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User: FellowConspirator

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  1. Re:Kernel mode driver on ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista · · Score: 0

    Yes. None of that runs in kernel space. The iTunes USB protocol driver for the device runs in user space too. I don't know why it crashes the machine, but Vista *SHOULD* not be able to be crashed this way -- it should catch it and kill the app.

    I'm guessing that there's a bug in the system calls servicing the USB stack and that an improperly framed call to the USB driver causes kernel fault (i.e., Vista bug). Apple should have caught it, though.

  2. Re:Good Marketing on ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista · · Score: 4, Informative

    The drivers are USB protocol drivers -- they run in user space. iTunes doesn't (shouldn't) load any kernel-space drivers. It is correct to say that, under the circumstances, it should be impossible for iTunes to crash the OS. iTunes should crash, but Vista shouldn't.

  3. Re:Worth picking up, but... on Review: Spore · · Score: 1

    Use a VM. The performance isn't that bad. People wouldn't seriously install the from-the-store version directly on their system, would they?

  4. Re:Uhhh on Redesigned, Bulkier Honda Insight to Challenge Prius · · Score: 1

    Owning both a Civic and a Prius myself, the Prius is certainly the better car. Not only does it average about 66% better mileage (about 30 mpg average for the Civic vs 50 mpg on the Prius on my commute) and has demonstrably better emissions (for those that care about stuff like that), but the Prius has proven more reliable and it's got more leg room. Not to say that the Civic is a slouch, it is a good car, but the Prius is better built, better handling car. They are two completely different classes.

    If you really want a cheap no-frills ride, the Toyota Yaris is an excellent little car (basically, just like the Honda Fit, but slightly better built). I've rented several late mode korean economy cars too that seem pretty decent. Again, we're talking a different class of vehicle, though.

  5. Re:Home Science not Under Attack on Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts · · Score: 1

    The county doesn't have anything to do with zoning laws, and he can't get a permit for what he was doing where he lives. He could apply for a variance, but it's not as simple as a fee (he has to plead his case before the zoning board).

    The point is that there are pretty clear rules on the books. There's ways of getting an exception, but he couldn't be bothered.

    Zoning laws are intended to be used in this way. Keep in mind that he lives only a few miles from where there was a chemical explosion in a house that leveled half a neighborhood. They haven't forgotten about that yet.

  6. Home Science not Under Attack on Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even the newspaper article linked by the person making the sensational claim doesn't support the claim. The story appears in several places and the facts in each don't support the thesis that "Home Science is Under Attack".

    The chemist in question had a fire in his house. While the fire department was responding to the fire, they happened upon the lab with an unusually large array of chemicals and equipment. They asked the man what he was doing with them and he noted that he was a retired chemist, doing his own development at home now, and was even patenting and marketing some of the things he developed.

    The fire marshall was concerned that the lab might pose a fire hazard and contacted the DEP per the usual protocol, and they went through and checked it out. They notified the town of the situation, who noted that he was doing commercial chemical R&D (by his own admission, he was) in a residential area in violation of applicable zoning laws. The DEP was required to "close" the lab and clean up any chemicals for which there's a prescribed disposal procedure (e.g., you're not supposed to pour large quantities of it down the sink).

    The guy broke zoning laws and he got caught because of an unrelated fire in his house. That's it.

  7. Re:OpenGL is NOT only games on OpenGL 3.0 Released, Developers Furious · · Score: 1

    I'd add that most game companies don't code OpenGL or DirectX either. The majority of the game is completely separate. There's a layer of abstraction that is the engine that they write for. It's the engine that targets the underlying platform. Once the engine's backend is written (and they tend to be a fairly straight-forward abstraction layer), the same game will run the same on all things supported by the engine. DirectX does put everything in one basket, but other platforms aren't nearly as disarrayed as DirectX proponents would have you believe, and once the necessary abstractions are made, the game itself knows no difference.

  8. Par for the course. on MoBo Manufacturer Foxconn Refuses To Support Linux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First, Foxconn's hardware isn't the only with DSDT errors. Every use a Dell? HP? Considering how sloppily lots of this BIOS code is written, it's a miracle anything works at all. These errors only mean that he's stuck using APM in place of ACPI. If the user wanted a decent motherboard, he'd have bought it from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. It's not some conspiracy, it's a cheap motherboard vendor using a defective BIOS that doesn't give crap about it's customers. Really, how's that not normal?

  9. It's not running out... on Supplies of Rare Earth Elements Exhausted By 2017 · · Score: 1

    ... it's becoming harder to mine. We actually send very little of this stuff off-world or use it in applications where it's bombarded with enough energy to make it fission. So, we've got lost of the stuff locked up in land-fills and on desktops -- but it's not gone. Sure, digging it up is getting substantially more expensive, but the reason that it's used is because it's economically feasible to do so. If that ceases to be the case, costs will go up and demand will decrease. We'll mine our garbage, etc. I'm not saying it'll be cheap, fun, or even ecologically sound... but the actually amount of the element available isn't changing (much) over time. It's just being moved about.

  10. There's a big difference... on EFF To Fight Border Agent Laptop Searches · · Score: 1

    A gas tank is reasonably expected to contain gasoline. A suitcase is reasonably expected to contain clothing and personal effects. A laptop, on the other hand, may reasonably contain data -- many classes of which are protected by laws that explicitly restrict who has access to it. Some examples of information on a laptop that the law requires the owner to not permit access to: patient-doctor information, lawyer-client information, parishioner-clergy information, classified/secret/top secret information, trade secrets, personal health information, or diplomatic communications. Also, copying information from the laptop may violate copyright (it almost certainly does). While a TSA official might otherwise access your belongings, if they ever became party to those types of information stored on your laptop, they'd be open to a lawsuit. There's no exception to any of those laws for border checks or any access outside of a specific court order.

  11. Sure it will put a dent in... on iPhone's Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games · · Score: 1

    iPhone's advnatage is that you will soon be bale to deliver software for it. Delivering Java apps to phones (in the USA) is such a PITA it's not a practical solution. Even with relatively few iPhone's out there, the market for the apps is comparably quite big. There's no need to negotiate with the vendor, no working around the modified Java security of vendor-supplied handsets, no having to deal with various features being disabled, not variations in J2ME/MIDPs, etc. The iPhone probably will put a dent in the mobile Java market -- doubly so if it somehow becomes cheaper (and more popular).

  12. Of course, there's the obvious work-around... on Washingtonpost.com Wants Identities of Posters · · Score: 1

    Develop a second site that has a frame at the top for the article, and another at the bottom for comments about it. Forget logging into washingtonpost.com, just go to http://someasofyetnonexistantsite.com/washingtonpost.com instead. The third party site would very quickly become the primary conduit for accessing the content. If you used an IFRAME, washingtonpost.com would never know the difference. Sounds like the Washington Post is just creating a new business opportunity. Incidentally, if the Washington Post feels this way, they should put their money where there mouth is and adopt a policy of no anonymity for sources, and stop clamoring about freedom of the press. There's no point in the double standard. If they don't believe in free discourse, they should be the first to strap on the yoke and muzzle.

  13. Re:Where and how do they search on Laptops Can Be Searched At the Border · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's possible to have information on your laptop that even a customs agent does not have the authority to become party too. Think an attorney with case files and communications, a clinician with patient data, an engineer with trade secrets, etc. Hopefully, that information would all be encrypted on the laptop... But, if that peaks their interest, what are you going to do? If you grant them access, you go to jail, get fined, loose your professional license, etc. If you deny them access, you'll probably be held until they can figure out what to do. Do you really want to sit in the airport clink until they get a court order forcing you to divulge the sordid clinical details of your patient's affliction with coprophobia?

  14. Re:Hacking the setup on Gartner Analysts Warn That Windows Is Collapsing · · Score: 1

    Why bother to adjust? Seriously. MS is noting that backwards compatibility with applications is no longer a concern, and that they consider the security model of Vista something that needs replacing. Just forget Vista and move on to Windows 7. Hypothetically, the differences between Vista and Windows 7 will be huge compared to the differences between XP and Vista. Why bother with Vista at all? It's a lame duck and soon to be put out to pasture.

  15. But where does Daniel_K reside? on Creative Goes After Driver Modder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is important. If Daniel_K lives in the USA, his reverse-engineering and modification of the drivers is protected and allowed. It is not a violation of their copyrights (and no, Creative, he's not stealing, just ask your crack legal team). While he probably doesn't have the right to distribute their drivers, he would be within his right to distribute a patch for them (binary deltas, plus a utility to apply them to a driver). And, yes, he can ask for donations for it -- he can even charge money for it. If Daniel_K hired a good copyright attorney, he'd know that (I'm sure Creative probably does).

  16. It's a sane request, and not a requirement. on iPhone's Development Limitations Could Hurt It In the Long Run · · Score: 4, Informative

    Two things: first, the human interface guidelines (HIG) stipulation that a process not background itself is perfectly reasonable. The phone form-factor has limited battery, memory, and processor resources. It wouldn't take much to make resource contention an issue or to torpedo battery-life and phone performance. This isn't a laptop with a big battery, multi-gigabytes of RAM, and a 3GHz dual-core CPU.

    It should also be noted that while the HIG asks you not to make your app run in the background, neither the phone nor the SDK enforce it. You can, in fact, do it.

    If you want to sell your app through Apple's service, you probably need to communicate to them that there's a good reason for it (for example, implementing hands-free voice-dialing might require it). Apple reserves the right to not carry applications that don't meet the HIG, but there's no reason to think that they won't make exceptions when a reasonable request is made to do so. Certainly, a good hands-free voice-dialing app would be a good candidate for such a thing.

  17. Why Safari 3.0.4 beta? on Firefox 3 May Be More Memory Efficient Than Either IE or Opera · · Score: 1

    Safari 3 has been out of beta for some time now (3.1 came out today), so why use the beta version. Doesn't it go without saying that if they include all the debugging stuff in there that it will use more memory than the non-beta version? It's legitimate to use the beta version of FF3, since that's the thing you're talking about, but all the other browsers for comparison should be the latest release versions of the respective software.

  18. If you read the thing through... on iPhone SDK Rules Block Skype, Firefox, Java ... · · Score: 1

    You find that, basically, and app can't make calls into an external app. You can use whatever frameworks/plugins you want, but it has to be bundled all into the application package. This is somewhat constraining, but it doesn't rule out things like FireFox, Word, etc. (though, I'd never want to see a full version of Word on a phone; even MS doesn't do that with Windows Mobile).

    This makes sense given the limitations of the phone platform. Namely, there's no installer, and packages can only read/write to themselves or the simple SQL database provided. There's no mechanism for resolving interdependencies, and the majority of the conventional OS X directories are located in firmware (read-only in operation).

    In the case of FireFox for Mac, the application already behaves this way, save for the fact that it saves its preferences and cache in subdirectories of the user's home directory instead of within the application package. The application itself is fully contained within the package, and changing the file paths for data ought not pose too much of a problem to put it on the phone.

    Claiming that they are ruling out other browsers or applications is unnecessary hyperbole.

  19. Re:Developer fee = unlock for OSS? on Apple Targeting Business World for the iPhone · · Score: 1

    What it sounded like from the video of the event was that the SDK is free (download an updated Xcode). The ability to publish (via there service) was $99 -- though they mention in the same breath that there's no cost for those distributing free software. I'm guessing that you need to pay $99 for publication access to the AppStore.

    That said, I think there's no problem installing applications without the AppStore, it'll just require that you hook up your phone via cable to your computer and use a utility to do it.

  20. No such thing as too salty. on Possibility of Life On Mars Looking More Remote · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here on earth we have several strains of halobacterium that can live inside salt crystals and survive off sunlight and residual moisture. Our terrestrial ones generally like a hot environment too.

    No, a high-salinity environment doesn't rule out life at all.

    Nor do other extrenes. There's plenty of microbes that will live in concentrated acids and bases. In one of my wife's old labs, she once had to through out a jugs of concentrated NaOH solution because a fungus was growing in it...

  21. Don't throw it away... Recycle it... on Toshiba Making Funeral Plans for HD DVD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it's a commercial failure, then why bury it. Just make the spec, tools, etc. free without license. There's a huge market for a low-cost high-capacity storage and video medium. Toshiba could make HD-DVD free to everyone. Blu-Ray can't beat that. Sure, the MPAA members will only ship Blu-Ray, but if it costs nothings to add to your drive, why wouldn't a vendor throw it on top just because. Home video and amateur cinematographers will have a reasonable format for producing, sharing, and storing footage, there'll be an HD replacement for VHS, and the cost for the blank media will plummet.

    Then let's see who wins in the long run. Toshiba can still ship HD-DVD recorders, media, etc. Being fully open, the platform will reach every corner that Blu-Ray doesn't, by design. Blu-Ray is a very consumer-hostile format as-is; it's designed to limit the medium. Toshiba should give up not by burying it, but by becoming the antithesis of its competitor.

  22. The bugs may not be fixable... on Rush Limbaugh Begs Steve Jobs For Bug Fixes · · Score: 2, Informative

    He had two: Time Machine didn't back up his mail (and can't backup web-mail that isn't on his computer), and the second was that he couldn't use Back to my Mac (because his router didn't support UPnP or NAT-PMP). What's a digital fruit peddler to do?

  23. Copy protection an alternative to copyright? on Is Copy Protection Needed or Futile? · · Score: 1

    If access controls and copy protection schemes exist, surely they should be considered as an alternative to copyright. A DVD typically has a region code that restricts DVDs to being played back on hardware that comes from the same market, and CSS encoding that prevents basic access to the media. Both absolutely abridge the rights of the copy holder/licensee with regard to copyright -- they are infringing, as it were, violating the terms of the contract that copyright is.

    In this case, the copyright holder's systematic violation of the terms of copyright ought to cause the work to lose protection.

  24. If I were president... on What Would You Do As President? · · Score: 1

    I would solemnly affirm that I would faithfully execute the office of President of the United State, and would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. You just don't see enough of that happening these days -- it'd be nice to get back to the basics.

    I would veto most legislation -- anything with an ear-mark, anything that puts the wants of the few above the needs of the many.

    I'd propose budgets that are within the means of the country, withdrawing troops to home until Congress declares war. I would bolster the US state department and bump the US diplomatic corps to cabinet position in its own right, and develop a robust and well-resourced diplomatics service that is the best in the world.

    I would remind everyone that the US government should never be regarded as a moral compass. Legislation sought solely on moral grounds or to assuage the wounded sensibilities of the electorate would be vetoed outright. Frankly, it's might right and your to be offensive. I think eating sea urchin is disgusting, but I'm not prepared to proffer a bill to ban sushi.

    Would make government as transparent as possible, make it easier to let go of government personnel, and task the GAO to identify inefficiencies in the way government is executed and address them. I would commission a small group to survey other world governments and pilfer the best ideas the world has to offer as far as providing the highest quality of life with the highest degree of personal freedom.

    I would ask the congress to propose a law that allows laws to pass only on a 2/3 majority and be repealed by a 1/3 minority so as to limit the how much questionable legislation gets on the books, and to speed problematic legislation off.

    I would stop prosecuting wars on whatever. Drugs, terrorism, Britney Spears... doesn't matter. It's ridiculous to think that we can totally stamp out everything that's unseemly or harmful to us. Rather, we'd look at cost-benefit analyses and determine the best possible compromise (I'd even ask the GAO to lend their expertise in this area). If it means releasing petty drug offenders to recoup the costs of incarceration, I'd be in favor. Perhaps we could develop a system of paying back society for petty crime instead of sitting in a dorm watching TV -- you know, something constructive.

    I'd develop an energy policy that aims to reduce oil consumption to as close to nothing as is physically possible. This would include investment in alternative energy, contemporary nuclear technologies (like pebble-beds), etc. I might request from congress money or authority to purchase patents whose existence is used to stymie the necessary research and development.

    I would provide a review of the "intellectual property" system and ask for modifications to current law to uncomplicate the system and optimize it's public benefit. I'd probably offer terms on copyrights stated in "generations" as indicated in the US census. The original US term was 1/2 to 1 generation and that might be good enough. I would also ask that media with "access controls" be exempted from copyright since the content cannot be accessed after it's term has expired, nor can the access control assure the rights of the user to sufficient degree to satisfy the minimal requirements of the copyright contract. I'd also ask the concept of "works for hire" to be abolished, or make it impossible to transfer right away from a creator.

    I would seek to offer a certain minimal level of public healthcare -- perhaps based on the German or Norwegian systems. I would end subsidies for goods and commodities. I would lobby congress to pass one of two laws: one that explicitly states that corporations are not individuals and sets up guidelines for their treatment as separate unequal entities, or a law that permits similar penalties (e.g., a product kills someone, there would be a murder trial and the product or maker could receive a corporate "death penalty").

    I would try to get considerably

  25. Re:Group Policy on Firefox Struggling to Compete as Corporate Browser · · Score: 1

    Group policy, particularly on Windows is a common, but really poor way to manage the apps. It's flaky and inconsistent not only between apps, but also versions of Windows (including service packs). It's labor intensive, and can have unintended consequences. It also requires someone to decide the policy, someone to implement them, and someone to test them. Perhaps worse, they're trivial to subvert (the screwed up way Windows implements password policies is my favorite).

    I understand its very common practice, but it's not best practice. A more consistent and secure method is to simply have a configuration file for an app, set as necessary, and prohibit alteration. Primitive, yes, but trivial to manage and more difficult to subvert (well, as difficult as gaining admin access, which takes several minutes and is nigh impossible if the system doesn't have any USB ports, floppy, or optical drives).