Slashdot Mirror


User: umghhh

umghhh's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,357
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,357

  1. Re:Who pays? on ATMs Compromised, $45M Taken · · Score: 1
    If your bank cannot do it right it does what most of western states also do - borrow in a hope the money to cover the costs will be earned later.

    If them banks do it right - the cost of service is on you as a customer just as profit of the company is. If they have no profit and/or do not pay for services they need to keep your money safe and buy insurance to pay for losses if things go wrong etc then you have a good chance of being parted from your money anyway.

    The question here is: which banks were they the ones that saved on all but salaries of directors or the ones that tried and failed to protect their business.

    I just wonder - were insider help needed there? TFA seems to believe the hacking crew had a clear access into finance systems - so it is not little identity theft, was it possible without any insider? If so then another interesting question/issue can be: states like Germany feel free to bribe anybody who wants to take money and sell secrete data of banks all over the place - the socialists that specialize in this art of 'investigation' claim that if not tax evasion there would be no financial problems in the country but I digress. If I were a bank clerk with access to some fat financial data DB I would consider working with German tax office but in lack of its interest I would cooperate hackers too. I think they will strike again - there is a good reason why the chief of NY street crew was shot dead I guess - the hand is off but the head may still be free and working on a better plan....

  2. Re:So many people miss the point. on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1
    I think you go in the right direction with your argument but you missed it slightly. The part of the constitution that is dealing with guns was written for the situation where guns indeed had much smaller firepower as measured with speed they could fire and distance they could be used effectively. The other side i.e. UK military that were just repelled with use of militia like force were not armed that much better than said militia man (except the big guns that is). IN these times a militia armed with weapons that its members could use for hunting made sense. Today it does not. Gosh even argument about use of military on the US soil is circumvented by police units that are armed like a combat army units. Try to fight those with militia like means and you will see that what you need to fight them is not a gun at home but an organisation - guns and munitions you can then get from your enemy or other places. Back then the mostly in the country side living population needed and used guns for living and for own protection as arm of law, i.e. sheriffs back then, was not patrolling streets constantly and you could not call them to rescue you with your mobile phone. I suppose assuming US will deteriorate back to these inspiring times then you may indeed need a gun at home.

    Of course for the big part of population the right to own and bear arms is god given so no arguments apply. To make any change in risk caused by said arms you would need to confiscate the existing privately owned weapons which is not going to happen. The discussion is entertaining at times but it is not changing anything really.

  3. Re:This is the best way of gun control on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    I do not know about 30k kills a year but there is a difference between a device that has some utility value besides killing and one that hardly does.

  4. what is a fault? on 450 Million Lines of Code Can't Be Wrong: How Open Source Stacks Up · · Score: 1
    It strikes me that over last few years I see less and less faults indeed. The way I look at it tho is that people will automatically reject the idea that the software is at fault unless it brakes in a visible way. Other than that you are for a tough discussion about it and unless you have it black on white that something should do B after A but it does C instead you have no chance. In other words - because we skipped the specification phase we do not have a specification we can verify the applications against i.e. we have less faults....

    OTOH majority of code is not hand written anyway but copy-pasted and/or automatically generated by some fancy tool so of course you have less faults.

  5. Re:Population control on A Case For a Software Testing Undergrad Major · · Score: 1
    I worked so far in the whole chain besides architecture and management and frankly developer job sucks of it most. The only one that sucks even more is technical writer because they are not allowed to touch anything, they have to understand how the document fits the reality however and all yell them because they are the 'authors'. The only thing worse than that is manager as this means you are peers with mostly sociopaths and assholes by choice. Few of them are good enough to either hide their character flaws behind competence or (gosh can I see myself even thinking this) being good people in general. Other than that I heard once I liked that: 'first time right' so no need for testers and maintenance etc. it brings smile to my face every time I recall this....

    I actually enjoyed work as self employed system tester but as soon as I got a local contract the job turned bad - nobody wanted to listen anymore and somehow quality of a product I was to test determined my bonus i.e. if it was good I got one if it was as it was I did not as opposed to pay as you go and if stream of faults did not subside go on and get paid per hour. Not sure if management gurus have brains for anything more than counting the money they took away from gullible and stupid. Having social techniques problem meself never wanted to go up but I guess I would feel good there :)

  6. Re:One of two things. on Can Older Software Developers Still Learn New Tricks? · · Score: 1
    It is indeed true that people especially competent ones tend to despair and suffer from burnout symptoms especially if exposed to too many assholes 'knowing' things and ignoring advice even if they were the ones to ask for it in the first place and then blaming the old ones for projects not being on time. It is also true that creative natures usually suffer more from savage swings of mood. Still there are plenty of others who just come at 8 and go at 16 - some of them skilled folk some of them just clerks and common technicians 'waiting' for instruction. This is the majority and it does not go into burnout mode just because management had suddenly a new brilliant idea. The spectrum is wide and your black and white view of the situation may have difficulty with applicability to the real life. I say fuck it and live on - the problems is not the age really but the assholes who hire: you are always bad for the job, that is just basic power grab mechanism for HR folk as well as a technique useful in negotiations over your remuneration.

    Come to think of it this never changes. That is how humans are. In 17th century in England - globalization and rapid pace of technological change caused that on regular base people went to the streets and hanged bailiffs and sheriffs because they were not compensated for their work properly, gov sent troops to subdue the protest and introduced regulation to prevent it in the future and businesses avoided regulation by moving overseas (to Holland among other places back then). Today we do not go to the streets anymore but ask for another does of prozac and the leading industries changed - back then it was textile now it is IT and finance.

  7. Re:True Democracy on Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep Into Facebook Data · · Score: 1

    oh and /. is a perfect example of how to make decisions in most reasonable way i.e. based on common sense, fair and informed opinions. Based on this I think humanity deserves to die and we will when some stupid asshole automates all then this automatic system will optimize us out of existence.

  8. Re:Selection bias, generation/aging falacy. on Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep Into Facebook Data · · Score: 1

    What one may also say is that if you do not know how certain things work in society you take statistics. This shows you some trends and with some luck and quite some sophistication you can actually deduce how humans society (in this case subset of FB members) tick. You also suggest that Wolfram has no clue which I find very likely - he is a clever guy with a lots of fancy tools.

  9. Re:True Democracy on Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep Into Facebook Data · · Score: 1
    how true - I looked at the parliament of my country once and saw only pigs there. I was shocked. Then I looked around and I found out that majority of people:
    • have no interest, and who can blame them
    • have not enough information and brain capacity to understand even less complex problems
    • we all are corrupt to some extent

    Bottom line: The parliament is an essence of the society it exists in. If you are disappointed try to change the society if possible in a peaceful way. That is of course impossible in a huge country with huge groups of conflicting interests. I guess the social cohesion is also a factor as well as reasonable approach to this decision making - that is why in Switzerland it kind of works. It must be understood of course that no system is perfect and as we somehow lack places to migrate at the moment we will have to live with imperfect system and hope it works best for us as well as in cases it seriously malfunctions - go to the streets and sometimes even risk our lives in attempt to modify it. The unfortunate fact about society is that it is built of people.

  10. Re:True Democracy on Wolfram Alpha Drills Deep Into Facebook Data · · Score: 1
    It works/does not work exactly the same way as all the other systems. The only difference is that this particular way of doing so would be sanctioned by the high priest of social data mining, venerable Wolfram and done by some automatic by minority controlled system spitting 'view of the people'. How exactly is this better? The control of the algorithm is in hands of the few, the decision has to be enforced possibly with the power of the state so that the minorities that were not counted in can be coerced into submission.

    To the 'all agree' dogma there is nothing to say - if you do it that way you will not find many decisions being done in the first place.

    I do not say that it is bad idea to have public opinion taken into account especially if technology makes it cheaper and more reliable but you need to do something with following items:

    1. what to do with opinions of the minorities who were of different view than majority - always ignore may be a reason society dissolves
    2. you cannot effectively do it all the time, more people are involved the more time it needs to discuss it.
    3. are all people really willing and have the energy to take part in constant decision making
    4. what to do with situations where no clear answer is possible or requires special knowledge?

    There are many more but whichever system you do you still will have a need for executive branch and leaders of the nation.

    Also a system that arguably uses wisdom of the crowd i.e. american courts of justice are flowed. I do not find German system much better but it is better in many ways still and we do have professional judges doing most of the work.

  11. Re:You'll Take them Out Of My Kids Cold Dead Hand on Six Retailers Announce Recall of Buckyballs and Buckycubes · · Score: 1

    if they swallow them and thengo to get MRI

  12. Re:The blind leading the blind. on Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat? · · Score: 1

    not sure if that is sad - it is just our human condition - it is in a bad condition so to say....

  13. Re:The long-period comet problem on Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat? · · Score: 1

    so maybe instead of deflecting a big rock out of our way you should deflect properly sized one into congress when the said fuckers are in the house? I suppose I am no officially on the list of forbidden guests into US as an evil terrorist....

  14. Re:The long-period comet problem on Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat? · · Score: 1

    Yes some of us do. You add the weight of the event like direct hit to any major metropolitan area and funny things start to happen to your risk analysis.

  15. Re:The long-period comet problem on Can NASA, Air Force, and Private Industry Really Mitigate an Asteroid Threat? · · Score: 2
    colonize galaxy - with warp drive I suppose? Yes we can invest money in anything instead of building f35 but even this silly project has some benefits for humanity in that it increases our knowledge about things. Now I can imagine investing in asteroid detection and analysis of deflection capability is doing something good for our science and engineering. I think it is better than giving money to the banks that are too big too fail.

    And as for risk analysis - once you add the wight to the odds you will see that it is not that simple. a rare event killing all londoners is worthwhile investing some billions into it even if it is all only monitoring or is it? Then this lesser argument about Tunguska event with one fatality - you care to compare the difference in population density of Siberia back then and now? Even better yet - do you think all these stones coming from the sky always chose Siberia for its landing zone?

  16. Re:Motorola? on Judge Slams Apple-Motorola Suit As 'Business Strategy' · · Score: 2

    Was NK involved in an of this?

  17. Re:Good on Judge Slams Apple-Motorola Suit As 'Business Strategy' · · Score: 1

    neee - probably a spy for NK.

  18. Re: Mobile computing replacing regular computing? on Windows 8 Killing PC Sales · · Score: 1

    I knwo what TF2 is - do I get a medal now?

  19. Re:Companies shouldn't' like where this is going on Windows 8 Killing PC Sales · · Score: 1

    you go high to iShit or low to *nix - being a low life I went for *nix at home. It works quite well. AT work We are switching to new MS product - Windoze 7 that is :) but that is only a terminal - all test and production platforms (except docware part) we use run on some form of unix. Who from technical stuff wants can have linux box too. It is pain in the ass because all working tools are aimed at MS terminal but it works anyway and the only thing that is really troublesome is Callendar functions integrated into MS products - thunderbird one does not integrate well with that albeit it can handle most of the functionality. The way I see it the only concern my workplace managers have is that unix is still seen as painful because there is no excel, outlook &co there..

  20. Re:The "lightweight" person that you mention on Windows 8 Killing PC Sales · · Score: 1
    so instead of a PC we have now a PC like other devices so why all the fuss about disappearing PC market? It is just changing as everything else. I envision a small device that can seamlessly integrate with all the new io for work and have not so nice and comfy interface for on the go. Revolution indeed.

    As for lightweight - it is just a synonym for almost useless but fancy.

  21. Re:Bull on Windows 8 Killing PC Sales · · Score: 1
    and this is all that simple? No 2nd hand market, no explanation how tablets and smartphones are better in everything than anything else for everybody? There is a huge market where there was none. Part of this market took part of the communication off of home pc this much is true but.

    The upgrade is not needed as it used to. The market got saturated - supermarket nearby has gone from old linux boxes to something fancy probably running linux anyway albeit pinguin is not visible anymore they did the swap of their SW/HW once in last 10 years, even the smallest shop has now lapop or desktop that does the main job (I have not seen them doing anything with tablets or phones tho). I used to by a new pc ever few years and I still do but these are not nornal PCs anymore: I bought shuttle 2ya and new laptop about the same time - I expect them to last for another two-4 years maybe more. But I agree it sounds cool when you find one single cause and can show yourself in a one-sentence-explains-all glory.

  22. Re:Suicide by Cop? on S. Korea Says Cyber Attack From North Wiped 48,700 Machines · · Score: 1

    That may be and may make a difference AFTER the regime fails but in case they start shooting the difference is irrelevant. I guess it was similar with Germans at the end of the second big one - it was clear for almost everybody that it was over and there were only two parties then: those that resigned and just waited till all is over and those who were inclined to fight till the last drop of blood of everybody else.

  23. Re:The secret of Google's success on Google's Idea of Productivity Is a Bad Fit For Many Other Workplaces · · Score: 1

    It is true of course that without a product that sells no organization is going to survive. However to get the product done, support it and improve it you need good people and if you have more than 2-3 guys it is my experience that you need some sort of flexible organization that allows to do stuff as it is necessary - this includes longer coding binges, cooperative trable-shooting, analysis alone or in changing groups of specialists or fetching experience from other groups to see if you can do a better job. It also depends what job/product you have and what people you work with. I think the lesson from any of these good companies as well as the failing ones is that you have techniques and processes that are fit for certain situation and different ones in others. When you look at this in that way you will find google method a nice learning experience that you can but do not have to use. Gosh I can even imagine (albeit with difficulty) that putting all your employees into a cubicle farm can also be productive especially if a cubicle farm is made fit for the purpose and ordered by some incompetent asshole who sees advise only in his excel sheet. I guess what I wanted to say is that blind copy/paste approach often done in by coders as well as managers (as in TFA) is silly. You need to understand what parts of what you see is doing what and why then your copy/paste canactually work.

  24. Re:Pastor Rick Warren's son commits suicide on Leak Found In Fukushima Tank Holding Radioactive Water · · Score: 0

    But I thought nuclear energy is safe so surely just dumping this radioactive whatever it is into the ocean is ok then?

  25. Re:Reminds me of the Timberjack on Inside Mantis: a 2-Ton Hexapod Robot With a Linux Brain · · Score: 1

    but this timberjack is doing stuff which diminishes the fun factor.