Slashdot Mirror


User: brusk

brusk's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
568
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 568

  1. Re:Pay captcha creators :) on Building a Better CAPTCHA · · Score: 1

    Actually music recognition seems like a task computers would be much better at than humans (rather, a program designed for just that task would be better at it than a random, off-the street human).

  2. Re:Won't Help Big Three on Feds To Offer Cash For Your Clunker · · Score: 1

    If someone wants to pay more for those cars than the amount of the scrap voucher, they can do so. If not, they're clearly not that valuable.

    And this IS buying the people a good, in exactly the way the government should: it's reducing a negative externality. The pollution and dependence on imported fossil fuels created by inefficient cars cause real harm to Americans. Setting minimum mpgs and mandating pollution controls is one way to reduce those harms, this is another.

    Whether this is the BEST use of that money is another question. That would take a lot of detailed policy analysis. But it's a reasonable idea in principle.

  3. Re:The *real* "right thing". Irrelevant pont. on An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks · · Score: 1

    Except that the existence a robust market for the used product could create demand for the new product, and spur the publisher to (a) reprint the book or (b) print the author's more latest book. Publisher do pay attention to the used market, and not purchasing the used copy destroys that market signal.

  4. Re:Best use of the Kindle on An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks · · Score: 1

    Not quite. If there is strong demand for the book on the second-hand market, the publisher might find out about it (they do track these things) and decide to reprint the book, which would lead to royalties for the author. Pirated/electronic copies would not have this effect.

  5. Re:You can get hard passwords on Elcomsoft Claims WPA/WPA2 Cracking Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    You should probably be smashing it with the keyboard.

  6. Re:You can get hard passwords on Elcomsoft Claims WPA/WPA2 Cracking Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    When you smash a spider, you are VERY likely to bash several keys near each other on the keyboard, and you are VERY unlikely to input characters that involve multiple-key combinations (and even more unlikely to use characters that are not directly accessible on your keyboard). So it would be possible to create a dictionary of "spider-bash space" -- those combinations possible/likely by smashing a QWERTY keyboard -- which would be orders of magnitude smaller than the entire universe of truly randomly-generated keys.

    In any case, there's NO way your spider-bash method is MORE random (and thus more secure) than a random number generator for which every combination has an equal likelihood.

  7. Re:Rotate your keys on Elcomsoft Claims WPA/WPA2 Cracking Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    I hope you are not implying that you think a larger fraction understand security in NYC.

    Probably not the case, but in densely populated areas there is more likelihood that an open router will be heavily used, to the point of affecting the uninformed user's bandwidth, so that the user looks at the router manual to figure out how to stop it. In a less densely populated area, that's less likely to happen, so for a given level of initial user ignorance you'll end up with a higher rate of encryption (and, in the process, people will learn about security).

  8. Re:You can get hard passwords on Elcomsoft Claims WPA/WPA2 Cracking Breakthrough · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's a good reason not to used closed source software or a web page. It's not a good reason not to use Keepass, the program suggested above, which is open source, offline, and has high-entropy random number generation. Saying some software is bad so I won't use any is like saying some clothes are bad so I won't wear any.

  9. Re:Sounds good... on Environmental Cost of Hybrids' Battery Recycling? · · Score: 4, Funny

    And fat friars are made of delicious, delicious monkflesh.

  10. Re:Goggles &c on Bottom of the Barrel Book Reviews — The Lost Blogs · · Score: 1

    Thank you for the summary of the review's literary merits.

  11. Re:I still don't understand on RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense · · Score: 1

    But business taxes are generally based on profit, not on public expense incurred. A company that makes a million dollars one year and nothing the next--even though it used the same amount of public resources--pays very different taxes. *Some* taxes are related to resources used, e.g. property taxes, but not very directly.

    And of COURSE it's my problem if the electric company (which in many places is a public utility, supported by public bonds) undercharges: it might raise my rates well above cost the next year to recoup its costs, or its pricing might lead to brownouts, a la Enron-era California.

  12. Re:I still don't understand on RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense · · Score: 1

    You seem to live in a fantasyland in which taxes are basically user fees directly proportional to expenses incurred. That's just not workable in reality, which is too complex to determine the cost of a given public service. If a street has five businesses on it, and four shut down, should the remaining one have to pay more in road taxes to cover the decreased revenue from the others? That would be the logical outcome of your position. Who really presumes that registration fees cover the expense of road building and maintenance?

  13. Re:I still don't understand on RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense · · Score: 1

    Not a sharp one. What about a public road that leads only (or mainly) to a factory? That's a handout to the company. Or publicly-sponsored training in specific skills that are useful to a particular industry, for example carpentry classes in community colleges. That's a handout to the construction industry, especially if the other industries have to pay to train their employees. I'm not saying either is automatically a bad thing, just that there's no clear line between a legitimate policy and a "handout." It's actually a very difficult distinction to make.

  14. Re:No addresses? on Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan · · Score: 1

    They DO use addresses, just not, for the most part in most cities, the number-street typical of European and American addresses. Rather, each city is divided into named sectors and each of those is divided into numbered zones, which are further subdivided into blocks. Each house on those blocks is given a number. So an address might look like "Minato-ku [port sector], 5-8-13": 13th house on the 8th block in the 5th zone of the port sector. What makes it VERY hard to find an address in Japan is that the numbers are not always laid out sequentially; if a new house is built it gets the next number up, so 13 could be between 8 and 21.

  15. Re:Same here. on Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan · · Score: 1

    Curtains block EVERYONE, not just Google. ROBOTS.TXT blocks spiders, not browsers. What if I want my neighbors to see in, but don't want photos posted on a searchable website? We can have much more precise control in cyberspace, and it would be good to have it in meatspace. Moreover, curtains block my view OUT--it would be as if ROBOTS.TXT limited my ability to browse others' sites.

  16. Re:I still don't understand on RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense · · Score: 1

    Your argument is specious. First, not all businesses pay taxes directly, and their payment of taxes is unrelated to their level of road use (unlike, e.g., their payment of tolls on toll roads). Second and more fundamentally, you define away ANY subsidy. By your logic, if the government gives $100 million to any company that makes products that are yellow, because the President thinks yellow is cool, that's not a subsidy so long as the companies pay at least $1 in taxes. But the one has nothing to do with the other.

  17. Re:I still don't understand on RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's absurd. Any business that relies on free road transport--which is a massive subsidy from the government--is by your definition following a failed model. So is any business that depends on its workers having received public education, rather than teaching them to read and count itself. Just about every business benefits from something it doesn't have to produce itself, from free fire protection to law enforcement to low-priced electricity. The only meaningful policy questions are which subsidies/price structures are good ones.

  18. Re:Details... on Vista's Security Rendered Completely Useless · · Score: 1

    When I was a lad a local root exploit meant you'd carved a turnip into a caricature of the mayor.

  19. Re:Open Source on The Inside Story On the San Francisco Network Hijacking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Open source does not equal open data.

  20. Re:Is This Evil? on Gmail Reveals the Names of All Users · · Score: 2, Funny

    A motto that, by its own grammar, violates itself? Brilliant!

  21. Re:This only punishes the foolish on Gmail Reveals the Names of All Users · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'll stick with my tiny, anonymized 3rd party free web based (and solar hosted) email provider, thanks.

    I'll stick to earth-based email providers, thank you very much. Though off-planet backups are helpful in case of catastrophe.

  22. Re:Are you really sure about that? on Kaspersky To Demo Attack Code For Intel Chips · · Score: 2, Informative

    Can you actually point to the section of the US code that prohibits a third party from delivering first class style mail? I mean, if a private company wanted to sell a service moving an ounce across 3000 miles for 50 cents, they could.

    From Wikipedia:

    18 U.S.C. 1693â"1696 and 39 U.S.C. 601â"606, implemented under 39 Code of Federal Regulations Parts 310 and 320.

    The federal government has strong powers in this regard because there's a postal clause in the Constitution.

  23. Re:DSL+Cable on Working With 2 ISPs For Home Networking? · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hence the need for two power systems, preferably from two different utilities.

  24. Re:can anyone still spell sputnik on What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sputnik 1 was in orbit for only a few months.

  25. Re:Look at some of the big companies out there, to on What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running? · · Score: 1

    The people who wrote the requirements are not necessarily the same ones who wrote the programs to meet them. If you tell an architect to build a 50-story building and then complain that it's not 100 stories, it's your fault.