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  1. Just a matter of time for tower data and Stingers on SCOTUS: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure · · Score: 1

    It looks the court is pretty consistent with rulings that would require a warrant before using your cell phone like a gps. I think there are still cases working their way up the courts for the tower data. For stingers, someone would have to get one into court in the first place.

    Unfortunately, cops still recreate a chain of evidence to conceal their 4th amendment violations ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 ) and we'll need to make that itself into a crime to put a stop to it.

  2. Self-install Alarm on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    Look on-line for places that sell the same kind of fire/burgler alarms that are usually installed by alarm companies to homeowners. Personally, I bought an "ELK M1" along with a receiver that picks up signals from the Honeywell/Ademco alarm sensors and panic buttons. The programming model for these is a bit arcane, but they are rugged and reliable.

    You can set up a smoke detector to automatically call a monitoring center (less than $10/month) and have them send the fire department and you can similarly use all of the standard burgler or adult-panic-button features to call police and medical help. This is all very configurable.

    For your child, you can program the child's "look at me" button as a "Non Alarm Zone" so that it doesn't trigger the alarm immediately but causes the system to call you (or text you or email you) or take whatever additional action you want. (In my case, I also added a Universal Devices controller that does even more automation stuff).

    You also may consider having the child's button trigger an actual panic alarm after buzzing for a while in the house. So, if the child hits the button and neither you nor your wife cancel it, professional help would be called.

    Many of these systems are very configurable and a good monitoring center can have special instructions for different alarms (call house, then call you, then call help). They are a pain to program (designed for non-programmers) but surprisingly flexible.

  3. Distinct IP address per site required for SSL on Google Proposes To Warn People About Non-SSL Web Sites · · Score: 2

    Most non-SSL sites use a single IP address for multiple sites and the actual hostname portion of the URL is not known until the GET request.

    Assuming that we want IPv4 to continue to work, a mechanism to permit an SSL certificate to secure a group of sites would be needed before more widespread use of SSL for non-commerce/non-login sites would be practical.

    Essentially, if a server hosts 30 domains, the server's certificate would need to have a certificate of its own and that certificate would have to be signed by EACH of the 30 domains. That is tricky and would require revision of HTTPS. You would probably have to have the server initially use its OWN unsigned/self-signed certificate to establish an SSL connection, have the browser specify the hostname, then have the server return a signature record that uses that hostname's certificate to sign the fingerprint of the server's SSL certificate. Once the browser confirms that the appropriate CA signed for the hostname and the hostname signed for the server, then it could continue the request (and cache the server's fingerprint).

    Google should get cracking on this new HTTPS handshake first.

  4. Lack of feeder routes + get people out of cars on The Smog To Fog Challenge: Settling the High-Speed Rail vs. Hyperloop Debate · · Score: 1


    California has no feeder routes. Even in areas where a train seems to be available, by the time a passenger manages the connections at both ends and adds in the wait time for even the most on-schedule service, train is MUCH slower than driving. If someone is to spend an hour (or two) getting from their origin to downtown LA and another hour (or two) getting from downtown SF to their destination and pay for parking and car rental, the train has to beat a car by at least 4 hours to get used much.

  5. Conclusion: ALL online math classes are terrible on The Problems With Online Math Classes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Based on my research, 100% of online math classes are terrible.

    Sample size, of course, is 1 statistics class where I apparently didn't learn much.

  6. Basic applied math questions work well on Are Brain Teasers Good Hiring Criteria? · · Score: 1


    I hire embedded programmers. If they graduate from a university and can't apply basic algebra principles, that is a pretty good indicator that they cut and paste and memorize. I don't ask them puzzles, but I do ask them to take a real-world phenomenon and turn it into an equation. If, knowing its (constant) speed, starting time, and starting position, you can't express the position of a train as a function of time, you can't program either.

    Some people call those "puzzles"

  7. They don't have those problems AT THE MOMENT on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    they will

    Young people (most of Google's employees) think they are indestructible.

    I daresay that I am in better financial shape than 80% of Mr Schmidt's employees including those my age and I fully expect to keep innovating and being paid well for it until I am in my 60s and due to retire.

    I cannot be certain that I will be OK financially at that point.

    * Medicare may be a shadow if what it was
    * The social security I paid into on the majority of my income for the last several decades (while the "investor class" paid on little of their income) may be gone
    * The major corporations that committed to a pension may have shoveled the liability onto a disposable successor
    * Medical insurance may become unattainable
    * I could get disabled by the negligent act of a corporation with little or no compensation (Tort "reform") and get wiped out financially

    It is time to realize that us 99%-ers are really in this together even if most of us are too busy working to join the protests.

  8. Mosso - Rackspace's VPS on Ask Slashdot: Best Inexpensive VPS Provider? · · Score: 1

    You set up an account, then use their control panel to choose a base distribution and create VPS instances. You configure the machine and pay for only what you configure. You can create a machine, log in as root and manage it. If you try a machine and blow it away a few days later, you just pay for the days it was running.

    I've used them for several years and they are very reliable.

  9. Yes, but only a few messages per month on Do Slashdotters Encrypt Their Email? · · Score: 1


    It's a pain in the neck, so I only encrypt a tiny fraction of technically sensitive emails and only to a short list of correspondents working on the same project.

  10. It was originally a default judgment on Court Renders $3 Judgment Against Spamhaus · · Score: 1

    In the original trial, Spamhaus skipped defending themselves in court and the original court entered a default judgement. Non-appellate courts, even with non-default judgments, don't make precedent.

    This appeals process was not based on the existence of the award but on the amount of it.

  11. For a surprising reason, I almost hope he loses on Teacher Cannot Be Sued For Denying Creationism · · Score: 1

    For every AP High School teacher at risk of being accused of being hostile to religion, there are hundreds of elementary school teachers actively pushing their own religion on all of their students regardless of that student's own religion or that of their family, holding it up as the one true religion, and inviting the class to ridicule and torment any student whose religious beliefs diverge from the teachers' own majority religion.

    Perhaps in ruling against Corbett, the courts would "put the fear of god" in these can't-tell-the-difference-between-public-school-and-sunday-school teachers. If so, I could live with making the AP High School teachers guard their words a bit more carefully while they try to make their slacker students think.

  12. Hiring Manager Here... on Obama: 'We Don't Have Enough Engineers' · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've recently had openings for well-paid EE/CS interns at a top-tier company. These are INTERN positions that pay in the "$37000-$47000" range and frequently lead to permanent positions that start at twice that and rise rapidly from there. I rarely see a single candidate who is, as you classify, a "native born anglo-saxon american". When I do, I rarely see one who can follow basic logic and apply algebra to a simple problem. The interview is usually essentially over in the first 20 minutes.

    Of the last 2 interns I hired, one happens to be a product of the US education system and the other falls in the "Indian/Asian" category. I can give one a permanent position. The pay is the same regardless of which one I choose. If I choose the non-citizen, I am in for a whole pile of extra paperwork to get his labor certification done.

    There is no comparison on the performance level. (The hours are identical -- interns work exactly 40 hours per week) Even though I will wind up with a whole pile of paperwork, I am hiring the non-citizen. I'd rather have to do the paperwork than have to teach the kid who grew up here all of the things that his parents and teachers should have taught him over the years.

    Face it. I need to hire people who know how to do stuff. In the last 20 years or so, we started to produce kids that don't know how to do anything. Personally, I think it was around the time that parents started to buy kids nice cars rather than helping them get a heap of junk out of the classifieds and lending them a set of tools.

    There is a part of me that would rather hire my fellow Americans. Too bad I can very rarely find qualified ones. That pains me.

  13. Actually, It is that complicated on Timezone Maintainer Retiring · · Score: 1

    It tracks all of the changes. If a train left Paris at 12:06pm on Jan 12, 1936 and averaged 60mph all the way to Moscow, you can't tell when it arrives in Moscow just by knowing the timezones now and the length of the track. You need to know what the timezones were at the time. And, you need to know exactly when they changed -- especially if they changed during the journey.

  14. RTFR (RTF Ruling) on Police Can Search Cell Phones Without Warrants · · Score: 1


    The court (outside the dissenting opinion) clearly made no distinction based on the amount of information stored on a smartphone and did not address the use of the phone to break in to systems outside of the phone itself. I hope, possibly in vain, that the latter would require a warrant. Read the ruling at http://sfgate.com/ZKUI

  15. Unwise to prepend "updates" to original report on Court Rules Website Doesn't Have To Remove Defamatory Comments · · Score: 1


    After reading the court's decision, which emphasized the absence of any activity by ROR after the injunction, they were probably unwise to edit the original posting by pre-pending updates about the progress of the case. Now, the plaintiff could argue, they took actual action (editing and re-posting) after the injunction.

    They would have been wiser to move the original (intact) to another URL and redirect the original to the new statement with links to the original at its new URL, possibly even adding some JS to the new statement to help go get the original article.

  16. Probably infringes some 1987 mspaint patent on MacPaint Source Code Released to Museum · · Score: 4, Funny


    The problem with this is that Apple was so innovative that they can infringe patents for ideas that other large companies came up with years later.

  17. Easy to do and fair on Internet Sales Tax Gets a New Champion · · Score: 1


    One of the reasons that out of state merchants haven't always had to collect sales tax is to prevent a small shop from having to find the rates and file a return in every distant state where they do a single transaction.

    The problem, now, is that your local businesses (if you have any left) have to pay taxes in your state even if they only sell a few hundred dollars of merchandise a year while online merchants don't have to pay taxes even if they ship millions of dollars of product into that state.

    This is easily solved so long as the following conditions are met....

    * Every state has a single tax rate for out-of-state merchants no higher than the lowest rate inside the state (no county-by-county rates)
    * Simple categories. If a state makes groceries exempt but taxes ready to eat food, then all out-of-state food is exempt
    * Either a national clearinghouse (upload month, total, and first 3 digits of zipcode) or a consistent mechanism (visit salestax.XX.gov)
    * In not using a national clearinghouse, either exempt anyone shipping less than a certain amoung ($5000/year?) to a state or have carriers (usps, ups, etc..) handle the tax process as part of the shipping process for little guys who ship one or two small things to some state and shouldn't be bothered with filing even online.
    * Require carriers on imports to assure that the tax is paid. (They already do this with import duties)

  18. Change channel / Try Kismet on Tracking Down Wi-Fi Interference? · · Score: 4, Insightful


    First thing to try is setting your AP to a different channel.

    If that doesn't set you right, get a USB Wifi device that is supported under Linux and fire up Kismet and identify any strong signals nearby.

  19. Why companies patent.... on Tridgell Recommends Reading Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Back in the days of dial-up modems, Hayes tried to force Motorola to license the (pause)+++(pause) escape sequence [Heatherington].

    The response was swift... Motorola looked in their own collection of patents to see what Hayes probably infringed....

    To paraphrase, the response started with "You use wire, don't you?"

  20. Just need to have serious fines for employers on US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ID cards are not the problem. The problem is consequences.

    Today, it is cheaper to staff with undocumented workers and hope they don't get caught. If ALL employers had to verify the ID of all of their employees and contractors or face serious fines and all contractors (including household help) were required to show a verifiable ID and anyone who fails to check or falsifies faced serious penalties, this problem would be hugely reduced overnight.

    The real problem is that the big businesses (agriculture, meat packing, hospitality, commercial real-estate, etc..) want the cheap labor and won't let the problem be solved.

  21. Nobody ever thought to tell them they couldn't on Pixel Qi Introduces a DIY Kit · · Score: 1

    Nobody ever thought to tell them they couldn't succeed at that.... so they just did it!

    Bravo!

  22. Idiots... the rest of the county is conserving on Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, it's nice to know that the city of Orange won't let residents save water while the rest of the towns on the same water system are offering bumper stickers that say "I killed my lawn.. ask me how"

  23. You owe taxes if you are a "non-contractor" on Our Low-Tech Tax Code · · Score: 3, Informative


    The issue with this would impact someone who forms his own contracting firm and starts to deduct business expenses like getting from home to the job site, home office costs, etc... If he is later declared to be an employee, all those deductions get disallowed and he owes the back taxes. I suspect that, if he incorporated and paid himself mostly by distributions, he also paid his taxes at capital gains rates instead of the wage rates. That's a privilege restricted to lawyers, doctors, financial consultants, investment fund managers, and corporate officers.

    Now, originally, the law's effect would have been balanced by the way that it kept companies like Microsoft and IBM from just making everyone a contractor to remove benefits, but the corporation quickly figured out that they could use temp agencies as a middle-man. It wasn't until a major lawsuit in the late 1990s that companies became sensitive to the idea that if it walks like a duck (employee) and quacks like a duck (employee), then it is a duck (employee) that can sue you for benefits. After that suit, many companies started brining contractors back on the payroll to avoid later class action claims.

  24. Never Prosecuted? There was no crime. on Was This the First Denial of Service Attack? · · Score: 1

    The author and I were contemporaries and he forgot one very important reason he was never prosecuted. In 1974, there was no crime even if this had been done by an adult maliciously and for money. The pendulum, of course, has swung far in the other direction and users now face serious criminal charges for TOS violations.

    By the way, many of us who have good heads for computer security learned during years before it became a felony to practice.

  25. Short-term CEO Bonus System on China Is Winning Global Race To Make Clean Energy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The problem with investing in green tech isn't the EPA. (Many of the worst chemicals in Solar Panel manufacturing are so toxic that they kill you instantly if you mishandle them... and they don't stick around).

    The problem is that these investments take years to payoff and US corporations provide incentives for very short term results at the expense of serious long term investments.