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User: gavron

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  1. Re:They're still running... outdated story on Uber's Short-lived Helicopter Service In Utah Grounded (ksl.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are correct. His "followup" story does predate.

    THEY ARE GROUNDED. NO FLIGHTS. Not to the Sheriff's pad. Not to private pads. Nowhere.

    Grounded.

    E

  2. ICANN won't change. The proof is in its behavior. on The Clock Is Ticking For the US To Relinquish Control of ICANN (betanews.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    ----before you Reply/criticize, please read at least one of the links I posted below - thank you ---

    Change in ICANN has been impossible to come by. The only "representative of the people", Karl Aurbach
    tried for years to get some accountability, some rationality, some responsibility. Instead all he got was
    stonewalled. It makes for interesting but not hopeful reading that ICANN is ready to manage a global
    network with ANY sort of eye to "the stakeholders."

    It's like letting the MAFIAA manage the Internet. Their goals are to please THEIR stakeholders, which
    do not include those of us who enjoy Pandora, Spotify, Hulu, Bittorrent, etc.

    Here's that "interesting reading" I promised. It's a small but representative subset.
    http://www.circleid.com/posts/...
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
    http://archive.icann.org/en/co...
    https://w2.eff.org/Infrastruct...

    Ehud

  3. Only 4 states want money? Thus far... on DOJ and 4 States Want $24 Billion In Fines From Dish Network For Telemarketing (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Someone got this story on the early-morning side.

    If there's any money to be had you can bet that every single other state in the Union will have their attorneys general filing suit to join in the grab for cash.

    This isn't about protecting consumers.
    This isn't about punishing companies that screw with consumers.
    It's not even making it about having dinner safe at home at eight o'clock at night without the damn phone ringing.

    It's about government entities wanting MONEY from anyone and everyone they can get it from.

    This won't stay "DOJ and four states" very long.

    E

  4. Obstructionists are funny -- till next job review. on Sys-Admin Dispenses Passwords With a Banana (thenewstack.io) · · Score: 0, Troll

    This guy has a job and it's to be a sysadmin, not a BOFH. Instead of helping his coworkers he's being an ass... and he's proud of it.

    Starbucks baristas provide WiFi passwords instantly, quickly, and without gross fruit issues.
    So do motel front-desk check-in clerks.

    If he can't do it, it's time to get a new job.

    This guy should have to "stroke the banana" on his next job review to keep his job.

    E

  5. IF THEY AREN'T DOING ANYTHING WRONG... on IoT Security Is So Bad, There's a Search Engine For Sleeping Kids (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    ...they they don't need to worry about the surveillance.

    And the parents who put these protections in place, that's just like our big brother the NSA and GCHQ putting protections in place for us. No encryption necessary. Hope no bad guys get a hold of this.

    But if you're doing nothing wrong... ...you have no reason to worry.

    E

  6. Finally! An end to crime! on 10 People Arrested In the Netherlands For Bitcoin Laundering (reuters.com) · · Score: 0

    Good job, US, AU, and Lithuania, for reaching across the vast expanse of the globe to track down these ten people.

    I've never seen a prosecutor put out a press release that doesn't tout how many MILLIONS OF DOLLARS they've saved or recovered, or what the "street value" (often inflates 4x-10x is) but this time it seems nobody could actually put a value on it?

    Undoubtedly all crime involving Bitcoin will now suffer a big hit. The dark nets are no longer dark. All will be well.

    I can now sleep easier. Come here, Doge.

    E

  7. Re:Not licensed pilots on Airbus Joins Uber For On-Demand Chopper Rides (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    LOL! I just posted a (more serious) note about the requirements in the US for on-demand (charter) air operations and the highly regulated environment. It's much more strict that simply having a licensed pilot :)

    If you're interested, check out 14 CFR 135. There are requirements for
    - pilots
    - aircraft
    - facility
    - maintenance
    - passenger security

    In other words... it's -nothing- like an Uber.

    Also the press-release is just marketing hype. Uber isn't buying helicopters nor flying them and Airbus isn't subsidizing that either :)

    Cheers,

    Ehud Gavron
    FAA Commercial Helicopter Pilot

  8. No, you can't Uber a chopper :) on Airbus Joins Uber For On-Demand Chopper Rides (thestack.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    This marketing press-release is making the rounds, and with each retelling it's getting more farfetched.

    No, you will not be able to *ever* call up a helicopter to pick you up with Uber. This is just a marketing press release (and fairly effective obviously).

    In the United States helicopter manufacturers don't fly helicopter -- helicopter flight operations companies do. Those that do on-demand (charter) flights are licensed under "Part 135" (14 CFR 135 to be precise). See http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/te... for details.

    Part 135 operators have strict requirements for pilots, aircraft, maintenance, and flight operations. They also have requirements for passengers some of which are dictated by the TSA. PDF (sorry): http://nata.aero/data/files/gi...

    Now if Uber and Airbus were *TRULY* committed to doing something together, then Airbus would provide aircraft at reduced lease rates to operating companies that could then partner with Uber. Uber would deliver the passenger to the helicopter; the helicopter would do the long-haul flight; another Uber car would deliver the passenger to the final destination. All this is doable, but none of it is in the press-release. None of it is in the plans. None of it is going to make a flight-ops company buy multi-million-dollar aircraft.

    It sure would be nice though. I'd love to fly more people around in a helicopter.

    Ehud Gavron
    FAA Commercial Helicopter Pilot
     

  9. Those who do not learn history... on Iran Complies With Nuclear Deal; Sanctions Lifted (nytimes.com) · · Score: 0

    So the topic started with Iran meeting some obligations of a generally easy-to-follow and
    none-too-painful recipe to get their billions of dollars unfrozen and really not setting their
    nuclear program back too far.

    That's the topic. This whole "BUT LOOK AT THE JEWS" and "WHAT WILL THE JEWS SAY"
    is a bit of a rabbit hole. For anti-semitic rabbits.

    Perhaps before making up stories to confuse small children you should read some yourself.

    The region was occupied by the Ottoman Empire, which you might call "Turks". That's not the UK.

    In time the British Empire colonized that area and took it over from the Ottomans. That's not the UK either.

    Then in 1948 the United Nations created a new country as part of that area. It wasn't a move by the UK,
    although I can see how "UN" and "UK" can seem similar to someone not versed in what really happened
    nor caring to be accurate.

    That country is "Israel". I can see how you might think "THE JEWS" and "Israel" is the same, but it's not.
    A solid foundation in history (or reading) would help alleviate this problem.

    As I said, nothing to do with Iran's acceptance of the mealy-mouthed limp-dick proposal that handed them
    everything they wanted on a gilded plate. Thanks so much John kerry and Barack obama.

    E

  10. Dude, I appreciate that you have an opinion. Perhaps you should post about it... where it is relevant.

    This thread is about Windows no longer supporting old[er] CPUs after a certain point.
    Windows is not Linux.
    New (or old) CPUs are not about Linux.

    Please stay current on your meds and stop hijacking threads to spew your irrelevant nonsense.

    Best regards and hopeful wishes to a good and speedy therapy,

    Ehud
    P.S.that clown poster behind you really IS mocking you.

  11. Re:Google him. on NY Bill Would Force Decryption of Smartphones On Demand (onthewire.io) · · Score: 1

    Do you know why you're modded so low?
    It's because you're unhelpful.
    You could have provided his number. You didn't.
    You could have provided his email. You didn't.
    You could have even been so cool as to share the text of your message. You didn't.
    In other words you want everyone else to research this prick and look up his office number KNOWING FULL WELL he will ignore them because they're not in his district.

    In other words you were gloating. And you were unhelpful. And you got modded down.
    Way to be a sociopath!

    E

  12. The need to fix everyone else on How To Talk About Mental Illness Online? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a very big part of the American culture thing to need to fix everyone else.
    This can be a very good thing, and I respect Bruce Perens for "daring" to "go there."

    Donald Trump, in his own bombastic style also likes to point out broken things, but
    he's less interested in fixing them and more interested in pointing out how he's not
    broken. [ob mental illness the Donald is clearly a case of NPD waiting for diagnosis].

    Bruce did the right thing because he brought a discussion to the forefront... and sure
    enough here we are on Slashdot talking about it.

    - Should a mental illness be treated any differently than Lamar Odom's condition... or
    Patrick Swayze... or Steve Jobs... or... anyone who has a physical ailment? I don't
    think so. They are all people and whether they suffer from a diseased liver, a drug
    overdose, or a mental demon, they deserve our [something- is it attention, respect,
    space, support, leave-them-alone-ingness, or even just a nod of the head saying
    you're not going through this alone].

    - Should we NOT discuss it, are we not then perpetuating the de-facto stigma that
    mental illness is so bad we can't even talk about it... let alone offer help... or just
    say we're there for that person.

    I did not know the man himself but I respect greatly the contributions he made to my
    daily life. (I use Mint Linux and Ubuntu, both of which are Debian variants).

    My thought - there are lots of mentally diseased people running for office right now,
    but Ian is no longer here.

    May his soul rest in piece... and may a dialogue help others in similar situations.
    Thanks, Bruce Perens.

    Ehud Gavron
    Tucson AZ

  13. Doozy vs Duesy on Tesla Model S Software Updates Lets Car Park Itself With No One Inside It (bgr.com) · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's not a "doozy" of an upgrade.

    Duesy is short for Duesenberg, a car so awesome it could only be a Duesy.

    Ehud

  14. Security through obscurity... never works on Domestic Terrorists Could Use OSINT To Pinpoint US Substations For a Blackout (darkreading.com) · · Score: 1

    If you actually read the article it goes on to say "...never publicly revealed the crucial substations ID'ed by FERC for obvious reasons, nor does iSIGHT plan to disclose publicly the ones it found...."

    So they never publicly revealed the "crucial" substations, have done nothing to make them less "crucial" (I think they mean critical) and have no plans to "disclose" (I think they mean reveal) the ones they found.

    This is either a spoof of a 1980s evil-soviet-Russia-movie or something because if it's real it has to be the STUPIDEST LAMEST excuse for secops people not doing their jobs rights.

    This shouldn't be hidden "because oh no bad guys will find it" but rather "good guys might say oh no wait wtf really???"

    Ehud

  15. Only good guys should shoot guns on Obama Orders Feds To Study Smart Gun Technology (cnet.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The regulations would hope to create a firearm that only is
    a) Shot by good people, and
    b) Is only able to shoot at bad people
    That way nobody ever needs to worry about guns.

    This is as misguided as "encryption that only good people can break"
    or "cars that can only hit bad pedestrians" etc.

    Smarter guns in the hands of equally stupid bad guys will do equally
    stupid bad things.

    E

  16. Those words... they do not mean what you think... on The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel (forbes.com) · · Score: 2

    If you insists[sic] on using a plugin that makes your browser non standards compliant...

    I'm sorry but the standards you speak of don't require anyone to load all content. That's the choice of
    the user and his/her browser. There a standard for HTML https://html.spec.whatwg.org/.
    There is no standard on "how to browse a web page".

    Specifically, it's not required to load the main page ("index.html/php"). (You can deep-link instead).
    It's not required to load everything linked to by that main page. It's not required to load anything at all.

    It is assumed when one visits a site with a web browser one will load up the index page and all subsequent
    referenced links, but that's not in ANY standard; a browser that doesn't do that is NOT out of compliance
    with standards, and further more if we go by de facto standards then the standards IS not loading ads.

    Have a happy browsing day. Don't confuse "standards compliant" with "being required to load an
    entire page and all its referenced links."

    E

  17. Forbes blocks browsers... and... this is absurd on The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel (forbes.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, the link goes to forbes.com which blocks any browser with an ad-blocker. http://fortune.com/2015/12/22/...
    That's ironic and hamfisted, but particularly in light of Forbes own September 2015 article that says ad blockers won't hurt online adversiing. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

    Second, the summary of this "anonymous posting" says:

    The stars call to us through the ages, with each and every one holding the promise of a future for humanity beyond Earth

    No. They don't. Humans evolved to live here, on Planet Earth. Not on our own star, or on any other star, and humanity's future is right here where we have an entire planet we were built for... not on a foreign star.

    How CRAZY would we think it of MONKEYS who want to live underwater? We'd marvel at why happy jungle monkeys would leave a comfortable environment free of most predators and full of food to go somewhere hostile where they can't breathe, their temperature will decay, and without machine aids would soon die.

    That's no different than us claiming that other stars[sic] becon us to live there. No. There's great scientific exploration to be done, and we could even establish limited outposts where machines keep us alive despite the harsh vacuum and cold [or relative heat] of space. The ISS is a good example of one such outpost. However, there's no "interstellar colonialism" happening because the rest of the universe is inhospitable.

    Saturday... when an "anonymous" (friend of the editor?) posts something that makes no sense, and links to a site that's about as close to a paywall as you can get.

    Ehud

  18. Re:Attention seekers. on BBC Taken Offline By 'Anti-IS' Group (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Conspiracy theories are interesting, but let's just skip to the facts:

    http://www.truthandaction.org/...

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...

    http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

    You can go on growsing about who borders on what with whom and Russia wanting to trash talk or whatever else now.

    E

  19. It's a false tradeoff on Majority of Americans OK With Warrantless Internet Surveillance (ap.org) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Security expert Bruce Schneier has been explaining for years that the "tradeoff" between security and liberty is a false one.
    It's put out there by politicians to justify a war on liberties.

    https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

    Any "survey" or "poll" that requires comparing the two or claiming you must give up one to have the other has begged this question and is already false.

    E

  20. Ego absorbed designer on Nadine the Robot Receptionist (qz.com) · · Score: 0

    Robots are tools. From Rosie (The Jetsons) to B-9 (Lost in Space) they are mechanical creations meant to aid us.

    This thing responds irrationally and inconsistently ("with emotion") and there's no guarantee it will do what it's tasked with...
    Asimov's four laws of robotics might as well add "Unless you're trying to deal with some egotistical idiot's creation that randomly says they don't wanna."

    Robots aren't "a creation of another human being with rights and maybe it wants to help and maybe not". Robots are tools and they should do what they're told to get the job done. This one does not.

    It's ok to build toys to make yourself feel better, stroke your ego, or even a talking mirror that says you're the prettiest in the world.
    This "robot" is an ego-stroking result of someone who wanted a machine to look like a younger version of herself, and act in pretty much just as self-absorbed and irrational a manner as well, and has no useful attributes.

    It's ugly. Argues with you. Doesn't do what it's told... If you're not already married, why would you pay for this? Seriously...

    E

  21. Them grapeses on George Lucas Criticizes the Force Awakens (theguardian.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Translated to English:

    I made three very good bottles of wine. So good people called me a visionary. My bottles were great.
    Then I made three bad jars of wine. These jars were jarringly bad.

    I sold my vineyard, great bottles and Jarring Jars and got lots of money.
    Nobody considers me a visionary any longer because of the latter.
    (Also have you ever tried discussing galactic treaties in a way that people want to hear about
    it that doesn't sound like you helped write the internal revenue tax code and the trans-pacific partnership?)

    Now I see that these new owners have made something good.
    I think "Hey I could have done that!" I'm a visionary.
    I think "Wait, I did, back in 1977, you know, before 30% of the planet was alive." Nobody knows I'm a visionary.
    I think "I could have done it again." They would have recognized my genius again. Jar. Jar.
    I forget about the jarring jars. I don't know where that came from anyway. I play with dolls way too much.

    The grapes I would have picked are probably sour anyway.

    - George Lucas

  22. Jeter code, Trump code, bad link inside, oh my! on Chrome Extension Offers Trump-Free Browsing (usnews.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The original code references a "Jeter" filter -- presumably Derek Jeter. (see README.md).

    The Github link in the code and in the github readme says to do this:
    git clone https://robspectre/Trump-Filte...

    Actually you want to include the host name and do this:
    git clone https://github.com/RobSpectre/...

    It would have been nice if instead of replacing almost all references to Jeter with Trump
    the code would have allowed entering any number of character strings, such as
    Trump, Clinton, Kardashian, and Fogle :)

    Ehud

  23. Not 55lbs. 0.55lbs on Drone Registration Is FAA's Way of Getting You To Read Their "EULA" (hackaday.com) · · Score: 0

    55lbs is a pretty hefty UAS (not drone).

    The rules are about 0.55lbs (1/100th of that.)
    https://www.faa.gov/uas/regist...

    Enjoy.

    E

  24. They are not "Oracle's proprietary Java APIs". on Google Confirms Next Android Version Won't Use Oracle's Proprietary Java APIs · · Score: 1

    "Proprietary" is a word meaning ownership. Oracle does not own any APIs.
    If you mean "hold the copyright to" well the US Congress wrote the law and it says they can't.
    The courts last year said they sort of can (in the 9th District). So in the 9th district Oracle
    has copyrights (but it's still not their proprietary anything) and in the other districts nothing.

    SCOTUS declined to hear it. Perhaps with conflicting rulings in other districts they will
    harmonize this and once again APIs will be free from copyright throughout the world. This
    is now true EXCEPT for the US Federal 9th District.

    Ehud

  25. Re:"but deep within the FAA site" on Drone Ban Extends 30 Miles Around DC, Per FAA (wusa9.com) · · Score: 1

    This is not a restriction on piloted aircraft. Hence, it's not listed as a NOTAM as you pointed out.
    Nor is it listed as a TFR at http://tfr.faa.gov/

    I agree the FAA needs a MUCH BETTER MECHANISM so UAS pilots can check for such flight restrictions.

    Ehud
    CPL-H
    Tucson AZ