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User: steelfood

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  1. Re:It's not your father's Wall Street Journal on WSJ Refused To Publish Lawrence Krauss' Response To "Science Proves Religion" · · Score: 1

    WSJ always leaned fiscally conservative. Actually, leaned is probably an understatement.

    Murdoch is just adding social conservatism to that list as well.

  2. Re:Motive on Did North Korea Really Attack Sony? · · Score: 1

    Ssssshhhh! You're gonna make them panic! Or in the immortal words of Kay (ironically a Sony film), "the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"

  3. Re:Motive on Did North Korea Really Attack Sony? · · Score: 1

    Last time we fought NK, South Korea lost half a million people. I can't imagine the casualties this time around. North Korea has the third largest standing army in the world, and they're not spread out all over the world.

    SK wants a more normal NK, not a war that could potentially cost them their existence. Some warmongers in the US and Japan certainly want war, but that's because they're not directly in the line of fire. Actually, Japan really just wants face by making war, which may be even more dangerous than the US's reason, which is to siphon even more money out of the population and into the military-industrial complex.

  4. Re:Motive on Did North Korea Really Attack Sony? · · Score: 1

    You would deny them warmth, but would give them food instead?

    Hard to make life worse for those in NK. They're so bad off if you give them something, it's more than they had before, and if you take something away, it's more than they had before.

  5. Re:What's next? on An Automated Cat Litter Box With DRM · · Score: 1

    Welcome to the next evolution of the Internet, the Internet in Things, namely, large corporations shafting your ass with their DRM.

    And yes, that's going to be the future where the toilet won't flush if you're not using the correct brand of toilet paper. Or your toaster won't work because the brand of bread is wrong.

  6. Lin is not just Fast and Furious on "Star Trek 3" To Be Helmed By "Fast & Furious" Franchise Director Justin Lin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's a lot of decrying of him turning Star Trek into Fast and Furious In Space, but people here either have forgotten (or more likely haven't bothered to find out) that Justin Lin did other things before taking over the Fast and the Furious franchise. Both Better Luck Tomorrow and Finishing the Game are two very good (indie) movies, the former being something of a drama and the latter a dry comedy.

    That he made his name doing muscle car racing films to pander to the masses is in no way indicative of his creative ability and vision. Of course, he could still screw it up, but it probably won't be in the ways that people here are assuming.

    On the plus side, I can't wait to see Sung Kang's cameo or bit role. That guy always has a presence in Justin Lin's movies. Hell, if this takes off, there might be significantly more minority characters in prominent roles in the Star Trek universe. Now there would be somewhere no one has gone before...

  7. Re:Fashionable Fire Extinguishers? on Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's his iron fire extinguisher, gold fire extinguisher, and diamond fire extinguisher.

  8. Re:Monkey Business on Argentine Court Rules Orangutan Is a "Non-Human Person" · · Score: 1

    By those standards, you'd be hard-pressed to find human people.

  9. Re:MS has been late to every recent tech movement on Ask Slashdot: Is an Open Source .NET Up To the Job? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a result of their past transgressions coming back to haunt them. Over the past 15 years, they've managed to alienate practically everybody. They've burned everyone who's worked with them, including vendors, partners, and now with Windows 8, application developers, server administrators, and general users.

    Their reputation precedes them. Nobody trusts them. People are avoiding anything by Microsoft. If it wasn't for Windows Server and Active Directory, Office, and to a lesser extent, SQL Server, and Visual Studio, everyone would have long switched away from Microsoft products.

    Their tactics worked in the 90's because there were so many small players that they could take advantage of, and people were largely ignorant of Microsoft's dirty actions. Today, there are a few major players, all of whom are well-known and liked by their users and partners. They're not just competing with Microsoft on technology, but also on reputation as well. People are showing their willingness to deal with a bit of inconvenience in using (arguably) slightly inferior enterprise solutions over the potential risks of being locked in and screwed over by a company with a history of doing so.

    Oracle is starting to feel this too. Anti-competitive behavior is being punished. Oracle still has a stranglehold on enterprise databases, but that's eroding very quickly. Look what's happening to Java and even more so, OpenOffice and MySQL.

  10. Re:of course it wasn't NK on North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation · · Score: 1

    There's a concerted push to put the blame on NK for this. The precise reason is beyond me, but I'm very suspicious somebody is taking advantage of the situation to put NK in a defensive position, be it Sony, the FBI, other parts of the U.S. government, or even the Guardians of Peace themselves.

    I find the FBI's explanation of why it was NK incredibly weak. Behavioral "patterns" do not constitute strong evidence. If anything, it's a starting point in an investigation, and no more than that. Impersonation of online behavior is easy, especially for those who are privy to NK's past behavior. The motive is also incredibly weak. NK has never acted on any perceived slight by the U.S. film industry. And when they do get offended, they spend a lot of time spewing rhetoric. If they're sufficiently motivated to act, they'll spend even more time yapping away, especially afterwards at their victory and how they've taken down a big western corporation. Nothing like this has happened since the GOP took down Sony's network. It is incredibly unusual that their first public statements about the matter is weeks after the events, and a denial at that.

    I cannot imagine how the FBI managed to gather and analyze all of the evidence in such a short period of time. That they came to a conclusion so quickly makes me even more suspicious. It is possible that they already had a bad actor in mind, and is either avoiding putting any real effort into this, or is trying to make themselves look capable by coming to a quick conclusion, or is trying not to drag this on for any longer, or may even be colluding with someone to paint NK in a bad light. After all, we invaded Iraq on similarly sketchy evidence. There are people pushing to attack NK, and I would not be surprised if they asked the FBI to point fingers at NK for this purpose.

    On top of that, based on what I've read so far, Sony was so wide open to attack for so long, and they had made so many enemies with strong technical know-how, I would not so easily rule out that they had more than one group of intruders in their network. If there were indeed multiple groups grabbing data from Sony, it would make any investigation even more difficult. But even barring that, I find the FBI's explanation rushed and entirely unconvincing.

    Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  11. Re:What about that stupid book is worth US$244? on Calculus Textbook Author James Stewart Has Died · · Score: 1

    The problem is money. Even if a university decides to create and publish its own textbook, and then distribute it to the rest of academia, it will eventually fall into the trap of seeing the textbook arm of the school as a money generator and do exactly what the publishers are doing.

    Better solution is to reduce copyright terms. That way, Stewart 1st ed would be in the public domain and anyone would be free to reprint it. It would be like drug manufacturers and generics.

  12. Re:Sets a precedent on Top Five Theaters Won't Show "The Interview" Sony Cancels Release · · Score: 2

    You got it wrong. Getting elected is how to get the American media to control you.

  13. Re:HTML on Navy Develops a Shark Drone For Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Forget any real editing, the editors don't even use the "preview" button.

  14. Re:This again? on Google Proposes To Warn People About Non-SSL Web Sites · · Score: 1

    The secure vs trustworthy issue is a fundamental flaw with HTTPS where both encryption and authenticity are meshed into the same protocol. Most places don't really need its authenticity validated (and really, the only way authenticity can be assured these days is with certificate pinning and advanced notice of cert changes, so the authenticity features of HTTPS aren't as reliable as they appear). But it'd be good to have the communications itself secure. But there aren't any alternatives, so even if it's a wrecking ball, it's better than nothing.

    As for proxy filtering, you could always try filtering on the client side instead. For example, AdBlock allows you to block individual externally-loaded elements. And I don't use it myself, but I hear GreaseMonkey may have the functionality you're looking for.

  15. Re:So perhaps /. will finally fix its shit on Google Proposes To Warn People About Non-SSL Web Sites · · Score: 2

    Caching only works with static content anyway, and a good chunk of the web has largely moved onto dynamic, real time or near-real time content.

    Also, note that caching methods like Google Cache and Coral Cache have no issues with encryption, as they can access a site via HTTPS separately, store the page's contents, and then serve the information back to whoever requests it. It's not as convenient as automatically caching at an intermediate hop, but it still works for situations where there's a sudden localized spike in traffic to a particular page.

    Besides which, now that everybody has easy access to data centers all over the world, caching can (and arguably should) be done by the site administrators rather than by a server admin in between.

    So your concerns aren't really valid. If you want to cache on your server and then serve the cached pages from your server as if the client was hitting the real site, well, tough shit. That was only feasible during the innocent days of the internet. Now, it's called MITM and frowned upon.

  16. Re:More accurate on The Joys and Hype of Hadoop · · Score: 2

    No, that's MapReduce. Hadoop is a distributed data store. Or a distributed file store optimized for large files.

    It's not a database. It certainly isn't database management software. It won't manage your data for you. Even the myriad of tools built to run on top of it are nowhere near effective at it. Rather, they're more data consumers than data managers.

  17. Re:I'm confused on Top Five Theaters Won't Show "The Interview" Sony Cancels Release · · Score: 1

    People are emotional creatures who lack internal consistency.

    News at 11.

    It's a shame the theaters caved to the threats. But the movie looks pretty bad from the previews and just because of the cowardice of some corporate heads won't make me suddenly change my mind and acquire a sudden desire to spend 2 hours of my life watching it. There are better ways of showing any outrage I might have over this matter.

    For starters, I could go see a different movie (one presumably I'd want to see) in a theater that's playing The Interview on a different screen. Or not do anything special because all this really is none of my business to begin with.

  18. Re:Go ahead on Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS · · Score: 1

    Torrent sites might start running as TOR hidden services. It's just torrent files and magnet links they're hosting anyway. As long as the actual P2P traffic doesn't go over TOR, it wouldn't kill the system.

    Actually, if TOR-enabled BT clients were to also automatically act as TOR bridge relays, that would really beef up TOR's resources.

  19. Re:Sell the key on Verizon "End-to-End" Encrypted Calling Includes Law Enforcement Backdoor · · Score: 1

    The real cost of the service is $90 per line. The other $45 is subsidized by the NSA.

  20. Re:been there, done that on Ask Slashdot: How Should a Liberal Arts Major Get Into STEM? · · Score: 1

    How's your job look now, keyboard monkey?

    Considering I (and most other people here) have neither acting nor comedic talent, still pretty damn good. Especially since everybody wants talented programmers, I know I don't have to be waiting tables or doing odd jobs in between gigs, because there wouldn't be any time in between gigs, and even if there were, it'd be on my terms like a sabbatical.

    Now, if I wasn't particularly good at programming, I'd probably be a bit more nervous. But because I got into a field I'm good at (and consequently enjoy doing), I wouldn't even consider doing anything else, no matter how glamorous another job might appear. There's a lot of money and glamor in management too, but I'm not one for navigating local political landscapes either (and I know the same applies to a lot of engineers and programmers out there).

    If you're looking for an entertainment career, it's a roll of the dice. If you get lucky, you make it big. If you don't, you're stuck doing bit parts and odd jobs. For STEM, you won't hit it big, but the work's steady and the pay's acceptable (unless you're in academia in which case you might hit it big but the pay'll be shit in the meantime). If I had both STEM and entertainment talent, that would be how I'd weigh my career options anyway. Fortunately, having only STEM talent means this life choice isn't applicable to my situation.

    Also note that entertainment is a subset of liberal arts in general. There are a ton of literature, history, "business", and other majors who also have no entertainment talent, and as such have significantly diminished employment prospects outside of academia. In which case, burgers and fries it is.

  21. Re:Can do this without logging off on Forbes Blasts Latests Windows 7 Patch as Malware · · Score: 2

    There's nothing quite as fast as the old school method of yanking the cord.

  22. Re:Why? on Lenovo Recalls LS-15 Power Cords · · Score: 1

    obviously without testing to Western standards

    That's actually not fair. There's a good chance the supplier mixed in some bad cables with good ones. The percentage of bad cables could be small (10% or less). In which case, it may not come out even with the most rigorous of testing, unless every unit shipped out was tested.

    Here, nobody'd ever do such a thing because the backlash (fines, public perception, etc.) would put the entire company out of business. In China, even such a small increase in profit is worth it because they can pocket the difference and start up a whole new company afterwards.

    The lack of corporate accountability is the real issue here, not the lack of testing.

  23. Re:Already lost the "complete freedom" argument... on Economist: US Congress Should Hack Digital Millennium Copyright Act · · Score: 1

    It is a complete straw man. GP is talking about liability, whereas TFA is talking about the illegality of circumventing electronic protections.

    These are two completely different things. If GP is advocating for the anti-circumvention measures of the DMCA, GP would be advocating for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not cool.

  24. Re:Just Lie on Ask Slashdot: Are Any Certifications Worth Going For? · · Score: 1

    Lying about certs is pretty bad, since it can be verified. But if you talk and act like you know what you're doing, there are plenty of people out there who'd be willing to hire you with or without certs. A lot of managers are pretty superficial, and good presentation is more than sufficient.

    The thing is, usually, the job you get hired into won't be that demanding. A manager who can't tell know who's bullshitting and who isn't probably won't have terribly challenging work, no matter what the job descriptions say (because said manager probably pulled a bunch of buzzwords out of his ass for it anyway).

    It's not a career, but it's enough to get by. And experience has taught me most of the world really just wants to "get by." It's a sad but not unreasonable fact of life.

  25. Re:why is it always comets and asteroids? on Asteroid Impacts May Have Formed Life's Building Blocks · · Score: 1

    Something about the necessary pressure perhaps?

    It's like making diamonds. You need both the carbon, the heat, and the pressure. Geothermal vents only have two of the three (though they may spit out diamonds).

    I'm just speculating. But I would imagine that if they thought geothermal was sufficient, they would have considered it. Of course, who knows, maybe it's the "science" journalist who's sensationalizing everything.