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User: bmo

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  1. Re:Cyptowall is very sophisticated on Inside Cryptowall 2.0 Ransomware · · Score: 1

    It's these 3rd party ad server farms that get hacked and start serving out this shit. Doesn't matter if it's Yahoo, CNN, Drudge, MSNBC, Fox News...etc. If they have a contact with one of these ad agencies (and they all do), all it takes is for one of the infected servers to rotate into view for the end user. Really nasty stuff.

    This. So much this. And there are ad networks that will host anything given the right amount of money and lack of care. I sure as hell don't allow ad networks to display their crapware on any machine, no matter the architecture/OS. With adblock-plus, privacy badger, and ghostery installed on a client, third party crap gets enough of a heave-ho to make even going to places like gawker "inoffensive."

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    BMO

  2. Re:Remember Final Cut Pro X? on Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive · · Score: 1

    The post didn't exactly disappear. It's on the Wayback Machine.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20...

    Playing "Mr. Language Person" aka Dave Barry:

    It's not "want to do." It's "wont to do."

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    BMO

  3. Re:Yes. on Writers Say They Feel Censored By Surveillance · · Score: 1

    The "tinfoil hat brigade" as you put it has gone from loonies to prescient given the facts from the last 20 years.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X...

    Just one example.

    Oh, and hello there Cold Fijord.

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    BMO

  4. Re:Actually, he's right on Paul Graham: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In · · Score: 1

    "so where do we get the next generation of major league players from?"

    Brown & Sharpe (now a tiny little division of Hexagon AB) used to be the preeminent machine tool manufacturer in the US.

    One of my previous bosses was told by one of the Sharpes that the day the company died was the day they stopped training apprentices.

    Short-term-profits-at-any-cost amounts to eating your seed corn and then sowing the ground with salt.

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    BMO

  5. Cartooney. on 'Citizenfour' Producers Sued Over Edward Snowden Leaks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yet another self-obsessed legal "expurt" suing over a ham sandwich"

    Horace Edwards, who identifies himself as a retired naval officer and the former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has filed a lawsuit in Kansas federal court that seeks a constructive trust over monies derived from the distribution of Citizenfour. .

    Court: Does he have standing
    Court looks
    He hasn't been damaged, You must have some sort of injury, financial or physical, or whatever, to have any standing in a tort.
    Court: Come back when you have standing, now go away and stop wasting our time.

    The only "person" who can bring an action that has any weight behind it is the US Government, or some other person who has been directly harmed. That would be under the purview of the Justice Department or one of the armed services or someone who has suffered some loss that must be made whole.

    Granted that I have a "GED in Law," but that's my best bet as to what's going to happen.

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    BMO

  6. Assumptions on Ask Slashdot: Is an Open Source .NET Up To the Job? · · Score: 1

    So, assuming Microsoft is sincere

    That's a pretty fuckin' big assumption there, guy.

    >BMO goes back to read the Halloween documents

    The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, A Sincere Microsoft Board Member, and a Rabbi (a Rabbi is required in every joke) come to a 4-way stop/intersection at the same time.

    Who goes first?

    The Rabbi, because the others don't fuckin' exist.

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    BMO

  7. Re:Network Level on Staples: Breach May Have Affected 1.16 Million Customers' Cards · · Score: 2

    Otherwise it's potentially just a matter of inserting a tiny reprogramable USB stick when there are few cashiers on and the cashier who is on isn't looking for a few seconds (ie two people walking into a Staples store can pull this off really easily).

    Indeed, so much this.

    I've seen open USB ports on all sorts of POS terminals and it just boggles my mind, especially because I've been in industrial environments in small companies where hot-gluing USB ports shut is a matter of course.

    You can buy a USB flash drive that sits almost flush and if you take a little bit of elbow-grease and sandpaper, you can get it to sit flush easily.

    So I don't see how big companies like Staples, who have the actual budget to look at security this way, don't even bother to do the basics like this. It's time we start fining/class action lawsuit-ing firms that don't even do the least bit of security, with amounts of money that actually hurt and not take "5 minutes of profits" to pay.

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    BMO

  8. Re:Some people better be out of a job... on Hackers Compromise ICANN, Access Zone File Data System · · Score: 1

    Peer Name Resolution.

    The problem is that it's patent encumbered, by Mickeysoft, so it's useless.

    There is also something called Hierarchical DHT-based name resolution.

    Abstract:

    Information-centric network (ICN) architectures are an increasingly important approach for the future Internet. Several ICN approaches are based on a flat object ID namespace and require some kind of global name resolution service to translate object IDs into network addresses. Building a world-wide NRS for a flat namespace with 10^1^6 expected IDs is challenging because of requirements such as scalability, low latency, efficient network utilization, and anycast routing that selects the most suitable copies. In this paper, we present a general hierarchical NRS framework for flat ID namespaces. The framework meets those requirements by the following properties: The registration and request forwarding matches the underlying network topology, exploits request locality, supports domain-specific copies of binding entries, can offer constant hop resolution (depending on the chosen underlying forwarding scheme), and provides scoping of publications. Our general NRS framework is flexible and supports different instantiations. These instantiations offer an important trade-off between resolution-domain (i.e. subsystem) autonomy (simplifying deployment) and reduced latency, maintenance overhead, and memory requirements. To evaluate this trade-off and explore the design space, we have designed two specific instantiations of our general NRS framework: MDHT and HSkip. We have performed a theoretical analysis and a simulation-based evaluation of both systems. In addition, we have published an implementation of the MDHT system as open source. Results indicate that an average request latency of (well) below 100ms is achievable in both systems for a global system with 12 million NRS nodes while meeting our other specific requirements. These results imply that a flat namespace can be adopted on a global scale, opening up several design alternatives for information-centric network architectures.

    http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm...

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    BMO

  9. Re:undocumented immigrant on Federal Court Nixes Weeks of Warrantless Video Surveillance · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh look at the poor persecuted "christian" that is so bent out of shape because his publicly funded school or courthouse doesn't have a monument to the 10 commandments. Paying 5 or 6 figures for a monument, as has happened in the past, is an endorsement.

    Look, numbnuts, it's not "your" school or courthouse, it's our school and our courthouse, and "us" includes atheists, hindi, buddhists, jews, etc., as well as christians, or so-called "christians" that have completely forgotten the Sermon on the Mount.

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    BMO

  10. Re:DOCUMENTS? on Sony Demands Press Destroy Leaked Documents · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'll bet they paid off NYS atty general Eliot Spitzer to shame the major ISPs into dropping usenet entirely because of "child porn."

    You're right. Sony is shitting itself not because of movies being prematurely released to the 'net, but evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

    I'm buying popcorn.

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    BMO

  11. Re:Does GPLv2 Grant a Patent license on The GPLv2 Goes To Court · · Score: 1

    There was one direct attack at the GPL that might've had teeth had it not occurred in the fetid imagination of a certain Daniel Wallace.

    Dan Wallace tried to get the GPL considered invalid because it amounted to price fixing and a Sherman Act violation. He claimed the harm was that the Free and free properties of Linux operating systems locked him out of the market, even though he didn't actually have a product to market.

    He was duly struck down hard by a de novo appellate court decision.

    That was probably the only "legitimate" attack on the GPL. Any others are, like you said, shooting the plaintiff in his own foot.

    http://www.internetcases.com/l...

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    BMO

  12. Re:FTFA on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    >Yeah, but how far can you make it in FUCKING LOS ANGELES

    Probably a lot easier since the roads aren't FUCKING CATTLE PATHS THAT GOT PAVED OVER.

    Crikes, you're stupid.

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    BMO

  13. Re:FTFA on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    I'm an urban cyclist.

    I can make it from Arlington MA to Downtown Boston no problem, down Mass Ave, one of the most traveled roads anywhere.

    And I don't feel like it's suicidal at all. Then again I don't bike like a moron and I pay attention to traffic laws. Clipless pedals help a lot.

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    BMO

  14. Re:FTFA on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    It /is/ walkable.

    4 miles is 1 hr 20 minutes at normal walking speed.

    2 hours by car? No, just no. That kind of time spent in a car going nowhere is just maddening.

    Fer crissakes, it's 1 hr 20 minutes from here to Boston's South Station, and I'm in Concord NH and even during rush hour, it's not two hours. And once you're in Boston or Cambridge, you honestly don't need a car.

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    BMO

  15. FTFA on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTFA:
    Killeen said her four-mile commute to UCLA, where she teaches a public relations class, can take two hours during rush hour.

    >4 miles
    >Sunny LA

    GET A FUCKING BICYCLE!

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    BMO

  16. Deckard on Blade Runner 2 Script Done, Harrison Ford Says "the Best Ever" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok, so Ford is going to be Deckard again.

    He is quite a bit older now. Since Replicants live short lives, and Deckard is a Replicant, how is this going to be reconciled in the movie?

    I don't see how. Not unless we stick Ford into one of Larry Niven's autodocs.

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    BMO

  17. Re:PRIVATE encryption of everything just became... on Congress Passes Bill Allowing Warrantless Forfeiture of Private Communications · · Score: 1

    This needs to be modded up.

    Encryption doesn't need to be "perfect"

    It just has to be convenient and ubiquitous enough to make the government do actual work to get your stuff, forcing agencies to spend money from their budgets. It's assymetrical enough to drain those budgets given enough strength.

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    BMO

  18. Re:Not sure who to cheer for on Fraud Bots Cost Advertisers $6 Billion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >If you don't like advertising on you favorite site. Then you better find them a business model where they can keep running (as it isn't free for them) and feed their family's.
    >Otherwise just suck it up as the cost of having free access to their data.

    Oh hay look, the old "if you don't like ads and block them you're stealing from the mouths of the children" argument.

    It would be fine if I could trust the ad networks to not serve up malware, but even my own favorite sites have hosted malware from their ad networks from time to time.

    Blocking ads is a much more of a security issue more than a convenience issue.

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    BMO

  19. Re:I prefer this memo. on CIA Lied Over Brutal Interrogations · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >So why give up a morally superior position to "fight" people who pose almost no threat to anyone outside their own countries?

    Money.

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    BMO

  20. Re: 3GPP on How the NSA Is Spying On Everyone: More Revelations · · Score: 0

    1. Learn how to make a goddamned paragraph.
    2. Your entire argument is wharrgarbl
    3. You've missed the entire point of what I've said.
    4. Fuck off.

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    BMO

  21. Re: 3GPP on How the NSA Is Spying On Everyone: More Revelations · · Score: 2

    It matters because without privacy you have no power.

    Everyone has a skeleton. Nobody is perfect. This is about archiving everything and using search technology to create instant dossiers on people who have influence on more than a handful of people. In other words, anyone who wants to effect change will be prevented/discredited.

    It is a direct attack on democracy itself. It is an attack on the public at large.

    Whether it's done by private corporations or the government, the effect is the same. It should be condemned in all cases.

    And it's people like you that give this all a pass. You and your ilk disgust me.

    Good day, sir.

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    BMO

  22. Re:This is moderately insane on Google Hopes To One Day Replace Gmail With Inbox · · Score: 1

    > I wonder if they'll drop POP support before lowering the boom? I have so very much data in there.

    What, exactly, is preventing you from archiving what you have /right now/? What is preventing you from setting your IMAP/POP client to continually store in local folders?

    Been using Tbird to access Gmail for years now. I don't see your problem.

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    BMO

  23. Re:Look what those assholes did to gedit. on Ask Slashdot: Non-Coders, Why Aren't You Contributing To Open Source? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >> Getting rid of this shit-for-brains UI is the best possible bugfix that gedit could undergo right now. But will it be accepted? Of course not! The hipsters can't possibly be wrong about the UI.

    >Substitute 'Firefox' or just about any other open source program in place of 'Gedit' and you have a perfect description of what is wrong with open source today.

    Substitute Microsoft Word or just about any other closed source program in place of 'Firefox' and you have a perfect description of what is wrong with closed source today.

    Fixed.

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    BMO

  24. Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING. on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 2, Funny

    It actually hurt my brain to read your reply.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

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    BMO

  25. Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING. on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 2

    Moreover, if Nokia wasn't run by absolute incompetents, they'd still be a huge player in the smartphone market.

    But they farted around with OSes, libraries, and waffled and couldn't decide themselves out of a wet paper bag being while pushed off a cliff. To top it off, the board decided to welcome Microsoft's cukoo-egg into their nest because "OH MY GOD A BILLION DOLLARS."

    Google is where it is because a lot of companies are run by boards that are more interested in feathering their own nests instead of what they largely give lip-service to - "innovation"

    Look at Yahoo. Go ahead, look at 'em. Point And Laugh. They deserve it.

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    BMO