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User: Master+of+Transhuman

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  1. Screw AT&T! on The Truth About Net Neutrality Job Loss · · Score: 1

    Bastards want to charge me a - get this - $450 NONREFUNDABLE "credit fee" for my new Uverse service because I'm a bad credit risk!

    Well, guess what, AT&T! You can cancel my new service installation. I'll get a new phone line from you (with a $50 prepay ALSO because of being a "credit risk"), then I'll get Earthlink or DSLExtreme or whoever presumably won't be trying to extort another $450 from me.

    AT&T - still the most corrupt corporation in the universe (next to Microsoft, of course).

  2. Re:Local? on Windows 7 Reintroduces Remote BSoD · · Score: 1

    "generally speaking you're not expecting attacks from inside your LAN"

    Remind me not to hire you as IT security boss.

  3. WTF? on Running Old Desktops Headless? · · Score: 1

    This guy is too cheap to just install a front panel?

    I used to program an RCA 501 using a front panel. Not even a Teletype was attached.

    http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-0784.jpg

    The machine had a grand total of 40K - K, not Meg! - of actual CORE - magnetic CORE - memory! And it weighed about 20,000 pounds.

    Young whippersnappers, these days! Nobody wantsa work!

  4. Re:How would you function talking to one of these? on Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid · · Score: 1

    Actually, mamy of the women I picked for that list - not ALL of them, I mean hell, Paris Hilton is on the list and she ONLY has looks - were picked because they have not just beauty, but talent and in a number of case, smarts (nobody ever said Jodie Foster was the best looking woman in Hollywood, especially now in her late '40's, but they all pretty much acknowledge she's no dummy - and neither is Ivanka Trump).

    There ARE quite a few on the list who are there mostly for looks, I'll admit. But almost all of them have SOME talent, possibly even the models.

    And anybody who thinks they all look alike is an idiot. They range the gamut of looks.

    As for makeup, almost ALL women wear makeup. Only a geek who's never seen a woman up close without makeup would comment about women wearing makeup. And since most of these women are in entertainment, by definition, to paraphrase the Church of the Subgenius, "Too much makeup is not enough." To quote Julianne Moore (who didn't make the list), "You can never be too pretty."

    The only people criticizing these women are misogynist geeks. And every one of these geeks would kill to get their hands on any one of these women - or their ugly sisters.

  5. How would you function talking to one of these? on Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid · · Score: 2, Informative
  6. Still doesn't look like this robot on Robotic Mold · · Score: 1
  7. The problem is advertisers on Nielsen Struggles To Track Modern Viewing Habits · · Score: 1

    Advertisiers don't care about DVR's because something like forty percent of more of viewers using DVRs fast forward through the ads.

    Advertisers care about LIVE viewers sitting in front of the TV screen watching ads.

    Go to the Web site http://tvbythenumbers.com/ which tracks the ratings of TV shows. They have a number of articles explaining how the Neilsen system works and why DVR's and Internet viewing DO NOT matter when it comes to your favorite TV show getting canceled.

    Back when Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was on, I wanted to know if the show was going to be canceled, since the quality was going down and I'd heard the ratings were bad. I went over to TV By The Numbers and got an education on how that stuff works. So it was no surprise to me when TSCC got canceled. OTOH, it WAS a surprise when Dollhouse, whose ratings were even worse, got renewed. But the explanation for that is that Fox Studios cut the Dollhouse budget down so substantially that it was not unreasonable for Fox Networks to renew the show. Still, that renewal was close to a miracle for the show.

    Robert Seidman and Bill Gorman at TVBTN use the ratings data provided to predict which shows will be canceled and which will be renewed. They are usually on the money as long as extraneous factors don't enter into it, such as a satellite network picking up the tab for a show and other special deals.

    They also cover this whole issue of whether Neilsen ratings are accurate and the broadcast industry's reservations about it. Best source of info on the subject.

  8. This is no surprise on Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug" · · Score: 1

    Chkdsk always ends up eating the machine anyway. You could never do any useful work while it was running, and why would you want to? You're checking the frickin' disk!

    The problem we have these days with 1TB hard drives is that ANY check of the hard disk is going to take the better part of a day. The hard drive manufacturers need to come up with on-board diagnostic system that can report results to the BIOS or to their own diagnostic software within a reasonable time frame.

    Although I suppose drives are sufficiently cheap now (Toshiba 1TB drives go for $90) that ANY discrepancy in the hard drive warrants replacing the drive. But then, of course, you have to COPY all that data onto the new drive.

    Industry needs to start dealing with the time-eating problem of repairing file systems and failing hard drives. Maybe everything needs to be "RAID 5" in some sense - without the multiple disks.

  9. I've just onto Twitter on Twitter Offline Due To DDoS · · Score: 1

    for the last few weeks, so naturally it falls over immediately, like everything else computer-related I get involved in for the last X years...As Woody Allen says, "Nothing works and nobody cares."

    I was just tweeting Gavin Bonnar (Sharon Corr's husband) about how he could get more followers than his wife - just offer free concert tickets to anyone who follows him. Instant 5,000 followers! But then I told him he'd then owe her money. LOL

    Following celebrities on Twitter is fun. Lisa Rinna once tweeted that she was stuck in traffic and had to pee.

  10. Depends on the person on Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip? · · Score: 1

    Based on her Twitter output and interviews I've seen, we could simulate Paris Hilton's brain on an HP 9100A...

    And it would have more "friends"...

  11. Re:Thank you for the link on The Music Industry's Crisis Writ Large · · Score: 1

    So I go to register, forgetting that I already registered a couple years ago, so they tell me my email address is already used, and do I want to recover my password.

    So I then have to ENTER THE EMAIL ADDRESS THEY ALREADY FUCKING HAVE SHOWED ME THEY KNOW, and NOW WHAT - SYSTEM ERROR! They can't do it!

    Fucking, mindless, scum-sucking, fucked up, asshat, brain dead, stupid motherfucking Iraq war cheerleading pieces of SHIT!

    Do NOT EVER put another article on this site linking to the fucking shitheads at the New York Times!

    Fucking morons.

  12. Thank you for the link on The Music Industry's Crisis Writ Large · · Score: 1

    requiring registration at the New York Times.

    Morons.

  13. Re:Morons on The Ethics of Selling GPLed Software For the iPhone · · Score: 1

    Just to add to that, to paraphrase what Sam says on "Burn Notice": OSS fanatics, bunch of bitchy little girls...

  14. Morons on The Ethics of Selling GPLed Software For the iPhone · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The usual moronic nonsense. As long as the source is available from the developers, it's fine. Charging for the software is also fine according to the GPL. This "spirit of the GPL" crap comes from morons who can't read the license, or from FSF fanatics who want everything to be free as in beer regardless.

    As for whether you can download the source from Apple, that's totally irrelevant. As to why you can't compile and distribute the same app via Apple's store, WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL DEVELOPERS OR THE GPL? Go talk to Apple, you morons.

    Morons. Idiots trying to start a flame war because they have nothing better to do with their time - the bane of the OSS movement (not to mention the rest of the world).

  15. More proof that FSF types are fanatics on Stallman Says Pirate Party Hurts Free Software · · Score: 1

    Copyright- indeed, all "intellectual property", a oxymoron at best - is bad. Period.

    No surprise Stallman supports copyright. He'd lop off your left nut for violating HIS "morality", like any other fanatic.

  16. Which is why "nothing works and nobody cares" on The Best First Language For a Young Programmer · · Score: 1

    "what we do is craftmanship, not engineering"

    No, it isn't.

  17. Again, first page of replies is fucking useless on Best Home Backup Strategy Now? · · Score: 1

    Except one guy who had it right. Buy a fucking docking station, buy 2 fucking 1-terabyte drives (times however many fucking terabytes of fucking porn you own), back up the fucking shit on each fucking drive, take one off fucking site.

    That's fucking IT! There IS NO better fucking solution.

    Now if you only have 100 fucking MB of fucking email, you can find a better fucking solution than fucking 1TB drives, I'm sure. But there IS NO one fucking solution that fits every fucking situation.

    Now - WHAT THE FUCK DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

    Sorry, been listening to the Christian Bale tape again...

  18. This is another "duh!" study on Study Finds Delinquent Behavior Among Boys Is "Contagious" · · Score: 1

    Of course if you get screwed over by law enforcement, the courts and the correctional system, all of which is designed to PUNISH people, you're going to have a bad attitude, even if you didn't start out with a bad attitude.

    Read my lips: punishment does not work.

  19. They messed up one of my posts on Superiorpics on ImageShack Hacked, Security Groups Threatened · · Score: 1

    with this shit.

    They better pray I never learn who they are in the real world. They've got a .45 hollow point coming fast toward their kneecaps.

  20. Not Quite on Firefox To Get Multi-Process Browsing · · Score: 1

    "they're currently "[sprinting] as fast as possible to get basic code working, running simple testcase plugins and content tabs in a separate process," after which they'll fix everything that breaks in the process"

    No - they'll fix MOST (or even SOME) of the things that break in the process.

    This is how Mozilla produces a Firefox that crashes and takes down the whole KWin system.

    This is how Mozilla produces a bug-ridden browser.

  21. Re:Splunk It! on What Would You Want In a Large-Scale Monitoring System? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I played with Splunk on my last client.

    Killed it in about ten minutes of futzing around with it. Reliability? Fail.

    Performance? You need dual Xeons. Fail.

    Support? Asked a question on the forums, got told to RTFM - which, by the way, is incomprehensible. Fail.

    Splunk sucks rocks. All I wanted was some relatively simple Windows event log monitoring. Ended up going with Network Event Monitor (which is also heavy on the hardware needed, but it actually runs and is relatively simple to set up, although limited in its filter creation).

  22. As long as techs give the same advice I do on Is IE Usage Share Collapsing? · · Score: 1

    which is to avoid using IE and use Firefox, I suspect this trend will continue.

    Every tech knows that most spyware comes in via ActiveX controls on IE (or stupid users clicking on crap, which is probably more responsible than IE itself). Regardless of what improvements Microsoft has made in IE7 and IE8, my advice - and likely that of every other tech in the industry - will be for organizations and home users to avoid using IE and only use Firefox. That and not clicking on crap are the two main things users can do to avoid spyware.

    This drop in IE usage, if confirmed, is almost certainly due to the penetration into "common wisdom" that IE is insecure. Even home users I get as clients these days are usually using Firefox.

  23. Re:Just remember the first rule of RAID 0 on RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller? · · Score: 1

    Okay, then RAID just dropped significantly in value if it's primary purpose - to allow recovery from disk failure - is "statistically likely" to be unable to be fulfilled because two drives fail within the time required to rebuild the array.

    I find this ridiculous. I think if you did a study on HOW OFTEN THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS you will find it happens in such a low percentage of cases - probably under 1% or even 1/2 of 1% - that it's not reasonable to be concerned about it.

    Shit happens - but not all the time.

    If the paranoid truly think this is a problem, then they need to be using RAID setups that allow for more than one disk to fail or they need to be using continuous backup, replication and fail-over techniques with multiple machines. You get the same result as RAID without the headaches - unless of course you think the same disks in multiple machines are going to fail at the same time. In which case, the claim becomes "there IS NO way to prevent data loss".

    Add in the problems with backing up and restoring RAID volumes in the event of operating system failures, especially in the case of dynamic volumes, and it would seem RAID is highly over-rated as a useful technique for recovering from data loss.

    If you believe the paranoids.

  24. Re:Just remember the first rule of RAID 0 on RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller? · · Score: 1

    What does "fail at the same time" actually MEAN?

    Are you saying two drives of the same batch are going to fail WITHIN THE TIME IT TAKES TO REBUILD THE RAID?

    I don't think so. They may fail within days, weeks or months of each other, but it's highly unlikely they will fail at the exact same time plus or minus hours - which is all you care about when rebuilding a RAID. Because the next step is to backup the data and replace the drives if you're that concerned about another immediate failure, anyway. So whether the drives you buy for a RAID are the same batch is irrelevant. The issue is WHEN the drives are going to fail - and ALL drives are going to fail sooner or later. That is what the article you reference is saying.

    Not to mention that generally people buy a bunch of drives at the same time and therefore it's highly likely that drives will fail at approximately the same time, depending on usage patterns (an OS drive may fail first since by definition it's usually reading and writing more than a data drive, unless the data drive is being used for transactions - for a home user, this is unlikely.) However, if a home user buys one drive and then months later buys another two drives and sets up RAID, it's likely his first drive will fail before his RAID drives do.

    And even if the RAID drives fail, one could fail sooner or later - that is in fact the ASSUMPTION of RAID: that ONLY one drive is likely to fail at a time relevant to rebuilding the RAID. Otherwise why bother with RAID at all?

    The position of the drives in the box could matter - one could be hotter than the other or vibrate more. This could cause one drive bought at the same time as another to fail first.

    You can't predict drive failure based on batch as a general rule. You can't even predict that two drives bought retail come from the same batch. They could be two different revisions of the controller despite being the exact same model.

  25. Well, this is fun on Best eSATA JBOD? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OP asks questions about external eSATA enclosures, the entire first page of responses is an argument over whether RAID is backup... /....

    Here's an ON-TOPIC RESPONSE! Horrors! Take away my EXCELLENT KARMA for this breach of /. protocol!

    I have a client who needed backup for a lot of big video files. We bought an enclosure from PC Pitstop, eight bays each holding 750GB SATA hard drives (1TB wasn't really around last year when we got it) attached to two eSATA cards in the PC controlling the enclosure. We spent a month futzing around trying to get the enclosures to be seen. I forget who made the eSATA controller cards but they sucked - or the enclosure chips sucked.

    So we turned to Burley, the guys who make enclosures for Macs mostly, but they work with PCs, too. These guys know their stuff. They told us not to use OEM hard drives in enclosures because some OEM drives you buy are dumped on the market and don't QUITE work with enclosures. They said use retail hard drives only. They also sell very good controller cards. The enclosure we got from them has worked fine for the last year and a half until last week when one of the drives went dead - no surprise. They aren't cheap, but they are well made and support is very good. I had both email and phone conversations with the Burley folks and they provide good support.

    We also in the last couple months bought two MicroNet 4-drive eSATA enclosures with 1TB drives from Newegg for use on a Mac Pro. That was a huge mistake, since the drivers simply weren't seen by the Mac at all. Apparently MicroNet didn't bother to test the drivers when Mac OS X 10.5 came out and couldn't be bothered to provide support for that. So we attached the enclosures to a Windows PC and they work OK, although occasionally one or more of the drives will disappear and generate "drive not ready for access" messages in the Windows event logs.

    Later, we decided to use those enclosures for iSCSI storage served up to the video lab. So I took one of the video lab PCs that were being replaced by iMacs and installed OpenFiler, the open source storage server run on Linux. The latest Rpath Linux kernel saw the drives and the enclosure no problem. I configured the iSCSI setup and everything seems to be working fine. And interestingly, none of the drives have gone offline like they did with Windows - which means it was Windows fault, not the drives. So now I can install an iSCSI client on the two iMacs - except Apple doesn't HAVE a Mac OS X iSCSI client, once again demonstrating how Apple isn't ready for the enterprise, since Linux has had them for years - fortunately there's a free Mac iSCSI client from another company - and serve up 1.8TB of iSCSI storage to each iMac.

    So my advice is: choose your enclosures and the drives in them and the controller cards carefully. Take notice of what Silicon Image chipsets are involved, since SI pretty much dominates the market for those things and they're not the smartest tech company in the world. Make sure you get retail disks for use in the enclosures. Make sure you can return what you bought for refund or replacement because this stuff is not yet "set and forget".