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User: rtaylor

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Comments · 1,172

  1. Re:Solution on Italy Approves 'Google Tax' On Internet Companies · · Score: 1

    A Russian can import goods from China into the United States. They pay duties and other fees at the border of the United States as the goods enter the country; even if they intend to pay Americans to take the product.

    The internet needs some kind of enforced border to ensure duties and other fees are paid on content as they arrive. The ads, in this case, would require payment in order to be presented to an Italian client. The "good" is being consumed by an Italian and taxes/fees should be paid when it crosses the border or by the local company regardless of where the purchaser or the manufacturer are located.

  2. Re:How is Norway going to know? on Norway Rejects Bitcoin As Currency; Taxes As Asset, Instead · · Score: 1

    They'll notice the same way they find out about other hidden income. Bank activity and assets in your possession.

  3. Re:Now, if... on Theo De Raadt Says FreeBSD Is Just Catching Up On Security · · Score: 1

    True, but kernel deficiencies cannot be fixed that way.

  4. Re:I am afraid tech lines are being narrowed... on China's First Lunar Lander To Launch Today; Manned Mission Planned By 2030 · · Score: 1

    Agreed. If the chinese are going to the moon you can expect them to stay there permanently, claim ownership, and begin sending back resources (rare-earth metals necessary for many manufactured goods).

  5. Re:Psychology on Psychologists Strike a Blow For Reproducibility · · Score: 2

    Science is a process, not a field of study or a result.

    That process can be applied to anything where you want to find a fact.

  6. Re:Two words on Why Amazon Is Profitless Only By Choice · · Score: 1

    You don't really think the majority of the funds in your bank account sit in a random bank vault do you?

  7. Re:We didn't need considerations... on The W3C Sells Out Users Without Seeming To Get Anything In Return · · Score: -1, Troll

    Of course you don't need DRM. You don't produce content with value.

    Producers of content with value want DRM.

  8. Re:Officials learn terrorist and criminals use cas on US Intelligence Chief Defends Attempts To Break Tor · · Score: 1

    FinCEN and FINTRAC has been around for a long time and tracks most large transactions in any monetary form. Lawyers, bankers, and even folks like real-estate agents are reporting entities.

  9. Re:Fingerprint != user authentication on MasterCard Joining Push For Fingerprint ID Standard · · Score: 1

    I don't see why this is a problem for me using a credit card.

    Credit card companies (well, retailers) take on the risk of fraud themselves. When you see a charge you didn't make, you call up Mastercard and let them know. A few days and an affidavit later and the charges are reversed.

    If this was a bank issuing a debit card I would be concerned. Getting debit charges reversed is nearly impossible IME.

  10. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) on Oracle Promises 100x Faster DB Queries With New In-Memory Option · · Score: 2

    MongoDB makes a great caching layer.

    Write your data to Pg into a permanent data-store. Use a trigger to push the data into MongoDB (foreign data wrapper).

    Enjoy the query benefits of Mongo and the reliability of Pg with the caveat that you need to occasionally rebuild your cache (MongoDB copy).

  11. Re:Wrong analogy on US Electrical Grid On the Edge of Failure · · Score: 1

    The fibre backhaul between data-centers being cut is a better analogy.

    Sections of power plants (most have multiple generators, etc.) are taken offline frequently for maintenance.

  12. Re:X.org forfeits agreement. IRS does job. News at on X.Org Foundation Loses 501(c)3 Non-Profit Status · · Score: 1

    The group has no revenue, they rely on donations to function and everything they make is given away for free

    Prove it. Show me the paperwork.

    That is the core of the issue. X.org is required to submit proof of this belief on an annual basis to IRS. They didn't do that.

  13. Re:This assumes the world isn't broke in 2030 on International Effort Could Put First Canadian On the Moon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Democratic countries only. Most of the communist ones, including those that went through financial difficulties in the 80's/90's are in pretty good shape debt wise.

  14. Re:Sugar on What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Few few people ate dozens of kilograms of honey per year.

    The quantity of HFCS in a typical modern diet is rather large.

  15. SSH Relay Machine/Audit Log on Ask Slashdot: IT Staff Handovers -- How To Take Over From an Outgoing Sys Admin? · · Score: 1

    Not an admin but this is what I would consider doing with management backing.

    Install a pair of SSH relay servers with full logging of everything going in/out of it to a write only filesystem. Configure production boxes to only accept connections via this relay server.

    There are good reasons to have a full audit of everything admins do; and suddenly you know absolutely everything the admins are doing today.

    If a ticket is closed and the process isn't documented, give your technical writer the log snippet so they can document the process.

    Either you've got 2 weeks worth of work fully documented or evidence that the previous guy wasn't working.

  16. Re:Not-so-accurate source on BBC Clock Inaccurate - 100 Days To Fix? · · Score: 1

    The time server isn't even the hard part.

    They also don't want to dynamically generate the page for every hit and likely pre-generate and/or cache large chunks of it; probably even in the clients webbrowser.

    So now you're implementing some kind of AJAX request system to pull the time when the page loads, with all of the tricks you mention, and that requires significant testing.

    They need to try a large number of phone browsers, tablet browsers, and desktop browsers in a number of different time zones and connectivity scenarios (spotty/lagged connections).

    Not easy at all to do well.

  17. Re:30 minutes?? Are you serious? on Tesla To Blanket US With Superchargers In Two Years · · Score: 2

    Do you frequently drive 7 hours straight without a bite to eat and a pee break?

    I doubt that's very common amongst their target market.

  18. Re:It's stupid though on WD Explains Its Windows-Only Software-Based SSHD Tech · · Score: 1

    It sounds great to me.

    ZFS will let me use the flash cache of a single mixed drive to accelerate writes to an entire pool of drives which do not have flash in them.

  19. Re:Large datasets are mostly IO limited on Harvard/MIT Student Creates GPU Database, Hacker-Style · · Score: 1

    Agreed. That easily fits into memory (3 times actually) on our main OLTP DB.

    If it can fit into ram for less than $50K, it's not big data.

  20. Re:Table-valued parameters on Security Fix Leads To PostgreSQL Lock Down · · Score: 1

    Both Oracle and PostgreSQL will let you pass in an array as a function argument.

    Incidentally, PostgreSQL normally changes IN into =ANY(ARRAY[]) for performance, so you're not losing anything that way.

  21. Re:Should be collected by the feds on Internet Sales Tax Vote This Week In US Senate · · Score: 1

    Canada has a minimum revenue level before you are required to collect sales tax. IIRC, it's around $30,000/year gross revenue.

    The same could apply here pretty easily.

  22. Re:Swatch Internet Time on Ask Slashdot: How Many Time Standards Are There? · · Score: 1

    I've found running a 24/7 website, that day or week and time of day really don't matter. Either someone is working or you risk losing business regardless of the date, holiday, or time of day.

  23. Re:Storing plaintext passwords should be illegal on Australian Tax Office Stores Passwords In Clear Text · · Score: 1

    Indeed. The Hash is the plaintext password.

    Hashing a password only protects a users account on other websites when they're silly enough to use the same password on all websites.

    It also makes it damndably difficult to strengthen or change the hash if a problem is found. If you picked MD4, you're stuck with it forever.

    I don't know what the solution is but hashing the password in the DB has created as many problems as it solved for me.

  24. Re:Google services on Ask Slashdot: Should We Have the Option of Treating Google Like a Utility? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You can have Google Search in-house.

    More specifically, you can buy Google Appliance which will index all of your in-house documents on a machine which lives in your office and provides a search interface for your own stuff.

    http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/campaigns/gsa7.html

  25. Re:Hope no one hacks our entire Air Force one day on Future Fighters Won't Need Ejection Seats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why send up one sophisticated aircraft when you could sent up 10,000 really dumb ones.

    Send up a cloud of drones with the expectation that 20% will be sacrificed for defence of the group.