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User: leptechie

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  1. Always interested in the history of computing, I bought Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive", and was immediately intrigued by chapter one dealing with the Pentium Bug.

    I never made it to chapter two. Every focus was on controlling message and image. No acknowledgement this directly affected customers, no outreach, no mitigations. Much anger at people communicating a flaw in the product, and defying Intel's response plan and schedule.

    Seeing these reports of the response doesn't fix my impression.

  2. What about Petition Government? Your response show a lack of knowledge of the amendment you cite.

  3. Why so much love for ZFS, none for BTRFS? on Ask Slashdot: Best File System For the Ages? · · Score: 2
    I'm seeing plenty of enthusiasm for a filesystem that has inline checksums that are verified on each file access, particularly ZFS. This doesn't quite address the OP's point: a filesystem for the ages. Given ZFS' license, it is not only outside the mainline kernel now, it likely will be forever.

    btrfs is in mainline now, and has a number of years to have settled down. Even if you don't like the more advanced features, it has some that tick all the boxes:
    - good on-disk checksums to detect errors (incl bit rot) for metadata and data
    - RAID modes to protect from whole disk failures
    - realtime and online scrubbing to detect and recover from checksum failures from another copy (RAID1) or rebuilding from parity (RAID5/6) - no action required from user (contrast with PAR solutions proposed)
    - subvolumes for segregation of data if needed, especially if there is a desire to consolidate multiple older drives and especially useful to pool capacity from these disparate sources to implement RAID modes.
    - online reshaping for the above So, even if you're not accessing the data frequently, if OP cares about data I'm sure it's no hassle to plug them in once a year and let a scrub run (for a couple of days if needed, I know this part of the code is still terribly slow). Even if btrfs is deprecated today, it will be a long time before support is removed from the kernel, and even longer before the last distro stops supporting it, and longer yet before that last distro release refuses to boot on whatever incarnation of hardware is available to plug the drives into. All the while the data is free to be migrated onto new spare/surplus drives and a new filesystem if needed.

  4. Re:bit rot on Ask Slashdot: Best File System For the Ages? · · Score: 1

    This doesn't address silent bit rot. Note OP refers to silent corruption of stored data, not notifications from the disk or FS that the data is corrupt. You'd need to manually scan data with your PAR tool to confirm integrity before accessing every single one.

  5. This post is atrocious on First Cancer Case Confirmed From Fukushima Cleanup (nhk.or.jp) · · Score: 1
    Wow, what an inflated bag of hyperbole and misinformation. It's right there in the first sentence of the post: This result is from a Labour Ministry, not anyone dealing directly with health, science, technology or even energy. The man merely arrived above the bar for compensation, and contrary to the post's headline it "confirms" nothing.

    The diagnosis itself is not a causal one, and the exposure "is nearly four times the annual dose allowed for nuclear workers in Japan but is less than half the amount US nuclear workers can be exposed to in a single year." (BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...).

    As for the 1,600 deaths in the evacuation - not one of them was as a result of exposure to anything except the hysteria that comes from exactly this kind of overblown fluff.

    Disgusting.

  6. Re:Considering how fast Google ditched China on France Tells Google To Remove "Right To Be Forgotten" Search Results Worldwide · · Score: 2

    France is not asking for this right worldwide, merely that there are not loopholes that can be exploited by the covered jurisdiction. As long as Google ensures requests from France (probably via GeoIP) to all of their assets worldwide blocks content France specifies the loophole is closed. It's the trivial nature of the workaround that is at issue. France's jurisdiction to compel a company's foreign operations to comply to their law is interesting, but I don't see this as onerous.
    Yes, the next point someone is going to raise is proxies and VPNs to appear as local GeoIP. Anyone doing this is intentionally violating French law on the reight to be forgotten, and I would then be livid if France ordered universal censorship in response - as long as Google shows good faith, that should be good enough.
    I am not agreeing with this law, but Google is not a sovereign entity - it must comply or exercise the right to not serve those markets. As for the other censorious states, they too would only have the right to censor locally sourced queries while the rest of us can happily discover all the dirt on their protected classes.

  7. Re:Why DMCA take down notice? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    Good point, thanks

  8. Re:Why DMCA take down notice? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    The content in question is likely not designed to be injected to a webpage on-the-fly, it is a standard script line that could have been provided to static pages or some other CMS presentation. Airtel is the one who decided altering content delivered to their clients, which they do not own, was appropriate. Flash Networks is blameless here, it's their customer who misbehaved.

  9. Re:Of course, it's likely copyrighted. on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    "They" who did the providing is Airtel, the 3G provider, and likely under a distribution agreement with Flash Networks, the copyright owner, for specific purposes. When the actual copyright owner (FN) found their content on GitHub, they sent the takedown. I think Flash Networks acted appropriately with the proper tool and, for once, the DMCA notification content is actually correct. Airtel are the ones who have things to answer for, not FN.

  10. Re:DMCA even has power over GitHub? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    The owner of the copyright did not send the DMCA Infringement notice to Airtel, India, they sent it to GitHub, San Francisco, California, where their copyrighted property was being served.

  11. Re:Of course, it's likely copyrighted. on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If anyone else were to do this, it would be called "hacking his website" and the group responsible would (theoretically) be brought to justice. However, since it is an ISP, they get to call it "monetizing their service"

    Even worse, this is a 3G network, so they're not just monetising, they're artificially inflating their customers' usage by forcing them to down content they didn't request on a service that is typically directly billed by utilisation.

  12. Re:Why DMCA take down notice? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    Every user of Airtel ... will get these files when they visit websites.

    Exactly, which is why he would need to post to GitHub (or somewhere else) - not every person interested in or capable of analysing the code is a customer or Airtel (I know I'm not).

  13. Re:DMCA even has power over GitHub? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    DMCA has power over any site that hopes not to have to hire an army of reviewers and moderators just to serve user-generated content. The problem isn't necessarily with the copyright takedowns process, which in this case seems to be quite justified (it's copyrighted, clear) but when it is abused by censorious thugs and their lawyers.

    This one seems pretty clear, user infringed copyright.

  14. Re:Of course, it's likely copyrighted. on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 2

    You can't just go posting other's source code on the web without permission. There are other, better ways to deal with this asshattery.

    There are two parts here, neither of which alone add up to the combined outrage (though both spurious): 1) Company A writes code to inject ads to documents, and Company B decides to inject these into pages from other people's services. Whether B got permission from A for this exact purpose we don't know, but it could just as likely be embedded in pages B serve themselves. Note, the injection part here is suspect, but unrelated to the DMCA notice. 2> Owner of said code (Company A) blows his lid that company property is openly accessible at GitHub. and uses appropriate tools to deal with it.

    If this is one party injecting their own code into a HTTP session without consent, then objecting to the subsequent source disclosure then fine, let rip, but the context here is critical, and without a view of the source we can't assume more than we know: This is a hostile act, intentionally modifying content in-transit, and more than just compressing JPEGs for mobile network consumption, it alters functionality and potentially the security of the user's device.

    He is well within his rights to ask for help from all and sundry in determining the potential harm, especially if (as it appears, I tried and failed) the file can only be downloaded from Company B's network and anyone willing to assist would be unable if not a subscriber. The Net Neutrality rules in India back him up, but unfortunately for him the DMCA covers GutHub under US law. It does protect him from the asshatted letter that makes threats if he continues to exert his rights under Indian law. Flash Networks' conduct here is mixed, but Airtel is incredible, and so far they remain uninvolved and unthreatened.

  15. Re:Why DMCA take down notice? on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    The owner is objecting to the user redistributing the file which is apparently subject to a license. In this instance GitHub (in USA) needs to apply their own laws in making the determination of fair use or exemption but I think the DMCA notice will stand - unless I'm misinformed there is no exclusion to DMCA for academic purposes as there is in India's safe harbour provisions.

  16. Re:Of course, it's likely copyrighted. on Developer Draws Legal Threat For Exposing Indian Telco's Net Neutrality Violation · · Score: 1

    No, they changed his web page to insert the URL, so only the URL becomes part of the document. The linked script it refers to retains its' own copyright which, in the absence of a copyright statement, could only reasonably be assumed to be the carrier that modified his blog's transmission.

  17. Re:Cygwin on Microsoft To Support SSH In Windows and Contribute To OpenSSH · · Score: 1

    And, in all likelihood, native (MS-)Kerberos.

  18. Re:More hoops before travelling through USA on Judge: Warrantless Airport Seizure of Laptop 'Cannot Be Justified' · · Score: 1

    The moral of this story is: 1) The TSA and assorted related three letter agencies don't give a crap about due process or warrants anyways

    The owner of the laptop had even been arrested previously and given testimony regarding his activities.

    Ahem, TFA says Yang was arrested and provided testimony, Kim is the subject of this ruling. He never implicated himself in anything and it is only by reference from Yang that he was noticed and investigated. The part about the investigating officer having zero suspicion that he would actually be involved in criminal activity during his stay but only thought that if Kim might have this search would find it, as well as hopefully recording proof of Yang's comments and interactions. If this man was a threat, the fact he was not monitored in any sense of the word during his stay negates that.

    Fishing expedition on a device that the agent clearly knew in advance would be a rich store of information using a procedure and supposed exemption that cannot be justified on exit from the country.

  19. Special treatment on How To End Online Harassment · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any particular reason religion is in that list of protected attributes? The others are innate characteristics while religion, regardless of how deeply held or deathly serious the consequences of deviating, is an opinion.

  20. Re:Anthropometrics on 3 Recent Flights Make Unscheduled Landings, After Disputes Over Knee Room · · Score: 1

    A mildly useless suggestion. It's like standing at a stadium - you may get an initial benefit but if everyone does it, nobody benefits (and everyone's legs get tired). So there are a few seats that are superior at no extra cost, it does nothing for the overall level of misery.

  21. A Seismic Shift on FBI Edits Mission Statement: Removes Law Enforcement As 'Primary' Purpose · · Score: 1
    Altering wording like this may not seem to amount to much, and sure Law Enforcement is still on their list, but the focus has a drastic impact:
    • Law is defined by Congress - so the FBI executes Congress' will by enforcing law
    • Terror is defined by.. not sure really; whoever is afraid of terrorists? So they execute the will of whoever defines terrorism? Um...

    The Executive Branch certainly seems afraid of terrorists, and the DoJ gets to define it as they please. This is like writing your own job description to say you can focus on whatever you've decided is important, and your boss' instructions can be overruled when you think you've got more important things to do. Is this a blank cheque-book or is there still a balance between the branches?

  22. Re:Is there a point of posting images of the phone on Google Posts Images, Binaries For New Nexus 7 · · Score: 0

    You do realise this article is about a tablet, right?

  23. The one they didn't kill on Ask Slashdot: Which Google Project Didn't Deserve To Die? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Surprisingly, Google Apps.

    It's not dead, but it's no longer free. I work with three volunteer organisations - they're not charities but social groups geared towards helping expats get settled in my city. Membership management, event planning and budgeting, publications and flyers. All were easy to collaborate on with Google Apps, but even the (seemingly) small subscription fees are a burden when we're explicitly non-profit and loosely organised. We could have two active users one month, ten the next, so no single pricing plan option is appropriate without serious overhead and/or possible overspend.
    Very unfortunate.

  24. Re:The Justice Department on National Security Letters Ruled Unconstitutional, Banned · · Score: 1

    Some people still think there are two parties in Washington instead of two faces of the same party, the Money Party.

    Some people are happy to accept that two political parties are all that are required to represent the 3rd largest (by population and expanse) country in the world, with only China governed less diversely at a comparable scale.

    Urban and rural poor, wilderness areas of desert forest ice and mountain rivalling countries in expanse, high-finance manipulators, middle-class commuters, academia, greens, industrialists, religious fundamentals of dozens of variants, secular scientists - in Americaland every person in these and all other groups all fit neatly into exactly one of two world-views - Red vs Blue.

    The rest of the western world have no idea why Americans think this is acceptable.

  25. Re:Best way on 10 Ways To Celebrate International Pi Day · · Score: 1
    Make a chart to illustrate how much time you spent making pie and then eating it while watching Life of Pi, which started at 3.14pm, on International Pi Day

    Oh, and I've always remembered 3.141592653589. My mother's phone number is a complete mystery...