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User: MobyDisk

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Comments · 5,998

  1. Re:Voltaire on In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist · · Score: 1

    So help me figure out what the K. S. means.

  2. Voltaire on In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's awesome that his pen name was Voltaer which sounds like a reference to Voltaire who was fighting for civil rights and had his books burned.

    It sounds like this guy is brilliant. He was smart enough to use a pen name to hide his writings from his students, and also smart enough to choose a pen name that mocks anyone who uses these writings to defame him. Clearly, Voltaire should now be required reading by Dorchester county students.

  3. change.org petition on In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist · · Score: 2

    There is a petition at Change.org requiring the county school superintendent to apologize.
    https://www.change.org/p/dr-he...

  4. Re:Wreak havoc on corporate networks, SSL observat on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 1

    I am unclear on all this, but "the browser then can trust the proxy" seems to mean that same thing as the MITM. The proxy issues a cert, and the browser has to trust that cert. It is a form of MITM attack: except you know and (supposedly) trust the MITM.

  5. Re:Wreak havoc on corporate networks, SSL observat on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 1

    This AC makes a key point: It is the auditors who decide the real policy. Sometimes that is good since I don't want politicians deciding those details. But the bad part is that the auditors, when faced with ambiguous language, will overreact and require nearly impossible things like keeping all web pages served for the next 10 years.

  6. Re:"Net neutrality", my ass. on Net Neutrality Campaign To Show What the Web Would Be Like With a "Slow Lane" · · Score: 1

    And how, exactly, do you propose to "expose them to competition"? Do you invite multiple last mile providers to install new infrastructure?

    The answer to your question is to have one "last-mile" company provide the wires, while other companies act as ISPs. So under that system, Comcast and Verizon can run a wire to my house, but they cannot provide service. Other companies such as AOL, Earthlink, and Netzero provide the service. About 20 years ago these two things were called "telephone companies" and "internet service providers" but a foolish regulatory framework allowed the telephone companies to either buyout the ISPs, or limit/deny their access to the wires until they went out of business. That created the problem we have today. But it is so entrenched that people can't even imagine such a world, even though we already had it. Nobody complained about network neutrality when they could switch ISPs with a 5-minute phone call and a credit card.

    The last true ISP I know of was Cavtel, and they stopped accepting new customers in 2011. Does anyone know any others? It could still be done, albeit inefficiently, with a VPN. Not quite the same though.

  7. Re:Wreak havoc on corporate networks, SSL observat on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry! I'm totally wrong! The corporate MITM will work just fine once it is updated:

    The UA will not be able to detect and thwart a MITM attacking the
          UA's first connection to the host. (However, the requirement that
          the MITM provide an X.509 certificate chain that can pass the UA's
          validation requirements, without error, mitigates this risk
          somewhat.) Worse, such a MITM can inject its own PKP header into the
          HTTP stream, and pin the UA to its own keys. To avoid post facto
          detection, the attacker would have to be in a position to intercept
          all future requests to the host from that UA.

  8. Wreak havoc on corporate networks, SSL observatory on Mozilla To Support Public Key Pinning In Firefox 32 · · Score: 1

    This is a good idea, but I bet it will not work well on corporate networks that do MITM attacks: every cert will be wrong. This same thing happens if you use the SSL Observatory add-on. This clearly shows how the public key infrastructure implementation is completely flawed.

  9. Other photocopier/printer robots on Robot Printer Brings Documents To Your Desk · · Score: 1
  10. Re:Seriously? on For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water" · · Score: 1

    So let us accept your interpretation -- how the heck does it apply to submarines?

  11. Re:Never useful info given with patches on Microsoft Releases Replacement Patch With Two Known Bugs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can a consumer make an informed decision to go ahead and install patches or not without hours of looking up KB numbers?

    Consumers don't make such decisions. If you want that level of control over your OS, don't use Windows. This isn't a knock against Windows or anything: it's just part of the closed-source model. You trust them. If they do a good job, then it saved you effort. If they do not, you get burned. That is the trade-off.

  12. Re:Google needs to clean up search on Microsoft Dumps 1,500 Apps From Its Windows Store · · Score: 1

    If you want to be a good citizen, submit feedback to Google using their Adwords feedback page.
    I also did a search for "Firefox" and got a different scammer. I just submitted a feedback form for it. The scammer I saw also used the trademarked Firefox logo, but don't even mention that because you can't report that unless you represent the trademark holder. Just select that they are a counterfeit site and mention the scamware/malware aspect.

    Naturally, Google should be able to use common sense and filter this out themselves. This is the problem with a fully automated world.

  13. Is this really a win? on Google Wins $1.3 Million From Patent Troll · · Score: 3, Insightful

    despite Google having already paid licensing fees for the technology.

    Since Google is paying the patent troll licensing fees, this doesn't sound much like a win.

    The article also doesn't explain why someone would sue even though they were being paid. Did Beneficial Innovations (OMG, even the name is trolling) not realize these customers were covered?

  14. Re:On site transmutation on New NRC Rule Supports Indefinite Storage of Nuclear Waste · · Score: 1

    You should change your name to mdagainstnuclear. :-)

  15. Re:On site transmutation on New NRC Rule Supports Indefinite Storage of Nuclear Waste · · Score: 1

    More to the point: It essentially takes more energy and money to eliminate the waste that way then what you got out of it in the first place.

  16. Re:The death of leniency on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 1

    I had not heard that the tax rate on the wealth is dropping. I did a quick google search for "United States Tax Rate Wealthy" and the first hit seems to be an informative WSJ article pointing out that the tax rate on the wealthy is increasing.

  17. Re:Will the cameras work? on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 1

    agreed.

  18. Re:Will the cameras work? on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 1

    but then it will immediately put suspicion on the police officer

    It doesn't work that way today.

    There was an example of where a woman claimed she was raped by a police officer. The condom vanished from the evidence lock-up before trial. But the absence of evidence does not good for the woman. Even if it put suspicion on the police officer, that suspicion is not enough to prove rape.

    Similarly, there are cases where police car-mounted cameras fail. I don't think those usually work-out well for the defendant who claimed he was attacked just as the camera cut out.

  19. Re:The death of leniency on U.S. Senator: All Cops Should Wear Cameras · · Score: 1

    This may sound odd, but that's actually a good thing. In short: If laws are enforced consistently, then bad laws are eventually removed. If laws are enforced selectively, they are used to punish those who don't have the political power to change them.

    Let me clarify: When laws are selectively enforced, it introduces the problem that the person doing the selection can "bias" that law. They can apply it to uncooperative people, or ugly people, or certain races, etc. So, for example, everyone speeds. But not everyone is pulled-over for speeding in a completely random distribution. Instead, the law targets the person in the sporty red car, or the one who looks like they might smoke weed, or the minority race. But if *every single person* got pulled-over for speeding every day, we would probably change the law!

    Criminal prosecutors cause this kind of problem a lot because they can selectively enforce laws. Wealthy people or businesses are often given a fine, while while an average individual will be given jail time. Or rather than going after everyone using insider information, they pick the high profile TV celebrity. The NSA and the phone companies have no consequence to violating wiretapping laws, but individuals are often frightened to record a phone conversation with tech support.

  20. Re:Doesn't need much to make it right on New Windows Coming In Late September -- But Which One? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Everybody on Slashdot talks about how Windows 8's flaw is the Start Screen. But as someone who has used Windows 8 extensively, the fundamental problem isn't just that the start menu is now full-screen. That is just the first big jarring change you see. But fixing that alone won't solve the problem.

    The real issue is that half of the OS uses the desktop UI, and the other half uses the "metro" UI. The built-in metro apps are inferior and redundant to the desktop counterparts. The metro photo viewer doesn't have as many features, you can't navigate photos in a folder. There are at least 4 wizards for adding a printer, some are metro-based and some are desktop based. System restore is another one like that, and there are lots more. There is a redundant registry area for desktop IE and the Metro IE, so some things like IE proxy settings can get out of sync between them. You can't even get to some of those settings from Metro. You can't put apps in the Startup folder.

    The bottom line is that they just didn't finish the Windows 8 UI.

    Look back at the Windows XP and 7 start menu. The shortcuts are usually a mess: folders with only one icon in them. Or folders with 3 icons: the app, the readme, and the uninstall. Can you remember which things are under "Accessories" versus the ones under "System Tools?" How many icons are on there that aren't apps at all? (Ex: I have a Silverlight icon - why?) The Windows 7 start menu is capped at 1/2 the screen height, wasting space and requiring scrolling. Installs typically put icons onto the desktop, the quick launch bar, and the start menu.

    There are actually a lot of good improvements to Windows 8. Full-screen apps isn't a *terrible* idea necessarily. But they just haven't figured out how to offer full-screen apps with all the power of the desktop. I'm not sure anyone has figured that out yet. Time will tell.

  21. Encryption encryption encryption on California Passes Law Mandating Smartphone Kill Switch · · Score: 1

    This is fine so long as the key to do so is held only by the owner of the phone. Ex: It can't be some kind of message like "WIPE PHONE NOW" it needs to be "WIPE " or something like that.

  22. Re:Germany switching from nuclear to coal? on NRC Analyst Calls To Close Diablo Canyon, CA's Last Remaining Nuclear Plant · · Score: 1

    That is an informative link, but nothing in it dispels the claim that they are digging a giant strip mine. If anything, it corroborates the statement by pointing out that they are building more coal plants. All it does is explain *why* they are building the plants, and that they have been planning to do so for a long time.

    No one will probably follow that link anyone since you added insults into your post, guaranteeing it never goes above 0.

  23. Stop calling them clickbait on Facebook Cleans Up News Feed By Reducing Click-Bait Headlines · · Score: 1

    After reading a shameful article praising clickbait I realize the term isn't negative enough. "Bait" can be good or bad. Instead, please call them "misleading headlines" or "incomplete headlines" or "editorializing headlines."

  24. Re:More information please! on Robo Brain Project Wants To Turn the Internet Into a Robotic Hivemind · · Score: 1

    (RoboEarth's files have to be processes and organized by humans)

    Coffee is connected to mugs, as well as to the motion-planning related to pouring liquid.

    That parenthetical comment changes the entire thing. When they said "coffee is connected to mugs" I read that as "the system learns that coffee is connected to mugs all by itself" but really that parenthetical part conveys that the human went through the video and made that connection for the computer.

    I got the part about querying the system, I just thought they were saying that this "database" that it queried was something it built on its own. Throughout the article they reiterate how this program processed the videos, not that it processed the human's explanation of what is happening the videos. I would think they key about the system is this annotation process and how it works. I'd love to see that. It sounds like a neat Mechanical Turk kind of project.

    I don't think they explained that clearly. Thank you for pointing it out.

  25. Re:More information please! on Robo Brain Project Wants To Turn the Internet Into a Robotic Hivemind · · Score: 1

    So, you don't expect a computer to be able to recognize what "coffee" looks like after...

    Correct. Decision trees and neural nets can sorta do that, but they also need a human to mark which sections of the image correspond to those items.

    I'm guessing you never used Google Picasa years ago

    This is completely different from facial recognition. In facial recognition, a human being writes code that defines what a "face" is. I believe the typical approach is to find 2 eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Then they calculate the size and spacing of those items and use that to identify the face. But that isn't general-purpose image recognition. Right now, you could make a program to do the same thing for coffee if you wanted.

    The article claims that they wrote an anything recognition algorithm that can find anything, with no help from a human whatsoever, even if that thing is embedded in a video with a bunch of other images. That is not possible today. Even humans can't do that! I have a 5-year-old and a 1-year old. The nly way the 1-year-old would know that coffee is coffee is if I hold it in front of him and say "coffee."

    There are actually algorithms that do try to recognize arbitrary objects. But they work on images of just that one object, and everything else cut out, along with some kind of annotation that tells them what the object is. They don't work with just any image.