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User: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

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  1. Incidentally... on U.S. Government Hires Company To Hack Into Video Game Consoles · · Score: 1

    With today's consoles being walled-garden cryptographic playgrounds, I am hard pressed to think of any useful exploit tools that wouldn't run a substantial risk of qualifying as 'circumvention devices' for DMCA purposes...

    It makes me wonder if the law(s) that probably do make almost any sort of spying legal also enable otherwise illegal tools, or whether the MPAA just isn't going to be suing the Navy as a pragmatic matter?

  2. Re:Duh McDuhface on F-18 Fighter Jet Crashes Into Virginia Apartment Complex · · Score: 1

    This might be a rare circumstance where the contractual and military senses of the phrase 'Force majeure' quite literally collide...

  3. Re:Counterproductive on AT&T To Unlock Out-of-Contract iPhones · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "We're the phone company. We don't have to care."

  4. Re:Worldwide??? on 42% of Worldwide Households Expected To Have Wi-Fi By 2016 · · Score: 1

    I've got a laundry list of intestinal pathogens that says it'd be a bad idea; but there isn't any particular reason to expect that WiFi would lag running water, sewage systems, or a power grid that stays up more than it goes down...

    Good civil engineering is Not Cheap. It is also Not Fast and tends to require longish periods of comparatively competent, not-too-shortsightedly-exploitative governance. It also need't be terribly high tech(though it can be), so areas that have enjoyed reasonable wealth and stability have examples going back quite some time.

    WiFi, on the other hand, has teeny capital costs and can be(shoddily) installed in about 5 minutes. And, thanks to the requirements of mobile devices, it consumes little enough power that a car battery, the alternator of a dodgy motorbike, your illegal unmetered hand-splice off a utility line, or just about anything else larger than a 'C' cell is ample.

    It isn't entirely clear that the motive is there(since people generally only want WiFi if they have a device to connect and a network to connect to, which both cost money); but if it were it would be trivial to have broad WiFi coverage well before they upgrade the open sewers and communal disease taps...

  5. Re:Channel Crowding on 42% of Worldwide Households Expected To Have Wi-Fi By 2016 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It would certainly be nice for the FCC to cut out some more spectrum, I'd say that WiFi has proven to be of enormous value despite living in the wireless war zone that is 2.4GHz, and is amply deserving of more.

    In the meantime(and/or forever, since it seems to be an accepted truth that any available spectrum is either the god-given right of legacy broadcasters or must be sweethearted to a cellular Telco as quickly as possible lest the terrorists win) it would be nice for access points to 'back off' more intelligently.

    A limited number of AP deployments are actually looking for maximum range. The rest only actually want enough range to handle the X devices in the household; and any spillover is useless or worse. It would be useful for the client and the access point to be able to exchange information with each other on signal quality, and settle on minimum levels needed for the distance and speed required.

  6. Re:India on Robot Helicopters To Single Out Pirate Ships · · Score: 1

    They might be rather more sensible to stay away for as long as somebody else is willing to take the bait instead(though they do currently have a small force with CTF-151, as does Pakistan).

    Nobody really wants to touch the 'go after the pirates directly' problem because that would mean voluntarily wading into the mire of another pest-riddled franchise of Ethniclashistan and pursuing an open-ended peacekeeping of attrition against a dynamic grab-bag of unsavory groups that can't quite decide if they hate you or each other more.

    On the high seas, there is at least the advantage of being ludicrously overqualified, which keeps the risk of casualties to a minimum; but it doesn't make playing whack-a-mole against junk you could practically buy at a sporting goods store with your big, butch, blue-water navy any cheaper or less Sisyphean... I can only assume that it makes sense at all because the training exercises that they'd be doing to keep away from port aren't too much cheaper, and every so often somebody will insinuate that Al Qaeda is worming their way into the pirate business somehow.

  7. Re:A big heap of cardboard boxes... on Robot Helicopters To Single Out Pirate Ships · · Score: 1

    ...readily alter one's piratey-boat profile.

    Aside from the cheap and low-to-no-tech countermeasures you propose, this system seems pretty much doomed to be a 'small boat detector' rather than a 'pirate detector', given the difficulty of determining intent before they get within sight of some target vessel.

    Now, if you adopt the de-facto policy of "yeah, we are just going to hunt any small boats that don't look innocent enough to us, who exactly is going to object and why do we care?", then the difference is immaterial; but if there are legal or PR problems involved with false-positive 'incidents', it doesn't exactly take a rocket surgeon to pack some discount fishing supplies along with the AKs when stocking up for the next pirating trip. Guns sink fast(and are probably a legal and sensible thing to be carrying in the area anyway, so they are both disposable and not proof of intent).

    Doesn't render the system useless necessarily; but it's only a modest automation of the existing 'dispatch to vessel being approached suspiciously' process unless you are, in fact, interested in clearing the water with more efficiency than tact.

  8. Re:Oh Great. on USGS Suggests Connection Between Seismic Activity and Fracking · · Score: 0

    Oh, it isn't so bad as all that. So long as the pointy-heads agree to change all references to 'seismic activity' or 'earthquakes' to 'geologic optimization' or 'seismic progress', we'll let them live. After all, somebody has to turn this GPR data into exploitable resource deposits so that us 'bigger picture' guys can do what we do best...

  9. Re:Cool for cats. on Raspberry Pi Passes EU Electromagnetic Compatibility Testing · · Score: 2, Funny

    The good Dr. Robert J. Van de Graaff has your prostatic workstation needs covered.

    In fact, I'm pretty sure that he is now a major factor in semiconductor production: during the later stages of their diffusion, when the punk-ass new microprocessors think they know everything, the wise old 8086s tell them: "Now kids, if you exhibit any of the undocumented errata for your model number during your rated lifespan, Dr. Van de Graaff will come for you, and with him comes the Vcore transient from which their is no waking..."

  10. Re:CE certifications..... on Raspberry Pi Passes EU Electromagnetic Compatibility Testing · · Score: 1

    Just for curiosity's sake, I have to wonder if the hub itself was flawed and fraudulently labelled(also, was it a real, live, hub? those must be getting hard to come by...) or if it was one of the 'qualification tests with a decent wall-wart adapter, ship with the cheapest piece of shit that doesn't catch fire when plugged in' jobs that could be compliant with the right swapping...

  11. Re:Pie in the sky on How To Share a Cake Over the Internet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My intended point was not that it is impossible to cope with utility functions in general; but that many real-world actors have hard minimums that add up to greater than one cake across the group you are dividing for. Sometimes, their utility functions even appear to be dependent on the deprivation of others of the cake, not of the possession of the cake themselves(and, in the somewhat-less-fucked-up-but-not-much-more-helpful, intermediate case you have the 'keeping up with the Joneses' where people continually recalibrate their utility functions based on the shares allocated around them).

    There are certainly unequal-utility cases that are solvable, I just suspect that those don't include many of the real ones...

  12. Re:Pie in the sky on How To Share a Cake Over the Internet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suspect that the deeper problem is that virtually nobody, even if they use the word 'fair' to describe the outcome they want, actually wants what this outcome provides...

    The classic 'cake slicing' analogy holds in situations where it is agreed that the cake ought to be sliced evenly and there is simply the problem of doing the slicing. It does not cover the situations where ownership of the cake is my Manifest Destiny, where the cake was given to you by God, where possession by those subhumans of any part of the cake would be unacceptable, or where it is only just that the invisible hand allocate the cake...

  13. Re:Not really a red tape delay on Raspberry Pi Passes EU Electromagnetic Compatibility Testing · · Score: 2

    Not when one of the FCC regulations is "must accept interference". No seriously, that's actually a requirement.

    I don't think that pacemakers would qualify as Part 15 devices; but Part 95 ones. Those have a much shorter list of things they aren't allowed to interfere with; but they are still required to deal with interference(that and, obviously, building life-critical systems that can't handle a little RF would be a Bad Thing even if it were legal.)

  14. Re:Duh McDuhface on F-18 Fighter Jet Crashes Into Virginia Apartment Complex · · Score: 2

    If it bleeds, it leads. The media is a bunch of ghouls when it comes right down to it.

    A proud few choose to rise above mere feeding on the already dead...

  15. Re:Things break, even multi million dollar equipme on F-18 Fighter Jet Crashes Into Virginia Apartment Complex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ejector seats definitely separated from the aircraft before it hit the ground, so they must have ditched; but I get the impression that fighter jets don't give you very much "we'll just glide along for a while until we find something that looks nice and open" time once the thrust goes out so they quite likely didn't have much choice about location.

  16. Re:Hmm on F-18 Fighter Jet Crashes Into Virginia Apartment Complex · · Score: 2

    Some flavors of engine failure could spread, when a turbine sheds a blade, say, that part tends to go slicing off in some direction with considerable enthusiasm for its new career... If you are lucky, it chooses a direction away from anything important.

  17. Re:Duh McDuhface on F-18 Fighter Jet Crashes Into Virginia Apartment Complex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idea that the medium is the message is overblown; but it certainly shapes the message. Unfortunately, TV gets all the wrong shaping.

    In order to take advantage of the 'live' nature of the medium, the station is effectively required to field somebody to stand at the scene and make noises while facing the camera as soon as humanly possible. Regardless of whether they know anything useful, and regardless of whether they could spend the camera time learning something useful to bring back to the camera. At one time, this did have the virtue of ensuring a camera at the scene; but cheap silicon sensors have basically covered that now. Since they don't actually know anything of use, they generally fill their time by asking unutterably stupid questions. Since that is boring, they'll have to elicit some emotion or 'reaction' so that the audience doesn't glaze over and change the channel.

    Even better, after the big kids have had time to sift through the details, airtime is too limited(and broadcast video not terribly information dense) for those details to be presented in any comprehensive or coherent way. Instead, you generally get a brief summary "Pilot Error!/Mechanical Failure!/Search For Answers Continues!" followed by some emotive human-interest stories.

  18. Serious Question... on Raspberry Pi Passes EU Electromagnetic Compatibility Testing · · Score: 1

    Could someone enlighten me on why the testing would include ESD sensitivity?

    Devices that don't die when you pick them up on a non-humid day certainly are nice; but(outside of safety-critical medical and controls applications) dropping dead if handled without ESD precautions doesn't seem like a safety risk, or a greater RF emissions violation than the spark doing the killing, or otherwise troublesome in a regulatory sort of way. Likely to annoy customers, quite possibly; but not likely to do much harm in the process...

  19. Re:The perfect cover on China Admits Anonymous Hacks Occured · · Score: 1

    It isn't merely that: there is no reason to suspect that all of the hackers were domestic(anybody seriously think that some free range script kiddie who suspects that the security of random Chinese websites is as bad or worse than random American ones, and the FBI doesn't care about them nearly as much, wouldn't have a try?), which allows them to do the "Oh, look, many nation-states and corporations are victimized by hackers, just like us, alas." line(which is certainly not false, but reports suggest that damage received and damage dealt are not entirely symmetric).

  20. Curious... on Dell To Acquire Wyse · · Score: 1

    Does Wyse have some sort of secret management-sauce that I've not dealt with in my own relatively small deployments?

    I can easily see that thin clients are something that Dell would be interested in selling; but buying out a company to move into a market is usually something you do if the product is in some what specialized.

    Thin clients are basically the most boring single-board computers available(with specs somewhere between embedded desktops-level and weedy ARM SoC, depending on how 'thin' the customer actually wants) running either Windows Desktop OS Embedded Edition, WinCE, or a cut down linux. Surely this isn't the most difficult market for an existing whitebox slinger to break into?

  21. Honestly... on More Fuel For Facebook Censorship Advocates In India · · Score: 2

    They should probably encourage facebook to keep up the good work...

    Nothing intensifies feelings of religious entitlement(that, when violated, swiftly turn to violence) like continual cringing deference and nothing dissipates those feelings like a continual bilateral exchange of ridicule.

    It bloody well took long enough; but thanks to the scoffers, freethinkers, and scurrilous pamphleteers(Oh, and those guys were scurrilous. Trolls respect your elders....) most of the western world can't even distinguish between a Lutheran and a Methodist, much less excitedly tell you why burning one of the two at stake is an immediate necessity. Heck, unitarians the last major surviving heresy(Arianism, Socinianism, and Catharism didn't do quite so well) are now considered to be risibly bland liberals, rather than barely-christian heretics. Even the good, old, Catholic/Protestant bloodbath just isn't what it might be. You've still got a few belligerent, probably whiskey-soaked, Irish fighting; but outside of that knowledge and care about the theological and doctrinal differences is probably at an all-time low, particularly when you consider that the ability to inform yourself if interested is at an all time high.

    It takes time; but success through mockery that gradually degenerates into sheer apathy is the way to go! Censorship is an attractive short-term plan; but it will have you travelling away from the slackutopia, where nobody gives enough of a fuck to go to the trouble of brutal communal violence.

  22. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    De-facto, I suspect that a lot of stuff goes home english-only(teacher pounds out a once-off handout, runs off 30 copies, are you going to get a translator in there?; but for more serious stuff schools frequently will ensure native-language access. I don't know if the requirements are as strict as for hospitals; but if it needs to get translated, you'd be impressed how many languages are available to some districts if they lean on the ESL teachers...

  23. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    "Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?"

    Poor people exist. And attend school. And there's an odd notion that we shouldn't make things even more unfair for them than they already are.

    I'm not sure it's that(at least not in districts where such don't represent a substantial fraction of the population served).

    I've worked in school IT. We had a variety of systems(mailing lists for general interest/PTA/community announcement stuff, Moodle for per-class stuff. Some custom web frontends for scheduling teacher conferences and delivering grades.) Most parents liked the convenience. For any parent who couldn't, or didn't want to, we didn't ask any questions, all you had to do was say you wanted it, anybody who preferred hard copy could have somebody pull it up during the school day and send it home with kiddo.(Just anecdotally, some of our more hard-case students were actually much helped by the system, not because they necessarily had computer access at home; but because the special education faculty found it much easier to chase them down, keep track of exactly what work they ought to be doing, get copies when the students inevitably lost them, and generally keep the students on track. Your high-achievers and their helicopter parents certainly found it handy; but shuffling paper isn't rocket surgery as study skills go.)

    However, this was all at the initiative of the IT head, in pushing the systems, and the individual teachers who populated them with classroom materials. At least at that time there wasn't Jack coming from the DOE or elsewhere(and this is not necessarily a bad thing) requiring what we were doing. We just did it. I think somebody crunched the numbers and determined that we were roughly breaking even in terms of extra IT hours vs. extra secretary hours, paper, and postage, and the electronic system was handier, so it was deemed a reasonable success; but it was a purely optional thing. Teachers weren't required to use it(except for grade reporting, that tied into some state-mandated database stuff) and not all did.

    It varies by district, I suspect both as a function of funding and as a function of motivation.

  24. Ouch.. on Despite Drop In Piracy, French Music Industry Still In Decline · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sarkozy is going to be sleeping on the couch for a week at this rate.

  25. Re:Confused on Despite Drop In Piracy, French Music Industry Still In Decline · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Presumably TFA is referring to the fact that the de-facto bundling of physical distribution($15-$20 for 1 CD worth vs. $1/track) is much harder to push for digital product. The 'chart topper + 14 tracks filler' is now worth ~$1, rather than ~$15...