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User: Spy+der+Mann

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  1. Re:Time to move search engine companies on PROTECT IP Act Follows In COICA's Footsteps · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Why should a non-american trying to search a access *outside* the U.S., limited to a list of sites approved by the U.S. law? Just because he's using an american search engine?

    This sucks. It seems it wasn't enough for the U.S. to destroy the global economy, they want to destroy the internet, too?

  2. Re:Darth Vader, bring balance to the force on Is Process Killing the Software Industry? · · Score: 2

    I completely agree. I've come to believe that Agile development is a fad invented by some marketing genius to get big loads of buck from gullible enterprises. While TDD might be useful for, say... a linux kernel module, there's very little use for it in your standard "make me a module which reports in detail our budget surplus and deficits" project.

    It's much more efficient to hire a small team of beta-testers available on-demand ("Jim wrote this new model, can you test it please?") than wasting hundreds of man hours per-month in "agile" development.

  3. Re:Experienced only? on Why the New Guy Can't Code · · Score: 1

    It doesn't compute because they're brainwashed by Enterprise flim flam. "Degree this! Company that!" They don't understand shit except for whatever a company shows them with nice colorful pie charts. But here's a hint: There ARE good companies who exactly know what they're looking for. At the company where I work at, we give candidates a skill test: Make a blog application in PHP without using any external libraries (except if you've developed them yourself). So, you got a degree in web development, huh? Let's see if you really know what your title says you should know.

  4. Re:Wall Street rules on The Companies Who Support Censoring the Internet · · Score: 1

    Diversified investment portfolios make boycotts virtually worthless.

    Wrong. The diversified investment portfolios only give money to the current shareholders and the "financial advisors" (read as: investment salesmen). When you buy stock, you don't buy it from the company, but from the previous stockholder (unless it happens to be from a current company associate). The companies whose stock is public, ALREADY got their money from their Initial Public Offerings.

    Boycotts do affect companies, as you don't affect their initial invetment, but their cashflow. Boycott a company long enough (and with enough people), and then they'll start worrying. By the way, with negative publicity, their stock values will decrease, and the stock the current owners are already holding will see their investment in jeopardy. The trick is to have your boycott reach enough people.

    Alternate suggestion: Publish the negative stuff on twitter (I am not a lawyer, so be careful with libel lawsuits).

  5. New Microsoft Live Hotmail on Some Hotmail Accounts Wiped · · Score: 1

    Get it while it's hot!

  6. Warning: SPOILER on Tron: Legacy — Too Much Imagination Required? · · Score: 1

    I think the only part that I got interested in was Quorra becoming human. They could make a WHOLE movie about that, did you know? What does it mean to be human? Why is pain so awful? What are these things called emotions? Et cetera.

    I expected to see more stuff about "the user has superpowers" that Flynn displayed in the original TRON (after all, he's the USER). But I guess they chickened out from being compared to Matrix just because the user can do things that programs can't.

    Anyway, the 3D was awesome and I got out of the theater with a smile. It was a nice weekend.

  7. Re:Unrealistic time to crack a password? on The Case For Lousy Passwords · · Score: 2

    In addition to salting the password, I design my systems to sleep for one second after each failed password attempt, and for 3 seconds before booting the guy off. That should take care of brute force attacks.

  8. Re:More security in what way? on DNSSEC Comes To .Net Zone Today · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was thinking more or less the same thing.

    The point is that a good domain name system implementation needs to be secure against protocol attacks. DNSSEC secures it against hackers, but makes it more vulnerable to political attacks. Because DNS was designed to be centralized.

    The problem with currently emerging alternatives is that they're designed to be decentralized, making them vulnerable to protocol attacks. However, a good p2p implementation would use an underlying hierarchy based on the anonymity of the name authorities, and they would be able to establish further authority points. But that protocol isn't even invented yet as far as I recall, and it would require a hell lot of thought and encryption.

    In any case, more cryptographic security is better, not worse. If you want someone to blame, it's the inventors of DNS for establishing a US-based name authority. Oh wait, the Internet was invented in the US, by none other than the DARPA. Go figure.

  9. Welcome to the corporate internet on PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service · · Score: 2

    I guess this is the time when the veil's opened and we realize that the web designed by Tim Berners-Lee, is dead.

    The Internet has stopped being the land of free-speech as we know it. At any time that corporate or government interests are against free speech, they just hit the political off-switch. If someone decides to install internet routers and domain systems in another country, expect that country to be labelled "terrorist" and invaded by those with power.

    Expect peer-to-peer information sources and services to be outlawed. Guess the cyberpunks authors got it right after all.

  10. Tagged "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" on Hong Kong Team Stores 90GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria · · Score: 1

    I read TFA, and they're storing the data in the Bacteria's DNA. I assume there is a minimum chance of this happening, but if somehow the bacteria mutate and reproduce, perhaps with horizontal gene transfer, I don't know what could happen to existing species. What if suddenly one gene is changed and suddenly harmless bacteria become harmful?

    Seriously, have they done a study on the safety of this method? Worst of all, we're not talking about a species which can easily be handled and captured if it ever escapes. We're talking about freaking bacteria.

  11. Re:Ergo oil on Life Found In Deepest Layer of Earth's Crust · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA. (Or the summary, for that matter). The oil there is produced ABIOTICALLY. i.e. from chemical reactions that have nothing to do with dinosaurs, OR bacteria. That, and the bacteria found there don't produce, but eat the hydrocarbons.

  12. Character assassination on Swedish Court Orders Detention of Wikileaks Founder Assange · · Score: 1

    That's what this is. When he gets arrested, the news won't say "The swedish authorities have finally captured wikileaks founder Julian Assagne, using 'rape' and 'molestation' to get an arrest order".

    They'll say: "Wikileaks founder Julian Assagne has been convicted for rape. " Then they'll make a story of how corrupted wikileaks is and how its founders are a bunch of criminals. Of course, I'm sure Fox News will add some spice to please the masses.

  13. Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed on Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org? · · Score: 1

    LibreOffice has the spanish word "libre" in it. I can't use that either because I strongly condemn the actions during the Spanish Inquisition.

    Java, OpenOffice, MySQL are all GPL or better and no one can change that.

    Good point. We might persuade them to name it in Esperanto. Libera-oficejo all the way! :D

  14. Re:WebM versus H.264 on 80% of Daily YouTube Videos Now In WebM · · Score: 1

    The problem with H.264 isn't Mozilla. It's patents. The Mozilla guys are just being cautious (remember Unisys' GIF patent?)

  15. Re:Difference between healthy and unhealthy... on In Praise of Procrastination · · Score: 1

    About your anecdote 1, obviously there's bad management. That's what project managers are for, you know, to keep track of to-dos and if any of them require contacting the client. Arranging meetings, etc. Have you arranged that meeting yet? No? Well do it, now. How many projects are there? Does the company have a list of todos for each project? You know, like using Microsoft Project (TM) to keep track of each one of them?

    The company I currently work for has weekly meetings for each single project. Don't get me wrong, these aren't "meetings with powerpoing presentations etc.", but operational meetings. How much we've advanced, if there are any problems with development, unknown bugs, need feedback, things that really concern us developers.

      As much as those meetings seem to be a pain in the ass, they're necessary to keep the engine going. Sometimes I've found that my approach to a certain project was going in a completely wrong direction. True, it's good to let developers work, but don't give them the full responsibility for the project. Programmers have so many things to work in that we lose track of things like customer support.

    In other words, if a worker ends up procrastinating and delaying a project, here's some advice for the company: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

    Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but sometimes I have to get these things out of my system.

  16. Re:You got it all wrong! on UK Wants ISPs To Be Responsible For Third Party Content Online · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You need to think of this from the child's point of view! We are doing this to protect THEM!

    Scrap that. We need to protect the internet FROM them!

  17. Re:Semaphore towers on Building a Telegraph Using Only Stone Age Materials · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was just thinking the same thing. Take a look at this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore

    In the stone age, you can have fire. So with a little animal grease or wood, you can have torches. SO far, so good, right? Now, make up a good semaphore code and easily to transmit numbers. Maybe you'd need to use three torches instead of two. Hey, with a little rope, wood you could make a mechanism to make the torches spell binary. (Up: One, Down: Zero. Perhaps you need a "ground" torch to show the zero signal).

    So what happens when you can easily transmit numbers over a certain distance? Assume you have enough friends with semaphore towers. You could transmit numbers over a really long distance.

    But let's not stop there. Assign each tower a unique number and certain flags for "give me your id", "acknowledge", etc. Now you got a fucking protocol.

    Now invent some signs to tell the operator to give the message to a certain tower's id. Now give the operator a series of tables (you can provide them stone tablets or something) telling which towers can send a message to which towers. Congratulations, you just invented routing.

    Given enough operators and towers, and train the operators to handle the protocols, and congratulations! YOU JUST INVENTED THE FUCKING INTERNET.

    How's that for stone age?

  18. Re:Opening cocoons on Genetically Engineered Silkworms Spin Spider Silk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, when silk worms finally do make silk as strong as spiders' silk, then will those silk moths be able to open their own cocoons?

    That's a good thing. It's literally embedding a natural limiter for a genetic experiment. The stronger the silk, the less probable the organism will be able to escape and reproduce outside. If the thing does reproduce, I expect the offspring that will make it will be the ones with weaker silk, bringing balance to nature again. Unless, of course, stronger silk gives them an unknown reproductive advantage, which I really hope doesn't happen. (Crap, now I really got scared).

  19. Re:Maybe, but that's not what those studies say on Study Finds Most Would Become Supervillians If Given Powers · · Score: 1

    One of my favorite examples of this trend is Yagami Light, from Death Note. He is given possibly the most powerful and badass superpower ever invented. He decides it to use it to clean the world of criminals - and hence, he becomes one but that's just a technicality, right?

    Things start turning dark(er?) when he has to get rid of the police who are after him, when his initial plan consisted of only killing the bad guys. Finally he resorts to killing his own father to save his ass. All in the name of the greater good.

  20. Re:And if the information is wrong or fake on "Pre-Crime" Comes To the HR Dept. · · Score: 2, Funny

    The exact factors use to calculate FICO score depend on the person."

    Meanwhile, inside the FICO facilities...

    An alarm buzz sounds. A pigeon grabs a white card from a stack. Next to it, an operator reads the card and types it in a nearby computer.

    A few miles away...

    Sorry, sir, your FICO score tells us you're disqualified.

  21. Re: "...what's known as absolute zero," on Scientists Using Lasers To Cool Molecules · · Score: 1

    Because most of the population doesn't know enough about the topic to understand

    Yes, but this is slashdot. We DO know what absolute zero is. This story doesn't belong in here, it belongs in digg or reddit. No wonder the submitter is an anonymous reader.

  22. Re:It's made of magic on Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword · · Score: 1

    Is "I'm looking for the man who killed my father" a valid reason in Spain?

    Only if your name is Iñigo Montoya.

  23. Re:Sigh on DRM-Free Games Site GOG.com Gone · · Score: 1

    I second this. Currently I've been exposed to Starcraft (the original!) by Blizzard. It's good news that the game got so popular that Blizzard themselves patched their latest version so you wouldn't need to put the damn CD in there.

    So now I'm looking for a place where I can purchase the product legally and get my legit key to play in battle.net.

    So, with or without DRM, it's the game that makes me want to buy it. Still, kinda sucks that Blizzard are so DRM-obsessed.

  24. Re:VTEC kicked in on Honda's Exoskeletons Help You Walk Like Asimo · · Score: 1
  25. Re:The more important question on Review: Halo: Reach · · Score: 1

    I thought the project had been retaken a couple of months ago.

    Hail to the king, baby! 2K Games and Gearbox Software today announced that Duke Nukem Forever will make its long-awaited debut in 2011, when it will ship on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Attendees of this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo will be able to go hands-on with the game at the 2K Booth (booth #3417), and see that it is very much alive. With this news, we are closing our Duke forums. However, fear not, as you can continue to talk with your fellow Duke fans in the new Dukem Nukem forums on GearboxSoftware.com.

    Source: http://www.3drealms.com/