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User: steelfood

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  1. Re:Port to GCC, then ensure no backdoors in GCC on First Phase of TrueCrypt Audit Turns Up No Backdoors · · Score: 1

    We know there's a difference between Windows containers and Linux containers, that being the ~64KB of random data at the end of the header for a Windows container instead of ~64KB of 0's in a Linux container.

    This difference is not a result of some difference in the source code of Truecrypt when compiled under Windows. Where could the backdoor be?

  2. Re:u can rite any way u want on Is Germany Raising a Generation of Illiterates? · · Score: 1

    It's satire.

    Wait, what? It wasn't meant to be funny? Oh well.

  3. Re:Easy fix on LA Police Officers Suspected of Tampering With Their Monitoring Systems · · Score: 1

    reform isn't really beneficial to anyone powerful since it just hurts everyone in power and no one powerfulgets ahead by enacting it.

    FTFY. Oversight benefits us, the little people. It benefits people who are subject to institutionalized discrimination. And occasionally, it may even benefit the people being monitored, when it's the other side overreacting. But it doesn't benefit the congressman who gets let off for driving 100 in a 35, or his teenage son for that matter.

  4. Re:Is Slashdot all 12 year old boys now? on LHCb Confirms Existence of Exotic Hadrons · · Score: 1

    Don't kid yourself. "Men" in the form you romanticize do not exist. All men are "boys" at heart, and remain so irrespective of age.

    There's a reason why male-oriented comedy is filled with penis jokes. They're not just targeting the teenage demographic.

  5. WTF is Planet X? on Last Month's "Planet X" Announcement Was Probably Wrong · · Score: 1

    What is Planet X supposed to be nowadays? It was supposed to be a planet beyond Pluto. But first off, Pluto isn't a planet anymore. And there have been a number of KBO's discovered that that are comparable to Pluto. Does Planet X have to meet the actual definition of a planet?

    So what's Planet X if it hasn't already been found and named Eris? Or Makemake? Or Sedna? Or should it actually be called Planet IX, since Pluto isn't a real planet anymore?

    This whole Planet X thing sounds absurd. Between this, and the thinly-veiled slashvertisement for NoSQL "Ask Slashdot", and all the other crap articles that've made the front page, is it still April 1st somewhere or something?

  6. Re:Nintendo Hard on Study: Video Gamer Aggression Result of Game Experience, Not Violent Content · · Score: 1

    That experience is probably a lot less common these days

    Probably because you would be down an expensive smartphone if you did so. Not that it doesn't happen to smartphones, mind you, and for far more trivial events.

    At least a NES controller was cheaper, and had a cord to limit its range, and was fairly light. There is a very real risk of killing somebody by indiscriminately chucking those wireless Xbox controllers.

  7. Re:It's not trending. on Smart Car Tipping Trending In San Francisco · · Score: 1

    It's called boredom. Kids who have nothing better to do, aren't going to sit on their hands. They go find something to do. It's usually destructive because destruction is so much easier.

  8. Re:Chrome's SSL uses a lot of the OS certificate m on OpenSSL Bug Allows Attackers To Read Memory In 64k Chunks · · Score: 3, Informative

    My understanding is that Chrome and Mozilla both use NSS. It's a bit outdated, so I could be wrong (given that Google forked webkit, I can imagine them forking NSS too).

    Actually, with a quick Google search, it seems that Chrome on Android uses (used?) OpenSSL for certain functions. I'm curious to know if secure communication via Android devices can be compromised via those functions. At first glance, I'd say no, but I don't have enough domain knowledge to make this assertion.

    NSS is thus far secure, but I really, really would like to see the results of multiple full and independent audits. If there's a problem in NSS, that would be about as big as it can get.

    Like I said, it's a bit frightening that there are such large and somewhat obvious holes in these major crypto libraries found within three months of each other, but it's good to know that they're being found and fixed.

  9. This is good on OpenSSL Bug Allows Attackers To Read Memory In 64k Chunks · · Score: 2

    Well, it's not good that almost every major audit-able crypto library has been found to have trivial exploits (still waiting on issues in the Chrome and Mozilla SSL libraries).

    It's good that eyes are looking, and people are finding these things. I imagine that without Snowden's revelations, nobody would have bothered to check. And these bugs would have been found much later or not at all, allowing espionage organizations to compromise many more private communications in the interim.

    While the idea that the NSA or some other agency had a hand in these bugs is largely a conspiracy theory, the answer to whether they knew about these flaws and exploited them should be pretty obvious. After all, the NSA has probably done the very same code audits for the purpose of finding holes they can exploit.

    And before somebody says a closed-source implementation wouldn't suffer these problems, quite frankly, if all of these libraries were closed-source, we wouldn't know if there was a vulnurability at all, or for that matter if any found would be fixed. There needs to be more eyes auditing the security code, not fewer.

  10. Re:Calculations on Seagate Releases 6TB Hard Drive Sans Helium · · Score: 1

    The He-filled WD version is just a bit larger, and has a giant laser in the center that can blow up a city.

  11. Re:misleading title on Elite Violinists Can't Distinguish Between a Stradivarius and a Modern Violin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's an informative blog piece by one of the testers:

    http://www.violinist.com/blog/...

  12. Well, regarding #1, #3, and #4 (I've never heard about #2, so I can't comment):

    1. French wines consistently win tasting contests over California wines, yet have no advantage in blind tastings.

    The recent surge in California wine prices, as well as the recent surge in popularity of California wine, is due to Californian wine beating out the French in a competition. I say recent because wine snobs have existed for centuries.

    3. Some of Rembrandt's greatest paintings, the very paintings that made him "great", and were considered quintessential Rembrandt masterpieces that could never be equaled by lesser artists, turned out to be fakes.

    There was actually a guy who tried to show what a sham the whole art thing was by forging many famous original works and then burning the original. In my opinion (strictly my opinion), just because someone is talented doesn't mean someone else is just as talented, or talented in a different way. While the "market value" of an original might be overinflated due to the relative ease of a forgery, the true value of the work itself does not fluctuate with copies. And there could be separate value to the forgeries too, as that itself requires no small amount of talent. In particular, the forgeries of the Rembrant forger you most likely had in mind do in fact have value.

    4. Monster gold plated cables.

    There is no subjectivity in digital signals.

  13. Re:Horse hockey on SF Evictions Surging From Crackdown On Airbnb Rentals · · Score: 1

    There are two things to say to that:

    1) You can always check yes, even if you're not. Nobody's stopping a potential renter from lying on the application. AirBnb isn't liable for anything if the renter is lying.

    2) It may not be their job or even their social repsonsibility, but it does sound predatory. They're taking advantage of people who don't know the local laws to pad their numbers (particularly of units available in those areas). There can be legal repercussions (see #1).

  14. Re:Flamebait on TCP/IP Might Have Been Secure From the Start If Not For the NSA · · Score: 1

    I'd imagine if the NSA did have their hands in helping to secure internet communications, every country would have been up in arms last year, and the internet would be completely fractured by now.

    Their non-involvement was a good thing, not a bad thing. Now, we currently know there are better things that can be done to secure the internet, but not having implemented them yet does not mean things are bad right now either.

  15. Re:Schrodinger's Salesforce, or Denny's on P vs. NP Problem Linked To the Quantum Nature of the Universe · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should start with the half that's alive?

  16. Re:longer to crack than the age of the universe? on NYU Group Says Its Scheme Makes Cracking Individual Passwords Impossible · · Score: 2

    10K years is more than enough for anybody.

  17. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    So I shouldn't have the freedom of speech to denounce those who take actions I disagree with?

    You do. Just don't think you're any better than them, or that your speech is any "freer" than theirs.

    But this affair isn't a matter of free speech. This is a matter of persecution. This is the mob forcing someone from their job when they've done nothing wrong professionally (Javascript notwithstanding).

  18. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    You're naming politicians here. It's not helping your argument.

  19. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    Being bigoted towards a bigot is still bigotry.

  20. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    as CEO Eich would have the power to decide how the company he heads throws its weight around in the political arena - you know making political contributions, lobbying, filing amicus briefs, funding all manner of political foundations and front groups.

    And yet, he has not had the opportunity to do any of these things before he was forced out. In fact, he's stated that nothing would change about Mozilla's stance towards the LGBT community and its issues. Yet he was judged not by his ability nor his performance, but by his beliefs. How is that not being bigoted?

  21. Re:Talk about conflicted... on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 2

    If OkCupid was actually doing more than just attention-seeking, they would've boycotted Javascript (and put up banners for JS-enabled browsers to tell their users to disable JS). And I'll bet a fair amount of people here develop in and/or work closesly with Javascript.

    Anybody, especially organizations, who advocated for Eich to step down should boycott JS too, if they truly believe their own righteousness. Don't see that happening anywhere...

  22. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You seem to have fail at separating personal from professional.

    It has everything to do with his personal beliefs.

    If he had fired a bunch of LGBT-supporting employees at Mozilla, or defunded the LGBT club (if they have one) there, that would be crossing the line between personal and professional. Only then would all this outrage be justified.

    Did he do anything like this during his short tenure? I certainly haven't heard.

  23. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're thinking of a 1st amendment issue regardinig the government. Free Speech exists above anything written on a piece of paper.

  24. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    Based on the previous decisions of the Mozilla board, based on his work history, Eich had every right to be CEO of the foundation...

    You sure you really want to go there? Javascript is one of the worst things to happen to web browsers. Based on that alone, he probably shouldn't qualify to be the CEO of a company writing browsers.

    But this argument just wouldn't appeal to the primitive tribal emotions the way that a left vs. right., liberal vs. conservative angle does, now would it? In fact, it might even be *shudder* logical.

  25. Re:I think this is bullshit on Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO · · Score: 1

    Absolutely correct. But those latter people probably should get off their high horse, since they're no better than the individual they're deriding. And by getting off their high horse, I mean these people should recognize, and should be recognized for the hypocrites that they are in speaking on the issue.

    Advocating for a boycott of a company for one employee's beliefs is just as "right" as donating money to an anti-same-sex marriage cause. They're both free speech, and they're both just as ugly.