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Comment Re:And patents, of course (Score 3, Insightful) 625

Yes and no. Patents are a problem -- you can NOT launch a small technology firm and make anything useful without violating patents. This is a barrier to US businesses and Europe, but not China as they will simply ignore patents (for their domestic market).

I'd say America lost because Wall Street *wanted* America to lose. Maybe not explicitly, but as a result of all those outsourcing tax credits Wall Street wanted.
Talk to a US based electronics manufacturer... all of them had NO CHOICE but to move their R&D to China, because that's where all the manufacturing is.
Often times, the latest and greatest micro chip thingy will be documented by a Data Sheet which is written in Chinese. Eventually it will be translated to English, but the part might be depricated by then if it is a short lived market item.

Linksys, D-Link, Buffalo etc. all of these router manufacturers have almost NO knowledge what is in "their" products. They simply say "I'll take one of those" from the ODM and slap their web GUI on the firmware.

Apple is the last remaining US manufacturer who -designs- in the US. They pay a high price in terms of cost of operating. And even then, all their manufacturing is outsourced, and they don't really R&D any of the low level stuff.

Back to my original point... even if you reformed patents, and even un-did the Bush era outsourcing credit, NONE of those R&D jobs would come back. You'd have to convince China and Japan to subsidize their businesses to move operations back to the USA. No other country is dumb enough to kill their manufacturing, deliberately.

  But hey, Wall Street knows what it's doing... killing US manufacturing kills unions, and higher unemployment means workers will accept forced overtime and less safe working conditions. It's all pretty basic stuff, really.

Comment Re:Mafia (Score 1) 554

Actually, yes, Zynga has "alleged" connections to Russian organized crime (who, to their credit, recognize that corporate games are more profitable than street ones, and less likely to result in actual jail time).

This is known, but I just had to point it out as so many replies didn't get your jest.

Comment Re:In other news..... (Score 1) 258

>How did that turn out?

Maybe ABI they make their money not off accurate predictions, but page hits from controversial predictions. Or maybe zacharye makes the referral cash (90 published submissions? I remember back when this site was a blog, and quality posts came from interesting folks who weren't SEO peddlers.

Comment Re:Tomato (Score 2) 196

Because dd-wrt wanted to take the project closed. Not necessarily closed source, but effectively so with some deliberate barriers to discourage folks getting into the code and making their own customizations. This drove away both users and potential contributers. Big surprise, that.

Everyone has gone over to open-wrt because it is... well, open.

Comment Re:OpenWRT + Buffalo Router (Score 1) 196

Plus dd-wrt is a bit "closed". They seem to deliberately go out of their way to make it difficult even for experienced developers to package up their own custom firmware. (If I don't qualify that, someone will reply with a red herring case why newbies shouldn't hack router firmware... and in such an extreme example, I agree).

Supposedly open source projects shouldn't go out of their way to keep people from modifying the source. This hurts not just the users, but it drives away potential new contributers. Which is why of course we have open-wrt. You'd have to pay me to use dd-wrt.

Comment Re:Needs more Ram (Score 1) 120

>I'd rather it have 2 network ports.

You can add USB hubs and switches if need be, OR you can choose an already available low-end single-board system which has multiple ports onboard.

This is -supposed- to be minimalist, low-energy tiny-footprint platform. And adding more hardware changes what it is. I like the fact that it's basically the cost of an Arduino, but can do so much more.

 

Comment Re:Haha (Score 1) 270

So pretty much you're saying you aren't very productive with a computer, and also: it's the user's fault if the OS is exploited. Gotcha. ... and I laugh at any Windows user who calls any other OS a "walled garden". Sour grapes from someone stuck inside a prison, I think.

Comment Re:How do these images fit in 2.5k RAM? (Score 1) 115

As perpenso said, these things don't use RAM for data.

These Atmel processors come with (besides the "CPU") RAM, flash RAM, and EPROM storage. External SD storage and more RAM, Flash etc are available if you add it yourself to the board.

So anyways, your script/sketch is saved to flash, which loads up in RAM (just like a regular script or program).
If you code things correctly, your bitmaps, your font definitions, are all in flash memory and so almost no RAM is used by that resource.

Some folks don't care, and the resource is embedded into the script (which means the resource lives in RAM). This is fine as long as you have enough memory and you weren't expecting other folks to run your sketch on smaller processors.

For end user data like an ebook on SD card, that gets loaded straight from the SD card and tossed onto the screen. The system is not trying to load the whole thing before display (which would blow out memory). Instead you scan and display things line by line... like you would do in an old-school shell script when your shell/console had very little memory (even on a server).

Comment Re:So? (Score 1) 298

Sun wanted control of these open source technologies NOT because they are kind sponsors, but so they could sow confusion in an attempt to kill these projects.
Sun acts in bad faith, much like SCO did.

Sun -kicked out- the OpenOffice developers. Also MySQL developers. These are facts. Why would you make such a misinformed comment, other than to be deliberately obtuse? To troll?

Comment How I use rDNS for my email customers (Score 1) 301

If the PTR request results in NXDOMAIN:
then add a X-Warning-no-RDNS header.

Customers are informed of this header. If they wish to make a client-side quarantine rule, they can. Customers are advised not to make rules to automatically delete such emails, as rDNS can get overloaded.

Also - if the rDNS resolves, and the answer is a KNOWN "dynamic or residential" rdns type name, then graylist that sender for 15 minutes. Most spam bots will not queue and retry their spam... they just move on and attack an easier mailserver. Note this is better than trying to use a "dynamic IP block list" because there isn't any, really (not anymore). Spamhaus PBL is not a dynamic IP list.

I use DynaStop http://dynastop.tanaya.net/ for this.
Note this is far better than maintaining your own IP blacklist. You're only graylisting IF the rDNS resolves to say 123-123-123-123-comcastbusiness.net for example. There are PLENTY of legitimate servers in domain space like that (albiet, IT running Exchange and not having a clue..). You would not want to block/refuse based on the rDNS. But the graylisting does thwart spam... in a very hands-off maintenance method. The sender can get through after 15 minutes OR after fixing their reverse DNS. (Once the sender gets through, their IP is considered green/OK for 4 days.. this eliminates the graylisting for frequent senders with bad rDNS)

Comment Off-shoring has is working as intended (Score 1) 319

US businesses can make an argument that the US can not be competitive with China until the US:
* permits industrial pollution on a large scale
* has no workman's compensation law for on-job injuries
* has no mandatory overtime-pay laws
* Shrugs when notified of sexual harassment
* turns a blind eye when a company roughs up "agitators"
* participates in state sanctioned murder of dissidents and union activists

We used to have tarrifs on countries with poor environmental and labor policies.
When we lifted those barriers, we basically PUNISHED companies for not outsourcing. ... and then comes Bush's post 9/11 tax break that's only available for creation of offshore jobs.

Strategists call this "cutting off the oxygen supply". The liberal wing of the Republican party died decades ago, and on the Democratic party it went out with Carter.

Conservative business elites want our elections to be very expensive and privately funded.. why?
The less money the middle class and unemployed have, the more responsive politicians will be to those who DO attend those $1,000/plate dinners.

This is why conservatives are OK with funding unemployment benefits (for now), because of the insecurity, and because it's not going to affect their investment profile (ie, Chinese investments)... in fact it'll just drive up the debt (but in a way that many middle class Americans do not view as a government benefit). The old "drown the baby" strategy conservatives talked about, decades ago..

Comment Wha? robocalls usually don't leave voicemail?!?! (Score 2) 619

Robocalls -do- leave voicemail. I get tons of it.
Voicemail spam is actually THE major reason I am going to kill my land-line (hear that, FairPoint?).

Sadly, you are right about the parties trying to "close the cell phone loophole". While the bill's primary sponsor is a house gop'er, it is co-sponsored by a NYC democrat.

Comment Re:Only if you had Yahoo's spam protection enabled (Score 1) 311

If this is true, Yahoo deserves to die.

It only takes half a brain cell to realize that allowing customers to opt in or out of spam checks on OUTBOUND email is a bad fucking idea.

If this is true, it would explain why Yahoo server IPs are always blacklisted at SpamCop.
Pick an article and timeline: http://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+spamcop as many of their IPs are compromised on and off since 2007.

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