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Comment Re:Nooooooooo (Score 2) 144

I would argue, it's not that he's *right*, it's that he's right in a way that still doesn't help.

Wife: "Honey, do you know where my keys are?"

Husband: "Pretty sure they're right where you left them!".

Technically correct, completely unhelpful.

And that's how QMail is. (or was, I stopped using it years ago) Qmail is a nightmare I'd rather forget. Sure, it is/was very secure, modularly written with strong privilege separation, built-in clustering support, etc. But because of the horribly restrictive license it was under, you had to download it and apply a half dozen patches in order to get it to do what you wanted. Worse, the patches were often somewhat in conflict, so you end up doing patches in a specific order to get what you want, and/or manually editing files. And then, when you are done, you have something that not only has its own init system, it actually conflicts with the standard init system so you have to pretty much disable every other service on the said server.

But you know what seems like the most asshole part of all? Updates are infrequent at best, and the license doesn't allow you to distribute updated versions. It just isn't going to get any better. Everywhere else, you run a single command (EG: yum install postfix) but to get qmail going takes weeks.

I'm a big fan of DJB's code quality, and the new Crypto being released as LGPL means I would actually get behind using his code. I'm just glad that heartbleed means that the critical security infrastructure will finally get somewhere near the attention it deserves...

Comment Re:most useful? (Score 2) 77

Two words: Synchronized Panes. For nothing else, this is enough.

Need to do a semi-repetitive task that's not quite annoying enough to script on a bunch of servers? TMUX to the rescue! You can open 10 windows to 10 different servers, and synchronize what you type so it shows up on all screens, or click on an individual screen to run just that command there.

For boring admin chores, it's a god-send.

Comment Re:Tesla needs just a few more things (Score 1) 360

but the pure electric car isn't going to be ready until a) massive updates to the power grid b) swappable batteries c) battery tech that lets cars go 500-1000 miles on a charge.

Why the boolean logic?

In case you hadn't noticed, pure electric cars are stomping the ever loving crap out of the luxury/performance car market. So long as the cars are selling at a growing pace, they are here to stay and are ready for the people who continue to buy them.

And as long as this happens, manufacturers will make continuing improvements to the cars they make.

A) The power grid is constantly being worked on. As people buy more cars, the grid will be upgraded to match demand.

B) Swappable batteries might be one of those improvements. But they don't seem to be required, at least not yet.

C) 1000 miles on a charge? Show me any common car that gets anything like that range.

Lots of people expect the world to change all of a sudden. But it doesn't really. Instead, continuing incremental changes gradually make the world into a different place. Those incremental changes have rather drastically changed how people interact in just the 30 or so years that I can personally remember.

Comment Re:Wat? (Score 1) 582

Your points are valid, in a sense. But do you really think that people are going to stop trusting Open Source technologies? What isn't part of the conversation is just how terribly horrible OpenSSL actually is. It's a readability nightmare. The patch makes my eyes bleed, makes me weep gently to myself as I rock myself in an attempt to succor the horrific nightmare that code of this quality is what drives most Internet "security".

I so sorely wish more consideration was given towards NACL as a replacement for OpenSSL. It's clean, elegant, readable. Bugs will be shallower because readers might have *some idea* what is going on. And with an LGPL license, it should be quite embeddable.

IMHO, OpenSSL should be toss summarily as soon as possible. Beneath its horrific API and code lurk untold numbers of nascent, undiscovered holes no doubt already being exploited by our good friends at the NSA.

Writing security code is *hard*, folks. Making it hard to read only makes it impossible to debug...

Comment Re:Polishing turds (Score 1) 117

Google TV isn't a failure, it's just not the only success.

I have a Google TV stick and I love it! It is just a tablet that uses my TV as its screen and a wireless keyboard as its input. It is about the size of a thumb drive. It cost $40 on Amazon (.search for mk808b to get the exact model I'm watching Hulu+ on as I write this)

See my post history for details: this is quite successful. I have no idea what Google would want to improve...

Comment Re:I'll wait and see (Score 1) 117

Play store: no problem. How else do you think I installed Netflix, CBS.com, Hulu, uTorrent, and all the other apps?

Seriously, just imagine a tablet running on your TV using a mouse/remote instead of a touch screen. That's what I use every day. (And what is currently playing Sherlock Holmes a la Hulu; my wife loves that show)

Comment Re:I'll wait and see (Score 4, Informative) 117

I have a "Google TV" and I love it! Also called a "TV Stick" they are best sellers on Amazon with many models to choose from starting at around $25. I bought an MK808B for my bedroom TV and it's hard not to love.

1) It cost $40.

2) It uses my already existing TV

3) It streams Hulu, Netflix, CBS, NBC, and any other TV network that bothers with an Android app over wifi.

4) It uses about 2.5 watts of power.

5) It's not much bigger than a thumb stick.

6) It works seamlessly with an "air mouse" wireless remote.

7) It plays MP4 videos fluidly and runs uTorrent without issue.

8) It has room for two USB devices and an SD card.

9) Effortless support for 1080p resolution.

What more do you want from set top box that actually hides behind the TV?

Comment But Terrizm! (Score 0) 233

Seriously: a major airplane "disappears" despite evidence that it wasn't really crashed. Everybody's wondering who dunnit and how, and whether or not it will become another impromptu bomb.

There's a *lot* you can carry on a 777. $50 mil is a lot, but the amount of damage such a plane could do with a little direction makes $50 mil look like peanuts. And it's pretty clear that anybody with the skills to make it disappear as completely as it did is capable of more than just a little direction.

Comment Lacking a point (Score 1) 88

The problem here is that the product has no specific point to it - it exists *solely to produce vendor lock in*. Since it's little more than a re-badged Android TV stick there's really nothing special at all about it. This, in a market space that's saturated with me-too also-rans.

It's not that Amazon's offering is horrible, it's that it's not notable in a field littered with the corpses of other not-notable failed products.

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