Posts by sisk

The handle would need to be hooked up to a rather unwieldy power source and cooling air supply. You'd look like you were dragging a vacuum cleaner around by the hose.

Canonically the first lightsabers (a few thousand years before Exar Kun and something like ten or fifteen thousand years before the movies) had a bulky backpack power supply about the size of a vacuum cleaner and a fat power cable going to the handle, so you're on the right track.

*Yes, I truly am sad enough to know that much about the history of the Star Wars universe. As I've mentioned before I had way too much time on my hands when I was younger. This is just further proof of the fact.

Re: But is it kosher ?

Human hair, or at least the proteins extracted from it for use in food, is Kosher

Our restrictions are in some ways much simpler than Kashrut law, but they come from the a block of text about 3 paragraphs long that's in both the Torah and the Bible. I always assumed, because of that, that Kosher food had to conform to our restrictions as well. If what you say is true then I've been mistaken about that for a very long time. Nothing from the human body would be acceptable for us to eat.

Re: I think Torvalds is losing it

There's no doubt that Torvalds suffers from a severe lack of both social skills and tact, but the man is a very talented coder and has done a very good job as the chief maintainer of what has become the most common kernel in the world.

That said, I've never gotten involved with kernel development partially (and only partially) because of the way he treats people. Much as I respect him as a coder and love Linux I do not and would not tolerate being spoken to in the manner that Torvalds usually speaks to people with whom he has disagreements. I've put people on my ignore lists in several forums for that sort of nonsense. It's one thing to disagree, even to disagree forcefully, but it's entirely another to start hurling insults at the first sign that you might be smarter than the person on the other side of the debate.

Re:

我也可能會增加，如果你回英文翻譯這個線程在谷歌翻譯部分的問世徹底錯位。包括這個職位。

Re: Propaganda

I actually feel that the best thing to do in Syria is....er....nothing. Hear me out.

On the one side we have Assad, a power hungry dictator who is hostile to the West and willing to resort to weapons of mass destruction and possibly even go as far as sponsoring terrorists. On the other side you have rebels with enough ties to Al Queida that US citizens have been tried for aiding the enemy for trying to help them overthrow Assad, and they may have used chemical weapons also.

Basically no matter who wins that civil war, which doesn't involve either the US or the UK, we lose. I'm all for saving lives, but I can't think of a scenario involving intervention in Syria that accomplishes that goal long term. I can, however, think of some nightmare scenarios that become possible should we intervene.

Re: PAY UP!!!

...banks systematically rearranging the chronological order of withdrawals, so as to maximise penalty charges.

While I agree with your post for the most part, I would like to point out that that particular trick is illegal. I've been involved in a class action lawsuit on that one for which I got a $300 check, far shy of what that bank had cost by through a combination of that policy and holding my deposit for 3 days without telling me.

The exact chain of events was that I deposited my paycheck (which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was held for three days per their policy because it was an out of state check over $1000 - they didn't bother telling you this, even in the small print, until after you were burned), wrote checks for my rent and car payments, then went out of town for the weekend and racked up 20 or 30 small debits at gas stations, convenience stores, and restaurants. Obviously the checks didn't get cashed till Monday as it was right at the end of the day on Friday, but they were processed first, then all the little debits, then the deposit. Without the deposit, my rent alone put me in the red, so I got slammed with $35 overdraft fees for every single transaction while I was out of town (which means I had the most expensive coffee I've ever drank that weekend at about $37 a cup from 7-11) plus the check for my car payment got returned.

Re: naked bodies are sick??

Is it really healthy to believe that a naked body is a perversion?

Naked bodies? No. Showing porn to a bunch of preteens in the hopes that some of them get ideas? Yes. The incident in question was hardcore porn, not anatomy textbooks.

Filters once again in being rubbish shocker, if using Bing counts as dancing around them.

Technically it was Bing's cache, which wasn't blocked because the filters we had at the time would only block at the domain level. Very rubbish indeed, which I'd been saying for a while (for different reasons). You could do the same with Google's cache for about a week out of every couple months (they'd hardcode a block to the cache, Google would change something, the block would break, it'd take them a week to hardcode another block, lather, rinse, repeat). We have much better filters now, but they're still outsourced.

Erm, GIMP is not a direct functional replacement for Photoshop.

I suppose that depends on what you're asking it to do. For professional photography and the like you're probably right. However, speaking as a web designer, I used Gimp in a professional capacity for several years until I was forced to buy Photoshop. (In case you're wondering one of my classes when I decided to go back to college required Photoshop. Otherwise I'd probably still be using Gimp.). I think Photoshop is a better program, but I don't think there's enough of o difference, at least for what I do with it, to justify its rather obscene price tag.

Indeed. Linux in general and Debian in particular has had app store-like functionality since long before the smart phone market brought them to the mainstream. We call them 'software repositories'.

Open Synaptic, search for what you want, click the checkbox next to the appropriate software, click install, done. When I first moved to Debian there was no easier software installation process on any platform. The only real difference (in other words, not just cosmetic) between this basic concept and Google Play or the iTunes App Store is that those two have a payment system. With the software repositories for Debian and other Linux distros it's all FOSS, so there's no need for such a system.

Re: amazing

NSA are antiheros. They have absolutely no regard for the law or for collateral damage so long as they catch the bad guys. It's a trait that makes for great fictional characters, but it makes for terrible real life agencies that are supposed to be protecting people.

Re: School Requirements

Don't forget 'custom editions' that can only be had through the university bookstore. Talk about a money grab. If you had any doubt that universities are willing to screw their students that should seal it.

Re: Call me a prude by all means

However, children even especially if they are in their teens are impressionable and sometimes very stupid.

There, fixed that for you.

Re: Why not just abolish copyright altogether?

Don't be silly. There're plenty of drug dealers, bank robbers, and murderers we can parole to make room for the copyright violators.

Re: inevitable

Meanwhile, gun crime rose for ten years after '97.

Which is pretty much what happens every time strict gun control is implemented anywhere. That's why I facepalm every time someone suggests we need more gun control.

Dreamweaver? Heh, you were lucky. I had Frontpage foisted on me. At least Dreamweaver TRIED to do standards.

Re: Backup Exec = Crap

I've gotta say I don't miss Backup Exec at all. What a POS that system was.

About 2 months back we switch from Networker (what we had been running after dumping Symantecs turd where it belonged) to Unitrends and I'm impressed with it thus far. The one feature I miss that they don't have is support for bar code readers and I'm told that's coming in 1.7 (we're currently on 1.6.somethnig).

The way the system works, at least how we have it set up, is that it backs up to its own internal drive and then, once per week, rolls those 'incremental forever' backups that we're doing into a virtual master and sends it off to the tape. We do Windows 2003-2008 and I'm told it can handle 2012 as well. We also do Exchange (yes, it can recover granularly), SQL, and VM Ware. We're told it can do bare metal but haven't had to put this to the test yet. Their support people are friendly and helpful and you can actually understand them (no call centers in Asia with techs whose accents are so thick it would be easier to have them speak their native tongues and run it through a translator). I have not, yet, gotten the appliance to sing YMCA. I'll put that on my 'try to do' list. :-D I belive it has a Linux client for you SLES boxen, but I'd have to double check and I'm not at the office right now. Our reliability is around the 98-99% mark. We've had a few failures, but they were cleared with a call to the support folks.

Now the downsides: The UI is, in my opinion a little on the clunky side. Not unusable or anything, but it could definitely be more intuitive. Also, it archives to tape but it won't do a direct-to-tape backup (or maybe it can and we just chose not to. I can't remember).