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User: swb

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  1. How much did move to cable/DSL cost Cisco? on Cisco To Slash Up To 6,000 Jobs -- 8% of Its Workforce -- In "Reorganization" · · Score: 2

    Back ~15 years ago if you wanted Internet access in a business you pretty much had to get a T1 and almost always this connection was terminated with a Cisco router.

    Nowadays nearly a lot of business Internet is delivered via DSL or Cable via Ethernet hand-off from some cheap device provided by the ISP. Even at places still using T1s its often a vendor-supplied Adtran.

    Did this change cost Cisco much business, or did they just make it up and then some on larger routers at providers, large customers and places willing to pay a premium for Cisco LAN equipment?

  2. I think there are some seriously cheap geeks out there with good T-mobile signal who have decided that unlimited data via cellular is both a better value and maybe even better throughput than whatever's available via a wall jack where they live.

    So they tether, maybe even bridging it to their home LANs as their only internet access.

    Sounds like a pain in the ass and unreliable as hell, but maybe they've got dedicated hardware which eliminates some of the unreliable part (external antenna, device dedicated to tethering to a dedicated wifi bridge, etc).

  3. As the man says... on Android Motorcycle Helmet/HUD Gains Funding · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...if you've got a cheap head, buy a cheap helmet.

  4. Is IPv6 "perfect" or will there be an IPv8? on The IPv4 Internet Hiccups · · Score: 2

    Given the time between IPv6 design and the eventual global adoption of it and abandonment of IPv4, will the broader adoption of IPv6 reveal problems addressed in a future revision?

    I'll admit to being willfully ignorant of IPv6 other than seeing it as enormously more complicated than IPv4, trying to solve too many problems at once. I sometimes wonder if maybe IPv6 didn't appear so complicated and different that adoption might have been increased.

    Couldn't they just have added a couple of extra bytes to IPv4 to come up with something that worked like IPv4? I also wonder about an addressing scheme like IPX, where a single network address covers an entire broadcast domain and node addresses are MAC addresses plus the network address. IPX network addresses were only 8 bytes, maybe that wouldn't be future proof enough (4.2 billion networks). I'm not talking about IPX as a protocol, just the system for addressing.

    The advantage is relative simplicity (no need for DHCP, network addresses are discovered and the rest is built-in), broadcast domains can scale arbitrarily large without needing to renumber -- sure you can start out every network with a /16, but often they don't and there are complications in organizations just arbitrarily shifting masks past /24, such as running into other networks in the local routing domain.

    Since node addresses are locally determined, ISPs would need to only assign a network address which would allow for basically unlimited public network addresses to each subscriber.

  5. Re:Defeated by Food Saver on Sniffing Out Billions In US Currency Smuggled Across the Border To Mexico · · Score: 1

    Are vacuum packages that tight?

    I would have always thought yes -- I have a Food Saver and it works miracles for food storage, especially meat in the freezer. But I could swear I've read that drug dogs smell right through them, even double-bagged, which seems to be kind of weird. I would assume that holding a decent vacuum would prevent anything from escaping.

  6. Why isn't call recording a smartphone feature? on Comcast Drops Spurious Fees When Customer Reveals Recording · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is it just because of "wiretap" laws? It seems like it would be a pretty trivial feature to add to smartphones. It's also easy to see how it could be very easily enhanced beyond simple audio files -- automated or selective recording of only some calls ("Answer and record", "record all calls" flag in contacts, speech-to-text, and so on).

    Recording calls USED to be very easy -- $5 telephone pickup from Radio Shaft and a cassette recorder.

  7. Re:Ideally it wouldn't matter on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 1

    I've heard the story about cast members of the same "species" grouping together. At first I'm tempted to merely believe it's apocryphal or at best a random observation repeated until it became a truth. Usually it's used to illustrate some truism or other about race.

    But now I think there's a logical explanation. The members of any film who have significant speaking roles is at best maybe 10 actors, often much smaller. The remaining cast members are extras, used to fill out scenes where more bodies are needed to tell a story.

    PotA is basically a costume drama and even the extras spend a lot of time in costume and make up as well as being grouped together for filming. It would stand to reason that the actors who are a specific species would spend a lot of time together, especially on-set. Standing around waiting to shoot their scenes, in costume/makeup, possibly even being given direction by the director or AD as a group since they were expected to act in a group or a special way as a member of their species.

    So it would stand to reason that the people who spent the most time together would get to know each other well and would also choose to spend time together. I'm sure the gaffers congregated together, the camera people and so on, like you'd find at any job site where the IT people sit together in the cafeteria or the marketing people, etc.

  8. Cats should be left indoors on Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving · · Score: 0

    And not allowed to roam and kill songbirds.

  9. Re:Nacrotics on The Doctor Will Skype You Now · · Score: 1

    My working assumption is that, at least in the US, you're limited to the telemedicine providers your insurance company provides, so you'd be calling the same one who would have access to your medical history.

  10. Bullshit medicine and antibiotics on The Doctor Will Skype You Now · · Score: 2

    Usually telemedicine is bogus, for hypochondriacs, helicopter parents and women with bladder infections.

    Prescriptions are limited to antibiotics for those with compelling easy diagnosis like the aforementioned women with bladder infection histories.

    The ones I've seen advertised on HR bulletin boards at companies I've visited always say they won't prescribe any narcotics or other "controlled substances" (gee, aren't all prescription drugs controlled substances if you need a prescription?).

    While this makes sense it also doesn't, since there are plenty of conditions that are extremely painful but neither life threatening nor worth a trip to an emergency room on a weekend. A 2-3 day supply of Percocet to ameliorate the pain of a back injury until you can see your regular clinician won't create or enable anyone's addiction.

    Until telemedicine gets over its paranoia about drugs its just not worth the effort.

  11. Re:As someone who lives in a hotel every week.. on Expensive Hotels Really Do Have Faster Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Well, there's obviously a calculus to this. If you don't have sufficient cell data, signal or high speed data then wifi would make a better choice.

    If I'm traveling for work I will at least try the hotel system even if it costs money. If it works reasonably well (speed, signal quality, reliability) and doesn't require constant reconnection I will end up using it. If it ends up being slow or unreliable I will switch to tethering.

    For personal travel, I might fool around with it if it's free but I often just default to tethering. I for sure won't pay extra for it on personal travel and free wifi in tourist type areas usually sucks anyway because you end up with a ton of kids and teenagers trying to stream media making it only marginally useful.

  12. Re:As someone who lives in a hotel every week.. on Expensive Hotels Really Do Have Faster Wi-Fi · · Score: 2

    I kind of thought this is what everyone did anymore -- tether to LTE phone and just skip whatever stupidity the hotel supplies. It's more than adequate for email, web browsing, and remote access. Any multi-gig downloads needed would happen on a remote server anyway.

    If I'm on business, I'll usually try the hotel connectivity to see how it is. Unfortunately the annoyance is often more than just weak wifi, it's periodically losing connectivity and having to "sign on" again through some kind of portal page, passwords that don't work, etc.

    I've never even bothered with Netflix streaming in a hotel. I just assume it would never work, either due to deliberate filtering or because it's just overloaded.

  13. Re:Go figure. on LinkedIn Busted In Wage Theft Investigation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While this makes sense in simple, easy to type in Excel, dollars and cents numbers, how is it good for productivity?

    Nearly every place I've ever worked where the company appears more interested in exploitation the quality of work suffers. The really talented people leave. The decent people do a lot less and the crappy people even manage to be even crappier.

    The quality of the work product sucks.

  14. Re:NFL team near you seeks "techie" on NFL Players To Use Tablet Computers During Games · · Score: 1

    I think the major sports leagues are already more sophisticated than you think.

    I read someplace that major league baseball has some kind of video database where you can call up any player and see them hit, field, etc. They're so obsessive about coding the video that they enter fan signs the cameras focus on.

  15. Without Joe, I would have failed Linux on Comparison: Linux Text Editors · · Score: 2

    Or taken a lot longer to sort it out and then move on to FreeBSD.

    Joe seems very intuitive to me and has just enough power as a text editor to give you free range of config files and basic scripting or even a couple hundred lines of Perl. I've always found vi impossible; the command/editing modes never made sense yet Joe seemed to work "like normal."

    I made an honest effort to master emacs, but it always seemed like effort and I always went back to Joe when I needed to get something done.

    I actually went trolling recently for a win32 text mode version of joe (which I swear I used to have) but couldn't find one.

  16. Hands and feet? on Fooling a Mercedes Into Autonomous Driving With a Soda Can · · Score: 1

    What exactly is this automating? The whole point of cruise control is to not require your feet on the pedals.

    My Volvo has distance sensing cruise control. It won't hold the lane for me but it doesn't turn off cruise when I take my hands off the wheel, either.

  17. Haven't I read this book/seen this movie already? on US Army To Transport American Ebola Victim To Atlanta Hospital From Liberia · · Score: 1

    It sure sounds familiar. I think it often starts with the military/epidemiologists doing something that SHOULD work, but somehow goes wrong...

  18. Re:Cuts both ways on Judge: US Search Warrants Apply To Overseas Computers · · Score: 1

    Is Microsoft Ireland an independent company with its own ownership, or is it a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft?

  19. How many have been bulk-mailed for Fortune 500s? on "BadUSB" Exploit Makes Devices Turn "Evil" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you had the money/resources, you could create these things by the thousand and bulk-mail these to major companies. It would stand to reason that somebody would end up plugging them into their office computer, enabling a back door.

    You could go even further and create hacked 5 port switches or access points and ship them off to big company branch offices, where users may be more likely to ignore standards or be short on resources and use those kinds of things anyway. You could put a return label on it for the office supply company or even the HQ office so that users thought it was something they had gotten by accident.

    I'd bet in a lot of cases people would just say "sweet" and go ahead and use them in the office, giving you a back door. A switch or access point would have enough space inside that custom hardware could be inserted giving a lot better back door, like having your own computer on their network.

  20. Re:its only property when its the RIAA. on Countries Don't Own Their Internet Domains, ICANN Says · · Score: 2

    I think the GP has a point. Why is one part of the domain name considered property but the other part isn't? It doesn't seem to be internally consistent. It feels like tortured reasoning when every other aspect of DNS is treated like property.

    If TLDs aren't property, how can any entity control and regulate them? Doesn't that require the kinds of power that imply ownership?

    Doesn't ICANN make money of registrars who effectively sell TLDs?

  21. Re:Not Property??? on Countries Don't Own Their Internet Domains, ICANN Says · · Score: 1

    How will that work when the trees I own produce their own air?

  22. Corporate States of America on Countries Don't Own Their Internet Domains, ICANN Says · · Score: 1

    They were planning a name change anyway, this just lets them put some spin on the decision.

  23. Re:Search and categorization are hopelessly broken on Is the App Store Broken? · · Score: 1

    Categories is plural. I'd like multiple categories, possibly including some kind of tagging so you could find things that overlapped.

    It's not just one-level of category hierarchies.

  24. Search and categorization are hopelessly broken on Is the App Store Broken? · · Score: 1

    I can't tell you the number of times I've searched for games and occasionally other categories and gotten fed up and not bought anything. The categories are mostly unhelpful, the search is completely useless, there's no good filtering, it's awful.

    That being said, I still have dozens of apps, some with obscure features that I don't know how I found them, so it's not impossible to find apps, it's just hard to fine tune a search.

    One filter I would like to see is "Has In-App Purchases" being something I can filter out. Especially with games. I'll pay $10 for a good game, happily, if it is feature-complete without buying add-ons.

  25. Culture is unreliable on An Accidental Wikipedia Hoax · · Score: 1

    Our entire culture of information exchange is unreliable.

    People believe things simply because they're told them. They discount ideas, facts and people simply because it runs contrary to their beliefs, incorrect facts held as true or it simply because runs contrary to what they want to believe.