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Comment: Coming soon, illegal to remove rootkits (Score 2) 443

it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime

Or until you use repair tools to remove the rootkit. Once they figure out people can do that, then they'll ask to make it illegal to remove their rootkits.

Comment: Re:What about the ISP? (Score 1) 380

by LordSkippy (#42874385) Attached to: Home Server Or VPS? One Family's Math

Although it is against the TOS, unless the server is using a large amount of bandwidth, it is unlikely to be noticed. Even if it is noticed, again, as long as it isn't using a large amount of bandwidth, the ISP is unlikely to do anything. ISPs are smart enough to know that it's better to keep Bob as a paying residential customer, than to have him switch to their only other competitor in the market over whether or not Bob's low bandwidth using game server requires a business account.

Other than using a disproportionate amount bandwidth, the only time an ISP is likely to go after you for violating the TOS with a server is if they think you are actually making money with the server. And I'm not talking about an extra $20 or $100 bucks a month kind of money, but enough extra money where they think upselling you the business account makes sense.

Why do I make this claim? Because I use to work for an ISP back in the day, and part of my job was to look for people using the service to set up Internet shops. We only cared if it looked like the shop was actually making money.

Comment: So far, it seems to pass the Mom test (Score 2) 675

My mother had to get a new machine this past weekend, all they had in stock came with Win8. I was dreading it the entire way back from the store, and while I was removing her old box and connecting up the new box, due to my experiences with the Win8 preview. Looked and acted pretty much like the preview did to me, but surprisingly, my mother liked it. I heard a lot more "oh wow"s than I did "oh no"s.

Comment: Re:These really aren't much (Score 1) 182

by LordSkippy (#42181239) Attached to: But Can It Run <em>Crysis 3</em>?

If Mechwarrior Online is anything to go by (it uses the Crysis 3 engine), the min-specs aren't going to play the game very well. Dual-core machines end up having both cores hammered, and FPS drops into the singles when up close and personal with more than one other Mech. My machine is about midway between the min-specs and the recommended for MWO, which looks like they took the min-specs straight from Crysis 3, and it plays alright, but not great. It could be due to some of the code the MWO team has bolted on, but I'd say it's a pretty good indicator that the min-specs are more wishful thinking.

Comment: Re:Snapfish (Score 1) 350

by LordSkippy (#39931111) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Option For Printing Digital Photos?

I used to work at a competitor to Snapfish, writing the software to manage and send jobs to the production floor and machines, so I'm familiar with the business. Using any of the web-based or brick-n-mortar stores with an actual photo-development machine is going to be a much better option than printing them out yourself. It takes longer to get your prints, but it will be cheaper and the quality is much better than anything you can do yourself. Unless you happen to have a Fuji Frontier, or other industrial photo-developer, in your basement. A true photo-development machine, like a Frontier, is going to produce better colors (if it's calibrated correctly) and longer lasting prints than either dye sublimation or ink jet printers.

Dye sublimation or ink jet printers are nice if you want a quick print, but for bulk prints or prints that you want to last, order online or drive to the drug store.

Also, a quick note, we used to compare our quality of prints to other competitors. Snapfish was alright and their quality was usually consistent. But that was over seven years ago, and everyone's quality would drift a bit over time. I'd order some test prints from a few places before placing a large bulk order.

Comment: Re:Not a lot (Score 1) 407

by LordSkippy (#39291741) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Who Has Been Sued By the RIAA?

I wasn't aware the FBI made it a habit of informing ISPs of the reasons for their information requests.

I've worked for an ISP and recall the FBI asking for information, logs, and any records we had on one customer. I did not see the request or any legal documents presented by the FBI, so I don't know if they contain information about the reason for the request. However, it was only minutes between when the request was fulfilled to when everyone knew why the FBI made the request. So, if the FBI didn't explicitly state why they were making the request, it doesn't take long for a sysadmin to see a pattern in the information being handed to the FBI.

Comment: Re:Star Trek would win (Score 2) 511

by LordSkippy (#37445132) Attached to: William Shatner On <em>Star Trek</em> Vs. <em>Star Wars</em>

That site is all about "proving" how awesome Star Wars is.

I can see how it would appear that way, given how lopsided the official numbers (from both sides) are.

However, look at the numbers used to SW tech, it looks an awful lot like George Lucas smoked some crack and pulled a bunch of numbers out of his ass...

Can't argue against that, George Lucas changes things around quite a bit. However, when you consider the age of the SW Universe (within the universe, not how long it's been around), the numbers do make a bit more sense. The Jedi were the guardians of the republic for either a thousand years or a thousand generations (George not keeping his units straight), and the galactic society being older than that. Contrast that with Trek, and you have a Federation that was in it's infancy in TOS and not much older by TNG, and no active space faring civilizations having more than a few hundred years in space. But all of that really isn't the point, because...

Well, because Star Wars is fantasy/space opera.

Almost. SW is the young hero's journey fable turned into a melodramatic redemption of a fallen hero, while ST is a mix of actual science fiction and social commentary. Both are wrapped up in science fiction setting, but that's really the only commonality. Comparing SW to ST in term of which ship can beat up which ship misses the deeper meaning of both (not that there's much deeper meaning in the prequels). Thus, the meaning of my last sentence in my original comment; it's better to compare the two on writing and story telling.

Comment: Re:Star Trek would win (Score 1) 511

by LordSkippy (#37441792) Attached to: William Shatner On <em>Star Trek</em> Vs. <em>Star Wars</em>

Take a look at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/FiveMinutes.html and you'll realize that Slave-1, a bounty hunter's ship, could have made short work of the Enterprise-D. There really is no comparison between the two universes when it comes to ship to ship combat. The Federation wouldn't stand a chance against the Empire.

Comparing quality of writing and story telling, however, is a different argument. There's a lot more good Trek than there is good Star Wars.

Comment: Re:Units of Measurement? (Score 1) 465

by LordSkippy (#31202178) Attached to: Distance, in multiples of my height, from my birthplace:

"Distance, in multiples of my height"

That clearly states that the unit of measurement is your height.

The unit of measurement you use for both height and distance is irrelevant, as long as they are the same. The final result will be in multiples of your height, which will effectively make your height the unit of measurement. For instance, I live about 40,000,000 inches from my birthplace and I'm 68 inches tall, which is roughly 588,235 multiples of my height from my birthplace - or 588,235 "my heights" from my birthplace.

And just to beat a dead horse; unless you live really close to your birthplace, the options don't give a very wide range.

Privacy

Ohloh Tracks Open Source Developers 115

Posted by kdawson
from the over-your-shoulder dept.
eldavojohn writes "The startup company Ohloh has a database listing 70,000 developers working on 11,000 open source projects. Their aim is to 'rank' open source developers, which raises some interesting questions about exactly how useful this tracking company is. Questions like, 'Is there an accurate way beyond word of mouth to measure the importance and skill of a developer?' I found it slightly alarming that, to this site, the number of commits (with input from the number of kudos) tells how good a developer you are."

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