Slashdot Mirror


User: djmurdoch

djmurdoch's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,077
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,077

  1. Re:A prime example on Liberal Saudi Web Forum Founder Sentenced To 600 Lashes and 7 Years In Prison · · Score: 2

    Bracing for being flamed all the way down to "-1, Troll" for daring to speak my mind, which ironically enough will prove my point for me better than I can prove it myself.

    As I'm writing this, you are sitting at "4, Insightful". So I guess that proves you are wrong. Ironic, isn't it?

  2. Re:Dear God on US Academy President Caught Embellishing Resume, Will Resign · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Didn't you read the summary? Her salary was $598,000 last year. Nobody with a salary that large gets any criminal penalty. (Actually, Jeffrey Skilling is a counterexample, but there are very few others.)

  3. Re:"Can't" vs. "Don't Want To" on NSA Can't Search Its Own Email · · Score: 1

    Now that you've revealed this hole in NSA security, they'll be after you. Those damn spies are going to sign up for their own domain names, and send their secrets to a different username @stolensecrets.com every time!

  4. Re:"Can't" vs. "Don't Want To" on NSA Can't Search Its Own Email · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Suppose that instead of "National Geographic", someone at the NSA wanted to search every email that was sent to Snowden's Gmail account from within the NSA.

    Do you think they would be able to do that? Not being able to do that sounds like a security problem.

  5. Re:Who? on MIT Attempts To Block Release of Documents In Aaron Swartz Case · · Score: 1

    Didn't the JSTOR servers crash because he put like 10x normal load on them?

    I don't remember that, and don't see it mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but if it's true, then JSTOR would have additional reason to sue him beyond the damage to the reputation that I already mentioned.

    The whole thing should have been a civil claim against Swartz by JSTOR for damages. He violated a contract with them, and it may have caused some harm to them.

    That part of it should not have led to criminal charges. The B&E probably was a criminal act, but it's not one that typically has a 35 year jail time penalty.

  6. Re:Who? on MIT Attempts To Block Release of Documents In Aaron Swartz Case · · Score: 1

    The B&E wasn't the basis of the threatened 35 year penalty, and in fact Wikipedia says those charges were dropped. The charges that remained were that he didn't follow the JSTOR rules. It's ridiculous that not supporting a monopoly is legally so much worse than breaking and entering.

  7. Re:Who? on MIT Attempts To Block Release of Documents In Aaron Swartz Case · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rare old books are a limited resource. If he took those, nobody else could use them. That would be stealing.

    Checking out too many books from the library means those books aren't available for other library patrons to check out. That's rude.

    What he did was weaker still. He violated a copyright license. JSTOR had negotiated monopoly rights to copy those articles, and he violated their rules. He probably didn't deprive anyone of anything, though he may have damaged JSTOR by making it harder for them to negotiate rights in the future.

  8. Re:Yes...strict...rolls eyes. on Strict New Anti-Spam Regulations In Canada · · Score: 1

    So yes, Canada implemented a useless regulation, again, yay.

    Don't cheer yet. In fact, though the anti-spam law was passed in April, 2011, but hasn't yet come into effect, because the regulations haven't been finished, so in fact *nothing* has been implemented.

    According to the government web site http://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/home, "A specific date for coming into force of the law will be set in the coming months." This lets us cheer twice: we can cheer when the date of the useless regulations is announced, and again when that date arrives (if it hasn't been pushed back...)

  9. Re:I was entirely sympathetic to Snowden on US Hacked Chinese University Network · · Score: 1
  10. Re:I was entirely sympathetic to Snowden on US Hacked Chinese University Network · · Score: 1

    I still hear people tell me English is the most widely spoken language. Anyone feel free to direct me to source stating so.

    You could try Wikipedia, specifically this page: http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speaker. It gives three estimates, and in one of them English is in the lead.

  11. Re:Forgotten on Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually) · · Score: 1

    Who said anything about cables?

    You did. You talked about quickly transferring a lot of energy from a charger to your battery.

    Swapping batteries is the only fast way to transfer that amount of energy quickly without doing it over wires, and that doesn't need any fancy new supercapacitors. I already do that with my camera: charge a battery over a few hours, then swap it with the existing one when I need more power.

  12. Re:Forgotten on Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually) · · Score: 1

    Transferring 70 watt-hours in 30 seconds is going to need high voltages and/or high currents, both of which are difficult to handle safely. You need heavy cables to carry 70 amps, and you need good insulation to handle 120 volts.

  13. Re:It doesn't matter and doesn't help. on NTSB Recommends Lower Drunk Driving Threshold Nationwide: 0.05 BAC · · Score: 1

    Beer is typically about 5% alcohol, wine is around 10-12%. Of course beer affects you less than the same amount of wine.

    I think the calculation for wine that you quote is just wrong. According to this calculator http://www.globalrph.com/bac.cgi, I'd need 4 hours to drink a bottle of wine and stay at 0.08, but I'm smaller than you. It says someone with your bodyweight would be at around 0.08 from a bottle of wine over 2 hours.

  14. Re:This... is a very good idea. on Honeywords — Honeypot Passwords · · Score: 2

    Yes, but even if you don't screw up the hashing, brute force attacks are possible. This approach discourages those, because an attacker won't know which of the broken passwords is safe to use without being immediately detected.

  15. Re:This... is a very good idea. on Honeywords — Honeypot Passwords · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's exactly intended to detect theft of your password database. If you salt in a known way, then it's inconvenient for the attacker, but it's still possible to brute force it. And if there's a bug in whatever hashing scheme you used, it might be easy.

    Wouldn't you like to know when someone has done that?

  16. Re:Drive conservatively! on Why US Mileage Ratings Are So Inaccurate · · Score: 1

    Counting out exact change is still faster than most debit cards.

    Get off my lawn, youngster.

  17. Re:Emergency Situations? on In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper · · Score: 1

    My comment was about the proposal to move everyone to wireless. As others have pointed out, regular wire lines generally work during power failures, because they are powered by the central station, which has battery backup or backup generators.

    It's possible that the new wireless modems will have battery backup, which will mean they'll last through short blackouts. I would be astounded if they could be powered by standard batteries that a homeowner would have on hand once their short-term charge is gone.

  18. Re:Your mileage may vary... on Why US Mileage Ratings Are So Inaccurate · · Score: 1

    Instead of using distance over usage (MPG), it would make more sense to use usage over distance.

    Most countries do that. For example, in Canada it's L/100km.

    And while you're at it, you should drop those "gallons" and "miles".

  19. Re:Emergency Situations? on In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That won't be much of a problem. In a disaster, there'll probably be a power failure, and nobody's phone will work at all. Oops, maybe that's not a feature, is it?

  20. Re:Our idiot overlords on Tweet From Hacked AP Account Causes High Freq. Traders To Drop DOW 150 Points · · Score: 1

    Nice selective quoting. Your line

    Someone who saw the precipitous drop and hit the panic button on their mutual fund (say, a retiree or soon-to-be retiree) would have lost, but good.

    pretty much mimics my unquoted line

    Only the people who sold in response to the tweet or the drop caused by it, lost money. Doing nothing didn't hurt anybody.

    Sure, responding to a drop like that by selling is a really bad idea. That only affected people who are reacting on a hair-trigger. Anyone who took 15 minutes to think about what to do wouldn't have lost anything, because by the time they tried to sell, the price would have been back up. (At that point they might have sold anyways, and lost the commission, but more likely they would have seen that a sale was unnecessary.)

    Like you, I have no sympathy for the gamblers and the high-frequency traders who might have been hurt by this, but it would not have hurt anyone who was sensibly invested.

  21. Re:Our idiot overlords on Tweet From Hacked AP Account Causes High Freq. Traders To Drop DOW 150 Points · · Score: 1

    Because a huge number of investors are people with retirement accounts, index funds, etc. They're not sitting at a computer watching the market because they're too busy working for a living. They have 401ks with market exposure because money gets 0% in the bank.

    If they didn't respond to the drop, they weren't affected. The market dropped and rose again within a few minutes.

    Only the people who sold in response to the tweet or the drop caused by it, lost money. Doing nothing didn't hurt anybody.

    (I guess some people might have stop loss orders that would have been triggered, but I'd say today illustrates why those are stupid.)

  22. Re:Our idiot overlords on Tweet From Hacked AP Account Causes High Freq. Traders To Drop DOW 150 Points · · Score: 2

    How did that do any damage to anyone other than idiots? If you had been smart, you'd have a buy order in place ready to buy if the market dipped enough. Then you would have made 1% today without even paying attention.

    Seems to me like this was an entirely deserved shot in the foot to anyone who suffered from it.

  23. Re:luckly we got the blogger to tell us the truth on Terrible Advice From a Great Scientist · · Score: 1

    Why would you believe what E.O. Wilson says? Sociobiology is crap like this: "People do X. That's because evolution makes people who do X more likely to reproduce."

    Essentially it gives the same explanation for every observation, without ever making any testable predictions. People like it, because it means that they don't need to take responsibility for how they act: after all, the great scientist says that evolution has selected for people who do that.

  24. Re:"good" on NSA Data Center Brings Concerns Over Security and Privacy and Jobs · · Score: 1

    It isn't a well paying job. It's a good job. And it's a paying job.

  25. Re:as i've said many times on BitCoin Value Collapses, Possibly Due To DDoS · · Score: 1

    I pointed out how to break this in my other post: police may access your private key in an unrelated investigation, and now they'll have proof that you were involved. Depending on the criminal activity you participated in, they may leave the investigation open for years.

    But there's another possibility. There are no proofs that the encryption methods being used are unbreakable, they are just thought to be unbreakable because nobody knows how to break them. Since you can't change signing algorithms (remember the record of the the transaction will last forever), if someone does figure out a way to break them, it means that the police will be able to tie your illegal transaction to all your other transactions, and then it's not too hard to figure out who you are.

    I'm not saying this is likely to happen soon, but do you really believe that SHA-256, etc. are going to remain secure forever?