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User: Cytotoxic

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  1. Re:Everyone's Personal Email Server on After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email · · Score: 1

    RE: exchange, etc. If they are relying on the email server to do their document retention then they are doing it wrong. Heck, even if they were just dealing with legal issues like discovery requests that would be the wrong answer. Any organization that has to deal with litigation (pretty much everyone these days) needs an effective way to deal with email discovery request.

    I pulled PST copies from the server 15 years ago for discovery requests and spent weeks going through the files looking for relevant information. That was a very expensive proposition - even if you discount the risks of screwing up a discovery request. This is a problem that tech companies solved a long time ago. There have been many document retention / discovery solutions (both on premises and off-site services) for many, many years now.

    With the vast volume of document requests the IRS must get I do not believe that they could possibly be making do without a professional archiving/search solution. Please tell me that an organization of nearly 90,000 people that deals entirely in sensitive, private information wasn't relying on local OST files for document retention in 2010. Of course if they were/are, I suppose that explains a large chunk of those 90,000 employees.

  2. Re:umm on After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We are not talking about email in 1998. By the early 2000's even small to midsized businesses were having to face document retention policies and discovery requests. Whether by implementing in-house solutions like Vault or using outside services to implement email retention and discovery most companies had to have this in place for more than a decade. The IRS has nearly 90,000 employees. Their IT shop is no mom-and-pop operation.

    So to claim that all outside email was lost from 2010 is pretty shocking. The client computer mention might be an error, or it might be that an outside email service was being used. If the latter is the case, this should be a huge red flag.

  3. Re:Oh Well There's Your Problem on After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email · · Score: 1

    You were kidding, making a joke that they should get the emails from the NSA.

    Congressman Steve Stockman isn't. Well, not 100% kidding anyway.

    I doubt he's holding his breath.

  4. Re:Phone security frameworks are fundamentally fla on New Permission System Could Make Android Much Less Secure · · Score: 2

    This sounds very much like the way Microsoft tried to do security in Windows Vista. People did not react well to so many dialog boxes popping up.

    Maybe that is why google decided that most people would rather just not have to deal with permissions in any real and meaningful way.

  5. Re:I still don't see the difference... on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    ... between what Uber has set up, and simply giving somebody else a ride, but expecting to be compensated for one's time as well as gas. Is it illegal to carpool if the driver is profiting from it?

    Heck, before I got my driver's license, I would sometimes ask my friends who already had their license for a ride somewhere and pay them for their time and gasoline as well. Was that illegal?

    From what I understand, it is indeed illegal to do this in many locations. The rate used as the cutoff is usually the federal mileage write off rate. So if you charge more than 56 cents per mile, you are a criminal. Hurrah for regulation!

  6. Re:$300k is cheap on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    It also doesn't imply that the driver can drive or anything like that, because the medallion doesn't have to be held by the driver. The driver can be changed out under the medallion by a taxi company. That's why that medallion proves absolutely nothing to the prospective taxi customer, and offers them absolutely no protection.

    Well, to be fair, it does mean that the customer will be paying too much for that cab ride.

  7. Re:scabs suck. next you'll skip paying bribes. on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    Uber works on a fixed price model: I'll give you a ride from X to Y for this amount.

    You'd think they could work out something with the government about meters in a case where meters are totally irrelevant.

  8. Re:What he's really saying is on Why You Shouldn't Use Spreadsheets For Important Work · · Score: 1

    I would support this approach. Excel is great for business users to prototype calculations and play around with data. When it is time to put what they have learned into practice, ship it off to software engineers and let them turn it into a more stable product for use by the less sophisticated user.

    Of course, reverse engineering a complicated excel workbook can be a royal pain in the rear. This is where you learn just how devilish a tool excel can be, with hidden rounding and other obscure effects.

  9. Re:2 basic issues on Kids With Wheels: Should the Unlicensed Be Allowed To 'Drive' Autonomous Cars? · · Score: 1

    Because until every vehicle is autonomous, there will still be a need to understand the handwaving signals from some guy standing in the middle of the road - he might be a flag man from a construction blockage or maybe just some guy helping out at an accident scene. In any event, with no standardization and no training for the random dude in the street it would be very difficult for a car-bot to understand every possible permutation.

  10. Re:Excellent on Registry Hack Enables Continued Updates For Windows XP · · Score: 2

    And if you remember watching the first moon landing.....

  11. Re:Cool. on Quad Lasers Deliver Fast, Earth-Based Internet To the Moon · · Score: 1

    We'll get to watch the colonists in HD video as they die of radiation from a coronal mass ejection.

    I am deeply skeptical of a moon colony. I really don't think it will ever happen.

    You are probably right.... for very small values of "ever". But given that there's probably at least a half-billion years before the sun begins to cook our part of the solar system, there's plenty of time to beat "never".

  12. Re:To the Moon, eh? on Quad Lasers Deliver Fast, Earth-Based Internet To the Moon · · Score: 1

    But which of those are available on the moon? Certainly not He3. The elements that the moon are much richer in than Earth seems to be those Earth still has plenty of, like Iron, Calcium, Magnesium and Titanium.

    From the Wikipedia article on Helium-3:

    It is rare on Earth, and it is sought for use in nuclear fusion research. The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon (embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years)

    They even have a whole section about mining the moon for He-3

  13. Re:Those that forget history are doomed to repeat on EU Court Backs 'Right To Be Forgotten' · · Score: 1

    Which is funny because the case was decided about a lawyer who wanted to expunge results pointing to news articles about court proceedings involving his personal life and finances. You know, public records that the government maintains and provides to the public.

    Truly the court has a dizzying intellect.....

  14. Re:Counterproductive on EU Court Backs 'Right To Be Forgotten' · · Score: 1

    I think his point was valid. Sure, Google may end up having to comply. And their results will become less reliable because of it.

    So what happens next? If the data is valuable, and the results from Google (and other public sites) becomes unreliable, how long before Experian or some other data aggregator begins selling their own version of uncorrupted search results and personal data that you don't get to see and edit?

    Equally valid, if this really does become an issue with the big search engines, how long before everybody starts using the new startup from Indonesia or the Phillipines?

  15. Re:Why nefarious? on EU Court Backs 'Right To Be Forgotten' · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your example is pretty much the case that came before the court. Some lawyer went through a messy divorce and it and all the financial fallout hit the news. Since it was the most newsworthy thing he'd ever done, it was the topic of the search results on his name even years later. The articles are still live at the newspaper sites. The court isn't ordering them to take them down. They are just saying that Google can't point to the articles.

    This is very bizarre. I suppose they see the book burning metaphor, so they won't force the library to take the book off the shelf and burn it. But they will force the library to remove it from the card catalog.

    I understand not wanting some upskirt picture from when you were 22 years old to be the first thing people see about you when you are in your 40's and your kids are in middle school, but the EU's solution is terrible.

    Charles Manson might be pretty tired of being tied to events of 40 years ago. So might Roman Polanski. That doesn't mean the government should be able to force a company like Google to corrupt their search results.

  16. Re:Except, government ISN'T government on To Save the Internet We Need To Own the Means of Distribution · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll add to your sentiments by pointing out that at the local level business is often steered to the old boys' network. The Mayor's golf buddy gets the contract for the line maintenance, the councilman's brother-in-law gets the billing contract, etc. And the new guy in town who has a great business that competes with them has loads of trouble with the permitting process and the zoning board.

    At every level, power corrupts. Even if most folks are basically good people trying to do the right thing, the constant pressure of vested interests trying to use that power to their benefit tends to move things in an unfair direction.

    I tried to reform some of the IT processes in our local government - it was highly fragmented and inefficient - and got no interest at all. I finally talked to someone who had a little insight into the problem - he pointed out just how many different businesses had contracts with all these little agencies and offices. So if you try to upset that apple cart you'll have all of those small business owners complaining to their councilmen about how they are being negatively affected. Nobody is agitating on the other side at all. (well, except me). So the chance of fixing the problem is pretty much exactly zero.

  17. Re:Forget Cars! on Google Using Self-Driving Car Data To Make Cars Smarter · · Score: 1

    It looks like there are roughly 1,000 trucks hijacked each year in the US, representing some half a billion dollars in stolen goods. I don't know if that counts as an epidemic or not. Google tells me that about 100 people die each year from the drug ecstasy. Slate tells me that 297 people have been killed in school shootings since 1980 - or roughly 10 per year. Those topics are all over CNN. State officials are eager to do something! about them. So a thousand could be a pretty big number.

    The NHTSA seems to think a couple of million people are injured in car crashes each year - a steadily declining but very large number. There are nearly 4 million home burglaries each year in the US. Which makes 1,000 hijacked trucks sound like small potatoes.

    I suppose a truck that doesn't have to stop so the driver can rest is probably less likely to get hijacked, since that seems to be a recurring theme in the hijacking stories.

  18. Re:What DevOps movement? on How 'DevOps' Is Killing the Developer · · Score: 1

    I was going to say something similar. There are a lot of people who don't want to be kept in a box, doing only one thing all day. I used to hire those people specifically - I found it worked well for our culture. Plus, I personally get bored with too much of the same thing. I love coming up with a cool SQL trick that cuts the cost of a query by 99%. It is fun to watch something complete in 2 seconds that was taking 15 minutes before. But I wouldn't want to do that all day, every day year after year......

    Different strokes for different folks. Not every developer wants to be pigeon-holed into coding web-server middleware all day, every day.

  19. Re:And the attempt to duplicate their efforts resu on Commenters To Dropbox CEO: Houston, We Have a Problem · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What i dont like is late comers to companies that get IPO, and then these get millions, ahead of the hardworking coders who started there from day 0.

    I dont mind her there, but if the company IPOs for billions, she should not get a cent, as I cannot see anything she can contribute that would add to the book value or earnings values. /*

    Actually, when IPO time rolls around people with "names" can add a great deal to the IPO. I can certainly believe that a former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor might have contributions to make on the "privacy and security" front, which is the focal point of the criticism. That aside, the IPO's that I have been involved in always included bringing in people with the right resume in high level posts at the last minute. That way the big institutional investors who are looking in to the company can say "Aha, I see they have big name official on the board, and look, they have the former CIO from Transamerica. They have all the right people in place to move the company forward!" And yes, it pissed me off that someone who had nothing to do with building the company made more than I did (by a couple of orders of magnitude) on the IPO. But Mr. Analyst working for the big investment group doesn't want to hear "we have this great guy who is super-bright and has been working 100 hours a week since the beginning as CIO".

    But that is irrelevant to the major shareholders - they are simply asking themselves "can we make 30% more if we bring in this handful of people for the IPO?" If they can make an extra $200 million by spending 20 million, they'll do it every time. Once the VC guys get involved, loyalty kinda flies out the window.

    So I guess the moral of the story is, make sure you get paid on the initial investments, because that might be the last bite of the apple you get.

  20. Re:Not the first time this has happened on Scientists/Actress Say They Were 'Tricked' Into Geocentric Universe Movie · · Score: 1

    He was using Jews as an excuse for NASA covering up the "truth".

    ....

    This man should be ignored.

    Even more so due to NASA's early leadership comprised mostly of former Nazi SS officers. It takes a particularly convoluted suite of conspiracy theorist logic to propose that a bunch of Nazi scientists are under the command and control of the global Jewish conspiracy.

  21. Re:This is one thing I love about it on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 2

    Shifting is a lot of fun, even in a little economy car. Even more so in a nice sports car.

    Having driven a Tesla Roadster.... the "instant-on" acceleration of the Tesla is even more fun. It makes you giggle like a little kid. The acceleration is so instantaneous that it is startling the first time.

    To go with it there is also a weird bit of instant-off deceleration to contend with as well, at least in the Roadster. Simply lifting your foot results in a fairly hard braking force from the electric engine. You adjust pretty quickly to leaving your foot on the accelerator to maintain speed or coast, but that first ride really emphasizes the massively different level of torque and power that you get from an electric like the Tesla Roadster.

  22. Re:Lies on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like this comment. I'm reminded of a recent interview that Neil Degrasse-Tyson did with the director of several big blockbusters. Neil called him out on a shot where there was a big lightning storm on the horizon and the sound of the thunder was coincident with the lightning in the distance. The director laughed and said he originally cut it with the real sound and the long delay was off-putting, despite being accurate. Apparently the accurate sound pulled you right out of the movie (because the delay was like 7-8 seconds).

    Interesting that "real" sometimes doesn't help tell the story, and it can even hinder it.

  23. Re:Top Gear was worse. on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    The point about the dealerships is that several states have protectionist laws that prohibit direct sales from an auto manufacturer. They require a separately owned dealership.

    Tesla does not sell through separate dealers. They only do direct sales.

  24. Re:Top Gear was worse. on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 4, Funny

    It was a complete puff piece, but I did really like one voiceover quote:

    "In the history of space exploration, four entities have sent a capsule into orbit and successfully recovered it. Russia, the United States, China and Elon Musk."

    If I was Elon, I'd have that on a continuous loop somewhere.

  25. Re:What party was that again... on Anti-Game-Violence Legislator Arrested, Faces Gun Trafficking Charges · · Score: 1

    Artor3 has you there. I was going to post along the same lines, but I think that pretty much covers it. Everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias and a myriad of other logical fallacies that support our personal world view. If you think you are exempt, that's just because your own biases are particularly strong.