Comment Oh great (Score 5, Funny) 241
As if fsck wasn't bad enough to use in business talks, now I have to get prepared for btrfsck
Comment Re:~Innovating (Score 4, Insightful) 391
They got bogged down due to their own weight. It's not easy to do anything when you have millions of people using your site, millions of articles, etc. They were able to innovate when they were small, nimble, and could afford mistakes.
Comment Re:sorry but I dont get... (Score 1) 354
Have you tried pasting in an IM window a Google maps URL? I'm guessing not or URL shortening would be painfully obvious to you.
Comment Is upgrading worthwhile? (Score 1) 269
I've never done OS upgrades (Windows or Linux). Do people trust OS upgrades in general and Ubuntu specifically?
I figure there is way too many changes, and companies can't afford the needed QA to test all the upgrade scenarios.
I'm curious to know what people experience. I guess I might try the Ubuntu upgrade and see what happens (of course I'll always have that nagging feeling, and if any crashes happen I'll probably blame the upgrade).
Comment Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. (Score 1) 869
He was "forced" only in the sense that newer distros are using it by default. This means that if you want to upgrade (e.g. for other programs), you either put up with KDE4, or pick a distro that uses KDE 3.5, or switch to a different desktop. You got choices, but some of those choices force you into other choices.
Comment I ditched KDE4 too (Score 1) 869
I tried KDE 4.1.3 and hurried back to 3.5.10 It was very Original-Vista-like (not just look, stability too) for my taste. Many things didn't work. This was a Kubuntu release, so maybe they screwed something up, but many applets were missing too (e.g. System Guard), so it's not just stability. I guess widgets will catch up too, but it just wasn't ready for me. I was rather surprised as it felt more like a beta than a .1.x release.
Comment A Commercial Wikipedia (Score 1) 412
They couldn't pay me enough to work on Wiki[pm]edia, on the other hand I do it for free.
Comment Re:Taking bets on deletion (Score 2, Informative) 113
Bollocks, this is not Wikipedia, but Wikimedia. Almost any picture gets accepted as long as the copyright stuff is in order.
Comment What Google should do (Score 5, Interesting) 135
Google should develop a really good plugin for OpenOffice.org that makes it a client for Google Docs. It should handle uploading, downloading, synchronizing, merging conflicts, etc. That would scare MS off a lot more, and it would actually make both OOo and Google Docs more useful.
Comment In-person absentee (Score 1) 709
I voted in-person absentee. Same ballot, same place, just earlier. Still had to wait 1 hr in line though.
Google's Obfuscated TCP 392
agl42 writes "Obfuscated TCP attempts to provide a cheap opportunistic encryption scheme for HTTP. Though SSL has been around for years, most sites still don't use it by default. By providing a less secure, but computationally and administratively cheaper, method of encryption, we might be able to increase the depressingly small fraction of encrypted traffic on the Internet. There's an introduction video explaining it."
"DonorGate" Is Latest Scandal To Hit Wikipedia 274
MSTCrow5429 writes "In the latest of a long train of scandals to hit Wikipedia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports on an accusation that founder and Wikia President Jimmy Wales traded a multi-thousand dollar donation for an article re-write. Jeff Merkey, formerly of Novell, claims that Wales approached him in 2006 and said that for a fee, Wales would personally see to it that the article on Merkey, which had cast him in a negative light, would be re-written in Merkey's favor. Merkey claims that after he donated $5,000, Wales followed through on this quid pro quo. The Wikipedia edit history does indicate that Wales wiped out the article on Merkey, and then personally re-wrote it. The SMH reports that Wales has called the allegation 'nonsense.'" Merkey filed a harassment lawsuit in 2005 against a number of people and organizations, including Slashdot. Slashdot was removed from the suit on 2005-07-20.
Update: 03/12 00:39 GMT by KD : Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh provided this official statement: "Current allegations relating to Jimmy Wales soliciting donations for the Wikimedia Foundation in order to protect or edit Wikipedia articles are completely false. The Wikimedia Foundation has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to a Wikipedia article — nor has Jimmy Wales. This is a practice the Wikimedia Foundation would never condone."
Update: 03/12 00:39 GMT by KD : Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh provided this official statement: "Current allegations relating to Jimmy Wales soliciting donations for the Wikimedia Foundation in order to protect or edit Wikipedia articles are completely false. The Wikimedia Foundation has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to a Wikipedia article — nor has Jimmy Wales. This is a practice the Wikimedia Foundation would never condone."
Submission + - Why am I getting cached web content more often?
teslatug writes: Recently I've noticed that many sites that produce dynamic content (e.g. Flickr, blog sites, etc.) have been serving me more and more cached content. I have to force refresh my browser to get the latest updates even if the last time I visited the site was 10 hours prior. I use Firefox (version 2.0.0.11) for my browsing. I'm not sure where in the chain the issue is though. It could be that the sites caching mechanism is broken, but that seems unlikely as it's happening across different sites. It could be that Firefox's page loading mechanism is broken, and that's somewhat more likely, but I would think that many others would have noticed this and that it would have been fixed. My biggest concern and most likely suspect is my ISP, Insight Broadband, which might have instituted some caching of its own to save bandwidth. How would you troubleshoot this issue if it happened to you?
NSI Registers Every Domain Checked 668
An anonymous reader writes "In a developing story, registrar Network Solutions has been caught front-running domain names. Any domain names searched via NSI's whois are being immediately purchased by the registrar, thereby preventing a registrant from purchasing the domain at any other registrar. There are multiple reports of this practice over at DomainState.com." Update: 01/09 01:58 GMT by KD : shashib writes to let us know that NSI has issued a response to the accusations of front running.
500-fold Increase in Data Flow from SETI Telescope 346
coondoggie brings us an article from Networkworld about a flood of new data for the SETI@home project. We discussed something similar a few months ago when a new telescope array went live. The vast amount of processing power required to handle the new data is prompting the SETI@home team to make a plea for more volunteers. Quoting the press release:
"What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now let the telescope record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of just one. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect the polarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequency coverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources."
