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User: smutt

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Comments · 105

  1. KeePassX on LastPass Reporting a Security Breach, Including Authentication Hashes and Salts · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd like to take this time to recommend an excellent open source project called KeePassX.

    https://www.keepassx.org/

    It's a password vault application. Remember local applications, they run on your computer, that you physically have to be at to use(usually).

  2. Want more details on Anonymous Accused of Running a Botnet Using Thousands of Hacked Home Routers · · Score: 1

    Does anyone have a better link with more information on this story?

  3. Some problems with this conclusion on Experiment Shows People Exposed To East German Socialism Cheat More · · Score: 1

    The study's abstract:
    "By running an experiment among Germans collecting their passports or ID cards in the citizen centers of Berlin, we find that individuals with an East German family background cheat significantly more on an abstract task than those with a West German family background. The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task. While it was recently argued that markets decay morals (Falk and Szech, 2013), we provide evidence that other political and economic regimes such as socialism might have an even more detrimental effect on individuals’ behavior.

    1) 'socialism' is a loaded word here. There were other differences between east and west Germany than simply the economic system. Any reading of history that doesn't acknowledge that is disingenuous.

    2) "family background" does not equate to exposure to an economic system. Are you telling me that if I have children after having lived under a specific economic regime I'll have somehow infected them with specific values derived from that system? That's crazy!

    3) This study was done by a group of business professors. We can't expect business proferssors to do anything but advocate for free markets, it's something of their jobs to be advocates for it.

    In all this study looks like a complete waste that doesn't contribute anything to our understanding of values and economics. An area that I'm actually interested in, and like to read papers on occasionally.

  4. DNSSEC Validation on OpenWRT 14.07 RC1 Supports Native IPv6, Procd Init System · · Score: 1

    I think it's also worth mentioning that this release supports DNSSEC validation. That's a bigger deal than the IPv6 support in my book, especially since it already supported IPv6 it just required knowledge to configure.

  5. Why should I be concerned? on New Federal Database Will Track Americans' Credit Ratings, Other Financial Info · · Score: 1

    Seriously, that's an honest question. Please tell me what I am supposed to be concerned about here.

    The feds can have my SSN, they gave it to me after all. Also, I'm much more concerned with private agencies having access to my credit rating than the feds. And private agencies have been messing up/with my credit rating for decades. I don't really see what's new. So I'm asking, what's the problem here?

  6. Stupid Argument on Bug Bounties Don't Help If Bugs Never Run Out · · Score: 1

    We should stop looking for bugs because we can never find them all. Maybe we should stop prosecuting criminals because we can't seem to stop finding more. There will always be murderers, so let's make killing legal.

  7. Re:Dumbest trend ever on The Internet of Things and Humans · · Score: 2

    They're basically mututally exclusive. How can the trend be both; big intelligence in the cloud AND have lots of little intelligence in your home. They're mutually exclusive marketing tropes, and we're somehow expected to buy into both at the same time.

  8. Not a big deal on U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Rule On Constitutionality of Bulk Surveillance · · Score: 1

    This doesn't really mean anything, and it would be surprising if SCOTUS actually did hear it now. The supreme court just basically said this needs to work its way through the normal appeals process. This might actually be better, since if you want to set a good and lasting precedent you should follow EVERY procedure in the most precedential way. Don't read too much into this decision.

  9. Cross Pollination on Interview: Ask Theo de Raadt What You Will · · Score: 1

    I appreciate the fundamental work that OpenBSD does in security and other areas, especially things like the recent work in getting X to run without privileges.

    AFAIK OpenBSD was the first to accomplish this, and I'm wondering how much of that research and know-how, maybe not code, can be used by other *NIXes? I know there are license conficts between the BSD's and Linux, but how much of the experience gained from that effort can be used to improve other *NIXes even if code cannot be reused? Is the OpenBSD project involved in sharing this experience, and others like it, with Linux distros or with NetBSD or FreeBSD?

  10. Re:If I am overseas as an American... on NZ Govt May Gut Privacy Laws For US Citizens and Ex-Pats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The United States and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that require their non-resident citizens to file tax returns.

  11. Tell people on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? · · Score: 1

    The worst thing you can do with this information is keep it to yourself. You need to find a way to communicate the state of the code to the right people. Do it in a professional manner, but do it repeatedly.

  12. Relevant Case Study on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? · · Score: 2

    You guys are going to have to do this yourself as no ISP will take an interest in your small neighborhood.

    You might want to try reading this case study.
    http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/p...

    It covers the hurdles a small rural town went through in order to build their own municipal network.

  13. Better than a faraday Cage on The Average Movie Theater Has Hundreds of Screens · · Score: 1

    I see a few posts recommending faraday cages in theatres.
    This has 2 obvious problems:
    1) Faraday cages require an actual cage. Doors and other openings might prove problematic.
    2) 911 calls. The FCC would not be cool with blocking all access to 911.

    I have a better idea. Mandate all phones sold in the USA MUST prioritize joining a specific theatre carrier over all others. We'll call this carrier STFU and whenever a phone sees this carrier it must join to it instead of any other operator(AT&T, Sprint, etc) it might otherwise prefer. Our STFU carrier will then blackhole all traffic not destined to 911. Then put a low power antenna(cell tower) in each theatre covering all available frequencies. All SMS, internet and voice traffic not destined to 911 is then black-holed. Only outgoing calls to 911 work in the theatre. Everything else simply doesn't work. The theatre can then route all 911 calls via it's existing land-line. Which emergency services prefer anyway because they get an immediate address when the call comes in.

  14. What about botnets? on Hackers Spawn Web Supercomputer On Way To Chess World Record · · Score: 2

    Why not just purchase a botnet? It's cheaper and easier than getting millions of people to visit a website. And you don't have to limit yourself to JS.

  15. Will transhumanism make Turing irrelevant? on Interviews: Ask Ray Kurzweil About the Future of Mankind and Technology · · Score: 1

    I wonder if in our march towards developing a machine that behaves human we are also creating humans that act more and more like machines. Is it possible we will ever encounter a future where the Turing test is passed NOT because a machine has been developed which acts human, but instead because humans are acting more and more like machines?

    I find myself agreeing with Neil Postman's premise in Technopoly more and more. That as technology becomes deified we start behaving more like machines and trust less in our human experiences. I'm also thinking of a future where the boundaries between what a human is and what a machine is become more and more blurred.

  16. Economics & Over Subscription on First European Provider To Break Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    Seems like a lot of folks here don't really understand the reason why ISPs over subscribe and why it's necessary.

    I wrote an article about this a couple weeks ago where I tackle that and other issues surrounding net-neutrality. Not to toot my own horn too much. But it seems a lot of folks are pretty out of touch with the real issues surrounding the debate.

    http://metafarce.com/index.php?id=24

    Peace,
    Smutt

  17. Re:marketing speak = teh suck on IPv6 Challenges and Opportunities · · Score: 3, Informative

    Where the fuck do you live where you have more than 2 viable choices for an ISP?

    Try anywhere outside of the United States. I live in The Netherlands and I've only got one choice of cable ISP. But I have about 4-5 options for DSL.

    //BEGIN Advert
    An article I wrote a couple weeks ago makes plain how important competition is in the ISP market. http://metafarce.com/index.php?id=24
    //END Advert

  18. Re:To quote the Joker... on How To Help a Friend With an MMO Addiction? · · Score: 1

    It speaks volumes that you're able to admit these harsh realities to yourself and confront them. I hope you find someone to love you. You deserve it. Keep searching.

  19. We need another Judge Greene on WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband · · Score: 1

    From TFA:
    We're told that we now live in an era of more regulation and more government spending, but neither approach is how problems get solved in technology...
    What we need to get the U.S. back into the top ranks of wired countries is more competition, not taxpayer handouts. That would be a real stimulus.

    What this guy doesn't seem to get is that we only get more competition through more regulation. As was the case when Carter launched the case that broke up AT&T.

    We need to stir the pot every once in a while and break things up. It's time to break up AT&T again to create more competition in local exchanges.

  20. Re:Most easy solution on Best Way to Build a Searchable Document Index? · · Score: 1

    I have one problem that I've learned from my interaction with SharePoint. It doesn't scale. Period end of story. It works great when you have 1000 users or less accessing it concurrently. But try going higher and you're in for a world of hurt.

  21. Where are the women I can hire? on Berners-Lee Challenges 'Stupid' Male Geek Culture · · Score: 1

    Where I work we are almost constantly looking for new people. Currently our crew is entirely men simply because I have never seen a qualified femaile resume. In fact I don't even think I've seen any unqualified female resumes.

    I've worked in past jobs with quite capable female engineers. I've also worked in past jobs with female 'engineers' who did nothing but sleep with the boss to get ahead. I've seen the entire spectrum. But in general the reason I feel there aren't more female engineers is because there just aren't that many women that want to work with computers. For whatever reason there just aren't that many women drawn to it. And if someone doesn't enjoy this work they're not going to be any good at it, period.

    I would love to hire female engineers where I work. It would probably stop the constant and tired penis and gay jokes I have to listen to all day.

  22. I got this virus in early 90's on Boot Sector Virus Shipped on German Laptops · · Score: 1

    I remember getting this virus on my 386 in the early 90's. That just goes to show how little things have changed if this virus is still able to infect machines.

  23. Re:You act as if this is some sort of problem on Richest 2% Own Half the World's Wealth · · Score: 1

    I think the point you miss is that political power is disproportionately distributed based on wealth. Those with more wealth enjoy more political clout. This is undemocratic. And I like democracy. Ergo I am concerned about concentrations of 'wealth' in the hands of a few. For the same reason we should all be concerned about the concentration of 'power' in the hands of the few.

    If someone can figure out a way to distribute wealth disproportionately while still distributing power evenly this wouldn't be such a problem. But no one has figured that out yet.

    However, if you have no problem living in a world where power is unevenly distributed then by all means. Tell us to shutup. Not like I have to listen...

  24. Re:Time for a new right... on First Company Logo Visible From Space · · Score: 1

    I had the joy of living in a place without advertising once. I was livining in Poland shortly after Solidarity. Lech Walesa was still president and the country had yet to fully adopt a lot of its current western stuff. I'll never forget when they started putting up billboards in Warsaw. I recognized a shift in my own personal relationship to space. I wish other people could go through this same experience. But how many people today have lived without billboards? Have you ever gone 6 months without seeing an advert?

    Advertising affects us. It affects our environment in both mental and subconscious ways. If it didn't work then companies wouldn't pay for it.

  25. Re:A warning to the Chinease People on Microsoft Considers Pulling Out of China · · Score: 1

    I can't tell if this guy is kidding or not?