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User: Manip

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  1. Re:Business Account on Ask Slashdot: Is There a War Against Small Mail Servers? · · Score: 2

    I read the summary. Don't believe him. He is using a consumer connection. I've never heard of an ISP blocking ports on a business connection since the entire point of the damn connection is to get servers on to the internet and to allow VPN passthrough. If they blocked ports required for e-mail they might have well discontinue offering business accounts at all.

    Most business connections also come with fixed IPs for exactly that purpose, and those aren't ever blocked by spam lists, since again the entire point of a business line is to bring servers online - not clients.

  2. Good tablets - yes on Are Tablets Just Too Expensive? · · Score: 2

    Unfortunately right now we have to kinds of tablets in the market - those which are useful and those which aren't. Most Android based tablets currently being sold are absolutely worthless due to poor software, poor screens, and extremely poor battery life. Then on the other side you have things like the iPad and a very small selection of "premium" Android devices.

    In the future you might see tablets come down in price but just like everything else they will be held back by batteries and or components which draw less power. Ultimately cheap manufacturers cannot cut corners when cutting power consumption since good modern batteries are expensive to make and good efficient components use rare earth metals.

  3. Tabloid Fiction? on Tech-Unfriendly Cafes Say No Kindles Allowed · · Score: 2

    This story sounds so tabloid I'm a little embarrassed that it is appearing on /. I'd read the story, except I can't. So I have to assume she cited no actual examples and basically could just as easily be making the entire thing up. You read these stories ALL THE TIME, it is like the cancer story every other week or the "shock action by authority figure" story you see every day.

    I bet you'd struggle to find more than half a dozen such places in all of New York STATE. Which, frankly, makes for an entirely non-event. I'm sure you can find just as many private clubs that don't let a certain gender or sexual orientation in at all...

  4. Re:7 and Vista still vulnerable on Microsoft Kills AutoRun In Windows · · Score: 4, Informative

    This patch turns XP's autorun into the Windows Vista/7 version. The dialog will appear. Right now on XP programs will launch without any user interaction at all...

  5. Personal e-mail too? on Big Brother Friends Facebook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been concerned for a while now that my corporate overlords haven't had enough access to my personal life or to monitor me during my personal time. I have already given them access to GPS on my phone, my personal e-mail, and my Facebook account - so I would be happy for them to automate this so my wonderful employers can, at a click of a button, see me every minute of every day, and so we can both work together to prevent negative thoughts or words that might impact my performance or more seriously the companies image.

    I would also like to thank my boss, Mr. Smith, for allowing me to post this message to /., I realise it was expensive for PR and legal to sign off on its wording and I will work to pay back the costs it incurred the company (by having them take it out of my pay each month).

  6. Wish my dentist had this... on SnowWorld VR Game Reduces Pain For Burn Patients · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I REALLY wish my dentist had some kind of distraction... I mean going to the dentists is a really unfun experience generally speaking. I'd love to see TV, or a little game to draw attention from the drilling, poking, pulling, and injections.

  7. Sudden outbreak of common sense... on Sony, Universal Hope To Beat Piracy With 'Instant Pop' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well OBVIOUSLY Sony. The main problem most of these old people have in the media industry is that they cannot get their head around the fact that they're in competition with piracy and it is a competition that they can win (even if they continue to charge). Look at Steam. Steam charges for games, but the level of service is high enough to justify the cost, or "you get what you pay for." The problem Sony and other media companies has is that they want to offer a sub-standard level of service to consumers while charging a premium rate - which shockingly consumers aren't happy with.

    You can say whatever you wish about iTunes, but iTunes has proved that is the level of service is high enough, and the prices reasonable enough people will use that instead of pirated music - because they have the money and the hassle of piracy isn't worth the time/effort investment (people are lazy!). While some will always pirate, these say people have no money, and thus aren't really "customers" anyway.

  8. Miss the point more? on The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is frankly fairly shocking - shocking that people would want to remove an offensive word from a book who's intent was to diminish that word's power. Just goes to show how scared and cowardly the Western world has become, when a single word can scare us so much that we must hide it from ourselves. I honestly wonder what future generations will look like after parents have worked so hard to make their kids softer and naiver than the generation that proceeded it. How long until the witch hunts begin, and we start removing undesirable thoughts/people/etc?

  9. Yes, but not for these reasons... on Should Colleges Ban Classroom Laptop Use? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Should laptops be banned? Yes. But let's ban them because writing offers better recall and less personal distractions. Frankly the argument that someone else reading facebook is distracting is almost laughable. I fail to see how facebook or slashdot are any more distracting on someone else's laptop than for example a word document or OneNote.

    But as a sidebar I just want to point out how lame "college" has become. It used to be for those serious about their education or the academic subjects, but now it is just another mandatory level of education with the same behavioural problems from those who really have no wish to be in attendance. The fact that we're talking about treating 19 to 24 year olds like small children should tell you how silly the situation is becoming.

  10. Harsh Sentence on IT Worker's Revenge Lands Her In Jail · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I love how computer crimes are measured on an entirely different scale to all other crimes. While I think her crime was serious, when you look at the prison sentence relative to other things it seem disproportionate. If she had done the same thing without a computer I bet she would see less than 1/2 the jail time.

  11. Re:Meh on President Obama On Mythbusters Tonight · · Score: 1

    I bet the Secret Service would have LOVED that. :)

  12. That sounds terrible... on President Obama On Mythbusters Tonight · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I like Obama and love Mythbusters (or used to). What a lame duck of a Myth. That Myth wasn't even very exciting the first time they did it, let alone the second, and now a third time?! If they're going to have Obama on it then why can't we see him getting his hands dirty? What better way to get people excited about science by showing a man a lot of people respect excited about it?

  13. London (City) does this too... on Kuwait Bans DSLR Cameras Use For Non-Journalists · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    London for all intense and purposes does exactly the same thing. You cannot take "professional" pictures without a licence (which costs money) and if you have a DSLR you are presumed to be a professional - thus if you're lucky harassed by the police, and worst given a summons to turn up at court (or VERY unlucky arrested under vague anti-terrorism laws).

  14. Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department on Oxford Scientists Say Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats · · Score: 1

    Either that or cats just don't give a shit, and have absolutely no interest in being trained. Cats are highly intelligent from what I've observed both in terms of how they interact with their environment and also how easily they manipulate us...

    Here is a list of a things a cat enjoys:
    - Sleeping
    - Eating
    - Hunting/exploring/monitoring its territory
    - Sunbathing

    You won't find fetching a stick or licking your hand on that list because cats have little to no interest in that. I have seen some trained up to a fairly high level but frankly cats - like humans, have far too much free will to be easily manipulated.

  15. Predicting the future... on Online Behavior Could Influence Insurance Rates · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here is what will happen:
    1) People will "game" the system to get cheaper quotes (e.g. fake browser history, fake cookies, etc).
    2) Some insurance company which doesn't really understand technology will either sue a client, or try and withhold a payout
    3) A 70 year old judge will agree that fake browser history (or "privacy" as I like to call it) is fraud
    4) A law will be passed making it illegal to tamper with or destroy your browsing history, or to attempt to avoid tracking while online

  16. How does this work? on Alternative To the 200-Line Linux Kernel Patch · · Score: 1

    Can anyone explain how the bash script / commands work? I know a fair bit about Linux but frankly this goes into device mappings at a level I've rarely had to deal with.

  17. US Employment Rights on Worker Rights Extend To Facebook, Says NLRB · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Frankly I'm a little surprised - since in my experience employees are more or less slaves in the US. The entire legal structure seems set up for whatever is easiest and cheapest for employers to do whatever they wish. Employees can sue, and that is often the de-facto suggestion whenever anyone in the US has a problem, but frankly a lot of situations could be avoided if they had a strong legal framework like every other developed country.

    No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.

  18. Not a cure (for blindness) on Chip Allows Blind People To See · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just to clarify in case you didn't RTFA this isn't a cure for all forms of blindness. Unfortunately we still aren't at the point of being able to clip a camera on to people and having their brains understand that input directly. But it does somewhat mitigate forms of blindness which are directly associated with the eye (as opposed to the image processing centre which is a common form of blindness). But that being said, this is HUGE. We can cure several kinds of blindness or at least mitigate it. The quality of life increase to the people who receive this new medical technology will simply be like night and day.

  19. 18 weeks? on Manchester's Self-Described 'Internet Troll' Jailed For Offensive Web Posts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love how "computer crimes" are punished on an entirely different scale to regular crimes. You can go bottle someone (break a glass bottle over their head) and you get an average of zero days in jail (suspended for two years). You can go mug someone and get only a week of "hard time" with a year of parole. I mean heck you can go run someone down in your car and still get a lighter sentence than 18 weeks...

    There is no level of rationality to computer crime sentences because the "old people" on both sides of the bench are simply too ignorant and out of touch to really know what the crime involved or how serious it was. This case should never have wasted the UK's courts time and public money let alone the cost of keeping him in jail for any period at all.

    Frankly I have a VERY low opinion of the police, judge, and state for this one. I want a million pounds spent on arrested serious criminals and keeping them locked away. Give the mugger, violent thug, or drug dealers 18 week sentences instead of saving them for the "omg computer terrurist?! he uses microsoft and word to send deadly communications of doom!"

    What's more - he wasn't even punished for threatening people. It is one thing to make threats and to scare people. It is another thing entirely to offend or upset them. While I think the things he said were extremely rude and offensive - nobody felt in fear for their security.

  20. Fantasy on Separating Cyber-Warfare Fact From Fantasy · · Score: 1

    I keep reading these articles about "cyber-warfare" and sometimes I forget that they're talking about my field of expertise. The things they talk about are more akin to some kind of real life battlefield, and they seem to want to push that as the methodology to "fight it." Which seems to involve counter-attacks which make no sense and has little to do with patching and best practices.

    Frankly I feel as if you have a bunch of Generals and politicians who have seen Operating Swordfish, Hackers, and similar Hollywood blockbusters - and think that hacking (and security) is this glamorous little battle rather than a spotty nerd installing patches, changing configuration files, and others looking for human mistakes in those configurations/networks.

    But that all being said, what do I care if some General has a boner for cyber security and wants to invest a few million in a industry I happen to profit from. Go right ahead I say. I just want them to quit attempting to alarm the general public with nonsense threads about hackers setting off a nuclear bomb, shutting down power, and otherwise ending the world.

  21. Re:Apple isn't doing Sun's work for them.... on Gosling Reacts To Apple's Java Deprecation · · Score: 0

    The complexities of the situation are that Apple would spend money so Sun/Oracle could make money. You will also note that Microsoft doesn't maintain Java for Windows. But really I'm not arguing for any particular party being "right" or "wrong" all I'm saying is that a lot of people entirely misunderstand what is being discussed.

    To be honest I think this is just a random issue the anti-Apple haters have decided to pick up on in their never ending quest to convince everyone else that the company sucks. The only thing more annoying than Apple fanboys are Apple haters. Both sides are morons.

  22. Apple isn't doing Sun's work for them.... on Gosling Reacts To Apple's Java Deprecation · · Score: 2, Informative

    There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread so let me make this as clear as I can - Apple isn't blocking Sun/Oracle's ability to ship Java for the OS X platform, what they're doing is dropping internal maintenance for the platform from within Apple themselves. Up until now Apple has been porting Java to the OS X platform, and they're now discontinuing that and consequently removing it from their update system.

    If someone else, including Sun/Oracle want to start maintaining a Java for OS X release they absolutely can - it just won't be available via OS X's automatic update scheme any longer (and won't be something Apple is paying for).

  23. What is Drupal? on Drupal 7 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What the heck is Drupal? Are we meant to know? I've never even heard of it?

  24. Radiactive Waste? on Boeing 747 Recycled Into a Private Residence · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did nobody mention to her that planes are very radioactive partly because they spend so much time in the thinner atmosphere and partly because there is depleted uranium (which is more likely to cause heavy metal poisoning) used as weights within them? Sounds like a lovely material to build a house out of. Maybe she should paint the outside with lead based paint, water the garden with agent orange and then install asbestos for installation? Jokes aside - fools with their money. This fool sounds like she has a ton to waste and deserves what she gets.

  25. Archimedes, again? Really? on President Obama To Appear On Mythbusters · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're doing Archimedes solar ray AGAIN? Aren't we up to three already (the original myth and two revisits)? Obviously I think it is fun that Obama will be on the show but frankly aside from that I really don't want to see that same tired Myth for a third time...