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Comments · 287

  1. Remember to shop around on Gadgets For a Budding Geek? · · Score: 1

    If you find something at Thinkgeek, you might be able to find it for $15 less at Amazon or some other retailer.

  2. Re:The difference between Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man on AI Taught How To Play Ms. Pac-Man · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ms Pac-Man also has a bow.

  3. It was in Sweden on EU Moving to Ban Online Hate Speech · · Score: 1
  4. Re:So rejected patents are now exposed? on USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon · · Score: 1

    18 months after being submitted, the patent application is available for download. So the public can see ideas that may still be rejected.

  5. Re:Sadly he has extremely low chances of winning on Obama Announces for President, Boosts Broadband · · Score: 1

    He says he's Christian, but when it comes to a lot of issues, he'll dance around for a while and land on the liberal side. He's even discredited parts of the Bible that contradict the liberal-view. For examples, he's stated that the book of Romans is obscure.

    He's charsimatic, but he's ultra-liberal.

  6. Good riddance on Gates Foundation To Spend All Its Assets · · Score: -1, Troll

    Any organization that supports Planned Parenthood and their abortion factories, I'm not said to see go.

  7. Re:Bill Wilson may have been the first... on "Dilbert" Creator Gets Voice Back · · Score: 1

    Ahh...I was trying to find the name. I remember hearing about this on Focus on the Family. The recovery was actually caught on tape because his Sunday school classes were always recorded.

  8. Re:Arimaa on ICFP Contest Underway · · Score: 1

    Looking at the game it's only been out for less than three years. If the game was as popular as chess, than stating that there's no good computer program would hold a better argument that the game strategy is unique.

  9. Non-web also on Tracking Your Taxes · · Score: 1

    I used H&R Block's TaxCut program and used the e-mail address of taxcut@. I moved to a different state and bought something at the Things Remembered store in the mall. Later, I get an e-mail to taxcut@:

    Thanks for shopping a Things Remembered in Apache Mall....

    It turns out that H&R Block sold my information to a third party to track me. Things Remembered also used the same third party. So the third party just put the pieces together (and tracked my move) and gave my H&R Block e-mail to Things Remembered.

  10. Re:FORTRAN - The ugly but lovable little SOB on How Not to Write FORTRAN in Any Language · · Score: 1

    My high school taught GW-BASIC that I took my junior year. The BASIC were code was:

    10 PRINT "THIS SUCKS"
    20 GOTO 10

    This was in 1997. I think after I graduated they moved to QuickBasic. We tried to do some fun stuff with GW-BASIC, like using the SOUND function to program simple songs. Or animate a stickman doing the macarena. But all those programs mysteriously disappeared from my HOMEDIR. Curse you admin!

  11. Re:BIODOME on MGM's DVD Class Action Settlement · · Score: 1

    I have a copy of "The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave" that was given as a gag. I'm curious what will happen if I send it in. Did they actually repress all these films or are they hoping that some people won't claim a certain film. Maybe I'll just get a call from MGM that says they'll give me $50 if I don't want Super Dave in the proper aspect ratio.

  12. Dogic on Rubik's Famous Magic Cube in Lego Form · · Score: 1

    If any of you are interested in Rubik's, you may be interested in buying a Dogic. It's a 20-sided puzzles that's going to be re-released by Meffert's if they get enough pre-orders.

    See http://sites.webec.com.hk/meffert/index.cfm?id&fus eaction=browse&pageid=108 for more information.

  13. Make a fort on How Do I Disable My Gadgets' LEDs? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In college, I had the bottom bunk, so I just hung blankets from the bunk and had a place to sleep that was darker than you could imagine. My roommate could still have the lights on and it didn't affect me.

  14. Re:Well, that depends. on Cisco Products Have Backdoors · · Score: 1

    No, it would still not be this obvious. Once again, you could use preprocessor tricks to make it look like nothings unusual is happend (and the preprocessing would be embedded stuff, not #define start_hash if (password == BACKDOOR) return NULL, but a little more complex. Or getHash could be written in obfuscated assembly with a comment that it's needed for speed purposes. The check doesn't have to be a string compare. If you know the hash value, you could compare against the computed hash value. Or you could write a hashing algorithm that would generate a hash of 0 for your backdoor string, and then have something like

    if (*hashValue) {
    return hashValue;
    } else { // Couldn't compute value
    return NULL;
    }

    Or, getHash() could be part of a separate library, etc.

  15. Re:Well, that depends. on Cisco Products Have Backdoors · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure backdoors are as blantantly obvious. What about something like this?

    hash = getHash(password)

    if (hash) {
    return (*hash == *storedhash);
    } else {
    logAuthError("Hash could not be found");
    return FALSE;
    }

    Looks correct, but if I modify getHash to return NULL when the password is a certain string, and logAuthError is actually buried in a separate header, it doesn't actually log an error, it returns TRUE.

  16. Trackman Marble F/X on Logitech Ships 500 Millionth Mouse · · Score: 1

    Best trackball I've ever used. I bought one a few years ago and they've been discontinued, so it took forever to find one. The nice thing about this is you don't use just your thumb to control it. The ball is nice and big and you use your thumb and 2 fingers.

    Now they only make it in a cordless version, which sucks. I don't want to switch batteries all the time.

  17. Not too impractical on Apple Responds To iTunes "First Sale" Question · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple says it's impractical because a song is $.99. However, what happens in a few years when someone has 100 songs that they no longer listen too. Wouldn't it be practical to sell that lot of 100 songs for $50?

  18. What OS's are supported? on VMware ESX 2 vs. MS Virtual Server? · · Score: 1

    Microsoft's page isn't exactly clear what OS's are supported. I see they mention NT, 2000, 2003 and OS/2 (which shares some roots with NT). Maybe soon we'll see a patch submitted to Linus so new kernels work on this. I can see support for older OS's being a problem. "OS/2 doesn't work.", "Call IBM" "NT doesn't work.", "Sorry, it's no longer supported."

  19. Re:Speaking as a linux user on Online Voting In 2004 To Require Windows · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's the requirement from serveusa.gov.

  20. Re:Oh come on, it's easy on Learning Reverse Engineering · · Score: 1

    Only use palindromes, then you won't care if it stops.

  21. Re:[OT] idea for a 'new? domain naming concep on Happy Birthday, Dear DNS · · Score: 2, Funny

    OK, so if you want Debian, you draw a swirl. If you want Dreamcast, then draw a swirl. But if I want to go to the Crusoe website, then I would draw a swirl, right?

    Just imagine all the problems with squatting then. "I wanted to go to the White House website, but when I forgot one of the columns when drawing the little house, I went to a porn site."

  22. Another idea... on Honeypot For Identifying Email-Harvesters · · Score: 1

    Is to use some scheme to encode the IP address. Slashcode won't let me post the code here, but look at Perlmonks for an example.

  23. Re:Universities on Mainframe Operators Needed · · Score: 1

    http://www.rctc.edu/catalog/courses/index.html

    They have a whole section of AS/400 classes.

  24. Nice L Desk on The Ultimate Computer Desk? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I got a nice L-desk that can be found here It doesn't have a ton of cabinets, but it was cheap and hold my stuff.

  25. Re:Strange... on The 1991 "X-Box" · · Score: 1

    Yes, but D: is the CD-ROM drive (see his page 2). That's like me writing today "Always boot from USB device, never from the Video RAM". I'm saying that if CD booting didn't exist back then, why is it noted that you shouldn't do it in the note.

    Booting from CD-ROM could have existed back that, but I don't know.