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Comment This isn't a victory for Behring-Breivik. (Score 3, Insightful) 491

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

Comment Re:"CipherShed" (Score 1) 270

So here's my contributions to the naming

TruerCrypt :-)

CryptBlock CryptAll CryptMore MoreCrypt CryptoCase CryptMyRide CoolCrypt CryptoMagnolia MagnusCryptum Cryptonomy CryptoFilo

And here are some names that do not have Crypt in them (note: I have not checked copywrites or squatter rights on any of these)

AssetTag Lockdown FileBlocker TickTockLock SquirrelCage AcornVault

I can't think of any more :-)

Comment Re:JSON (Score 1) 112

It's tragic how this is always being rediscovered...

back in the late 80's I wrote software that sent wire data for financial transactions... it was not open source, it was proprietary and sold as part of my company's product portfolio for wall street.

However, we did exactly this.. all client's taking part in the transactions first spent a few minutes (back then!) loading the data dictionary. Subsequent information packets were packed binary data with each field having a dictionary ID. There were 1 byte INTs, 2 byte INTs, 3 byte INTs and 4 byte INTs, variable length strings, booleans packed into bit fields, etc. It was very wire efficient, and this was because back then the wires were really slow. We had utilities developed to view the wire data and corelate it with the data dictionary, so we could inspect and debug captured wire data.

Today, in software and in networking applications, things like XML (good god! ), JSON (much better) and other open source wire formats become bloated because the developers want it all human readable and become complacent when they all have 8 core CPUs, 16GB memory and fiber to their desktops.

The wire format never needs to be human readable.

Now, get off my lawn :)

Comment Re:Guest network on a separate machine (Score 1) 572

OK. I'll give that to you. Yes, it's possible, but requires a lot of effort, it's definitely non-trivial effort on both the host and guest side, and you still need the guest network and router firewall rules as well.

Kiosk mode didn't even work in Vbox 3.x and I've not tried it in Vbox 4.x yet.

plus you have to install a restricted user in whatever OS you use on the guest, and make sure they can't exit it.

You may as well just give them a PC all to themself not worry about "did I catch everything they might do to escape the restricted environment I put there??"

Comment Guest network on a separate machine (Score 2) 572

These comments suggesting a Linux boot CD, or a Virtual Machine (VMWare , VirtualBox, etc) are all viable solutions if you trust your guest to stay within the environment you give them.

A VM, in my opinion, is really just useless, because the guest can switch away from it too easily and get at your main machine. Then perhaps become confused which browser is which, see your firefox on the desktop, double click and continue away... This is common with guests that are not too computer savvy....

Someone mentioned using a VM with a guest network and router firewall rules?? that's just more useless, the guest is sitting at your main machine. See the point above.

A linux boot CD is much better than a VM, with firewall rules to prevent this booted machine from accessing the local network, but any linux environment gives local access to local drives, so before you know it your (computer savvy guest) is browsing your local hard drive from your standard everyday system you use, and reading all your fine datas. Or if they are a reboot happy user (I've seen that, if the browser gets slow they power off) then that user may reboot when you're out of the room, and they may now boot into your main system and continue along, without you even knowing it, until much much later. You won't know this unless you are watching what they are doing every minute, and I am sure that won't go over well either.

The only way to go here is to have a separate guest network (hardwired or wifi or both) and have your guests BYOD. If you wish to be accommodating when they don't have their own device then you can give them a slow, cheap, small laptop from craigslist or something, and make them use that. Use any hard drive mirroring software to wipe and reinstall the Linux OS on it after they leave, or use a netboot to boot an image from a local server which you have a virgin copy of for the next user. As someone else already said, make sure it can access the printer, guests always want to print something.

I do the above. An old DELL Latitude D600 is the device for my guests. It has a 14" screen, 1 GB RAM, Pentium M 1.6Ghz, a 30GB hard drive, and dual boots Linux Mint or Windows XP so they have a choice if they care. The entire HDD is overwritten from a server image when they are done.

I say all this because I am the type of person that doesn't want anyone sitting at my local machine. I wish to give them full access, freedom to take their time and do what they want, without me watching guard over them to be sure they aren't reading anything of mine. I don't want them to start my Yahoo, or MSN , or read my email, my PC has years of financial data on it, local documents to my Condominium Corporation, letters to family, and the other 50% is ... well... we all know what the Internet is really for ;)

Comment Re:Competitions, trading (Score 1) 257

Is topcoder really worth the time spent?? I mean, in the end, it's just a gamble.

You write code for a competition that you might not win, so you spend all your time trying to second guess what other competitors might have done, and try to do better them. In the end it's just wasted time if you don't win. Yes, I understand there's experience gained in perhaps programming for some area you might not have been familiar with before.

but how many times can you do that? I need to pay the rent and put food on the table still.

I'd rather get some definite gig that pays me, and only me, as a sure thing.

Comment they go back to school , not on the street (Score 5, Informative) 206

Did anyone who's already posted even read the article? Apparently, the children are placed back at home and their education is completely financed by the violator. Apple follows-up regularly to make sure they are complying.

The child probably went to work in the first place because the family could not afford an education, so they had to choose between sending the child to school or putting food on the table. So now they can put the child back in school, and someone else in the family can work to put food on the table, and not have to worry about paying for an education for the child anymore.

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