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User: Agripa

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  1. Rugged Cell Phone Infrastructure on The IT Containers That Went To War · · Score: 1

    Many years ago I heard a lecture from a Motorola representative where he discussed the types of communications equipment they deployed when various hazards were present. Some areas like Los Angeles required bullet resistant trailers and enclosures for cellular communications equipment.

  2. Re:Easy to implement on Crypto Experts Blast Gov't Backdoors For Encryption · · Score: 1

    Adding a backdoor that is secure is very easy to implement. The government just needs to publish a public key. You then encrypt your private key using that public key and include it with whatever you encrypted. This would be much like the lock box on a house that holds the front-door key that only real estate agents showing the house are supposed to be able to access. And there's no reason it would be limited to just one. Opening a connection to a server in Turkey? Better include lock boxes for both your own government and the Turkish authorities.

    The only big hole is the security of the government's private key (or more likely, keys).

    Clipper worked like that but it encrypted the session key for key recovery. If the private key is encrypted, then key recovery allows forging authentication so all signatures using that private key become suspect. If the session key is encrypted for key recovery, then perfect forward secrecy is no longer possible.

  3. Re: Falling on deaf ears on Crypto Experts Blast Gov't Backdoors For Encryption · · Score: 1

    And then they make it unlawful to use non-sanctioned encryption.

  4. Re:Growing Herbs in the Netherlands? on Philips Is Revolutionizing Urban Farming With New GrowWise Indoor Farm · · Score: 1

    Hmm, what kind of herbs ?

    Does it matter? You may still be arrested for possession of marijuana if caught with a baggy of them. Hydroponic equipment is only good enough to justify a SWAT raid.

  5. Re:Hidden Blackholes on More Supermassive Black Holes Than We Thought! · · Score: 1

    I assume "area where time moves slower" cannot be the equivalent of an "area with high dielectric constant" but index graded lenses work fine for bending light.

  6. Re:Where does the 1st amendment fit in here? on Chilling Effect of the Wassenaar Arrangement On Exploit Research · · Score: 1

    Treaties are implemented by statute so no, they do not trump the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

  7. "The essence of superiority is delegation; I have therefore delegated these tasks to Systemd." - Emacs.

  8. Re:What do they *do*? on Silicon Valley Is Filling Up With Ex-Obama Staffers · · Score: 1

    That sounds cool and all, but what do they actually do there? What does an Engineering business need with a political functionary?

    Lobbying usually has a much greater return on investment than research or manufacturing.

  9. Re:PID FTW on When Nerds Do BBQ · · Score: 1

    why aren't all the things PID

    Probably because PID is only the simplest form of control. It's not actually that good if the thing you are controlling has nonlinear behavior.

    PID loops are not the simplest; they require frequency compensation. Hysteretic loops including constant on or off time loops do not and are simpler. A bang-bang type thermostat with a deadband implements a hysteretic loop. Hysteretic loops also have the advantage of not suffering from windup like the integral part of a PID loop although anti-windup can always be added to a PID loop.

    For a BBQ I would use a PID controller though and I agree with poster's sentiment; I would prefer a PID controller for ovens and ranges and such.

  10. Re:The inherent problem with electronic voting on Researcher Who Reported E-voting Vulnerability Targeted By Police Raid in Argentina · · Score: 1

    Having watched how vote counting and election monitoring works in SoCal while doing security, I have to say that your trust is misplaced. There are "official" ways to alter the count including not even counting anything except Republican and Democratic Party votes while ignoring the rest or having an election working "accidentally" take boxes of votes home which will be counted later.

  11. Re:Oh boy! on Firefox 39 Released, Bringing Security Improvements and Social Sharing · · Score: 1

    These are currently running systems that I occasionally use and it is handy to have a browser. They are very useful for legacy applications.

    Why would Opera need SSE2 for browsing?

  12. Re:because people dont change on Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Past Reports Of Man's Molestation Arrest · · Score: 1

    And what reason would there even be to change if the stain of the arrest or conviction means that change is irrelevant? Sentence them to death and get it over with.

  13. Re:Antennas on Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Most Unusual Hardware Hack? · · Score: 1

    I built a 2 meter gamma match using a piston trimmer capacitor and brass tubing to slide over 1/8" brass rod like a trombone. I used it to load up things like fences and high voltage transmission towers on transmitter hunts.

  14. Re:Not really unusual, but... on Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Most Unusual Hardware Hack? · · Score: 1

    High pressure air from a compressor works great for cleaning out power supplies and systems but beware of spinning the fans too fast with the air stream . . . the blade assemblies will explode if they spin too fast.

  15. Re:Oh boy! on Firefox 39 Released, Bringing Security Improvements and Social Sharing · · Score: 1

    I liked using Opera on old lower performance systems but Opera dropped support for processors lacking SSE2 which rules out any Intel processors before the Pentium 4.

  16. Re:New Chicago on Can New Chicago Taxes On Netflix, Apple, Spotify Withstand Legal Challenges? · · Score: 1

    The rebels renamed it Dame Liberty.

  17. Re: It won't work that way on North America Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 1

    private addressing is a good way to help enforce access around internal networks that don't need outside to inside access.

    Just like a stateful firewall with a default reject or drop rule.

    Interestingly enough, AT&T's current U-Verse modems enforce a drop all incoming rule on IPv6 which is not even user configurable.

  18. Re:Again proof who they work for on San Francisco Fiber Optic Cable Cutter Strikes Again · · Score: 1

    Or alternatively, "Why don't you share your customer records and data with us. You have statutory immunity. It would be a shame if all of these fiber cuts which are affecting your operations and costing you money were not fully investigated."

  19. Re: How did Rockefeller protect his pipe lines? on San Francisco Fiber Optic Cable Cutter Strikes Again · · Score: 1

    I never understood why the FCC didn't require cellular providers to provide the same level of backup power to cell sites as we had with the traditional POTS system. ... Perhaps they should require it for the fixed wireless installs that the telcos want to use to replace POTS.

    The FCC does not even require backup power for landline telephone service provided over cable or DSL infrastructure which replaces POTS.

  20. Re:False Flag on San Francisco Fiber Optic Cable Cutter Strikes Again · · Score: 1

    False flag operations? That is in the realm of tin foil hats and crackpots. Frankly the rest of it is just common knowledge to anyone with a brain.

    Documents eventually released by the DOJ show that they BATFE was doing this in their operation Fast and Furious; one of their justifications for selling guns to Mexican criminals was to justify further gun control laws and expanded power for law enforcement. The FBI does the same thing by encouraging people who otherwise would not to commit "terrorist crimes"; in this case the FBI or their informants are doing most or all of the work.

  21. Re:Ask other retro communities on UK's National Computer Museum Looks For Help Repairing BBC Micros · · Score: 1

    The BBC Micro switching power supply design includes cycle-by-cycle current limiting in the primary side of about 2 amps and an SCR crowbar on the +5 volt output so they are going to fail cleaner than most power supplies. From browsing various discussions it looks like most failures are the paper X and Y capacitors and the aluminum electrolytic capacitors. I am surprised they cannot find someone familiar enough with switching power supply design to refurbish and improve them.

  22. Re:Volunteers, please remember: on UK's National Computer Museum Looks For Help Repairing BBC Micros · · Score: 1

    You can look up the details but the early BBC MIcro power supplies were linear and the later ones were off-line switching power supplies.

  23. Re:Nope! on Analysis: Iran's Nuclear Program Has Been an Astronomical Waste · · Score: 1

    If I had a choice of countries to enforce my will upon and wanted to play the divide and conquer game, the authoritative ones will be easier to control than the democratic ones. The later are more unpredictable.

  24. Re:So, what was the nature of this agreement? on How Verizon Is Hindering NYC's Internet Service · · Score: 1

    So, what was the nature of this agreement?

    The nature of the agreement is that Verizon can alter it. Pray they do not alter it further.

  25. Re:Fucking Lawyers on SCOTUS Denies Google's Request To Appeal Oracle API Case · · Score: 1

    I only brought up the status of "sweat of the brow" in the US because you said:

    I disagree with the Lexra employee since a lot of *effort* and creativity goes into designing an instruction set.

    The effort Lexra (or anybody else) went to in creating a work is irrelevant. Creativity and originality matter but not effort. This comes up all the time with digitized works. The effort in digitizing video or photos or text is not enough to allow copyrighting what is produced. Services like Lexus instead copyright the formatting or table of contents that they produce which are not in the original works.

    The NEC case involved copyright of the microcode which NEC independently recreated through a clean room process. Microcode like program code is copyrightable but if Intel had been able to copyright the instruction set, they would have included that in the lawsuit.