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User: DreadSpoon

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  1. desktop linux distros on Will Open Source Solaris Kill Linux? · · Score: 1

    Any and all Linux distros geared for the desktop (and I don't mean Red Hat or SUSE rebranded with "desktop" in the name) do exactly what you say.

    Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire, etc. - they all pick a technology and stick to it.

  2. ... hot? on New Hominid Species Unearthed in Indonesia · · Score: 1

    "Keep digging, you'll pull up a hot brunette."

    If you still think she's still hot after 12,000 years of being dead in a cave, I am scared.

  3. Plot and coherence on Fantastic Four Animated Series · · Score: 1

    " There's no coherence to most Japanese stuff." ... What? Have you even watched a decent Anime series? The vast majority of the ones I watch are very heavily plot based. As in, you don't want to miss an episode, 'cause you really *will* be wondering what the heck happened.

    Not like most western series, where there is little to no continuity. You can run the episodes in any order, because nothing actually changes between them. Each is a neat little package, with some interesting/funny content in each, but the whole doesn't make anything meaningful in the least.

    Good anime series are like TV mini-series; there are a limited number of episodes, possibly enough to make a single "season", in which each episode unfolds more and more plot. String all the episodes together and you have a (long) movie.

    You need to start looking into better series if you think all of them are like Speed Racer. My experience is that they're just the opposite.

  4. Re:Ill-conceived sequels... on Mel Brooks Says 'Spaceballs' Sequel In The Works · · Score: 1

    "Dracula Dead and Loving It", anyone?

    [in a squeeky bat voice]: "Burke, you asshole!"

    ~_^

  5. No Responsibility on Open Source Security: Still A Myth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, if my experiences are any indication, most corporate development teams don't have much care for security concerns. There are several reasons.

    1) Incompetence. HR departments don't know how to hire coders. They often think a degree means you know what you're doing. Portfolios are rarely asked for, likely because even if they were, the HR departments wouldn't know what the hell to do with them or how to evaluate them.

    2) Time to market. Open Source does things when they're ready. Even projects with time-based releases do a "whatever is ready in that time" release, not a, "we're going to do a, b, c in this time." The rush to get to market doesn't leave a lot of time for security and bug fixing. After all, you can release a patch later, after the profit has started rolling in, right?

    3) No corporate incentive. The product has a bug or security hole. Unless it becomes a big deal in the media, why bother paying programmer time to fix it? Your customers are already customers. You've already been paid. Without service contracts, fixing bugs just doesn't have any monetary incentive.

    4) No programmer incentive. How many corporate programmers have any reason to put any pride into their work? None of the customers are going to know their name, think about hiring them on a side contract, etc. When software I write entirely for Free has a bug, I know my reputation is at stake, and there's a feeling of "how could I be so dumb, I have to fix this and make things right" feeling. I don't get that feeling for corporate work; if they want it fixed, they can pay me, otherwise, the bug can stay and I can get on with my life.

    5) Security Through Obscurity. Why fix something nobody knows about? Not only are you not going to get money from your customers for your efforts/programmer-paychecks, you're not even going to get any PR bonuses.

    There are many companies where the above don't apply. Good companies have good HR departments that bring in the other developers into the hiring process to select new employees that are actually skilled. Some companies have corporate pride and worry about quality as well as the bottom line. The above problems are not _rules_, they just common patterns I've noticed in my work, and in the work of others.

  6. Bioware? on OpenGL 2.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Bioware has nothing to do with NWN2.

  7. No, It's not on Spammers Are Early Adopters of SPF Standard · · Score: 1

    SPF is not patent encumbered. Sender-ID is, but you'll notice I wasn't referring to SID. I highly dislike Sender-ID for quite a few reasons, not the least of which is the patent issue.

  8. SUSE on Delta Compression for Linux Security Patches? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    SUSE already does this.

    RPM in general, however, doesn't nicely support this feature. Either RPM needs to be extended/modified, or a new format needs to be made. While I favor a new format for many reasons other than this, modifying RPM is probably the best solution in order to provide backwards compatibility.

  9. SPF is step one (we knew this already) on Spammers Are Early Adopters of SPF Standard · · Score: 2, Informative

    SPF is only the first step. It's purpose is to authenticate that the sender is who they claim to be. Nothing more.

    This primarily helps in two ways: first, it helps fight off certain kinds of social attacks. E-Mail can't claim to be from your bank; if it does, the MUA would display a big warning box stating the mail appears to be forged.

    Second, it guarantees that people can't spam or send viruses using your domain name. The spammers have to (just as the article says) identify who they are; they can't claim to be someone else.

    So no, obviously, that doesn't stop spam. It might block certain kinds of (soon to be obsolete) spam. You no longer have to blacklist all of aol.com, for example, since only real AOL users could send mail from @aol.com if we all used SPF.

    This does, however, make it possible to do *MUCH* more accurate RTBL (Real Time Block Lists). The spammers have to identify themselves; once you have their identity, block all their mail. You got spam from @spammer.com? Block spammer.com. The guy at spammer.com can't pretend to be anyone else, so you've got him successfully blocked. Sure, he can register multiple domains, but with a good RTBL that isn't too much of a problem. Good RTBL already block most of the registered spammers - SPF makes their job easier since all spammers will be identifiable.

    Mix SPF with a RTBL service and you *will* see a massive drop in spam. Over 80% of all incoming connections to my mail server are now blocked; most of the stuff that does get through is legit (lots of large mailing lists and traffic).

  10. Re:MS quality codecs.... on Microsoft Codec Required For Blu-Ray Players · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Indifferent: Nothing to see here folks, FOSS will reverse-engineer and/or come out with far better codecs."

    Doesn't matter if they do or not. The point is that FOSS will never be legally allowed to play these *standard* media discs, ever. The codecs are patented and not available for Free. Every single set-top box or other such hardware will be forced to run at least partially closed software. They might even be forced not to use Linux/BSD/etc. if Microsoft won't release or license versions of their codecs for those OSes.

    Even if we have a much better Free codec, that codec is worthless if every single DVD/movie released *must* be encoded in Microsoft's codecs because the standard mandates it and the hardware for playing those discs all supports Microsoft's codecs, but only one or two support the Free codec.

    It's just like the MP3 situation. The vast majority of people, even geeks that are pro-Free Software, must use MP3, because many of their devices do not support Ogg Vorbis or another high quality Free codec.

    Now that this standard is out that mandates Microsoft codecs, it can *never* be undone, because backwards compatibility must always be maintained in devices that use this standard (or you risk severely pissing off the end users who bought them or media for them), and that then mandates lockin to Microsoft and lockout of Free Software.

    The only hope in this case is that this new technology doesn't catch on (DVDs are still fairly new, many consumers will resist another video format upgrade so soon) and that by the time the market is ready for an upgrade, another Free-friendly standard is dominant.

  11. The real problem on TiVo-like Application for XM Radio Under Fire · · Score: 1

    The problem is valid.

    When you buy an album (be it a CD, on iTunes, wherever) you are paying the artist (and RIAA, unfortunately) for the right to repeatedly perform the work for your personal pleasure (no commercial broadcasts).

    When a song comes in over the radio, only a (relatively small) fee is paid for the song to be used commercially and repeatedly.

    If all users just grabbed their songs off broadcasts, then either artists wouldn't make any money (since there'd be a small handful of stations paying paltry payments for each album) or the cost of running a radio station would become higher than would ever be feasible to sustain (as each song would cost $1,000's to license to play on the air).

    Songs coming from the radio are intended for listeners to hear once for every time the radio airs it.

    Talk all you want about the RIAAs business model, you simply can't possibly claim there's any shred of hope of making money when people just snag all theirs songs off of radio.

  12. Generic on Cherry Announces Linux keyboard · · Score: 1

    Why not just get rid of the Windows logo on the key and put in something generic and OS neutral?

    And no, I don't mean the same thing as these ridiculous "LCD key" or "changeable key" posts. I mean just put a picture of a window or something on there. That'll fit in fine for Windows and for Linux and for any other OS. (That key is often used on UNIX machines for window manager control these days - so a window is still a good icon to put on the key.)

    Seriously. Change the graphic to a rectangle with a double line along the top. Bang, instant generic key that makes everyone happy.

  13. no wizards on Turbine Starts The Spin For Middle-Earth Online · · Score: 1

    Wizards aren't an available race in the game. Humans have the option of being sorcerer or necromancer, which I imagine is a flashier but less effective version of a wizard.

    After all, wizards in Tokien's book were not human. They were, basically, special-purpose angels.

  14. riiight on Senator Blacklisted by No-Fly List · · Score: 1

    "Fit supertall buildings with anti-aircraft weapons (specially designed for short range so they don't get hijacked)."

    This one is just silly. OK, so it's short range. You can still cause mass amounts of damage to the nearby area. OK, it can somehow only hit planes. Great, you killed all the innocents on that plane. And oh, oops, the plane (or bits) still smash into things after being shot.

    We need to make sure every building has some guns attached. After all, a terrorist with a car in a crowded area could kill hundreds, if not thousands, before he could be stopped. Right?

  15. Not likely on Microsoft Lists SP2 Incompatibilities · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These same (below) average users are the kinds of saps that are locked into Microsoft platforms merely because they are too lazy, naive, or both to use a different platform. If Microsoft says that the firewall will be enabled by default, the users will deal with it, because they don't have a choice.

    It would be more likely that application authors will start including tools in their installation wizards for opening ports the application needs.

    The sad thing is, any app could easily get passed the firewall with a bit of social engineering. I saw a popup on a Windows machine infected with some ad/spyware today. The window started an automatic download (and thus, on Windows, install) of some app. The page showed a picture of the security warning dialog and told the user to just click Yes. Which is actually what most users will do, because they don't know any better, because nobody has taught them.

  16. other costs on Living Without a Pulse · · Score: 1

    No, put you'll have to pay for fresh batteries (even rechargables loose their potency after a while) and electricity costs for recharging them.

  17. GUI possibilities on Bash 3.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Of course, your problem is that you are assuming that the very nature of a GUI is limited to what you've personally encountered.

    Please explain to me what precludes a GUI from offering an advanced search tool, in which you can open up a property info dialog for the results and do bulk permission/property changes for. (Hint: nothing stops this from happening.)

  18. The problem on Debian Votes on AMD64 in Sarge · · Score: 1

    The problem is that existing software installs 32-bit libraries into /lib. You can't go and break all that existing software; backwards compatibility the entire reason we have AMD64 being able to run IA32 binaries. If you want to upgrade a platform and require everything to be rebuilt and repackaged, switch to PPC64. ;-)

    Also, "forgetting the LSB" is a blatantly stupid thing to do. The LSB exists for a very special reason, and that's to make sure libs and apps work everywhere. If Debian does things differently than the LSB 2.0 specifies, then *Debian* is broken, because nothing will work on it except apps and libs made specifically for Debian.

  19. Re:Not for experts? on Black Hat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For one, this could be a very useful book for us to buy and hand off to relatives, S.O.'s, bosses, etc.

    Second, nobody said this was a site for experts. It's just news for nerds. No claim as to whether those are *expert* nerds or not. ;-)

  20. Re:Perfect! on IPv6 is Here · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You don't have to worry about that, though, because it isn't possible. How would the routers handle those (theoretical) 6 billion addresses? The routing tables could never handle it.

    At best, you'd continue to have a dynamic address, and then have a static address that resolves to some sort of forwarding service. So some agency would own a big chunk of 6 billion addresses (and routers would only then need that one routing entry), and then that agency's network would reroute packets to those addresses to your current dynamic IP assigned by your ISP for whichever device you want the IP to relate to.

    Which is pretty pointless and stupid, because you'll have many different devices and thus many different IP addresses, so what purpose would there be in having a single static IP just to refer to you personally?

    (And no, conspiracy theorists, I'm not going to assume that we all have chips implanted in our heads; trust me, we'd have another Revolution before that happened.)

  21. half solution on The Liberty Alliance Grows Again · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is only a half-solution, however. It still requires creating separate accounts on each host, doesn't allow you to use computers other than your already configured Mac to access those sites, and doesn't let sites share authentication data. (i.e., site A authenticates you, site B authenticates you, and those two sites want to make sure they're both talking to the same person.)

    There is a big different between actual single sign on and (for lack of a better word) hacks that auto sign on for you.

  22. Re:Bad music? on TMBG on DRM · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Increasing quality isn't going to make people want to pay. If a person has a choice between anything, high or low quality, at one of two prices, they're going to pick the cheaper one. Even if the cheaper one is illegal, if it's easy and risk free (or they _think_ it's risk free), that's what they'll do.

    My friends pirate their most favorite music. They use arguments like, "someone else already paid for it." A couple of my friends are even now very pissed at me because I absolutely refuse to burn them copies of a couple games. As _they_ see, the game company has already gotten paid since I bought the game, so why should they have to pay for it too?

    I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I do believe DRM and increased punishments are absolutely mandatory to get stop that sort of crap. I *DO NOT* believe that *MANDATORY* DRM or Federal-enforced laws are required, however!

  23. oops on Ammonia Could Indicate Life On Mars · · Score: 1

    That's just great. Near future:

    "We have found life on mars!!!"

    Several years later:

    "Actually, what we found was Earth life that migrated..."

    Which doesn't really have half the wonder. The big question isn't, "Has life gone from Earth to elsewhere?" It's, "Have the conditions to start life occurred elsewhere?"

    "Oops, damn; all we found was Earth life that migrated."

  24. ipv6 doesn't help on Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, it won't help. With either IPv6 or IPv4, you still need the global routing table entries. That's where the problem is. The global routers will say something like 1.2.3.0/24 are routed to some network equipment in New Jersey. With this ruling, those same global tables in all those routers need to add another entry for a particular IP address in that range to instead go to some other providor. Now imagine if everyone kept their own personal IP address. Those tables wouldn't be able to cleanly route chunks of the IP address space to the ISPs using them, but instead must be filled with tons and tons of rules for individual addresses.

    IPv6 works in a very similar fashion. The only difference between IPv6 and IPv4 in terms of the routing is that the address ranges/chunks are much more abundant and much larger. If anything, IPv6 will make it flat out impossible for the Internet to work if people keep personal IP addresses, because there is no possible way the routers could handle the mapping tables.

    Ranges need to be kept to individual ISPs as they are now. AT&T leases a big chunk of several billion IPv6 addresses and then assigns those as they see fit to their customers and internal network equipment. All the global routers need to know then is that any address in that chunk AT&T leases just gets routed along to AT&T's network. If a customer leaves AT&T, they need to get an IP address in the range of their new ISP. Otherwise, the new ISP needs to add tons of special routing rules to their equipment, AT&T needs to add tons of special routing rules to their equipment, the backbones and global routers need special rules, anyone that has any rules regarding AT&T and/or the new ISP would need special rules added, etc.

  25. Safety on Disney Launches Fireworks With Compressed Air · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I imagine these are safer for the technicians as well, no? I don't know how many people are injured each year by misfired rockets, but if this technology helps at least with the launching (if not with fireworks that explode in dengerous ways _after_ launch) this is of course entirely a good thing.