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User: ntufar

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Comments · 81

  1. Re:Pull the Plug? on National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity · · Score: 1

    By international maritime law, if you accept help form anyone on the seas, he ship that helped you is entitled to half of your ship and cargo. In many cases ship owners let the ships sink and get insurance money rather accepting help.

    But if you put the lives of people on board in danger, it is a totally different matter. You may be criminally prosecuted.

  2. Re:Charge for support on National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity · · Score: 1

    If you are in a life-threatening situation, the rescue is free of charge. That's what I was told. The fee is there to discourage abuse.

  3. Re:Charge for support on National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity · · Score: 1

    Bear in mind that it is Europe, everything is much more expensive here. Gasoline is 1.45 euro per liter, which makes 1.45 x 3.79 x 1.35 = $7.42 per gallon. Plus taxes, plus search, plus rescue, plus they might send more copters just to be sure.

    On the other hand, the bill might be artificially inflated to serve as a deterrent and an example.

    Alternatively it could be an exaggeration. This story sounds more like an urban legend than a fact.

  4. Re:Charge for support on National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is how it works here, in Greece.

    If you issued a distress signal (MAYDAY) from a boat, and you are not sinking, the Coastal Guard charges you for the helicopter ride. Never tried it myself but people say it is in 50,000 - 100,000 euro range.

  5. Re:25 years and only 7 versions? on The Secret Origin of Windows · · Score: 1
    1. Windows 1
    2. Windows 2
    3. Windows 3
    4. Windows 95 / 98
    5. Windows 2000 / XP
    6. Windows Vista
    7. Windows 7

    My current Windows Vista, reports this:

    Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002] Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

  6. The Stock Market on The Grown-Up Video Game · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not on topic but I'd want to mention the stock market as a good game for adults. I played computer games in my teens and twenties but now, in my thirties I find them quite boring, predictable and repetitive.

    For three years now I picked up a new hobby: stock market. I watch CNBC, I read business newspapers, i follow a ton of finance blogs, I think, I make hard decisions, I put my money at risk, I master my impulses and emotions. I throughly enjoy it.

  7. Re:Independence Day on Korean DDoS Bots To Self-Destruct · · Score: 2, Informative

    North Korean news agency (http://twitter.com/kcna_dprk) keeps celebrating 15th Anniversary of Demise of Kim Il Sung. Maybe it is this one.

  8. Re:Is Anyone Acutally Still Using Firefox? on Et Tu, Mozilla? Firefox 3 To Get Privacy Mode · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The AC is a troll, but link to Privoxy is relevant and informative.

  9. Re:Actually, much of it is accessable. on Dilbert Goes Flash, Readers Revolt · · Score: 5, Informative

    I get it using RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dilbertdailystrip/ Works like magic.

  10. True for Athens, Greece on Microsoft Cuts Vista Price In 70 Countries · · Score: 1
    Yes, it is true. I saw it with my own eyes last week in Carrefour market in Athens, Greece. Look for yourself, a year ago 459 Eur, last week 50 Eur:

    http://tufar.com/vista/

  11. Re:Ignore Putin at your peril on The Kremlin Tightens Its Grip on the Internet · · Score: 1

    You are greatly exaggerating Putin's abilities if you compare him to Hitler.

    Hitler actively pursued his goals as soon as he got the power. Wile Putin did not not do anything of interest in seven (!) years (1999 - 2007) of his rule. The stunts he is pulling now are aimed exclusively at people of Russia to impress them before December 2007 parliamentary and next year's presidential elections.

  12. Oracle on Piracy Economics · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oracle has been actively embracing this kind of viral marketing for a long time. They send you free developer's CDs, offer downloads of fully functional latest database and application server products without any restrictions. This is probably a major reason why they are so popular among developers. Their strategy works like this:

    1. Offer database and development tools to developers free of charge
    2. Wait until applications built by these developers get into production
    3. Call and remind that database and development tools are not free
    4. Profit!

  13. Re:VMS file versions someone? on Ext3cow Versioning File System Released For 2.6 · · Score: 1

    Why don't you use svn?

    Frankly, using SVN would be just too much effort for me: I may forget to commit the changes after a day of work; the files are binary .odt files; I need to teach my wife to use it.

    I would rather have a Ext3cow to sit there and so everything for me in background. But, you gave me a good idea. I never thought of using SVN for anything besides source files...
  14. VMS file versions someone? on Ext3cow Versioning File System Released For 2.6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It reminds me of VMS file versions.

    In VMS if you had a file named article.txt, each time you modified and saved it in editor, a new version was created named article.txt;1 article.txt;2 article.txt;3 and so forth. So after a long session of edit and saves you could end up with a hundred copies of file in your directory. A lot of clutter in the directory but easy access to older versions of the files.

    With Ext2cow you basically get the same functionality in a bit different way. By default you see only article.txt file. If you need to access a previous version of the file you need to specify a cryptic code like this: article.txt@10233745. A bit cumbersome but, hey, how often you access older version of your file anyways. Looks better than VMS' approach.

    This filesystem seems like a perfect solution for me as I am writing my Ph.D thesis. Currently I take backup every day and name it thesis20070420.tar.bz2, thesis200070421.tar.bz2, thesis20070422.tar.bz2 and so forth in case I need to go back and see how it looked some time ago.

    However, in my home directory I have a lot of large audio and video files that I would never want to be versioned. I wander if Ext3cow keeps extra copies of the files if I move them around, change file named but do not modify the content. Probably I would have to make a new partition and put my text files I am working on there under Ext3cow and leave my media files on ext3.

  15. IBM business plan at work on Qantas Ditches Linux for AIX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is a good example showing why IBM supports Linux:

    1. Hook up customers on a cheaply solution based on Linux and MySQL.
    2. As customer's data and number of clients grow they will start experiencing scalability problems.
    3. Propose much more scalable, reliable, dependable (and much more expensive) solution on AIX, AS/400, Mainframe.
    4. Profit!

  16. Additional Funding on OLPC to Run Windows, Come to the US · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Good for OLPC and for Linux acceptance.

    Consider: until now we have been running Linux on computers that were designed for Windows. With OLPC it will be the other way around: people will be able to run Windows on a computer designed for Linux! And this project will be partially funded by Microsoft. It is a huge publicity for Linux on Microsoft's expense.

  17. Re:Apache vs IIS on Virtues of Monoculture, Or Why Microsoft Wins · · Score: 0

    You are lucky to not have tried to install a web server (or anything else for that matter) on a mainframe. It would be a *nightmare* for you in comparison with Apache configuration file meddling.

    Guess what, there are toy platforms to play with, like Windows. And there are serious platform for heavy duty work, like Linux or Mainframe z/OS.

  18. Re:What amuses me on The End is Nigh for XP · · Score: 0
  19. Re:Royalty on EU Rejects Microsoft Royalty Proposal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most of what's done in the IT industry on a daily basis, isn't "state of the art" or innovation. When I spend 3 months developing complex web application system for a client, I usually resort to well established best practices, ideas, algorithms, and methods.

    This doesn't mean what I did is worthless and I should be forced to open the sources to anyone for free.

    That was not the point I argued for. Microsoft is asked only to disclose the protocols necessary for third parties to communicate with Microsoft's products. In your analogy, you will be asked to disclose the protocol used to communicate with your application, which is HTTP, and format of the data in your application, which is HTML. Both of them are royalty-free and open standards. If the web application you are talking about is public, it appears that you are benefiting from the openness of HTTP and HTML without paying royalty to their inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. And in the same fashion it does not mean that what Tim Berners-Lee has developed is worthless!

  20. Royalty on EU Rejects Microsoft Royalty Proposal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am not a native English speaker and I read the subject as if Microsoft proposed some kind of royal title to EU bureaucrats or something and they refused.

    As for royalty payments, yes, Microsoft is disclosing interoperability protocols and other who want to used should pay, but... Microsoft's protocols are not stat-of-art technology, it is an implementation of ideas that are commonly used in IT industry. NFS is in essence the same thing as CIFS but with different protocol convention.

    Thus, Microsoft's hiding interface details is not protection of intellectual property but prevention for other vendors to come along and intercommunicate.

    Think of post office. Street addresses are open. Pen, paper and envelops are freely available from different vendors. What if US Post Office would demand a royalty from private currier services and taxi drivers for using of Street naming and house numbering system?

  21. Martian Packest on Building the Interplanetary Internet · · Score: -1

    Bah, Matian Packets have been around for ages.

  22. Re:Hustin, we have a problem on Astronaut to Attempt Spacewalk Record · · Score: -1

    And ... I'm hoping they have some kind of equally precise system for relieving themselves?

    We all know that hey wear diapers.

  23. Timing on 10 Years of Pushing For Linux — and Giving Up · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This guy was pushing Linux for a decade and decided to give up today, a just a few days after Vista announcement? Give me a break

  24. It is ridiculous on RIAA Goes for the Max Against AllofMP3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Russia's yearly gross domestic product is $1.576 trillion. RIAA's claim is little more than that, $1.65 trillion.

  25. No kidding on OLPC's UI To Be Kid-Tested In February · · Score: -1

    No kids were harmed during the test of this product.