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Linux

Submission + - We should take a stand on unjust etax software (zdnet.com.au) 1

engochick writes: It's really annoying that etax isn't available in Mac or Linux versions. Free software foundation guru richard stallman has taken the ATO to task for the software — it's unjust he says. We should be allowed to change the source code and run it as we wish.

He reckons we should create our own version of etax and all use it in protest.

Comment No spoilers. Honest! (Score 0, Flamebait) 246

First episode was great, second so-so. IMHO, humor quality dropped a bit (movies included), but I'm still watching it. Same with the Simpsons - many old school fans are dissapointed a lot. Thing is, their revolutionary format wore off a bit. Rest of the world followed, and cought on. But I'm still watching, albeit it just does not feel the same. Why? Because those were AWESOME shows, and are now still GOOD shows, still some hillarious gags all around. And I'm not one of those to say "Worst episode EVER!!" and then watch again next week. I'm perhaps a die hard fan, but waging wars over cartoons is plain stupid. Just stop watching if you don't like it.

Comment Actually both good/bad for security and anonimity (Score 1) 275

Anything can be used for good and evil. Not to sound like a Google fanboy, but by setting default primary/secondary DNS to a hardened, cache poison (and other stuff) secured and properly maintained DNS service, their ChromeOS / Android / people-who-trust-them customers could be better off than relying on some unsecured local ISP DNS.
If I was paranoid (or had a reason), I would trust Google more than my ISP - my ISP's DNS belongs to my ISP. Which is subject to my country's law. Google is not, and getting any info from them is at least bit harder than asking local company - who also does not have a clear policy on logging and sharing my data.
And yes, in my case also its fast but not as local ISP DNS, but no big trade off since I use BIND to cache anyway. So primary and secondary are my ISP's, and tertiary and quadriary Google's.
What I learned from all this is that second(ary) DNS IP your ISP gives you is sometimes bit (lot?) faster, and better used as Primary DNS under Windows.

Comment Re:Brilliant piece of software (Score 5, Insightful) 225

Your argument is invalid. Yes, it might not be 100% draft compatible, but at least its SVG files are perfectly readable in all the software I ever tried... from Firefox, Opera, to Photoshop and whatnot. As far as I know, Word HTML is actually readable mostly in IE. It does so on purpose - 1. Get monopoly 2. Break standards 3. Get people to use your proprietary formats / equipment 4. Profit!

Comment Brilliant piece of software (Score 5, Interesting) 225

As a person who uses vector drawing programs from time to time, this program was a great find. Having pirated Corel Draw installed, mostly for rubbish reasons, was also bad - for bloat reasons, law reasons - and sanity reasons. I remember that Corel then (>5 years ago) had so much bugs, slow and unresponsible, bad support for local fonts, unstable. For all my purposes Inkscape is by far better program - compact, standards compliant, fully functional, and frankly I enjoy using it much better than Corel Draw. Couple bugs yes, but brilliantly reliable compared to horrible nightmare that is (was?) Corel Draw.

Comment Who will benefit from this? (Score 3, Interesting) 319

People who program different migration utilities benefit from this, and of course users of such tools. Even wild ideas like Fuse filesystem that mounts it as Maildir.
So, converters, importers, exporters, indexing tools, repair/forensics, optimize/defragment/find duplicates tools, sort, grep.
Also, if its a standard than it needs to be STANDARDIZED, so no special treatment for own products.

Comment It's about money (Score 1) 198

Step 1 in saving the environment in the short run should probably be spending money on reducing pollution where it also brings reasonable savings, as the effect on nature is cumulative on the world.
And less coal used means less need to dig it out, which means less coal miners in the long run. "In [USA] 2006, 72 miners lost their lives at work, 47 in coal mining", "an average of 21,351 injuries per year between 1991 and 1999". Which means this actually saves lives, not to count expenses of compensations to those hurt or families of killed.

Comment Re:No business (Score 1) 122

Democratic regimes that see their own countries' intellectual elite as an enemy are not really democratic. If you're trying to make your own people dumber by average so you could rule them more easily .. that is base premise for any authoritarian / fascist / fanatic form of government. Not (true) democracy.
Government in my (small European) country recently spent millions of euros for building number of sport arenas we don't need. Now, crisis is here, and they are "cutting corners" by stopping the free school book program for primary schools. Go taem!

Comment No business (Score 4, Interesting) 122

"China has several gigabytes per second of traffic to deal with and has a lot more international businesses," he says. "They can't be as heavy-handed with their filtration. The Iranians aren't as concerned about that⦠so they get to use all these fancy toys that, if the Chinese used them, could cripple their economy."

I myself ordered Chinese products from sites using SSL. I don't think even they would be crazy enough to turn down money - but it seems Iran's leaders are. Are they going North Korea style? At least Chinese have a positive side to their repressive government. They have the money, they'll transform that to power and influence. Iran's policy is VERY bad for business - who seem to really WANT their people to be poor and unemployed. Which also leads to emigration of smart, competent and anybody willing to work. So yes, killing protesters and having a idiotic clerical fascistic system will make Iran poor and irrelevant in time. Countries with saner systems will benefit from importing their disgruntled intellectual elite - because smart people might be more tolerant by average, but also have lower tolerance for being served hypocritical crap.

Comment Commercialization! (Score 1) 389

It's a nice dream. But what strikes me as bit weird - is that there are AFAIK huge natural resources on the moon. It's basically a goldmine! So what is stopping today's multinational super-corporations from exploiting it? No natives to subdue?
And lets be realistic - only way human race is getting to moon again is commercialization.

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