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User: bcmm

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  1. Re:zero punctuation on Six Months Without Adobe Flash, and I Feel Fine · · Score: 1

    This seems completely weird to me. It's like having a free website, optimised for IE6 at 1024x768, and charging people for modern, standards-compliant HTML.

  2. Re:Microsoft controls compoter booting on UEFI Secure Boot Pre-Bootloader Rewritten To Boot All Linux Versions · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's a misdirection. We direct our anger at untouchable faceless corporations instead of individuals who are actually vulnerable at election time.

  3. Re:OK, 35 years, then... on MIT Warned of a JSTOR Death Sentence Due To Swartz · · Score: 1

    (To make my point slightly clearer, the Daily Mail is well-known in the UK for regular articles comparing prison to a luxury holiday and demanding harsher sentances for everything.)

  4. Re:OK, 35 years, then... on MIT Warned of a JSTOR Death Sentence Due To Swartz · · Score: 1

    Better source, please. The Daily Mail is aimed directly at people who want harsher treatmeant for other people in general, and regularly lies to please its audience.

  5. Re:micro USB on New Arduino Due Brings More Power To the Table · · Score: 1

    MicroUSB is tiny, so you can build tiny devices. What is wrong with a microUSB to USB cable?

    Mice don't have USB ports either, because they have an integral cable. MicroUSB is the best way to put a non-fixed USB interface on a small device.

  6. Re:The Absolute Death of Software Copyright? on Linus Torvalds Will Answer Your Questions · · Score: 1

    If it is because you hope to use lack of an ABI to force drivers to be open what do you say to the fact that the most stable graphics driver in Linux is Nvidia, who is closed?

    Having used it and also used the open Radeon driver, the answer is that it simply isn't. It may be the best-performing Linux graphics driver, but it is far from the most stable.

  7. Re:Good. on Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic · · Score: 1

    There needs to be *at a minimum* public education on this issue, and if nobody is willing to do that, then handheld lasers need to be outright banned for unlicensed individuals.

    Or you could have what the UK has: laser devices regulated according to laser class. Anybody can have one of those less-than-5mW red pointers that people use for presentations, while potentially blinding brighter green lasers are theoretically harder to obtain.

    It's a good system, since you can't actually harm someone with a normal laser pointer, since you blink before any damage is done, like unexpectedly seeing the sun. However, in practise it is too easy to mail-order a green laser from Hong Kong.

  8. Re:And, cue shitstorm.. on Three Mile Island Shuts Down After Pump Failure · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be fair to the shitstorm, there are historical reasons to be a bit worried when Exelon describe something as a planned release of steam with minimal release of radioactive material. Lets hold out for the NRC report.

  9. Re:You've really never heard of VNC? on Ask Slashdot: Options For FOSS Remote Support Software? · · Score: 1

    And use a reverse VNC connection (where the viewer listens on a port for the "server" to open a connection). That way, you only need to worry about your own NAT router. There are some VNC servers that allow you to create a nice package that when run automatically opens a reverse connection, which, combined with a dynamic DNS service for your own network, could give an idiot-proof way to get things started.

  10. Re:But then on Advance Warning System For Solar Flares Hinges On Surprising Hypothesis · · Score: 1

    Also, not everything nuclear invoves decay and radioactivity. This is why NMR had to be rebranded as MRI.

  11. Re:Direct3D vs OpenGL on OpenGL Version 4.3 Released · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OpenGL never caught on? That must be why iOS and Android gaming is dead and most new mobile games are written in XNA and released only for Windows Phone 7 these days.

  12. Re:I'm Swiss and I wonder... on Swiss Voters Reject Book Price Controls · · Score: 1

    Price-fixing IP cartels?

  13. Re:Mitigating factors on Shmoocon Demo Shows Easy, Wireless Credit Card Fraud · · Score: 1

    Move more than about 5 cm away from the card and it won't read.

    ... if for some reason you are a fraudster with some sort of objection to violating specs and potentially created temporary interference. Otherwise, crank up the power!

  14. Re:Just keep calm... on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way To Deal With Roving TSA Teams? · · Score: 1

    Being the richest guy in the world makes you a target, whether you deserve it or not (see sept 11).

    Are people still seriously saying that 911 happened because "they hate our standard of living"?

    I am in no way saying it was deserved, but it also wasn't motivated by the US's wealth. Its policies in the middle east, especially the unquestioning support for Israel, are much more relevant.

  15. Re:I got my beta invite yesterday on Microsoft To Offer Flight For Free This Spring · · Score: 1

    For those who don't want to go through the comments themselves: DCTech started posting two days ago and has criticised Firefox, Chrome and Apple. No criticism of Microsoft; in fact IE saved the web and "IE9 is a completely good browser" today (CSS is overrated).

    He also persistantly uses what looks like Reddit speak. We "mod posts up", not "up-mod posts".

  16. Re:Just like with TinyURL... on Malicious QR Code Use On the Rise · · Score: 1

    Supposed the website you were trying to access was hacked?

  17. Re:Bending USB the spec? on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 1

    The choice of microUSB rather than USB-B or something is probably because there is a spec for high power over microUSB. It's used in the new standard mobile phone chargers. IIRC, a dumb charger can short the D+ and D- pins; indicating that it is too stupid to operate a real bus or do enumeration, but a device is welcome to draw as much current as it wants (with voltage possibly dropping if it draws to much; like a battery).

    Perhaps somebody more knowledgable could correct some details or link us to the spec.

  18. Re:Unsuitable for teaching on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 1

    Teaching ARM is the equivalent to teaching Visual Basic Programming, common but very closed architecture.

    Uh, what?

    No; teaching people to program C on an ARM Linux machine is the equivalent of teaching people to program C on an x86 Linux machine: the CPU is proprietary, but who cares?

    The cross-compiling thing is a red-herring too; you'd just run GCC on the RaspberryPi and for educational purposes it would be plenty fast enough.

  19. Re:Design flaw? on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 1

    Are you by any chance an N900 owner?

  20. Re:Reality is coming on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But why is it front page news every time these guys pass gas?

    Mostly because they're being very open about the development process on their blog, meaning you see stories about stages which wouldn't be announced publicly in comparable projects.

  21. Re:Arduino, anyone? on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 1

    It has onboard storage via the SD card slot; and USB for external storage (the only external storage anybody really uses now anyway). You just need a mouse, a keyboard, and a monitor, which plenty of PCs don't come with.

  22. Re:Arduino, anyone? on Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled · · Score: 1

    The Arduino is an advanced microcontroller. The RaspberryPi is a minimilist Linux computer. Not an embedded thingy like iPodLinux either; it's capable of running a real, conventional distro with glibc, Xorg, etc.

  23. Re:How to Leave GoDaddy on GoDaddy Backs SOPA · · Score: 1

    December the 29th is Move Your Domain day. Be sure to tell GoDaddy why you are leaving.

  24. Re:KDE. on Ask Slashdot: Assembling a Linux Desktop Environment From Parts? · · Score: 1

    Setting up Plasma the way you like it can be very much like building a desktop from parts, albiet parts that are specifically designed to work with KDE. There are alternative taskbars, menus, clocks, launchers etc.

    I have a vertical panel with various widgets, nothing but a picture on my desktop, and launchers and a directory (not~/Desktop) on the dashboard, for example. None of this is the default.

  25. Re:Long-Term? on Linux Mint Developer Forks Gnome 3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The goal of this fork is to use the improved Gnome 3 internals and put a more familiar Gnome 2 interface on it.

    TFA actually says that it is a fork of the Gnome shell rather than the entirety of Gnome. Presumably, it would be built against and installed along with the official libraries and applications. Just a single component being replaced; a bit like changing the default browser to Firefox.