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User: hedwards

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  1. Re:Were they lost? on Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers · · Score: 1

    Indeed. I used to be a security officer, and one time I was sent to unlock a server room for an audit that the tenant authorized. It turned out to be a closet with a couple servers in it, and right at the top of the closet was a big ole sprinkler head.

    Needless to say the auditor that I let into the closet was less than enthused by the situation.

  2. Re:what a horrible idea on Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers · · Score: 1

    Not really, they could coordinate it so that there's a small number of them, perhaps 1 per region of the US. Say broken up into the same regions that the federal government uses for district courts. Most of the servers could reasonably be combined using virtual hosts, since most of them really don't need to be separated. Somethings like Social Security and the IRS have a reason to be separated, but most of them don't need to be.

    But, the point is that since you have them consolidated to a small number of areas, you can keep track of them. You can make sure they're patched, backed up and secured. You can reallocated capacity as needed.

    Which is something which isn't happening now. I don't know that for a fact, I just know that if you've suddenly discovered that much capacity that at least some of them aren't properly cared for and definitely not being monitored.

  3. Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings on Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers · · Score: 1

    Precisely, there's a lot of things which genuinely have bipartisan support, and those are the things you focus on first.

    That's not to say that you ignore the other ones, we're going to be permanently in debt unless we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the high earners, and we're going to have to cut government spending on defense to fund education and jobs programs. We're going to have to force companies that send jobs overseas to book profits before they book deductions like ones that are located and functioning in the US.

  4. Re:Silly President, streamlining's for wings on Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers · · Score: 1

    Of course they have no meaningful chance, not with folks like you voting for gridlock. I mean seriously, if people would vote for the candidate that was sincerely interested in good policy and willing to make compromises to get it, there would be change. What President Obama failed to appreciate is all the numb nuts out there that are voting specifically for the candidate that's going to cause the most damage to the federal government.

    Which is really the only reason why the tea party movement is even in the press. There's a lot of people out there that are comfortable cutting off the nose to spite the face. Never mind that the original tea party had precisely zip to do with taxation, and everything to do with ditching the competitors product so that they wouldn't have any competition.

  5. Re:good for text messaging, notgood for streaming on Researchers Test WiFi Access From Moving Vehicles · · Score: 1

    I take it you're not an AT&T customer.

  6. Re:Define "Public" on Researchers Test WiFi Access From Moving Vehicles · · Score: 1

    If you've failed to set up any authentication you've given everybody permission to use it. You set up authentication so that you limit who is and is not allowed to use it. That's the way that authentication works, an open or blank password is the same thing as granting permission to whomever it is that wants to log in. That's the reason why people use blank passwords. If you care who it is that logs in you don't use a blank password.

  7. Re:Define "Public" on Researchers Test WiFi Access From Moving Vehicles · · Score: 1

    In the US, they typically are. Even the ones that do are capped at 250gb which would be hard to max out with WiFi. I've been able to hit that a few times with a wired connection, but doing that over wireless would be tough. Fortunately, the one saving grace of Qwest is that they really don't have a cap.

  8. Re:not gonna work on Researchers Test WiFi Access From Moving Vehicles · · Score: 1

    Traditionally, the way you did that was type in a very weak password. Like 1234, but really, if you haven't got any wireless authentication, you're open, whether you like it or not. The difference between open and closed is whether or not the public has access.

    This is a bit like posting a sign that says "please no trespassing, we're not going to call the cops, but we don't want to have to see you trespassing."

  9. Re:Yo moron on Researchers Test WiFi Access From Moving Vehicles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The transit system around here was working on that for a while. What they did was set up a low power access point in the middle of the bus, and hooked that up to a cellular card. The effect was that you were using WiFi, but since you were in the same reference frame, you didn't have to deal with any of the random interruptions you would otherwise have to deal with.

    The main problem would be in tunnels and plain old congestion.

  10. Re:Why? on Oracle's Newest Move To Undermine Android · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you ought to turn yours in. The suit isn't about destroying Android. The suit is about the fact that Google is using an incompatible VM with the Java language and trying to pass it off as Java. Which it isn't. Java is supposed to be compatible between the various VMs, even if not always perfect.

  11. Re:as usual... on Lawyer Is Big Winner In Webcamgate Settlement · · Score: 1

    You do realize that in a typical class action suit, the attorneys work for sometimes years free of charge waiting to get a settlement or award. By that time the amount of work they've done for free genuinely adds up to that sort of money. They don't typically collect anything unless there's a settlement or the jury awards them the money.

    Consequently, they end up making a lot of money as a result. If you want cheaper representation, all you have to do is get your own attorney and pay as you go. Most if not all attorneys charge less in that kind of situation than when they have to go on a contingency basis.

  12. Re:Associated costs on Lawyer Is Big Winner In Webcamgate Settlement · · Score: 1

    Trials aren't about finding out who is right. If it were that simple we wouldn't have attorneys. There's a lot of things that can go wrong, there's a lot of procedural rules that can sink a case quite quickly.

    There's an old saying, that a man who defends himself has a fool for a client. And there's a good reason why folks say that.

  13. Re:Wow, just... wow on Lawyer Is Big Winner In Webcamgate Settlement · · Score: 4, Informative

    Short answer is that he doesn't get to keep it. There's whatever he gets to keep as a part of his salary, but there's the cost of the paralegals, office, professional literature, time spent interviewing witnesses, time spent researching the case and coming up with a strategy. There's a lot of work that goes into the practice of practicing law.

    Plus, if the case was taken on contingency, which it looks like it was, he has to worry about the possibility of losing and ending up being paid nothing. Which can and does happen, there's a reason why attorneys work so hard to keep things out of the courts, the jury can be very unpredictable at times.

  14. Re:Lears on Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net · · Score: 1

    It's just confused. It's trying to learn, but it's on the internet. An innovation solely for the purpose of leering at pornography.

  15. Re:It spelled fine on Meet NELL, the Computer That Learns From the Net · · Score: 2, Funny

    Iambic pentameter? Looks more like an iambic nanometer from here.

  16. Re:Oracle, OpenJDK?? Yeah Right. on IBM and Oracle To Collaborate On OpenJDK · · Score: 1, Troll

    Um, Google created something that couldn't inter-operate with the rest of the Java installations out there. They claimed to be using the Java language, but didn't actually do anything other than use Java syntax and IIRC didn't include the standard libraries. The VM itself couldn't handle the normal class files, nor could the authorized VMs handle the files that the Google version was using.

    This wasn't a matter of Google adding things to the language, this was a case of Google deliberately misrepresenting their implementation and harming Oracle's trademark.

  17. Re:Now maybe we can get a decent JDK with yum on IBM and Oracle To Collaborate On OpenJDK · · Score: 1

    I switched to OpenSUSE from Ubuntu for my Linux install, and that's the thing I miss the most. Most things are in the repository, but a few of the things I use aren't.

  18. Re:what? on Research Shows How Deaf Cats' Brains Re-Purpose Auditory Centers · · Score: 1

    AFAICT all they managed to demonstrate was that there was a connection between the beefed up processing and the deafness/blindess. Which is really just a first step towards more thorough study.

    I'd imagine that further research would probably focus on cases where one loses sight or hearing later on in life. Probably what happens when one temporarily loses hearing/vision and when that happens repeatedly versus just once.

    Really, this is just one step towards a lot of other research that's really necessary to understand what's really going on and why.

  19. Re:God's no dummy on Research Shows How Deaf Cats' Brains Re-Purpose Auditory Centers · · Score: 1

    It would take research, but I don't think that this is a matter of redistribution. It's a matter of portions of the brain having multiple purposes. For instance it's typical for ones vision to dim when one is really focused on listening to something. And since one can't hear anything there would be no competition between purposes.

  20. Re:Don't cookies do the same thing? on HTML5 Draws Concern Over Risks To Privacy · · Score: 1

    Flash has already become a problem. As in those zombie cookies that Adobe didn't feel inclined to offer a way of getting rid of or deciding to decline. Being able to store things with flash is fine, as long as the end user gets to decide and is aware of it.

  21. Re:how about just flipping the damn default? on New Tool Blocks Downloads From Malicious Sites · · Score: 1

    Drive by downloads are definitely real. I've had them. The only reason why I didn't get infected was that I was running the browswer in sandbox with an antivirus program which blocked it before the file was run. All I had to do was click a link to an infected site.

  22. Re:Shenanigans! on New Tool Blocks Downloads From Malicious Sites · · Score: 1

    I'm trying to establish why this is better than a sandbox. I suppose this is an onion thing and really intended to go side by side with something like Sandboxie

  23. Re:Hmmm... on Squeezing More Bandwidth Out of Fiber · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or figure out a way of getting cyber criminals off the net. The problem for quite some time has been that they'll suck up as much bandwidth as they can get, and since they don't pay for it, there's little reason to actually throttle back their operations.

  24. Re:Tipping Point on Chinese Nobel Winner's Wife Detained · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not really, almost all of what they produce can be sourced elsewhere. They'd end up hurting themselves far more than they hurt us. The things which we really need are pretty much all produced by somebody else. Oil is mainly Canada and OPEC, food is mostly ourselves.

    Same goes for trying to pull out their money too quickly. It would definitely be a case of MAD, they'd end up hurting us, but they'd end up hurting themselves worse. The US still has the production capacity to fix the problem, it would just be one hell of a shock to the system. But ultimately as we're the most productive nation on Earth we would ultimately survive it.

  25. Re:back in the day... on Alaska To Export Billions of Gallons of Water · · Score: 1

    The summary says no such thing. They're bottling it in India for dispersal in the Middle East.