Recent Posts

751

Living Room / Re: Cool site alert: Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org)

« Last post by housetier on March 24, 2008, 05:58 AM »

ha those are nice!   

752

Living Room / Re: Weird Mozilla Firefox Page

« Last post by housetier on March 23, 2008, 04:34 PM »

I have firefox 3.0 beta 4 and cannot load "about:kitchensink". Josh which browser did you use?

753

Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by housetier on March 20, 2008, 04:59 AM »

The idea of failover communication is very attractive to me. So attractive indeed that I have been practicing it for years: I communicate per forum, email, instant messaging, IRC, telephone, snail mail, and face-to-face talk.

Using the various electronic means of communcation is a second nature to me, it just was convenient so I used them and still do. Other people might not have the time (or the brains) to develop such a scheme. I wonder if and which backup plans others have. If efnet where to vanish I would just use a different network more. If icq keeps disconnecting people I suggest jabber or irc. If I can't acces my regular email accounts, I create a new one and send an email to a few select people who will help spread the word. If my telephone stops working I fire up ekiga and try this voip thingie. If I don't have stamps for my letters, I deliver them myself...

However, if DC.com goes down I cry.

I think #donationcoder on efnet is a very good failover communication means for me; although one must not forget that nothing on IRC lives long. Forums are so much better at archiving than IRC. For me it is enough, others will want to keep "the history". Apart from mirroring the forum I can't think of an adequate replacement.

One should not have to make a huge effort to reach those alternative means (*I* would be willing to do so, but I can't expect that from others). In case of an "emergency" we could update DNS and users hopefully wouldn't notice, except for the time it takes for the update to propagate.

754

Living Room / Re: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim

« Last post by housetier on March 20, 2008, 04:37 AM »

You are both smart enough to see that you fail to communicate with each other. So why do you keep trying in this thread. Just let it be, both of you. You don't have to debunk anything when it's not on topic - so don't even try to. There is no point in threatening each other what you will do when both of you failed to behave.

Let me rephrase that: YOUR ARGUMENT IS A FAILURE SO STOP IT.

755

General Software Discussion / Re: New Google "search site" box, but not yet from my pc?

« Last post by housetier on March 14, 2008, 08:48 AM »

I even use google to search my own site!

756

General Software Discussion / Re: New Google "search site" box, but not yet from my pc?

« Last post by housetier on March 12, 2008, 06:17 AM »

"site:" is the switch I used most often, so I know how to find what I am looking for without search boxes

757

Living Room / Re: What Are Your Favorite Science Blogs?

« Last post by housetier on March 11, 2008, 08:39 AM »

These are from my rather large list of feeds, I consider them partially scientific:

• astronews, German astronomical information and news
• PLoS Blog, Public Library of Science
• damn interesting, well just damn interesting stories and facts

I am still looking for a (German) site about quantum mechanics, very much like Astronews but on "the other side of normal".

I think Damn Interesting was recommended by someone from this very forum And PLoS I support because I believe knowledge needs to be spread and made available as much as possible: only educated people can make just decisions.

758

Developer's Corner / Re: Free Software Magazine comes to their senses: software patents are good

« Last post by housetier on February 24, 2008, 12:44 PM »

call it what it is: misleading

759

Developer's Corner / Re: Free Software Magazine comes to their senses: software patents are good

« Last post by housetier on February 24, 2008, 07:35 AM »

You should really read the article.

760

Developer's Corner / Free Software Magazine comes to their senses: software patents are good

« Last post by housetier on February 24, 2008, 05:39 AM »

and they even go as far as to defend software patens in a long article. Usually these free software zealots are against everything non-free, but this time they have gotten it right:

In this article I’ll try to explain why software patents are necessary, and in the sake of fairness I’ll look at the other side of each argument. Here is the “defense of Software Patents”. I report, you decide.

-http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/in_defense_of_software_patents

761

General Software Discussion / Re: More on social networks, and security: you can derive a net from PGP use!

« Last post by housetier on February 23, 2008, 12:40 PM »

luckily gpg does not ask for my income, hobbies, preferences, or peer groups

762

Living Room / Re: NEW Cody desert island wallpaper

« Last post by housetier on February 23, 2008, 12:31 PM »

thank you nudone! 

763

Living Room / Re: NEW Cody desert island wallpaper

« Last post by housetier on February 23, 2008, 05:01 AM »

now make me one in 1024x768

yes there are people from the stoneages who want a pretty wallpaper too 

764

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by housetier on February 22, 2008, 09:18 AM »

Drivers that think they are the best in the world, and everyone should just drive like themselves.
Drivers who are inconvenienced by other drivers abiding to actual traffic laws.

765

Living Room / Re: GPLv3 explained

« Last post by housetier on February 22, 2008, 05:01 AM »

Linus Torvalds is also not a member of the FSF and does not "fight" for the 4 fundamental freedoms as RMS does. I saw Mr Stallman live in Berlin last Monday, where he gave a long speech about the freedoms, and the history of GNU. He is a very smart man, and has a vision to change society.

Mr Tovalds is also very smart, but not so worried about society and their freedoms.

766

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for February 21st - Codename "Vertigo"

« Last post by housetier on February 22, 2008, 04:56 AM »

I already subscribed to the feed for new forum topics, but the newsletters still show some that slipped by me. Thanks Darwin!

767

General Software Discussion / Re: Memory Secrets

« Last post by housetier on February 22, 2008, 04:50 AM »

wow.

768

Living Room / Re: What annoys you to no end?

« Last post by housetier on February 21, 2008, 04:41 AM »

People who willingly and knowingly break rules and then excuse themselfes saying "but so-and-so is doing it also!". They ought to obey or change the rules, not break them!

769

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: chat blocked

« Last post by housetier on February 21, 2008, 04:27 AM »

Move to Germany already! We got cheap broadband here: I heard someone mention 30mbit/s for as low as €29.99, that includes a free landline plan too. I cannot say if that provider is reliable though...

770

General Software Discussion / Re: How many active DC member are there? 150? (Dumbar number)

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2008, 02:50 PM »

 

Well now! That was absolutely FASCINATING! I really enjoyed reading/learning this. However, 150 seems quite a large number to me...

771

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: chat blocked

« Last post by housetier on February 20, 2008, 12:34 PM »

or we find allen a proxy/bnc...

772

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: ACRONYM database

« Last post by housetier on February 18, 2008, 04:44 PM »

Somewhere down this page is a list of windows clients to the dict(ionary) server. Maybe these programs work for you.

foldoc and jargon file are the most appropriate dictionaries I think.

773

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: chat blocked

« Last post by housetier on February 16, 2008, 08:53 AM »

so far I had little to no problems with irc.efnet.pl

774

Living Room / Re: The SSL certificate industry is a messy business

« Last post by housetier on February 15, 2008, 10:10 AM »

Using cacert as CA

• is convenient for me, because I don't have to set up my own CA
• is convenient for some visitors, because I know some of them will already have imported their root cert
• makes no difference on the trust scale

Yeah that's much better than what I originally came up with

775

Living Room / Re: The SSL certificate industry is a messy business

« Last post by housetier on February 15, 2008, 06:05 AM »

jgpaiva:
I decided for myself the trouble was worth it. In my case the decision was easy: either pay and have less hassle, or have "trouble" and pay less. Since I don't like to pay for stuff I can get for free, I decided to not pay. Likewise, I'd be unwilling to pay for software, operating systems or email services.

And I installed cacert's root certificate into my webbrowser, so I don't get as many warnings.

cacert's competitors are fighting very hard to keep cacert's root certificate excluded from software (i.e. firefox' built-in security token): their business relies on this.

I don't trust verisign more because they charge more; given their history with what they did to DNS, I am inclined to trust them less. Lucky for us all, there are many other CAs out there, many of which have their root certificates built into software packages, so one can get an easy to use certificate without paying too much.


techidave:
I'd suggest dropping one certificate if having two is a problem.