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User: w_dragon

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  1. Re:I hate these misleading statements... on Man Caught Trying To Sell Plans For New Aircraft Carrier · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're removing security clearance from someone who is clearly easily bought. What's the problem?

  2. Re:Entrapment is lazy policing on Man Caught Trying To Sell Plans For New Aircraft Carrier · · Score: 1

    Stupid and greedy is a good definition of someone who should not have security clearance.

  3. Re:I want something simpler. on Ask Slashdot: Convincing My Company To Stop Using Passwords? · · Score: 1

    You know that a smartphone with NFC can generally duplicate a RFID token, right?

  4. Re:This is laughable... on Alva Noe: Don't Worry About the Singularity, We Can't Even Copy an Amoeba · · Score: 0

    Yet we still can't answer basic questions about ourselves like 'why do we require sleep?' or 'what is a healthy diet?'. I think it is the height of arrogance to think we can achieve in a few decades what took nature billions of years. Today's computers are intelligent in the same way that a parrot is fluent in language.

  5. Re:Mod parent up. on Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Starting and Running a Software Shop? · · Score: 1

    The founder should be a subject matter expert. They should be the one guiding the product to the first release. Unless the product is a compiler it doesn't matter much if they can code. They need to have a vision of what the product will be, not what widgets are required for every function.

  6. Re:The Fix: Buy good Chocolate! on MARS, Inc: We Are Running Out of Chocolate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd say chocolate is more like coffee. There are a few snobs who will happily pay incredible prices for what they're told is the best quality, a lot of people who want something that tastes right, and the majority that have never tasted it without drowning it in milk and sugar.

  7. Re:No. on Zuckerberg: Most of Facebook Will Be Video Within Five Years · · Score: 2

    Video ads are exactly as blockable as image ads. If it's served from the same domain as the content it's hard to block, otherwise it's easy.

  8. Re:Number is irrelevant compared to severity on NSA Director Says Agency Shares Most, But Not All, Bugs It Finds · · Score: 1

    I would guess that they release when it is likely that they themselves are exposed, or when it is possible that the exploit is already used by others, which may increase their chance of being caught. Their ideal exploit to keep secret is probably in the realm of mathematical cryptographic weaknesses, random number generators being weighted, and other things that are really hard to find and hard to determine if your data has been exposed.

  9. Re:Ought to bring down ... on Ford Develops a Way To Monitor Police Driving · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I worked in IT for a police force for a time. These systems have already been in place for more than 10 years, Ford is just making them an option on the Interceptor rather than requiring an after-market solution. And yes, police do get in shit for going 50kph over the speed limit without their siren on. Not that that stopped some of them.

  10. Re:Because they don't want to. on Ask Slashdot: Why Can't Google Block Spam In Gmail? · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are lots of legitimate sites that send emails on behalf of someone not on the domain. A lot of 'email this content to someone' links work that way. Maybe Microsoft understands how email is used in the real world far better than you do.

  11. Re:So, it has come to this. on Complain About Comcast, Get Fired From Your Job · · Score: 1

    That's interesting. Here in Ontario it's the opposite, people are almost always let go without cause and given at least the minimum severance required by law so they won't sue. I'm not a business owner, but I think the employment insurance payments are set based only on an employee's pay. Fascinating how much small differences in similar government programs can affect behavior.

  12. Re:Not surprising on Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Healthcare.gov Rollout · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You haven't worked much as a developer. Having built systems used by tens of millions of users I guarantee you that every time Amazon rolls out an update to the store or cloud software there's an ops person biting their nails hoping the system doesn't die. When Google released Gmail they only allowed each user to invite a certain number of friends in order to slowly ramp up the system. Writing any software that is made to have millions of users on day one is really fucking hard.

    On top of that steps 2 and 3 require interacting with external systems who may also not be able to handle load well, and probably use a combination of buggy and poorly documented interfaces, and step 5 requires reading a bill so long that the people who voted for it didn't bother to read it. You're grossly trivializing the problem.

  13. Re:Standards on Can ISO 29119 Software Testing "Standard" Really Be a Standard? · · Score: 1

    It's worse than that. Large companies will lobby government to make sure that not only government contractors must be certified on the standard, so must anyone who sells to certain regulated industries. Want to sell to airlines or food processors, even if it's non-critical software? Hope you're certified.

  14. Re:Hardwoods and a broom on New EU Rules Will Limit Vacuum Cleaners To 1600W · · Score: 1

    It's cheap, and no matter how crappy a job the builder did on your subfloor the carpet will not crack when the boards start to move apart. It also absorbs a lot of sound and causes less injuries when the kid falls down the stairs.

  15. Re:And how long does it take... on How Does Tesla Build a Supercharger Charging Site? · · Score: 3, Informative

    The only places you need quick-charge station are places where people will be traveling long distances. Most of the time people will charge overnight at home. Most highways have areas where you could easily build a huge lot with rapid chargers. I suspect the larger issue most places will be finding and transporting enough power to charge perhaps hundreds of cars at one time.

  16. Re:Contact Us on Ask Slashdot: Why Are Online Job Applications So Badly Designed? · · Score: 1

    Google 'free fax'. There are plenty of companies that will fax a PDF of a couple of pages for free.

  17. Re:Now this just might.... on Russia Cracks Down On Public Wi-Fi; Oracle Blocks Java Downloads In Russia · · Score: 1

    Perhaps they are exploiting security holes in current versions of Java that are due to be patched soon.

  18. Re:Opinion from industry insider on Least Secure Cars Revealed At Black Hat · · Score: 1

    Does nobody do signing or encryption of signals to control systems? Having had issues with VW's electrical systems in the past I wouldn't blindly consider a more complicated setup to be a benefit from them.

  19. Re:PHP Finally Getting a Formal Specification on PHP Finally Getting a Formal Specification · · Score: 1

    It's a bug, but some people rely on the current behavior, so the next release will have RealSpecificationFormal that does more what people might expect.

  20. Re:Adopt on Smoking Mothers May Alter the DNA of Their Children · · Score: 2

    If you've in an area of the world where they grow tobacco people smoke, third world or not. Same way third world countries with poppies often have some level of opium problems. Drugs are cheap if you can produce them yourself.

  21. Re:What about on the ground? on Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View · · Score: 1

    On the ground this could be easily solved in a number of ways. When a plane goes off-course where it shouldn't be, however, the last-ditch attempt to communicate by the fighters that intercept is a standard set of hand signals. That could be a problem if they can't see the pilots.

  22. Re:Windows as point of weakness on Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View · · Score: 1

    Windows screw up the aerodynamics and force the cockpit to be at the front of the plane, making the most critical controls run the full length of the plane. If the front of the plane were smoother a flight could burn less fuel, the main cost in flying these days. If the cockpit were towards the back a lot of weight could be reduced in control lines to the wings and tail, all that's needed from the nose is wiring for a couple (critical) warning systems.

  23. Re:Creativity on How Tim Cook Is Filling Steve Jobs's Shoes · · Score: 4, Informative

    The post-2000 revival of apple, sure, that was Jobs. But the founding and initial success of Apple would not have happened without Wozniak.

  24. Re:How is it broken, exactly? on The Internet's Broken. Who's Going To Invent a New One? · · Score: 2

    SCTP already exists, and is reasonably well supported. No one uses it because it turns out TCP and UDP actually do most of what we need pretty well.

  25. Re:How close? on U.S. Passenger Jet Nearly Collided With Drone In March · · Score: 1

    You need to be out of the controlled airspace for the airport. Or you need to have ATC approval for where you are. Same as every other plane in controlled airspace.