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User: Emperor+Tiberius

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Comments · 125

  1. The road... on L.A. School Superintendent Folds on Laptops-For-Kids Program · · Score: 1

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  2. Yelp is so full of shit sometimes on Company Promises Positive Yelp Reviews For a Price; Yelp Sues · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can make a legitimately negative review of a place and watch your review get buried, because the sort isn't chronological. I really don't care if the restaurant had 5 stars three years ago. I *do* care if they all the sudden have a slew of negative ratings for people getting sick, etc.

  3. Splinter Cell on MIT Researchers Can Take Your Pulse, Right Through the Walls · · Score: 1

    Anyone else reminded of Splinter Cell, where Sam can track people's "life signs" through his googles?

  4. Not surprising on European iPhone Chargers Prone To Overheating · · Score: 2

    I had a PowerBook charger nearly catch fire back in the day. Had I not caught the burning smell, I might have lost my whole house.

    I'm always a little cagey about leaving laptops plugged in unattended nowadays.

  5. OS X on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Secure Your Parents' PC? · · Score: 1

    Seriously. Just get a refurbished iMac and put it in there.

    I converted my parents a few years back and was so happy when I could finally stop cleaning up virus and malware laden crap. Even better, when I came to visit, I wasn't scared shitless that there were any key loggers or other unpleasantry installed. Yes, I know OS X isn't malware-proof, but it "feels" less vulnerable than what they had. The OS is set to automatically update along with their apps and everything is automagically backed up with Time Machine. My Dad still likes to play games in Windows; running Boot Camp and Deep Freeze keeps things happy there and when they want to surf, they just boot back into OS X.

  6. Re:Fine by me on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium · · Score: 1

    Except you're missing out on ABE and some of the more advanced features of NoScript. ScriptSafe also hasn't been updated in over five months. The last time I used it, it had some pretty frustrating bugs that made me go back to Firefox and NoScript. Maybe as it improves, I'll give it another shot, but not now...

  7. Re:Fine by me on Ubuntu Developers Revisit Replacing Firefox With Chromium · · Score: 1

    Until Chrome gets a solid NoScript-ish plugin, I'm sticking with Firefox. ABE and a few other NoScript features keep me happy.

  8. maildir + mutt + maildir-utils on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Archive and Access Ancient Emails? · · Score: 1

    Simple. Archive mail by the year as it gets too big. Use mutt's search for the basic searching and maildir-utils for the heavy lifting.

    To those saying keeping email forever is hoarding: not if it's done right. You'd be surprised how useful it is to go back and find an email from four years ago.

  9. No privacy on Harvard Secretly Searched Deans' Email · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When are people going to learn that they have no privacy on their employer's computer systems? Geeks and IT folks seem to have the biggest problem with this. If you really need that privacy, go out to your car on your lunch hour and use your smartphone. At the end of the day, it's your employer's power, bandwidth, space, and equipment. If they want to monitor their systems, they have every right to do so. Now obviously, some monitoring is a huge gray area when it comes to moral and ethical issues. So why not simply side step the issue by using your own person accounts, devices, and access?

  10. Online courses provide no added incentive on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 1

    I went to college when technologies like Blackboard were just beginning to come to fruition. The problem I've always had with online courses is that they give you no added incentive to do to the work. Motivation may be its own reward for some people, but I still need that subtle "mental push" to succeed. A class set in an actual classroom gives my brain some reason to be there and do the work. Online courses just makes me think they're available "whenever." The concept of deadlines and necessity quickly goes out the window, usually along with my grades.

    People don't drop these courses, because they don't remember them and/or don't think about them. The same goes for "hybrid" online courses, where you still spend some class time in a physical classroom. You're not getting enough cues to actually realize you're doing poorly. The instructor is also poorly interfaced with the class that they don't match a student's online progress with their physical presence.

    Maybe working on your day's assignment in your PJs at 3 a.m. appeals to you. I still want to see and talk to the instructor. I need that "meat space" interaction.

  11. Good ol' fashioned attendance on Brazilian Schoolchildren Tagged By Computer Chips · · Score: 1

    Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned attendance? Back when I was going to school, it was done with Scantron forms. The teacher took attendance and sent a runner to deliver the form(s) to the attendance office where they were processed. Once it was determined that a kid was out that shouldn't have been, that office called the parent to ascertain where the kid was. Simple, effective, and hardly Orwellian.

    Don't get me started on taking attendance in college courses, though...

  12. Ouch on Criminals Steal House Thanks To Hacked Email · · Score: 1

    I sort of think he should have kept a better eye on his properties, but that's neither here nor there.

    Fundamentally, I think this is why we need some form of authentication that "only you know," but everyone can verify/authenticate against. Most places -foolishly- usually social security numbers here in the 'states. I think that's a terrible idea as the protections surrounding them are incredibly weak. I was going to suggest this fellow have some sort of PGP/GPG setup, but if the criminals got into his email, they'd probably have his passphrase(s) and key(s), too.

    Sigh...

  13. Lack of WPA2-AES support in devices on A New Wi-Fi Exploit, Limited But Clever · · Score: 1

    Annoyingly, I can think of two devices that can't cope without TKIP under WPA2. The older Apple Airport Express and a Linksys wireless bridge.

    Without TKIP, these two devices have effectively become expensive (when they were purchased, at least) door stops. It's aggravating, because they both advertised support for WPA2-AES!

  14. Things I can think of on Things To Look For In a Web Hosting Company? · · Score: 1
    • Backups. Make them. Test them. Store multiple versions & copies of them.
    • Redundancy. Disks fail. Servers crash. If your site goes down, you'll want to get it back in a hurry.
    • If you don't want to roll your own admin with a VPS or a dedicated / colocation server, get cozy with the notion of shared hosting.
      • Shared hosting is a shared resource.
      • If your neighbor is crushing the machine, your site is getting crushed.
      • If your neighbor and/or admin's software/policies allow the box to get owned, your stuff can get owned.
      • Stuff can be changed at will, often without notice to you. Maybe another customer needed something. Maybe an update needed to be pushed...
    • Price. There is such a thing as paying too much and there is such a thing as paying too little. Do not be a cheap ass, especially if you need support.
    • Unlimited X. There is no such thing as "unlimited" anything in the web hosting business. Some limits are more finite than others. Figure out what they are...
    • Storage. Storage can be cheap, but often it is not. Do not argue with your web host and say that you can buy a cheap ass 1TB drive for $X. If you dislike their prices, vote with your money.
    • Chat with the sales, support, and billing departments. Do you feel comfortable with them? Are they robots, or real, live human beings? Is it a small company, or a corporation?
    • Treat your support people with courtesy and respect. Your $15/month website is not worth $1,000,000/hour. If it was, maybe you should have bought better hosting/support/redundancy.

    Finally, do your research and educate yourself! There are a lot of good review websites out there. Web Hosting Talk for instance...

  15. Re:slicehost on Things To Look For In a Web Hosting Company? · · Score: 1

    I was with Slicehost for more than a year. The needs of my sites kept pressing me to upgrade my slice(s). I'd say they're no longer cost effective around (or above) the 1GB mark...

  16. Global block? on Twitter Hit By BZPharma LOL Phishing Attack · · Score: 1

    I guess I have a hard time understanding why these things are so hard to block (globally). Doesn't Twitter maintain some sort of global regex cookbook of spam-laden crap?

  17. IRC on Operation Titstorm Hits the Streets · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Their ad brings even more negative attention to poor ol' IRC...

  18. Re:FireGPG on Yale Switching To Gmail, Not Without Opposition · · Score: 1

    If a letter and a postcard are dropped on the floor, which is easier to inadvertently read?

    Also, look at the matter of detection. The letter is at least sealed in an envelope. You can generally detect if someone has opened the envelope...

    Your postcard (unencrypted email)'s contents are not protected in transit. Your letter has a PGP/GPG envelope protecting it from being read, inadvertently or otherwise.

  19. Pardon my ignorance on A "Never Reboot" Service For Linux · · Score: 1

    But couldn't this still have the potential to pork your system and force a reboot? Wonder what their policy is on that...

  20. Re:I will laugh when ATT's network collapses on Why AT&T Should Dump the iPhone's Unlimited Data Plan · · Score: 0, Redundant

    And what about people sending texts as a passenger in the vehicle going faster than 10 MPH?

  21. Protected updates on One-Tweet Wonders · · Score: 1

    Further proof as to why people should protect theirs: to prevent news agencies from analyzing them :-).

  22. Age on House Bill Won't Criminalize Free Wi-Fi Operators · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did you know that the average age of the representatives is 55? I often wonder if age's impact on someone's familiarity with technology plays a role in some of these voting sessions.

  23. Nobody tests anymore, I guess on EVE-Online Patch Makes XP Unbootable · · Score: 1

    How did this slip by quality control? Given that it was a major release, I would hope that there was at least some testing. So, either all the test machines were running Vista and weren't effected, or they just don't reboot their machines that often.

    And yes, most of the /. commentators know this isn't "bricking." So, what should you call it for a summary? Unbootable?

  24. DVD players with guns on IBM Files DVD Spam Patent Application · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder how long it will be before home entertainment products come with weaponry to coerce you into viewing advertisements...

  25. Re:My stragegy for stopping the junk mail... on Student Financial Aid Database Being Misused · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I get consolidation offers every week. Like most physical spam, I toss it in my shred bag. When the bag gets sufficiently full, I shred it.

    Now these scum bags are sending offers in envelopes that say things like "final notice," and "government notice." Shouldn't this be illegal? Now I actually have to examine some of the more deceiving items to make sure they're not real.