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User: MozeeToby

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  1. Re:Vote with your feet on Microsoft Petitions US Attorney General For Permission To Disclose Data Requests · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In fact, handing over data after a court battle is much, much better than doing it before. That's called due process, it's how things are supposed to work and it is a significant improvement over handing over the data just because the feds asked nicely. Now when you talking about "secret courts", that's when things get ugly again.

  2. Re:Non-Apple books on Judge Rules Apple Colluded With Publishers to Fix Ebook Prices · · Score: 2

    Amazon sent out an email a while back when this case first started, basically saying that the expected result will be $1-3 credit per book purchased over their preferred $10 price point. How that actually works in terms of who pays who what I have no idea; but I doubt Amazon would send that out if they weren't pretty sure that would be the end result.

  3. Re:Nice try NSA on Ask Slashdot: Preventing Snowden-Style Security Breaches? · · Score: 1

    Encryption? Each file could be encrypted individually or there could be encrypted volumes, either way. Need to know is the test. Using commonly available tools he does not need the contents of the files to do his job, therefore the contents should not be made available to him. As to the USB ports, the minor hassle of dealing with PS2 mice and keyboards dwarfs the risk of leaving them open. Yes fill them with epoxy, yes disable them, yes set up alerts so that all admins on the system get a message when they are re-enabled. Same if any other important security setting is changed. Same if large amounts of files are copied or moved.

  4. Re:Nice try NSA on Ask Slashdot: Preventing Snowden-Style Security Breaches? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The NSA doesn't need help, all they would have had to do is follow their own procedures and the leak would have been greatly reduced. There's no excuse for having active USB ports on a machine that is handling top secret documents. Nor is there any excuse for giving someone access to more classified documents than they need to do their jobs, a system admin needs approximately zero access to the actual contents of the actual documents.

  5. Re:Misleading title on MIT Project Reveals What PRISM Knows About You · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem is that now, thanks to the PRISM leaks, no one believes Google. Not even a little bit. And yes, they can be legally compelled to lie and if they are so compelled they will be shielded from any consequences of those lies, just like the phone companies were the first time a massive warrantless wiretapping program leaked 5 years ago.

  6. Re:Didn't they just elect this guy? on Egyptian President Overthrown, Constitution Suspended · · Score: 2

    Yes, but since then he has made more power grabs and less reforms than people are comfortable with. On the one hand, I don't see that not producing enough jobs is cause to overthrow the government, on the other, there has been real concern of a significant shift towards institutionalized Islam in Egypt.

  7. Re:regarding constitutions on Egyptian President Overthrown, Constitution Suspended · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, I can't imagine what would have happened if the founding fathers' first attempt at a constitution had been deemed a failure and replaced. The world would be a totally different place.

  8. Re:Already Been Invented: Fired Ceramic Tablets on Ask Slashdot: Permanent Preservation of Human Knowledge? · · Score: 2

    I think that's a good place to start, but more detail is always interesting:

    I would start with a Rosetta Stone, specifically designed to explain as much of the language and text as possible. Included in those would be directions, both in terms of location and recovery procedures, to a much larger collection of paper documents stored in sealed casks of an inert gas to prevent degradation. From there it would be possible to at least describe the basic procedures and formats needed to read much, much denser long term storage options, I thought I remember reading about modified DVDs that would be stable across centuries.

    You can either assume that the discoverers will reinvent basic electronics, or, if you have the capacity in your paper archive, lay out a plan that would get them there. If you assume say early 1800's level tech for example, would it be possible to bootstrap them to reading data from a DVD using only printed word? Could you describe the materials, designs, manufacturing techniques necessary? Would they even care enough to try to follow the directions? If you can get them that far you could have petabytes of data stored and ready for use... but that's a big if.

  9. Re:They still can get out of Europe with some risk on Bolivian President's Plane 'Rerouted Over Snowden Suspicions' · · Score: 1

    So put him in a diplomatic "pouch" of sufficient size for him to be safe and comfortable until he is on friendly territory.

  10. Re:Not a big deal on USPS Logs All Snail Mail For Law Enforcement · · Score: 1

    It is already illegal if I have a reasonable expectation of privacy, that is the test that the courts have used time and time again. Given how surprised, people are when they hear about these programs it seems that many people assume that the information is private.

  11. Re:Does the CPU matter? on Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but if they can't meet production and stores are sold out people will look for alternatives. Or if they have issues and a bunch of devices come DOA they're going to have bad press and people will look for alternatives. You seem to be under the impression that the market is for iDevices, which is certainly true for some of their customers, but many others will jump ship if they think the alternatives might be better.

  12. Re:Not a big deal on USPS Logs All Snail Mail For Law Enforcement · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I send a letter, I don't expect the outside of the envelope to be private, fair enough. If I drive down the street I don't expect my license plate to be private. If I walk down the street I don't expect that to be a private act. What I do expect to be private is the records of all those actions going back months and years. This isn't just a matter of degree, there is a fundamental difference between any single action being public and a log of every action I've ever performed being private.

  13. Re:Replaceable computer on Why Automakers Should Stop the Infotainment Arms Race · · Score: 2

    You bring up a good point, but I guess what I think of when people say "standards compliant" in this context is making a new standard listing:

    Form factor
    Mounting bracket size/position
    Standard connection for power (including voltage levels and minimum wattage).
    Audio out (for music)
    Audio in (for voice recognition)
    Antenna
    Discrete lines for key signals
    A dumb serial bus

    You can the bluetooth, wifi, USB, etc on the head itself; dozens of tablets do it already and without a need for a battery there is even more room to spare. You can get away with a dumb serial bus because the amount of information the car should be sending to the system is absolutely minimal, at most a few lines of text per second. The only reason to use anything else would be because it's newer, not that it's more appropriate to solving the problem. If you want a little more flexibility let the car define which discrete pin is which at startup over the serial line.

  14. Re:Summary misses a small detail. on 'Boston Patients' Still HIV Free After Quitting Antiretroviral Meds · · Score: 5, Informative

    Marrow transplants are dangerous, and there's no obvious way to go about making them safer. The problems are a fundamental result of the procedure itself, not simply a side effect. First, you must kill off the patient's bone marrow, there's simply no way around it since the bone marrow is what is causing the problem you are trying to treat. The only ways we know how to do that are with near fatal doses of chemotherapy or radiation. Actually, the doses are fatal, if they do what they are supposed to do and the patient doesn't receive their transplant they will die (when you donate there is a time period after the patient has had their marrow destroyed but before you actually donate, if you change your mind and decide not to donate during that time period the patient will almost certainly die unless another donor can be found and medically cleared in a matter of days). Then there's a period of not days, but weeks where the patient has no functioning immune system to speak of, not to mention severely limited red blood cell production. Then there's graft vs host disease where the immune system rejects it's new host body, essentially like organ rejection except in this case it affects the entire body. Then there's liver and kidney damage (both from the chemo and/or radiation and as a result of the transplant itself) and increased risk of cancer (not related to the original cancer being treated).

    And that's all assuming that a suitable match can be found, which isn't guaranteed. A non-ideal donor increases the risk of complications, especially graft vs host (but can actually reduce the risk of cancer relapse interestingly). Part of the reason a donor can't always be found is that there simply aren't enough people on the registry, largely because people have this notion that donation is an extremely painful process. This was true in the past, but most donors now donate peripheral stem cells, where a drug (filgrastim) is given for a few days and donation is done through vein in the arm.

  15. Gene Therapy on 'Boston Patients' Still HIV Free After Quitting Antiretroviral Meds · · Score: 1

    I remember recently there was some talk about research into curing some cancers by removing the patient's bone marrow, using HIV (ironically) to modify it, then transplanting that bone marrow back to the patient. What are the chances that something similar could be done here? To me it seems like all the pieces are in place; we know which gene confers some immunity, we are capable of editing targeted genes, and we can perform the bone marrow transplant. A marrow transplant would still be dangerous, but allotropic transplants are much less so since you get rid of the risk of graft vs host occurring.

  16. Re:With all due respect ... on Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance · · Score: 1

    That's a cute view of history there. Naive, but cute. During WWII we rounded up all the Japanese citizens and put them in camps. During the Civil War we suspended Habeas Corpus. We've read citizen's mail en masse the old fashioned way. These are not new abuses, what's new is the ability to do it always and to everyone in a cost effective manner.

  17. Re:the way I see it on Boston Marathon Bomber Charged With Using 'Weapon of Mass Destruction' · · Score: 1

    The criminal definition is different from the military definition. That's all this is. Criminally, a weapon of mass destruction is one that destroys indiscriminately, that's all it really means. Yes, there's a lot of verbiage about the size of the explosive and the delivery mechanisms and whatnot, but the underlying thought is causing indiscriminate death. The thought processes and motives are different and state of mind is an important issue in the legal system.

  18. Re:Read / Write power is God power on Automated Plate Readers Let Police Collect Millions of Records On Drivers · · Score: 2

    Is there a one way, write-once technology which is provably tamper proof? Can one be designed?

    Save simultaneously to multiple, external, independently controlled locations. If the data is not private there should be no problem with allowing 3rd parties access for truly independent record keeping. If the data is private you could still upload encrypted copies to 3rd parties on a defined, regular basis, to be unencrypted only by court order.

  19. Re:No. They just dress more conservatively. on Are Booth Babes Going Away? (Video) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's the question. If you meet one of these women in the elevator and happen to remember which booth she was working, would you feel confident that you could ask her a question about that company/product and get an informative answer? If yes, they're not booth babes, they're marketing people who happen to be attractive (which certainly helps their career, don't get me wrong). The problem isn't attractive women manning the booths, the problem is when the women are there solely to be attractive (in a very literal sense).

  20. Re:packet radio? on FCC Considering Proposal For Encrypted Ham Radio · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, let me elaborate. The HAM network is almost completely self policed. It would be trivially easy to abuse the spectrum and ruin it for everyone so it's in everyone's best interest that people who don't follow the rules, who are using it for commercial gain for just one example, are reported and stopped. Allowing encrypted traffic would allow me to sell internet service to people in rural areas because there's no way to detect what is in the encrypted content. If something becomes profitable enough eventually you'll choke the spectrum and make it unusable for everyone. Keep in mind that this isn't a managed slice of spectrum, there's no one in charge of who is using what frequency where. Get enough sources broadcasting and it simply won't work.

  21. Re:packet radio? on FCC Considering Proposal For Encrypted Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    From the summary:

    If hams can't decode messages, they can't identify if the communication even belongs on ham radio. A potentially worse problem is that encryption destroys the harmless nature of Amateur radio.There's no reason for governments to believe that encrypted communications are harmless

  22. Re:You have to contract / set up a firm on Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In this situation it's going to be all about who you know. You say you have a long history of successes? Contact the people you worked with and worked for. Someone, somewhere, is hiring and at least some of those people will be in position to push your resume at least past the first layer of defense. Lack of a formal degree will see your resume to circular filing cabinet in record time, unless the HR drone has a reason to believe otherwise.

  23. Re:Stupid Question of the day! on 3 Habitable-Zone Super-Earths Found Orbiting Nearby Star · · Score: 2

    If it's here and it wants to be spotted it would have announced itself by now. If it doesn't want to be spotted we don't have any realistic hope of spotting it. Keep in mind, anyone out there with routine interstellar travel of any kind, even just with automated drones, is more than likely to be hundreds or at least tens of thousands of years ahead of us technologically.

    That said, it's always possible that the machinery only wakes up every so often. If it only sticks it head out to look around every 10000 years or so it might have missed us last time (or we might still be below it's detection threshold but I find that hard to believe personally). So, we could examine the asteroid belts, and the trojan asteroids around the gas giants, looking for things that give off an anomalous amount of heat or have a higher than expected metal content. Logically any plan to explore the galaxy is going to rely on something like von Nueman probes; that is to say probes that get to their destination and build a few hundred copies of themselves to send to the next start system (and to provide redundancy in this one).

  24. Re:"Nearby star" on 3 Habitable-Zone Super-Earths Found Orbiting Nearby Star · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everything is relative. 22 light years, ludicrously far away in every day terms, is a hop skip and a jump in astronomical terms.

  25. Re:I want a car, no I want a plane... on Firefox 22 Released, Boosts 3-D Gaming and Video Calls · · Score: 2

    I personally use Lynx to browse, why would I want images/audio/video built into it?