FridayWithJohn's comments

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: South Africa's Nelson Mandela dies

Cook1929, your name suits you as you are still trapped in the 1920s.

As a white South African who was born in apartheid I saw first hand just how evil the system was. As for your examples you are after with regards to " one instance of white apartheid South Africans intentionally killing women and children" here you go: 1.) Ruth First (Joe Slovo's wife) was killed by a parcel bomb in Maputo. 2.) Soweto Uprising in which about 170 to about 600 people (mainly children) were killed by police... oh and one of the first people to be killed there was not some older man, the poor person was Hector Pieterson, he was only 13.

I know that Nelson Mandela wasn't a saint, (even he said that). However he gave to South Africa what it really needed. Peace and reconciliation, something that is still sorely needed in this world.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

The one thing that has forced me keep Windows on my PC is the fact that most games require it. Hearing that such a large player in the gaming industry wants to move to Linux is really fantastic news.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

Question: How was this list generated, ie: how do you find out which hash number has a lot of bitcoins in it? I thought that was completely hidden.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: McCain says NSA chief Keith Alexander 'should resign or be fired'

When I read the title of this article I was so pleasantly surprised. Who would have thought that McCain (an old warmonger who is power hungry) would say?

After reading that I now see that he wanted him fired, not because the NSA targeted everyone and not because the NSA violated everyone's privacy but only because the NSA boss should have had even more security protocols in place.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Rackspace launches Performance Cloud Servers

Their service was terrible? Maybe you just had some rather unlucky experience. We've been using RackSpace (I'm based in the UK) for almost 2 years now and their service has really been fantastic. To give you one example, I had an almost 2 hour phone call (no charge by the way) trying to track down an issue with our LAMP stack.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

I'm busy reading "The Masters of Doom". Here is a little snippet all about patents with one of the world's best developers of all time, John Carmack. "Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.” Al assumed Carmack was trying to protect his own financial interests, but in reality he had struck what was an increasingly raw nerve for the young, idealistic programmer. It was one of the few things that could truly make him angry. It was ingrained in his bones since his first reading of the Hacker Ethic."

As a developer there is nothing more destructive than to be be told you can't do that... it is similar to what I did.

Could you imagine what would happen if someone put a patient on breathing?

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Fury at Facebook as login requests “Government ID”

@DominikR, actually your question should not be downvoted at all as it looks like you genuinely want to know how you could solve this security problem.

First off, it is important to know that all IT systems have a scale from "weak" to "strong" in security terms. There is no 100% hacker IT proof system. Generally the more secure a system is the more of a hassle it is to use. Seeing as FB has just been accused by Snowden of handing over mass data it has on various users to the NSA, it would be very foolish for them to ask for this sort of very private data especially at this time (when a lot of people don't trust FB)

As for your question, here are some of the security workarounds FB could do instead of asking for a freaking ID (which by the way can easily be forged)

- Don't lock the account, rather suspend it for just a few days telling the user that he should reset his password

- Get a friend (that has been a friend on Facebook for ages, not just a few days) to authenticate the real user (for this to happen it is assumed he must actually contact his friend without using FB as his account is blocked.)

- A simple unique "reset your account password" URL sent to your e-mail address.

- OTP sent to your phone

Those are just some ideas I thought of in a few minutes. I'm sure there are a whole host more.

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: Fury at Facebook as login requests “Government ID”

@algorias, I once considered people like you to be weird not to communicate on FB... but for a while now I have really started to mistrust FB. The revelations by Snowden most certainly played a big role, but now that they are asking for freaking IDs I draw the line there. It is now time to really think about me leaving this crap... I think my boss might like that too as I'm sure to do more work now, haha

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: The 11% for IE11 challenge

"nearly 30% faster than the nearest competitive browser." - Micro$oft. Absolute crap as can be seen here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413632,00.asp

I'm not loyal at all to any browser. I swop and change (used to use IE, then went to Opera, then Firefox and now to Chrome), but when I hear obvious lies such as IE is 30% faster than any other browser I all of a sudden want to permanently leave IE alone

FridayWithJohn | 12 years ago | on: You don't need millions of dollars

Damnit, after reading that I simply had to buy myself a copy of that book. These two guys were my childhood heros. Although my mom hated them thanks to all the hours I spent playing Keen or Doom and "not doing my homework"
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