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User: raymorris

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  1. Yeah, helps to find that one-in-a-million on Marriages Spawned From Online Dating As Satisfying As From Traditional Dating · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was looking for a special lady, a one-in-a-million. (Okay, so maybe one in ten thousand.). It's REALLY hard to meet and sift through a thousand women just meeting people around town. I tried, and I did have brief conversations with 60-120 or so, and had lunch with 20-30. Online, I had more available women to see, with tools to narrow it down before starting up a conversation.

    I married my one-in-a-million five years ago.

    (My first marriage taught me that choosing from the five or ten available women in my social circle was a REALLY bad idea.)

  2. Funny, my first thought b4 reading, sell the best on Ask Slashdot: With Grants Drying Up, How Is a Tech Non-Profit To Survive? · · Score: 1

    It's kind of funny - before clicking the link to even see what kind of non-profit it is, I thought of a non-profit know that collects old computers, images them, and sells them. That was before I read that the link had anything to do with that. Basic desktops really haven't advanced that much in the last few years, so there are a lot of "old" computers being given away or sold for garage sale prices that are perfectly usable. A sizeable portion of the time, people are replacing computers and the only thing "wrong" with them is a bunch of malware.

    So you want to fund giving away refurbished computers? Sell the best ones. Selling one for $250 will fund reimaging / reconfiguring 10 others. Sell one for $125, that will probably cover your costs of five giveaways.

  3. And utter lack of any goal, laziness on Disposable VPN: Tor Gateways With EC2 Free Tiers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "That is where America's occupy movement failed."

    That, and the fact that they had no goal, nothing specific they were trying to accomplish other than to complain that some people (ie college grads) earn more than others (mostly dropouts and liberal arts majors). Also, their complete laziness - refusal to DO anything other than sit in a park smoking weed.

    So yeah, Turks, don't fall into those two traps. Find an actual solution to advocate for, then do something about it. It seems that getting high and whining doesn't improve your life effectively.

  4. 90% of it is troubleshooting and communication ski on Ask Slashdot: What Is the Future of Old Copper Pair Technology? · · Score: 1

    90% of tech support is troubleshooting skills and communication with the customer. Learning to apply those same skills to a different technology isn't that big of a deal.

    When interviewing for tech people, I ask how they would go about fixing something - anything. I can train a good car mechanic to fix networks a lot easier than I can train someone who knows all about networking but nothing about troubleshooting.

  5. So right 11 times, then full nutjob on Activist Admits To Bugging US Senate Minority Leader · · Score: 1

    You wete do right on 1-11, then out comes the GIANT tinfoil hat for #12.

  6. Damn you autocorrect on Activist Admits To Bugging US Senate Minority Leader · · Score: 1

    That post got mangled.

    While in his senate office, you mean? Assuming that were true, it wouldn't matter because this was a campaign meeting, at a private office, not his senate office. Personally, I think leaders should be able to have frank, honest discussions with advisors. I know that JFK's private consultations with his attorney general (and brother) helped avoid World War 3. For the consultations to be forthright, that means they aren't public, and therefore carefully worded for political purposes.

  7. His campaign office doesn't belong to the PEOPLE on Activist Admits To Bugging US Senate Minority Leader · · Score: 2

    While in his semester office, you mean? Assuming that were true, it elephant matter nectar this was a campaign meeting, at a private office, not his senate office. Personally, I think leaders should be able to have frank, honest discussions with advisors. I know that JFK's private consultations with his attorney general (and brother) helped avoid World War 3. For the consultations to be forthright, that means those discussions aren't public.

  8. Easy peasy, since the beginning on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: 1

    That's easy on Linux. Much easier than on Windows because everything is just a file, there's no registry or anything like that, and no copy protection. In some of the very first Linix distros, that's pretty much how the installer worked - it treasured a "backup" of a default system. Just copy the files and install the bootloader, basically.

    I created a system that backs up your Linux system to a virtual machine, so the backup can be booted directy, or be restored by copying it to a hard drive. Even cooler, Linux can act as an external drive enclosure, so the empty machine can be plugged into the backup and booted from the backup file directly, wirh the hardware believing it's booting from a local drive...

  9. He only has to give them a copy, not the key on Judge Orders Child Porn Suspect To Decrypt His Hard Drives · · Score: 1


    can't accept that as valid constitutionally. To me it looks horribly corrupt and subject to tremendous potentiality for abuse. (If I have to give you the evidence, then I don't have it to prove my innocence. If I give you access to my signing key, then you can forge messages and claim they came from me. etc.)
    </quote>

    The law handles both concerns. He was ordered to provide a decypted copy, so he still has (or can get) a copy and he doesn't give up the secret key. That's how it's normally handled with documentary evidence - both sides get a copy.

    In SOME CP cases (not this one), after seeing the evidence and seeing that it really is CP, a judge will rule that the defense only gets access to the CP evidence, they don't get to keep a copy. In the cases I'm familiar with, that decision has been made reasonably - when the photos or videos MIGHT be underage, when the defense wants to contest that, they've gotten a copy. When it's been unquestionably CP, the perv was not allowed to keep a copy to enjoy.

    I've seen other injustices with regard to CP cases, but the issues you're raised have been addressed pretty well.

  10. Updates, backups, and Flash on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: 3, Funny

    Assuming you don't do silly things like run completely unknown commands, you're pretty safe. JavaScript and Flash is cross-platform, though. I've seen one Linux system where their Yahoo email account was compromised, probably by malicious JavaScript. It might have been phishing, though, or a combination. The main things I do for security are - run most updates provided by the distro and browser, have backups, don't run services I don't use, and I have a separate browser for Flash and Java. Most Flash is ads or pointless eyecandy so I don't miss not having Flash in my daily browser. Even YouTube doesn't need Flash these days, so I open the Flash browser maybe once per month, if that.

    TEEX.com has some free online cybersecurity courses that may have good reminders for your and your family members regarding safe browsing habits and simple security practices.

  11. You can't lock the evidence in a safe when you tur on Judge Orders Child Porn Suspect To Decrypt His Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    I do see your point. On the other hand, if I have some evidence of your innocence locked in a safe and I'm ordered to turn it over, I have to unlock the safe and hand you the evidence. I can't just hand you the safe and say "good luck".

    More accurately, if it's good encryption, it would be more like encasing the paper evidence in concrete, then handing you the block of concrete.

    There are two sides to this question. The fact that the judge ruled he did NOT have to decrypt it, then when the facts changed ruled the other way means that the judge is considering both sides.

  12. Learning works better than whining on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 1

    Spending 30-60 minutes per day learning so you become competent yourself works a lot better then whining about people knowing that you're not very good yet. So does finding where your talent lies, if programing isn't something you can learn to do well.

    I am in process of learning myself. I would like to be a competent kernel programer and competent to code on world class projects like Apache. So far, I'm a competent business applications programmer.

  13. If I could mod an AC ... on Moore's Law Fails At NAND Flash Node · · Score: 1

    Two internets for you, and for GP

  14. A plan (not wish) gets you half way there on Moore's Law Fails At NAND Flash Node · · Score: 1

    Do you actually have a plan to do that? A plan, as opposed to a nebulous wish? I had such a plan. My plan was 15% increase per month for 12 months. I then followed that plan, thereby increasing my income by 15% per month.

    On the other hand, if Intel planned to increase by 20% every 18 months, that would practically guarantee they wouldn't double in that time period. I'm guessing your plan for the next 18 months, to the extent that you have one, is to leave your income exactly the same as it is today. Is that more accurate?

  15. You can be forced to give up EVIDENCE, not testimo on Judge Orders Child Porn Suspect To Decrypt His Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    "If am coerced into giving you evidence ..."
    That's the legal distinction. You CAN be forced to hand over evidence. You can't be forced to testify. If the cops have evidence that something I have is evidence of a crime, they can get a court order and take possession of that evidence.

    The current ruling is that the files are evidence, so he can be forced to hand them over. Before any drive was decrypted, it hadn't been proven that the he COULD decrypt the drives. Maybe he bought them used and the previous owner encrypted them. The judge's earlier ruling was that he couldn't be forced to SAY "I can decrypt those files (they are mine). Giving up the key would be equalivent to testifying that the files were his. That would have been testimony and therefore protected under the fifth amendment.

      Now that the judge is satisfied it's proven that the encrypted drives ARE his, the big question is "what is on the drive" and that's a question of evidence, not testimony. As evidence, it's not protected by the fifth amendment protection against TESTIFYING against useful.

  16. Definition of mediocre, competent IS much better on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 1

    > The whole industry is plagued by this idea that ... the people who do the bulk of the grunt work are mediocre

    Which is true by definition:

    me&#183;di&#183;o&#183;cre [mee-dee-oh-ker]
    adjective
    1. of only ordinary or moderate quality; n

    Indeed, the bulk of the grunts are "of only ordinary or moderate quality". "The bulk of" and "ordinary" mean pretty much the same thing, don't they?

    The mediocre generally know enough to do the task, badly. They screw things up pretty badly by making it "work" just enough so that on the surface, it appears to work most of the time. If your car crashed once a week, that would be the worst car ever made. An operating system that crashed once a week became the market leader, and by a large margin.

    The quality of "professional" software shows us that the ordinary, average (mediocre) developer is, unfortunately, not quite competent. There's a huge productivity difference between mediocre developers and competent developers, much greater than the difference in their salary cost. That's where "The whole industry is plagued by this idea that only the superstars are any good" comes from. What you call "superstars" are those fully competent people who make stuff that actually works, reliably and robustly. Because they cost only 20% more than the mediocre ones, only those people are a good hire. Hiring a mediocre person for 20% less is almost always a bad decision.

  17. Where do you work that bad code isn't accepted? on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 1

    So where you work, bad code that appears to work isn't accepted? Where is that? Are you hiring?

    I thought I worked at such a company once, where I was the one deciding what was accepted and what was not (as well as doing most of the software architecture).
    Over time, I had to work on code I'd approved or even written 5-10 years before. I'd learned enough then to know that what I once thought was good was actually pretty awful.

    That said, while all of the COMPANIES I know produce some pretty gnarly code, I've worked on a couple of open source projects which have fairly high standards.
    The Linux kernel, of course (my names is in changelog exactly ONCE), the Apache web server, and parts of Moodle. It takes three rewrites to get accepted by one of the Moodle maintainers.

  18. Yes, "have to" is different from "most efficient" on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 1

    > Personally a big red flag for me is when a dev says "I have to completely rewrite this persons code."
    > Not saying it doesn't happen, but a decent developer should be able to deal with other peoples work.

    Indeed there is a big difference between "I have to" (because I don't understand the pattern or idioms) versus "It would be best to rewrite" (because the architecture or data structures are wrong).

    Atzanteol mentioned another common case "if the original is confusing or buggy" and in that case a refactor is likely the best option.
    I've done major refactoring of my predecessor's code of the type where I didn't attempt to understand the code confusing, buggy code until much of the refactoring was done. Just by mechanically breaking up the 200-line functions with variables like $bob and $fred into 15-line functions with variables named $radius and $scrollheight, the code was made much less confusing and the solutions to bugs were then obvious. That mechanical refactoring process ensured that it continued to work the same way, though, so I wasn't rewriting any logic, only reorganizing it to be more maintainable.

  19. Re:VLANs, RH Virtualization Security manual, virt- on Ask Slashdot: Safe Learning Environment For VMs? · · Score: 1

    libvirt, as used by CentOS, also has virtual switches. The libvirt virtual switches can do IP masquerading NAT, routing mode, or complete isolation mode.
    http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/VirtualNetworking

  20. Learning to do more in 8 than most do in 16? on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 2

    Some would say that if you spend 30-60 minutes per day actively learning, that's the equalivent useful knowledge of adding a new postdoc degree every few years. I could see such a person easily producing twice as much value per hour.

    How many times have you had to completely rewrite someone else's code, or spent so much time on it that you might as have rewritten it? The "typical" developer creates enough future problems by poorly thought out systems that their net productivity approaches zero. It's not that hard to be twice as productive as the guy whose code only survives a year or two. Just learn to build systems that a) actually work b) for at least four years between major overhauls.

  21. VLANs, RH Virtualization Security manual, virt-man on Ask Slashdot: Safe Learning Environment For VMs? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thanks for going the extra mile with your students.

    As AC said, a separate LAN or VLAN, or multiple separate LANs/VLANs handles most of what's posted below. For example, a rogue DHCP server would only be visible on that VLAN.

    Red Hat has a Virtualization Security section in their manual:
    https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Virtualization_Administration_Guide/chap-Virtualization-Security_for_virtualization.html

    CentOS/RHEL includes comprehensive support for KVM with virt-manager. While VirtualBox et al are fine for running one or two virtual machines on your desktop, for many VMs, with new ones created and removed each semester, the enterprise level support of KVM built into the distro is more appropriate. That support includes creating VLANs within the same management interface, for example, and integrates with the built in storage stack administration tools. Again, VirtualBox may be simpler to set up for one or to two machines, so I'm not saying it's not good - it's just not the best tool in this particular scenario. In this type of scenario, the KVM / virt-manager / virsh stack that RH baked in is probably a better match to the needs.

  22. Re:A similar solution works very well, no GPS on How To Hack Twitter's Two-Factor Authentication · · Score: 2

    There are at least two other ways of getting location data leveraging standard protocols (no special software needed on the client.

    > There's GPS and location by wif works well for desktops. IP address is
    > the obvious solution. I believe google us also fingerprinting. IP address and fingerprinting
    > would be just as effective without the location information.

    IP without location isn't nearly as effective, especially with mobiles, but also with desktops. IPs change.
    When you power cycle your cable modem, you'll likely get a different IP address. We can still tell you're in the correct neighborhood, so it probably really is you.

    > No need to outsource this kind of work to a company unless they have some special proprietary algorithm that's better than what you can cook up in-house.

    it's easy to get this wrong. We've specialized in this for 15 years and still continue to make improvements and corrections. Your error above thinking that location doesn't add anything beyond IP address is an example that there is more to it than you might think. There are at least three different actions you need to take for different types of proxies. We've analyzed hundreds of millions of login attempts and still we don't have it down pat, there's more work to do.

  23. A similar solution works very well, no GPS on How To Hack Twitter's Two-Factor Authentication · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not familiar with Toopher specifically, but the general idea works quite well. We've been doing it for fifteen years.
    I always post on Slashdot using a small Android phone in Bryan, TX, and my ISP is Suddenlink. I've posted on Slashdot hundreds, if not thousands of times. 20 minutes after I make this post from here in Bryan, if someone claiming to me tries to log in using an iphone in Canada, that's guaranteed to be bogus. That's a simple, obvious, and common example.

    Now take that same general idea and apply fifteen years of R&D and real world experience. You can catch most unauthorized login attempts. If you do any late night surfing, on sites like GirlsGoneWild.com, you may have noticed half of those sites say "protected by Strongbox". They do that because it works.

  24. I am sad for you on Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good? · · Score: 1

    > Ultimately, your goal is to get paid. If you don't do what the customer wants, you have failed to achieve your goal.

    If your ultimate goal in life is to get paid, I'm sad for you. What a pointless, meaningless existence that must be.

    Perhaps you're saying that's your ultimate goal AT WORK. The time you spend working is most of your waking hours, so still, that makes me sad for you.
    You might get a lot from reading Viktor Frankl's 184 page book "Man's Search for Meaning".

  25. Re:That switch only moves one way? on Judges Debate Patents and If New Software Makes a Computer a "New Machine" · · Score: 1

    > There can be, be definition, no new "inventions".

    So said Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office, in 1899.
    Since then, we've invented airplanes, computers, and a million other things. Al Gore even invented the internet.

    > Let me ask you: does it makes a new invention if the time machine would be implemented only in software?

    Is either a new invention, or not. Whether it's rendered into a few transistors (a circuit) or many transistors (a Flash memory) doesn't make any difference as to whether or not the invention is new.

    > The general purpose computer is already invented. So be definition, you can't patent that.

    Metal was invented thousands of years ago. That doesn't mean the internal combustion engine wasn't a new invention in 1807, just because it's a configuration of metal.