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User: gbickford

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  1. It seems pretty apparent... on Scientists Wonder What Fingerprints Are For · · Score: 2, Funny

    Celestial barcodes. The gods are thinking of moving towards an RFID based solution but for now it works.

  2. Re:Let's Get Serious on Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms · · Score: 1

    Didn't you see the Simpons episode where Lisa was invited to join MENSA which then became the acting governing body over Springfield? They suffered from severe organizational issues and from being out of touch with the real problems that Springfield faced. The truth of the matter is that nerds, politicians, and leaders form more of a Venn diagram. Being part of one group does not implicitly include or exclude you from another.

  3. Re:Motive? on Apparent Suicide In Anthrax Case · · Score: 1

    What kind of skilled scientist would end his own like by taking a massive dose of "Tylenol mixed with codeine". That's gotta be the worst way to go.

    http://groups.google.com/group/alt.suicide.methods

  4. Weights & Running on How Do Geeks Exercise? · · Score: 1

    There's been some great suggestions already.

    I have a treadmill as I find running is the best aerobic workout for my body. I got mine off craigslist for $200 and it works really well for me especially during the winter months. This nut job took it a step further and integrated it into his workspace: http://lifehacker.com/software/contest/coolest-workspace-contest--the-treadputer-171537.php and this guy thinks he can make a business out of it: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-07-office-fit_x.htm

    Weights are just as important as running. You burn more calories just by having more muscle. Don't worry about how big they look just get them toned and stronger and they will burn calories while you're standing in line at the Taqueria.

    Riding bicycles is fun and if you're less than 5 miles to your office it may be feasible unless you live in Bangkok.

    Calisthenic exercises are easy to do in private and you get the benefit of aerobic and anaerobic at the same time.

    Softball is a good excuse to get outside and meet some overweight middle aged guys from the community. Just don't drink all the calories back on after the game.

    For me running and weights are the best combination to remain fit but any of the other things that you can do for fun will help out and let you keep eating whatever you want.

  5. Hacking 101 on How To Encourage a Young Teen To Learn Programming? · · Score: 1

    Boys like to break stuff. Show him how to crash a machine remotely on your home network. Explain how to analyze a system to compromise it. Show him the movies Sneakers and Hackers.

    As a parent you are also in a good position to teach him the ethics of white hat hacking.

    This should give him motivation to learn how to program and develop a deep understanding of how systems work.

    It worked for me.

  6. Article Discussing Pidgin UI Decisions on Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork · · Score: 2, Informative
    By Ethan Blanton:

    While you probably can't call the Pidgin developers wild-eyed radicals (heck, a fair number of us don't use any software projects started after about 1998 with any regularity), we do have the tendency, from time to time, to shake up the Pidgin UI in a quest for improvement. Unfortunately, these genuine quests for improvement are almost always accompanied by a rich cacophony of "I hate the new !". There are also often responses which are more useful and coherent, but this article is not about those responses.

    He talks about standard responses to UI complaints as if they are grudgingly listened to by developers and the "patches welcome" reply is generally used as an OSS way to tell users to go-climb-a-tree. Read the whole article.

  7. Etan Reisner Is Teh Jerk on Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork · · Score: 1

    The OP makes it seem like all of the developers are acting arrogant and unreceptive to users wishes. This is not the case.

    It's not that they think they are right and everyone is wrong. They just don't want to spend hours hacking with GTK+ to get it working correctly. Sean Egan posted this on the Trac ticket:

    "The main problem is getting GTK+ to play nice with auto-resising and user-resizing. If anyone wants to submit a patch that gets it all right, I would gladly accept it."

    Sean Egan is the the project leader of the pidgin project. The guy that ran off and made a fork could have sent a working patch, one that lets users enable or disable, and it would have been integrated.

    Etan Reisner makes an ass of himself when he says

    "Enjoy using Trillian, or whatever other client you choose. Oh, and the fact that someone actually took the time to implement the preference for switching back to the old behaviour is a very nice surprise and I would like to thank nodashi for doing so (assuming the patch is yours). I have no intention of accepting such a patch because I still believe that is the wrong way to fix this and I would think it could be written as a plugin as well, but it at least shows a proper way of handling this situation and for that I want to commend you."

    Fortunately for the users he is not the project leader.

    My guess for the future is that Etan will get respect-minus-minus from the other developers on the team and a patch will be integrated to add the option.

  8. Old School USB NES Controller on PC Gaming Suggestions for Console-like Fun? · · Score: 1

    Use an emulator and some old controllers from http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/12/nes-usb-controller-dont-make-it-buy-it/ You won't ever have to blow on the cartridges or work special magic to make it stay down.

  9. Re:Torrent of PDF on Vuze Study Exposes P2P Throttling By Canadian ISP Cogeco · · Score: 1

    That was the irony which I was attempting to imply. :) The torrent is valid though.

  10. Torrent of PDF on Vuze Study Exposes P2P Throttling By Canadian ISP Cogeco · · Score: 1
  11. Re:Newsworthy? on Last Year's CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This small focus group of participators are not script kiddies. They publicly represent the people that do not want a public representation and do not want their unknown exploits exposed to the public eye for the mere price of a laptop or even a $10,000USD cash prize. The lurkers want bot nets and relay servers. The unseen want to be able to bend the entire internet. This information is only worth money if people do not know it.

    The people that participate in this are like magicians selling their secrets at a bus stop.

    This isn't like a McAfee vs Norton contest. The "the total end point security" which you reference is no where near contextual. This is a how much are black hats willing to give up for chump-change contest.

  12. Why Did They Buy It? on Yahoo Acquires Zimbra for $350 Million · · Score: 1

    Why did they buy it if it's open source? Couldn't they just download it?

  13. Other Videos on Electric Motorcycle Inventor Crashes at Wired Conference · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here is a mirror of video of the crash: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2984983237984172859.

    There are a lot of videos of the thing in action at http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=KillaCycle. The thing is clearly not a scooter

    It's really a bummer that he decided not to wear a helmet.

  14. Link to the cache on A Campaign to Block Firefox Users? · · Score: 1
  15. Something is funny on The Pirate Bay Won't Be Censored · · Score: 1

    From Goaway's comment on the most recent pirate bay article:
    http://thepiratebay.org/user/achim106/
    When I checked it there was nothing there so I looked in the cache http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//the piratebay.org/user/achim106/&sourceid=mozilla2&ie= utf-8&oe=utf-8

  16. Re:Those evil cubans! on Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent · · Score: 1

    This baffled me for years as well. I eventually read and read and came to this conclusion: When Castro came to power he passed a law which allowed him to retake land from industrialists from the United States. The people that were poised to make shit-tons of cash from the cuba-states relations where supremely pissed when Castro "stole" their land so they spent the next few decades lobbying and campaigning for the US to re-sign the congressional approval of the embargo every 6 months this has happened for almost 60 years save the brief break they had before the Reagan years when Cuba was briefly set free before Reagan reinstated the embargo with strict laws which prevented American tourists from visiting Cuba. The quick answer is: Money from pissed off business men that continue to Lobby against Castro to push his country into poverty and shit because they lost a buck in the 60s. Fortunately Cuba continues to boast the highest HDI (human development index) to GDP ratio of any country which is the biggest FU any dictator driven communist country could ever give the United States of America. You gotta give Chavez props for trying though...

  17. Re:this password case not withstanding.. on Analyzing 20,000 MySpace Passwords · · Score: 1

    IMHO grupus.com sucks.

  18. Re:What's not said on Better Networking with SCTP · · Score: 1
    "The current version is sctplib-1.0.4, published on September 16th, 2005. Please note that this is a prototype implementation. This version should run on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows."
    http://www.sctp.de/sctp-download.html
  19. Hacking 101 on What Interests High-School Students? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least when I went to high school hacking was perceived as cool somehow. Even kids that know nothing about computers may be attracted to learning how people hack into systems without authorization. Tell them about tiger teams. Talk about breaking crypto. Explain how hacking isn't just limited to breaking into other peoples computers. I was the kinda kid that was always in saturday school and detention. I would never have been attracted to computers unless I knew that I could do "fun" stuff with them.

    For added effect wear a mohawk.

  20. when you search for sbc on slashdot... on Microsoft and SBC Team Up on IPTV · · Score: 1
  21. My message to comments at google dot com on Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images [updated] · · Score: 1

    I would like to bring to your attention that I believe Google as a company has just violated it's "Do no evil." moto. This is the first abuse of power I have seen Google make that affects me personally. I will no longer blindly trust Google. When people ask me if I'm afraid of Google scanning my personal email for keywords I can no longer refer to the "Do no evil." moto.

    A lot of Googles success is built around excellent engineering, an amazing advertising system, and also your users. It is specifically stated "Since Google is committed to providing thorough and unbiased search results for our users, we cannot participate in the practice of censoring information on the world wide web." at: http://www.google.com/remove.html while a slashdot article details how images of soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners have been specifically removed along with images of lynndie england and charles graner. see: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/07/14 42217&tid=153&tid=226&tid=217 These two statements conflict and actually put Google in a position where it is lying to its users. Lying is inherently evil. Bowing to an administration in a democratic government which claims free speech but wishes to censor undesirables shows a weak moral fiber which Google has never displayed.

    I am irate at the thought that Google would provide politically biased results and I would like a response to this email, either public or personal.

    Thank you,
    Gardner

  22. Re:legality on CherryOS Not All It's Cracked Up To Be · · Score: 1

    it's totally legal to due that. and aurguable that he actually added some value to the original codebase which would justify him selling it. however he claims that it contains no pearpc code. you saw all those links up there... why dont you read one? http://www.artworxinn.com/alex/arben.htm

  23. I just checked.... on Cherry OS Claims Mac OS X Capability For x86 · · Score: 1

    and I didn't see anything like that. Perhaps all of them were purchased by slashdoters...

  24. Vonage on What VoIP Is Actually Good For · · Score: 1

    I've have Vonage for almost a year now. I brought it with me when I moved to Argentina in December. Here we have a crappy 512/128 adsl line. I often find the ATA zombified and disconnected from the Vonage servers while it still routes IP traffic. I had to set the call quality on super bandwidth saver so my calls aren't really that crisp.

    Vonage does not support the use of their service outside the united states but they dont really care if you have it as long as you have a united states billing address. I can't really complain about having to reboot the ATA once a day and stop any downloads before making a call because it's prolly saved me a shit ton of money and allowed me to do things like call my family on sundays without having to worry about getting a phone card and dialing a million digits. it's also afforded them the same conveniences.

    g
  25. Targus on Advice On Notebook Backpacks? · · Score: 1

    I have last years model of this: http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=T CG650

    I know you already said you were impressed by some of their bags but this thing is awesome. My 15" Fuji fits in it perfectly and the three big pockets will basically expand out to hold anything. I carried an Oxygen8 keyboard, a firewire external soundcard including my bulky power adaptor and the thing still had room for more.

    The only bad this about it is that there's so many tiny pockets to stash stuff that sometimes stuff gets lost in there.

    g