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User: philfr

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  1. Re:My opinion on the matter. on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 1

    make the init system restart a service automatically when it crashes.

    Like old school inittab always allowed with the respawn option ?

  2. Re:What! on TrueCrypt Website Says To Switch To BitLocker · · Score: 1

    From wikipedia : "There is an independent, compatible implementation, tcplay, for DragonFly BSD and Linux." Not totally cross-platform like TrueCrypt, however.

  3. Re:You have to have the right selling point... on USMA: Going the Extra Kilometer For Metrication · · Score: 1

    All you have to do is convince the male congressional leaders that they will gain manhood size once we convert over to metric! 15 is a whole lot bigger than 6 :)

    Except this would make for easier comparison with European males on that matter. 15 cm is considered rather small over here.

  4. Re:Classes/Templates are not a magic bullet ... on GCC Switches From C to C++ · · Score: 3

    I could be wrong, but I doubt the Linux kernel ever used anything C++ related, given the strong opinion Linus has about the language

  5. Re:Apple does not block choice. on Techrights Recommends An Apple Boycott · · Score: 1

    Enjoy this while you can.
    How long before Apple reproduces the iPhone market model on the Mac ?

  6. Re:Future on The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not sure, but the restaurant out there is open 24/7.

  7. Re:11k Is Too Big? on Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C · · Score: 1

    This is a lame excuse for writing bloated code...
    "Anyway the compiler will f*ck it up, so why bother ?"

  8. Re:up 300%? on IPv6 Adoption Up 300 Percent Over 2 Years · · Score: 3, Funny

    If something increases by 100%, that means it doubles, not stays the same. Induction can take it from here.

    So going up 300% means doubling 3 times ?

  9. reportlab on Modern LaTeX Replacement? · · Score: 1

    Maybe reportlab fits your needs. It leverages the python language to make pdf documents going from low-level drawings to complex table layouts and page layout.
    Much easier than LaTeX if you have needs that don't fit in one of the standard templates, and its programmability makes it more powerful yet.

  10. Re:My god! on Debian Refuses To Push Timezone Update For NZ DST · · Score: 1

    NTP does not change your time zone.
    It just fixes the UTC time, from which the local time is derived.

  11. Re:Which versions? on Skype Linux Reads Password and Firefox Profile · · Score: 1

    Which versions of Skype, 1.4 or all of them?

    I just checked my 1.3.0.53 version with strings, and strace.

    It does read my passwd file (which is acceptable IMHO), but none of the other files mentioned.

    And the "passwd" string is not in the binary, so it merely uses a getpw* library call.

    Maybe people should stick to an older version ? I don't even know what 1.4 has more to offer (but, OK, I use skype 2 or 3 times a year...)

  12. Belgium does this since 2001 on British Columbia To Charge Recycling Fee · · Score: 1

    It's called recupel http://www.recupel.be/

  13. Re:Temporary Solution on Fight Spam With Nolisting · · Score: 1

    There is a mention of unlisting at the end of the article that does that. This article on nolisting does not cover extra checks on the primary MX address.

  14. Too good on Sun Spearheads Open DRM · · Score: 1

    The problem with an opensource standard for DRM is tha it will not be so easy to crack than proprietary ones...

  15. WIPO was bypassed in favor of WTO for TRIPS on FSFE Becomes WIPO Observer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) are discussed at the WTO, and not at WIPO, which would have been a more logical place for the most important international treaty about intellectual property.
    Why ?
    Because US did not want to discuss separately a tailor-made law for Hollywood and parmaceutical firms.

    So, even with FSFE at WIPO, which is good news, what will this change if it is the WTO that makes the rules ?

  16. P=VI on Greatest Equations Ever · · Score: 2, Funny

    If vi is power, what about emacs ?

  17. /bin/sh on Metaprogramming GPUs with Sh · · Score: 5, Funny

    At first read I thought they ported bash to the Radeon GPU...

  18. Holding the data on A Look at Microsoft's Regulatory Problems · · Score: 1
    the man who holds the data, not the software, will win

    This is really the point: for my part, MS can bundle any software it wants on its platform, as long as this software doesn't make a proprietary/patented/secret protocol or data format ubiquitous.

    If WMP was only a media player, able to play any standard media, it would compete with other software (still with the advantage of being preinstalled).

    From the moment WMP "helps" people to switch from mpg/realmedia/ogg/... to MS-only standards, this kicks-off not only these other formats, but also non-Windows platforms. I don't care what player Windows users use (WMP, Winamp, or whatever), I know I can use XMMS, Xine, mplayer, or vlc on Linux to play most media files or streams, except those coming from MS (don't tell me I can use win32 dlls, I know that. But MS will do its best to stop this possibility).

    And what pisses me off most, is when I find internet radio stations streaming .asf files, because I know they choose this format for its ubiquity on the desktop, and that forced them to use MS on their servers.

  19. Re:Shouldn't impact pay-by-view ads on Norton Antivirus 2004 Ad Blocking - Tough Call? · · Score: 1

    The fact is, ad-blocking software prevents your browser to download the images/ads, to save your bandwidth. So if you really want to support the site, don't block their ads, or better, send them money.

  20. Re:Knoppix is a victim too on Europeans Still Battling Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Hmm. This message on the home page had been suggested by FFII to put on as many websites as possible to spread the word. If you look a bit further, there is a link to the old index page inside the message. Nothing has been closed down for real.

  21. Re:UUCP on Practical Unix & Internet Security · · Score: 1
    The store and forward feature of UUCP is quite different to SMTP's. If your final destination host can be off-line for, say, two weeks (vacation maybe ?), and you don't want mail to be bounced back, you have to tweak the retry configuration of the relaying MTA.

    UUCP will instead consider this mail delivered once it is in an intermediate spool. I have a cable ISP that forbids me to run an SMTP server (on port 25 anyway) and changes my IP address regularly.

    Dynamic DNS allows my remote UUCP host to contact me anytime on a non-standard port of my choice, but could not allow me to run a standard SMTP server, nor to be off-line for more than a few days.

  22. Re:UUCP on Practical Unix & Internet Security · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, UUCP over TCP is probably the only sensible way to operate a full-featured mail server on a dynamic IP address or on an intermittent connection. Even people with dialup connections can have at home a full MTA serving multiple domains connected through UUCP to their (nice) provider. Other solutions (ETRN on SMTP, maildrop on POP3) are broken somewhere. UUCP is a generic store-and-forward protocol, supporting binary file transfer and custom commands, not only mail or news. UUCP mail transport can be easily customized, to add compression (third world countries have used that over slow dialup links), encryption, and of course it works over SSH (using the port forwarding features), SSL (with Stunnel). Even if it was designed for serial lines, its later protocol variants were optimized for TCP (full-duplex, no need for error correction...) Only people who don't know UUCP say that UUCP is obsolete. Alas, most ISPs don't know UUCP.

  23. Re:So very true... on Explaining WLAN Chips' Poor Linux Support · · Score: 1

    Hey, don't forget Atmel's chipset based ones. Atmel released their drivers as open source and both USB and PCMCIA hardware works OK. See Atmel WLAN driver page

  24. Re:What does java actuall add to an id card? on Belgium Rolls Out Java ID Cards · · Score: 5, Informative

    The ID cards are able to prove your identity. For this, they embed a private key, and calculate a signature themselves on data that is sent to them.

    If they only gave this private key to the device that asked for it, they would be easy to duplicate.

    Of course, you don't need Java for this, but you need a smart card with a CPU inside, and you need to develop the application that runs on that CPU.

    The choice of a chipcard determines the SDK to be used for it. One of them is JavaCard...

  25. Re:Java based??? on Belgium Rolls Out Java ID Cards · · Score: 5, Informative

    Memory cards only contain data, some parts read-only, some parts read-write, and some parts write once. They have been used since a long time for prepaid public phone cards or access control.
    Smart cards also contain a CPU, sometimes highly optimized for e.g. RSA encryption, and their data is available through a file system abstraction. Smart card suppliers call this an operating system...
    Multiple applications can run on these smart cards, which means you could theoretically have only one card for your ID card, your electronic purse and various loyalty cards (if your are not too worried about security/privacy issues in case of breaking into such a chip).
    Memory cards are also called synchronous cards and smart cards asynchronous cards. That's because of the nature of the serial protocol they use to communicate with the device that reads them.
    Smart cards have a real UART embedded, and implement one of two protocols (T0 and T1) defined in ISO 7816, the second of which is fairly complex and allows to multiplex communication between multiple applications running in the card reader and their peer inside the smart card.
    JavaCards embed a "JVM", but a very limited one: you can't just open a network connection or dynamically load a class. Sun specifies the precise subset of Java that corresponds to a JavaCard profile. But, yes, they run Java "cardplets"...