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Comment Short description sounds a bit like DAMA (Score 4, Interesting) 130

Like it was/is sometimes used in ham-radio packet radio or in satellite communitation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Assigned_Multiple_Access

The wikipedia description actually makes it sound a bit more complex than it actually it. In packet-radio DAMA simply meant that the central station polled each node regularly and asked it if it has queued requests. The only thing a client was allowed to send without asking back was the "I am a new client"-message.

Comment Re:FUD article (Score 1) 657

Just to disappoint you...

Germany has just shut down 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors. It still does not need to import energy (in the last years Germany exported a massive amount of energy to other countries). Before the shutdown, Germany produced about 20% of its energy from nuclear and abount 17% from renewable energy sources (see wikipedia)

After the shutdown, Germany probably produces more power from renewable as from nuclear energy...

Comment Re:Longer Answer: (Score 1) 657

Nope, they will not.

Since 2004 France (which has more than 40 nuclear reactors) has imported power from Germany, not the other way round.

Germany still has a (admittedly small) surplus, even after powering down 8 nuclear reactors at once. And the dependence on Germany on nuclear power is not very great -- Germany gets approximately the same amount of power from wind energy as from nuclear energy.

So, replacing the nuclear plats without depending on outside power imports is not impossible...

Comment Re:Encryption? (Score 1) 250

Well, no, it does not necessary.

Convergent encryption is a widely used technique, where a file is encrypted with it's hash value.
Thus identical files are always are encrypted with the identical key.

However yes - this breaks privacy for files which are saved by several users.

Comment Re:Patch (Score 5, Informative) 281

Or, if you want to wait for your vendor patch, set vm.mmap_min_addr manually, if it hasn't been set by your vendor already - the only distribution I have where this is necessary is debian.

You can either do
# sysctl -w vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536
and redo that every reboot or do

# echo "vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536" > /etc/sysctl.d/mmap_min_addr.conf
# /etc/init.d/procps restart
and be done with it.
Mozilla

Submission + - NYT Shines a Light on Firefox's Financial Sucess

NewsCloud writes: "Noam Cohen raises the issue of Mozilla's amazing financial success with Firefox's Google relationship.:

"Thanks to the Google agreement, the Mozilla Foundation went from revenue of nearly $6 million in 2004 to more than $52 million the next year [similar revenue is expected in 2006]...In 2005, the foundation created a subsidiary, the for-profit Mozilla Corporation,...mainly to deal with the tax and other issues related to the Google contract...By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent. In part, that is because Google insists on the secrecy of "its arrangement and agreements," said board member Mitch Kapor.
The article compares this approach to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraisers and raises the issue of transparency in open source projects. i.e. should Firefox's 1,000 to 2,000 developers and 80,000 evangelists have full knowledge of how revenue is spent as well as the extent to which Google is able to influence strategy vs. other stakeholders."

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