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User: TubeSteak

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  1. Re:WTF, submitter and green-lighter?! on China's Yearly Budget For High-Speed Rail: $100 Billion · · Score: 4, Informative

    "The network itself has had its share of problems, with people dying as a result." : This happens everywhere.

    Not like this it doesn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision
    Here's a picture of the accident scene: http://i.imgur.com/YJAAA.jpg

    There was a string of preventable events, from the lowliest track worker to the people that designed the control systems, which led up to the accident.
    The Chinese Government tried to throw a blanket over the whole event, but the public outrage forced a review of the events.
    /The USA actually has a lot of rail accidents, with injuries, but almost no one dies.

  2. Re:Always wondered about Russia... on Kaspersky's Exploit-Proof OS Leaves Security Experts Skeptical · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Russia and the former soviet states:
    1. A strong educational system (that is churning out computer scientists)
    2. Lack of opportunities in the computer science field
    3. No laws to curtail computer crime or minimal enforcement where laws exist.
    4. Strong tradition of organized crime

    Mix all these things together and you get hotspots of computer crime.
    There are towns where you can find everything starting with the guy who is writing the malware,
    to the guy translating your website/e-mail into english, and ending with the guys who cash out bank accounts and launder the money.

  3. Re:Really? on How Hair Can be Used To Track Where You've Been · · Score: 1

    Most soft drinks are bottled locally or, for certain parts of the world, in a nearby country.
    Perrier has three bottling plants in the US of A, though you can buy French bottles if you go looking for them.

    AFAIK, Perrier doesn't have a bottling plant in China, since the vast majority of the fresh water is polluted.

  4. Re:I am skeptical on How Hair Can be Used To Track Where You've Been · · Score: 1

    Lead formulations change; suppliers change; the very ore from which the lead is refined, varies even from the same mine. Convictions were overturned.

    Obviously there are major problems with trying to link hair to a very specific location, but all water treatment plants are required to take samples at regular intervals.
    This doesn't account for any trace accumulated from the pipes between the water treatment plant and [where ever], but it does provide a reliable baseline that bullet manufacturers don't have.

  5. Re:Sounds like on Zero Errors? Spamhaus Flubs Causing Domain Deletions · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Secondly, how sure are you somebody didn't forward your email to their own not-so-double-opt-in list which got reported as spam.

    2/10 domains were blacklisted by Spamhaus, which means 2/10ths of his e-mail list might be contaminated.
    It shouldn't be too much of a hassle to subdivide those users and flush out the one(s) which are causing the problem,
    Ideally, you'd notify Afilias ahead of time so that they don't blacklist your honeypot domain(s).

  6. Re:PEBKAC on Malware Is 'Rampant' On Medical Devices In Hospitals · · Score: 1

    The solution is obvious: turn on Windows update, and train staff to rein in their egos and drama for just a few minutes every day.

    First off, this is not how enterprise software management works. It's a terrible idea and you're a terrible person for suggesting it.

    Secondly, medical software management is a whole nother ball of wax, because the manufacturer has to certify the software to a higher level of confidence (regardless of whether or not any update has to go through regulatory review).

  7. Re:Invulnerable? on The Pirate Bay Starts Using Virtualized Servers · · Score: 1

    Just that the availability of the site wouldn't be affected by a raid. I guess this is at least one of the reasons they migrated to magnet links.

    They moved to magnet links for two reasons

    1. Significantly less storage and bandwidth resources are required if they no longer have to host torrent files.
    2. By no longer hosting torrent files, TPB can't (well, shouldn't) be accused of hosting infringing content. All they offer you is a url with a hash.

  8. Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo on US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls.

    The 15% polling number for inclusion is arbitrary and no 3rd party candidate has reached 15% anytime during the last hundred years (AFAIK).
    The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, bi-partisan (with emphasis on the partisan) organization created by the two parties specifically to freeze out 3rd parties and to create a 'safe' space for the candidates to debate.

    American politics has been a duopoly for generations.
    The parties aren't interested in a free market of ideas.

  9. Re:I like the idea on Kaspersky To Build Secure OS For SCADA Systems · · Score: 2

    As far as security goes, I think one important aspect is transparency.

    FTFA:

    Threatpost: What are the most important features for the new OS?

    Eugene Kaspersky: Alas, I cannot disclose many details about it.

    A secure OS shouldn't need to be kept secret.
    It should be publicly vetted like an encryption algorithm

  10. Re:A pity on MacKinnon Extradition Blocked By UK Home Secretary · · Score: 1

    Sorry, the constitution does NOT apply to foreigners in the US.

    The Constitution says "citizen" or "the people" when it means citizen and says "person" when it means anyone/everyone else.
    Consider re-reading the constitution + amendments with all those words highlighted.

    The 2nd Amendment issue has been litigated and the conclusion was "citizens only".
    The 4th Amendment issue has never been directly litigated by SCOTUS, but they have tangentially stated that there is no reason it wouldn't apply.
    The 6th Amendment issue has been litigated and the conclusion was "applies to everyone" (in the country)
    --INS/DHS/ICE deportation proceedings are not covered because they are civil cases, not criminal trials.

    And in the interests of being complete, the relevant portion(s) of the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th, 13th, and 14th Amendments also apply to "persons", regardless of their immigration status.

  11. Re:Jared Polis is one of the few.. on Congressman Warns FTC: Leave Google Alone · · Score: 1

    The market is that way because every other competitor's product sucks more. [...] Google Maps is unparalleled, for example.

    Have you tried anyone else's online map?
    Everyone has the basic features: directions, business search, satellite view, traffic

    Microsoft's Bing, despite the stupid name, has a great online map.
    In their satellite view, you can pan around and see the same spot from multiple angles.

    Mapquest (remember them?) shows you the outlines of neighborhoods.
    Yahoo... okay yea, you have a point there.

    I don't like big corporations and Google's size makes me uneasy. But I have problems finding serious fault with how they got to where they are today.

    Being a monopoly is not necessarily about how you gained your market dominance, but what you do with that dominance once you have it.
    The cost of regulating is less than the cost of another recession. Let the regulators do their job.

  12. Re:And I want a pony... on EU Authorities To Demand Reversal of Google Privacy Policy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    which is probably why my knee jerk reaction is that this is just another extortion racket and an organization hired to cause a stir.

    CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) translates to 'National commission on informatics and liberties'

    Unlike America, European regulators take their privacy seriously.
    They are mostly independant and don't have to bow down to political pressure.
    You seem to be confusing "not captured by corporate interests" with "just another extortion racket."

  13. Re:You can't win... on Post-ACTA Agreement CETA Moving Forward With Similar Provisions · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All the above worked diligently to stop ACTA.

    For some reason, governments are allergic to consumer advocate groups and sunlight.
    Which is why those groups were never invited to the ACTA negotiating table and will never be invited to participate in negotiations for any other copyright-related treaties.

    I am a stakeholder in my country and I should not be frozen out of the process that creates my laws.

  14. Re:Cost justifications on Is a Wireless Data Center Possible? · · Score: 1

    When the 60Ghz transceiver (which doesn't exist yet commercially)

    60 GHz exists right now for point to point communications.
    You can get it on newer computers by looking for "Intel wireless display" aka WiDi
    You can use it commercially with multi-gigabit speeds at ranges up to 1.5km (about a mile assuming good weather).

    They mention using 4 - 15gbit transceivers... what's the aggregate bandwidth of a 60Ghz network? If the aggregate bandwidth is 15gbit, that's not going to handle a rack full of servers.

    Talking about aggregate bandwidth for 60GHz is meaningless.
    The only number you have to worry about is the maximum bandwidth of a single transceiver, because, unlike most current wireless offerings,
    60 GHz frequencies are so directional that you can run multiple tx/rx systems on the same frequency as long as they're not pointed directly at each other.
    And if you're using polarized antennas, you can run multiple signals on the same frequency, without any interference.

    That said, unlike most current unlicensed frequencies, the 60 GHz spectrum is enormous.
    The unlicensed 2.4 GHz has 84.5 MHz of bandwidth.
    The unlicensed 5.8 GHz has 125 MHz of bandwidth.
    The unlicensed 60 GHz has 7 GHz of bandwidth from 57GHz to 64GHz.

    /I wonder how many library of congresses/second that works out to.

  15. There's a reason on The UAE Claims To Hold the Worlds Largest Biometric Database · · Score: 2

    The UAE's native population is vastly outnumbered by imported workers.

    There's about 1 million natives and about 7 million foreigners.
    A small fraction of those 7 million foreigners are white collar, with the rest being cheap labor

    Almost all of the labor force is male and the government was scared shitless the last time the workers got upset and started striking.
    It's no surprise that they want to build a database of the immigrant workers.

  16. Re:This is what Benjamin Frankin warned us about.. on Shut Up and Play Nice: How the Western World Is Limiting Free Speech · · Score: 1

    There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

    Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942)

    It has always been part of our legal tradition that there are words capable of causing "an immediate breach of the peace" and that violence is an acceptable response to those words.

    Or, as one of my friends said, right before giving me a dead arm: This is why you don't troll people in real life.

  17. Re:This is just taste of what's to come on US Suspects Iran Was Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks · · Score: 1

    So what they're saying is we need to re-internetize the internet. In this I think they're probably right. To a degree we've de-interneted the internet by building inter-dependent applications which focused a lot on their utility to civil society and not what assholes could do with them.

    How hard can it be to integrate this into the smart grid? We have the a large part of the infrastructure. We have robust packet switched networks.

    Oh fuck. The smart grid.
    The smart grid was designed by individuals who either "focused a lot on their utility to civil society and not what assholes could do with them"
    OR bootstrapped their "smart" on top of stupid old systems that no one ever imagined would require security,
    OR they were just to fucking cheap to bake security into their plans from day 0.

    This is doable and should be done.

    It's doable if the government is willing to pay private companies to rip out their old infrastructure and put in some brand new Made-In-China technology.
    It will not be done if private businesses can't write it off on their taxes or find some way to have the general public subsidize it for them.

  18. Re:So? on US Suspects Iran Was Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks · · Score: 1

    I feel Yet Another Desert War coming on...

    Probably because you don't know anything about Iran except that they have a nuclear weapons program and have used aggressive language towards Israel.

    If you attack Iran, you will not just be fighting within the Iranian borders.
    Iranian funded groups will lash out, in all directions, at once.
    People smarter than us know and understand this, which is why Iran has been managed with sanctions and computer viruses.

    You cannot plan to attack Iran without committing to a general war across the Middle East.
    The USA does not have the resources to do this and I doubt Poland (or our other NATO buddies) have any interest in being dragged into the sandbox again.

  19. Re:Pearl Harbor???? on US Suspects Iran Was Behind a Wave of Cyberattacks · · Score: 2

    "Provoked" and "sneak attack" do not have to be mutually exclusive.

    But good luck trying to correct the historical record.
    Most Americans learn a very abbreviated version of history during their formative years.
    That version doesn't include 99% of the shitty things our country has done.

  20. Re:Has there been a trial? on Proposed Posting of Clients List In Prostitution Case Raises Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1

    Innocent until proven guilty is a fiction the legal system utilizes in order to prevent the justice system from being prejudiced.
    It does not mean the accused is innocent.

    You can't censor the list of individuals being given a summons.
    If the list is used as evidence in the prostitute's prosecution, it's going to become public eventually.

  21. Re:Coal mining? on Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Drilling On College Campuses · · Score: 1

    The best part is, once the extraction is done, you have two new basketball courts!

    And a Super Fund site!

  22. Re:And your point is? on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 1

    Suppression of information is not libertarian, even the idea of the free market itself requires informed players.

    Unequal access to information is a very libertarian viewpoint,
    unless they've suddenly started advocating for laws preventing insider trading.

    Libertarians believe in a very specific type of free market, with the emphasis on "free."
    Their presumption is that "free" leads to 'competitive.'

    That said, I'd rather have more viewpoints than less.
    The way debates are generally rigged to avoid including 3rd party candidates is a state and national disgrace.

  23. Re:Dissent amongst thieves? on WikiLeaks Losing Support From Anonymous · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, that was a veiled reference to the diplomatic cable leaks -- Bad Plan, Darlings. We don't need to know that our diplomats are sexually promiscuous, or that they're having marital problems, etc. Those are private matters -- diplomat or not, we need to respect the privacy of others unless there's a compelling public interest reason for disclosure.

    If that's all you learned from the Diplomatic Cables, you should put down the gossip magazines and start reading serious news.

    Things the diplomatic cables revealed:
    1. The USA was bombing Yemen and lied to the American people about it. The Yemeni government provided cover for the USA's involvement.
    2. Confirmation that the Chinese government directed the hacking of Google's servers in China
    3. Our ally Kuwait refuses to take back the Kuwaitis we've picked up in Afghanistan and have been holding in Guantanamo
    4. Funding for al-Qaeda, is still flowing from various rich individual in Saudi Arabia (our ally)
    5. Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai, is on the CIA payroll and a major drug dealer.
    6. Indian politicans were giving and receiving bribes in order to vote for a nuclear deal with the USA
    7. The US Government was secretly lobbying New Zealand and Canada to institute shitty copyright laws
    8. The State Dept pushed The Washington Post into watering down a story about security contractors bribing Afghans with drugs and teen partyboys
    9. The USA used the acceptance of Guantanamo detainees as bargaining chips
    10. US troops rounded up and shot 11 people, then called in a missile strike to cover their murders.

    Feel free to go point by point and argue why there isn't a "compelling public interest reason for disclosure"
    From what we've seen, a lot of what gets classified is either embarrassing, illegal, or a war crime.
    Not anything whose disclosure would be a threat to national security, unless you consider justice a threat.

  24. Re:Seems like a rationalization on Stress-Testing Software For Deep Space · · Score: 2

    First of all, there's a typo in TFA.
    They state the chip is a "RAD760" but they link to the RAD750 wikipedia page.

    Do x86 processors not process images precisely enough? I get the idea of being hardened to radiation but it was my understanding we have newer processors that fit the bill on this.

    The problem with x86 technology is that it has gotten too advanced.
    The chips have become so dense that radiation hardening is much much more difficult than it used to be.
    Increased difficulty = increased expense

    Further, I don't think you appreciate the specs of that old PowerPC chip.
    It's tolerance to 1 megarad of radiation exposure is a lot.
    You literally get what you pay for with this cup, ranging from 200 rads to 1 megarad.
    Even 500 rads is more than most space applications require.

    So in order to save money, some companies use cheaper hardware in a triple redundant configuration, in order to avoid paying out big bucks for radiation hardened boards + chips. But for a mission to mars, where reliability and power usage are critical, two old 133mhz processors are better than any of the other choices.

    The rover has just enough processing power to talk to NASA, look around, and do one other thing. And that's just fine.
    They've partly split up the workload between two processors, but if one processor failed, NASA could juggle everything with one hand.

  25. Re:Truth or dare... on Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week · · Score: 1

    PS this wasn't quote stuffing. In order to gain from quote stuffing you'd have to cause queuing in the exchange. Firstly this didn't happen. Secondly, it wouldn't happen because these orders were spread across many symbols, which each have their own queue.

    The entire exchange has a certain amount of bandwidth and processing power.
    The HFT wasn't stuffing individual queues, it was testing the limits of the entire system.

    HFTs are like tribbles: they will expand to fill all available space.