Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

In Japan I heard you could pay for things all day wearing nothing but a cellphone.

I know that the Japanese are much more casual about skin than most westerners, but isn't that going a tad far?

It's probably because many users of XFCE don't need all the extra functions of other DEs and don't realize that other people do.

I use Xfce for a number of reasons. One of them is the fact that it's easy to customize without installing third-party extensions. I also like the fact that if your needs are simple you can get rid of bells, whistles and gongs that you don't need. However, I fully understand that there are people who either need or want those tools (If anybody should understand that it's me; I use Compiz because I like the flashy desktop effects.) and I appreciate the fact that they're there if you need or want them. For me, one of the important traits of Linux is the ability to decide for yourself what tools you need or want instead of being stuck with what the developers think you want and I'll probably stick with Xfce as long as that's what it provides.

Only if they prioritize based on content. They can always base the priority on the source or destination of the packet, ignoring the content. Not that I'd approve of that either, but it's not only possible, it's faster and simpler than opening the package.

Not only are there orphan drugs, there are orphan diseases, one of which is MS. One of the major drugs used to control this is Avonex. Check out the cost of a monthly supply, and note that a monthly supply consists of exactly four doses. About the only way anybody but the 1% can afford it is the fact that if you're using it you're automatically eligible for Medicare, SSI and whatever assistance your state offers. And, I suspect that if that weren't the case, the price would drop dramatically because without the subsidies there wouldn't be any market for it.

I never said that blocking outbound DNS queries would be a good idea, just that some PHB might think it was a clever thing to do.

I can see how they'll keep track of your DNS queries if you use their servers. If you don't, they'll either have to examine all outgoing traffic on Port 53, or block the port altogether, rather like they do with Port 25 to control email relaying by spammers. My guess is they'll just go for the blocking because it's easier, and because most customers won't know the difference anyway.

In theory, at least, you patch or update the software image on disk and this allows the working copy in RAM to use those patches without being restarted. Thus, if and when you need to reboot, what you load is functionally identical to what you were running before. Of course, that's only in theory. In practice, there's always the possibility that what you get at reboot won't be quite the same as what you had before because of some sort of read/write glitch that slipped past the error checking and mucks things up. Yes, that can happen now, but if you need to reboot to get (let's say) a new kernel running, you don't have to wait for an emergency to find out and, you may be able to reboot into an older, working version until things get corrected. I didn't RTFA, so I don't know if this new process leaves you with a backup version or not.

Yeah; my deafness is service-connected too. Too much outbound back when I was on the Gun Line back in '72, although it didn't show up until almost forty years later. Still, I have a classic artillery notch, and nothing else to account for it. A little tinnitus too, once in a while, but mostly it's just the frequencies that I can't hear properly that makes for problems.

I'm partially deaf, so if I'm going to listen to music at all, it doesn't matter how good the equipment is, or isn't. As long as I can recognize the music, or understand the words, that's as good as it's going to get for me.

But really, what is the point of looking at what you did 6 months ago?

Good question. Let's say that they suspect you of money laundering, but have no admissible proof. If they can examine your old emails, they may find evidence that you were laundering money back then and use that to get a warrant to read your current emails. In effect, this is pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and making an end-run around the intent of the requirement for a warrant. This law would block that loophole and make the law work the way it was always intended to work.

I've never been modded down before though.

"What, never?"
"Well, hardly ever!"

He's well behind Clinton (400+ by his own admission)...

That works out to just under once a week. I've never been a fan of either Clinton or Obama, but that's not unreasonable at all when you break it down that way. And, if they don't use a golf cart, it's good exercise.

I have a friend who's been legally blind all of her life. She has a Kindle and finds it very easy to use and read because she knows how to adjust the text size to what she needs. I have a high-end Nook that I'm very fond of. I've let my friend experiment with it and she told me that if she didn't have a Kindle, she could get along just fine with my Nook. Depending on just what you need, either one may be the right answer for you.

Why not measure all the way back to the Medieval Warming period?

The reason they don't take it that far back is that then they'd have to use data from the Little Ice Age, and explain why that happened. This way, they can ignore those inconvenient truths.

If all that hatred came from moral indignation, why is it that almost all of the protesters were college students who were worried about keeping their student deferments. Somehow the 4-F's were drastically under-represented, possibly because they didn't have to worry about the draft.