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User: PastaLover

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Comments · 706

  1. Re:Nah on Are Neo-Retro Game Releases a Fad? · · Score: 1

    I concur. This whole thread is full of people that don't realize there's an entire universe of games out there. If only I had time to play them all. :(

    But seriously people, learn to look past the latest installment in the GTA series (not that that is a bad game, though I liked GTA 1 best, honestly). This thread manages to be both hilarious and extremely sad at the same time.

  2. Re:Amarok: The undisputed champion on iTunes On OS X Finally Has Competition · · Score: 1

    So, any suggestions? I'm using xmms right now, which works fine, but is discontinued (and doesn't have the rating feature, or an easy way to search for songs).

    Anyway, I'd like to use amarok - it looks like it has all the features I want, except being able to handle thousands of songs.

    Probably it didn't work on some specific version of amarok, but probably will if you just go and try it. Anyway I don't like amarok personally since I think the UI is a bit of an afterbirth. Recent versions(post-1.0 I think) of Banshee are a very nice alternative.

  3. Re:Using the "right" interpreter with env on (Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks? · · Score: 1

    Very portable, except for making it impossible to target a specific version of python of course, meaning as soon as you upgrade from python2.4 to python2.5 all your scripts break and you have to muck around with the PATH to get it to work again. Using /usr/bin/env is really more of a hack than anything genuinely useful, just hardcode the location of your python interpreter and let the installer/packager/users worry about where to point it to.

  4. Re:Is anybody seriously surprised? on Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on "Joe the Plumber" · · Score: 1

    (from reuters, yes I went through the trouble to click through on wikipedia):

    Odinga also said he was a cousin of Obama, but Obama's uncle said that the two were not directly related.

    "Odinga's mother came from this area, so it is normal for us to talk about cousins. But he is not a blood relative," he said.

    Aside from that your claim nobody has investigated Obama is completely ridiculous. People have gone over his life with a fine tooth comb. First his own party, then the RNC and the media.

    And "Joe" is not an ordinary citizen as far as the media has found out. He looks more like a lying scumbag from where I'm sitting.

  5. Re:Why a laptop? What about a desktop? on Is Ubuntu Getting Slower? · · Score: 1

    The SYSTEM is not slower. The TASK is slower.

    The system is slower in terms of throughput, but not in terms of latency (which is arguably what matters to consumers).

    Still, I find ubuntu a bit sluggish lately, wouldn't hurt to do some profiling. The article is one big advertisement for their "phoronix test suite" though.

  6. Re:Belgian RIAA? on Belgian ISP Scores Victory In Landmark P2P Case · · Score: 1

    We're the masters of the surreal and proud of it.

  7. Re:Belgian RIAA? on Belgian ISP Scores Victory In Landmark P2P Case · · Score: 1

    The name is an acronym in two languages: "Société des Auteurs Belge - Belgische Auteurs Maatschappy", basically meaning belgian society of authors. I presume composers and publishers were tacked on later so now they stick with the old name for brand recognition (ha!) but add others in a subtitle.

  8. Re:Actually, having RTFA, I stand corrected on Evolutionary Scientists Test-Drive Spore, Gripe · · Score: 1

    The point which you missed twice already is that nobody would be worrying about it if EA wasn't claiming it was an ACCURATE DEPICTION OF EVOLUTION. Which it is not.

    If that doesn't make it more clear for you perhaps I should throw in some more caps.

  9. Re:As a non-driver on People Prefer Angry-Faced Cars · · Score: 1

    I personally like to drive fast...very fast when I get the chance and the road conditions allow for it safely. If on the highway, I just ask that you leave the left lane open for passing, it isn't anyones responsibility to 'manage' who can go what speed, and again, see above, it is to your advantage to let a faster motorist by.

    And no....I'm not a BMW/Jag type owner...most of those things have WAY too many seats. I prefer 2.

    If there's enough other people on the road for them to get in your way, then it is not safe for you to drive ultra fast. What is dangerous is not the speed, it is the speed differential. And I have seen one too many BMW driver get in a near accident because they didn't understand that people aren't expecting them to come in at a speed that makes you look like you're standing still.

    Not to mention the assholes that think I'll drive straight into a truck because they're flashing their headlights at me or are practically hugging my bumper. Or the number of times I've been nearly run over on foot by drivers in BMWs and, more recently, Audis.

    As much fun as this discussion is, the story itself is completely silly of course. No way they can draw those conclusions.

  10. Re:Should lead to possibly great advertisements on How Kernel Hackers Boosted the Speed of Desktop Linux · · Score: 1

    This is what bothers me most about my Linux station. The services mostly load quickly, but come to a screeching halt when the interfaces need to be brought up, jumping into a fast launch sequence once the DHCP address is acquired. I've not understood why service dependencies cannot be mapped and multiple services brought up at one time (which I gather is the goal of projects like this). Windows pulls it off relatively well. On the same hardware, I have Windows XP and Fedora 9 multibooting, and the Fedora boot time is significantly longer than that of Windows.

    At least one of the problems is that when two programs are starting up that need lots of data from disk, starting them in parallel will result in lots of trashing and lost time. Also some services aren't supposed to come up before the network, sometimes because they really need the network, other times because you could configure them to use the network. Obviously, all this stuff has sparked a lot of interest in doing it better, because the status quo can be pretty appalling (though it does vary system to system).

  11. Re:Computer systems need security audits. on CSRF Flaws Found On Major Websites, Including a Bank · · Score: 1

    This is pretty much the standard paradigm in ruby on rails as well, as far as I can tell. Does work nicely.

  12. Re:passionless technician on Wall Street's Collapse Is Computer Science's Gain · · Score: 1

    I wholeheartedly agree with you. The GP seems very full of himself. It's great if you knew what you wanted to do by the time you were 10, but most people don't have that luxury. I've known people who spent tons of time just trying to figure out what they would enjoy doing for the rest of their life and just not finding it. These people are not somehow more or less interested in their own happiness, they just got a raw deal as in the strange mix of experiences that leads up to that choice of college and education never introduced them to the one thing they would really love, if such a thing exists.

    And it certainly isn't all that simple either. I've always known I'd wanted to do something in computer science, but after a while I started dreading I made the wrong choice and I wasn't were I was supposed to be. I ended up taking some weird detours to arrive at the place I am today, and think I might now finally have found what I wanted to do. But people are not as static as the job market used to assume, and I am very much aware of the possibility that in 4 years time I might be somewhere else entirely.

    One last point, I for one do not look down on the people that take a certain career path because they want a good job to provide for themselves and their family. They might not be the best coders/sysadmins/researchers out there, but they can be plenty productive and take their job just as serious as the next guy.

  13. Re:And the first thing they do after connecting... on Google Reveals Wireless Vision — Open Networks · · Score: 1

    True. Everyone that is mentally sane uses Google as their homepage and search engine.

    Actually I don't really see any particularly compelling reason to make it your homepage. Though it is handy for the "is the internet working" kinda thing. Personally though, as long as you are given the choice and can easily change it, what's the problem?

  14. Re:The NYSE runs linux on Trading the Markets With FOSS Software? · · Score: 1

    To me, it seems foolish to develop FOSS for financial markets.

    If you need software to analyze the markets, write your own, open source it and someone else takes it, improves it and gives you the patches, then you've both won. He didn't have to write or buy his own, you just had help developing it without needing to pay anyone for it. If enough people use and contribute to it you can add new tools and features at accelerated pace, thus justifying the initial development cost. This is one aspect of how open source works, I don't see how it's different in financial markets vs anything else.

  15. Re:a match made in heaven . . . on MediaSentry Hired By People's Republic of China · · Score: 1

    I've seen both images of peaceful and violent monks. The chinese people has only seen one variety. To say the western world is uneducated in comparison is to be completely oblivious of just how well the Chinese government scrubs its local news broadcasts.

    Here's a hint, most of the western world (i.e. not the US) doesn't have much of a problem with communism as such. It's the authoritarianism and human rights violations that's got us all up in arms. But what do I know, clearly you are much better informed.

  16. Re:This won't have an effect in Belgium on IBM Granted "Paper-or-Plastic?" Patent · · Score: 1

    I feel I should point out that in Belgium it works as follows: you don't get the normal plastic bag for free any more but you can buy one for a fee (3c I believe, which is as low as it sounds). The "reusable" bags are other, generally pretty sturdy bags that are generally meant to be used hundreds of times (thus recouping their environmental cost).

    Anyway, this does not really hurt the poor as they can use a 3c bag for ages if they can't afford a reusable bag. Not to mention Belgium is actually pretty good about making sure the poor get fed.

    It's also a scheme that attempts to use the market to great environmental effect. The goal is to expose the actual cost of those free plastic bags you used to get. They used to cost 0c while in reality the warehouse was buying them somewhere, meaning they did have a cost. So for the most part the legislation just forces the warehouses to recoup their cost by charging for them. People are instantly better informed and market forces do the rest.

    Of course this presupposes that they have their actual cost when the warehouse buys them, which is the spot where trying to expose externalities through government taxes is less of a science and more of an art. Suffice it to say, it doesn't always work out as well as the plastic bags have. For instance, diesel cars are hugely popular in Belgium, since petrol/gasoline has been heavier taxed. Only now to discover that all that was based on some flawed environmental math and gasoline cars might actually be better for the environment. Oops. :-)

  17. Re:Yay Miguel on Miguel De Icaza On Mono, Moonlight, and Gnome · · Score: 1

    WinForms support is nearing completion; the issues left are primarily issues with the X Window System model (which sucks, and don't even try to deny it) and theming (I know the guy working on theming for Mono's System.Windows.Forms implementation, and he's coming along very quickly).

    So...the problem is...what?

    Your bridge, it misses its troll. Go back to it.

    Right, so it only took them what, 2-3 years? And no .NET winforms application I've tried works on the latest stable. This was the whole point of .NET of course, so called cross platform but really hard to port to any platform because winforms support will be severely limited. I'm not saying mono doesn't have its uses, I think it's great, when they're not trying to claim they'll get feature parity with anything from microsoft.

  18. Re:no it does. on Mozilla SSL Policy Considered Bad For the Web · · Score: 1

    You're right I misread it. Apologies to the OP.

  19. Re:Yay Miguel on Miguel De Icaza On Mono, Moonlight, and Gnome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have an awesome track record of coming up short. Like the winforms support that is still coming up short! He himself stated in the interview that moonlight will be like a "light version" of silverlight. So us linux desktop users are supposed to remain first-class citizens on the web by using a second rate, braindamaged implementation of a new, unproven web technology by Microsoft of all places? Hah!

  20. Re:Makes good points on Miguel De Icaza On Mono, Moonlight, and Gnome · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only reason I usually turn off Flash on sites other then some game sites or YouTube, is because the Linux Flash player is just so crappy. I have a decent enough /etc/hosts file that blocks 98% of the ads, but if I leave Flash on, Firefox's CPU shoots to 80% just displaying a banner ad. Thankfully, I downgraded to an older version and it doesn't do it as much.

    Ehm, this is not the linux flash player as such, it's the flash player, period. I get the exact same problem on some sites in windows. Also downgrading flash is a seriously stupid thing to do right now, as the recent vulnerability they discovered leaves you wide open to attack. (and it has been spotted in the wild, though generally targeted at windows)

  21. Re:double standard on Yahoo Blocks Venerable Email List Over False Positives · · Score: 1

    And by people you mean the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy(TM).

    No no it's the Liberally Biased Mainstream Media(TM). They wanna destroy moveon.org because well, who wouldn't? :P

  22. Re:no it does. on Mozilla SSL Policy Considered Bad For the Web · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SSL isn't meant just for encrypting pages, it's meant for verifying identity also.

    By all means, suggest to us a way to encrypt a website that doesn't involve SSL.

    There are two solutions to this problem.

    1. create your own CA and tell your customers to import the CA by clicking here (before putting them in ssl mode). It's really not much trouble to set up your own CA.

    Right, so you'd favor asking users left and right to add CA's from potentially very insecure sources (how well does the average website secure their root cert?). If this would actually catch on I'd predict the entire system to crumble in a few years.

    2. buy a cheap ass certificate from godaddy for $10. Your domain registration likely costs this much as well, but we don't complain about that, do we? The service is actually worth $10.

    Without the above, the ff3 presentation is correct, the certificate is bad and should not be trusted. Otherwise you're in real danger of man in the middle attacks.

    I'd agree it's not that costly. However FF3 did go a little bit over the top on self-signed certificates. I need to use those from time to time and having to click through like 5 times before even getting to the site is a major hassle. Sure show a warning, show some visual cues, but there's something like too much of a good thing. If a user really can't tell the difference between a self-signed certificate after giving them a warning and using completely different icons/colours from other SSL-sites, perhaps that user needs his head examined.

    Even if I make allowances for stupidity, I can't see how FF3 is now more secure. If someone is willing to ignore all those visual cues and warnings, they're probably equally willing to accept a scammer's word that their browser is buggy and they just need to click through five times "because of a configuration bug" or something like that. Phisher mail could start including detailed instructions on how to bypass firefox's warnings, I bet they will at some point.

  23. Re:You cannot outlaw bots on Blizzard Tries To Forbid Open Sourcing Glider · · Score: 1

    True, but it's a lot more moral. :-)

  24. Re:You cannot outlaw bots on Blizzard Tries To Forbid Open Sourcing Glider · · Score: 1

    No single player WoW !

    Actually, there are private servers floating around that you can download and play on by yourself. You can make yourself lvl 200+, get all the best gear, one shot all the major bosses, you name it. But interest in it is low, as can be expected, as people generally cheat to one-up someone else.

  25. Re:I have a solution.... on Blizzard Tries To Forbid Open Sourcing Glider · · Score: 1

    The idea behind grinding (and timesinks in general) is that you have a cheap way of keeping your players occupied. Various materials for crafting, gold, etc etc etc. In fact, why bother with creating actual content when you can keep people busy for an hour or two a day by killing the same type of monsters over and over.

    No the idea behind grinding is that getting everything thrown into your lap doesn't involve any sense of accomplishment, so a certain type of grinding must always be present to keep the game interesting. You have to have a ladder to climb to actually enjoy the game. That's also what makes it hard to completely turn-about the design of an MMO as the GP seems to be suggesting.

    Most of the people in this discussion are missing that Blizzard themselves acknowledged the problems with grinding and cut down on it considerably. The kind of grinding that Glider does for you, perpetually killing mobs in a small spot, is almost completely unnecessary now and surely there are better ways to spend your time.

    Most of the stuff it automates is stuff that people don't need to do but they want that nice shiny fishing pet or 5k gold to buy an epic mount or whatever and they don't feel like working for it. So they falsify the game, immediately making a mockery of the effort other people put in. It's like climbing some rockface, only to get to the top and some guy standing there drinking a slushie saying "oh why didn't you just take the elevator?". He doesn't understand that the point wasn't climbing some random rock, but the feeling of having climbed that rock.

    Don't even get me started on the people claiming you have to grind all possible reputation factions. The whole point is that you don't have to. If your OCD is really that bad, just stop playing MMO's.