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User: frost_knight

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  1. Re:What we need is,,, on No Justice For Victims of Identity Theft · · Score: 1

    I'm a fraternal twin. Our SSN's are only different by a single digit, but it's a step of 2. So my last four is 1234 and his is 1236 (not our real last four of course, purely an example).

    Someone out there sniped the number between us. Combo breaker!

  2. Re:ADA? on Is It Worth Learning a Little-Known Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    I currently work for a refrigerated shipping and warehousing company. The in-house warehouse management system is all in COBOL. One of my responsiblities is the care and feeding of the WMS system and the database cluster back-end.

    This WMS chugs along and weathers everything that gets thrown at it. It really is the most bulletproof system I've ever worked on.

  3. Re:We can learn from this on Copyright For Sale: What the Sony Docs Say About MPAA Buying Political Influence · · Score: 1

    I worked as a *nix administrator for the House of Representatives for a number of years. The saying on the hill was "as long as you're not caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl".

  4. Re:Bogus argument on Are You Sure This Is the Source Code? · · Score: 5, Informative

    For true malice there's also The Underhanded C Contest.

    From their home page: "The goal of the contest is to write code that is as readable, clear, innocent and straightforward as possible, and yet it must fail to perform at its apparent function. To be more specific, it should do something subtly evil."

  5. Re:GNOME on Red Hat Confirms GNOME Classic Mode For RHEL 7 · · Score: 1

    How about we call you "efficient". Laziness is a virtue when properly applied.

  6. Re:GNOME on Red Hat Confirms GNOME Classic Mode For RHEL 7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're performing a new install of Debian and want it to use xfce as your desktop right from the start, edit the install cd boot command and add the following:

    desktop=xfce

    Or you can go to Avanced Options and choose xfce.

    Then your system will be configured for xfce from the get-go.

  7. Re:The most human side of scifi... on Ray Bradbury Has Died · · Score: 1

    Humans are storytelling creatures.

    For many moons we've sat around campfires, hearths, lamps, and glowing rectangles telling each other stories -- about the hunt, the weather, myths, fables, our neighbours, ourselves, the day's work, and even math problems. Sometimes we stick to the facts, but often the teller exagerrates, embellishes, or flat out lies. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, or so it goes.

    Fiction is part of the human condition.

  8. Re:Busy databases on Ask Slashdot: What Type of Asset Would You Not Virtualize? · · Score: 1

    The VMware vCenter Server is not required for a VM cluster to function.

    It provides a handy interface from which to view your entire cluster and provides tools to make administration and initial setup easier, but the cluster will run just fine without it. High availability and load balancing continue to function. You can always log in to each VM host server directly as well.

    If you've installed VMware License Server on the same VM as vCenter then you won't be able to add any new licenses and some ESX features expire in 14 days. However, one would hope that you've been able to bring your Licensing/vCenter VM back online by then.

    The failure case is an annoyance that should be dealt with, but it is not a disaster by any means.

  9. Re:Hewwy! on Red Hat Will Pay Microsoft To Get Past UEFI Restrictions · · Score: 1

    Where did I say that the vendors had the right to do it either?

  10. Re:Hewwy! on Red Hat Will Pay Microsoft To Get Past UEFI Restrictions · · Score: 1

    If you've sold the laptop, or given it away as a gift or a donation, by what right do you have to limit what the recipient can do with it?

  11. Re:Every time a bell rings on Should There Be a Sci-Fi Category At the Oscars? · · Score: 1

    And, yet, fantasy where 'anything goes' is usually terrible, in my opinion. I think good fantasy remains consistent to its own internal laws, whatever those laws may be.

  12. Re:Apparently on SCO vs. IBM Trial Back On Again · · Score: 4, Funny

    Plant some Roundup Ready corn around their building and send Monsanto after them.

  13. Re:I'd start by shooting the Captain.... on What To Do With a 1,000 Foot Wrecked Cruise Ship? · · Score: 1

    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill:
    ----
    "Forget the drunken skipper fable. At the helm, the third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker's radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was [in Exxon's view] just too expensive to fix and operate." -- Greg Palast, BBC

    At the time of impact with Bligh Reef, Captain Hazelwood was asleep in his quarters, having left Third Mate Gregory Cousins in charge of the navigation bridge and Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm.

    Captain Hazelwood was accused of being drunk at the time of the accident, though at trial he was cleared of this charge.
    ----

    Exxon used him as a fall guy.

  14. Re:And no patents on Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away · · Score: 1

    Pipelining was invented by Douglas McIlroy, not Dennis Ritchie. But that, of course, doesn't lessen Dennis' status one bit.

  15. Re:Meh... on Early Look At The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim · · Score: 1

    Many moons ago I was playing an old game called Midwinter. One of the ways to win the game was to blow up the building where the commander of the invading army was staying.

    The game involved warning NPC's about the invasion and also recruiting them to help. But some of them didn't get along and could only be recruited by specific characters. You could play from the viewpoint of any recruit, and you had to worry about supplies, routes of attack, and other various strategic bits. I imagine playing the game as intended would take a long time to win.

    I fired up the game, simply ignored the invaders completely, skied all the way to said building and blew it up with the initial character. Total time, 15 minutes.

    I wished I hadn't done that. It ruined the game for me since I then didn't want to play it The Proper Way, with all the recruiting and grand strategy.

  16. Re:Comes down to promotion I think. on Indie RPG Struggles On Xbox, Yet Thrives On Steam · · Score: 1

    Space Pirates and Zombies is on Steam, unlocking on August 15th.

  17. Re:The "switch" key on Why Classic Video Game Revamps Must Disappoint · · Score: 1

    It's available on gog.com for $5.99.

  18. Ignore the Curmudgeons on 15-Year-Old Sells Startup To ActiveState · · Score: 1

    Congratulations on your achievement, and may there be more in your future.

  19. Re:Capt. Obvious reports. on What Happens To Data When a Cloud Provider Dies? · · Score: 1

    Won't it make them think "stay off his lawn"?

  20. Re:No Surprise There on Pentagon Papers Ellsberg Supports Wikileaks · · Score: 1

    -1 is the only way to browse. Otherwise you let modders with axes decide what you get to read.

    The line between insightful and flamebait is often blurry. Why let someone else draw the line for you?

    you == generic && != The_Moof

  21. Re:Why remake just FPS titles? on FPS Games That Need a Remake · · Score: 1

    I'm reprogramming Below the Root from the ground up to run on modern computers. It's an as-is clone: same graphics, same sound, using the Commodore 64 version as my baseline. I've extracted all the sound and music, most of the graphic blocks, and I've re-created the sprite sheets. It's taken me longer than I'd have liked, but I'll get there (my sig strikes home).

    The author of the books gave me license to clone the game. Years ago someone bought the rights to make a movie and possible new game, so the author couldn't give me permission to redo the game with new graphics and sound. Alas, whoever bought the rights has apparently done nothing, or at least not that the author knows of.

  22. Re:Poor metropolitan area on Northrop Grumman Says 'I'm Sorry' For Virginia IT Outage · · Score: 1

    I grew up in Prince George's county Maryland and now live in Kent county Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. The entire county has less that 20,000 people (the smallest population in the state) and it's almost all farmland and waterways. Yet Kent County had its roads cleared very quickly after the big snow this year and our power went out for maybe 2 hours. Kent county has the most efficient emergency crews I've ever seen and I'm willing to bet they only have a fraction of Montgomery County's budget.

  23. Re:Hmmm on Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.

    The two words are not derived from the same place.

    Definition and history of "niggardly". Possibly Scandinavian origin, 14th century.

    Definition and history of "nigger". French and Spanish origin, 17th century.

  24. Re:Writing For Video Games on Writing For Video Game Genres · · Score: 1

    Quirkz, I think a thoughtful, moving story could be created off of the roadmap you've provided. A skilled writer could make the "worry about the peace" absolutely gripping.

    And perhaps the "ugly damsel" is the most beautiful woman in the world to the main character...Niafer from "Figures of Earth" by James Branch Cabell springs to mind.

  25. Wishful on What Are the Best First Steps For Becoming a Game Designer? · · Score: 1

    There are many folks on here saying a variation of "Don't Do It".

    - If you really want to be a game developer, you'll ignore their advice.

    - If you listen to their advice, then you didn't really want to be a game developer.

    Walking away from a creative passion because someone tells you that you should is a fairly good sign that it wasn't really a passion.