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Comment Re:Own email server (Score 4, Informative) 383

I do, because I still run my own, as plenty of power-users do. Of course, the masses never ran their own e-mail servers, even before webmail, they just used POP3 or IMAP.

I don't. Google Apps is free for 50 users, almost never goes down, configures itself automatically and does a better job of protecting my data than I could. I don't even use the web interface, I just hook my mail client up to it and away it goes. "Fire and forget".

Comment Re:why i no longer contribute (Score 1) 194

perhaps th next gen wiki will fix this and the copy left part

You've actually read Wikipedia's page on licensing, haven't you? They (where "they" is anybody with a business plan) *can* sell your work, but it has to be under a Wikipedia-compatible licence and they have to credit you (directly or indirectly) as an author. It's not exactly a bottomless pit of money.

Comment Re:"Hopeful" language (Score 4, Informative) 76

This is A-grade linkbait, they're just spewing buzzwords and hoping certain news outlets (*cough* Hack-a-Day *cough* *cough*) will pick up on it and direct their readers to the Kickstarter page. Just looking through their writeup, it seems like they have absolutely no idea how they'll *actually process* the data; for example, they claim that they'll put a camera onboard, yet assuming that this camera uses one byte per-pixel channel and has a resolution of 160 * 180, they'll need (3 * 160 * 180)/1024KiB = 84KiB of memory to store a single frame and probably even more to process said frame. Yet the Arduino has only 1KiB of memory, and their downlink is unlikely to be able to transfer a whole frame in a reasonable amount of time (so no live video). That's only one of the big holes in their plan, here are some of the others:

  • They plan to put a GPS onboard, but commercial GPS receivers shut off when they reach 60, 000ft and 999kt. The satellite will exceed both of these limits mere seconds after it leaves the launchpad
  • They haven't explained *how* they plan to launch the satellite into space, or why it's costing them a mere $35, 000
  • As pointed out above, it's unknown what advantage there is to running code *onboard* the craft when you could simply analyse the data on the ground
  • None of their sensors are designed to operate in space. How will their pressure sensor work in a vacuum? Is their temperature sensor rated to work at extreme temperatures? It doesn't sound like it.

tl;dr parent is right and this is a giant load of bullshit.

Comment Re:CEO has to mark his Territory (Score 2) 72

Their iOS app.

That's right, because the only way a web service can be successful is if it has a thin wrapper over its API in the form of an iOS app so poor users don't have to open Safari.
 
Also, I don't think you should be measuring other companies against Instagram. There's no greater proof that we are in the middle of a second tech bubble than the fact that a company whith no discernible monetisation strategy managed to be bought for $1 billion.

Comment Re:Take it off the Internet? (Score 1) 266

...like sticking USB sticks into power plants/mission-critical gadgets.

Wait, what? The last USB-spread virus I heard about outside the Windows world (where viruses spread via autorun, which can be disabled) was a Ubuntu file manager bug which was quashed within a couple of minutes of being disclosed. Apparently it only affected Ubuntu users who had both an infected USB and had disabled AppArmor. Is "oh yeah, somebody stuck a USB stick in it" really a valid excuse for a major security breach?
 
You're right about not needing a "cybersecurity military", but I don't think we need to "train" users either - sane security defaults can fix that for us. Follow the principle of least privilege and you will be fine.
 
PS: My apologies if you were joking, I'm not sure if you've been modded up as insightful or funny (or both!).

Comment Re:Ubuntu Sucks (Score 1) 230

Arch breaks often in it's update and is seriously not recommended in production environments.

Ironically, my experience has been that Arch actually breaks less than Ubuntu does with updates, especially when you throw the horror that is dist-upgrade into the equation. That said, the reason I stopped using Arch was the fact that they symlinked /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python3 for no discernible reason other than "OMG 3 > 2 SO WE MUST USE IT". This promptly broke all my third party Python 2.x apps + libraries and forced my migration to "greener pastures".

Comment Re:A good thing (Score 1) 60

But seriously, it always makes me angry when I see the notebook computers that some schools force their students to use. Big heavy 15" models are stupid to be carried every single day even by adults, let alone small children. You would think that inexpensive, small netbooks should be a no-brainer.

Netbooks are out of the question because they are almost impossible to work with on a day-to-day basis (particularly for students with vision problems). That only leaves small, inexpensive laptops, which as I understand it don't exist yet. Ideally you'd be looking at a 12-13" laptop, but they're too damn expensive when you put them up against the 15-17" monsters. To be honest a 15" laptop isn't that big a deal, I have one sitting on my desk which is approximately 1.2kg with the battery in, vs. 1.1kg for an average size maths textbook. Hell, I've got a soft-cover physics textbook which is 2.1kg, and a couple of hard-covers which are presumably much heavier.
 
Oh yeah, and just for the record here is an approximate cost breakdown of current secondary laptops in Australia (figures given to me by a tech guy from a high school):
  Hardware: $1500
  Software: $1500
 
To be fair, that is for a Dell machine rather than the Acer which the State Government were pushing, but in any case the OLPC reduces hardware cost to $234 and software cost to $0.

Comment Re:When will governments learn? (Score 2) 151

They probably already have 2) down pat if they're doing their jobs properly. Remember, all that happened here was a DDoS - there were no gaping holes found in the defences of the websites. Anonymous just happened to have more resources than the Government websites did and thus managed to make the sites unresponsive for a couple of hours.
 
But of course you already know this since you're the kind of discerning Slashdotter who reads linked articles and has at least a basic understanding of the topics on which they comment, right?

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