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User: mbkennel

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  1. Re:What happens if..... on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    "Actually, I'd consider that a draw... with sufficient heat dissipation,
    a speedboat could avoid most dangerous missile fire and then only
    come under rocket fire or machine gun."

    Come on. A speedboat on water is an obvious visual and IR target to any modern missile seeker. Attack helicopters are designed to eliminate tanks---contrast on sea is higher than on land. If it's daytime, look for the wake. If they're not moving fast enough to make a wake, they're a target.

    If they have MANPADS, then the jets will attack those first. You can even use a bomber with laser-guided ordnance.

    Really, air superiority prevents some pretty big barriers to Iran's operations except for submarines.

  2. Re:Suicide boats is not Iran's primary weapon on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    In an actual war the fishermen scoot to ports quickly. Fishing boats don't look like small attack boats, especially to the swarm of helicopters & jets sinking them.
    They are all in range of Saudi and UAE's and Kuwait's jets & helicopters.

  3. Re:Suicide boats is not Iran's primary weapon on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    "Seriously Iran has only to mine the entire ormuz strait and the game is over for the US."

    Two thirds of Iran's budget comes from oil exports. They just self-blockaded. The mines in the strait will be cleaned and moved to Iranian ports.

    The Saudis will build an overland oil pipeline in overtime.

  4. Re:Suicide boats is not Iran's primary weapon on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    How would the Iranians accurately target the missiles well beyond visual range?

    The countermeasure against small launch boats is of course attack helicopters.

  5. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    "Why did US enter into conflict in Libya but not Syria?"

    Because there was a viable military option with a good chance of success. Libya was geographically dispersed, with substantially armed and organized rebels with maneuver capability who could win with close air support.

    The Syrian army is much stronger than the Libyan army and the conflict is internal urban warfare.

  6. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    Iran has stated on the record that even if the Palestinians agree 100% to a peace agreement, they will still pursue the violent extermination of Israel.

  7. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 1

    Actually the evidence against Iran today is far more comprehensive than against Iraq in 2003.

    In 2003 virtually all the international groups saw nothing significant in Iraq. By constrast even the open facts regarding Iran is far more suggestive of a breakout nuclear weapons capability. Read recent IAEA reports.

  8. Re:Gee, maybe U.S. shouldn't try to steal oil on Tensions Over Hormuz Raise Ugly Possibilities For War · · Score: 2

    "Via electricity, so much of which is supplied by oil."

    Actually oil is too expensive to produce electricity everywhere in the world, except in subsidized petro-states.

    There is little substitutions available for trucking, and none for shipping and aircraft.

  9. Re:I do not use the same password for multiple sit on Ask Slashdot: Changing Passwords For the New Year? · · Score: 1

    If it's a wire transfer, the only thing they lose is customers. Banks know if you're a profitable customer or not. Banks are very bureaucratic and often stupid. But they are interested, somewhat, in reducing transfer fraud if only because of the hassle it causes them, the large amounts involved, and fear of government investigations. The government doesn't care about you getting back your money, just whether it is going to trrrrists.Some banks do have software & statistical models to detect on-line transfer fraud, and perhaps even physical tokens.

    Their IT departments are quite divorced from operational commercial bankers ---IT (often overseas/outsourced/not engaged) probably tells the internal people to suck it up and so they say the same thing to the customers with a slightly nicer tone.

    If it is a credit card, then the bank takes the fraud loss in most areas. A debit card, possibly, depending on jurisdiction & policy. This means they have a more organized department for dealing with fraud.

  10. Re:Jeff Goldblum on Insects Rapidly Becoming Resistant To GM Corn · · Score: 2

    "If you have good evidence to the contrary, please present."

    Saudi Arabia. Citizens are quite rich and yet women have lots and lots of babies, far more than others with same per-capita income.

    I think this evidence shows the most proximate cause of reducing population growth is women's liberation, which---most of the time---came wrapped up with other benefits of modernity which reduced disease and poverty.

  11. Re:Phone Company? on Verizon Adds $2 Charge For Paying Your Bill Online · · Score: 1

    it's to get out of union contracts of Verizon landline.

  12. Re:Boycott by using snail mail to pay bill on Verizon Adds $2 Charge For Paying Your Bill Online · · Score: 1

    "If every verizon customer started paying by snail mail, they may revize this scam policy."

    Indeed they would, they'll add a $5 paper-processing convenience fee.

  13. that's what an 'efficiency expert' says. on Verizon Adds $2 Charge For Paying Your Bill Online · · Score: 1

    Then the 'profit-maximization expert' comes in and tells him to screw it, lets charge a fee for nearly everybody, but have some incredibly obsolete and inconvenient fee-free mechanism only for PR purposes.

    Who gets the big fat bonus?

  14. more specifically on Did Microsoft Make Google Pay Triple Rate To Mozilla? · · Score: 1

    I think Google created Chrome to make sure that Google Apps, online versions competing directly against Microsoft, will be sure of running sufficiently well on some set of platforms. They could bid for multi-year contracts and have an answer for some prospective buyer who asks, "Yeah, your apps work in the browser now, but what if the browser changes?" Answer: "We have a good browser which we control fully, and we will guarantee support for the apps we're selling you on Chrome until YYYY-MM-DD".

    IE can clearly sabotage Google Apps, and Mozilla might go in its own direction and not serve the needs of Google Apps.

  15. Re:What would Steve Jobs say? on Charlie Kindel On Why Windows Phone Still Hasn't Taken Off · · Score: 1

    "And due to the policy of code reuse, [2] under the covers it might actually be the same DLLs on every platform. From a corporate standpoint, this meets the managerial line item of "windows everywhere""

    Fake Steve Jobs: Your (ex)-customers don't give a shit about your managerial line items, Steve, or freaking cross-platform DLLs, Bill. My customers want their emotions to be delighted.

  16. Re:What would Steve Jobs say? on Charlie Kindel On Why Windows Phone Still Hasn't Taken Off · · Score: 1

    "Windows is Microsoft's core competency [1] and pretty much the only mindshare they have left."

    except that Windows Phone 7 isn't Windows, and their Windows mindshare is that of a migraine.

    Steve Ballmer is the Gil Amelio of Microsoft, except he's stuck there.

    Microsoft has been stuck with the Windows Empire mentality for too long---in fact since about 2001. They should have voluntarily broken up the company anyway (and fired Ballmer) as soon as they won.

  17. Re:Does it matter? on New WiFi Setup Flaw Allows Easy Router PIN Guessing · · Score: 1

    For Very Sensitive national security projects that's just what they do.

    Sandia National Laboratory has a semiconductor fab. No doubt they're few generations behind Intel in process, but that isn't the point of these.

    It is because They have discovered very subtle and apparently intentional hardware flaws inserted into chips made in the East. Not mistakes.

  18. Re:I strongly disagree! on America's Turn From Science, a Danger For Democracy · · Score: 1

    True. So let's make a list (i'm serious).

    what shitty things has George Soros done?

    what shitty things have the Koch brothers done?

  19. Re:I for one disagree with his analysis on Charlie Kindel On Why Windows Phone Still Hasn't Taken Off · · Score: 1

    "I guess that's how it's worked out for x86 choice in the face of the Apple desktop monoculture. Nope? It turns out that we value openness."

    Not at all. Corporate purchasing managers really enjoy a Microsoft monoculture that they can purchase at cut-rates.

  20. What would Steve Jobs say? on Charlie Kindel On Why Windows Phone Still Hasn't Taken Off · · Score: 2

    Why the fuck are you calling it "Windows" or "Phone" or "7"?

    People associate "Windows" with uncool corporate dilbert crap. Phone is OK, but what are you going to call your pathetic excuse for a tablet, Windows Phone 8.5 For A Thing That Isn't A Phone?

    And why 7, just reminds people how much 1 through 6 sucked. If it's totally different, and it is, you need to change people's feelings and not just the fucking api.

  21. Re:Strange Statistics on October, November the Worst Months For Writing Buggy Code · · Score: 2

    actually fortran 95 and 2003 are very good programming languages, not at all like F77.

    And in fact, large Fortran codebases are often remarkably un-buggy.

  22. Re:Wow, what a stupid post on How To Thwart the High Priests In IT · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Well yes, but I think you're implicitly overestimating the typical cost of "resulting in regulatory fines or competitive disadvantage". When was the last time you heard of a company getting fined or giving data to a competitor as a result of a data leak from a lost piece of computer equipment? "

    Where I work, the prospective clients insist on various security audits of procedures in our company before they are willing to buy our products or share their data with us (necessary for the work we do). This is standard.

    Loopholes == losing huge deals.

  23. Re:Dell, on Dell Ditches Netbooks · · Score: 1

    This is false. Apple is a hardware company, because hardware is what they make money from, they put a substantial effort into specialized and unique hardware and software. Revenue comes from hardware, and software is there to make hardware sell, but hardware design is core to Apple and always has been. Even IBM doesn't manufacture all its own chips from bare sand the way it used to.

    Dell is a logistics, sales and and support company.

  24. Re:Dell, on Dell Ditches Netbooks · · Score: 1

    There's a pretty big difference between Apple and Dell.

    Apple has many employees who design chips and certainly motherboards from scratch. (remember they have CPU designers who used to work on PowerPC chips and probably now do similar for their ARM cpu's)

    They design all cases, often with non-standard materials and innovative manufacturing techniques and do thermal modeling. They design their own mice and keyboards and power adapters unlike Dell who specs out to a generic manufacturer.

  25. Lots of them in the government on How Does the CIA Keep Its IT Staff Honest? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is some kind of standardization of ID cards.

    They *might* have some generic code, you might get "DOD", "DOE" but also a common one is "U.S. Government" for the entire Intelligence Community (which is a term of art referring to quite a number of agencies). I've seen business cards on them with little more than a "U.S. government" identifier and some generic identifiers for email or phone number.

    What is indicated pretty clearly by some kind of color & pattern code is (a) authorization level (b) bool isContractor

    The most striking thing about the CIA (and many other cards), is that they don't even have the person's *NAME*.

    Yes, I have some first hand knowledge, as I was inside the CIA HQ building about 10 years ago and my escort mentioned how the ID cards don't have any names on them, intentionally.