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User: wouterke

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  1. Re:Interesting given recent removal of 386 support on Debian m68k Port Resurrected · · Score: 1

    We (author of article being quoted here ;-) actually do own ColdFire V4E boards, which were donated by Freescale at some point. Unfortunately they can't be used for the plain m68k port without some substantial work.

    While the ColdFire is sufficiently similar to the m68k so that code written to support one processor (at least in userspace) benefits the technical situation for the other, unfortunately they are also sufficiently different that you can't just take binaries for one processor and try to run them on the other.

    I /may/ decide to bootstrap a ColdFire port at some point, but it won't be tomorrow.

  2. Re:debian is better for n00bs on Why Debian Matters More Than Ever · · Score: 1

    Debian IRC help not polite.
    Ubuntu IRC help polite.

    Please report that. There's a bunch of operators on the #debian channel who regularly kick trolls and people who are not polite. The channel has had a pretty bad reputation in the past, but it's not really deserved anymore these days.

    Debian users are territorial like packs of wolves.
    Ubuntu users are generally much nicer.

    Not in my experience.

    Debian loves freedom at cost of everything else.
    Ubuntu loves civility and courtesy above everything else.

    Is it now clear why Ubuntu is popular and not superior compared to Debian?

    Absolutely wrong. Simple example: Debian's been providing a non-free archive, even though there have been several votes to remove it (all of them failed).

  3. Re:I run Ubuntu because it installs - Debian doesn on Why Debian Matters More Than Ever · · Score: 1

    That particular bug, as it happens, has been fixed for squeeze. Debian now uses UUIDs rather than /dev/sd* entries to boot, by default, which does not have that problem.

  4. Re:This is great on Debian 6.0 Released In GNU/Linux, FreeBSD Flavors · · Score: 1

    Because Grub1 is horrible.

    See http://bugs.debian.org/grub (the open bugreports against grub) and, especially, http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=239111#237 (a particularly telling example) if you don't believe me.

  5. Re:Are they mad? on Debian 6.0 Released In GNU/Linux, FreeBSD Flavors · · Score: 1

    It's a bit of both, really

    There's certainly a factor of 'because we can' in there, but it's also a matter of preference. I know plenty of people who prefer the FreeBSD userland, but I also know plenty of people (myself included) who've tried both the FreeBSD and GNU userlands and preferred the latter. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is certainly not for people in the first group.

    Also, since many of debian's postinst scripts assume a GNU userland (and are allowed to do so by policy), shipping the FreeBSD userland as default would not have helped the port.

  6. Re:Interesting development on Encryption Passphrase Protected by the 5th Amendment · · Score: 1

    That's not a very useful statement.

    Cyphers (*all* cyphers) are based on the *assumption* that it is easy to do one thing, but very hard to do the other; for instance, RSA is based on the assumption that it's easy to multiply one prime number by another, but that it's very hard to factor the resulting product into its two original prime numbers again.

    This particular assumption about factoring is based on millenia of mathematical history on the subject; multiplication and factoring has been known since the time of the ancient greeks, but the academic world to this day does not know of a method to factor a product into its original prime numbers other than by multiplying a number of candidate prime numbers by other prime numbers and verifying whether it just happens to be correct.

    That being said, for most of those millennia, there hasn't been a very great incentive to make factoring easy. As such, it's not impossible that there actually is a method to quickly factor a product into its prime numbers; and it's not impossible to think that the NSA (or some other organization) has discovered such a method. If they do, they have every (military) reason to keep that a secret. Unfortunately, it's impossible to disprove that possibility; you can't prove that there is no way to do a particular thing (you can only prove that it is, in fact, possible to do something, by actually doing it).

    Obviously, the same is true for other crypto algorithms besides RSA.

    (Not that I think this is the case, but the possibility certainly exists)

  7. Re:Multipath broken in debian etch! on Debian 4.0 'Etch' Released · · Score: 1

    That does mean you get to recompile your kernel every time you buy a new mouse. Well, not that often, perhaps, but you get the point.

  8. Re:Missing package on Debian 4.0 'Etch' Released · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just for clarity: Debian hasn't enabled register_globals in its default configuration since ages, either. The comment you refer to relates to security updates for PHP. Basically, it says "if you use register_globals anyway, you're on your own; we don't support that"

  9. Re:Multipath broken in debian etch! on Debian 4.0 'Etch' Released · · Score: 1

    Because compiling your own kernel is a waste of time, and the benefits from optimizing it for your own processor are negligable anyway?

  10. Re:Question on Debian Server Compromised · · Score: 1

    SELinux is being worked on (there is some support in Sarge, but it is not complete). ExecShield is not AFAIK.

  11. Re:Once is ok, but twice is too much... on Debian Server Compromised · · Score: 1

    Except that gluck.debian.org, while it is a developer machine, does not touch any file that could eventually end up at ftp.debian.org.

    Now move along, nothing to see here...

  12. Hardly surprising... on RIAA Bullies Witnesses Into Perjury · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is hardly surprising, is it?

    We all knew the RIAA uses mob tactics to get what they want. This is just another proof...

    I'm actually surprised nobody's tried to sue them under the RICO act yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd win.

  13. Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack! on The Planet's Most Moronic Hacker · · Score: 1

    I'll say it again: What do you think a netmask is?

    Write 255 down in binary. Count the 1-bits. Hey...

  14. Re:Good news, even for Sid users. on Sarge is Now Frozen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, that's what I said. X.org will be in sid the day Sarge comes out, which basically means that it won't be in a stable release before etch (the next release after sarge).

  15. Re:Other fun IP addresses to attack! on The Planet's Most Moronic Hacker · · Score: 1
    127/8 is shorthand for 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0

    Ie, the '/8' means 8 '1 bits' in the netmask.

    Compare with 192.168.0.0/24, for example.
    Ummm, actually, "127/8" would be shorthand for 127.0.0.0 - 127.255.255.255. The "/8" explicity means that the first eight bits will be constant, in this case constantly 127.
    Yeah, obviously. What the hell do you think a netmask is? '/8' means the netmask, when written down in binary form, starts with 8 1's.
  16. Re:Good news, even for Sid users. on Sarge is Now Frozen · · Score: 1

    the day sarge comes out

  17. Re:Redundant… on New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux · · Score: 1

    You're the one who brought up the multimedia file example :-)

    That said, yes, I do think it's important for an operating system not to take too much space, even if disk space costs nothing these days. The more disk space is used up by the OS, the less space you have for other things. Useful things.

    An operating system is necessary bloat. It shouldn't be too bloaty.

  18. Re:Redundant… on New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux · · Score: 1

    ...and?

    If I install a 150MB OS plus a 3MB media player, I can use the rest of the hard disk for media files.

    If I install a 5G OS instead, that leaves almost 5G less space for media files. Do you know how many .ogg files fit in 5G of disk space?

  19. Re:Why? on New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux · · Score: 1

    I'm a Debian GNU/Linux user. Whether my hardware is PowerPC, i386, m68k, or s390, that doesn't matter; I run the same operating system.

    That's nice, because it allows me to switch to different hardware without having to learn a new user interface or operating system.

    I recently bought a 12" PowerBook G4. Obviously I installed Debian on the thing, otherwise there wouldn't be a point.

  20. Re:Redundant… on New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux · · Score: 1

    No reason to use Linux? Come on!

    MacOS X is horribly non-free. Sure, the kernel is open source, and so are most of the userland unix-things, but that's about it.

    Apart from that, MacOS requires 5 fucking gigabytes of disk space to install. Compare to e.g. Debian, which requires about 150 meg.

    I know what I prefer.

  21. Re:Umm, "FOSDEM"? on FOSDEM 2005 Speakers List Available · · Score: 1

    Had you actually bothered to follow the link, you would've seen it immediately.

    The main content on http://www.fosdem.org/, linked above, starts like:

    "Welcome to the FOSDEM 2005 site !

    The fifth Free and Open source Software Developer's European Meeting (...)"

    Now. There.

  22. Re:Todays News on Debian Project Rejects Sender-ID · · Score: 1

    Obviously you don't like Debian. Why, I don't know, that's your problem. But do you really think that the Microsoft move was a good one?

    Come on, now.

  23. Cool, but nothing new on A Camaro That Leaves A Wake · · Score: 2, Informative

    The 1960-era(!) Belgian children TV-show "Kapitein Zeppos" ("Captain Zeppos") featured an amphibious car. The Belgian government-sponsored TV station "VRT" has made a description of the series (in Dutch), which includes a picture of the car.
    Obviously, it didn't go as fast as the camaro, and, according to the site, "turning it was a bad idea, while at the least movement of the water, the car would heavily move from left to right".

  24. Re:And? on Super MP3 Will Feature User Tracking · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What are you suggesting then? Agreed, 255 is probably more than we'll need in the near future, but who is to say what technology will be able to do in the future?

    "640kB? Hell, that's more than anyone will ever need".

    Limits suck. Crazy high limits suck less, but still do. Silly low limits suck majorly.

    a 4-track format falls in the "silly low" category in my book. a 255-track one doesn't.

  25. Re:braille on Mobile Phone for the Blind · · Score: 1

    I guess so. Normal braille reading devices are 2 lines of 40 characters, and have about the width of a normal computer keyboard.

    Embedding such a device in a mobile phone, even if reduced to a lot less, would either require a braille reading device with only a few characters (rendering it quite useless), or a mobile phone the size of a keyboard (try to put *that* in your pocket).