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Comment SHA-1 has only been around for 10 years? (Score 1) 143

I know this isn't the primary point of the announcement, but does anyone know where the authors get 10 years from, as included in this statement: "Today, 10 years after of SHA-1 was first introduced..."? Best I can tell, SHA-1 was formally defined in 1995 (FIPS PUB 180-1), and I'm pretty certain it was in common widespread use long before 2007. Are they referring to the first time it was introduced into one of their own products or something? or I'm I missing something obvious?

Comment Max Keyboard? (Score 1) 223

Anyone have experience with this company? MaxKeyboard I've been looking for a new mechanical keyboard on-and-off for a while (so this post comes at a great time for me), and I think I've settled on the Cherry MX brown switch (which I was satisfied to see was so well reviewed in TFA). I'm looking for a bit more than just a plain keyboard, though, and I currently have my eyes on the Nighthawk X8. It's pricey and seems to be a bit difficult to find, though (out of stock most places I've looked), and I'm not familiar with the manufacturer, but it seems to be a pretty solid product. Anyone have personal experience with either this keyboard or the company itself?

Comment Re:Stupid Floating Headers (Score 1) 2254

I agree with this as well. Honestly this is my only real complaint; I think the rest of the site works fine, pending some time to adjust to the new look and feel. However, the floating header is worse than a toolbar, as it actively covers page content. This is, I think, one of the worst and most offensive trends I've seen on several website designs lately. Please reconsider this, or at the very least make it optional.

Comment Re:A Gnome user that wants to give this a try... (Score 1) 302

openSUSE is generally regarded as the flagship KDE distro. I've heard good things about Mandriva as well. Either one should give you a decent KDE experience. Personally I run stock KDE (on Gentoo), as I think the default theme and configuration is quite slick on its own, but most distros tend to add certain themes and enhancements to make it more accessible for newer users.

Of course, package management, system administration utilities, etc. are all somewhat unique to each distro, and will probably be different from what you're used to with Ubuntu, so do keep that in mind when comparing KDE vs. Gnome. Eg., if you don't like using YaST to configure your network settings, that's a knock against openSUSE, not specifically KDE.

Comment USB drivers require OS before loading (Score 1) 460

I've seen drivers mentioned a few times as an issue with USB serial adapters, but something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the fact that these drivers are usually (or always?) tied to the OS, which means the device can't be used until the OS is running and the driver is loaded.

From the client perspective this isn't a big deal. Eg., when using a USB serial adapter on a laptop to connect to a switch or modem, you're already going to have your OS up and running on the laptop. However, from the server perspective, this can be a major problem. If you use this on a server that, say, doesn't have a native serial port, nothing can be redirected until after the OS loads the appropriate USB driver. So, POST/BIOS messages, bootloader options, initial boot messages (eg., dmesg for Linux) are all unavailable. This severely limits the usefulness of USB serial adapters.

I think this problem needs to be resolved before USB can ever be considered a viable replacement, though personally I hope it does. It seems like it should certainly be possible; HID device (keyboard and mouse) support is offered by most BIOSes by enabling the "Legacy USB" support option, so obviously it's possible to talk to USB devices at this level. They just need to settle on a standard protocol for serial communication that can be implemented in a similar manner.

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