homeland Security vs CDC on The Department of Homeland Security Needs Its Own Edward Snowden · · Score: 1

    Agent Smith, we need to be on the watch for these pathogens entering our soil. Here, open this bottle and take a sniff. Note the scene. If you detect any of these while on shift, please inform your superior immediately.

    Now, please report to quarantine room C for the next 36 hours....

  11. Re:Cheap DVD players on Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Now Supports BD-J Java · · Score: 1

    I don't get it. Samsung, Sony, etc have Blu-ray players, they've got Android phones, why not combine both technologies into one awesome media box?

  12. Re:Cheap DVD players on Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Now Supports BD-J Java · · Score: 1

    So I got to thinking... "surely somebody has thought of/tried this somewhere by now"

    I've found this thus far. It says it supports 3d blu-ray and menus... though I don't see where you would insert the discs (hopefully it's not just for rips)

  13. Cheap DVD players on Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Now Supports BD-J Java · · Score: 1

    That used to be the advantage of cheap DVD players too.
    The bigger brand names respected region encoding, un-skippable previews/warnings, etc. The cheaper ones were sometimes a bit noisy (parts movement) but generally they didn't bother to implement "features" such as region-lock or unskippable sections, which actually made them more useful.

    There don't seem to be as many off-brand Blu-ray players, especially if you want one with Netflix etc. I'd love to see an android-based system which combines something like a Minix X8 or Asus Cube and a Blu-ray. Bonus points if somebody could come up with a blu-ray "shell" which basically includes the drive, power, and infrared remote but allows an upgradable android core for the advanced OS features. It shouldn't be hard to have something which just plugs into the base for power and connects to the drive via a OTG interface. The biggest issue is probably stuff like the Java and copy protection/licensing crap.

  14. Private data not on the phone on Privacy Lawsuit Against Google Rests On Battery Drain Claims · · Score: 1

    Also, how much of said "private data" is actually harvested the phone itself, other than perhaps location data?
    Gmail: That goes to Goog's servers before your phone
    Talk: Same thing
    Contacts: Can be kept on just the phone without sync (for that matter, sync can be toggled on/off for most things)
    Browsing history: Do they get anything if you use firefox instead of chrome, and/or don't sync bookmarks?
    Maps/Latitude: Location stuff can be turned off

    Most of the ways they can get information *from* the phone seem inherent in the functionality being used: i.e. use of gmail, maps, etc

    It would be interesting to learn what data is being "sync'ed" beyond that needed to get the functionality out of the given apps.

  15. Re:Take responsibility for your decisions on Privacy Lawsuit Against Google Rests On Battery Drain Claims · · Score: 1

    Or just turn off all location services. On every phone I've got, it's usually a question during the initial installation process.

  16. Re:Pft on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 1

    Yeah. I don't find the implication (that I'm black, gay, whatever) offensive so much as the terms themselves, which are particularly vile as their basic connotation is that somebody of whatever group is less valuable as a human than others.

  17. Re:Pft on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 1

    Erm, read my comment. I'm certainly not saying this is acceptable, what I am saying is that all bad behaviour gets "reported" under some fairly narrow categories. Having a better way of report - and dealing with - such behaviour would be beneficial to all.

    For example, if you're reporting personal threats, a report could also scan the chat log for key-words and escalate. Racial/sexist could scan stuff like the N word or b**ch. As there are probably quite a lot of reports, this should help push stuff that's more serious and beyond the typical "noob, loser" etc up the chain.

    There's no reason an improvement to such a system couldn't benefit not only women, but everyone.

  18. Re:This has nothing to do with sexism on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 1

    The difference here as usual is that women expect to be treated differently

    The difference is that people pay more attention when it's not a random white male complaining. Seriously, I could do without that shit too, but when I complain about it, I'm a whiner. When a woman complains about it, it's a potential gender-discrimination issue. Ya know what though, if women can clean that shit up - at the very least so that 20+ men aren't acting like 12-yr-old boys - hopefully it will improve things for everybody. That sounds fine to me.

    I'm fine with the occasional noob or "you suck", but some people really seem to take being offensive as their goal in life, to the point where the only thing they seem to want is to make everyone else have a shitty time.

  19. Re:And the result of all this? on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 2

    So for (b), if Linda is consistenly a serious issue, then Fred reports it. If he reports it multiple times and it isn't dealt with, then he sues the company for harassment.
    Literally telling Linda to go f*** herself isn't really a winning response in any situation.

  20. Re:Pft on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 1

    I represent that remark. The fact is that men are expected to want sex, so unless it's guy-on-guy or somebody twice your age, it's not taken seriously.
    That said, I'd imagine that penetrative rape - the type commonly suffered by females - is a lot more traumatic.

  21. Re:Pft on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a straight male, I've been called Noob, loser, moron, fag (though it doesn't apply), n*gga (though it doesn't apply), whatever.

    As much as I hate internet tracking, something I wish it was a little better in terms of these losers. Maybe if the game corps could better track the useless trolls and accept feedback then things would clean up.
    DOTA2 had a $10m tournament this year. It's big news. Yet the only real categories they have for reporting are the broad "communication abuse" and then feeding/etc. Maybe if had better ways of identifying (and warning/enforcing) the racist, sexist pricks we could clean some of this crap up. Steam and Origin capture most of the non-console game market, so getting a perma-ban from multiplayer on both platforms (not just the game, but the whole thing) would go a long away to showing that this shit isn't acceptable.

  22. NFS homedirs on Ask Slashdot: Linux Login and Resource Management In a Computer Lab? · · Score: 2

    Back when I worked in schools, one of our techs setup LTSP with NFS-mounted homedirs.
    I mentioned that perhaps IP-based host authorization wasn't exactly a secure way of doing things, especially when it applied to both students and teachers/admin-staff.
    I was told that it wouldn't be an issue, and that files were perfectly safe.

    So some time goes by and a demo is scheduled for the system. My compatriot logs in and... he gets a hot-pink desktop with My Little Pony wallpaper theme. Unfortunately that didn't dissuade him from going with NFS, and they rolled it out anyways: "kids will never figure that out"

    One thing that shouldn't be underestimated is the ability of a user (especially a young user) with *lots* of free time on his/her hands to figure out ways to game the system...

  23. First world problems, second-rate service on Netflix Reduces Physical-Disc Processing, Keeps Prices the Same · · Score: 1

    The sad part being that many non first-world countries still have better internet service than our so-called first-world countries...

  24. Re: minivan dead? on New Toyota Helps You Yell At the Kids · · Score: 1

    Maybe he was transporting one of these.

  25. Ex-Ukranian hardware on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 1

    Ukraine claims that any hardware that was left behind was non-functional. It was supposedly later claimed by the rebels that they "fixed" one of the BUKs. Maybe the fixing didn't enable the safety lock (or it wasn't working as intended)?