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User: jythie

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  1. Re:Don't worry, Romney... on Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim · · Score: 1

    Pretty much. Stupidly enough, the whole 'civil suit' system was originally intended to try to balance that out a bit.. if the DoJ didn't want to do the job you had another recourse... then an increasing number of laws were written where civil suits were the only recourse.. then we started shaming anyone who uses them.

  2. Re:Why "threaten"? That's lame on Jimmy Wales Threatens To Obstruct UK Government Snooping · · Score: 1

    Not only that, but moving everything over to https can be time consuming as you track down all the places that assume http is available. Depending on what is lurking in those configuration files, simply cutting off port 80 might not be enough. I know when I tried to do it to some of our servers, some worked fine, others started having mysterious errors that took a while to run to ground. One I gave up because people needed the service immediately and the cause was not obvious.

  3. Re:Don't worry, Romney... on Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Infinite no, but the amount of resources that go into prosecuting a tiny fraction of the crimes could easily be spread out among a much larger set. The triage seems to be less about 'what limited resources can result in the most prosecution' and more 'resources to people with influence, anything left over goes to everyone else'

  4. Re:Don't worry, Romney... on Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How in the world did you go from 'these crimes should be prosecuted even if the victim is a nobody' to 'watergate should never have been prosecuted'?

    I am just tired of the 'people with power deserve more justice then regular people'. Crow, a crime like this probably has less personal impact then one on a regular person... you think something like this would actually impact Romney in any significant way? Hacks like this are about as politically dangerous as fumbling a line during an interview. On the other hand when some average person has their personal information stolen it can be life destroying. So in a very real way this is a less serious crime since it is unlikely to have much impact on anyone or anything.

  5. Re:Don't worry, Romney... on Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ahm.. part of the point of bitcoins is they are hard (in theory at least) to track. There are no 'bit coin servers' the FBI can go to, just a distributed network of anonymous nodes. In theory asking for a ransom to be paid like this makes a lot of sense.. it doesn't have the traceability of government backed currency (or the banking system it travels through) nor does it have the physical delivery problem of something like gold. In practice, if they wanted to expend significant resources (the kind that only get expended if you piss off someone really powerful), they could probably compromise or surround enough nodes to maybe track the coins being spent and try to watch where they transition back into goods.... maybe.

  6. Re:Don't worry, Romney... on Secret Service Investigating Romney Tax Hack Claim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For me at least, it isn't a case of 'should we go after them', but how much more attention gets paid to a case by law enforcement if the target if famous or politically connected. The Palin one was is a classic example... a type of hack that is not unusual and gets reported to the police fairly frequently, but very little is done about it. Yet all the stops came out to track down the person when Palin's emails were stolen.

    I am all for people like this being tracked down and arrested for their crimes, I just wish it did not matter so much who your victim is.

  7. Re:Where DID they come from then. on Apple Denies FBI Had Access To UDIDs · · Score: 2

    It is possible they are both being 'technically' truthful. The filename indicated it was from NCFTA... so Apple could have sold them the data, and then it wasn't really the propert of the FBI so they did not own/have it....

  8. Actual Data? on EA Exec Won't Green Light Any Single Player-Only Games · · Score: 0

    I wonder if he is pulling this 'consumers demand online play' from actual market data.. or listening to people inside the company that are bais towards it.

    Last I heard, and this is years out of date, on-line play still makes up the minority of actual game time (and players) but makes up the majority of forum posters and developers... so companies often get a skewed view of the market and over-focus on them.

  9. Re:not quite MAD on Government Lawyer Says Patent Trolls Are a 'Concern' · · Score: 1

    Actually the patent office has issues with insuffient examiners who know the domain, so a lot of very iffy patents get through.

    Plus, a smart troll doesn't go after Apple or another big company, they go after little ones that will settle first. Not only does that build up a warchest for going after bigger players, but the settlements have a legal impact on the validity of the patent, so the fact other companies have agreed that the patent was infringed makes other companies claiming otherwise have a greater barrier to doing so. So yeah, it actually is possible for someone with small resources (but a lot of time and domain knowledge) to bilk the system with little personal risk.

  10. Re:Not surprised ... on BitFloor Joins List of Compromised BitCoin Exchanges · · Score: 1

    I was more thinking that the buyer part would be easy to seed, since I assume at some point someone needs to make a delivery, but that would not impact buyers all that much I guess.

  11. Re:Criminal Investigation on Should We Print Guns? Cody R. Wilson Says "Yes" (Video) · · Score: 1

    Well, it is hard to say what the war of the future might look like, but never underestimate the effectiveness of an armed population to cause trouble for an occupying force. At some point, if you want the land, you have to set aside all the indirect weapons and put troops on the ground, and then every window and corner becomes a potential trap when weapons are easy to get a hold of.

    As for who would want to invade us? I agree it is unlikely, but who knows what the future might hold. If nothing else we are not all that well fortified, so a land invasion could probably knock a lot of our infrastructure offline and weaken us on some other front. Or it could be someone gets strong enough to just plain want our land. A lot has changed in 200 years, and plenty can change in the next 200.

  12. Re:Criminal Investigation on Should We Print Guns? Cody R. Wilson Says "Yes" (Video) · · Score: 1

    The prices are almost in freefall though. The type of fabrication setup that just a few years ago would be tens of thousands can be had (at least in capability, but not speed) today for a few kilobucks. Over the next decade they will probably continue to decrease in cost and increase in capability, so while this is not a worry for today, we are not all that far off.

  13. Re:Not surprised ... on BitFloor Joins List of Compromised BitCoin Exchanges · · Score: 1

    Wow, Silk Road is still functioning? I would have through with all the publicity it has gotten it wouldn't be trustworthy anymore....

  14. Re:Not surprised ... on BitFloor Joins List of Compromised BitCoin Exchanges · · Score: 2

    I suspect these sites that think of themselves as the banks of the future are slowly discovering how difficult being a bank is.. and customers are discovering just what being FDIC backed means.

  15. Re:So where does that assumption get you? on FBI Denies It Held iPhone UDIDs Stolen By AntiSec · · Score: 4, Funny

    I do not know how.. I do not know when... I do not even know why.. but I will find and excuse to use the phrase 'Schroedinger's Laptop' someday.

  16. not quite MAD on Government Lawyer Says Patent Trolls Are a 'Concern' · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MAD only works because everyone dies, no one profits. The patent situation is almost an inverse MAD... the worse things get the more profit there is to be made and the more risk there is to not playing the game. Any public company basically has to behave this way, otherwise their shareholders will string them up or one of their competitors will become more profitable because they ARE playing.

  17. Re:I think the OP mentioned self-employment on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Disabilities In the Workplace? · · Score: 1

    Even with support, the issue can be pretty significant. The options for people with certain mental health issues are very limited, they get even less limited if they are not a computer geek with a college degree. In fact they get vanishingly small... resulting in the 'support' simply taking a larger and larger burden for a person society is not structured to find a use for.

  18. Re:Holy Shit! on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Disabilities In the Workplace? · · Score: 1

    Because a lot of people in the US do not believe in mental illness.. they think it can be overcome with work or faith or something, or that it is simply moral weakness, or is just plain made up. It is still pretty stigmatized in a way physical illness isn't, and physical illness is still pretty stigmatized.

  19. Re:Businessmen on With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing More Complicated Than Ever · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The point is that the ratio of income from the two age groups is further out of whack then it ever has been, so the older generation is holding on to more wealth rather then the younger one advancing like they normally would. In other words they are putting in the same years of hard work as the previous generation, but not getting the same amount of reward.

    Also:

    I'd be willing to guess their incomes were not much different (in 70's/80's dollars) to today's youth, but their standards of living were probably lower.

    That is part of the point, their incomes WERE different. They were doing much better then people of similar age today.

  20. Re:Businessmen on With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing More Complicated Than Ever · · Score: 2

    As the saying goes, beware the advice of successful people, for they do not wish company....

    Much of the rhetoric I have seen lately (which oddly enough seems to be branded as 'pro-entrepreneur".. then again the small business community has traditionally been a political sucker ) seems to be focusing on shutting down things that help people advance by people who have already benefited from it.

    But that is part of a hyper-capitalistic mindset...personal gain is what one optimizes for, not advancement of the group, to the point that even things that hurt others more then you are considered 'good' since one comes out relatively better.. which is why businessmen make lousy economic planners.. the mindset is all wrong.

  21. Re:usteam isn't responding. on Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot · · Score: 1

    That would indeed help even out the risk a bit more.

  22. Re:usteam isn't responding. on Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot · · Score: 2

    Thing is, DCMA wouldn't be in play yet. This was a private company proactively stopping content they were paid to carry. While yes, they are required to implement a process for taking down infringing material, that requirement is not a blank check to welch on a contrat.... so, legally at least, 'we were just trying to comply with the safe harbor provision' does not negate the negative effects of that implementation. They are still liable for them... in theory at least.

  23. Re:No on Do We Need a Longer School Year? · · Score: 0

    Ah yes, the boogy-man of teacher's unions,....

    It is kinda ironic, the original intent of the teacher's unions was to protect a weak group of people from the political whims of the school boards.. and now it has just become a new scapegoat. When all is said and done, we are not a country that respects education or educators, and teachers are an easy target. Always have been.. and when they try to protect themselves, they get this 'how dare they fight back' backlash, which has become the modern union bashing.... how dare they not know their place,.. they should have picked a more profitable career.

  24. Re:usteam isn't responding. on Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if they could be gotten for breach of contract.

    The problem with these bots is how the people setting the policy weigh the risks.. they fear the content owners suing them more then their customers. But if you are failing to provide a service that you have been contracted to provide, then that opens up a new area of liability that I do not think customers have been pushing enough.

  25. Re:Soul Crushing? on High Tech Companies Becoming Fools For the City · · Score: 1

    And one nasty surprise these companies will discover is, over time, if they want people to work in their city offices they have to pay a lot more. One of the reasons so many companies moved to the burbs was the lower cost of living (and lower cost of renting corperate space).

    We see this every now and then.. a group of companies rides high on a wave of investment and move into the city because they can afford to waste the money....