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User: GCsoftware

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Comments · 94

  1. Re:Religion of Peace strikes again no doubt.... on EgyptAir Flight 804 Missing (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    This. Exactly this. The IRA even had back-channels with the UKGOV to decide on code words that would be used to indicate an actual real bomb threat instead of a random nutcase calling Downing Street and saying something in Whitehall will blow up in 30 mins, get your people out.

  2. Re:Religion of Peace strikes again no doubt.... on EgyptAir Flight 804 Missing (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Because there are no loyalist on the dole, right? :P

    (It's a joke, relax)

  3. Re:Bomb or missile on EgyptAir Flight 804 Missing (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    I've flown in tens of them - some of them are pretty old, sure, but they have a pretty decent fleet.

    Security problems on the ground? Sure.

    Unmaintained airframes - not so much.

  4. Re:the safest part of the journey & Charley He on EgyptAir Flight 804 Missing (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Shot by whom exactly?

    The usual suspects (US, Israel..) are Egyptian ALLIES (well at least have a peace agreement) and have no interest in doing this.

    The Israelis aren't engaging anyone over the Med in air-to-air combat and neither is the US.

    A SAM launched from North Sinai? Maybe..

    Air-to-air: HIGHLY unlikely.

  5. Re: Islam's relationship to modern science on ISIS's Hunt For a Bogus Superweapon · · Score: 1

    Well write it into the constitution of the country then if you're that worried - it sorta works in Lebanon (well actually it's a total cluster duck right now but that's because of Syria).

    In Lebanon the seats in Parliament are allocated by sect, Christians get half, Muslims (including fringe groups like Alawis and Druze) get the other half.

    The president is ALWAYS a Maronite Catholic, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Twelver Shia.

    Or shit, just give them residency papers and not citizenship and there's no problem with voting at all..

  6. Re: Islam's relationship to modern science on ISIS's Hunt For a Bogus Superweapon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, because Shariah does not allow a valid Caliph (whom al-Baghdadi is, btw - he meets all the qualifications including being Qurayshi, the first real Caliph since like the Abbasids) to recognise any borders or accept any peace treaties longer than 10 years.

    It's the duty of the Caliph to wage Jihad and conquer as much as possible territory to be included in Dar al-Islam - should he not do so, he would no longer be worthy of bays'a [allegiance] of Muslims.

    It's not so much lebensraum but rather territory that hasn't yet been occupied by the Ummah (basically the nation that is Muslim).

    This is the hardcore Salafi doctrine by which people like Daeesh operate by and it's theologically valid, though batshit insane.

    HOWEVER, only about 70-80% of Muslims are Sunnis and of those maybe 10-15% are Salafis.

    So no, the "mohammedic brutalism" will not be carried with them - they've seen what life under a Caliphate is like and they want the hell out of there.

    I can say this with some certainty as during my last 3 years in Beirut (which BTW has more Syrian refugees than ANY Western city) say that the Daeesh are a bunch of psychopathic foreign assholes led by an eloquent sociopath from Baghdad.

  7. Re:also also on Carbon Dating Shows Koran May Predate Muhammad · · Score: 3, Informative

    That IS Arabic, a very old form of it that didn't use the dots we use nowadays to denote say a Ba from a Ta or a Nun

  8. Re:Books. Heh. on Book Review: Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways To Write Better Python · · Score: 1

    Hey COBOL is awesome, especially the SCREEN SECTION :)

    Why futz about with (n)curses for a day when you can knock out a beautifully laid out text UI in a 10 minutes!

    (I'm 50% serious here..)

  9. Re:Really? on IBM Launches Linux-Only Mainframes · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nokia's DX200 series of PSTN switches had fully redundant motherboards, you could literally physically cut the PCI bus and the thing would just keep on rolling, without dropping any calls..

  10. Re:No it hasn't on IBM Launches Linux-Only Mainframes · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I'm sort of failing to see the point here as well - running your classic z/OS backend stuff and then having a few zIFLs talking to the backend over HiperSockets (IIRC) made sense, but just a big zSeries box with no way to run legacy apps?

    I'm not sure but I guess the market will decide..

  11. Re:So it competes with SUN. on IBM Launches Linux-Only Mainframes · · Score: 1

    You do realise you can emulate a z/Series using Hercules and use that for development, right?

    No need to fork out $100K+ (also since these Linux-only z boxes won't have any CP's, just zIFLs, I think the base price might come down)

    And since it's pretty easy to set up virtualised instances (either using LPARs or say z/VM), you could always share one of these boxes amongst multiple users.

  12. Re:Ubuntu?! on IBM Launches Linux-Only Mainframes · · Score: 1

    I've run a few Debian/s390x instances in Hercules and it's pretty cool. Once it's up and running, you wouldn't know you're running on a "mainframe"

  13. Re:Storage space isn't the problem. on Micron and Intel Announce 3D NAND Flash Co-Development To Push SSDs Past 10TB · · Score: 2

    Yeah spell it right - it's 'systemd'. Looks like an OK operating system, shame it doesn't have a decent init.

  14. Re:So the Italians win the latest round ... on Maps Suggest Marco Polo May Have "Discovered" America · · Score: 1

    Nice hypothesis.

    Too bad there were no "English" people at around 30 AD as the Angles and Saxons only invaded about 400 years after that followed by the Norman (some Norse blood in there too) invasion in 1066.

    So are you saying they had a time machine too?

  15. Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... on Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards" · · Score: 1

    Errrr..There is a V, and it is basically the same letter a B with a dot.

    It's in ARABIC and Ottoman Turkish where the W and V letters were interchangeable..

  16. Re:Question on Point-and-Shoot: TrackingPoint's New Linux-Controlled AR-15s · · Score: 1

    Yup. Salt (well a sachet of infant electrolyte mix) and access to clean water would solve that problem as the kids tend to die from dehydration.

    Not in ALL cases but the death rate would definitely go down. Back when I was working as a dive master on the coast of the Sinai desert, we used to take the baby rehydration sachets all the time if we'd overindulged in the post-diving beers the night before.

  17. Re:Remember TEMPEST? on Scientists Extract RSA Key From GnuPG Using Sound of CPU · · Score: 1

    Argh, was replying to the post above claiming PGP is pure asymmetric crypto. No idea which this got placed here.

  18. Re:Remember TEMPEST? on Scientists Extract RSA Key From GnuPG Using Sound of CPU · · Score: 1

    No, it isn't. GPG / PGP is a hybrid cryptosystem just like SSL and SSH. Not sure where you got this idea from..

    Do you realise the sort of processing overheads that encrypting mega/gigabytes in RSA involves?

    It would have taken a LONG time to encrypt a single HD floppy image back in 1991 when PGP was first developed.

  19. Right-to-left scripts? on First New Top-Level Domains Added To the Root Zone · · Score: 1

    I wonder how a browser will display something like .shabakah - will most software have right-to-eft rendering and the ligature support for Arabic? Also imagine an Arabic TLD that allows Latin domain names - how the hell do you render that..? Anyway, I'm gonna go kill some time on the shabakaat

  20. Re:running only on an OpenVMS, which runs on Ask Slashdot: Why Won't Companies Upgrade Old Software? · · Score: 1

    I've got two systems (one single Alpha box, one VAXcluster) that offer VMS guest accounts via telnet (I know, I know - CHIMPY can do SSH but the VAXen are just too slow for it):

    CHIMPY (single AXP box):

    telnet to chimpy.sampsa.com

    HILANT (VAXcluster)

    telnet to hilant.sampsa.com

  21. Re:It's too bad on How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop · · Score: 4, Informative

    But if you just wanted a package manager and repos, you could always use Fink (for those who don't know, it's basically apt-get for OS X and a bunch of repos of binaries), no need to bootstrap with dev tools from Apple.

    Actually you could probably get a version of gcc from Fink and then use that to bootstrap Mac Ports. Not tried that myself, though.

  22. Re:I dunno about that on Iranian Players Blocked From World of Warcraft Due To Trade Sanctions · · Score: 1

    No.

  23. Re:KGB, in 2012? on Russia's Former KGB Invests In Political Propaganda Spambots · · Score: 2

    Belarus too, where the org is still called KGB. Gotta love the Belarussian regime, it has some balls.

  24. Re:And... on Indian Gov't Bans Bulk SMS, Investigating Social Media · · Score: 1

    Yup, GP fails badly at understanding basic Semitic roots.

    Take the root K-T-B (book, written, to write, etc):

    KITAB - book
    AKTIB - to write

    but

    MAKTAB - office (literally "place of writing")
    MAKTABAH - primary school (place of writing, feminine form)

    So saying that islam and salaam derive from S-L-M is pretty damn vague and useless information without context.

  25. Re:Unfortunately, UK has become Uncle Sam's lapdog on UK Authorities Threaten To Storm Ecuadorian Embassy To Arrest Julian Assange · · Score: 4, Funny

    >Perhaps it does, but whenever I read something about the NHS, its a sad story in the Daily Mail about some doctor making a silly mistake that takes a way a father or mother from their children, or vice versa..

    The DAILY MAIL. You get your news from the Daily Mail. OK, then.