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User: TechyImmigrant

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  1. Re:Wrong focus? on Can ISO 29119 Software Testing "Standard" Really Be a Standard? · · Score: 2

    This shit matters if you are selling things internationally. It makes it difficulty for country A to refuse imports of county B's software because it wasn't tested to their local testing standard. If it was tested to an ISO standard it'll do and the WTO will be on their ass if they try to claim otherwise.

    That doesn't mean the specs are any good. They aren't. But there is a very real interaction with international trade regulations.

  2. Re:Chip and PIN on Banks Report Credit Card Breach At Home Depot · · Score: 1

    Why do you think the chip or the information on it can't be duplicated or spoofed?

    To duplicate an EMV card, you would need to take the card to a lab and do some serious meddling.
    To duplicate a standard US credit card you need a cell phone and the card for 10 seconds.

    The difference is significant.

    Of course NFC will screw the pooch before the US catches up.

  3. Re:I'm switching to an OS designed for the cloud on You Got Your Windows In My Linux · · Score: 1

    So you just wanted to pop in and say something about Plan 9 then?

    Kthxbye.

    Actually he would bind his explanation into your file system name space.
       

  4. Re:Chip and PIN on Banks Report Credit Card Breach At Home Depot · · Score: 1

    FOAD. I'd prefer the banks implemented security so I wouldn't have to go through a bureaucratic mess to get back my property.

    And what property of yours is missing? I'm thinking it's your sanity.

    No, it would be insane to invite all that hassle by advocating banks continue with ludicrous plaintext credentials on credit cards. Do you work for a bank?

  5. Re:Chip and PIN on Banks Report Credit Card Breach At Home Depot · · Score: 1

    FOAD. I'd prefer the banks implemented security so I wouldn't have to go through a bureaucratic mess to get back my property.

  6. Re:ECC? on Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away · · Score: 1

    >You're a poster child for Dunning-Kruger

    Actually I am an engineer who has designed many error correction circuits for communication and storage systems. I think I know how much I know about error correction systems, which is plenty for this conversation.

    While the statement was made in Slashdot jackass style, the question is legitimate. Why didn't they do any or more ECC on the flash that is failing. There is probably a perfectly fine answer like "We knew the expected error rate and It was designed to last 10 times longer than the system", but the system lasted 40 time longer so the ECC correction capacity was exceeded". or "We had TMR, but the give then age of the system the error rate is now such that the error collision probability is too high". or "This flash claimed to be rad hardened but it turns out it isn;t".

    I'd like to know the answer because I like techy shit.

  7. Re:What they don't tell you on Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study · · Score: 1

    The science indicates that your dogma is BS.

  8. Re:ECC? on Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away · · Score: 1

    >You can detect single bit errors with a simple parity bit

    You can detect (2^32-1)/(2^32) of every possible failure pattern with a CRC. With a combination of a multiple bit error correction algorithm (with most correction schemes n bits can be corrected with 2n redundant error correction bits) and then the CRC can be used to tell if you correctly corrected the data.

  9. Re:ECC? on Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away · · Score: 0

    If you're so smart, why aren't you advocating using BCH codes or Reed Solomon codes or some form of forward error correction code over code and data stored in flash so random bit errors in flash won't affect the code that is stored in the flash? What is your super clever alternative?
     

  10. ECC? on Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away · · Score: 5, Funny

    They didn't do any ECC on the flash memory? I thought these people were rocket scientists.

  11. Re: Not the PSUs? The actual cables? on HP Recalls 6 Million Power Cables Over Fire Hazard · · Score: 1

    "Pakis..." I suppose you must be from Great Britain, probably one of those "old school tie" types who think those savages should still be all under the Queen's boot.

    Yes i'm from Great Britain, but what I think I that the colonials should be using 220-240V, not 110-120V. Since P=i^2*r and i is proportional to v, resistive power loss in the cable the cable would be cut to 1/4 of what it is today, greatly reducing the risk of excess heat in skinny power cables.

  12. Re:Strange software design on $75K Prosthetic Arm Is Bricked When Paired iPod Is Stolen · · Score: 1

    Apple doesn't allow access to UDIDs (universal device identifiers) anymore, so unless the software is quite old, or requires a jailbroken device, the prosthesis cannot be paired to the device. (That's one of the reason why you can't access the UDID anymore, because pairing information with a device is stupid; the bigger reason is privacy).

    The prosthesis can easily be paired to an AppleID plus an application specific ID. However, all information about this would be stored on the device, backed up to iTunes, and could be restored by just buying a new phone, entering the AppleID and password, and downloading the last backup.

    If that doesn't work, then these guys must have some really strange and stupid software design + implementation.

    Any app writer can include their own magic number in the instance on the device and use that for pairing.

  13. Re:Spherical Torus on Princeton Nuclear Fusion Reactor Will Run Again · · Score: 1

    A topologist and an engineer walked into a bar.
    The engineer kicked the shit out of the topologist for using the same words to mean different things than engineers use them to mean.

  14. Re:In other news... on NRC Analyst Calls To Close Diablo Canyon, CA's Last Remaining Nuclear Plant · · Score: 2

    So read the rest of the post. FFS.

  15. Re:In other news... on NRC Analyst Calls To Close Diablo Canyon, CA's Last Remaining Nuclear Plant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Solar cells on every house is great as long as there is local storage in every house too.

    Wind power is great as long as there is good power distribution infrastructure: It's always blowing somewhere.

    Nuclear power is great as long as you address operational safety and waste storage, both of which are addressable if you do engineering rather than politics. Part of that is again, good infrastructure so you can build the nukes in good places for nukes.

    It's easy to point at any single generation or harvesting technology and identify it's flaws as a sole solution. However there are many technologies and combined together they form a robust and comparatively clean solutions.

     

  16. If there was any data to suggest the ACT tests are statistically valid (they test the thing you think they test) or reliable (they would get the same result if you tested again) then the correlation may be a clue to something. However when the underlying test is neither valid nor reliable, the correlation it shows doesn't even show you there is correlation.

  17. Re:Why focus on the desktop? on Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' · · Score: 1

    Layout tools, Schematic capture, logic simulators, analog and mixed signal simulators, P&R, floorplanning etc, etc.
    The all have a GUI that needs to be used.

    What's notable is that with all these tools, the specific ones I use in the company I work for making big-ass chips, precisely none of them work on a windows desktop. You either run them locally or remotely on a Linux desktop. As time goes on they tend to drop support for older unixes. I don't know anyone who runs these on anything except Linux these days and windows is just a platform to run X or VNC to get to the desktop of the Linux box running the tools.

  18. Re:Why focus on the desktop? on Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' · · Score: 1

    Well if it does, they can just give up and go to the baker on foot.

  19. 1) Screw software, hardware is where it's at.

    2) Hard topics pay well: DSP, information theory, crypto, information coding, etc.

  20. Re:Why focus on the desktop? on Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' · · Score: 1

    >rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.

    It's there and dominant in a whole host of industries. The western world would collapse if Linux ceased being available on the desktop. For example we couldn't make chips.

    But the eastern world would be ok?

    Yes. They have good bread and public transit.

  21. >Sounds grea

    It's following the lead set in the SuperValu article a couple of days ago.

  22. Re:Why focus on the desktop? on Linus Torvalds: 'I Still Want the Desktop' · · Score: 1

    >rather than trying to break into the standalone desktop OS market.

    It's there and dominant in a whole host of industries. The western world would collapse if Linux ceased being available on the desktop. For example we couldn't make chips.

  23. Re: Lightfoot on Processors and the Limits of Physics · · Score: 1

    I don't think you design chips do you?

  24. Re:Oh god so what? on C++14 Is Set In Stone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > Integer overflow has absolutely nothing to do with security.

    Yes it does. I take it you don't write much crypto code?

  25. Re:Bribery and corruption on Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft · · Score: 2

    >Because, you know the average Linux user is smarter than the nose-picking windows users.
    I use Linux and I pick my nose you insensitive clod!