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User: lythander

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  1. Insurance on Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive? · · Score: 1

    While I'm sure that there are valid arguments that the medical licensing process, liability, and form factor play a role, the simple answer is that MOST people in the US don't pay for them, their insurance does. Or Medicare. But it's seldom out of pocket, so they feel free to charge way too much. Insurance companies probably negotiate the price down, and keep you from getting the very highest end devices for free, but just like software that's only purchased by large companies, so it costs a great deal, the price sensitivity of the insurance companies is such that they'll bear the freight, and make it up on the other end. Which is to say they will screw all of us.

    Another argument for meaningful healthcare reform. Whatever that means.

  2. Everybody calm down... on Google Gets US Approval To Buy and Sell Energy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The thing about this that proves than google is trying not to be evil (or at least that they lack subterfuge) is the name of the company. GOOGLE power. (Is the symbol a raised rainbow-colored fist?) Not a subsidiary named "Trans-co-op-national warm fuzzies" Put their name right in there.

    Google is a large corporation. The have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. So the whole "don't be evil" thing got dialed way back when they went public (remember when everyone wanted them to go public?) US law provides huge liability to corporations who pass up money-making opportunities for the sake of morality in the form of shareholder lawsuits.

    They are expanding their portfolio of businesses to protect against shifts in markets, in ways that complement their core competencies. This is bad because they clearly know what their doing, as opposed to say, Microsoft, who grew to behemoth size on the back of only their core competency (whatever your thoughts on that), and very much despite the other business lines they chose to enter?

  3. I rewired mine when I moved in... on Suggestions For a Coax-To-Ethernet Solution? · · Score: 1

    I used a combo wire which is 2 RG-6 and 2 Cat5e runs shrink-wrapped together into an impressive snake (http://www.smarthome.com/868261J/2-Cat-5e-2-RG6-Quad-Cable-Jacket-500-Feet-RG6-Coax-Cable/p.aspx). I fact, I still have 200+" of it in my garage if you're going to pull new cable. Very nice stuff, hit me up if you're interested.

  4. Re:On your marks, get set... on Cyber Defense Competition Has A New Champion · · Score: 1

    Seriously, I work with one of the major partners making this competition happen, and they're already in talks with ESPN2. They're working hard on visualization techniiques to make it TV-friendly.

  5. No more lava lamps? on Australia Outlaws Incandescent Light Bulb · · Score: 1

    So have the Aussies outlawed owning pets who need heat lamps, people who like heat lamps, lava lamps, and burger joints who use them to dry out their burgers? As with all legislation that aims for a quick, easy fix, this is foolhardy and will likely cause more harm than good.

  6. More practical approach... on Protecting My Daughter's Notebook? · · Score: 1

    I work at a major East-Coast university in IT security. I have seen students with a wide range of computer-related problems, and while theft can happen if she's careless, your daughter's data is probably more valuable.

    Make sure it's running anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and that they're set to automatically update often (NOT once a week). Install a personal firewall, AND use a hardware firewall (router) in the dorm room. Defense in depth. She'll be out on the campus using wireless or whatever, hence the personal firewall. Hardware is still better, though. Make sure it does egress-filtering, as well (keeps you from spewing bad stuff if you get 0wned). Make sure she pays heed to the info she's given by the university IT people -- they may have additional tools to keep her machine and the campus network safe.

    We no longer counsel people to "clean up" infected machines, except in the case of very simple viruses. These are increasingly rare. Everything has a bot in it these days, meaning it is no longer under your control. They're difficult and time-consuming to extract, so we require an FFR -- fdisk, format, reinstall.

    To make this easier, see to it that the machine is installed such that Windows sits on it's own partition, with data on another partition. Backup the data often and back up the Windows partition after it's installed and patched, but before you have it on the net. Make sure she has media for everything she could conceiveably need to reinstall -- waiting for openoffice to download again because you got 0wned again isn't good.

    Insure the laptop through your homeowners' insurance, or get her renter's insurance. If it's from a vendor who has insurance or an extended warranty, get that. It will fall, get sat on, or maybe get lifted, but don't hobble it so it's useless. Get a club for it (easy security but not effective against the determined), and make it distinctive (stickers, paint -- make it look ugly or obnoxious though, not cool!) Most of all, relax. Your daughter is going off to college. You have so much more to worry about, don't sweat this.

    BTW, is she cute?

  7. Security guy cynicism on CA Warns Of Massive Botnet Attack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, these things need to be taken seriously, but any press release needs to be taken with a grain (or bag) of salt. Spyware is the threat flavor of the day, and the specialized programs (ad-aware/spybot/spy sweeper/etc.) are better at managing it than traditional A/V is (at least right now). Bots are scary. Need to reformat and reinstall (our instructions to students at this major university). Viruses you can just clean (mostly, but mytob is throwing a wrench into that clean division). You figure which is scarier.

    CA is the only product which detects ALL three of the mentioned viruses as of this posting. Which is not to say that they're making this up, but I'd be more willing to believe it if it came from the Secret Service or CERT.

  8. Before creditting this to junk science... on Engineers Have More Sons, Nurses More Daughters · · Score: 1

    Remember that individual hormone balances in the father and the mother DO affect the sex of the baby that tends to be conceived, and those hormones tend to shape their owner's brain as much as their reproductive systems. It's likely that nurses and teachers are driven by a combination of hormones tending to more female production, as well as disposing their brains to their chosen professions, or more likely, the qualities which make them take interest in those professions. Ditto the engineers.

    FWIW, when my wife and I were working at building our family, I read that the frequency of intercourse had an effect, such that more frequent sex made more boys (by a smaller margin than this study claims to have). Draw your own conclusions.

  9. AOL used to do this (and probably still does) on Providers Ignoring DNS TTL? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Simple. Response time and bandwidth.

    Caching provides a response much more quickly (albeit not always right), and for a large scale ISP, DNS lookups consume not-insignificant amounts of bandwidth. This used to cost much more than it does today, and I'll bet much of this continues out of intertia.

  10. ICS on Secure Hard Drive Deletion Appliance? · · Score: 1

    ICS DiskMASSter devices are for imaging drives for forensic capture, and they have DOD-compliant wipe routines. They're quite configurable. I have used the IDE one (1 master and 8 target devices, can wipe all nine at once, IDE plus SATA adapters), and the SCSI one (worked with everything SCSI (50 pin, 68 pin, SCA) except a few disks from a Sun Enterprise 1000, but the little bird inside may have died of old age in them.

    http://www.ics-iq.com/

  11. Dumbest idea ever. on Daylight Savings Change Proposed · · Score: 1

    Please note the following:

    "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey...

    Um, there's no more daylight. It just comes at a different time.

    And if you want more light, get out of Massachusetts and go to Florida!

    This all stems from our former life as an agrarian economy, without headlights on tractors. Please stop the madness. Some of we early risers don't like to have to wait until 7:30AM for the sun.

  12. Re:And Saddam's Bluff got him invaded on North Korea Admits to Having Nuclear Weapons · · Score: 1

    I agree that China is a large factor here, but I think (for no reason based in a thorough knowledge of Chinese thought or politics or anything like that) that they view Kim Jong Il as their own Saddam in a way -- Certainly they assisted his father, but I don't think they ever planned for dealing with his loose-cannon son. They are now faced with someone on their doorstep, with whom they have a very iffy relationship, who claims to have nukes. Imagine if Cuba had developed their own nukes early in the 60's. Not an appealing scenario!

    I hope we can take the high economic and diplomatic road this time. China doesn't need another beach, nor would South Korea work as well as an island. Iraq has so exhausted our will to fight a war (outside of real self-defense -- if the Cannucks invade, we're up for it!) and much of our ability to do so, we may have little choice. Or maybe those draft rumors aren't. Take your choice.

  13. If I'm the CEO, this guy gets fired now. on Symantec Antivirus May Execute Virus Code · · Score: 1

    OMFG. Who would say it's not a vulnerability until it's known? Known by whom? If a black-hat knows, and shares it quietly with other black-hats, thi scould be devastating without ever being "known." This is security by obscurity, except it isn't well obscured.

    Or did Symantec know, and just not mention it to their customers (so it wasn't "known") ?

  14. And Saddam's Bluff got him invaded on North Korea Admits to Having Nuclear Weapons · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not that we didn't (or shouldn't have) know(n), but it presented a governing coalition with an agenda and a chip on it's collective shoulder an excuse, a mechanism by which to dupe a credulous population.

    I think this particular whack job (Kin Jong Il) wants the sort of respectful, diplomatic (by comparison) treatment Iran is getting, rather than the sabre rattling it gets now. Let's face it, if South Korea weren't completely held hostage and likely to lose 10^6 people in a week should a real war break out, North Korea would have already have been invaded.

  15. Use styrofoam peanuts. on Revenge for the Foil Apartment? · · Score: 1

    OK, not styrofoam, but the corn-starch-based environmentally-friendly ones. They're sold in industrial size bags, and are quite light to move.

    You might look into those landscaping trucks with the gun which shoots hay to cover bare ground before hydro-seeding. It would probably shoot the peanuts as well.

  16. I love Opera. on Opera Offers Free Licenses For Educational Use · · Score: 2, Informative

    I like Firefox, too. Firefox is an easier transition for IE users, since the interface is very similar, and on the whole it plays nicer with sites which are very IE-specific. Opera is very standards compliant, but doesn't try as hard to play nice with those who aren't.

    Opera's multiple document interface is better, IMHO. It's also more featureful out of the box (I know firefox has a gazillion extensions available, many of them damn fine, but you have to go get them).

    Opera has also (allegedly, I don't use it this way) taken substantial time to make it customizeable and manageable in an enterprise sense. I think it would be easier to roll out Opera to 150 machines than to roll out Firefox with the same capabilities (i.e. lots of extensions) to the same machines.

    Firefox is truly FREE, Opera just doesn't have a cost for use, but for most users (the unwashed masses who care not at all about F/OSS) it doesn't matter.

    Now, if Sunbird works out...

  17. Re:CD hack? on Valve Cracks Down on 20,000 Users · · Score: 1

    If you just bought the game off of steam in the first place, you have no CD to insert, therefore no problem.

  18. Good to know... on Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid · · Score: 1

    Not that I'll ever go there, but it's nice to know that should need arise, I can fill my double-gupl with diet coke (or something) in Taipei.

    Mind you, probably not in south-central PA, but definitely Taipei.

  19. I thought that's what NOC-monkeys were for. on It's 2004: What Are The Best Remote KVM Options? · · Score: 1

    Robots are an expensive solution to any question. Until The technology is cheap and mature, they should just be used for bomb disposal and nuke-plant maintenance.

    This is a great job for an intern or any other entry-level employee. Don't automate away opportunities for newbies to learn! (At least this can't be outsourced yet!)

  20. Babysitter worries... on High Tech Baby Monitoring? · · Score: 1

    You know, the cure for this is...

    Stay the fsck home.

    You just had a baby. Your wife needs to rest for a while, and once she's recovered from having the baby, she needs to rest from taking care of the baby all freaking day. Let her sleep and YOU change diapers and feed for several hours a day. Besides, why bring in all those germs? You have enough at home already.

    You life will change irrevocably, don't expect to keep living like you did before. Expect the change and allow it to happen. Dad's who expect to keep going out like they did pre-baby make the rest of us look bad.

    Oh, and forget anything but a radio audio monitor, and stop using that after the first year except for special occasions (like you're on vacation and need to make sure the kids actually went to sleep when you went into the next room). It'll keep you from getting any sleep, and it won't keep your kid any safer.

  21. Exempt status on IT Workers Not Eligible for Overtime in New Rules · · Score: 1

    Most IT workers I know who are above entry level are Exempt status employees -- no overtime, even before the new rules. No 40 hour weeks, either, although that's the general guideline, but the number of hours to get the job done. Might be 40, 60 , or 25. No clock punching, either, just a timesheet indicating you were here that day or not.

  22. Funny... on Technology Makes New Cars Too Expensive to Fix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As a sysadmin/netadmin/IT/MIS guy all of my career, I've always described my job as being not too much different from a mechanic, except I stay less clean and I apparently get paid less.

    And working on my 1969 Baracuda is MUCH more fun lately. Maybe I should change jobs...

  23. This will linger on for quite a while... on Local Root Vulnerability in passwd(1) on Solaris 8, 9 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The patch for Solaris 8 is a giant PITA. Install in single user mode only, lots of patch incompatibilities, very sysadmin and uptime unfriendly. Many won't apply it because of the downtime it involves. At least not until there's an exploit. Then there will be hell to pay.

  24. Another good trackball. on Carpal Tunnel- Laptops Better than Ergo Keyboards? · · Score: 1

    Amen to the above, and let me recommend the Logitech Trackman wheel. No Anti-MS feelings here, they make good hardware, but the wireless version of this logitech device is great! It's a thumb-ball, where you move the ball with your thumb and click with the same fingers you use on your mouse, plus a scroll wheel in a similar-to-mouse position. easy to clean, good an batteries, and pretty accurate.

    I play FPS with them frequently, and I cannot blame my sucking at them on the trackball at all. Accuracy is good (the trackball's, not mine) and you can give it a good spin to move a long distance without moving your arm (never have to pick it up and reposition to keep moving in a given direction.

    Just my $.02

  25. We're not called a litigious society for nothing. on Replaced by Outsourcing -- What's a Geek to Do? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Talk to a lawyer. If you can prove even remotely that they were negligent, wrong, or malicious, try suing them. What the hell, you have time, right? They'll settle. Think of it as extending your severeance a bit.