Blah Blah Blah.

I'm well aware that the Government or hackers* could compromise Slashdot and find out who I am. I also don't care. I can also lie to you about who I am on Slashdot. Assuming you use the handle "Kenja" on any other online forums I can probably show you fun-filled research papers from people who are really good at data mining who could probably track you down with a very high probability just based on the content of your publicly-available posts and some educated cross-reference guessing. It's life, deal with it.

*Slashdot still runs on Apache 1.3 you know, and the "infrastructure" if you can call it that hasn't been updated since the late '90s. It's been compromised in the past and I feel that hackers don't bother with doing more damage because there isn't any money in it.

Controversial title but here's why: With the ability to use nicknames, you can delude yourself into thinking you have privacy when you really don't. With a real-name policy you are having your lack of privacy rubbed right in your face so you don't forget it and do something stupid under an "assumption" of privacy.

You want real online privacy? Don't use Facebook.

You think this violates the "anonymity" of the Internet? The Internet was never anonymous.. it's just that the Internet made it (and still makes it) difficult to verify that the other person at the end of the pipe is actually who he says he is and isn't lying to you. Don't confuse lack of authentication with privacy, they ain't the same thing.

At least in the U.S., trademarks come into existence by use in commerce. Registering a trademark is a good idea, but not even a requirement (which is why you see (TM) for non-registered trademarks and (R) for registered marks).

Assuming that the Python programming language and other related marks have been used in commerce *before* this other Python outfit showed up, then they don't have to worry about losing their rights to the name. Unless Europe allows for hijacking of marks simply through registration, I don't see what the Python guys should have to worry about (unless the other "python" company was using that mark in commerce before the real Python guys were).

Notice how confusing it is to name things above because of the conflicting "Python" mark? That's why there are trademarks, because if you have these name collisions it becomes difficult to accurately identify the source of the good or service.

I have this thing called a car and when it is used in an approved manner to drive down an empty road it transports me. This actually happened last Tuesday.

  We should do research on what would happen if we dropped my car from a cargo plane at an altitude of 20,000 feet and then decide if cars should be banned if there are any ill effects.

Since Slashdot won't post it for another 36 hours: North Korea just set off another nuke. The USGS has detected a 4.9 to 5.1 magnitude artificial earthquake centered at the same location as previous tests: http://inagist.com/all/301169171180433408/

You're flat-out wrong with calling the standard console "ultra-fast"

Wall-clock time to run "tree" on 152,724 files on my Arch system (repeated runs were made for each technique to ensure consistency):

      1. Using the supposedly bloated & slow Konsole under KDE: 1.8 - 1.9 seconds.

      2. Using the supposedly "ultra-fast" kernel konsole: 12.7 - 12.8 seconds.

This is new and new stuff is EVIL! We should get our pitchforks and BURN it right alongside Wayland for daring to do something different than the perfection of 1985 era technology!

Now please excuse me while I get back to ranting about how patents are the one and only cause for innovation being squelched in the modern world.

Interesting, I didn't even know it had shared-key support. I think they prefer a PKI setup and I didn't delve into all of the options in that much detail. Good call.

You could say that. In fact, it requires certificates & PKI to work. You can be a self-signing CA if you want, so there's no need to deal with Verisign/etc. if you don't want to. OpenVPN links to utilities that make it manageable to setup the CA and generate certificates for end users.

Live it, love it, use it (oh and it has commercial support too so it's not just a toy). http://openvpn.net/

Oh yes, Intel's reign of terror that includes foisting tens of millions of systems that can easily boot practically any version of Linux and their insidious plot to use standardized system interconnects has truly ushered in an age of darkness from which the world will never recover. Don't even get me started on their insidious projects where they infiltrate the Linux kernel with completely open-sourced GPL'd graphics drivers! Truly they should all be put up on war crimes charges!

Now excuse me while I return to my secret resistance base where we are attempting to load updated ROMs on our Android phones. One of these weeks we'll download the right set of magic files & instructions from some random forum and hopefully not permanently brick the phone in the process. Only ARM can save us hobbyists from the tyranny of well documented and easily modified computing systems!

Considering how easy it would be to set off some of those cheap Blue-Rhino propane tanks and get a similar death-toll, I hop that NYC is going to have gas control next on the agenda.

I was actually referring to the infamous youtube videos of supposedly ordinary tap-water that was incredibly flammable due to fracking and just so happened to burn in exactly the same way that Everclear/Bacardi 151/etc. would burn when lit on fire....

This sounds WAY too much like that bad evil fracking thing that I've been programmed to be scared of. I've seen videos of Everclear-- uh, I mean "tap water" -- that lit on fire because of fracking!

We need Matt Damon to make a move (funded by Abu Dhabi of course) that exposes the evils of this non-OPEC produced energy source immediately!

" I think the issue of file storage was solved by openafs a long time ago, certainly at the scale of small University."

LMFAO... and yes, I am a Carnegie Mellon Alum and yes, when I was in Grad School I did manage to hack my research Linux box enough to be able to mount my Andrew share. Having seen how people who aren't in grad school at CMU actually use computers in the real world, somebody needs a bit of a wakeup call.