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User: Kobun

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Comments · 274

  1. Re:Secret Ballot? on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The counter-argument goes that if the voter can pull out their generated ID tag to verify their vote after the fact, a standard-issue "thug" (representing any malicious party) can also use that ID to verify that the votes went to their preferred candidates. So it's not really anonymous at all.

  2. Re:Uninterested people aren't worth it on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 1

    By the way, look further down the page for this post - http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... App-based voting will very likely lead to MORE voter suppression, not less.

  3. Re:Uninterested people aren't worth it on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 1

    Way to cherry pick your statements while ignoring context. Would you like to debate my use of the word "is" next?

  4. Re:Conflating Issues on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 1

    It's not a given that low voter turnout is a problem. We don't need more low-information voters (89% agree that DHMO should be banned) and we don't need to coerce those who do not vote to signal their non-consent to the system.

    Amen.

  5. Uninterested people aren't worth it on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not worth going out of our way to make voting MORE accessible than it already is. There are multiple polling places in every city of any size across the nation. People who are so uninterested in the process that they can't either go to their local poll or drop an absentee ballot in the mail are VERY likely to have a misinformed, useless opinion.

    There are any number of areas regarding voting that I'd rather see time spent on instead of being able to claim "There's an app for that".

  6. Still can't believe on Early Bitcoin Adopters Facing Extortion Threats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That swatting is a thing. How can it be that a single, anonymous phone call is all it takes to deploy a militarized police team to your front door? It blows my mind. That it keeps happening over and over ... ugh.

  7. Re:Anti-worker would mean against, not for... on DOOM 3DO Source Released On Github · · Score: 1

    In my opinion, it really isn't at all positive or a success. I commented earlier about the vast cultural differences between German (& Danish & Scandinavian) unions and American unions; the Hostess story is a good example. Compare what happened with Hostess to this explanation (that does a much better job than I would do): http://www.remappingdebate.org... Given the political situation in the US, I think that to see the American system shift the US unions need to buy the companies that they staff.

  8. Re:Cars got made on DOOM 3DO Source Released On Github · · Score: 1

    Ford, Chrysler and GM's management obviously thought (and by most indications, still think) that they've got the US Government wrapped around their little finger. Why improve quality or reduce unneeded costs when you don't believe that lack of competitive offerings will ever truly be the end of you? Their testimony in Congress at the time of this article was ... impressive. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/...

  9. Re:Cars got made on DOOM 3DO Source Released On Github · · Score: 2

    To play Devil's Advocate (just a little bit) - there are cultural differences (sometimes huge) between the USA and Germany, and a HUGE cultural difference between their respective labor unions. There may be more to a German car being built well than whether or not a Union was involved.

  10. Re:Yawn ... on Microsoft Azure Outage Across the Globe · · Score: 2

    Surprisingly enough, I've got those failure calculations (estimated using prior internal failures rates) included in my own measurements. The SLA thing is where things really turned south - for the expense cloud providers who would guarantee uptime the way you describe AND reimburse for outages outside of the SLA, I could have doubled my staff size.

  11. Re:Yawn ... on Microsoft Azure Outage Across the Globe · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd like to take your question "Is it really a good trade off?" and toss out an example set of numbers to summarize it. Let's say there are 250 business days in a year. Operations run from 8am until 6pm, not counting after-hours processing and maintenance. Revenue is $100 million. Gross profit percentage is 20%. This gives per hour revenue of $40,000, per hour profit is $8,000. A day of lost revenue is $400,000, or a loss of $80,000 of profit opportunity (assuming that opportunity costs are not recoverable). My own calculations for my department are somewhat similar, except I've also included the additional benefit my employees bring in for the work they do when they aren't working on maintaining/improving uptime. Avoiding the cloud is almost a no-brainer in our circumstances, except for very specific & limited services.

  12. Re:Affected Student Here on Duke: No Mercy For CS 201 Cheaters Who Don't Turn Selves In By Wednesday · · Score: 1

    Answering your post got me thinking about another point of curiosity - the whole Lacrosse thing from a few years ago appeared to me as if Duke has a faculty full of people who think the worst of their students and/or hate them. In this CS incident, if they don't have any actual proof here this would seem to be in keeping with my prior perception. Are witch hunts common at Duke?

  13. Re:Affected Student Here on Duke: No Mercy For CS 201 Cheaters Who Don't Turn Selves In By Wednesday · · Score: 1

    Just saying ... if the relevant professor is reading here, and then you turn around and do what you say you're going to do (and are unique in your meticulous development) the fact that you posted as AC really isn't going to matter. I'm guessing that 2 + 2 will equal 4.

  14. Re:Wow, what a stupid post on How To Thwart the High Priests In IT · · Score: 1

    Yes, there are explicit laws that govern trade secrets. These laws are separate from employment contracts and vendor agreements. Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Trade_Secrets_Act

  15. Re:Yes, but not the U.S. produced code on Is Off-Shoring a National Security Threat? · · Score: 1

    Correction: Germany is much closer to the size of Montana, than it is to Texas. Germany has 82 million people, versus roughly 1 million for Montana and 26 million for Texas.

  16. Re:Not all americans on Americans Favor Moratorium On New Nuclear Reactors · · Score: 2

    We had this solution in 1994. Sen. John Kerry spearheaded the push to kill it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

  17. Re:News flash: NASA discoveres there's life on ear on NASA Confirms Discovery of Organism With Phosphorus-Free DNA · · Score: 1

    Belief versus non-belief is rendered MOOT by evidence. THAT'S why this is awesome for NASA - because they are scientists.

  18. Re:Rise of the triad on FPS Games That Need a Remake · · Score: 1

    Yes please - I'd love to see this in a modern engine. The game was fun! The graphics were workable even if they used a heavily upgraded Wolf3d engine (still limited to squares!). They made it look and work pretty well. I think even something like a mod into Serious Sam would be about right for this.

  19. replaygain or something similar on Senate Votes To Turn Down Volume On TV Commercials · · Score: 1

    As for the technical side of this, it seems to me something like Replaygain would work well. Especially since commercials are known before hand (no live broadcasting) - the program establishes a baseline sound level that audio is measured against. Depending on track or album gain settings, I think that this would be made to work.

    http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Replaygain

    As far as congress goes? I'm so glad they can get this bill passed, when everything else is punted down the road until the lame duck session or beyond. Lord knows we don't pay them nearly enough to think about anything harder than freakin' TVs being too loud ...

  20. Re:My story... on What Happened To Palm? · · Score: 2, Informative

    My old boss had a 4 different Treo 650's, followed by a 700. I used to spend about an hour every other day resetting his phone. An acknowledged bug in Palm's software kept corrupting his filesystem, causing it to reboot whenever the currently flawed file(s) were accessed. We had the newest firmware, always. Numerous hours were spent on the phone with support, or back at the store. No relief, until I quit working there.

    I know what happened to Palm. They stopped caring about quality, and the market noticed. Let them reap what they have sown.

  21. Re:Anti-Malware Response on Sneaky Blackmailing Virus That Encrypts Data · · Score: 1

    Current hardware vs. future hypothetical hardware, some things are just damn big problems no matter what you throw at it. As an example: Populate a ZFS file system to totally full.

    Summary: For our current and immediately foreseeable technology, filling a 128-bit file system requires more energy than we could harness. For a very long time to come, there will be no computer that we will seriously imagine that could accomplish the task.

    http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/date/20040925#128_bit_storage_are_you

  22. Re:looking for details on storm botnet control on Storm Worm Being Reduced to a Squall · · Score: 2, Interesting
  23. Re:Look at the Quasiturbine on X Prize For a 100-MPG Car · · Score: 1

    To be fair to the quasiturbine, it has run. The company will even make demonstration models available for a person to use. However, it requires a much better lubrication system before it will run reliably over long periods of time.

    My personal opinion is that the engineering involved is significantly easier to deal with than the multitude of feats we will have to accomplish before we see fusion power as a commercial product. I've got my hopes, at any rate.

    Vaporware seems to me a term for something announced, but not made yet. The quasiturbine has been made, it just doesn't work very good at the moment. Like my grammar.

  24. Look at the Quasiturbine on X Prize For a 100-MPG Car · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's an awesome engine, just need to get it finished up and built en masse.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiturbine
    http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm

  25. Re:Network security too! on First-Person Account of a Social Engineering Attack · · Score: 1

    I'm getting an education in this as I read through stuff. I like this place to start with:
    http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.ph p?t=2271

    In short, SSHv1 is not secure. Continue from there.