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User: jotaeleemeese

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  1. "has just released plans for a competing product" on ChipSiP Smart Glass Specs Better Than Google Glass? · · Score: 1

    Oh please.

    Really?

    Next....

  2. One size surely doesn't fit all. on Office Space: TV Documentary Looks At the Dreadful Open Office · · Score: 2

    A French company I know about has different spaces for different functions.

    People doing clerical repetitive work sit in an open office area, but in small clusters of 2-3 seats so you don't feel like participating in a dystopian future.

    People that require to concentrate for long stretches of time have offices, shared between 2 people at most. In the middle of that area there are standing up long desks were these people can congregate with colleagues to discuss technical matters.

    There are lots of offices since most people are not doing repetitive work.

    They also have several meeting rooms of different sizes, tables of differing sizes where quick improvised meetings can be held, and the canteen is communal, airy with striking views of town centre.

    This is not a tech firm, it is an old school utilities company (oil, gas, that kind of stuff).

    A company that is not going to great lengths to understand the kind of working space its workforce needs is not helping itself.

  3. I read the documents. on Silent Circle, Lavabit Unite For 'Dark Mail' Encrypted Email Project · · Score: 2

    In p 31 he is asked to hand over the SSL and TLS keys for his service, which in practical terms it would allow the FBI to eavesdrop in the communications of *everybody* at will, this with all certainty would have meant a breach of contract with his users, lawsuits would have ensued. Would the FBI have paid for the damages?

    Most importantly Lavabit was willing to comply with the original request, which was limited to a single email account.

    You'll have to try harder if you want to dispel the positive aura around Ladar..

  4. Why DarkMail? on Silent Circle, Lavabit Unite For 'Dark Mail' Encrypted Email Project · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many outlets in the right wing media will have a field day with the name alone.

    If one is going to try to occupy the moral high ground the choice of language really matters: you are framing the debate by how you word every single relevant item related to a given project, and which item will have greater visibility than the very name of your project?

    By using such a name they are serving in a silver plate the opportunity to malicious, uninformed and naive commentators to badmouth whatever they come up with and that before having put forward a single detailed sentence about the proposal.

    DarkMail may sound cool, but from the start is eliciting all the wrong kind of associations, I am sure many parties in the field could be interested to join such an effort, but the DarkMail name alone may put some people off.

    The name really should be changed, these battles are difficult as it is, people shouldn't make it unnecessarily harder than it is going to be.

    Let me put an example, lets compare these 2 headlines:

    "Terrorists confess to using DarkMail"
    and
    "Terrorists confess to using PrivateMail"

    Look, at the end I know it is the same thing, but while a headline would push many to say "yeah, tell me something new" the other may elicit comments of the kind of "What? That is what I use to email my bank"

    I really think that name ought to go.

  5. Re:What problem are they solving? on Silent Circle, Lavabit Unite For 'Dark Mail' Encrypted Email Project · · Score: 1

    Ease of use.
    Consistent protocol for exchange of encrypted mail (which could be based on PGP).
    Key decentralization and anonymitation ....

    Using PGP is a PITA in most stand alone systems (Windows, OSX, Linux) relies in way too much trust as well (how do you know that PGP key is legit?), and it isn't implemented at all in big emailers (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft's whatever it is called this week, etc).

  6. I have a deal for you on Book Review: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon · · Score: 0

    You pay me the difference and I'll buy local.

    Oh wait you also have to pay for my time.

    And other costs (parking and/or transportation to name only the most obvious)

  7. Yeah right. on Book Review: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon · · Score: 1

    When something goes wrong Amazon really sorts things out.

    With an Asian based company with no local presence where I live? Good luck with that one.

  8. I never did the same problem 95 times (I may have done 95 different problems, applying the same principles).

    So writing a paper is also "busy work"?

    Under such limited perspective, pretty much any intellectual endeavour will just be "busy work".

    That is how people that didn't have the drive or will to go through higher education devalue the hard work of others. It's ok to vent frustration that way, but is fundamentally nonsense.

  9. ... if you had an education you would know that an anecdote is not enough substantiation for statistical analysis.

    After interviewing and working with hundreds of IT people I can assure you that your situation is the exception, not the norm.

    People that learned to put a bit of code together, disassembled a PC to change a RAM chip or do some other menial IT work are promoted to positions for which they are sorely lacking in skills.

    They don't care to document what they do (because they never undertook six months or a year of software engineering classes), they don't have the mathematics and physics background to tackle complex problems (because they missed calculus, classical physics and other knowledge imparted at degree level foundation courses) , they try to reinvent the wheel (because they didn't take courses about computational algorithms) and they keep programming undocumented spaghetti code (normally Perl) because they didn't receive formal education as programmers (structured and object oriented programming), or they don't know how to avoid the basic pitfalls when designing a database (because they didn't learn the mathematical theory behind database design).

    You tell people that they will be ok without a solid education, those of us that know this to be untrue will have less competition. Many thanks.

  10. Natural law.... on What Employee Lock-In Means At Facebook · · Score: 1

    Would dictate that the first arrivals own an empty (truly empty) land and can call themselves Native.

  11. Really? on What Employee Lock-In Means At Facebook · · Score: 1

    Says where exactly?

  12. well, that is the point. on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 2

    In the UK you don't need an insurance plan. Even if you are unemployed.

  13. Most obvious feature. on No Love From Ars For Samsung's New Smart Watch · · Score: 1

    I can't bloody believe the negativity about this kind of gadget, and in any case, it seems most people are missing the bleeding obvious.

    A smartwatch would be safely attached to your wrist.

    I am looking at my phone know and his screen is cracked in several places due to it falling to the floor (mercifully it is still working).

    When you compare the cost of replacing a screen vs the cost of having a smartwatch the gadget becomes a very attractive proposition.

    Minimizing the amount of times you need to manipulate a $500-600 small device that is just a fall away of becoming unusable will save you money in the long term.

  14. Sure, we are imagining things. on Sorm: Russia Intends To Monitor "All Communications" At Sochi Olympics · · Score: 1

    President-Prime Minister-President

    Opposition: in jail or in exile, some of them murdered in suspicious circumstances.

    But whatever you say buddy.

  15. Poor sod. on Sorm: Russia Intends To Monitor "All Communications" At Sochi Olympics · · Score: 1

    The people fumbling for power are different factions of the same powerful class.

    USians still believe those people represent them...

  16. Lets stop mail, phone calls. on US Intelligence Chief Defends Attempts To Break Tor · · Score: 1

    Lets burn books. magazines, and the evil contraptions that churn them out.

    Lets stop radio broadcasts.And TV. And telephone. And telegraph for good measure.

    And lets declare pigeon breeders criminals and destroy those terrorist animals, just in case.

    And ban fire, so smoke signals can't be used.

    Lets cut peoples tongues. And their hands so they can't signal. And gauge their eyes out (and block their ears).

    Because any means of communication could be at the disposal of terrorists.

    Don't you want to be safe or what?

  17. What about old fashioned intelligence gathering? on US Intelligence Chief Defends Attempts To Break Tor · · Score: 1

    In older times intelligence agencies would follow suspects, build a file, keep track of them, build a case against them.

    Now sometimes it seems to me like they want a contraption akin to Google to give them all what they need to do their job, sometimes one feels they don't want to get to work properly.

    if the chaps manning drones have a 9 to 5 job, hey, why they shouldn't?

    People should remember that Osama bin Laden's technology usage was minimal. Most likely meaningful communication happens face to face or via more conventional channels, only a complete moron would take the internet for anything secure now.

    Anybody with a bit of technical acumen knew that the net isn't a safe communication medium and that it is easily infiltrated, by undermining the very fundamental of (very imperfect) secure communications the NSA and its UK counterpart have put a clear marker in place: don't use the internet.

    Which is fine for actual terrorists, who already knew that, but is not fine for the rest of us, since now other kind of criminals very adept at exploiting the Internet have confirmation of how dumb the NSA is for undermining secure communications.

    We as a society will be owned by a cracker in ways we haven't imagined yet, and the seed of that failure will be the NSA's cavalier attitude regarding people's privacy and appeal to security by obscurity (no matter how sophisticated the obscurity is) by undermining standards that should be as safe as practically possible.

  18. What killed Novell was TCP/IP on How BlackBerry Blew It · · Score: 1

    I don't even remember the evil protocols they used, but when people familiar with TCP/IP started to become SysAdmins one of the first things they did was to install the drivers to allow TCP/IP networking.

  19. Great businesman? on How BlackBerry Blew It · · Score: 1

    He spent *years* in the wilderness after the first Apple Macs probed a financial disaster. He was removed by the board when it became obvious he was going to destroy his own company.

    Then he presided over the train reck that was NexT.

    He certainly had a vision, but golly, lets not canonize him.

  20. People should read Jobs biography on How BlackBerry Blew It · · Score: 1

    He was heavily involved in all kinds of New Age stuff, he clearly was aware about how cults work and I can't imagine that somebody with such obvious marketing acumen would not realise the advantages of building a following that would do stupid things in order to ingratiate themselves with the "cult" leadership,

    Every time I see a fanboi celebrating that he has been shafted at the tune of $500-$700 for buying something which could be sold online more efficiently I shake my head in disbelief.

    How low is the self-esteem of these people to need *that* to achieve a boost of their happiness?

  21. You have a business plan right there... on How BlackBerry Blew It · · Score: 1

    You have a business plan right there...

  22. You wish on The Circle Skewers Google, Facebook, Twitter · · Score: 1

    The only solid leads I got last time I was looking for a job and actually lead to interviews came all via Linkedin.

    The traditional job boards were pretty useless.

    You may not wish it so, but not having Linkedin is becoming a liability for people looking for a job.

  23. Re: H1B working as intended. on Justice Department Slaps IBM Over H-1B Hiring Practices · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's funny how USian slashdotters say "competitive salaries" with such abandon.

    Let's ignore for a moment that this visas mandate US level salaries, by definition if a company is forced to pay a higher than average salary it isn't "competitive".

    The market for talent is a global one, you should be grateful companies decide to stay in the US, where they pay taxes, instead of moving operations elsewhere, as many have done.

    Western salaries have been historically too high, a global economy will correct this, wether one likes it or not

  24. Re: Are you F*cking kidding me!!! on Justice Department Slaps IBM Over H-1B Hiring Practices · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nonsense. Those visas mandate proper salaries (note that the article says nothing about this point)

  25. Re:Feeble minds. on Apple Sells Nine Million iPhones Over Weekend · · Score: 1

    This help came "after 18 months of losses" ( http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ )

    And you can go and check Apple's share price, at just $3.3 on Xmas 97, it was well on its way to collapse, to claim that Apple didn't need the money (if anything at least as a moral buster) sounds frankly preposterous.