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User: dskoll

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Comments · 1,375

  1. Re:Anti-math and anti-science ... on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No, Islam is fundamentally different from other religions. It's a fascist ideology whose goal is world domination; read any of the Islamic writings to see Islams attitude towards non-Muslims. This fascist ideology is cloaked in religion in order to call those who criticize it bigoted.

  2. Re:they will defeat themselves on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 2

    I don't believe that killing terrorist breeds terrorism. Eventually, even the dumbest of the dumb will realize that it doesn't pay.

    In the short term, the only effective answer to ISIS is to kill them.

  3. Maxing out the universe... on Chrome For Mac Drops 32-bit Build · · Score: 1

    The universe is plenty big enough. 2^64 is about 1.8x10^19 and there are around 10^59 atoms in just one average-sized star. That leaves 5.5x10^39 atoms per bit. That's a lot of atoms; a lot more than a trillion kilograms, in fact.

    The universe is really, really big..

  4. Is this why they call them "smart" phones? on iPhone 6 Sales Crush Means Late-Night Waits For Some Early Adopters · · Score: 0

    Come on, everyone! Camp out and pay $600+ for a device that's gonna cost much less a few months later! Be L337!

  5. Evil Overlords on Ask Slashdot: What Smartwatch Apps Could You See Yourself Using? · · Score: 1

    From: Apple Monitoring Service
    To: Apple Customer
    Subject: Alert

    We have detected unusual accelerometer activity in your iWatch. We believe you are left-handed and were visiting some porn sites.

    Sincerely,

    Evil Apple Overlords.

  6. Re:The Nanny State Strikes again! on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 1

    Regulation's goal is not to stop stupidity. It's to reduce harm. If you think seatbelt laws, automobile safety regulations, etc. have not reduced harm, then you're living in a fantasy world.

  7. Re:The Nanny State Strikes again! on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 1

    Tell that to all the babies in the United States who were not disfigured by Thalidomide because of the courageous actions of the US regulator. There were some, but it could have been much, much worse.

  8. Re:The Nanny State Strikes again! on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 1

    Cell phone use (talking and texting) has skyrocketed over the last decade. The accident rates have not risen in correlation with it.

    Wrong. Accidents caused by distracted driving have increased dramatically. For example, see here:

    "In 2013, distracted driving fatalities surpassed both impaired and speed related fatalities in fatal motor vehicle collisions investigated by the OPP. A total of 78 persons died in distracted driving related collisions compared to 57 impaired driving deaths and 44 speed related deaths last year.

  9. Re:Not severe enough on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 1

    So you react to my post with ad hominem attacks rather than refuting what I stated. As a "weak-minded idiot" and "easily-led child", I deal with people like you by ignoring them until they contribute something useful to the discussion.

  10. Not severe enough on Text While Driving In Long Island and Have Your Phone Disabled · · Score: 1

    Since the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cell phones impair drivers as much as over-the-limit blood alcohol does, the penalties for cell-phone-distracted driving should be as severe as for drunk driving, and we also need a campaign to stigmatize it the way drunk driving has been.

  11. Canada: Chip and PIN on Home Depot Confirms Breach of Its Payment Systems · · Score: 1

    I've shopped at our local Home Depot, but here in Canada everything's been chip-and-PIN for quite some time. So... am I at risk? It's not clear from the news media whether or not the chip-and-PIN system has protected me from this breach.

  12. Cancon... feh. on Ontario Government Wants To Regulate the Internet · · Score: 2

    I'm Canadian and I'm completely fed up with Can-Con rules here. CBC Radio is pretty decent, but CBC TV is crap. If Canadian TV producers wanted Canadians to watch Canadian shows, here's an idea: Try making good shows once in a while.

    (Funnily enough, my favourite TV channel is... TVO (TV Ontario), which is funded in part by the Ontario government, and which produces excellent kids' shows and great adults' shows like The Agenda. But for the most part, Canadian shows are crap, apart from documentaries and a few comedy shows, and the shows produced by private broadcasters are usually much worse than the ones produced by public broadcasters.)

  13. Re:Hopefully this goes without saying on Ask Slashdot: Remote Server Support and Monitoring Solution? · · Score: 1

    Our DSL is not particularly unreliable. However, our servers are spectacularly reliable. They run Linux on decent hardware and we almost never have a server failure. Our most common cause of a server failure over the last 10 years has been power failures long enough for the UPS to decide we'd better shut down.

  14. Re:Hopefully this goes without saying on Ask Slashdot: Remote Server Support and Monitoring Solution? · · Score: 2

    The fact that a well-managed cloud service is multiply-redundant is of little consolation if your crappy DSL line goes down for 6 hours and your salespeople cannot access the CRM tool.

    What's more likely to happen: the loss of access to Amazon cloud services/internet, or a local box getting cacked

    Unequivocally for us: Loss of Internet access happens far more often than a server failure.

  15. Re:Hopefully this goes without saying on Ask Slashdot: Remote Server Support and Monitoring Solution? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, the model of remotely-managed on-premise appliances is not that crazy. Assuming it's done securely, you get the best of both worlds:

    If the customer's Internet access goes down, they're not dead in the water as they would be with a cloud solution.

    If you manage everything for them, then the box is completely hands-off... just like a cloud solution.

    There's an entire business category called "Managed Service Providers" whose vendors do exactly this: Remotely manage all aspects of your IT infrastructure so you don't need to worry about anything. For mom-and-pop non-technical businesses, it's an excellent model.

  16. Re:Keeping track.. on Ask Slashdot: Remote Server Support and Monitoring Solution? · · Score: 2

    Managing the OpenVPN connections is not that bad. You give each client its own key and certificate and you use OpenVPN's ccd/ directory to assign VPN IP addresses.

    We use the following tools to monitor our servers, but we're only monitoring about 30, not 500:

    • OpenVPN for accessing the remote servers. SSH if we need to log on to the server to do something. Some of our more important servers include built-in KVM-over-IP ability which can be very handy if the OS locks up.
    • Xymon (formerly known as Hobbit) for monitoring the health of remote servers. We include some custom Xymon plugins to monitor SNMP variables. I find Xymon much easier to configure than Nagios, though it's not quite as flexible.
    • Munin for tracking performance and ensuring we have baseline data.

    I'm not sure how well this would scale to 500 boxes, though Xymon claims to be able to monitor "lots of systems".

  17. I actually like Perl statement modifiers; they can make code more readable if used judiciously. Something like:
    return unless $DEBUGGING;
    can be pretty useful. Obviously, something like:
    $a += $b * complex_function($c, $d, $e) unless ($x > 100.7 && pre_condition($d, $c, $e));
    is not good.

  18. csh is one big wtf. Those of you on Linux/UNIX boxes with csh active, start csh and then type:

    else

    Keep typing stuff in.

    breaksw does the same thing. Who wrote that parser?

  19. Re:Looks Interesting on Firefox 32 Arrives With New HTTP Cache, Public Key Pinning Support · · Score: 1

    x86_64 firefox on Debian Wheezy and it works perfectly. I really like Firefox and don't understand the anti-Mozilla hate people seem to express.

  20. Re:Science is a religion to some on Canada Tops List of Most Science-Literate Countries · · Score: 2

    How, exactly, is "faith" a "way of coming to knowledge?" What knowledge is revealed by believing in burning bushes, virgin births, or flying horses?

  21. Re:Science is a religion, so this makes no sense on Canada Tops List of Most Science-Literate Countries · · Score: 1

    You are full of shit.

    The scientific method (what you call "Science") makes testable and falsifiable predictions. Religion does not.

    If a scientific theory is shown to be wrong, it is either modified until it better fits the facts or an alternative theory is developed. If religious belief is shown to be wrong, odds are the people showing it as such are shunned or killed.

    Science has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. The scientific method is the single biggest factor in the progress of humankind.

  22. Re:McDonallds should sue ... on Comcast Training Materials Leaked · · Score: 1

    It's Comcast or no TV.

    This is a concept I do not understand. Paying someone to watch TV shows riddled with commercials?

    We use an antenna and receive about 12 channels very clearly. I have yet to see a TV show I would pay for. I spend 8 hours a day in front of a computer; not being able to spend another 3 hours vegging in front of the 500-channel universe is not a big loss.

  23. Re:McDonallds should sue ... on Comcast Training Materials Leaked · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I understand upselling. I run a business and can appreciate its effectiveness. However, there's a time and a place for everything, and customers who do not want to be sold anything should always have their wishes respected.

    When I deal with large corporations who try to upsell me, I tell the reps to stop doing that and deal with my question. It usually works. If it doesn't work, I cut them off and ask to speak to the manager. That always works.

  24. Re:Physical mail vs. email on Daimler's Solution For Annoying Out-of-office Email: Delete It · · Score: 1

    Is that all you can come up with? Calling someone names instead of actually trying to understand where he's coming from?

    Hint: My business runs on email. My business, in fact, is in the email security space. I think I understand a little more about email than you think I do.

  25. Re:Physical mail vs. email on Daimler's Solution For Annoying Out-of-office Email: Delete It · · Score: 1

    Sorting by sender or by date is not usually useful to me. Sorting by importance and urgency is, but I've yet to teach my computer to do this.