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User: lizrd

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  1. Re:Duh on Ex-NSA Analyst Warns Of NSA Security Backdoors · · Score: 1
    It is clear, you ONLY choices for security are:

    1. Code it yourself.

    2. Use publicly available source.

    While these are good solutions, they are far from foolproof. Most of us (yes, even here at geeky /.) don't have the necessary crypto background to effectively and securely implement crypto algorithms. It's one of those cases when doing it just a little bit wrong it's far worse than not doing it at all. The only thing worse than no security is false security.

    Using public source prepared by known experts in the field isn't any gaurantee either. Just a month ago the whole PGP ADK problem come up and showed us that some code that has been out in the open for years was insecure. I have a lot of respect for PRZ and really don't believe that there was any malicious intent or heavy-handed tactics by the NSA, but it really goes to show how fragile even good security software can be.
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  2. Re:Loss of NTFS security on Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support · · Score: 1
    Thanks for writing back. I wasn't actually trying to be a troll, but apparently I kind of had my head up my ass. Naturally I should have thought of this exact situation since I have done this on several occasions. My line of thinking when posting this wasn't really considering the case of a public access computer. These sorts of settings obviously have unique and important security concerns.

    I was thinking more along the lines of a computer that already has a certian degree of physical security (it's in your office, study, machine room, home, etc.). If this is the case and you're still concerned about someone using a floppy to boot the machine and get root access, something needs to be done about the situation and I don't think that the appropriate step is more security for the machine.

    As always, computer security is an interesting topic for discussion. And as always, a discussion on the topic brings up points that I had not previously considered.
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  3. Re:Is sharing so bad? on Dirt Cheap Telescopes With Liquid Mercury · · Score: 1
    My impression of the community around telescopes is that the scientists are generally pretty good about sharing resources. The problem is that when the resources are very expensive the high costs have to be shared as well and to make this practical, they have to be shared between a large number of projects.

    To make a really bad analogy, it's not so bad to have to share a car with your little sister, but you'd like it a whole lot better if you didn't have to. If someone found a way to make a car that's almost as good for 1% of the cost, then you would probably be able to get your own. And having your own is a good thing(tm).
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  4. Re:The "pointing straight up" part... on Dirt Cheap Telescopes With Liquid Mercury · · Score: 1

    It's the largeness of the mirrors/lenses that give a really big telescope it's power. The larger that the mirror/lens is the more light that the telescope can gether and the better it is at picking out dim/small objects. I think that the problem with using accessory mirrors to direct light to the main mirror is the result of the fact that the first mirror/lens is what really determines how good the telescope is. While I'd imagine that building a really large flat mirror would be a little easier than building a really large curved mirror, you would still be left with the problem of making a really large and really perfect mirror. It's the cost of such a mirror that this project is attempting to eliminate.
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  5. Re:I've seen a stupider website idea. on CueCat At It Again · · Score: 1
    To err is human, but to really fowl things up you require a politician.

    Not unless in your country politicians are poultry. Around here they are more often compared to snakes, weasels and chimps.
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  6. Re:Loss of NTFS security on Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support · · Score: 1
    If there's a need to protect data from those that have physical access you need to fire these people if they're your employees or move if they're your roommates.

    Well, that and keep your crypto drives unmounted when not in use. It's always good to help the honest people stay that way.
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  7. Re:A related rant... on IOC Clamps Down on Athlete Web Diaries · · Score: 1

    The thing is that they basically tried this 4 years ago or was it 8. I don't remember. They had 3 pay per view style channels that just showed live events all day. Problem is that nobody bought it and they lost tons of money. Therefore it ain't happening this summer.
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  8. Re:PDA phones on Palm/Motorola to Develop Combo handheld/phone · · Score: 1
    Will you be write a program that will make a phone call or accept calls?

    Digital airtime may be gettin' cheap and all, but do you really want to run a war dialer on your cell phone?
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  9. Re:If we can't invent something new... on Palm/Motorola to Develop Combo handheld/phone · · Score: 1
    Some people just have no skilz. If you can't talk on the phone, take notes on a Palm, smoke a cigarette, drink a coke, eat a sandwich and parallel park and manual transmission vehicle at the same time you deserve to die in a car wreck.

    </sarcasm>

    All joking aside there are always going to be people who do stupid things and the way to prevent this isn't to pass a law against every stupid thing that someone and do. Seems to me that anyone in the situation I described above could and should be charged with careless driving or similar.
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  10. Re:Misssing Features on ZapStation CD/MP3/DVD Player/Server · · Score: 1

    Interesting. I've never tried the Sierra Wheat. I really like the Pale Ale it is double plus good. :) Although IMHO it is a little bit too strongly hopped to really be called a Pale Ale, I would have classed it as an EPA or perhaps an IPA but it's a little too thin for either of these styles. Overall I haven't been too impressed by the Sierra beers. I think that they all taste kind of like the pale ale even if they really shouldn't. Especially the stout. The stout is really over hopped. It's difficult to taste any of the roast malts that define a good stout. Well, this is getting really off topic, but it's a topic dear to my heart.
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  11. hrm.... on What's Coming In Red Hat 7.0 · · Score: 2

    Well, sounds like things are moving in the right direction. Better security in the workstation installs is a big step in this direction. As far as I see it I'll wait for 7.1 so that I can actually get kernel 2.4 and KDE 2.0. Those are the things that are really be going to push me to do some upgrading. The inclusion of Open SSH on the disks is also a very good thing.
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  12. Geek Apartment on Constructing A Geek House · · Score: 1
    My senior year in College I lived in an excellent Geek Apartment. The documentation of this place can be viewed at http://orangenet.dhs.org/lll. I will now describe some of the features of this abode that I found most necessary.

    • Computers - I believe that we had ~14 between the 4 of us. Having one on the coffee table in the living room is very useful.
    • Food - Try your best to make sure that at least one of your roommates is a good cook and keep snacks on hand.
    • Bandwidth - We had a 7 Mbps DSL connection that worked well for us.
    • AV equipment - Plan ahead and run sound and video wires to every room. We had a really sweet AV system in the bathroom, it's great to watch the news in the morning while you shave or not miss the movie when you get up to use the toilet. A cheap way of running AV is to use speaker wire. This can then be spliced to RCA cable ends for easy connections, you do gain a bit of noise since they're not shielded coax, but it's usually acceptable.
    • Refridgerators - Used dorm fridges can be picked up on the cheap. Make sure to put one near each couch and desk.
    • Web Cam - What good is any geek dwelling without one? Also provides a good way to archive any interesting events/personalities that may occur in your geek dwelling.
    • Good Roommates - It is very important for such a project that you are living with people you trust and that you enjoy spending time with. Ideally you should all have somewhat different areas of expertise. This way at least one of you should be able to take the lead on any new project that may come along and you'll have others to hand you beers while you work.
    • X10 - Yes, I know that they have really irritating banner ads. But, the home automation stuff they sell is very cool and fairly cheap. There is no reason why you should have to get off the couch to turn on and off the lights.
    I think that about covers the things I found most important. Naturally, a geek home isn't something that can be planned, it is something that will grow in the proper enviornment with the proper people and an investment of some time and midnight oil. A 24 hour Walmart and some alcohol often helps to get the creative juices flowing.

    Upon moving in a big priority should be laying out the furniture in such a way that the addition of more cables will not be greatly difficult in the future. To that end, you may wish to consider the purchase of some of those 6' sections of half round rubber cable guides. These can by purchased for only a few $ at any home improvement store.
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  13. Re:Why shouldn't we have Carnivore? on Carnivore-like tool released as Open Source · · Score: 1
    But there's no outcry over phone tapping because a) it's already here, and b) it's not affecting the Internet.

    Sometimes there is outcry over phone tapping. It wasn't more than about 2 years ago that the FBI was trying to get Congress to legislate that the telephone companies had to install special equipment at the central office to allow 1% of all the nation's phonelines to be tapped at the same time. 1% is a huge amount of phone lines to be tapping at once being that in recent years the total number of court orders for wiretaps has been ~10^2 while the population of this country is ~10^8. So when the FBI went trying to expand their power by 4 orders of magnitude (1% of ~10^8 is about ~10^6) there was general outcry and the proposal was revised to something more appropriate.

    A few years earlier there was similar trouble when the Clintor administration started talking about the Clipper Chip. This nifty little gadget was going to be put in phones and faxen and whatnot and allow us all to have all sorts of lovely encrypted communications. Only drawback was that the makers of devices using the Clipper Chip would have been required to turn your private key over to Uncle Sam for safe keeping. People were generally upset by this and Phil Zimmerman did something about it. He created PGP which made even better security than the Clipper Chip was to have offered avaliable to everyone, for free, and without the govn't getting involved. They sued him and lost, called it a munition and put export restrictions on it and lost at that game too.

    Now we've got this carnivore thing. I think that it's just more of the same old, same old. the FBI is asking for more than it really thinks that it can get. The American people and the Justice Department are making a big stink about it and in the end the FBI will get what they wanted in the first place, a way to monitor the e-mail of suspected criminals with a court order.
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  14. Re: (there is no) sexism in computer jobs on Interviews Come Back -- With Cringely's Answers · · Score: 1
    The trouble is finding applicants.

    This is exactly the point that I wanted to make. Even though it is true that Physics and Computer Science departemnts would really like to have more women (both as students and as faculty) they just can't find applicants. My hypothesis is that part of this problem is coming from the admissions office and high school counselors. When a young woman is applying to a university and is undecided about choosing a course of study they are very unlikely to be referred to the physics department as a good place to explore.

    This probably means that there are certian fields that really need to make a stronger effort to reach out towards young women and help them realize that studying Physics, Math, Comp. Sci. etc. are actually viable options for them. I'm curious as to how this would actually be done, I really don't know what the best way is.
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  15. Browser Cache in RAM Disk on Other Uses For The Linux RAM Disk? · · Score: 1
    Putting the browser cache in ram is something that is often done by the more paranoid types. This helps to keep any records of what [possibly evil, but more likely boring] websites you have been browsing from being written to disk. This way when the jack booted thugs to break down your door all evidence can be destroyed by just pulling the plug.

    In terms of more practical benefits of this practice, it can be useful for preventing the size of your disk cache from getting too large and taking up space that you *really need* for those N. Portman .jpg's and Metallica MP3s and can help to reduce file system fragmentation.
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  16. Re:No shrinkwrap on Digital Convergence Changes EULA, and Gets Cracked · · Score: 1
    I don't think that I am the lizard of whom you speak. Sorry.

    The thing that bothers me about this is that the software came in an opened state and "By opening this software you agree to the terms of the EULA" or some such nonsense. It was unpossible to not open the software since it was open upon receipt. Not that it really matters, I hashed my windows partition back in march and haven't used it since. I'm not likely to ever use the software that came with the cuecat anyway.
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  17. Re:No shrinkwrap on Digital Convergence Changes EULA, and Gets Cracked · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I was kind of miffed about this. I received one in the mail from Wired Mag. (Note, I didn't ask for this but it arrived in my mailbox. Therefore it is a gift) Having previously seen discussion of IP issues regarding this device on /. I carefully inspected everything that came in the box. There is no notice of copyright/EULA printed on the device itself. There is no legal warning on the enclosed audio cable (BTW, has anyone figured out how that thing works. Seems kind of cool). There is no notice or warning or printed copy of the EULA on the instruction sheets. However there is a notice on the unsealed cardboard sleeve that the software CD comes in saying that by opening the CD package you must agree to the EULA contained on the disk. Somehow I would imagine that this is unenforcable since you are unable to read the contract until you have taken an action that is specified to constitute acceptance. Hell you really can't avoid it even if you tried, my CD fell out of the sleeve when I dumped the contents of the box onto the kitchen table. Oh well, that's enough ranting for the day.
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  18. Re: (there is no) sexism in computer jobs on Interviews Come Back -- With Cringely's Answers · · Score: 1
    No school that I've ever heard of has any policy keeping girls (and here I'm talking about teenaged girls,) from enrolling in a computer class. Nor have I ever heard any teacher actively encouraging the boys to enroll in one.

    I'm not quite sure that this is true. Granted, that I never heard of a stated policy denying girls access to physics, higher math and computer science; but I think that it still exists. It's quite simply a matter of those times when you don't know what to do with your life and ask a well trusted person for advice (be that a school counselor, faculty advisor, older sibling, parent, pastor or some other role model). When you ask "what should I do with my life?" or "what class should I take during this free hour in my schedule?" a girl is much more likely to get the advice to explore some art or music classes or perhaps literature or biology while a boy is more likely to have computers, math and physics suggested. It's certianly not the case that these people are seeking to keep women out of the tech workplace, but the fact is that there are still strong ideas of gender roles in this world even if they are now much less rigid.

    In addition to these ideas of gender roles, there is also a social aspect. The tech fields remain somewhat of a good old boys club. I'm fairly certian that again this is not an intentional thing but the fact remains that tech jobsites and classrooms remain largely male. There is simply no denying that it is much more challenging to enter into a new situation where most of the others involved are quite different from you in some way.
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  19. Re:PNM Streaming... on The First Mouse · · Score: 2

    lynx -dump pnm://vodreal.stanford.edu/Engel/12Engel200.rm > ~/12Engel200.rm
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  20. Re:Um, aren't we a little hasty? on IE 5.5 Tracking Default Bookmarks · · Score: 1

    Thanks, I appreciate your input on how to get rid of this feature. However, I do find it irksome that there isn't an easier way to deal with this problem. Oh, well, such is the nature of Linux: if something bothers you there's always a way to fix it, it just may be that it takes a good bit of web searching to find the proper hack.
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  21. Re:Um, aren't we a little hasty? on IE 5.5 Tracking Default Bookmarks · · Score: 1
    However, I think MS IE is far worse as it has so many features which are sneakier.

    Yeah, gotta agree with that. NS makes no attempt to hide the fact that they think you are a cow. At least in IE you can disable all these "features", in NS you're stuck with THAT GODDAMNED FUCKING *SHOP* BUTTON!!! Excuse me, I just really don't like that button. Even worse than having it at all is that they put Shop right next to Stop. This really bothers me since I generally use text only buttons in NS. I'd rather use the icons, but they're stuck at size FUCKING HUGE! Well that's enough of my ranting for today.

    Pretty please, pretty please, can I have a good browser for Linux???
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  22. Re:the *default* bookmarks only? on IE 5.5 Tracking Default Bookmarks · · Score: 1

    Well, if you're completely lacking a TCP/IP connection I'd suspect that you don't get much use out of Internet Explorer.
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  23. Re:Here: on MP3.com Nixes Decss.mp3 · · Score: 1
    Well, it's not really illegal to do any of these things until a Judge tells you not to. So, unless you're 2600 you're free to do as you please. Only problem is that if the MPAA decides that it doesn't like what you're doing they'll ask a judge to tell you that you can't do it and since they already succeeded in getting a judge to tell 2600 to knock it off they'll probably win against you too. Having them go and ask the judge is going to be exceedingly problematic for you and therefore probably something that you really don't want to be doing in the first place.

    While I think that it would probably be pretty difficult for the MPAA to actually have this song declared illegal, I also seriously doubt the MP3.com really wants to be named as a defendant in this month's round of lawsuits.
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  24. Re:Better hardware support than ZDNet said on New iBooks And OSX Beta Released · · Score: 1

    Should be able to. There's only 1 video card involved in this process (i.e. the projector must show the same thing as the LCD). I think this problem only applies to those who have 2 monitors that can show different things.
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  25. Re:Great now it's IPs and AMEXs on AmEx To Offer "Disposable" Credit Card Numbers · · Score: 1
    This is kind of interesting. egghead.com is now asking for those digits. They have some babble on their site about how it makes your transaction more secure, but I don't understand it. hrm...I've got a link here someplace.... ah here it is.

    I don't really see the extra utility of giving them these digits, is it just to help prevent the use of CC# generators? Don't see where that would help since it isn't required. I also wonder when they say on that page that 16 + 3 = 20. I'm muchly confused by that as well. Anyone else have any ideas?
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