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User: gumbi+west

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  1. Re:One Time Pads on Ask Slashdot: Post-Quantum Asymmetric Key Exchange? · · Score: 1

    I think the idea was to pre-exchange keys and then continue to rely on AES for bulk encryption. I believe this would make the bulk encryption much harder (maybe gives you until 10 to 20 more years after quantum computing reaches the bit level in question).

  2. Re:Vulnerable in 20 years on Ask Slashdot: Post-Quantum Asymmetric Key Exchange? · · Score: 1

    Census is 72 years. The IRS and soda recipes are never, ever.

  3. Re:There's one uncrackable method on Ask Slashdot: Post-Quantum Asymmetric Key Exchange? · · Score: 1

    Repeat after me, the first two words in one time pad are?

    Your scheme can have a name, but it can't start, "one time" okay?

  4. Re:Wow on Obama To Veto Anti-Net-Neutrality Legislation · · Score: 1

    puh-lease. 9% unemployment is from the financial meltdown that nobody saw coming but was fueled by low interest rates, greedy home borrowers, greedy financial markets, and a general misunderstanding of what was going on by everyone who should have known.

  5. Re:No, it would not work on Could Crowd-Sourced Direct Democracy Work? · · Score: 1

    "Experts would say the solution to AGW is to immediately stop producing greenhouse gasses. What that does to the economy and life as we know it, well, I think that's something important to consider. " they have. Their job is called economists, and the answer is this: if the real interest rate is less than 10% (and it is way, way below that), then you are much better off fixing global warming.

    Basically, there are tradeoffs, and not being able to grow crops in 100 years is a really bad situation you want to avoid, even if it means 1% lower GDP growth in the interim.

    Representative democracy is what we have, and it is exactly what we need. Want proof otherwise: California will soon declare bankruptcy, largely because of contradicting direct democracy votes.

  6. Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap on Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search? · · Score: 1

    Well, and the constitution, such as the 13th amendment.

  7. Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap on Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search? · · Score: 1

    Breaking encryption may be illegal, but there is no law that prevents the feds from doing it (though there is no law saying they can, and the supremes have not considered it).

    I would imagine the headers are not encrypted and simply recording them is not a violation of the 4th either, after all, you broadcast them over the air. Not that different from putting a billboard on your roof and expecting unencrypted communications to remain private.

  8. Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap on Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search? · · Score: 1

    For example, if a thief breaks into your house and moves the contents of a safe onto the street, they have committed larceny but not violated your 4th amendment rights (nor have the cops when they riffle through those documents which are now in a public location).

  9. Re:I did on Fee Increase Attempt Inspires 'Dump Your Bank Day' · · Score: 1

    I think there is a check involved somehow, but I pay online and the landlord gets (I guess) a bank check that does not have my account info on it. BTW, this is from my local, small (6 branch) bank.

  10. Re:I did on Fee Increase Attempt Inspires 'Dump Your Bank Day' · · Score: 1

    They say the'll cash a check, but a friend wrote one out to me for $1,000,000 and the wouldn't give me cash. He was right there, no question the sig. was legit. I offered 25% cashing fee and they still wouldn't do it.

  11. Re:Very True on Consumer Tech: an IT Nightmare · · Score: 1

    That sounds like a poorly designed controller. Maybe you should try an enterprise *worthy* controller.

    There is no reason that it has to mark the drive as dead when it could just wait the 2 minutes for it to try to recover, tell it to mark the sector as bad and use the mirror/checksum in the meantime.

  12. Re:Very True on Consumer Tech: an IT Nightmare · · Score: 1

    I'm not trying to tell you that consumer ATA drives and SCSI drives are the same, only that it is firmware that makes up most of the difference, not the hardware. You are paying a huge fee for something that has no reason to be different except to make you pay more because you have more money.

    I'll admit that the tax is difficulty to avoid because it is not easy to fix the firmware on a consumer drive to make it appropriate for a enterprise setting (i.e. the 8 s maximum read time on a bad sector makes sense if it is an enterprise setting you are working in; probably better to say the sector is bad and use another copy than to make the person keep waiting).

    This also makes consumer drives look like shit when hooked up to a enterprise server since it keeps saying they are dead when the controller is just poorly designed and doesn't realize that it is talking the wrong language. I believe that you get a 95% reported failure rate on consumer drives in the first year. I don't believe that the drives would report anywhere near that same failure rate, or that a good controller designed by an engineer (not marketing) would either.

  13. Re:Very True on Consumer Tech: an IT Nightmare · · Score: 1

    "the saddest part of all is that the overwhelming majority of mechanical failures are due to failure modes that wouldn't even be all that hard or expensive to REPAIR without substantial data loss..." How can you possibly know this?

    I've had about 10 HDD fail on me, every one has been verified by SMART up until the moment of death, including while they were obviously dyeing, such as taking a minutes to return on read operations or spin up.

  14. Re:Very True on Consumer Tech: an IT Nightmare · · Score: 1

    What your describing is called vendor lock, it means your wasting money.

    You wrote, "this is a different behavior and there for(sic) makes the drive unsuitable for the application." I have been able to get the remapped sectors from my consumer drives... since at least 1995.

  15. Re:Iris on Siri Gives Apple Two Year Advantage Over Android · · Score: 1

    Do you remember when Apple' iTunes sales were dropping by the day and many /.ers were saying that it was dead?

    Yeah, it can take awhile for a new technology to become ingrained, but Siri looks like it will get there.

  16. Re:Unlike the Ipad2 on OLPC Project To Air-Drop Laptops · · Score: 1

    So OLPC is a durable paper weight?

  17. Re:Very True on Consumer Tech: an IT Nightmare · · Score: 1

    My consumer drives pass the bad sector info to my consumer controller to allow it to use this data s a predictive failure indicator (it's called SMART).

    The difference is this: the firmware on a enterprise never spends more than 8 seconds attempting to recover a bad sector before it returns as unreadable while the consumer drive spends a lot more time trying to recover before it returns that it cannot (up to 2 minutes). Enterprise controllers will assume it is a fail after 8 seconds while consumer controllers will give it the full 2 minutes.

    Change the settings on either component and you your problem is solved. There are obvious reasons for the 8 second vs 2 minute thing, but it's all just firmware.

  18. Re:What a perfect opportunity... on Asteroid Passes Closer To Earth Than the Moon on Nov 8 · · Score: 1

    Problem: one way missions are not ideal for humans.

  19. Re:Why wait? on New Algorithm Could Substantially Speed Up MRI Scans · · Score: 1

    Thanks.

  20. Re:That's a good tradeoff on How X-Ray Scanners Became Mandatory In US Airports · · Score: 1

    You do realize that 50 kVp does not mean that the x-rays are 50 keV x-rays, right? Most of them will be (off the top of my head) 10-20 keV and skin deep sounds about right for that range.

  21. Re:Which other variables? on Is the Apple App Store a Casino? · · Score: 1

    Well, spill overs (if we both have the same App, interact in the App, share the experience, share knowledge), buzz (when is the last time that you decided that you HAD to see a 10 year old movie THIS WEEKEND), advertising quality, sometime people like the "less useful" App with the simpler interface, ...

  22. Re:Why wait? on New Algorithm Could Substantially Speed Up MRI Scans · · Score: 1

    I was a little confused about the 15 minute claim, how long is spent "shimming" the magnet for a subject? I'm surprised that alone isn't 10 minutes (I know nothing of MRI, only NRM).

  23. Re:What about the Government Unions / Payroll Taxe on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 1

    The expense ratio for federal workers is 22% on top of salary. This will not get you there.

  24. Re:They're impossible to fire on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not true. I worked for the USG for a few years and in that time my boss fired 2 of the 15 people reporting to him (fired, not laid off).

    The real issue is that people think that and then never check how the process works.

  25. Re:Tax evasion on Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers · · Score: 2

    YANATL (you are not a tax lawyer).

    You also have to pay the corporate income tax on the cap. gains. But, IANATL