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User: Dop

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  1. Re:old news on In-Flight Service Gogo Uses Fake SSL Certificates To Throttle Streaming · · Score: 1

    Yeah, don't understand how this is news. It's not a security flaw, it's how your browser is supposed to warn you. Sure bandwidth on the plane sucks... YOU'RE ON A PLANE.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

  2. Re:Spoof on Ask Slashdot: What Should We Do About the DDoS Problem? · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that most major ISPs in the U.S. (or at least those with sane network engineers) already do this by dropping spoofed packets on the ingress side of their routers for sources they don't own (https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp38). Hurting market share or forcing implementation is easy domestically, but with the global nature of the Internet and entire nations not implementing this, perhaps for political reasons, it becomes a much more difficult proposition.

    Also, any ISP that charges people for bandwidth has an internal conflict of interest when asked to resolve this problem. They want to ride the line of charging you as much as possible, while not coming up with a solution that completely prevents the attacks that use bandwidth the customer is paying for.

  3. Don't go the way of Vancouver on City of Toronto Files Court Injunction Against Uber · · Score: 1

    Was just in Vancouver and learned that they've done away with Uber. It was horrible. Not enough taxis so it was impossible to get around the city. Frankly, it will impact my decision on whether or not I go back to visit. Unless your taxi companies can offer the same level of service, killing Uber will result in an impact to tourism... maybe just from me, but it'll be an impact. :)

  4. Re:NCSA should lose it's NSF funding anyway. on 'Blue Waters' Supercomputer Lucky To Exist · · Score: 1

    No connections at UCSD anymore, sorry.

  5. Re:NCSA should lose it's NSF funding anyway. on 'Blue Waters' Supercomputer Lucky To Exist · · Score: 3, Informative

    I will not comment on the originally submitted system (IBM) vs what was installed and the reasons behind that. However...

    As a former employee of NCSA, I think I can shed a little light on this, at least from the employment side. To my knowledge, they never fired an admin, at least not recently (largely because firing people at the University of Illinois is extremely difficult, even when it's totally justified in some cases). Certain admins left for better opportunities, but I can hardly blame them.

    You mention both Cray and NCSA having issues finding new folks. That's two-fold in my opinion. Very few people _want_ to move to Champaign, IL. You have to be the kind of person that wants to live in a college town that's a good 2 hours from a big city, surrounded by corn fields, and has shitty winters (oddly I'm that person). In addition to that, partly because of the horrible State of Illinois budget issues and the fact that NCSA is a department of the UofI, they don't pay market rate for qualified individuals. They used to justify this by really good benefits, but those have all been eroded.

    In a market where the best of the best (often working remotely from wherever they want) are making more than NCSA managers, it's no wonder they can't find anyone to fill technical positions. I'm not sure if other NSF funded institutions are in any better shape. Would Blue Waters really be better off at another location? I'm not sure.

    All that said, I'm extremely grateful for my time at NCSA and the amount I was able to learn with state of the art technology. It's just that working will cool stuff (and great people) doesn't pay the bills anymore.

  6. Re:person to person = best communication method on Building a Case For Telecommuting · · Score: 1

    I agree that the meetings don't always work well, I think you're 100% right on that. However, we're talking about Fortune 100 companies that aren't necessarily in any financial trouble, it's just difficult to manage that many employees. It's not physically possible for all of the employees to be in one location.

    My premise is, given meetings of that nature, why not telecommute?

  7. Re:person to person = best communication method on Building a Case For Telecommuting · · Score: 2

    So how does that work when you are employed by a large corporation that has multiple locations, where the majority of the people in meetings are on the phone from different locations? How does it matter if I'm at one of the other corporate offices rather than my home office?

  8. Re:Ready, fire, aim on Anonymous Threatens Robin Hood Attacks Against Banks · · Score: 1

    Heh. I was a victim of paper check fraud as well. At one store the clerk asked the thief for their driver's license, wrote down the crook's real DL#, and still accepted my check even though the names didn't match. Even if it were law (maybe it is?) the clerks are too lazy to pay attention and half the time they know the criminal and are in on the deal.

    Walmart's collection agency was the worst. They had all these hoops they wanted us to jump through to prove it was a fraudulent charge, we filled it all out twice, referred them to the Detective in charge of our case, etc. The collections agency still wouldn't drop it. Finally they threatened that if we didn't pay they'd hand the case over to their lawyers. I responded "please do" and that's the last we heard from them.

  9. Sometimes.. on Ask Slashdot: Successful Software From Academia? · · Score: 1

    Being formerly from a research institution I can say it happens... sometimes. Usually the people in charge of the project realize they can make money at it and spin off a company.

    Other times, really excellent software, that would be great for the community, goes absolutely nowhere because there isn't an easy path to profit. Once the grant money ends, the project dies. Then other groups write more proposals to solve the same problem over and over because there's nothing in the market.

  10. Re:Why did IBM do this, and what next for NCSA? on NCSA and IBM Part Ways Over Blue Waters · · Score: 1

    Anonymous Coward, eh? You must still work there.

  11. ooOOOooohhh on Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    So... it's an eight armed starfish? Astounding.

  12. Re:It's the teachers, and the parents. on Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education · · Score: 1

    Nobody is suggesting parents make school policy, but parents need to be involved in their child's education. They have to encourage them, help them with homework, be excited when their child does well, backup the school when a kid needs discipline.

    No government policy can take the place of parental involvement.

  13. Re:It's the teachers, and the parents. on Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education · · Score: 1

    I agree 100% except with regards to teacher salaries. My wife used to be a teacher and quit for two reasons. Primarily, there was so little support from most parents that struggling kids didn't have much of a chance. For someone that loved teaching, it was extremely stressful dealing with backwards administrative policies and parents who didn't care.

    Secondary to that, her low teacher salary meant it was no longer financially viable to drive 45min to the rural community where she taught. This is where I think the government could step in and help.

  14. Re:Oh Lord on New State Laws Could Make Encryption Widespread · · Score: 1

    New with version 6, Truecrypt disables Windows paging by default. Good for security, but it makes Windows pretty useless.

  15. Re:The blinking red light on What Examples of Security Theater Have You Encountered? · · Score: 1

    Typically I'd agree. Then someone stole the radio out of my stick-shift truck.

  16. Disagree on Cisco CSO Says Antivirus Money "Completely Wasted" · · Score: 5, Informative

    Correct, patching your systems isn't going to protect you against state-of-the-art malware. What patching does is protect you against script kiddies running exploits that are 6 months old. The majority of the successful attacks I've seen are against old vulnerabilities, not new ones.

    Additionally, patching isn't just about security. It's about fixing software bugs that could cost you time/money later.

  17. Only one legitimate reason? on Cocaine Vaccine In the Works · · Score: 1

    The only positive outlet of this research I can foresee is the unfortunate infants born to crack-addicted mothers. As for cocaine addicted adults, I couldn't care less and this research seems like a waste of medical research resources in that regard.

  18. Re:Teachers on High Paying Jobs in Math and Science? · · Score: 1

    In Illinois, starting teacher salary is about $24k. Maybe it's just a problem with our state. :)

  19. Teachers on High Paying Jobs in Math and Science? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not a teacher, but I don't think you should use teachers as an example of someone who should be paid less than someone in math and science. Frankly, I wouldn't put up with today's disrespectful teenagers even for a substantial raise.

    Sure, there are some crappy teachers out there that give them a bad reputation, but you can say that about any profession.

  20. Who controls my TV? on Who Controls Your Television? · · Score: 3, Funny

    My wife. Duh.

  21. Same, yet different on Blizzard Made Me Change My Name · · Score: 1

    Similar to CmdrTaco I've been using "Dop" for years and years in my personal and professional life. (Even my wife calls me "Dop").

    However, I find that I always choose a different name for online gaming, never the same. Probably because I always have multiple characters or I don't want silly kids that get pissed at me in-game bugging me in my daily life. ...something to think about.

  22. Some good ones on Fun Tabletop Games? · · Score: 1

    Puerto Rico
    Goa
    Tikal
    Ticket to Ride
    Power Grid

    Or if you want card games:

    Guillotine
    San Juan
    Bang
    Wizard
    Bohnanza

    And if you're playing Carcassonne now, make sure to get the Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders expansions. I'm a huge fan of funagain.com, they have a great website and they'll even do price matching if you find something cheaper somewhere else.

  23. Re:Guidelines for setup without phone line... on TiVo vs Microsoft vs HDTV Cable · · Score: 1

    I tried that actually. I'm not sure it works with the DirectTV TiVO (model R10). My menus don't even include networking as an option like other TiVos I've seen.

  24. phone line on TiVo vs Microsoft vs HDTV Cable · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When are they going to get past the phone line requirement for initial setup? I have the DirectTV TiVo and it works great getting channel info right off of the satallite once it's setup, but I had to bring a dish over to a friends house to use their phoneline at first.

  25. Re:OpenSSH ... on Kerberos: The Definitive Guide · · Score: 1

    While OpenSSH can accept kerberos passwords, if you want to accept Kerberos tickets you'll still need a patch. We do it all the time, OpenSSH is just one of the many services on our network that use Kerberos for authentication.