* Posts by sisk

2455 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Mar 2010

Did Linux drive supers, and can it drive corporate data centers?

sisk

How many of these will be running WIndows? Probably none.

'None' is most definitely the wrong answer to that question. 'Few' is plausible, but there are plenty of shops out there, including the one I work at, that prefer to set up Windows themselves.

That said I would imagine that the same is true of most Linux shops. Especially given the fact that most vendors only offer a few choices for distros (if any at all). Those are almost invariably Ubuntu, SUSE, and Red Hat. I've never seen a major server vendor offer Debian (my own distro of choice) or Arch for instance, both of which are major players in the Linux server market. Debian, in particular has a 29% share of Linux web servers and a 9% share of web servers over all according to some studies, and that's just web servers. I would imagine that if a company prefers Debian for its web server then it would probably prefer it for its other servers as well.

Chubby-chasing sex trolls ran me offline, says fashion blogger

sisk

Re: I Must Admit

I agree with everything you said except for:

The photos she can do nothing about. They become public property as soon as you post them on the net

Under US law anything put on the web obtains an automatic copyright, provided its not already copyrighted by someone else and you're not releasing it to the public domain or otherwise giving your permission to use it. So, in theory, she could send out DMCA takedown notices to the people who are using them without her permission (provided, of course, that they're in the US). Actually enforcing the copyright might be difficult, but, much as I'm usually against it, DMCA does give her some recourse.

sisk

Re: So why don't men run into as many assholes as women?

We run into just as many as women, but male assholes tend to not objectify other males the way they do females. And female assholeness* tends to express itself in ways that do not translate well to the internet. Women, for whatever reason, are less likely to objectify men. The female equivalent of the guy giving a detailed, graphic description of what he'd like to do to a woman (and, as often as not I suspect, not realizing what an ass he's being by doing so) is the woman complaining that all men are pigs or who constantly makes comments like "only a man would blah" or who knowingly leads men on to get free drinks at the bar then purposefully gives them a wrong phone number (which is doubly bad because then an innocent, happily married nerd in his mid 30s gets texts in the middle of the night from some horny 20 something guy...not-so-random example). These are just as common as your garden variety perverted troll, and in my opinion just as bad, but more socially acceptable.

Anyway, my point is that there're just as many women with bad behavior toward men as men who act this way. It's just that their bad behavior doesn't tend to be sexual in nature.

*Yes, yes, I'm making up words now.

sisk

Possible solution and obligatory XKCD

XKCD #322

Now we just need an EMP wielding nerd girl named Joanna.

Wikipedians say no to Jimmy's 'buggy' WYSIWYG editor

sisk

Um.....why?

Given how little you actually need for Wikipedia, why do they not just use CK Editor, perhaps with some minimal customizations. I'm not a Wikipedian, so I may be off base, but CK Editor is wonderful for in place editing of blogs and forums and such. It could do the same for Wikipedia I would think.

Plus it's been around for ages, is a mature and has been pretty well debugged over the years, and it's open source. Why reinvent the wheel? Just use what's out there.

'Steve Jobs killed music biz', but Bon Jovi don't mind Google Glass

sisk

I still think that, while till wildly inaccurate, "Apple saved the music industry" would be a lot closer to the truth than "Apple killed the music industry". If they hadn't dragged the music industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century they'd still be trying to stay afloat by selling shiny plastic discs that no one buys anymore.

sisk

What are we supposed to call them then?

Something I can say in front of my munchkins without worrying that they're going to repeat it to my parents would be nice.

First burger made of TEST-TUBE MEAT to be eaten on August 5

sisk

Re: Totally disgusting

@FredBloggsY : And that proves the folly of using Wikipedia as a source. Basically none of what you said there is right. Look up what the USDA really says about it.

sisk

Re: Totally disgusting

BTW, it is only technically called beef. It does contain a load of other items from the cow that most of us would not call beef at all. Pink shit would be a better name.

When you don't know what you're talking about you shouldn't talk. FTLGB is the made of the bit of meat too close to the bone to be easily gotten off with a knife. It's not, as some have suggested, from the intestinal cavity, offal, or any part of the cow that anyone who normally eats beef would be opposed to consuming. That's one of the points in the libel lawsuit I mentioned above.

I have SEEN the stuff with my own two eyes as it's being packaged. Trust me, it's ground beef. You can not tell the difference, either in appearance or taste.

sisk

Re: Totally disgusting

"Pink slime" (properly called lean finely textured ground beef, or LFTGB) is beef. If you were handed a plate of LFTGB and a plate of lean ground beef produced by a butcher you'd not be able to tell the difference, in appearance or taste, despite the lies (or, perhaps, ignorance....if I were feeling generous, which I'm not) of Jamie Oliver and NBC (who, by the way, are both on what looks to be the losing in of a very big lawsuit over it). If anything the LFTGB is both safer and healthier than 'regular' ground beef.

Indian military pondered attack on Venus and Jupiter

sisk

if I were to try and categorise objects in the sky (which are likely only going to be bright dots) into "Venus" and "not Venus", chances are it'd be a dismal failure

How about "moving fast enough to be flying" and "relatively still and therefore probably celestial"?

And yes, I facepalm at my countrymen to when a planet is mistaken for a UFO.

Apple crushes all competition in US Brand of the Year survey

sisk

Re: BS

#1) Brand recognition is not brand love.

#2) Of course AT&T makes the list of mobile networks. They're the second biggest provider in America. There are a lot of places, like the boonies where I live, where the only options are Verizon, AT&T, and local companies that no one's ever heard of.

#3) Again, this is about brand recognition. Try to find someone who hasn't heard of MS and/or Best Buy. Go ahead, try.

sisk

Re: Newegg. Never heard of them

Never heard of Newegg? That's ok, you can turn in your geek card right over here.

Seriously, they're THE name in online electronics retailers. Saying you've never heard of them is rather like saying you've never heard of WalMart.

Microsoft pledges Linux boost for Windows Server and Center R2 duo

sisk

Re: @AC 14:55GMT - Huh?

Windows house needing Linux ? Do you really think we're that stupid to swallow that ?

I work in a Windows shop. We have 2 Linux servers forced upon us when the vendor for our security camera system quit supporting the Windows version of their server. We could either replace $1.5 million worth of security cameras or set up a couple Linux servers. It was a no brainer.

sisk

Re: Oh really?

Some people don't object to paying for software...

True enough. Even I, as a Linux geek, don't object to paying for software. I do, however, object to paying a company for the privilege of running software that was written and given away by someone else when there is a less expensive, or even free, solution that is just as good for running said software.

sisk

Oh really?

How to make money off Linux for Remondians:

1) Make Linux run as well on Hyper-V as Windows does.

2) Charge a licensing fee for each VM.

3) Wonder why no one is using Hyper-V to run Linux.

Texas man charged in multimillion-dollar Bitcoin Ponzi scheme

sisk

Re: Texas man charged in multimillion-dollar Bitcoin Ponzi scheme

Can't believe a Texan would be smart enough to come up with that

You clearly don't know many Texans then. They're a pretty clever bunch, despite what the internet thinks of them (and, frankly, they don't care what the internet, or any one else, thinks of them).

For pity's sake: DON'T MOVE to the COUNTRY if you want to live

sisk

Allow me to point out that 'rural' does not necessarily mean 'country'. By most definitions the entire Western half of the state I live in is rural because of the low population density throughout, but you can be assured that we have several towns throughout the state, some of them of decent size but none big enough to have a Red Lobster. I live in the biggest town in the region, at a population 30,000, and we're still considered rural.

sisk

Re: How to survive in the countryside

Yes but D.U.I is simply not considered an issue in the states.

False. As an American I can assure you that most of us take drinking and driving quite seriously and would like to see offenders taken off the streets. In fact, we make a pretty decent effort to catch them and revoke their licenses.

Last year when over there I went out with some locals one night, and we got totally blattered. I was the only one who ordered a taxi home. And the other lads and lassies all drove their own cars home and they had more to drink than I did.

When I mentioned a taxi as a good alternative, they said, "No, were used to drinking and driving, you're not, so that's why you need the cab".

Don't judge our whole population on the actions of those type of idiots. You have your fair share of morons in the UK, we have ours in the US. Ours are just louder than yours.

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

sisk

@Ian Bush: That hypothesis is almost certainly false. That or our current understanding of physics is flawed. Even in that article it admits that for the hypothesis to work there had to have been a violation of the law of conservation at some point. Too miniscule to measure or not, a violation is still a violation and any violation of the laws of physics requires either an explanation of how it happened or a reexamination of those laws.

Feeling HORNY? RHINOCEROS INCEST project underway at Cincinnati Zoo

sisk

Re: Mankind

Both do the same thing but the inserting genes thing is quicker and more successful.

Quicker, yes. More successful? That's questionable. If your goal is just to modify the plant, then yes, inserting genes is more successful.

If, however, your ultimate goal is to produce more crop, then no, genetic modification is not usually more successful. GMO crops actually produce significantly less than their organic counterparts usually, and the farmers incur higher cost along the way due to the need (not just ability) to use far more herbicide and pesticide.

There are exceptions, of course. Some GMO crops do outperform their organic counterparts, but the biggest ones (wheat, soybeans, and corn) don't. Not that we really need them to. We already produce more than enough food to feed the world one and a half times over if we could just get it to where it's needed and keep it out of the hands of corrupt governments and warlords.

sisk

Re: Mankind

Then laugh the next time you hear someone saying how they like to eat farmers' pure, natural wheat and how terrible GM wheat is.

There's a big difference between selective breeding and using gold atoms to inject bacteria DNA into a plant. Just saying.

US town mulls bounty on spy drones, English-speaking gunman only

sisk
Headmaster

Re: Not to worry about the falling bits

The only relevant thing to deceleration is air resistance - without it the bullet would come down at exactly the same velocity as the one it left the barrel with.

False. Terminal velocity of a 00 pellet is much lower than the 1400fps muzzle velocity of a 12ga shotgun. It would be so even in a vacuum.

However, even the terminal velocity is such that if a falling bullet hits you on your head you will be either dead or very lucky indeed.

For bullets, yes. I'm not so sure about shot. Following a certain famous formula, the energy (which equates lethality) depends partially upon the mass of the object. Even a .223 round (the smallest bullet the sentry in your example could possibly have been using) has a great deal more mass than a buckshot pellet. Also, due to better aerodynamics, a conical bullet would probably fall significantly faster than a spherical pellet.

To put all this in perspective, if you got hit by a penny falling at terminal velocity you'd likely need a couple stitches and have a headache for a few days. I would suspect that falling buckshot would result in slightly more significant injuries (it would be falling faster but has less mass), but you'd be exceedingly unlikely to catch more than one. Even when fired from a gun a single pellet of buckshot is rarely fatal, and when they are it's because they've hit a major artery.

All that said, it'd be exceedingly unpleasant to be on the receiving end of falling buckshot.

Graphical front ends for PowerShell? Here's a couple for you

sisk

Re: Geh

You have a good point about choice Martin. I suppose I'm just a CLI junky.

sisk
Facepalm

Geh

Microsoft FINALLY has a decent command line and people want a cripple it with a GUI?

And people wonder why so many Linux geeks sneer at Windows.

IT bloke inadvertently broadcasts smut on vast public screen

sisk

Re: I never understood...

I can top that bit of stupidity. We had a middle school teacher here several years back who INTENTIONALLY showed a grumble flick to a room full of 12 and 13 year olds over his classroom projector. That struck me as potentially the stupidest 'porn at work' incident ever (not to mention the sickest).

Is it a BIRD? Is it a plane? Right first time – and she's in SPANDEX

sisk
Holmes

Re: This is Kick-Ass!

Phoenix Jones was actually one of the inspirations for Kick Ass. He was one of the first to don a costume and go fight crime in real life, along with a healthy chunk of the rest of the Rain City Defenders. He's been in national headlines several times. I think the last time was when he lost his day job after his first arrest and subsequent unmasking.

Personally I question his sanity, along with the rest of the people taking inspiration from Batman in the last few years.

Brits: Give us £1m and we'll build a crack ALIEN-HUNTING TEAM

sisk

Re: Concept of fiction? intelligence@home

Isn't the basis of intelligence modeling the external environment, predicting the results of changing parameters and selecting a desirable outcome?

Well yes, but there's a big difference between that and making up stories for entertainment value. In fact, it's not hard to imagine a highly intelligent race for whom the entire idea of entertainment, including the concept of fiction, is entirely alien. Such a race could easily assume that even our most fantastic TV shows are historical documentaries or serve some educational value. The idea that we watch these shows to stave off boredom would never occur to a race that doesn't experience boredom or doesn't find it unpleasant. That's what I mean by lacking any concept of fiction.

sisk

Re: intelligence@home

The idea that intelligent aliens would broadcast their presence to lord-knows-whom is absurd.

Not really. Think about it: the distances are so vast that even the most aggressive alien race imaginable (perhaps a Space Ork with rabies) isn't a credible threat unless they can cheat the laws of physics. Yes, that's theoretically possible, if a lot of our assumptions are true, but even the theoretical scenarios involve absolutely absurd quantities of energy.

I also disagree that we'd kill and dissect an alien. That's fodder for fiction. In reality, our governments would treat them like any other foreign nation, I think. Well, maybe like they treat North Korea if they were being paranoid.

Personally what worries me about any possible contact with aliens is that they may have been watching our broadcasts for the last 70 years or so but may lack any concept of fiction. Chew on that one for a few minutes and consider just how confused they'd be about us after watching Gunsmoke, Sesame Street, Star Trek, and Charmed, thinking it was all true.

Samsung Galaxy S3 explodes, turns young woman into 'burnt pig'

sisk

You really don't want to pour water on pure lithium - that will actually cause an explosion

That was one of my favorite days in chemistry class.

sisk
Headmaster

Re: "Fanny means bum in English"

You mean Americanese, a language originally based on English, but which deviated over the centuries into something roughly comparable to a monosyllabic Neanderthal grunt.

Actually Americanese is much closer to 18th century English than the English spoken in the UK, thanks mostly to the proliferation of dictation teachers in England in the 19th century who rather radically changed the way Brits speak by pushing their version of 'correct' English (which didn't actually exist in real usage when the US first became the US).

Emergency alert system easily pwnable after epic ZOMBIE attack prank

sisk

Re: OMG I did not realize you can change the *message* remotely as well as start it up.

...defies all known laws of physics.

I think you mean all known laws of biology. There's no law of physics that would prevent a corpse from being reanimated. Shuffling around moaning for brains might be a bit of a stretch, but I suspect they could do a music video with Michael Jackson.

sisk

Re: @dogged

Eadon was Anti-MS, but even he didn't claim they were responsible for security flaws in Unix

Of course not. Eadon didn't admit to any security flaws EXISTING in Unix. Though I suspect that if you could get him to admit to one he'd somehow try to blame it on MS.

OFFICIAL: Humans will only tolerate robots as helpful SLAVES

sisk

And how the hell do you end up as a robot relationship expert?

It involves a lot of practice. And, on occasions, some electrical burns and/or chafing in unpleasant areas of your body...

Rest your head against a train window, hear VOICES in your SKULL

sisk

Re: I quite like the train noises

"Please watch your head while standing up. Should you fail to watch your head, please watch your mouth."

Vulcan? Not on our tiny balls. Pluto moons named Kerberos, Styx

sisk

Re: Can't we have some rude names?

I believe that one would be a fitting tribute to Kirk....

sisk
Trollface

Re: Who'd be an astronmer

Hey, lets be fair here. Peering into optics is quite fun.

Oh, they're supposed to be pointed at the sky?

sisk
Coat

Re: Happy doggies

Domoarigato Mr. Roboto....

Yeah, yeah, I'm going. Mine's the one with the mp3 player loaded with classic rock in the pocket.

sisk

Vulcan was always inappropriate

Not only does it not fit with Pluto's theme, but it doesn't fit with any other aspect of Pluto and it's moon. Vulcan was the Roman god of fire, and the fictional planet on Star Trek was a hot one. What possessed Shat to think that it was a good idea to name an ice ball after these is beyond me.

Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING

sisk

Well that makes me a liar

I just told a friend who recently had a heart transplant that she'd undergone the most traumatic sugery known to man.

Dubya: I introduced PRISM and I think it's pretty swell

sisk

So the program was started by a man whose actions in office show he had/has absolutely no concept of the 4th Amendment. Tell me, Mr. Bush, how can you say you're respecting civil liberties when you're collecting all our phone records?

Yahoo! announces last hurrah of ancient AltaVista search

sisk

Re: AltaVista

AltaVista died the day the 'search within results' feature vanished in my opinion. On that day it became pointless to try to use it instead of Yahoo or Google (Yahoo hadn't yet faded to insignificance at the time).

PRISM leaks: WTF, you don't spy on your friends, splutters EU

sisk
Coat

You're surprised?

The NSA even spies on other Americans. You're surprised they're spying on Germans?

Mine's the one with the white noise generator in one pocket and the tin foil hat in the other.

What's the difference between GEEKS and NERDS?

sisk

Wrong premise

He started out with the wrong definition for nerd. Nerd, according to everyone I've ever heard from on the subject who has an opinion worth noting (in other words, people who realize it's not an insult to be hurled at people smarter than them) is simply a very smart person with wide ranging knowledge. His definition of geek is spot on, but nerds aren't subject specific.

Voyager 1 'close' to breaking through to DEEP SPACE - boffins

sisk

Meanwhile, in interstellar space

"Honey, look over there in the no entry zone. I think there's something coming out."

"Impossible. The only habitable planet in there is populated by hairless apes. They can't make a spacemobile, let alone find an onramp to the interstar."

*CRUNCH*

"MY SPACEMOBILE! I'll sue those damn apes for their entire planet!"

Idaho patriots tool up to battle Jihad with pork bullets

sisk

Re: So much for respecting the religious beliefs of other people.

I'm all for respecting other people's religious beliefs right up until those beliefs say I and my family should be murdered in cold blood for not sharing them.

If you want to go to the Mosque or Temple or Church every week, so be it. If you want to believe that you were put here by the Creator, or that the Great Wolf guide you through visions while you're smoking a sacred herb, or that your ancestors watch over you, or that the God Emperor is protecting you from the Chaos Gods, what do I care? If you choose to believe that we're all cosmic accidents and that there's nothing beyond what our 5 basic senses can tell us, what difference does it make to me?

But the second you start to believe I need to die and begin to act on that belief I will take whatever steps I need to stop you and protect myself and my family. If that means making a bullet that you believe will send you directly to hell in hopes that you decide not to mess with me, then I will.

I know not all Muslims are violent, but to be honest when it comes down to offending the non-violent majority of the religion or potentially saving some 'infidel' lives, I'm going to save lives. This lunatic idea that there's anything wrong with treating murderous religious extremists as the murderers they are just because their motivations are religious in nature is just unacceptable to me. Making a weapon that will scare them so badly that they don't want to try to kill me or my family anymore by using the same religion that prompted them to violence in the first place seems pretty reasonable to me.

sisk

Re: Solution for Afghanistan

I heard a rumor, years ago, that during the first Gulf War we were dropping pamphlets threatening to wrap the corpses of fallen Iraqi soldiers in bacon. The source of said rumor attributed the propaganda as one of the primary reasons that war ended so quickly. Personally I sprinkle salt liberally on that one, especially given Bush Sr's connections to the Saudi royal family, but it sounds plausible. It could work in the current war to, except for two things: the American public would throw a hissy fit over it and, as we kill most of them with drones, they'd know we couldn't recover the bodies.

Labels to get, count them, 0.13 cents per play on Apple iRadio

sisk

Erm.....those royalties are absurdly HIGH, not low. Think about this for a second. They're paying .13 cents per play. Take that times 360 songs per day (very roughly, milage will vary - that's based on the fact that I average about 30 songs in a 2 hour set of DJing) and that's $46.8 per day. Very piddly yes.

Now consider that each listener has a unique playlist and factor that in. Let's go with a modest 10,000 listeners (realistically we know that iRadio will have at least 6 figures, and probably 7, at any given time) That's $468,000, near half a million dollars, every day. And on top of that they're offering 15% of the advertising revenue, which will easily pop the figure up to several million dollars per day.

Forgive me if I find the condemning tone and assertion that we should feel sorry for the labels offensive, but I've done internet radio. When you stream music online you get reamed. The labels are raking in an absurd amount of money from a market where only the biggest players can manage to not operate at a loss as is.

Obama says US won't scramble jets or twist arms for Snowden

sisk
Black Helicopters

Note:

He said nothing about scrambling CIA assassins to arrange an accident.

Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

sisk

Re: Alternative to Windows?

Only if you don't want to use Office

You don't need Office when you have LibreOffice, but if you absolutely MUST have Office it runs under Wine.

Or Photoshop

http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-install-photoshop-in-ubuntu-and-linuxmint/ (Just in case you don't want to deal with Gimp's learning curve, and I really don't blame you).

Or AutoCAD

Ok, you got me there. However: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/non-linux-foss-autocad-alternatives (and, lets be honest here, AutoCAD isn't exactly the most common need)

Or play games

Steam for Linux. Nuff said. (Disclaimer: serious gamers should stay in Windows land....we are finally getting good games on Linux, but they big titles are still Windows only.)

Or use video services

I haven't used it (because I use my bluray player and 50in TV for Netflix), but there's a Netflix desktop app for Linux now.

Or use NTFS discs (NTFS use kills the CPU on Linux, a very well known bug they can't be bothered to fix).

I use NTFS with Linux all the time, mostly to transfer files back and forth between my two OSes since it's far easier to do that than to get Windows to play nice with Linux filesystems. I never have a problem with it.

AND your users don't mind using the command line every few minutes.

Actually with modern distros a "normal" user rarely has to look at the command line. I've set systems up for people so that they NEVER had to see it. Power users still do and probably always will because there are some things GUIs just don't do well. Linux recognizes this fact and always has. Even Redmond is figuring it out finally.

"How do I fix this?"

"Well, open a terminal and grep foo/bar with the wibble switch.

Now take the n-th item and echo that into /dev/thingy (remembering to re-align your byte arrays or you'll trash your data.

Finally, switch bit 3,457,234 of the main module (or recompile from source) and you are done.

Simple"

FUD worthy of Microsoft circa 2001 that. There are fixes that go like that, admittedly, but they're rare and of the sort that send normal Windows users into computer repair shops anyway.

Then we get into all the forking that's going on. X, Wayland, Mir...AND all the DEs! And GUI kits! So you have to re-write your application about 10 times...no, 20 (sorry, I forgot the deb/rpm thing) times in order to deploy.

Nope. Write it once for POSIX. Stay away from DE specific libraries and it'll run on any of them. As for deb/rpm, that not a 're-write' thing. It's more of a repackage thing.

The is a reason that Windows (with OS X some way back in the distance) won the game. A clear vision, clear direction and dependable platforms. Something Linux can't (wont!) offer. This is why Linux fails and this is why it will continue to fail.

Wrong again. Windows won because they're locked in with the manufacturers and have been for around 20 years. The average user can't (won't, actually, but they think it's can't) install their own OS so they use the one that came with the computer. That means they use Windows or Mac. With Mac being ludicrously expensive by comparison most people aren't going to buy it. You have to hunt for a computer that comes with Linux, even when you know it exists. Some plebe who's never heard of it has no chance of finding one.

Linux is not for everyone. I realize this and I have, frequently, told people they should stick with Windows after they've seen my Linux system and thought it looked interesting. That said, there is truth and there is FUD. Give people the truth, not this sort of FUD you're spewing.