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User: xxxJonBoyxxx

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  1. Sounds like it could work here too.. on Identity Dominance: the US Military's Biometric War In Afghanistan · · Score: 2

    From the TFA...

    "Locate and identify every resident (visit and record every house and business). At a minimum, fully biometrically enroll all military-age males as follows: Full sets of fingerprints, Full face photo, Iris scans, Names and all variants of names
    Use badging to identify local leaders, and key personnel.
    Track persons of interest; unusual travel patterns may indicate unusual activities."

    "All biometric data collected (is) sent back to the DOD’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) located in West Virginia, where it is stored and also shared with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI. Partnerships with other nations also allow the DOD to run data against biometrics collected by foreign governments and law enforcement."

  2. "Millionaires" - heh on Blood of World's Oldest Woman Hints At Limits of Life · · Score: 2

    >> Millionaires will live forever

    Not sure you've been keeping up with the cost of living, but you pretty much have to have a million dollars in the bank to even think about retiring these days. ($1M divided by 20 - a common rule of thumb for maintaining a nest egg in retirement - is just $50K/yr.)

  3. More military presense...and Canada..and Russia? on Panel Says U.S. Not Ready For Inevitable Arctic Oil Spill · · Score: 1

    >> And if an emergency happens, there’s no infrastructure in place—no consistent U.S. Coast Guard presence...

    Interesting. Related article covers Canada's and Russia's claims in the same area - the "Lomonozov Ridge"
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

  4. What monoculture? on OpenSSL: the New Face of Technology Monoculture · · Score: 1

    OK - here's a niche industry page listing about forty open source, commercial and cloud solutions that all have secured by SSL and their responsed to heartbleed:
    http://www.filetransferconsult...

    Of these...maybe a third had OpenSSL...most of the rest used a Java stack, and many of the rest were on IIS or using MS crypto. Within my own company (about 1500 people and 20 web apps on a mix of platforms), heartbleed affected exactly 3 sites.

    If you looked around other industries and saw >50% affected rates maybe I'd believe "monoculture"...but if you're talking the entire web dev world, OpenSSL is just one of the top options.

  5. The real reason behind this: Jobs RIP on iPad Fever Is Officially Cooling · · Score: 0

    The real reason behind this? Jobs is dead. Yeah, it sucks, but no one could market tech like he could, and without that cheerleader out front, Apple has begun to look and behave like every other tablet-pusher on the planet.

  6. Don't Mess with April Fools on VK CEO Fired, Says Company Under Kremlin Control · · Score: 2

    >> He appeared to announce his resignation from the company on April 1st, but later claimed that it was an April Fools' joke, and that he would remain onboard. In a statement issued Monday, however, VK said that Durov submitted a resignation letter on March 21st and never withdrew it within the mandatory one-month window. Because of that, Durov said, he will be "automatically relieved" of his position.

    Politically, it's bad, but I do enjoy seeing someone's stupid April Fools stunt blow up in their face.

  7. Obamacare as a cause? on In the US, Rich Now Work Longer Hours Than the Poor · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have more than a few friends on the low end of the pay scale who've been pushed down below 30 hours a week by their employers so their employers stay clear of Obamacare insurance mandates. (e.g., http://www.theguardian.com/wor... ) It usually comes across as a double-whammy: now they have less money in their pockets, and they're still up a creek in terms of health insurance.

  8. Re:Or.. on Not Just a Cleanup Any More: LibreSSL Project Announced · · Score: 1

    PolarSSL doesn't have the same licensing model as OpenSSL, so it's not a drop-in replacement. (https://polarssl.org/how-to-get vs. http://www.openssl.org/source/...)

  9. MySQL used to have a license like this... on Heartbleed Pricetag To Top $500 Million? · · Score: 1

    In the 2000's (before Oracle), I negotiated a license with MySQL that allowed our company to bundle the software in my commercial app (for ease-of-install, especially demo time) even though someone could have downloaded and installed their own copy of MySQL for free. The OEM license cost something like $150-250/license (kept going up, of course).

  10. Dihydrogen Oxide on Americans Uncomfortable With Possibility of Ubiquitous Drones, Designer Babies · · Score: 1

    The obligitory "Dihydrogen Oxide" reference:
    http://www.dhmo.org/research.h... ...applies here.

  11. "too hard for developers" (sniff) on Samsung's Position On Tizen May Hurt Developer Recruitment · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't understand the belly-aching. When I wrote code for Apple II machines, I had to know both BASIC and assembler. PC? Batch scripting, VB, C++, C#, SQL, InstallShield and still a little assembler. Web and mobile? Javascript, Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C#, ASP, Objective-C plus a few dozen "platforms", "frameworks" and what-not cobbled together with JSON, XML, CSS and various template and scripting syntaxes.

    So, you have to learn three platforms to keep up with a line of devices? Boo hoo. Besides, an "app" should be something you can crap out in a month or two - these generally aren't monolithic platforms like Office - even the context-switching-disabled should be OK.

  12. Re:are we seriously blaming google on Heartbleed Sparks 'Responsible' Disclosure Debate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> are we seriously blaming google and not NSA who found the bug 4 years ago when the bug was first introduced?

    Yes. The NSA is the US gov's lead black hat. Google's an advertising company that depends on people trusting the Internet for information and commerce. I'd expect the NSA to hoard information to assist their black-hatting, and I'd expect Google to quickly share anything they know so security vulnerabilities can be patched and people don't lose faith in the Internet*.

    * = (Seriously, when people have asked me what to do about Heartbleed, I've said "don't buy anything you don't need, and try to avoid paying any bills online or doing any online checking for a week or two - then change your password as soon as you sign on.")

  13. CISSP opinion: the patch proves Google f***ed up on Heartbleed Sparks 'Responsible' Disclosure Debate · · Score: 1

    >> Google notified OpenSSL about the bug on April 1 in the US – at least 11 days after discovering it.

    "OK, maybe it was caught up in legal. Suits at large corporations can take a while."

    >> Google would not reveal the exact date it found the bug, but logs show it created a patch on March 21,

    "On second thought, if the geeks on the ground had the authority to patch and roll to production, then why the finger to the Open Source community, Google?"

  14. "The Register has the story as well" on RCMP Arrest Canadian Teen For Heartbleed Exploit · · Score: 2

    >> The Register has the story as well

    Duh - the Register is where most of us read the story so we'll know what to write when the same news appears on SlashDot tomorrow.

  15. Cynic on Switching From Sitting To Standing At Your Desk · · Score: 2

    >> Advocates of sit-stand desks

    Sorry, I read that as "vendors of sit-stand desks"

    Seriously, does anyone still work at a tech job crappy enough where they care if you sit, stand or bounce around on a pregnancy ball all day?

  16. tldr on The Best Parking Apps You've Never Heard Of and Why You Haven't · · Score: 5, Interesting

    can we all pitch in $5 a month and get this bennett guy his own blog? (and punt him the hell off slashdot?)

  17. I doubt "no one knew" on Mr. Schmidt Goes To Washington: A Look Inside Google's Lobbying Behemoth · · Score: 2

    >> What none of the attendees of the conference knew was that Google was pulling many of the strings behind the event

    I doubt/hope that "no one knew." Conference agendas, like news stories, should always be read for brand-name frequency. (The brand name that appears most frequently or in the most positive manner is usually the one that hired the PR agency to plant the story in the first place. Same thing goes for a conference agenda.) What's the number one name on this conference agenda? Google.

    So...if the academics attending the conference didn't guess it was Google sponsored...then they're probably not as bright as their titles suggest.

  18. Nah...TL:DR on Google Chrome 34 Is Out: Responsive Images, Supervised Users · · Score: 5, Informative

    A "responsive image" will load either a small or large version (or multiple versions) depending on the browsers's screen resolution. To do this, it makes an extra request to the server before requesting the appropriate image size.

    (The referenced Opera article prattles on and on - Google's faster.)

  19. TLDR? Exactly. on Judge (Tech) Advice By Results · · Score: -1, Troll

    C'mon, with BUILD just behind us, how did this wall of text make it up here? (It's NOT a slow news day.)

  20. Er...what's left in "open source" to talk about? on Interview: Ask Bruce Perens What You Will · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Having lived through the entire lifecycle of "open source," it seems like its place in development communities and businesses is well-established, with a mix of different licensing and deployment models for whatever anyone wants to do.

    So...is there really anything interesting left in "open source" to talk about? (Software patents, maybe, but even that's picked up some case law.)

  21. He pretty much agrees with you on page 12. on NYU Group Says Its Scheme Makes Cracking Individual Passwords Impossible · · Score: 1

    >> Sane people will stay with salting and stretching, ideally with scrypt() to neutralize GPUs.

    "Key stretching is orthogonal to PolyPassHash and could be trivially used in conjunction."

    Hell, just the bit about bcrypt, etc. using a unique hash per password would have stopped most of these "grab the file then crack the table" hacks; the current focus of developers should probably just be to replace anything still using unsalted (or common salt) MD5/SHA1/SHA256 schemes.

  22. WTF would you think we would enjoy an "audio ver"? on The Inside Story of Gmail On Its Tenth Anniversary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> some readers may note that with this story we are slowly rolling out one we hope you enjoy -- an audio version of each Slashdot story.

    Er...no thanks. There's a reason video tanked on this site too - your readership is too damn busy to wait for the talky-talk. So, we skim (and type) like crazy, and value text-heavy sites like Slashdot and Reddit. (OK, 15 seconds - time up - back to work!)

  23. TL;DR on The Inside Story of Gmail On Its Tenth Anniversary · · Score: 3, Informative

    Early use by a major company of Javascript consuming XML-based web services. Successfully leveraged Google's search engine. Design conflicted with the all-on-one-page "portal" paradigm of the time. Text ads instead of banner ads, and controversial because they were tied to the content of the messages. Original cluster was 300 servers.

  24. Re:definitely news for nerds on OpenSUSE To Offer Rolling Release KDE Experience · · Score: 0

    ...and both KDE users have already shown up to comment. Badabing!

  25. Wonder if TW techs read marketing's whitepaper? on Target and Trustwave Sued Over Credit Card Breach · · Score: 1

    Retailers a Top Target for Attackers in 2012, Trustwave Says
    http://www.securityweek.com/re...