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User: Culture20

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Comments · 9,596

  1. Re:Fingerprint Reader? on Child-Suitable Alternatives To Passwords? · · Score: 1

    Only if her family is unwilling to cut off her fingers... Really, though: Fingerprint readers might be easily bypassed by lifted prints and even smudged print-outs of lifted prints (they _must_ work within an error range to be useful), but if one of the requirements is that it not have to deal with memory, biometrics or a hardware key are your easy options. I'd go with the hardware key (either electronic or good ole fashioned lock).

  2. Re:Here's a bread analogy on The Semantics of File Sharing · · Score: 5, Funny
    Feeding of the 5000, New RIAA version:

    (8) Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, (9) "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?"

    (10) Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. (11) Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

    (12) When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." (13) So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

    sqrt(-13) For thirty pieces of silver, the boy told the Bakers what Jesus did. Then the Bakers went out and began to plot with the Fishermen how they might kill Jesus, for they thought to themselves "How are we going to get money to eat if he gives food for free?"(a)

    (a) All ancient authorities do not contain verse sqrt(-13).

  3. Re:Pledge - Funny on Microsoft's New Leaf On Interoperability · · Score: 1

    +5 Interesting? Just so no one from across the pond gets the wrong idea, parent is joking. I went through elementary school refusing to "pledge alliegance" to a piece of cloth, and schools (at least in my area) don't even have the kids do it any more.

  4. Re:HOME in, idiots on WizKid Robot Debuts At New York Museum · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is there part of a child in there?
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: [after examining Dr. Venture's latest invention] What the hell is this thing made out of?
    Dr. Venture: [suspiciously] Nothing.
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: Come on...
    Dr. Venture: All right, fine, I might have used a few unorthodox parts.
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: Just tell me one.
    Dr. Venture: [mumbling] An... orphan.
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: A what?
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: [clearing his throat] An orphan?
    Dr. Venture: Did you say... an ORPHAN?
    Dr. Venture: [weakly] Yeah, a little orphan boy.
    Dr. Byron Orpheus: It's powered by a forsaken child?
    Dr. Venture: [defensive] Might be, kind of - I mean I didn't use the whole thing!
  5. Re:Looks cool... on Gravity Lamp Grabs Green Prize · · Score: 1

    I tried dropping a wet noodle on my keyboard, but it didn't depress any of the keys. Perhaps we need to be slightly stronger than a wet noodle to post here? Ah, I forgot about laser-keyboards... my bad.

  6. Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant on Mozilla Opens Thunderbird Email Subsidiary · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google docs does everything that Exchange Server does
    Including sit physically secure in my server room? I hate Exchange too, and also think email clients should stick to email instead of adding the kitchen sink, but Google isn't going to kill MS until people can have control over the hardware it runs on.
  7. Re:I am convinced that this question is irrelevant on Mozilla Opens Thunderbird Email Subsidiary · · Score: 1

    That's what kvm is for.

  8. Re:SpeedBoost? "Burst" back. on Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing? · · Score: 1

    forgot to mention: write a little script named except that reverses the exit code (non-zero to zero, zero to one) for the kill portion. There's apparently a binary on some *nix system somewhere that does that, but I always use a shell script.

  9. SpeedBoost? "Burst" back. on Comcast Cheating On Bandwidth Testing? · · Score: 1

    If they slow you down after the first 20 seconds into a 700MB iso download, might I suggest:
    false; while [ $? != 0 ] ; do wget -c http://ubuntu.com/foo.iso & ; export X=$! ; sleep 20 ; except kill -9 $X ; done

    This runs wget in continuation, sets the PID of wget to X, sleeps for 20 seconds, kills wget, and finally quits when wget isn't around any more. Possible problem: if something else gets wget's old PID during the sleep period (after wget finishes normally), kill -9 will kill it, and run through the loop once more.
    My ISP was throttling after 5 seconds, preventing me from doing OS updates, so until they fixed their policy, I had to do something similar.

  10. Re:the singularity will consume all the water! on New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water · · Score: 1

    Hopefully something didn't just zing over my head... but you do realize that the waste product of hydrogen fuel cells is H2O. Hydrogen is just the storage medium. I have a strong feeling that "the singularity" of which you speak won't even try to store energy in a chemical fashion.

  11. Re:Oblig: on Robot Interprets, Plays Back Dreams · · Score: 1

    Bender: Heeeey Baby... wanna kill all humans?

  12. Hydrogen bottlw balloon on Inventor to Launch Pop Bottle Rocket into Space · · Score: 1

    Does it have to be a rocket? If he fills it with Hydrogen, it'll get quite a bit off the ground.

  13. Re:ALERT: People at SANS, incoming CHAIRS! on Digital Picture Frames Infected by Trojan Viruses · · Score: 1

    If they're open sores, then I'd do the malware test for free (as in beer).
    Ah, I never get tired of open source jokes.

  14. This made a rant during an economic radio show on Comcast's FCC Filing Called Unfair, Not Good Enough · · Score: 3, Informative

    On my way home from work this evening, a radio host was finally talking about this in a way that regular joes would care about (and the show was for regular joes trying to invest). He said that Comcast is using its monopoly to limit competing content (non-comcast video and audio). I'm sure more than a few ears perked up.

  15. Re:SCP really on Multi-Threaded SSH/SCP · · Score: 1

    Yes, there is:
    http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=451874&cid=22406684
    or rsync over ssh, etc etc.

  16. Vacuum smells like blood? on Outer Space has a Smell · · Score: 1

    So, vacuum smells like metal... maybe kind of like rusty iron? If your capillaries in your nose burst, and the only gas in your nose is your evaporating blood, maybe that's what you smell? Stop breathing vacuum, dufus!

  17. Re:i wonder on Spore Hands-On Preview · · Score: 1

    This is a specific type of ID: directed evolution (breeding).

  18. Re:Doesn't take forever... on Windows XP Update Library On a CD · · Score: 1

    The question is, how do you know you've never been attacked while updating? I only knew because drivers started going wonky. The only way to be _sure_ is to do updates offline, and lock down the machine before it ever touches the 'net. BTW, "Just because you can't protect yourself" is a silly comment to make when you're advocating online updates to an OS that has open remote exploits by default (whether it be windows or Solaris with their silly telnet issues).

  19. Re:What MS sysadmin doesn't already make their own on Windows XP Update Library On a CD · · Score: 1
    for the pedant in all of us:

    for /f %%X in ('dir /b *.exe') do %%X --quiet --noreboot && sleep 120
    there, I fixed your^W^H my command line
  20. Re:Doesn't take forever... on Windows XP Update Library On a CD · · Score: 1

    Last time I installed Windows, I left the network cable plugged in and the whole thing was done-in in 20 seconds. Worms & script kiddies still exist. Always offline update any OS.

  21. What MS sysadmin doesn't already make their own on Windows XP Update Library On a CD · · Score: 1

    What MS sysadmin doesn't already make their own patch CD? Download all of the (critical and important) patches to a linux box, burn them onto a CD with a batchfile something like
    for /f %%X ('dir /b *.exe') do %%X --quiet --noreboot && sleep 120

    Then let the intarweb handle the non crit patches. Tada.

  22. Re:Wrong question on "Anonymous" Takes Scientology Protest to the Streets · · Score: 1

    I had to re-read your statement; I thought you meant Xenu. :P
    Alas, I am found out. Death to Calculus!

  23. Re:Wrong question on "Anonymous" Takes Scientology Protest to the Streets · · Score: 1

    To add to what the others have written, I posed this question to my physics teacher more than 15 years ago (and I'm certain someone else thought of it before then):

    If time and other dimensions are a result of the big bang (a change), and time is the dimension through which all change is currently measured (dX/dt), how can it be possible that a change from pre-big bang to post big bang occurred? Either change should be measured against something other than time (removing /dt from physics equations), or the current conception of a big bang is fundamentally flawed.

  24. Re:ethics require education on Ethics In IT · · Score: 1

    I don't have a very strong liking for administrators who use technical means to enforce something where "...hey could do this for me..." would suffice.
    Asking politely is _never_ sufficient, but it is a good social lubricant to add on top of the abrasive necessity of technical measures. Even if everyone in your company is nice, cordial, and willing to do what you ask, there will be some people that don't know how but don't want to look stupid by asking, some people who just plain forget because important things always pop up, and the few who actually follow through.
  25. Re:Misleading on Linux Kernel 2.6 Local Root Exploit · · Score: 1

    I'm sure you get a lot of users on your personal box who might use this exploit.