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User: RichM

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Comments · 192

  1. Enterprise? on Will Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Stay With MySQL? · · Score: 1

    Who will pay for MySQL enterprise licenses into the future?

    I've never come accross any company, or individual, who actually does this.

  2. Re:wow on Anonymous Takes Down DOJ, RIAA, MPA and Universal Music · · Score: 1

    So there's absolutely nothing unusual there.

    Which is sad, really.

  3. Re:Rename the War on Terror on Help Rename the Department of Homeland Security · · Score: 1

    The 9/11 attacks are more successful than Bin Laden probably ever dreamed of.
    The terrorists have won.

  4. Compression on The Loudness Wars May Be Ending · · Score: 1

    This isn't really "loudness", it's "compression".
    And it's been done for years on commercial radio and, more recently, on TV adverts.
    Every album you listen to has been mastered or mixed with compression of some sort on the master tracks.

    A good example of how things have changed: listen to Violently Happy by Bjork for an example of when Compression is done correctly (i.e. subtle), then listen to any autotuned crap made within the last 2 years (Ke$ha) for an example of when not to do it.

  5. Starcraft 2 on Computer Learns Language By Playing Games · · Score: 1

    A bit off topic, but I was always amused by the fact that when you play versus the computer 1v1 in Starcraft 2, the computer says "gg" when it realises that they can't possibly win.
    And then they surrender.

    I'm just waiting for the days when they start swearing at you and you can't tell the difference between AI and a person.

  6. The better question is... on Is This the Golden Age of Hacking? · · Score: 1

    I think the more important question here is: are they (the companies) being attacked more or are they being more honest about being breached?

  7. Disclaimers at the bottom of emails on Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Other People's Email? · · Score: 1

    Another pet hate of mine is those stupid fucking disclaimers at the bottom of emails sent from companies.
    They usually bang on about "if this email has been sent in error you agree to delete it and inform the sender and must not disclose the contents to a third party... " etc.
    Yeah right...what a load of bollocks.

    I'm not a lawyer but I'm betting that virtually all of this junk is legally unenforceable because to enter into any kind of agreement or legal contract you have to agree to it first - that's why it's called an agreement...
    Email sent by mistake can be considered the same as spam - unsolicited email.

  8. I get this all the time on Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Other People's Email? · · Score: 1

    I've not got a massively popular surname, but thanks to having a FirstInitialSurname@gmail account, I get tons of the stuff.

    I've had the following:

    - Job offer for the Vice President of Communications (ha!) for the Carlyle Group
    - Invoices from storage companies
    - Bills from Qwest Communications which unbelievably include a temporary username/password to log into the customer's account, imagine the fun to be had here
    - Party invitations
    - Bank statements
    - Random email conversations that I have been CC'd into
    - Pictures sent from mobile phones (usually by the owner to what they think is their email address)

    Occasionally I email back, but most of the time I don't bother - it's their own damn fault.

  9. Re:So Mac Users should expect this? on Mac OS Update Detects, Kills MacDefender Scareware · · Score: 1

    Root does matter, but if I were writing Mac malware I would grab their Safari passwords then try a "sudo -i" with each one on the system.
    You can bet most users will use the same password for websites as they do for their computer login.

    Also, I'm not sure how feasible it would be - but it would be theoretically possible to flag a binary setuid by modifying the underlying filesystem or exploit another binary which is already set to +s.
    And then, boom - root access.

  10. Re:So Mac Users should expect this? on Mac OS Update Detects, Kills MacDefender Scareware · · Score: 1

    Ummm, what viruses would it be looking for? There aren't any real, in the wild Mac viruses unless you count Mac Guard, which barely qualifies and is only delivered via trojan that happens to spawn a separate app at run time.

    Windows malware.
    Say your colleague gives you .zip archive full of files that he's worked with on a Windows machine and wants you to review some of the data for whatever reason (imagine they are some kind of self-extracting Powerpoint .exe files along with the source .ppt files).
    One of the files is infected, but you would have no idea until you email your company CEO the archive and infect his machine...
    Most machines in workplaces will share SMB drives between Mac and Windows machines - this is a good example of why you need an AV program for every computer no matter the OS.

  11. Re:Finally... on Steve Ballmer's Head On the Block? · · Score: 1

    Jobs has headed 3 companies to success: Apple (2 different occasions), Next and Pixar. Gates on the other hand is a one-trick pony.

    Which "one trick" would that be?
    Making his fortune at Microsoft or giving away half his money to solve real world problems?

  12. Re:Distro isn't the biggie, it's the scheduler on Ask Slashdot: Best Linux Distro For Computational Cluster? · · Score: 1

    I would choose a 'stable' distro though, so no Fedora, no Ubuntu (even their LTS isn't exactly enterprise grade compared to RedHat / Suse or even Debian stable

    That would depend on if you mean stable = "ancient" or stable = "modern but secure".
    Ubuntu LTS is in the latter category from my experience.

  13. Re:This post is tabloid-fodder on Skype Crashes and Burns In Worldwide Outage · · Score: 1

    The outage* was over by the time Slashdot posted it.

    * except that there never was any outage, just some clients that crashed when they updated their XML config from Skype servers.
    Where I worked we speculated that they were updating the master IP/hostnames for the login servers when beta testing Azure or some other Microsoft datacenter and some clients received corrupted data.

  14. We were affected on Skype Crashes and Burns In Worldwide Outage · · Score: 1

    It affected my company for a short time today from midday to around 14:00 when we became aware of the fix.
    Not everyone was affected but we found it rather odd how this "shared.xml" file would become corrupted and crash Skype just because it was connected to the Internet - there's probably a serious bug waiting to be exploited by malware here.

    As a further note, not all people use Skype for phone calls - we use it for secure IM between office workers.

  15. Infinite Loop on Mac Malware Evolves - No Install Password Required · · Score: 1

    So, when are the bad guys going to invent the "Mac Guard Cleaner" tool?

  16. Re:Pure insanity on Why IT Needs To Change for Gen Z · · Score: 1
    I believe the best way to approach the issue is to:
    • Have a policy in place that wireless access is provided for everybody
    • The wireless only gives access to the Internet
    • The wireless network is on it's own subnet, and access to the main LAN subnet is blocked by the firewall
    • Use VPN to provide access to the LAN subnet for those that require it (and only on company-bought devices)
  17. Re:ssh is the same on Ask Slashdot: FTP Server Honeypots? · · Score: 1

    Not sure why you'd run SSH over the standard port...

  18. Re:Keyboard shortcut? on Google Is Serious, Chrome 13 Hides URL Bar · · Score: 1

    Pff, ALT + D is the old school way.

  19. Tit Recognition on Google Builds Biometric Models of Celebrity Faces · · Score: 1

    The subject is what the world really needs.

  20. Re:Bad summary on PSN Up, And Then Down Again · · Score: 1

    Hmm.. Kotaku - isn't that the site that was hacked recently?

  21. Bypassing the need for Apple Appstore on Boot Linux In Your Browser · · Score: 2

    This would be amazing if if had an eth0 interface with an SSH client.
    That would mean that you could SSH to any of your servers from within Safari on an iPhone with no need for paid-for apps.

  22. Re:Necessity on Google To Offer Chrome OS Notebooks For $20/month · · Score: 1

    As an owner of a Chrome OS laptop, the only way I'd get one of these (or recommend it to a friend) is if they came with unlimited 3G. The 100mb cap is not nearly enough.

    Is that per day?
    I hope so.

  23. Re:This is very bad design on VMware Causes Second Outage While Recovering From First · · Score: 1

    He mostly likely deployed a development version of a script (by pressing Enter) that hadn't been tested properly and contained an error which only manifested itself on the live environment.

  24. What is the point? on iMac Gets Thunderbolt I/O, Quad-core · · Score: 1

    According to Apple, Thunderbolt can do 10Gbps * 2 on dual channels.
    That's faster than any hard disk, raid or even an enterprise-level fibre channel SAN.
    I fail to see why anybody would need a connection that fast - where do you think the data will be going?
    And don't you think it's time to start looking at upgrading the slowest component of a computer instead? The hard disk.

  25. Re:Unstable on Ubuntu Unity: The Great Divider · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu has certainly proven not to be an option for production level servers and is starting to make me question its viability as a work station.

    Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI so your argument is largely irrelevant.
    It (10.04 Server LTS) has certainly proven to be an option in my production environment where we provide web services backed by databases with over 100 million rows in a single table.
    It also beats CentOS by a mile for speed and efficiency, too.