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User: NateTech

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Comments · 2,032

  1. Re:So? on Breaking a Car's Cipher · · Score: 1

    Keys in doors aren't any more secure than Keeloq. A slim jim and two swift tugs and you're into my vehicle. Another 30 seconds of work and you've gotten it started and you're leaving the parking lot.

    Who cares about electronic keys being insecure? So are regular locks.

    And LoJack is worthless. Sorry LoJack folks.

    Just drive older, less popular cars and hope the thieves don't need parts from that model to fix others.

    (In other words, if your car is going to get stolen, it's going to get stolen. Big whoop. Find an insurance company that isn't a huge hassle/problem to get a rental for a time, and will hand you a check for the value. Never buy a car "upside-down" financially, either... so if you get handed that check, you CAN replace it.)

    Cars get stolen. Shit happens. Move on.

  2. Re:Forget Infrastructure! Broadband Over Powerline on How Much Does a New Internet Cost? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And FEMA, and various other Federal agencies, and the military, and ... the list of folks who would be interfered with by BPL is very long. The NTIA's comments to the FCC regarding BPL read something along the lines of, "Not only no, but fuck no!"

  3. Re:It's telling, but of what? on Alienware Won't Sell Consumers CableCard PCs · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Alienware moved away from the tech crowd long ago.

    And someone will sell Cablecard PC's if they won't. The market corrects itself.

    Alienware can continue their slide into uselessness, no one here will shed a tear when they're gone. Buh-bye.

  4. Re:So don't use them. on Comcast Hinders BitTorrent Traffic · · Score: 1

    Gee, it would seem that if they're blocking their customer's traffic, they already have customer service as the last thing on their minds.

    Duh.

    Bury 'em in red tape to the point where they just stop screwing with traffic.

  5. So what happens with failures in the real world? on Microsoft Questions FCC's 'White Spaces' Decision · · Score: 1

    The system then interferes with licensed spectrum holders when there's a normal failure of the receivers in the real world too then, eh?

    Sounds like M$ is arguing against the thing, not for it. Since failures happen in the real-world too.

    Frankly, the FCC is making billions of dollars (and not refunding anything back to the taxpayer) selling/auctioning rights to spectrum.

    They're never going to give away "whitespace". They'll just wait until this dies down and then auction it off too. They just hadn't figured it out yet as a source of billions more in "revenue".

  6. Re:Adds to Perception of GPL as Viral on VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights · · Score: 1

    You are correct. BSD licensing works much better for such products.

  7. Re:They made a movie about this with Charlie Sheen on VMware May Violate Linux Copyrights · · Score: 1

    Yeah, they were helpful.

    They gave us plenty of time to short their stock, which is currently looking like it'll make a rather large crater somewhere in Utah.

  8. Re:TFA Interesting on See Who Is Whitewashing Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    You frighten me.

  9. Re:Not interesting... Yeah right. on Torvalds on Linux and Microsoft · · Score: 1

    He's probably saying he has no interest in the distorted and twisted "politics" we see today, mostly based on who's paying off whom.

    That's not politics, that's just a high-paid, but very unstable, job.

  10. Re:Official PostgreSQL fanboi thread here :-) on MySQL Ends Enterprise Server Source Tarballs · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that Informix is still alive and kicking, has been around and stable since the 80's, and is pretty cheap these days.

    Why not use something proven to work, and stop candy-assing around with so-called "free" database engines altogether?

    Postgres is about the only "free" engine I'd ever recommend to a customer with critical data. Maybe.

    Paying the price of a couple of good dinners out, for an engine that's been around for two decades -- and isn't going through the soap-opera-like BS that MySQL is constantly going through, sure seems like a smarter way to go, than to wonder if your DB vendor really has your best interests at heart.

    Plus, you sleep better at night.

  11. Re:Great Ideas don't work in the military on First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq · · Score: 1

    Yeah, because the Iraqi's (or anyone else) can't figure out how to strap a small bomb to a radio controlled car, eh?

    Come on... it's only going to give an advantage for a short while in the "remote controlled arms race". Then, as the first person said, it'll just make the battle even that more deadly...

    Hiding behind things and what-not won't matter... unless you can target the 12 year old with the Futaba controller before the loaded-down RC pickup truck he's driving toward your position, rounds the corner.

    And then of course, someone will jam the cheap RF devices to stop them (also works for both sides, building a broadband RF noise source with plenty of power running from a battery pack and dropping it somewhere nearby -- so the emissions don't make you a target -- isn't hard either)... and then will come the anti-jamming frequency-hopping "mil-spec" Futabas... on both sides...

    And then the ability to control them from long-range, probably from aircraft, making the aircraft the real target...

    It never ends. Thus, war.

  12. Re:Those responsible for the earlier comments... on Duke Wireless Problem Caused by Cisco, not iPhone · · Score: 1

    Well, these are apparently patches for the Access Points, which don't really run "IOS" usually.

  13. How freakin' big is the Linux kernel now? on Linux Gains Two New Virtualization Solutions · · Score: 1

    Anyone attempting to compile a full Linux kernel with every conceivable feature that doesn't clash with another turned on, non-moduluar, will be able to measure the build time in months...

    Unless they're running a virtualized cluster of machines! :-)

  14. Those responsible for the earlier comments... on Duke Wireless Problem Caused by Cisco, not iPhone · · Score: 1

    ... have been sacked.

    As someone in another forum pointed out, and it's a good point...

    Cisco provided a NEW patch, or just finally got Duke's IT staff off their ass and over to a patch set that's been readily available for some time?

  15. Re:ARP storm on IPhones Flooding Wireless LAN At Duke · · Score: 1

    Misinformation: Welcome to SlashDot! ;-)

  16. Projects fail when people don't give a shit on Identifying (and Fixing) Failing IT Projects · · Score: 1

    The whole article reads like a Dilbert cartoon. Metrics and various forms thereof, stupid pithy phrases like "projects do better in a positive environment"...

    Most of the BS these guys are spouting helps them with "peer recognition" but their real workers probably want to hurl, if they even read the article.

    What a crock of shit. There's a few grains of truth hiding underneath all that bullshit, but bring a shovel.

    People care about the project, it'll do well. People don't give a rat's ass about the project, it'll die, either slowly or quickly, metrics or not, it'll die.

    Traditional development, Agile development, none of it matters, if the people aren't interested in what they're doing and building.

    If their priorities are elsewhere, it won't matter how much you measure it, or how easy you make it for them to make changes mid-stream.

  17. Re:*sigh* no satillite connectivity... on Retailers Leak New TiVo HD Specs and Price · · Score: 1

    Seeing Comcast and the word "grace" together in the same sentence makes me (who can get both, and sticks with Dish) want to hurl.

  18. Re:If it's really necessary... on openMosix Is Shutting Down · · Score: 1

    Thus the real problem with open-source and computing in general...

    People who really understand something aren't cheap.

    Computing isn't cheap (when you factor that in).

    Far too many people now believe that computing LOWERS costs, where in most real-world examples of what computers are generally used for, they actually raised overall costs significantly.

    Sometimes a pen, paper and filing cabinet really IS the proper solution over a RDBMS, for example... but how many companies would announce to their employees that the vast "data warehousing" project has begun, and that they should fax in all the appropriate documents for $6/hour clerks to file?

  19. Re:ARP storm on IPhones Flooding Wireless LAN At Duke · · Score: 1

    Please understand I know plenty about wireless networking, and answering an AC is truly retarded, but...

    You have no more evidence of your claims than I have evidence, but you seem to think I was talking about a problem on the wireless segments themselves.

    My assumption, which could be disproven easily by anyone with a clue with a packet sniffer (which is apparently what Duke needs to hire -- someone who knows how to LOOK at the network issues and FIX them, not run crying like a baby to the press), is that their wired LAN underlying the wireless LAN is built on a FUBARed design methodology.

    I give myself better odds than your assumptions, since it's obvious their LAN admins are morons if they're whining to the press and not implementing fixes.

  20. Re:no more voice mail on Internet Phone Start-up Goes Belly-Up · · Score: 1

    Don't know what you're emotional about.

    What's advertised and what you get are RARELY the same in the tech "sector".

    People dedicate whole jobs to reviewing products and usually rate companies that produce products that match their advertising, fairly high.

    Software/computers are probably one of the worst examples of "you don't get what you were told it would do."

    What's the big deal? It's just naievete to think that a $14/month phone service would survive.

  21. Re:Okay... let me get this straight... on Worm Claimed For Apple OS X · · Score: 1

    We do.

  22. Re:Marketing Failure? on Internet Phone Start-up Goes Belly-Up · · Score: 1

    Same here. Been in telco over a decade, and had never hear of 'em.

    They must have had some real dolts in Marketing... that or never had enough budget to really make a go of it, anyway.

    Hey some people got some crappy phone service at lower-than-sustainable prices for a little while. Isn't that what everyone was screaming for when Judge Green broke up the Bell System?

    You GOT it, America. Congratulations! Competition means that some companies DO NOT SURVIVE, especially if they don't have a sustainable business model. These guys... didn't.

    Welcome to un-regulated phone service. Enjoy.

  23. Re:no more voice mail on Internet Phone Start-up Goes Belly-Up · · Score: 1

    You paid a lower-than-sustainable price for the service and they went under. They didn't "get you", you got yourself.

  24. Re:Problems are usually CAUSED by telcos. on Internet Phone Start-up Goes Belly-Up · · Score: 1

    Those "accidents" are probably real. I work for a telco manufacturer (not a telco) and I can count the number of people I've dealt with in the last five years that really understand telco networks on just over one hand.

    Telco's aren't "scared to death of VoIP". They're using it, in the back-end of the networks, probably where it really belongs. In controlled environments. The number of people using VoIP for home service isn't significantly changing their backbone traffic, which someone pays them for, either way. Old-style voice traffic goes to the local switch, and gets muxed into long-haul backbones. New-style VoIP (even if the end-customer is paying a small amount to the VoIP dial-tone provider) still brings in 2/3's of the revenue of an old-style phone line in the form of either a) DSL or b) a Cable provider that ends up buying bulk bits from here to there and paying for telco inter-connect anyway.

    VoIP to the home doesn't bother the traditional telcos at all. Business as usual, just more people working on the IP backbone and less on the traditional backbone. The fiber has been able to carry either one for decades, and they own the long-haul fiber, so why should they care?

    Large global carriers love all of it... own the undersea fiber, and fill it with traffic. Bill appropriately so that it's expensive but not cost-effective for someone to go lay their own fiber. Done. Permanent cash cow.

    Also, the skill level in telco is falling. People aren't trained like they were under the monopolistic Bell System. There's also a disadvantage to being a clueful old-schooler in telco. We get trouble tickets at work where telco employees who've worked in telco for 20 years longer than I have, send in things like, "The customer heard X message".

    The message they heard included a call-error tone, and had a switch tag number on the end of it, and they're wondering if it came from our box and want "confirmation" that we didn't play the message before they contact their own switching/routing groups internally. The person reporting the "trouble" knows our system has no such message and hasn't had for the almost 10 years its been deployed in ANYONE's network.

    But... that ticket took up a whole day of "work", sending e-mails to vendors, looking intelligent to the bosses, generally wasting everyone's time -- but no one at a vendor is going to call a large telco's employees on something like that! We're just happy as clams to continue collecting the money for the service contract, and their useless tickets make our numbers look good. We also play along and "work" the ticket, sending logs, showing the customer where the system NEVER sent such a message and directory listings of message files showing where the message doesn't exist (even though THEY know this), and generally -- the "system" just feeds on itself.

    Or for a more "modern" example, the logs will show that the switch dropped a SIP call and sent us a "tear-down", complete with a SIP end-of-call message, and they'll call complaining that our system "hung up on" someone. Uh... nope. But here, let me be a good service rep and spend a couple of hours preparing a document that shows you the full logs of exactly what your stupid broken switch did when it hung up on us... heck, I'll even colorize the important bits for you. Cool, huh? EXCELLENT customer service provided, and another day of excitement in telco, abated.

    Seriously... telco is bad, but not for the reasons many people think. It used to be fairly "hard" to get a senior position in the Bell System. You had to work at it, and go to tech school, and get good scores, and then more training, and understand what you were doing as you worked your way up the technical ranks. You were proud to work for the Bell System. You got to go on "special project" leave to other areas of the country, if you were really good. In fact, you could become a "Subject Matter Expert" and actually have sign-off authority on projects even at a technical level, that NO manager cou

  25. ARP storm on IPhones Flooding Wireless LAN At Duke · · Score: 1

    Dumbass network engineers create giant flat network, iPhones with shitty antennas connect and disconnect constantly, network devices with too little memory and/or bad implementations of ARP protocol get freakin' confused...

    ARP storms ensue.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

    (And these network admins must have missed the early 90's with lots and lots of hubs.)

    Time to go back to network architecture school and quit relying on the Cisco TAC for brains.

    Who hired the moron who went to the PRESS to fix his network problems, when his vendors let him down, anyway? That's the really interesting question.

    Guy's obviously in over his head and hoping someone from Apple or Cisco will chopper in and rescue him. He probably even hopes, nay expects, that they do it for free.

    Perhaps if they ignore him long enough, he'll figure out how to fix his own problems?