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User: Farce+Pest

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Comments · 110

  1. Re:It's just like... on 'Stargate: SG-1' Cancelled · · Score: 1

    You mean Fargate?

  2. Re:OSSEC is great on An Open Source Security Triple Play · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh, no. Nagios is great for monitoring network services and local services, but it is not an IDS, and it does not look at logs or look for modified files or rootkits. There are some plugins that allow at least one IDS (Prelude) to talk to Nagios, but that's a separate product.

  3. Re:Know how it works... on Zimmermann, Encrypted VoIP, and Uncle Sam · · Score: 2, Informative

    Phil has a FAQ that, among other things, describes how man-in-the-middle attacks are eliminated or at least mitigated.

    http://philzimmermann.com/EN/zfone/index-faq.html

  4. Re:"Does little and not very well" for $200, Alex! on It Does Little and Not Very Well · · Score: 1

    What are "Slashdot editors"?

  5. Re:Conspiracy theories too soon on Microsoft Joins OpenDocument Alliance · · Score: 1

    Well, it is a Zonk article, which guarantees that it will be less accurate than The Onion.

  6. The followup to Microsoft's Play-Once DVD on Microsoft's Unique Innovation · · Score: 1

    The Boot-Once PC!

  7. Re:Haw haw on Comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL 2 · · Score: 1
    If you are using MySQL-5.0 and set it to strict mode, column overflows will abort the transaction; see The Server SQL Mode.

    BTW, here's New Features We Don't Plan to Implement:

    We aim toward full compliance with ANSI/ISO SQL. There are no features we plan not to implement.
  8. and not News for Anyone on The First Killer App: VisiCalc · · Score: 1
    Seems like most of the articles on Slashdot lately are things that I have seen two or three days earlier on del.icio.us or BoingBoing. A good example is the "Google to destroy all information not indexable" Onion article which came out on Friday but I first saw on O'Reilly Radar on Tuesday.

    And then there are the embarrassing dupes and story descriptions that are just blatantly wrong. In a world where everyone and their dog has one or more blogs, Slashdot is quickly becoming irrelevant.

    As an aside, I think comment moderation should be done the same was as meta-moderation: You get 10 random comments to moderate on, instead of cherry-picking them.

  9. Already? on Star Wreck 6 Finally Complete · · Score: 1

    No comments, and it's already slashdotted...

  10. Originally with kangaroos, but crocs work too on Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV · · Score: 1

    A couple vacationing in the outback are shocked to see a man having sex with a crocodile. A few more miles down the road, they see *another* man having sex with a crocodile. When they finally return safely to their hotel, there is a man with a peg-leg in the hotel lobby masturbating. Outraged, they complain to the hotel manager, who says:

    "You can't expect a man with a peg-leg to catch his own crocodile!"

  11. Re:That should go along nicely... on USA to Pass Science Crown to China · · Score: 2, Informative

    Japan? We never left. Same goes for Germany. We'll probably still have bases in Iraq in when 2065 rolls around, based on that performance.

  12. No, no, no on William Shatner Pitches 'Starfleet Academy' Show · · Score: 1

    Both Spock and McCoy and Scotty are all significantly older than Kirk, so much that they can't all be teenagers at the same time. Uh-oh, I've opened the door to another time-travel episode. Somebody travel back in time and stop me from posting!

  13. Article Obsolete on Vonage's CEO Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship' · · Score: 1

    Telco agrees to stop blocking VoIP calls

    The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that Madison River Communication will "refrain from blocking" VoIP, or voice over Internet Protocol, calls and will pay a $15,000 fine to the government.
  14. Battle Roomba on Battle Roomba Tractor · · Score: 1

    I figured a Battle Roomba would look more like Ziggo.

  15. Talos IV on Ask Unix Co-Creator Rob Pike · · Score: 1

    Do we have to ask yes/no questions so Commander Pike can answer them (one blink for yes, two for no)?

    (mod as -1: Star Trek reference)

  16. Re:This is not a solution. on Microsoft to Deploy SPF for Hotmail Users · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it's just not a solution for everyone.

    If you don't publish SPF records, nothing changes. Mailservers are unlikely to reject mail from domains that don't have SPF records for a long time, maybe ever, depending on how broadly used it is.

    If you do publish SPF records, you can indicate whether or not your the record describes all hosts that can send mail for your domain. Adding ~all means:

    SPF queries that do not match any other mechanism will return "softfail". Messages that are not sent from an approved server should still be accepted but may be subjected to greater scrutiny.

    SPF FAQ

  17. Historical newspaper coverage on Apollo 11 Photographs Unfrozen · · Score: 1

    Some of the old newspaper coverage from the first moon landing has recently become available again as well.

  18. Re:That's beside the point on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 1

    Socialist software? You mean BSD where the author essentially gives up their copyright and gets nothing in return? A slight oversimplification, but read on.

    If I am not free to use it any way I want to then you have no reason to be saying that it's "free" when it really isn't.

    What if, hypothetically, you didn't want to give the author credit? Then BSD wouldn't be "free" by this standard either. BSD has other restrictions, of course, which you may find agreeable but are restrictions nonetheless.

    The only truly free license is not a license at all, because all licenses have restrictions. The freedom you are looking for is called public domain.

    The GPL has restrictions, too, and more than BSD. Does society as a whole benefit? Probably, and that was certainly RMS's intent. Does the author of the work benefit? Definitely, because they get the right to use any derivative works.

  19. Re:That's beside the point on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 1

    You're still not compelled to use it, though; use something else. Dump GCC and get TenDRA if you don't want to be a hypocrite. OTOH, the FreeBSD people don't seem to have a big problem with GCC.

  20. Re:Outstanding on Microsoft Announces Dividend and Stock Buyback Program · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A lot.

    Bill Gates directly owns 1.12 billion shares (that's 1.12e9), and indirectly owns 428K shares, so his cash dividend will be somewhere between $3.36 and 4.64 billion.

    There are only (yeah, only) 10.8 billion shares outstanding, so overall this is a $32 billion dividend.

    I have to wonder if Bill plans to buy a country and retire there. I just hope it isn't the US.

  21. Re:That's beside the point on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 1
    The point was that if you do use GPL software, GPL is less free because it compels a course of action in order to use it.

    No it doesn't. You do not have to accept the GPL in order to use GPL-licensed software. RTFL:

    0. Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted...

    5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.

    Thanks for playing.

  22. Re:Dictionary shows GPL is less free (as in freedo on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Compelling another to a course of action against their will is the antithesis of freedom.

    Except no one is forced to use GPL software. If you don't like it, use something else.

    bsd# rm -r /usr/lib/gcc-lib

    The GPL is quite compatible with capitalism: The author retains copyright, but allows others to redistribute derivative works, provided the source for the derivative work is available under the same terms. Quid pro quo.

    You can't force other people to be socially responsible. Freedom includes the right to be an asshole.

    Hmmm, wouldn't forcing people to be socially responsible make you an asshole? QED. Anyway, nothing forces you to accept the GPL, since you can choose to not create derivative works.

  23. Re:Secret ballot on Diebold Sued (Again) Over Shoddy Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    Have a 5-vote output buffer. When it's full, write a random vote to the disk. Fill the empty slot with the next vote and repeat; flush at the end of the election. Any given vote can be delayed indefinitely. Each vote in the buffer has a 20% chance of being written out each time someone votes, or an 80% chance of remaining in the buffer, a (cumulative) 64% chance after two votes, 51% chance after 3 votes, 41% chance after 4 votes (.80**4), and so on. There is about a 1% chance it will still be in there after 21 votes (log(.01)/log(.8)=20.6). (Note each time someone votes, any vote in the pool still has a 20% chance of being flushed out, no matter how long it's been in there.)

    You could probably get good reordering with as little as a 3-vote buffer. Anonymous remailers use this sort of reordering scheme, or a variant where messages are thrown into a pool and periodically random messages are chosen until the pool is reduced to a minimum level, or a certain percentage is sent (50%). Nothing that elaborate is needed here.

    Your other comment about how does the voter know what really got written out is correct, but the same argument applies to mechanical tabulation as well.

  24. Re:It's True About Desktop Management Tools on Report From "Get The Facts" · · Score: 2, Informative
    The typical larger IT department has to deal with things like corporate software policies, locking user account profiles, automated application and operating system patches/updates and remote helpdesk. How can I enforce the corporate software policy against instant messengers when every distro except debian bundles all the stock KDE applications (including instant messenger apps) in a few giant RPMs? KDE 3.2 will be doing more profile locking features, but what about applications that don't use the KDE libs? What about Gnome?
    1. Dont give your users root on their desktop machines, and they can't install packages. Additionally you can make gcc non-executable to non-root users.
    2. Use a central authentication source, such as LDAP.
    3. Use a better distro
    4. Use ssh for remote administration, or if you need a GUI, a remote X client.

    A specific suggestion: Gentoo. If you really think you might need to rebuild your apps to add your own patches and such, Gentoo arguably has the best build system, and you can configure your clients to only install binary packages from a central server. Then your client machines don't have to actually build anything.

    The downside on Gentoo is that it does not have an automated installer, which can be a real pain if you have a lot of machines to install. The solution is fairly simple: Build one client, and then use Mondo to build a self-installing CD (it's a one-liner). Burn the resulting ISO(s) (depending on how much you install), put them in a new machine, boot, let it self-install, reboot, and you're done. You don't have to use Gentoo for this, of course.

    Supporting desktop clients is not going to be a no-brainer with any OS, but it is doable with Linux and existing tools.

  25. Re:Idealism must mesh with reality... on Another Zero-Day IE Scripting Exploit · · Score: 1

    Funny, I use their http://premier.dell.com site with Galeon and it seems to work fine. At least the site I get has Javascript menus. Maybe this is why they haven't responded...