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User: mrbene

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Comments · 139

  1. Re:They shouldn't on How Should a Non-Techie Learn Programming? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Have to heartily agree here. I'm a techie, I understand code easily. It's natural for me.

    However, I do agree with the OP that people in not-directly-technical roles should have more confidence with technology. Whether this comes from mucking around with SQL or HTML, or from just learning that most mistakes can be undone with ctrl-z, I think that gaining confidence through doing something that they actually want to accomplish is excellent.

    For example, I gained confidence in home improvements by actually doing them - doesn't matter what, specifically. I know that I'll never use these skills to help feed my family - expecting that an amateur such as me can compete with folks who have actual training is idiotic - but I do know when to call the experts, how to call their bluffs, and when I can save myself some bucks by doing it myself.

  2. This could be good, this could be bad... on ISC Offers Response Policy Zones For DNS · · Score: 2, Informative

    A whole lot depends on implementation. The initial intent seems to be to provide a mechanism of blocking domain names that have just been created and have high probability of being phishing/spamming/whatever nefarious. Theoretically, DNS could be updated to include the age of the record to help clients make up their own minds of whether to connect or not, but then you'd start on a slippery slope of additional information about records.

    By building the protocol around a layer of abstraction, additional information can be considered - the actual IP that it's resolving to, how rapidly that's changing, how many different domain names are being created against the netblock that this one is created against, and so on. Much richer information, and theoretically can provide much more useful results.

    The implementation? It's going to be problematic for some, since the decision is being made by a 3rd party as to what is trusted. But this is the case with many ISPs DNS servers anyway - if it doesn't resolve, you end up at a search page instead of getting a DNS error. This won't affect the majority of users in a way they perceive. Is that a good thing? Most of the time...

    Overall, if the DNS server I used was smart enough to prevent successful lookups of records created recently (>1 day), records associated with IPs that saw more than n records added per time period, and a maybe one or two other basic things, I'd probably have a significantly reduced vulnerability to drive by downloads, bots depending on fast fluxing C&C servers, and other actively nefarious threats.

  3. 2600 on Modern Day Equivalent of Byte/Compute! Magazine? · · Score: 1

    If you don't know of this quarterly magazine, look it up. It emphasizes the value of curiosity, while often providing templates for additional investigation. Some of the content is crap, but most of the time there's at least a few things of value.

    Check it out.

  4. Re:Why not just *keep* the money? on FBI To Prosecute "Money Mules" · · Score: 1

    00:00 - Money transferred into your bank account
    01:00 - You take money out of your bank account
    01:30 - You send 92% of the money via Cash Transfer service
    03:00 - Fraud is reported by the actual victim
    04:00 - The 100% money is un-transferred from your bank account, leaving you with -92% of it.

    If you keep the money, you're not ahead - but at least you're not behind. However, at 01:30, you've not yet been burned, and are seeing a whole heap of money, so the greedy voice is saying "Do the transfer so the free money doesn't stop!"

    In short, the promise of this being a long term, low effort thing is what drives people to be "honest".

  5. Re:The DVD I bought on Avatar Blu-Ray DRM Issues · · Score: 1

    Yeah, 12 inch screen? Lame.

    Definitely lame. Don't you know that 9.7 inches is the size of the week?

  6. Re:$1.4 Billion on The Death of the US-Mexico Virtual Fence · · Score: 1

    I'm sure that when I was 12, I was picking crops right next door, and that my son doesn't have the same option to learn to work.

    Only part of that is because I moved to the city- they used to bus kids out to the berry fields as well.

    Is the other part because working when you're under 14 is illegal? And that working in hazardous environments (like harvest) when you're under 18 (given some exceptions for apprentices) illegal?

  7. Re:Awesome on The Death of the US-Mexico Virtual Fence · · Score: 2, Informative

    In terms of historical oil production, google came up with this chart which I was going to link to initially and shows a rather steep decline. But it contradicts the DOE's own chart even though it cites the DOE as a source. So I'm guessing the wiki chart is wrong and uses figures massaged by a peak oil advocate.

    Nice assumption, but you know what they say about assumptions. The DOE chart shows "petro" values declining from a peak of 11M barrels in 1983-ish, while the Wikimedia chart shows a decline from about 9M barrels in 1985-ish. This should indicate to you that the DOE chart includes petrochemicals that are not oil - like LNG and coal.

    Oh, and check the DOE's raw data for a chart that is specific to crude oil, that lines up pretty much exactly with Wikimedia chart.

  8. 3D Glasses Block "half the amount of light" on The Movie Studios' Big 3D Scam · · Score: 1

    In TFA, the author gripes that the glasses "take almost a full stop of light out of the image. That's almost half the amount of light!"

    In fact, the glasses are designed to block at least half the light, since they are polarized to show half the content to one eye, and half to the other.

    The author is similarly uninformed in other technical aspects, but I found this to be the most blatant.

  9. Re:Is DRM socially irresponsible? on Ubisoft's New DRM Cracked In One Day · · Score: 1

    I agree that holding a publisher responsible for any specific machine infection is far fetched.

    However, my proposal is that since DRM exists, there exists a demand for cracks served by semi-legal sites. This semi-legal source of installable code (which wouldn't exist without DRM) is a contributing factor to overall infections, rather than any specific one.

    What I'm saying is more "Because sexual urges exist, people are raped." However, while we can't really do that much about sexual urges, we can do away with the urge to bypass DRM - by eliminating DRM.

  10. Is DRM socially irresponsible? on Ubisoft's New DRM Cracked In One Day · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Given that:
    • No DRM is perfect, and is therefore guaranteed to be cracked.
    • Hosting cracks is semi-legal at best.
    • Semi-legal sites tend to be supported by crappy advertising (at best) or malware installation (at worst)

    I propose that, by shipping games with DRM, software vendors are promoting the dissemination of malware. This means that DRM is a direct contributor to spam, botnets, and all the other nasties that infest our Internet.

  11. Does anyone learn from history anymore? on Avoiding a Digital Dark Age · · Score: 1

    Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it - but these days, it seems that there's more and more effort put into actively avoiding learning from history.

    Or maybe I've just hit that age when The Kids ought to get off My Lawn.

  12. Re:Damn! Should have installed Win7 instead of Ubu on Windows 7 Can Create Rogue Wi-Fi Access Point · · Score: 1

    Is the WiFi Link 5300 Intel based? A recent blog entry from Connectify indicates that there may be issues with those drivers - at least for Windows. Mind you, if Intel has outstanding issue in the Windows drivers, it's possible that it's a problem in Linux version as well.

  13. Re:I need to check this out on Windows 7 Can Create Rogue Wi-Fi Access Point · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you want easy-mode, check out Connectify. Timothy (the poster for this article) linked a story about Connectify back in November.

  14. Re:Have you ever tried googling your own name? on Personalized Search From Google Now Opt-Out · · Score: 1

    If you have, make sure you delete your cookies before you search for "midget gay porn".

    My name? Not at all - I used yours!

  15. Re:No Ohare or any of the NY airports?? on Google Gives the Gift of Free Airport Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    MS already got O'Hare, so you'll need to do a search on Bing to get your free wifi there.

  16. Re:heh on Google Gives the Gift of Free Airport Wi-Fi · · Score: 4, Informative

    What would be really awesome is free wi-fi on aircraft. Although I'd trade that for power in a heartbeat.

    This is already being offered on some planes - AA, Delta, Virgin American, and Airtran all offer Gogo Inflight Internet. It's surprisingly similar in price to internet at airports, but I doubt that it offers anything particularly speedy.

  17. Copying MS? on Google Gives the Gift of Free Airport Wi-Fi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like Microsoft was doing this already to promote Bing, and that they've snagged O'Hare.

    I'm curious tho - if they're picking up the tab for Boingo and so forth, are they also picking up the user registration information?

  18. Re:Clients already do this on uTorrent To Build In Transfer-Throttling Ability · · Score: 1

    It has been a while since I read it, and when I read it I was very very tired, but my understanding is that it tags each packet with a high-precision send time. So if we have two packets, A and B, A will sent at 100ms and B will be sent at 300ms. So you know they were sent 200ms apart. The _receiver_ then notices that he receives them 400ms apart, so there is 200ms of lag which means it should be throttled back. It tries to keep the amount of lag 50ms. Again, I could be completely wrong :D

    This would show that the lag had increased (from n to n+200ms), but it would not be possible to solve directly for n. You'd need additional back and forth (in the vein of NTP) to establish a baseline value for n.

    Mind you, if you don't trust the network to be consistent, (or expect it to take longer in one direction than another) NTP doesn't work as well.

  19. BattleNET + WoW = Cross-Server Instances? on Battle.net Accounts Becoming Mandatory For WoW · · Score: 1

    There's word of cross-server instances. I expect the functionality to support these features is baked into the newer authentication system.

  20. What I don't get... on Massive Phishing Campaign Hits Multiple Email Services · · Score: 1

    Is why it's a "leak" if phishing was the method used to acquire the list. Or why it's still referred to as a "bug". Some sort of bug in the Human OS, right near the gullibility logic loop?

  21. Re:And What About... on Melting Memory Chips In Mass Production · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yep. PCM natively supports per-bit writing without the need to re-write the rest of the block.

  22. Durability and Other Limitations on Melting Memory Chips In Mass Production · · Score: 5, Informative

    PCM is interesting stuff. Here's some info:

    • It's expected re-write lifetime is magnitudes larger than that of Flash.
    • It'll be heat sensitive - weak crystal bonds will 'fail' if the module gets too hot. This also means interesting challenges around soldering.
    • While Flash memory units become less usable the smaller they are (due to bleeding of info from weird electromagnetic interactions at very small scale), PCMs become more usable, as they require less energy to go through the "melt and refreeze" steps.
    • It'll be in the manufacturers best interest to direct the heat directly at the PCMs themselves, since this is the most energy efficient solution. They're probably going to run cold.
  23. Re:A brand new mechanic? on Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time Offers New Gameplay Mechanic · · Score: 3, Informative

    Blinx had several different ways of interacting with time (FF, REW, and so on) that could be used on demand. It's Achron that's really looking cool in the time-front.

  24. Part 2 of The Internet After Dark on Drop in P2P Traffic Attributed To Traffic Shaping · · Score: 1
    The rest of the story is here. It includes:

    The answer: long after Exchange and Oracle business traffic slows to a crawl, Internet users turn to the web to surf, watch videos, send IM's and happily try to kill each other.

  25. Re:The mainstream never embraced TV Adblockers... on Will Mainstream Media Embrace Adblockers? · · Score: 1

    Especially the cable TV networks such as TNT, FX, and TBS. When they show movies, there is always a 15 minutes ad break every 15 minutes.

    Maybe in 1970! The actual implementation is much more intelligent than this - you'll get very few ads in the first half of the movie, then more and more ad interruptions as the movie progresses. Why? Because if you've committed 1.5 hours to watching a movie already, you're way more likely to stick around through an excess of ads than you are 5 minutes after it starts.

    Also - actually no. I shouldn't get sucked in.