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User: jbmartin6

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  1. Re:Coming Soon on Robots Join Final Assembly Line At US Auto Plant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This old "people won't find work and will starve" horse is trotted out and whipped every time there is one of these 'robots now doing x' stories comes up. History says something else will happen, but this doesn't stop the doomsayers. Meanwhile, bring on the massive prosperity, robots!

  2. Re:Slashdot Canidate on How Car Dealership Lobbyists Successfully Banned Tesla Motors From Texas · · Score: 1

    it assumes people will always act rationally and without fraud

    There's your problem, this statement is not true. Libertarianism makes no such assumptions.

  3. Re:who cares on Could a Grace Hopper Get Hired In Today's Silicon Valley? · · Score: 1

    There has been some success at splitting the genders up and allowing women to develop interests and study in all girls classes or schools

    I would appreciate a reference regarding this for my own further reading. I have heard much the same thing about boys in school, regarding certain "anti boy" attitudes among the 100% female faculty in standard elementary schools.

  4. Re:Not just Win8 on German Government Warns Windows 8 Is an Unacceptable Security Risk · · Score: 1

    but the important data is on Linux servers, meaning the real professionals would much rather find Linux exploits

    Any hard data on this? I understand your logic, I just don't think this is borne out in practice. Usually we see Windows exploited since it has access to the data AND has a user to trick with phishing emails and the like. I don't recall any stories like 'we really tried to exploit the Linux server but had to settle for stealing the data from the Windows workstations that accessed the server' For example, see the value to certain actors in Stuxnet,Flame, etc. I doubt those teams were wishing they had Linux exploits to use against Iranian users on Windows.

  5. Re:People who can't stop on What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything. · · Score: 1

    but it's not why obesity happens

    True. 500 pounds doesn't appear out of thin air. That's just simple laws of nature. You can't blame some mystery cause when you are eating three pies and a bag of chips every day.

  6. Re:Money and age on International Climate Panel Cites Near Certainty On Warming · · Score: 1

    Only governments have the power to change this

    Patently false. There are other possibilities. Ultimately, through one mechanism or the other people will change their behavior, or not. And then attempt to deal with the consequences.

  7. Re:Welcome to Fiction writing. on Biggest Headache For Game Developers: Abusive Fans · · Score: 1

    Welcome to everything. The more customers you have, the more likely some of them will be nutbars. I found when working retail, the best solution was to have no tolerance for the people who are out of hand. Sure, you lose those few customers, but everyone else is so much better off that it more than makes up the difference. A nice chance to apply the 80-20 rule.

  8. Re:commercials on Despite Global Release, Breaking Bad Heavily Pirated · · Score: 1

    I will bet the skip option is a key part of the research. What sort of ads get skipped? If I make this change, does the skip rate go up or down? Do different types of users have different skip rates? And so on. Eventually ad makers will produce multiple versions of the same ad, all engineered to hit the non-skip spot for all the different types of users. Google will know everything about my skip preferences. I am not sure how I feel about that outcome. On the one hand, ads get less annoying for me. On the other, I hate the fact the telemarketers track what time of day you are more likely to answer, which gives me a sour feeling. Do I want Google figuring out what time of day I am less likely to skip ads, then carefully calculating how many more ads they can show me during that time before I get annoyed and start skipping?

  9. Re:Fine. Let them. on Consumer Device Hacking Concerns Getting Lost In Translation · · Score: 1

    The "password" was really just a shorthand for any sort of access control or other cost paid in trying to make the device immune to malicious tampering. Time spent hardening device software is not free, this needs to be taken into account when deciding whether a control is appropriate. You make a fair point though, the 'might need emergency access' argument is perhaps not that strong. I would bet that part of that argument is simply doctor's hatred for anything that costs them extra time that they view as superfluous.

  10. Re:Fine. Let them. on Consumer Device Hacking Concerns Getting Lost In Translation · · Score: 1

    Let's make two broad categories of threats.

    First, if you wanted to kill Gary specifically. You have some grudge or vendetta. Would you give up because he didn't have an insulin pump of the particular model vulnerable to this attack? No, you would use some other method from my list. So Gary isn't saved here by having a password on his insulin pump.

    Second, you just want to kill someone for the thrill of it. There's so many ways to do this. If you were this sort of person, would you do the work to learn about insulin pump vulnerabilities, then go find someone who has that pump? Maybe, but if you are that sick you'd kill someone by some other means. So the random victim here isn't saved by having a password on everyone's insulin pump.

    I guess you could say that in case one, you might not be angry enough to kill Gary unless he happened to have an insulin pump that you could use to hide your tracks. Does this seem likely to you to ever happen? I am sure the manufacturer would argue no. Your life insurance company might argue differently. I think we'd all just be guessing unless there was some research on similar circumstances.

    In case two, you might say that the psycho MIGHT want to use the pump method, find that there was a password on it, and then move on to kill someone else by some other method. In that case the diabetic was saved by having a password on the pump. Again, does this seem very likely?

    I can see the argument that even if it is possible it might happen once in a century, they should put safeguards on the pump just in case. Especially if you assume that is zero cost. The counter was made elsewhere in the thread that putting harsher security on the device is far more likely to cause harm to the patient than the random psycho threat, when there is a medical emergency and the doctor cannot access the device due to the security.

  11. Re:Fine. Let them. on Consumer Device Hacking Concerns Getting Lost In Translation · · Score: 2

    There are plenty of easier ways to kill someone. The threat of someone going out of their way to hack the insulin pump is so near zero that any cost to fix it is not justified. If the flaw were something that could be triggered accidentally or by a simple fumbling around they would be more likely to act on it. As it is, we can't patch for a person's vulnerability to poison, gunshot, bludgeoning, air bubble injections, etc. so the existence of one more extremely improbable attack isn't worrying people who have more dangerous things to worry about.

  12. Re:Quality and Safety on Consumer Device Hacking Concerns Getting Lost In Translation · · Score: 1

    In the USA, the FDA does this. In a way this is one contributor to the problem, the effort and time to recertify a device after substantive changes is considerable. It depends on the scope of a change though, certain types of maintenance don't require recertification.

  13. We can only hope it wasn't a summer intern calling for this.

  14. Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. on Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts · · Score: 1

    The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.

    This is the framing bias writ large. We can see in all sorts of recent events that many people don't change their opinions even when presented with the evidence that makes their initial conclusions unsupportable.

  15. Re:+5 Insightful for on Jimmy Carter Calls Snowden Leak Ultimately "Beneficial" · · Score: 1

    Well I can't address the rest of your statement, but Carter was not a nuclear engineer.

  16. still on Swedish Machine Turns Sweat Into Drinking Water · · Score: 1

    I wonder if you could do anything interesting with it using fermented corn mash

  17. Re:I disabled mine months ago on Pre-Dawn Wireless Emergency Alert Wakes Up NYC · · Score: 2

    I wonder if you can get a free pass for any reckless driving charges by explaining that you were looking around for the tan Lexus instead of watching in front of you. Wait a second, this whole thing must be a trap since we know using handheld electronics while driving is illegal! ENTRAPMENT!

  18. Re:Nice on Edward Snowden Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize · · Score: 1

    Asking a question isn't putting words in your mouth. There is an implied 'is that what you mean?' in this common usage of the question format. Thanks for clarifying your point.

  19. Re:Definitely... on Edward Snowden Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize · · Score: 1

    I like the 'wolf by the ears' reference. I believe T. Jefferson used the same exact phrase when rationalizing his continued support for slavery.

  20. Re:Nice on Edward Snowden Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize · · Score: 0

    So you believe returning to the barter system would increase general quality of life for humanity?

  21. Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse on NSA Spying Hurts California's Business · · Score: 1

    I didn't see any indication that Germany was targeted more than say, France or Brazil, which tends to disprove your assertion. i.e. I didn't see a scale where amount of spying correlated to size of economy.

  22. Re:Should be good news if stays stable & acces on Kenyans Will Soon Be Able To Send Bitcoin By Phone · · Score: 1

    As an American, I crapped my pants and hit the fetal position when I saw you used the "T word"

  23. Re:And what will happen if they do on DEF CON Advises Feds Not To Attend Conference · · Score: 1

    They are making a choice to work there even though they know what the organization does. They are not innocents caught in the crossfire.

  24. Bloop? on City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica · · Score: 1

    Was there a bloop or a train?

  25. Re:The America I believed in never existed on Lincoln's Surveillance State · · Score: 1

    Huh? Since "theoretically possible" doesn't mean desirable, surely this isn't the reason.