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User: tabrnaker

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  1. Re:Sad on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1
    I'm mexican and so are all my ancestors since there's been a Mexico, i'm pretty sure i understand the culture.

    Computer courses here do not compare to anything given in the states or canada, unless you go to a very expensive internationally recognized University which a huge section of the population can't even dream to afford.

  2. Re:Sad on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1
    I'm pretty sure that the mexican government would not go for linux regardless of what any other country does. First, no kickbacks, and second, how do you skim money from support services when there aren't any support services and third, all the computer geeks/nerds i've met here are far behind in terms of education and hacking skills.

    Though it would make a lot of sense since all the computers i've seen in governement offices are ancient things and look basically just like terminals, something Linux would be excellent for.

    I've often thought of working in the government to help introduce change, but seeing how 'American' everything is here i won't give up my Canadian citizenship to bang my head against a wall.

    Besides, the whole free thing hardly means anything here when everybody just pirates things. Still puzzled why there's always police at the tianguis yet they do nothing to the ~12 stands of pirated movies/video games/music. I'm a little too afraid of what would happen if i asked them.

  3. Re:an outlaw of balloons on The Outfall of a Helium-3 Crisis · · Score: 1

    Simple, they buy it from Canada.

  4. Re:Unfortunately they do on Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com · · Score: 1
    I agree with you. However, i sense a certain amount of unecessary vehemence in your words. i could be wrong, text and all that, or it could be an issue very dear to your heart. In which case, i hope those you love and hold dearly haven't been affected by the naive ignorance of the crazies of the church world.

    After all, i understand as some one who had been called 'son of satan' since i was about 7 to 18 just because some kids claimed to have seen me levitating on certain occassions during my meditations.

  5. Re:Already made it months ago on BitTorrent and Khan Academy To Distribute Education · · Score: 1

    I think he was already asking somebody from another country to help him (in fact he asked the source directly) and that person just blew him off with some naive response about changing his government.

  6. Re:Hate meets hate? on Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com · · Score: 1
    Could be, could be, though the bible leaves the return of christ open for such an interpretation.

    In the return, the Christ (translation Messiah, no, it's not Jesus' last name) comes not as the lamb but as the lion, and justice will be meted out by his right hand (the hand of aggression) carrying a sword.

    Of course, that can always be interpreted that the returning Christ was Mohammed and we are in the midst of seeing the conflict between those who follow more strictly the teachings, and not the church which wrote a new set of rules and threw out all the old ones.

    May we live in interesting times.

    BTW, i belong to no religion. I do find it important to keep on eye out for what all the religions are doing (including the religion of science) because there are always wackos who will go to extremes, and regardless of whether i believe, THEY believe, and that's all that's needed to make it 'true'(self-fulfilling prophecies and what-not).

  7. Re:WBC are Professional Trolls on Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't that be God Hates Shellfish? Though i think the translation is more along the lines of creepy crawly that lives in darkness.

  8. Re:Unfortunately they do on Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com · · Score: 2

    Actually, the bible doesn't say sodomy is against god's will. It says that God considers it a SIN. The original definition of sin was not that the act was evil (evil being an invention by the church as well as the personification of 'enemy'[satan] into the devil) but that the act could lead to undesirable effects.

  9. Re:This is a republican distraction technique on Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government · · Score: 1
    Someone mod parent up. There has always been some big hoopla story after any news of how the conservatives are raping and pillaging canada.

    I actually got so disappointed by my fellow canadians allowing such bullshit to go on that i left the country.

    Canadians may have a lot of heart and lay down their lives to protect freedom in every war out there (almost, so damn proud of Chretien basically telling Bush to shove his "you're either with us or against us" where the sun don't shine over Iraq), but they're also extremely naive and stupid when someone tells them to bend over you're going to enjoy this (basically all natural resource exports to the US)

  10. Re:I'm not afraid to open my email ... on Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government · · Score: 1

    Security by Obscurity was there motto. The first time i got fired by them was because i pointed out holes in their security which they didn't want to address because it costs money to do that. Of course they had to rehire me once i went to the ombudsman and the union. I gave up trying to improve their computer security after they fired/rehired me for the third time.

  11. Re:The REAL story on Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government · · Score: 1

    Ah, gotta love the stupidy of the canadian government. I remember when we bought some stupid search engine technology from the US gov't (that should have been a clue). Problem with the search engine, doesn't actually search documents, only meta-data. Problem with that, virtually no documents had meta-data. Absolutely useless for any of us who worked there, so everybody had their own link farms.

  12. Re:The REAL story on Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government · · Score: 1
    I used to work for the canadian gov't. This would never fly because most of the admins can't wrap their head around something like PGP let alone the non-techs.

    Non-techs can't even seem to follow the rule of locking their computers when not at their desks. They tried to be more secure by adding short expirations for passwords without the ability to recycle passwords and passwords having to be different for each system. So what happens? A plethora of yellow stickies on monitors with everybodies latest passwords.

    Hell, when i was there the tech people couldn't even understand what a video card with digital output was, 'it's a computer so it's all digital right?'.

    Besides, this is nothing special, this happened more than once every notable holiday where people send those stupid digital cards which have always been expressly forbidden. My guess is that the big story is 'China bad man!', and probably only because they've finally learned how to trace attacks one hop backwards.

    It's all propaganda against China, because of course all these chinese hackers breaking into govts everywhere are too stupid to use a proxy. Geeks shouldn't fall for this type of propaganda, but the majority will. The question is, why all the propaganda against China? My slightly conspiratorial view is that it will make it so much easier for the states to default on everything it owes China, but i guess we'll see in a few years.

  13. Re:Why even connect sensitive computers to the net on Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government · · Score: 1
    Let me explain. It's the Canadian Government.

    Maybe i should elaborate, i used to work for the Canadian Government. The salaries that they offer computer programmers is about the same salary they offer to somebody whose job is to get and put away paper files. So about 2 times less than a code monkey would get in the private sector, and about 4-5 times less than a good programmer would receive. Seriously.

    So what happens is most of the programmers and most of the programs get written in VB, yes pathetic i know. Security is virtually non-existant. I actually got let go the first time (got fired 3 times and quit once, gotta love their stupidity) because i was seen as a security threat because i knew more about the computers there than the fresh out of school computer grads. Not your normal grads, but the ones who got the degree because they thought that's where the money is and don't even own computers at home. Yes, tech admins who can't even assemble their own computers.

  14. Re:I think Beck has started to believe his own con on Glen Beck Warns Viewers Not To Use Google · · Score: 1

    False. Only certain sects do, one of the earliest splits in the church was due to the creation of the trinity. Trinity was introduced by the Roman Catholics to put the people in their place, i.e., make Jesus special unlike all other humans, regardless of how many times Jesus said that all humans are sons of god.

  15. Re:Command And Conquer on Chinese Hackers Strike Energy Companies · · Score: 1

    Well, they also have that other thing where the US is in debt up to their eyeballs with them.

  16. Re:It had to happen, and probably won't help. on Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the tip. If Nokia sends me a replacement instead of a refund (i hope not with this news) i'll be sure to remember that.

  17. Re:Meego and Symbian aren't dead just yet on Nokia and Microsoft Make Smartphone Alliance · · Score: 1

    Just remember to baby the usb connector. Worst design ever, attached only by the 4 very thin, very fragile pieces of metal. Mine broke 3 months after purchase, and still waiting 1.5 months now to see what Nokia will do about it. Now i just wish i could get a refund.

  18. Re:Thank goodness for Canada on Leaked Cables Reveal US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated · · Score: 1
    We don't have unrest here. You might be referring to all the poor people fighting over a chance to provide drug addicted US'ians with their fix. That's a bit of a different story.

    Then we have a president who's learning from the states about the profiitability of running a war on drugs, even though it's currently reaping in less money than the cartels were offering the gov't every year to just let them provide drugs to the US who so desperately want them.

  19. Re:Thank goodness for Canada on Leaked Cables Reveal US Thinks Saudi Oil Reserves May Be Overstated · · Score: 1

    That would be funny... if the US gov't didn't already have a commissioned study to do exactly that when the shit starts to hit the fan. Well, BC/Alberta anyways. Seems for resources like gold and silver Mexico is much easier to annex.

  20. Re:Insect Brains on How Machine Learning Will Change Augmented Reality · · Score: 1
    Could be wrong, but i do recall that the they have mapped out an earth worms nervous system, a bit of a stretch to call it a brain though.

    Ant's aren't easy because you can't really view them as individuals.

  21. Re:Still the future? on How Machine Learning Will Change Augmented Reality · · Score: 1
    With the thermostat example, you're saying that a human is intelligent because it can choose to not lower the temperature at night even though it would save energy while the thermostat would have to always lower the temperature to save energy.

    So basically your definition of Intelligence is the ability to choose to act non-intelligently?

  22. Re:Still the future? on How Machine Learning Will Change Augmented Reality · · Score: 1

    Show me an AI that learns to play Chess all on its own starting from nothing but the board and pieces, then I'll consider it intelligent.

    Umm, can you point ANY human that can learn chess just starting from nothing but the board and pieces. You do realize that you have to teach humans how to play chess as well.

    Show me a human who could do that and i wouldn't call them Intelligent, i would call them psychic!

    It's pretty trivial to teach a computer the rules of chess and have the computer build a database of moves on it's own, actually a lot simpler and a lot quicker than having a human do exactly the same thing. It might take a lot of work to come up with a computer that beats grandmasters all the time, but a trivial chess learning program will easily beat more than half the human population, if not closer to 90% or upwards. Nature actually does a lot worse since if you just taught all humans the rules and nothing else they wouldn't get very far, hence the reason that there are books out there that are basically databases of moves and algorithms for humans.

    Perhaps the problem is that you think that humans exhibit intelligence which is rarely the case.

  23. Re:wow on Cisco Linksys Routers Still Don't Support IPv6 · · Score: 1
    Well, considering that there are no plans to switch to IPv6 even though nobody can deny that is absolutely necessary, then yes.

    Now, even when the switch does happen, i'm guessing most isps will have IPv6 connections to the internet but may use IPv4 to assign addressess to their customers, after all, which ISP is going to want to replace every single cable modem out there with a new upgraded version? So yes, it'll still work.

    Of course, in true slashdot fashion i have no idea if any of this is true, just thought i'd give an alternate un-research opinion to the ones you've already gotten :)

  24. Re:Really? on Only 39% Curse At Their Computers? · · Score: 1
    I may be the only one, but i find the act of speaking into pieces of plastic for hours baffling as well and try to limit such exchanges to pure data transfer.

    I just prefer talking to real people i can see i guess.

    I basically view all posts to slashdot as talking to myself even though i view that behaviour as crazy if done out loud :)

  25. Re:Alternate Theory on Only 39% Curse At Their Computers? · · Score: 1
    No, really good programmers laugh at themselves.

    If you can't laugh at code you've written in the past, you haven't grown as a programmer.