Installing Debian...

No doubt people who've read my posts realize I'm concerned about the NSA spying issue, especially in light of the global cooperation in sharing information between spy networks run by other countries including Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and the UK. Even here in Canada our CSIS uses information collected on their behalf by the US NSA. It's already being abused, with information being fed to the DEA and from there on to police departments in the US, which has nothing to do with the original goal of "catching terrorists."

As my own ISP, SaskTel, leases servers in Florida, my email is monitored. My Google and Yahoo accounts are also monitored. There is no way for me to communicate any more without being tracked.

I've always expected this day would come, because when the internet protocol was designed, one of the key requirements were headers that identified the sender and receiver of data packets. There was no way around this, and there is still no way to avoid such identification (though it can be obfuscated to some degree by protocols like TOR.)

As computers have gotten more powerful, it was inevitable that humanity would have the capability to monitor all communications and track all users. It was just a question of when would it happen, and I must admit I'm surprised that we've come this far in my lifetime.

Unfortunately, it would seem the corporate-led fascists are the ones who are leading the charge. Governments whose leaders no longer respect the will of the people, nor even listen to the concerns of the people, but instead spin the lies suggested by their corporate masters. The world is all about the money nowadays.

Maybe some day we'll see a resurgance of humanism and a more equitable social order based on socialist ideals ala Star Trek, where people work for perks, not survival, but I don't think we're going to see that in my life time. Perhaps we'll never see it, because the more entrenched the elite owners of the corporate world become in their mastery of individual country's governments, the less likely it is that they can be uprooted and removed from the halls of power.

Still, I haven't given up hope on humanity.

I'm just very worried about where things are going to go in my own lifetime, never mind the lifetimes of my nieces and nephews.

Despite the tracking that is possible, people insist on using pseudonyms and aliases for their web accounts. I think that's fundamentally wrong. If you've got any sense of honour, integrity, and personal responsibility, you should not be afraid of having your comments and articles on the 'net associated with who you really are. In fact, you should be proud of who you are, stand up as an individual, and rant with enthusiasm against the evils of the world.

Sure you'll make mistakes. You'll say embarassing things. You'll shove your foot in your mouth up to the knee from time to time. And those mistakes will not be erased from the 'net.

But so what? Everyone is human. If anyone is in error, it's those who insist on judging people by their past mistakes instead of realizing that people screw up, learn from their mistakes, and grow to be better people because of them. I've certainly never worried about being judged by potential employers or friends on the internet.

After all, if I am anything, it is honest and blunt with my opinions. I am the kind of person I want to be and would want for a friend: trustworthy and blunt. I hate double-talking backstabbers with a passion, and wouldn't want to work for a company that would judge me based on my internet social life instead of my job history and quality of my work.

So rave on, rave on, rave on, I shall.

Peace.

Mark Sobkow

Not so well, huh? India is usually cited as one of the Green Revolution's successes, but it's easy to watch the ongoing failure.

I decided to try out nosupportlinuxhosting but they appear to have suspended hyperlogos.org without notice or explanation. I sure hope I don't have to issue a chargeback, that would be stupid. I'm already waiting for Amazon to process two returns that have been sitting around at their facilities for weeks.

I'm not talking about the content, that has always been shit
I'm talking about what happens when I try to modify my relationships.

OK

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at slashdot.org Port 80

Of course I reported the error. Of course I never heard back. Now I'm seeing it again.
Slashdot is basically unusable without friends/foes lists.

Subject says it all. If I can't read your content without javascript, either you are an idiot, or you're evil, or you're an evil idiot.

Google will tell you that their collection of "anonymous" location statistics is opt-in. That is, technically, true. However, on Gingerbread it is not opt-out. Once turned on, there is no option to disable it, that was added later. That, or I have forgotten all I once knew about google-fu. I can find how to change your mind about this on ICS, but not on GB.

I became curious (about Slashdot achievements, silly) and searched to no avail. Anyone have any clue?

Beta 6 implements the table id generators for the RAM implementation and corrects a defect in the implementation of the RAM deletes.

It also corrects the use of table id generators for all of the supported databases (DB/2 LUW 10.1, MySQL 5.5, SQL Server 2012, PostgreSQL 9.1, Oracle 11gR2, and Sybase ASE 15.7.) Previously the client-side code that is generated for objects which incorporate BLOBs (or TEXT for SQL Server) would not have properly used the table id generators, but instead would have relied on obsolete/incorrect code for schema id generators of the same name.

All of the RAM and database implementations have regression tested using the CFDbTest 2.0 test suite.

Beta 6 and the corresponding test suite are available for download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/msscodefactory/files/.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42911081
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42911043
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910999
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910763
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910725

Slashdot, why for you no let me use Plain Text in my journal any more?

I finally reached Beta 5 with my pet project. It now supports manufacturing of code for DB/2 LUW 10.1, SQL Server 2012, MySQL 5.5, Oracle 11gR2, Sybase ASE 15.7, and PostgreSQL 9.1.

I've finally achieved what I set out to do 15 years ago -- provide a multi/cross database coding tool that automates the mapping from an abstract business model to the specifics of the database while using all of the available performance tuning options of the database. This is far more challenging and complex than something like EJB3, which just generates dynamic SQL, not stored procedures and prepared statements.

Next up will be using the tool to write an application. I'm thinking of doing something simple and straight forward, like the core of an accounting system with general ledger, accounts, subledgering, and so on. During that development I may well add in the security support I've been planning all these years, but maybe not. Time will tell.

Regardless, I'm just peaking to have finally achieved this long outstanding milestone. :)

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436185&cid=42803807
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436175&cid=42803841
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3430839&cid=42803897
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436185&cid=42804399

I can afford it.

Modtrolls troll mod. Film at eleven.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3428941&cid=42771455
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3428941&cid=42771437
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3426877&cid=42770781
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3427061&cid=42770777
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3427083&cid=42770769

Pretty sure this time I offended an iFanboi.

Too bad you can't tag things "slashdot"

Every time I get a modtroll I get validation. Here are the five comments in question, all downmodded in a row by someone too lazy to even spread out their punitive moderation.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3411745&cid=42715053
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412111&cid=42714885
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412141&cid=42714871
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412263&cid=42714843
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412263&cid=42714801

I should very much like to demand satisfaction from people who are badly in need of correction. Namely, those who use insults against me in lieu of argument. (I am not above answering insult with insult, of course.) When are we going to get internet VR boxing, so that I can realistically challenge some random dipshit who talks a lot of shit to a boxing match and announce his cowardice should he decline?