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User: cdwiegand

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Comments · 248

  1. Re:Build a business case on Ask Slashdot: How Do I Convince Management To Hire More IT Staff? · · Score: 1

    Take a vacation. Seriously. I was at a job for almost 6 years, and about 4 years in we finally started hiring an assistant. Went through 2 idiots before finally getting someone competent. Got him trained up for about 6 weeks, then they laid him off because the C-levels couldn't go basic math. That whole time I couldn't take a vacation because things would go bump and they'd need help. Sometimes even impacting 24x7 4 9s uptime connections (we wanted 5 9s). Now that I'm gone, so much less stress, and they learned their lesson.

  2. Re:Law Enforcement Drones? on How To Hijack a Drone For $400 In Less Than an Hour · · Score: 1

    Wha? Yagi wifi antennas are certainly NOT 10 feet tall. 18" long - http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-1800. 15 dbi (so if your current antenna is 3 dbi this is a 12 dbi increase, or say 100x+ish). Very directional, though.

    And no one sane running a drone "program" would use normal wifi - they'd get a control frequency from the FCC and go that route.

  3. Re:Cost vs. Benefits on Ask Slashdot: Best Laptops For Fans Of Pre-Retina MacBook Pro? · · Score: 2

    Soldered in RAM is so NOT STANDARD. Before my current job, I worked for almost 6 years at a place where, if we could afford it, we got Lenovo Thinkpads. I could upgrade every single one's memory. Shoot, even my MBP (pre-Retina) can be upgraded. My old Acer laptop, Gateway, shoot even the old Toshiba one (1998?) could all have memory upgraded. Soldered in RAM may be standard in smart phones and tablets, but not laptops.

  4. Re:State should just tax it. on Amazon Botches Sales Tax, Overcharges NJ · · Score: 1

    They're no better - snobish, poor customer service, and the local CUs in this area have savings accounts whose rates are no better than a bank's. I ended up switching to an employee-owned bank. I get pretty good service, and my only complaint is they don't run their own data system, so when I make a deposit it's not instantly credited to my account, I have to wait anywhere from 1-8 hours before any of it shows up on the account, as they batch everything from each branch only twice a day.

  5. Re:153 GOP voted to default on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    Probably because it's HARD WORK to get a company up and running, and no, the government doesn't help us small business owners. We constantly face defeat every week. More laws, more taxes, more "benefits" we have to give employees, that takes money away from the business. Ask almost any small business owner how much TAKE HOME PAY they get - very often it's only enough to pay their bills. Any extra money needs to stay in the business to fund whatever crazy law comes down the pipe next. Yes, society may make it easier here than elsewhere (like Soviet Russia or Iran), but that doesn't mean it's not hard work. Society is so not organized to help startups at all, in fact it favors large businesses that can afford economies of scale as well as lobbyists.

  6. Re:Kind of a warning sign actually on How Deadbeat Facebook Friends and Using ALL-CAPS Can Lower Your Credit Score · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We are already there. Case in point - my wife and I. My family is poor, my mom's already had one bankruptcy, and I now make more than the rest of my family DOUBLED. My wife comes from a solid middle class family, both her mom and her dad have 50K credit cards (real Platinum-class cards back then). She and I married, moved in together, and after a few years started to get credit cards. I got a $300 credit line, she got 5K. My second card eventually got approved, $500. Her second? Over $4000. At this point she has $12k in credit and I have around $4. The only one with a job is me - when she got her cards she was working part-time in a book store making 8.50/hour, prior to that she was in college. I was making 50k a year as a computer programmer.

    I got saddled with my family's credit "worthiness" and she benefited from her family's. I *still* cannot get as much credit as she can, even though we've been married for 13 years, my name is on the mortgage, the car loans (one already paid off), and I'm still the only one with a job (she's a stay at home mom), but she keeps getting the card offers in the mail and I don't. So, yes, we are ALREADY in a class-style system for credit.

  7. Re:They must mean the IPv4 internet on Researchers Release Tool That Can Scan the Entire Internet In Under an Hour · · Score: 1

    No one's stupid enough to only run IPv6, but you will find plenty of dual stack servers - like Comcast's email servers (run dig comcast.net MX to see what I mean).

  8. Re:That's the beuaty of it on Medical Costs Bankrupt Patients; It's the Computer's Fault · · Score: 1

    And when the government decides not to pay for it? Ever heard of Medicare? Plenty of things it won't pay for, or won't pay market value for.

  9. Re:Inciting rebellion on Colorado Town Considers Drone-Hunting Licenses · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if you fire a gun at a government building, or landmark, and hit it, yeah, you're in trouble. Also, remember one of the cardinal rules of using guns - where will the bullet go AFTER it hits (or misses) the target? You shoot up, the bullet will eventually come down, possibly in a residential area (ok, it's Deer Trail, but still).

    While I like the sentiment, I think it sets a dangerous mindset in play.

  10. Re:Alert on Pre-Dawn Wireless Emergency Alert Wakes Up NYC · · Score: 1

    EAS is a one-way technology sent to everyone on the same tower, in a broadcast-type system. Get with the times. You didn't verify anything.

  11. Re:And what will happen if they do on DEF CON Advises Feds Not To Attend Conference · · Score: 1

    Indeed, and part of it is the enlisted troops swear an oath to obey their officers. Officers are assumed to have brains, but not enlistees or non-coms (except Warrant Officers). If enlisted guys thought they could be punished for breaking the law but following orders, they'd be thinking more about their orders and less about just getting them done. Let the officers do the thinking, that's the military way.

  12. Re:Why? on FCC Considering Proposal For Encrypted Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    Yeah but HIPAA doesn't have a "emergency safety of life" exemption. Sure, the FCC will give us a pass in an emergency, but Susie M. Bovine's lawyer won't and neither will the courts due to HIPAA. So hospitals are increasingly less and less interested in working with ARES groups, and during an emergency we won't be able to include them in coordination of events.

  13. Re:My reccomendation. on FCC Considering Proposal For Encrypted Ham Radio · · Score: 1

    Same was said about SSB ("I need a carrier to tune my AM Receiver!") and Morse Code ("But if you don't know morse code, how can you be a ham?"). You say the ham bands are not for private communication - I agree. But they are, per the FCC, for the public good, and if we can't legally transmit in the clear patient information (e.g. "Found another dead body, ID is Susan Mary Bovine", or "Another plague victim at our evac center, name is Susan Bovine - do not permit entry") then we are useless to hospitals. Already there are some that no longer participate with ARES because we cannot be HIPAA compliant and they don't want the headache or liability.

  14. Re:Respect Your Elders, Telstra! on Beer Fridge Caught Interfering With Cellular Network · · Score: 1

    Even if it's interfering with hams - Part 15 guys are the bottom of the rung. It really depends on what the nature of the interference is. A Florida man was fined because his well pump was interfering with local hams.

  15. Re:Oh brother on PETA Wants To Sue Anonymous HuffPo Commenters · · Score: 1

    No, the NRA wants everyone to HAVE THE RIGHT to bear arms. Totally different.

  16. Welcome to Mac! on Ubuntu Developing Its Own Package Format, Installer · · Score: 1

    So... catching up with Mac OSX? Sounds just like the .app "bundles" (really just zips as far as I can tell)

  17. Re: Stronger rival? on MySQL Founders Reunite To Form SkySQL · · Score: 1

    Did Postgres finally join every other database and implement cross-database queries? Call me when they join the new century. My experience with Postgres was that their management interfaces were toe-to-toe as bad as MySql's, no cross database queries, and things like sharding and master-slave had to be implemented in your software.

  18. Re:How do they test for this? on Ricin Tainted Letter Sent to Senator and Possibly the President · · Score: 1

    Or... allow anyone to email their senators without having to only be from their district (as there's a lot of committees, so by current rules only a few states get to determine energy policy for the whole frickin' US because they won't listen to anyone not from their district, but all bills have to go through committee and most don't make it out alive :( ).

  19. Re:it should be common knowledge on Boston Officials Did Not Shut Down Cell Network After Marathon Bombing · · Score: 3, Informative

    They weren't activated, and the ones that were in use during the race (for coordination) were all evacuated and followed those orders (http://cqnewsroom.blogspot.com/2013/04/boston-marathon-update-all-hams.html)

    You're more likely to find hams helping in inter-departmental capacity, where large-scale (this was so not large scale) events require coordination between multiple police and fire departments, hospitals, etc. This was a local situation where Boston Police (and to a point DHS) were involved, but no other agencies - they can usually handle talking on their own radios to themselves.

  20. Re:REBEL WITH A CAUSE on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Unwanted But Official Security Probes? · · Score: 1

    Lawsuit wouldn't happen - he lacks legal standing. Unless it's his PRIVATE network. If it's the company's network (which the article rather implys), then they company has standing, but not him (the employee).

  21. Re:Key words for me: independent practice on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Unwanted But Official Security Probes? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes - this! Just because they don't want to rock the boat, doesn't make it not a federal crime! And if they decide they don't want to follow up on the legal violation, I would tell me boss that the hospital may not be pentesting officially - it could be a corrupt IT (or even non-IT) person testing their clients w/o the hospital management's knowledge. If it's a major hospital (which most seem to be, these days), there are serious repercussions for doing that to the hospital employee. I would probably block the IP at the firewall and if they complain let them know that, per YOUR standard operating policy, the IP was perm-banned due to a large number of attacks coming from an unauthorized source. I do at my place of business (of course, I'm the CTO and a business partner to boot, so I can make those decisions).

  22. Re:Lesson: Licensing costs suck on PayPal To Replace VMware With OpenStack · · Score: 1

    Uh, not if your whole network is virtualized. For example, I don't have a single real physical server running a real OS, we run a virtualization platform and run our public and private servers on the boxes, and a VM running a firewall to manage access.

    As far as our laptops, those are in a whole 'nother office, with a separate firewall. But if I deploy something on amazon and want an OpenVPN connection back to other clusters of servers running in other data centers, yeah, I'm going to run pfSense on a VM.

  23. Re:I don't get it. on US CEO Says French Workers Have Three-Hour Work Day · · Score: 1

    I have to seriously disagree - I'm a part owner (largest minority share) in the startup I work at, I'm CTO, and I work my a** off. I get in at 9am, work through lunch much of the time, get "off" at 6pm, then go home, do dinner with the family, and half of my weeknights I go back to work. I work every other weekend. I have one intern, and I also play "Manager" of most of the company as well as my programming and other technical pursuits. I have to ensure salespeople are hitting their goals, working with them to set reasonable goals, and discussing with my other two partners when those goals aren't met. I am on the hook for a not insignificant percentage of the company's debt, so yeah, I'm gonna be pissed if people are slacking off and I'm paying out the nose for it.

  24. Re:Comment? No comment. on Google Store Sends User Information To App Developers · · Score: 1

    Developers have been aware of this since the beginning! We have had access to this the whole time, some developers just don't care (or are in places where they don't have to remit sales tax).

  25. Re:"Flaw"? on Google Store Sends User Information To App Developers · · Score: 1

    Unless, of course, they are in the US of A, in which case they HAVE to calculate and pay sales tax back to the government. A brick and mortar store doesn't have this problem because for physical stores it's calculated based on where the store is, so they don't need to know where you live. But internet "stores" are taxed based on common "nexuses" between the seller (the app developer, NOT the marketplace) and the buyer (you). And Google's tax system is horribly incorrect - in CO I can have up to 6 common nexuses (City of Aurora, Arapahoe County, RTD District, Arts district, Football Stadium district and the State of Colorado), and they have yet to correctly keep enough taxes (so it comes out of my pocket since they can't do it right).