Slashdot Mirror


User: Raenex

Raenex's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
7,132
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 7,132

  1. Re:Advisory Timeline on Remote Exploit Discovered for OpenBSD · · Score: 1
    An outsiders opinion: I've heard that OpenBSD takes security seriously. Then I see this story and I'm shocked. There's no excuse for labelling a remote denial of service as anything but a security issue.

    You can argue with their system of classification, but if you're actually administering an openbsd box, are you skipping the reliability patches because you like unreliable, but secure servers? I hope not... Well, yes, I might. There's a difference betweeen a bug that a user might run across and screw himself over and an exploit that any random script kiddie can use to take down your machine. The first is a reliability issue, the second is a security issue. Yes, there is a distinction between taking down a machine and being able to run arbitrary code on it, and if that is OpenBSD's concern they should come up with categories under security that reflect that fact.

    I find the OpenBSD position appalling. I've gone from respect and considering them as an OS to use, to wanting nothing to do with them.

    These are my "common sense" opinions. CVE agrees with them. Honestly, I have no axe to grind, I'm not a Linux or whatever advocate, etc. It just seems so obvious that OpenBSD has betrayed the very principles they stand upon.
  2. Re:Marvin Minsky killed AI on Marvin Minsky On AI · · Score: 1
    Wow, you reply two weeks later? Is that some pathetic attempt at getting the last word, or did it take you that long to come up with a response?

    Why not tell people what is true ? That's what I've been trying to get out of you. I read your post and it came across as a smear. Especially the part about Minsky "admitting" what you claimed. I asked for a reference, and never got it. Instead you end up pointing to a paper that denies the whole point of your smear. Classic.

    Why not give examples on the intellectual corruption of academia ? Politics exists wherever there are people. Nothing new here. Maybe Minsky did all the things you said, maybe he didn't. Yet I was asking you to back up a specific claim, and you never did. Why not?

    And I didn't say Minsky spiked my Ph.D. "He kinda spiked my Ph.D in the process...oh well :-)"

    As for all the ad hominem stuff, I think you should get over yourself. Why do you feel the need to compare your life to some random poster on Slashdot? You know nothing about my personal life or achievements. I'm not going to get into a pissing contest.
  3. Re:How does document.write mess up your DOM tree? on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    Back before there was Firefox there was Netscape/Mozilla. Firefox inherited from that. So if you were coding for the "major" browsers you would probably have been ok when Firefox came out.

    There are also standards which neither browser support. Bottom line is you have to code to what works, and preferably the standards if the browsers support them. I recommend watching the lecture: An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the DOM (three parts, downloadable here).

    I wish it was just as simple as "follow the standards", but if you look at the history and reality of the situation, you see why that isn't possible. The best advice is to code to a well maintained library that shields you as much as possible from browser incompatibilities.

  4. Re:Seen it... on How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People · · Score: 1

    By the way, you don't need to use slashdot to "get our ear", come post questions on the dev@subversion.tigris.org lists. Oh I know, but you know how it is. Lazyness and whatnot. There's lots of stuff that nags that we all let slide without following up on. This was just a matter of convenience and opportunity. Thanks for your reply!
  5. Re:Seen it... on How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People · · Score: 1

    And where is this seperate directory? A couple of options. It could be in the same directory as the source, with the same name but _svn attached, or it could be in a standard subversion directory.

    How is subversion supposed to find it? How does any package find stuff like your configuration file for the package? It can check for a standard ~/svn/ directory, it could check for an environment variable, and it could check for a command flag. All of these are standard among software.

    According to your reasoning KDE is broken. I think in general "hidden" files like dotfiles are a Unix design flaw, but that's besides the point. Your analogy is a bit stretched. The point is you have a directory for your source code. Your code belongs there, not files pertaining to version control. There are many tools I want to work with my source code. I don't want them all to have to be aware of and work around each other.
  6. Re:Seen it... on How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People · · Score: 1

    As for the '.svn' folder - is there any other way they could have implemented it? Yes, they could have mirrored the directory structure in a separate directory.

    I'd say your tools are broken if they can't be configured to ignore .svn folders. I'd say any tool that imposes itself in ways that interferes with other tools is broken.
  7. Re:Seen it... on How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People · · Score: 1

    Oh good, I can get your ear!

    I just got to the part of the talk about limiting your scope. Subversion's stated goal was removing the bad stuff from CVS. One of the things I hate about CVS is that it puts .cvs directories in your code, interfering with tools that scan your source code. Subversion copied this behavior :(

    Sorry for the off-topic rant, but this has been nagging me for some time and I had to get it off my chest.

  8. Re:AJAX is for writing applications not Documents on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    The line between application vs document gets blurry, fast. Consider a site like Try Ruby!. There's definitely content hidden inside the tutorial, yet a search engine will never see it.

  9. Re:How does document.write mess up your DOM tree? on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    Code to the standard and let your client decide what obscure browser to use. Actually you should code to what works in all the major browsers. If that's the standard, great. Even better, as much as possible use a library that takes care of it for you.
  10. Re:google.com/?q=slashdotting+in+google+dollars on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    The sad thing is I bet the vast majority of crap like this earns enough to buy lunch or something. There's a lot of people running around trying to get rich doing this, but Google is the real winner.

  11. Re:Model on The Economist Magazine Looks Outside For Insight · · Score: 1

    Filtering good ideas out of the gibberish would be a gargantuan undertaking -- probably one that is more difficult than just thinking up your own ideas. Is it really that much of an undertaking? Let's say only 1 in 1,000 ideas are any good, and that they get 10,000 submissions. Let's also say it takes, on average, two minutes to filter an idea. With 6 employees filtering, it would take less than 60 hours of work. Worth a shot, and by no means "doomed to failure". Worst case scenario is they get free publicity for their magazine. Best case scenario is that actually get a brilliant idea they would not have thought of themselves.
  12. Re:-1, poor style on Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified? · · Score: 1

    Anonymity has a dark side, but without an absolute right to it, we may as well let the government install "The Eye" in our living rooms right now. What nonsense. There's a big difference between government mandated spying in your living room vs investigative journalism. If you want to remain anonymous then it is your job to protect your identity. Don't trample on my rights to expose the source of a public action.
  13. Re:If you can contract it it's coded already on Why Is "Design by Contract" Not More Popular? · · Score: 1

    Apologies for losing the indentation; how do you get Slashdot not to do that? Plain Old Text with <ecode> does the trick.

    It took me awhile to figure this out, as there is no obvious link to help on formatting your posts (eventually found some help via Google).

    Up until now I've been using HTML Formatted, since Plain Old Text sounded un-web like. <ecode> doesn't work very well with HTML Formatted, because it doesn't preserve the space and you can't add them with &nbsp;. Turns out Plain Old Text is what I wanted all along anyways. Just hit return twice when you want a new paragraph, once when you want a line break. No more <p> tags!

    Actually, now that I look at Preview, Plain Old Text inserts two <br>'s instead of <p>, which doesn't look quite as nice and is definitely un-web like. Oh well, convenience wins out.
  14. Re:But it's truthful. on Wikipedia May Require Proof of Credentials · · Score: 1

    I'm going to agree with the others: lacking citations diminishes your message. Responding to valid criticism with a childish "koolaid" remark diminishes it further. You are doing exactly what you blame the Wikipedia admins for.

    As an example of why I don't accept posts like yours at face value, I did some research awhile ago into the Sanger as "co-founder" issue. When somebody says that Sanger is a co-founder, it sounds to me like two guys started a company on some equal or near-equal footing. In reality Sanger was just an employee (chief editor, as I remember it). Wales was the idea man for bringing a collaborative encylopedia to the web (Nupedia). Initially they only allowed experts to edit it, but it wasn't working out so well, and Sanger suggested they move to a wiki model (an idea Sanger himself got from a friend over dinner). It's not like the Sanger was a founder in the sense of Google (Larry Page/Sergey Brin) or Apple (Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak).

  15. Re:Use the Java Persistence API on Oracle Open Sources TopLink Java ORM · · Score: 1

    Code to standards or roll your own.

    Well if you had coded to the original EJB standard you'd still be stuck with a painful migration, since it was a piece of crap. EJB only started looking reasonable after they copied the ideas from the very open source projects you are disparaging.

    Rolling your own is not necessarily a good solution either, if it costs you more time and money than an off-the-shelf solution. Either way you have to pay the migration cost if something better comes along.

  16. Re:If you aren't using Hibernate.... on Oracle Open Sources TopLink Java ORM · · Score: 1

    This reads like an advertisement. It is also deceptive to say it is open source. Part of it is based on open source, but Kodo proper contains open source and non-open source code.

  17. Re:Just like cable TV on More Advertising in Your Next Xbox Game · · Score: 1

    Well, I get around comercials for the few TV programs I like to watch by renting them from Netflix.

    Maybe no commercials, but there's "in-show" advertising there, too.

  18. Re:Thats not the same thing on USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon · · Score: 1

    Sigh, it's like you didn't read my post at all, and instead replied to the common complaint about "obvious" patents. I did not once mention "obvious ideas". When the software industry was a brand new field, tons of ideas were not obvious, but the whole point is that they were researched, discovered, and, shared without patent protection. If they had been patented from the beginning it would have only slowed things down. I also addressed the point that lots of patents are funded via taxpayer money, and then privatised. The public pays twice, at monopoly prices!

    It's quite possible that the patent system is unneeded, yet you aren't even allowing yourself to consider the question.

  19. Re:Headache for EU negotiators on Turkey Censors YouTube · · Score: 1

    I get bent out of shape about it because it's a huge violation of principle. The government has made it illegal to question a certain aspect of history. It's not just being able to criticize the government that is important.

  20. Re:Headache for EU negotiators on Turkey Censors YouTube · · Score: 1

    So 50 years from now, it will be fine for Germany to pass a law to outlaw saying Germans massacred Jews in WWII?

    The sad thing is that Germany passed the opposite law. You can't legally question the historical accuracy of the Holocaust.

  21. Re:incorrect on Crackdown Review · · Score: 1

    We should probably just go with some kind of color percentage, to be more accurate. I mean, why call somebody "black" if they have 20% "black" heritage? Or maybe "darky". That seems pretty descriptive without being overly descriptive. Oh wait, is that why the term "colored" came into use? Is that acceptable or taboo now? I'm so confused.

  22. Re:Shai-gen's enigmatic Wang on Crackdown Review · · Score: 1

    X-Play ratings aren't to be taken seriously. Actually, nobody's ratings should be taken seriously. I can't think of a single source that is predictive if I will enjoy a game or not. Usually X-Play just rubberstamps what everbody is saying anyways. I also suspect that they have a pro-Microsoft (probably paid for) bias, but maybe that's just my imagination.

    Don't get me wrong, I do like the show. It's entertaining in its own way, and it does give you some idea about the gameplay.

    The nice thing about the 360 is that you can download demos. Crackdown's demo is completely playable. Who needs ratings when you can play the game for yourself?

  23. Re:D'Amato's a Cheater on Al D'Amato: Online Freedom Fighter · · Score: 1

    Who can say that D'Amato's cheating ways are "Offtopic" to a story about "Al D'Amato: Freedom Fighter"?

    A poker fanboy without principles.

  24. Re:Thats not the same thing on USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon · · Score: 1

    Patents are like anything else, there are abuses of the system, and extremes that can be cited, but in principle, we are better off with patents and copyright than we would be without them.

    That's the big question. Are we really better off with patents in principle? Lots of inventions happen with government funding, and then are privatized into corporate profits. And what about the software industry? For decades it blossomed without patent protection. Imagine how much slower things would have been if basic algorithms for databases, graphics, etc. were patented from the beginning. Even without patent protection, companies made large amounts of profit by being the first to market with an idea.

    Remember that patents are a government granted monopoly that infringe on a basic principle of humanity -- to freely learn from each other. The fact is that humans will invent and share their inventions with or without patents. If the vast majority of patents are gumming up the works instead of moving us forward, it may be time to just ditch the patent system.

  25. Re:Credentials Really Are Meaningless on Wikipedia's Wales Reverses Decision on Problem Admin · · Score: 1

    As Jimbo has already done the right thing and requested Essjay's resignation, what Jimbo knew once upon a time is wholly irrelevant.

    It's not irrelevant. He only did the right thing after much fanfare. Better late than never, but it would have been much better if he dumped this guy as soon as he learned of his false credentials.