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User: cant_get_a_good_nick

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  1. Re:To the cloud! on Flaw In Netgear Wi-Fi Routers Exposes Admin Password, WLAN Details · · Score: 1

    The Internet of rushed to market, horribly secured, never updated, easily pwn3d things.

  2. Re:Why would any novice on Flaw In Netgear Wi-Fi Routers Exposes Admin Password, WLAN Details · · Score: 2

    The second you say "firmware" or even worse "tftp" you've lost +99.9% of people out there.

  3. Re:"Not intentional". Right. on Samsung Smart TVs Injected Ads Into Streamed Video · · Score: 1

    Im not sure why I need a smart TV. Besides the "smart TV, dumb viewer" joke, Im really not into the "every thing needs a CPU" thing.

    Im a geek, not a Luddite (though Luddism wasn't about tech per se, but tech taking over jobs), and Ive been on the Internet since FTP space days (simtel anyone? sumex-aim?) But having every physical object having an infinite state machine programmed by someone thinking "security can come later" rushing half finished code to the market doesn't seem like nirvana to me.

  4. Re:Optics! on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Canon M series, once they sort it out, with a pancake lens... drool.

    I used to (in film days, wow, that wasn't that long ago but it sounds like decades ago) walked around with a Rebel S and a 50mm lens. The whole kit cost 200 and I'd be willing to have it broken or stolen with no sense of loss. Not that bulky.

  5. Re:Optics! on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    There are quite a few things a good SLR would do than a (stock) smartphone. I think there is like some Venn Diagram of things that an SLR would be good at, and things that a phone would be good at, and though there's some overlap in the middle, there are a lot of things that both do better than the other.

    1) Smartphone lenses are fixed focal length and usually pretty wide angle. My 5s has the 35mm equiv of 25MM focal length, pretty wide. It sucks for portraits, which should be 70-120mm (35mm equiv). Sucks for distance shots as well. I was on vacation and saw a pretty moon shot, I wanted it in the background. So with a 25mm (equiv) lens, we had huge heads, and there was a pale dot off in the distance.

    2) Most phones are also fixed aperture, I've only seen f/2.2 on my shots. Pretty wide open. Hyperfocal anyone?

    3) Exposure controls are on screen. You have to dick around with them as you're composing, tapping the screen and making your phone shake.

    There are a bunch others, those are just the first off the top of my head.

    Now, this may not make your statement false. You may not care about any of those, so your phone is equivalent functionality to you. But there still is a loss.

  6. Are they good enough already? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Whenever any one asked me about cameras, I always thought that whatever you have is best. One of my favorite photogs is Brassai. He ran around Paris, with I think the equivalent of 100 or 200 ISO film, and came out with some of the best b/w pics. I have an old IXUS i picked up on vacation (read: Elph series here in the US) and it's probably technically better than anything Brassai had. But I can't take anything like he took.

  7. Re:Tsk. And they wonder where employee loyalty wen on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 2

    If corporations want to be people, then corporations are sociopaths.

    Corporations take from the environment - did IBM pay for the roads that lead to their businesses? How much of their gear is connected to the Internet, which is a US government/government sponsored university invention. But we're always told "corporations need to take take take only never give".

    That is one kind of capitalism, not the only kind. The Japanese practice stakeholder capitalism, which means you think about everyone involved. You might say "hey look at their economy", but they shot themselves in the foot with bad fiscal policy and they have horrible demographics. Stakeholder capitalism is not doing them in.

  8. Sounds like ethernet on MIT Randomizes Tasks To Speed Massive Multicore Processors · · Score: 1

    if you bump into another packet you back off a random wait time. The other sender will back off, also a random wait time. Less likely to bump again.

  9. Re:Radical Left allowed to run a country... on Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister · · Score: 2

    Though unlikely to change your opinion, Krugman has an interesting piece on how they're not so radical after all, but pretty much following textbook macro. Don't like Krugman? Well, he predicted the economic quagmire that we're in now. Bill Gross was so off he got kicked out of his own firm.

    If you're reactionary, everything pretty much looks like radicalism,

  10. Effort in policing is a a feature, not a bug on Omand Warns of "Ethically Worse" Spying If Unbreakable Encryption Is Allowed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Constitution put in barriers to policing. It's a filter, making it cost a bit if you want to go after someone. This doesn't totally eliminate the threat of tyranny, but it slows it down quite a bit.

    So, this clown is saying "hey, if you don't let us do this low effort illegal spying, we're gonna do high effort illegal spying". Even if he's right, this is still good news to me. You need to put shoes on the ground to go after folks. I can't do a blanket surveillance on everyone, no more LOVEINT illegal spying just because you can. I think this is better than even stronger laws. I can ignore the laws of man, but harder to ignore the laws of economics.

  11. There goes all protests... on Paris Terror Spurs Plan For Military Zones Around Nuclear Plants · · Score: 1

    Lets say you've a memory more than a week and you remember Fukushima and Chernobyl and then want to protest Nuclear Energy for safety reasons, and/or you want different green energy.

    Now you're arrested, and no safety of civilian courts. FUN!

  12. Re:Didn't we have this discussion... on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    This is just invented for parallel construction.
    Basically, you do an illegal search, find what you want, then spend time to create something that can get someone arrested.

  13. VPN hack Great for travellers on FBI Seeks To Legally Hack You If You're Connected To TOR Or a VPN · · Score: 2

    So, you use a VPN to avoid getting hacked by your local situation, then get hacked by your own government.

  14. Invisibilia podcast on just this issue today on Parents Investigated For Neglect For Letting Kids Walk Home Alone · · Score: 1

    On fear, talking specifically about how children's worlds are shrinking.

    It's a new podcast, seeing how it turns out.

  15. Re:You're picking your tool before your problem. on Ask Slashdot: Linux Database GUI Application Development? · · Score: 1

    When the only hammer you have is C++, every problem begins to look like a thumb.

    My new .signature

  16. TMobile CellSpot routers are ASUS routers on Asus Wireless Routers Can Be Exploited By Anyone Inside the Network · · Score: 2

    So, i have a free-while-youre-with-tmobile router from TMobile. Its a NTAC68U with a custom firmware. The custom firmware IS vulnerable. But, the firmware is simplified, and doesn't have any way of getting a command line interface to run killall.

    Im a geek, so I can reflash to Merlin or something like that. But most people with these routers will be non-technical folks. I hope the TMobile folks patch this quickly.

  17. S, SPlus, R on Little-Known Programming Languages That Actually Pay · · Score: 1

    I'm a tech in a finance firm. We use math tools a lot. Octave too.

    Though not quite a language, you can get a lot of jobs knowing Excel spreadsheets,

  18. MUMPS anyone? on Little-Known Programming Languages That Actually Pay · · Score: 1

    I had an aunt that regularly tried to get me to come to her firm to code in MUMPS.

    I wonder why I never did it.

  19. Re:Pono Player? on Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman · · Score: 1

    And lightning connector available for super cool bitrate audio to headphones.

  20. Pono Player? on Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Neil Young already has the Pono Player. It plays FLAC.

    Cooler name origin, just $400 (BKA one third the price), Kickstarter funded. And helps you keep on rockin' in the free world

    My cube mate has a $300 bland iPod-ish thing with it's own FLAC capable firmware, and a true hardware amp. Did i mention $300, B.K.A. one fourth the price.

    Methinks this is a non-starter. They will sell when heavily discounted, much like the HP Tablets finally sold (as Linux devices) when prices came down.

  21. Re:They said that about cell phones on The One Mistake Google Keeps Making · · Score: 1

    Depends. I think the docking and unloading may be one place where the programming to get this right may be more expensive than actual humans.

    Think of restaurants. You can drop hundreds of thousands to build a robot to be a waiter.

    Or you can throw iPads at every table for orders and payment, and dump all waiters and cashiers for a much smaller number of servers. Its not about tech, it's about cost. Externalize the feeling thinking humans to be just a cost and get rid of the suckers that dare ask for wages.

  22. Re:Fine! on The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace · · Score: 1

    I remember StarOffice. Crazy ass hacked together Office Suite used to battle MS Office. Just one of many side projects that Scot McNealy did at Sun. If he dropped those, and actually worked on his SPARC processors so that the $10,000 workstation didn't get smacked by a $2000 Intel PC, he may still be CEO of Sun.

    The irony of fighting the MS Evil Empire, waste so much resources doing so that he was swallowed by the Oracle Evil Empire.

  23. Re:They said that about cell phones on The One Mistake Google Keeps Making · · Score: 1

    Driverless cars? A better feature proposition (it'd make the commute much easier and enjoyable), but the feature is limited to certain roads/speeds, and after seeing the price hikes for a hybrid, one can only imagine what the driverless feature set will cost you as someone out shopping for a new car.

    This will be a hit commercially. Think about all the drivers you need to pay. I see two huge holes to plug.

    1) Taxis. Don't worry about Uber. A redesigned,small, driverless taxi, taking Google Pay, using Google maps.
    Saves gas (no need to circle, wait for a page). Less space (two seat taxis can do much of what's needed for taxis).

    2) Long haul trucking. Drivers have limits on to how long they can drive. To get their quotas they regularly violate them. Safety issues abound. What if you just drove to a highway (human) let the truck drive itself across country, then you drive it to dock it.

  24. Re:Motive on Did North Korea Really Attack Sony? · · Score: 1

    United States of Mexico?

    We call ourselves the US, but we're not even the only United States on our continent...

  25. Re:Move over USA, it's China's time to shine now.. on Serious Economic Crisis Looms In Russia, China May Help · · Score: 1

    As an economy that is 70% consumer based, I'm not sure how much consumer debt is from China.

    China needs to buy our debt more than we need to sell it. They need to convert yuan to dollars to maintain a favorable exchange rate. How's that go? If you borrow $1000 from a bank, the bank owns you. If you borrow, say, several trillion dollars from a bank, you own the bank.