Slashdot Mirror


User: Packet+Pusher

Packet+Pusher's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
47
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 47

  1. Re:Why it's (sort of) bad on 90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    While in the future there may be a way to cure whatever creates violent actions but it's simply a pipe dream at this stage. Humans are violent, they rage, they get hurt, angry, we react and act with the intent to win, sometimes at any cost. That's part of our core programming, even if in the future it's possible to suppress there would be ethical questions about if we should. Who will defend us from unpredicted future abuse if not people who are ready to take violent action for themselves or others?

    I feel cities are pretty safe because of a large amount of police in a fairly small area, I have no problem walking around NY City or any major City without a pistol. It's already illegal to do so some places and that's cool, whatever works for them.. The vast majority of the US however has no police force that could respond before you are dead even if you called 911 as soon as you suspected possible future threat. It's not that difficult to get to places in the US that you can't get a cell signal and even if you could call 911 and somehow managed to know where you were it'd be a half an hour to get a police officer there.

    Most gunshots near me are from hunting are from shooting ranges. No one would report a gunshot, not even a police officer unless they either saw something bad or it was happening too close to someone's house. I doubt I've ever even heard a gunshot related crime and doubt 99.9% of people living around me have either.

    What works for guns in cities does not work outside of cities, different places, different problems.

  2. As a gun lover, and privacy lover I can't see how this is a bad thing. Cities have gun regulations making it illegal to fire a firearm. If it is a justified self-defence act the person being attacked would like the police to come anyway. If it's an illegal firing then we want the police to respond.

    Make it so it's not possible to be used for any other use than dispatching armed officers/first responders even with a warrant or national security issue though without being put forward as vote by all of the voters. It's reasonable to allow surveillance uses of automated technology as long as the public interest and their privacy is protected.

  3. Lenovo is doing poorly in my enterprise workplace on Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design · · Score: 1

    We get an option of a couple high end lenovo's and the 15" macbook pro retina. The shear size and weight of the thinkpad with the 170 watt power supply is basically a non-starter for people who even only travel occasionally or just to meeting rooms and back.

    Lots of people in my office learning OSX now and not because they love apple or are expecting productivity gains. One guy still loves windows so much he only boots his macbook pro into Windows 7. The lenovo hardware just sucks by comparison.

  4. Why didn't the FBI run it? on Crowdsourcing Failed In Boston Bombing Aftermath · · Score: 1

    The failure was in leadership not effort. People wanted to help. The FBI can and should take that into account for major incidents. Provide some outlet for people to actively help in a useful and meaningful way.

    In light of the failures of facial recognition software identifying people wouldn't it have at least been useful to have an FBI website where people could tag people against facial images the FBI has determined to be unique?

  5. Time management on Ask Slashdot: Old Dogs vs. New Technology? · · Score: 1

    As a 40ish year old technical engineer I can tell you that I spend less time chasing ideal solutions and much less time believing marketing hype. You assume that your co-workers don't want to learn new technology but you've skipped the entire story about the requirements for the deployment.

    My advice to keep you employed is to find a mentor, one of them you get along with well and go to them with these questions. Hey Bill, can I ask why we chose to use XP for these PC's rather than something more current? For all you know it's a business policy that all PC's deployed this year use XP until the company cuts over to 7. Pissing off people high enough to fire you with off handed comments about technology is a good way to get fired but there is nothing wrong with people knowing that you are a fan of xyz technology.

    Successful non-technical businesses do not upgrade because it's a possibility, they upgrade when doing so makes them money or they can no longer buy support for what they already have. Your job as a tech or engineer is to learn the new stuff as you can so you are ready to support it when eventually they switch but don't bother recommending upgrading until you can justify the cost in savings. Dollars is what the real world is about, not just running the latest software.

    As far as the age thing goes, some people have a passion for technology, some people don't. As someone who does many technical interviews both right out of college and also people switching technologies I can tell you that age is a poor indication of how good of a engineer they turn out to be. Passion, interest count for more. There are college graduates that will obviously go far and some that will just sit around and facebook all day. Older engineers have the same differences.

    tl;dr: Been there, done that. Learn to come up with business cases for choosing new technology when appropriate and businesses will almost always follow the savings.

  6. Re:Context? on Google CEO Says Privacy Worries Are For Wrongdoers · · Score: 2, Informative

    In video it seems a lot more common sense and a lot less scandal.

    http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people

    Basically, Google is subject to the law of the land. Your searches are retained for some time and if you absolutely want to make sure that the information doesn't end up in government hands (via legal methods) then don't search for it.

    Simple and truthful advice that any tech savy person would give.

  7. Re:Surface don't matter on We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks? · · Score: 1

    On a high school level then yes, states generally chose text books that everyone in that grade uses. We don't pay for those books though, they are free so there is no real real need to come out with many many editions with small changes since the states are large customers who have good bargaining power. The only way that students would have to pay for these would be to replace ones that they destroyed.

    Once students enroll in University though they buy their own books, many of the teachers have "authored" their own books which they then require people to purchase to make more money for themselves. The teachers (authors) usually change the text often not to improve the quality of the book but to make sure you have to purchase a new one so they make money.

  8. Re:In France you get book loaned or rented on We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks? · · Score: 1

    Just for Fun, some numbers from Wikipedia

    France 260,558 sq mi
    US 3,794,066 sq mi

    1/14th size of the US in square miles

    US GDP 14,264,600
    France 2,865,737

    1/5th size of US in GDP

    US population 298,213,000
    France population 60,496,000

    1/5th the size of US in population

  9. Re:Nice answer Slashdotters. on DHCP Management Across a Diversified Network? · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'm sorry but some people are idiots and they shouldn't be working the job they have. If you can't find someone to hire who knows how to setup DHCP you are a cheap bastard. Hire a competent person and stop asking other people to tell you how to do your own job. I see a lot of this in the US right now and I'm non too happy to have to do other peoples jobs for them when I'm getting paid for it let alone when I'm not.

  10. Re:Yeah right on Calculating Password Policy Strength Vs. Cracking · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This whole new password every 90 days things blows monkey chunks too. All it does is make me have a half a dozen passwords or more likely variations on a few passwords that I never know which one belongs where and end up putting every valid password into all the wrong sites.

    If the password is strong to begin with then changing it every 90 days is stupid. Who's to say the password I change it to isn't next on the list to be guessed?

    Monitor systems for strange access, restrict my access to just what I need, let me know the last place and time I access sensitive systems from and leave my fracking password alone.

  11. Re:The Text on Twenty Years of Dijkstra's Cruelty · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Dijkstra wiki link said he owned a Mac for email and web browsing. How can they expect us to read the links if they aren't going to themselves.

  12. Re:configs are not written to flash, eh? on The Inside Story On the San Francisco Network Hijacking · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not to ruin a +5 interesting with facts but the article said he ended up saving the configs and disabling recovery.

    So basically the devices are fine, if they reboot they will come back online.

    However the only way to regain access is to factory reset which would wipe the configs.

    My expectation is that Cisco or someone else is just going to use a hardware device to read the configs out of nvram bypassing wipe config recovery.

    Baring that solution Cisco and a partner will likely just write a set of new configs and replace the devices one by one with new units leaving the original devices intact.

    Lots of options when you have the amount of experts and cash that Cisco does and you can bet Cisco is making sure to take care of this customer so people continue to buy the products

  13. Re:CACert on What Would It Take To Have Open CA Authorities? · · Score: 1

    Exactly.

    Basic encryption should be both easy to implement and use and be free of charge so that more people use it not less.

    The web needs an accepted encryption method that doesn't necessarily need to have someone verify the initial identity of the site similar to SSH.

    Connect to the webserver once, trust it is who it says it is the first time and then after that make sure the certificate for the website always matches and warn when it doesn't.

    SSL is imo one of the major shortcomings of the webs design.

  14. Re:When OSS Fails Itself on OpenBSD Project in Financial Danger · · Score: 1

    Linux and Mozilla would still exist without corperate backing. Linux in fact did quite well before IBM and RedHat came along and would do just fine without them again. You seem to be confused that OSS programers are for the most part paid for thier contributions when in fact they aren't.

  15. Re:When OSS Fails Itself on OpenBSD Project in Financial Danger · · Score: 1

    I'd say it's a high probility. If it's useful, people will contribute. How can you manage to read Slashdot and not realize that most OSS isn't funded at all and that which is funded doesn't cover the development man hours. They are asking for funding for a few hackathons, not to pay programmers to work on it.

  16. Re:When OSS Fails Itself on OpenBSD Project in Financial Danger · · Score: 1

    This isn't OSS failing, this is the OSS model succeeding. If they stop developing it due to cash problems someone else can take over. Had this been a commercial product cash problems could effectively take it off the market.

  17. Re:Simply ridiculous on Open-Source Router to Take on Cisco? · · Score: 1

    Open-source software will not match hardware routers or switches in the enterprise or SP markets in the short term (10+ years). The processors in Cisco's routers/switches are usually slow as heck, it's the hardware backplane and switching fabric that makes and breaks routers/switches.

    As some have pointed out you've been able to use software routers for decades ala Unix, NetWare, Windows etc etc yet people continue to use higher performance hardware solutions.

    In addition, Cisco has been releasing open source routers for years now ala the Linksys WRT54GL (the L is for Linux, formally called the WRT54G)

    So no imho, Cisco (Enterprise/SP) doesn't need to be exceptionally concerned about low-cost open source products anymore since even if it did become competitive with enterprise level features they already own a top company in the open source router market.

    Opinions expressed are strictly my own as a network engineer who has worked with Linux, Windows, NetWare & Cisco over the last 10 years and not necessarily those of Cisco Systems, Inc who signs my paychecks.

  18. Re:FYI: HDTV vs HD Ready on ATI Claims HDCP Then Covers Its Tracks · · Score: 1

    In the US I've found that HD ready means it will accept HD signals but doesn't have a built in HD tuner.

    You don't need a built in tuner though to use HD from say an xbox or a cable company box.

  19. Re:Sounds like on Britons Unconvinced on Evolution · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More like bad things the US has imported from your country. We asked for the seperation of Church and State for a reason your country being the prime example at the time.

  20. Re:Here is a challenge to BellSouth customers... on BellSouth Will Charge Providers For Performance · · Score: 1

    Make sure your mom & pop ISP isn't buying access from Bell South if you really want this to work.

  21. Re:It's not a technical question on Galileo Sends Its First Signals · · Score: 1

    Galileo won't be available to the EU any more then GPS in the unlikely event of a war. Do you honestly expect that the Americans wouldn't jam Galileo? Do you honestly think that the EU couldn't jam GPS? The GPS/Galileo technology isn't any good for fighting countries with a modern military.

  22. Re:The response by Google..... on Cross Site Scripting Discovered in Google · · Score: 1

    Setting a html content type on a web page is hardly a difficult fix

  23. Re:Borg on Algorithms Determine Mona Lisa's True Emotions · · Score: 1

    I doubt it. If he were alive today he'd more likely be helping to make the algorithms. He was more interested in how things worked then in painting.

  24. Re:Alternative headline: on Chimpanzees Beat out Children in Reasoning Test · · Score: 1

    Human kids more likely to be successful with McDonalds career path.

    "She taps on top of the stove with a stick a lot but my burger tastes just like the one I got yesterday!"

  25. Re:Four Weeks Notice on Computer Jobs -- How to Resign Professionally? · · Score: 1

    Good post but I'd never recommend accepting counter-offers to stay. If they valued you as an employee they would have given you a raise before you decided to leave.

    Secondly, let's say that you get a large raise and stay with the company and abandon your new job. What is to say that they really didn't only need you for two more months and then they will fire you? You aren't very loyal since you've threatened to leave before, you'll be the first on the chopping block.

    It's really never in your best interest to stay for more money unless you know the offer for new employment isn't contingent on you starting now like you are starting your own company or something to that effect.