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User: postbigbang

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  1. Re:It's not a patent on Never Mind the Epidemic, Who Gets Patent Rights For the Cure? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The sequence is data. I don't think patents cover data. You could modify the data, but a patent claim is dubious. Working pi to infinity-2 is data. It's not patentable. My DNA, your DNA, is not patentable. Mod them uniquely, and you're Monsanto.

  2. Re:Linux's Biggest Threat is Human Engineering on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: 1

    Good practices.

    And oddly, I know public IPs where ssh to root is not only possible, but in service as I write this.

    I'm also subject to one-time-use password generators for clientele that are maniacal regarding security.

  3. Re:Linux's Biggest Threat is Human Engineering on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: 1

    There are times when root is fine. But not for long.

    I watch coders use root as a default. If you use any of the many distros, the default is user space logon and it works for most needs. I tracked myself yesterday and found myself in root seven times going on misc installation and modding adventures.

    A collaborative effort I'm working on lands me as root on another coder's machine. It's always there, CLI forever. Bash at root stares me in the face. If I demote it, it's back again. It's unlikely this person is rooted, but you never know. Rootkits are pretty transparent.

  4. Re:Linux's Biggest Threat is Human Engineering on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: 1

    I appreciate your wisdom. It hasn't helped my flamebaiting status. I see sooooo many paste jobs that say something like:

    root@frankenstein # grep tail foobar etc.

    As a coder, I like to run unscathed by logons, too. But after an indelicate rm decades ago, I'm a convert to user space.

  5. Re:Linux's Biggest Threat is Human Engineering on Ask Slashdot: Is GNU/Linux Malware a Real Threat? · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Sudo, hell.

    Most non-civilian Linux users run as root. They don't want no stinking user space hassles. They are coders. They are immortal.

    Mod me as flamebait ONLY if you don't run as root consistently. And don't lie.

  6. Re:The reality distortion field is waning. on Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing · · Score: 1

    I also find it amusing that the fanbois have modded me down to flamebait.

  7. Re:The reality distortion field is waning. on Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing · · Score: 1

    We agree. The bloom is coming off the rose.

    When the rumor mills starts going hum-ho, oh, something might be happening. Yawn.---- > then Apple is in deep trouble. Oh, wait....

  8. The reality distortion field is waning. on Apple Leaves Journalists Jonesing · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Tim Cook seems to be trying hard to lead the juggernaut that Jobs et al built. That the press has nothing to rumor and fuss over is a big wah wah wah to me. I'm tired about reading about the next quarter mm that will be shaved from (fill in this blank) or how the next (trick little ARM CPU) will shave another half femtowatt from the next (iPad, iPhone, iWidget).

    That the press is depressed is an alarm point: they need to focus on what's hot and new and important.

  9. Re:Citrix because its web enabled on Ask slashdot: Which 100+ User Virtualization Solution Should I Use? · · Score: 2

    A lot depends on what you want to host. The Windows Type 1 hypervisor platforms are well-known. If you want to host Linux/BSD/etc., there's really a different family for that.

    If you want to add-in VDI, it's a different mix of products, but the commercial vendors are the same. VMware is expensive, Citrix less-so, Oracle is reasonable if and only if you like Oracle; Microsoft supports Microsoft and a hand-picked set of Linux options.

    But you can teach a lot by using Xen, vyatta, and a bunch of FOSS components that are as secure and LDAP-using as the rest of them.

    If you need your hand held, and you have budget and hardware, VMware is deluxe but sometimes opaque. Citrix is strong if loose and fast and more egalitarian (especially in VDI support).

    You can get HTML5 support from any of the commercial vendors, but supporting Linux is a bit tougher-- Citrix does this better. Oracle doesn't support HTML5 at this point.

  10. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    If it's so easy and simple, why is Intel in a ditch?

    Put on some cleats when you astroturf.

    And no, there isn't anything "magical" about ARM. It's just clever, and not an ecosystem you can control, like Intel likes to control.

  11. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    Uhm, do you realise that Intel sold one of the businesses they owned that had unbelieveable potential? Uhm, do you realize that they, uhm, don't have squat for low power processors and comprehensive consumer platforms? Uhm? Or that they could have uhm, been maybe a leader in uhm, ARM? Uhm?

    I uhm, had a Palm and an uhm, HP, and uhm others based on uhm, a processor family that they, uhm, screwed off.

  12. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    The topic is Intel, so I'll frame it within the reference of a large shift in computing that Otellini missed-- an area of consumer products dominated by smartphones and tablets. Servers have done well, too, but the packaged 1U-5U/generic blade markets haven't done quite so well.

    You focus on the iPhone. There's not one high-selling Intel-powered phone or tablet on Earth. Not ONE.

    I cited Apple to show how Otellini and Intel in general, though that their domination of the PC industry would make them kings forever. It did not. They deluded themselves.

    My first views of the iPhone were that it wasn't all that great, but by comparison to phones in the market at the time, it had any number of good things going for it. The Treo and a few Nokia and LG and HTC and other phones were trying. Not one of those had an Intel chip inside.

    Otellini was asleep at the switch and the train wrecked.

  13. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    Other phones had long battery life. And they didn't have the processing power. Face it: transistors cost money. Flip phones were marvelous in that they used energy scrupulously.

    It took a while to cut that down, and now appsdevs and the core OS makers are very sensitive to optimizing the chipsets.

    But yeah, for its functionality levels, the iPhone blew the doors off equivalent-functionality phones.

  14. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    There's some whoosh going on here, as my tongue was firmly in my cheek.

    Yes, somehow Intel convinced HP to use ATOM instead of ARM in Project Moonshot. I notice that HP can't get Moonshot out the door.

    It is NOT IN INTEL'S DNA to think about supply chains that aren't invented at INTEL. They are in a ditch of their own making. It's going to take a bunch of ugly quarters to get them really moving again, and much longer to regain thought leadership. By then, we'll have 64core widgets that only a mother could love, that still can't do threads right, and shoot towards power consumption that's plainly evil. And the ghost of John McAfee will continue to haunt them.

    So let's talk about those ARM chips that Intel made. I can find them in one of the five top selling phylum of smartphones, right? Tablets? You mean neither of those? Not even the Surface RT? Egads!

    Intel is nothing if leaden. They did well for years, and then, after repeated gaffes and partnerships, they barely made it out of the woods duking it out with AMD. They need a ruthless Grove in there to cut and cut until they get the core mission back. Yell, scream, and strive to out-do everyone. They have no boldness. They have inbreeding and golf.

  15. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 2

    Kind respondent,

    You say "Nonsense" when you've just said pretty much everything that I said as an argument to my post. Thanks for the corroboration.

    The Atom is a catastrophe in the phone and tablet market. Yes, StrongARM might have had a chance, but DEC didn't invent the 6502 and was only a licensee of ARM-- and DEC had other IP that HP bought and Intel shared over another catastrophe chip, the Itanium. There are a closet full of these things. Intel wanted to control all of the elements, just as Apple has, with their supply chain. They said, essentially: go away. And they did it, and like it or not, it worked. It has its problems. Nothing is problem-free.

    But in terms of leadership and direction, Otellini has run Intel into a ditch. Software acquisitions have helped a bit, but in terms of silicon leadership, Intel has lost a lot of ground-- despite the missteps of AMD. The ARM licensees have shown great vision and lots of brains. NVidia eats a lot of lunch and for good reason-- they're not stuck in a ditch of their own making.

    Integration is a wonderful thing. We're not talking servers that will last ten years. Consumer devices last about three, then they churn. If they're made by HTC, IMHO, they last about two years if you're lucky. I'm not a believer in disposable electronics, rather, Intel's vision of how to make devices can be readily stated as old-school. The day of fat motherboard chipset licenses is freaking over. The half-life of a phone or tablet design is a meager nine months. Intel just isn't ready to live in those cycles. That's why deft manufacturers have designed around them and the supply chains evolved to move around them.

    Intel is leaden.

  16. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 1

    I never claimed it was any such thing.

    Statistically, however, it's been a huge financial success and propelled Apple's ecosystem to unusual heights, whether you or I like it or not.

    Battery life compared to others was pretty good for the data features it provided. Apps had to grow and become part of iTunes financial system. And apps have made some developers very rich and others not so, but their financial ecosystem, awful as it might be, made a lot of millionaires from dev teams. Android has been successful in the same way. RIM/BB and Microsoft, not so much- save Microsoft's extortion for Android cease-and-desist money.

  17. Re:The girl you should've asked to prom... on Paul Otellini: Intel Lost the iPhone Battle, But It Could Win the Mobile War · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Jobs just designed the pain out of the iPhone. Long battery life. Just works. No hassle operation. Huge apps. A natural extension to your growing stable of i-stuff.

    The herd moved. The CPU? An ARM-- the direct and absolute antithesis of everything Intel stands for. Simple, low-power consumption, RISC, and with easily grafted subsystems.

    If Intel did the ARM, it would measure six feet by eleven feet, weigh 900lbs, and use four kilowatts of electricity, and would need to have Microsoft's lipstick on it.

    It's maximally disingenuous of Otellini to utter such horse crap. Andy Grove, come out of retirement, would ya?

  18. Re:Damned if they do... on Microsoft Reads Your Skype Chat Messages · · Score: 2

    No.

    This isn't "Company filters messages for spam"

    This is: private IMs between parties are tested for whatever reasons without the consent of the parties when accessed over the Skype transport.

    1) Communications are being filtered and parsed, perhaps not in real-time. In the US, one would suspect the TSA, DHS, etc.

    2) After parsing, found URLs are then tested for whatever purposes as though they were a random third party-- which they are not.

    3) ToS or not, the repurposed communications are used in possible ToS violations, along with IP ambiguities.

    Finally, it opens doubts as to other components of Microsoft's integrity, which they've been trying to rebuild. So much for that.

  19. No. That's only a partial cure. Your services are known, your location is known (GPS enhanced). Who you called, when, etc etc. is still available.

  20. Which means that if you had any doubt that all you do with your smartphone is data for sale-- it is! And it's being sold to whomever, without anonymizing, I'll bet. Good to 700m. Yeah... right. Good to about 3m if you had your GPS on. Your applications are ratting you out, and the browser data is an open book on your life, and everything you've done with the phone.

  21. Re:Overcomplicating the subject on How Should the Law Think About Robots? · · Score: 1

    You, dear AC, are an idiot of the first degree. This has nothing to do with feriority. You didn't read the thread, you only trolled it. Perhaps life will go better for you. I doubt it.

  22. Re:Overcomplicating the subject on How Should the Law Think About Robots? · · Score: 1

    You say "above", like pecking order. My survival instincts say, not gonna happen. I do not welcome my robotic overlords.

    Hyper-intelligence and collective intelligence might be useful and might not. See plentiful science fiction for possible outcomes.

    Let's remove the hocus pocus "soul" word, because much as you'll try, you won't define it and that won't satisfy anyone. The Touring Test is but one of many ways to attempt this. We'll figure it out. Until then: chattel.

  23. Re:Overcomplicating the subject on How Should the Law Think About Robots? · · Score: 1

    Such automatons might be self--aware, but their execution of their program is not their own. They're already slaves.

    Choice, the hopefully best choices, are the ones we hope for. But we could go and devolve the arguments endlessly. First there is self-determination, which is hopefully acting responsibly.

  24. Re:Overcomplicating the subject on How Should the Law Think About Robots? · · Score: 3, Funny

    You've obviously never had children.

  25. Re:Overcomplicating the subject on How Should the Law Think About Robots? · · Score: 1

    We, as humans, seem to have evolved, not genetically so much as through ideas. We understand what civility is and how it needs to work.

    Robots may or may not evolve either themselves, or with suitable programming. It doesn't matter to me. They are rocks and wires and goo. When they participate in society responsibly, then I'll consider their merits. That's a long ways away.

    Black and white ideas? No, not at all. Civility took a long time to construct, and all of the antecedents are important as to how we got to understanding civility, responsibility, and interaction.

    I know a few animals that might be sentient. Most are not. That doesn't mean that I care for them, as they have feelings. I don't care for rocks, for they have no feelings, they are part of the infrastructure, like water. I've raised birds, dogs, and plentiful other animals. I don't eat them for food. I've nursed, hatched, and played with them. I'm not playing with a programmer's creation. It is not an object that has feelings or sentience, and hasn't demonstrated their responsibility or civility.

    Any robot is therefore chattel. And you're a fool if you anthropomorphize one until it's worthy of *that*.