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User: thrashbluegrass

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  1. "... invitations to unspeakable sexual acts ..." on Requiem for Usenet · · Score: 0, Redundant

    But...what if that's /why/ I'm on usenet?

  2. Re:Article summary on Why Students Are Leaving Engineering · · Score: 1

    "there are about 3 billion people smarter than average"

    Wrong: there are 3 billion people smarter than the MEDIAN :)

  3. Re:Privacy Rights? on E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 1

    Both - why are you going to allow an arrest on something that you've decided is inadmissable? Why give the police that much leeway?

  4. Re:Privacy Rights? on E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 1

    "What if probable cause was based solely on the electromagnetic radiation the policeman's eye picked up in the visible light spectrum?"

    Well, aren't we just the wit?

    This would set a very poor precedent, were it to be allowed. We would now have police with the ability to almost arbitrarily set upon you (sort of the tech equivalent of "Your honor, when this young black man walked by, Deputy Wollensky's K-9 alerted.").

    And what if you just had passing contact with it? Like, say, you picked up the scent of ammonium nitrate, because you got some fertilizer, and get pegged as "possible bomb?" What happens should they find a joint on you? Was that covered by the probable cause for search? No bomb, but you've got a controlled substance.

    This doesn't pass the "sniff test" of what free societies allow as police powers.

  5. Re:Privacy Rights? on E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Note: idiot prognostication to follow. Heap shame and scorn upon poster.

    You raise a very valid point. Hypothetical:

    Let's assume that the technology gets to be so good that it's accurate enough that it becomes a standard tool. You have cops out, and they run their instrument all the time, trying to alert for explosives. At the same time, however (before the courts get involved), they run it looking for _everything_ that they can, and someone gets busted with some drugs on them. The specifics aren't important, other than the probable cause was based solely upon the nose picking it up.

    This then gets to trial, and the defense argues that it was a violation of the accused's 4th amendment rights. This would most likely, within a year or two of police forces using these tools, come before the Supreme Court. Given my limited legal understanding, this would probably result in both the release of the convicted and the wholesale banning of "wide-spectrum" sniffers running all the time as a policing tool.

    Of course, SCOTUS has bowled me over with some pretty ass-backwards rulings over the past few years, so I wouldn't be totally surprised either way; anyone with legal expertise/experience/strong opinions should feel encouraged to put me in my place.

  6. Re:Cheap Joke, I'm not Proud. on E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 1

    Apparently, it can't find the proper conjugation of "to find."

  7. Re:Working on Athlon64 yet? on Another Step Towards BSD on the Desktop · · Score: 1

    dmesg and ps/trace can be gotten from capturing the serial console output on boot also, the freebsd 4.x is on, what, 4.11 now? you gave up on 4.5, haven't tried it since then, and are whining that you don't know if it's fixed? it's too bad I've used all my mod points, because you're trolling pretty fucking hard right now, my friend.

  8. Re:Working on Athlon64 yet? on Another Step Towards BSD on the Desktop · · Score: 1

    1) Net, Free, Open? What BSD are you using?
    2) dmesg + ps/trace from point of crash? it's really kinda hard to debug something with the scarce information you've provided.

  9. Re:Iris Recognition on Iris Recognition To Take Off · · Score: 1

    Don't be so sure of that. Where I work, a lot of consulting is done with MiniTruth...I mean, Homeland Security, and requiring iris scans at airports is being seriously discussed.

  10. Re:Trademarks? on Google Wins 'Typosquatting' Dispute · · Score: 2, Funny

    At Fjord, Glaciation is Job 1.

  11. Re:Linux on Intel vs. what? on Linux From A CIO's Perspective · · Score: 1

    late 90's, unix:

    pretty good chance it was solaris

    second best guess would be AIX

  12. Re:Give a man a fish... on Grizzly-sized Catfish Caught in Thailand · · Score: 1

    Teach a man to fish, and you turn him into a Darwin Award.

  13. Re:Anyone else find the graphs confusing? on AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 Review · · Score: 2, Funny

    Growth in confusing graphs on the internet, 1989-2005:

    =====75
    ========80
    ===========80
    ========75

  14. Re:Lycoris Major Linux Distribution? on Mandriva Buys Assets from Lycoris · · Score: 1

    This is all part of Mandrake's master plan:

    Now Mandriva, soon to be Mandriloris.

    They'll soon snap up Debian.

    And be called Mandalorian Linux.

  15. Re:it's so dark... on Chalkboards With Brains · · Score: 1

    I see two options: 1) Rear projection (but it's kinda hard to retrofit a rear-projection unit into an existing building) 2) Replace projection entirely, and have a gigantic piece of electronic paper (not quite ready for prime-time, yes, but I'm willing to bet that it's well worth the wait)

  16. Re:I can see it now... on Microsoft IIS v7 Details Emerge · · Score: 1

    Microsoft Longhorn: A False Hope

    To be followed by The FSF Strikes Back and Return of the Ballmer?

  17. Re:Complete nonense on IE Developer Responds to Mozilla Accusations · · Score: 1

    To say that MS is technically retarted is, technically, an insult to the retards.

  18. Re:your sig on Adobe Acrobat Toolbar Worse than Malware? · · Score: 1

    And the army is only a part of the military. Not the whole military.

    pentagon.mil is running Sun's webserver on Linux.
    navy.mil is running IIS on Linux.
    usmc.mil is running lotus-domino on an unknown os.

    Not to mention the individual units within the military, each with their own IT groups, each running their own servers.

    Not to mention the fact that you missed the entire point:

    netcraft reports IIS running on LINUX. How much do you trust netcraft now?

  19. Re:your sig on Adobe Acrobat Toolbar Worse than Malware? · · Score: 1

    Actually, according to netcraft, the military runs IIS 5 on Linux:

    http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.af. mi l

    smee

  20. Re:Threshold of complexity on OpenBSD Clashes with Adaptec In Quest for Docs · · Score: 1

    You may be closer than you think. From Scott Long, on OpenBSD-misc:

    "The hardware is tricky to get right and there are bugs in different cards and different firmware versions that often need to be worked around."

    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=1 11 126569205268&w=2

  21. Re:Why aren't more hardware concerns doing this? on Moving from Binary Drivers to Open Source? · · Score: 1

    You're arguing by analogy, and a poor analogy at that. Nobody (okay, maybe a few weirdos, but your normal criminal doesn't count) breaks into your house in order to figure out how to make their own.

    And how long does it take for a team to reverse engineer a piece of hardware? And does it really matter? You can't put the genie back into the bottle. In the end, all you end up doing is make it harder (in some cases, impossible) for people who want to legitimately use your hardware while putting almost nothing in the way of those who want to illegitimately use it.

    Again, this is what you breed lawyers for. If someone steals your design and begins pressing out their own, you sue the ever-loving shit out of them.

  22. Re:In answer to your sig... on Moving from Binary Drivers to Open Source? · · Score: 1

    you forgot moving stuff from documents and settings to a backup drive

    You assume I care about my users. I am BOFH, hear me roar :p

  23. Re:Why aren't more hardware concerns doing this? on Moving from Binary Drivers to Open Source? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I understand THAT they're paranoid; I don't understand WHY they're paranoid.

    The whole "if we release the specs, it can be reverse engineered" is so shallow as to be laughable; if a competitor truly wanted to reverse engineer your product, they'd do so with or without your published specs, by disassembling a) the hardware, or b) the driver you provide (this all reminds me of the "hackers only know how to break windows because we release security advisories" bs that comes out of redmond from time to time). Making sure this sort of thing gets handled correctly is what you let lawyers out of their holding pens for.

    Once the hardware's out of your hands, you HAVE TO operate under the assumption that it's going to be taken apart and put back together by interested parties. Frankly, this is PHB bs that has no real place in technology.

  24. In answer to your sig... on Moving from Binary Drivers to Open Source? · · Score: 0, Troll

    1) fdisk
    2) format
    3) full installation

    Now that I think about it, that's how you fix any software problems on a windows box.

  25. Why aren't more hardware concerns doing this? on Moving from Binary Drivers to Open Source? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although I understand that NDAs can be involved, it often amazes me that hardware manufacturers keep to closed driver implementations.

    While it's true that windows and linux are the biggest games in town, offering potential customers who run other OSes a way to use your hardware seems like a no-brainer: larger potential customer base -> more customers -> more profits.

    It often seems like pulling teeth; take a look at the recent (and ongoing) attempt OpenBSD is making to get more documentation and relaxed licenses for hardware. Being able to point to $1 million of hardware already running under an OS and getting little or no response from a vendor for better support -> larger customer base -> greater profits? WTF is wrong with the PHBs?

    And now, back to the topic:

    Document, document, document. Although I don't have any directly relevant experience, I've occasionally taken over 5000+ lines of code with abysmal documentation; on one occasion, it became so painful I rewrote major portions because it ended up taking less time than having to figure out what was going on.