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User: aberglas

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  1. What actually is Inbox? on Google Hopes To One Day Replace Gmail With Inbox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Google page just says that it will be good for me.

    It looks generally like a dumbed down phone style app. "lots of whitespace" etc.

    There is a *lot* of room for improvement in GMail that does not involve pissing about with the UI. Like being able to add a summary to an email thread. Like being able to break email threads which become muddled. Like being able to add additional meta data do emails and use them for simple applications. People have been asking for these for years, but the MBAs that now seem to run Google do not listen.

    But it does not look like Inbox is any of these things,.

    Anyone actually tried it?

  2. Arsenic is not radioactive at all on Is Chernobyl Still Dangerous? Was 60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda? · · Score: 0

    I once owned a block that had an old cattle dip on it. The ground near the dip was polluted with Arsenic. But unlike radioactive materials, As does not decay. It will be there forever. But life goes on...

  3. TLS/SSL/PKI is just the wrong algorithm. on Book Review: Bulletproof SSL and TLS · · Score: 1

    For logging into a secure server the correct algoritmm is Secure Remote Password (SRP).

    This uses a little crypto magic to produce STRONG security from weak passwords. It is a bit like using a nounce, but it does not give a man in the middle any way to brute force guess the password.

    If the user tries to log into a phished website the attempt simply fails. The phisher learns nothing. And there is no need for all the PKI certificate signing trusted third party nonsense.

    It is not just dumb end users. What do you do when an SSH session says "new certificate". Check its finger print? Of course not, nobody does. With SRP this would be completely unnecessary.

    It does not work for sites upon which you have no account. But for banking etc. it is the obvious way to go. But somehow the PKI mob and their expensive certificates got all the press. And no patents on SRP.

    (There are a number of similar algorithms known as PAKE. But SRP is the latest and greatest incarnation.)

  4. Re:A cost equation on Window Washing a Skyscraper Is Beyond a Robot's Reach · · Score: 1

    If the string breaks you can always hire another Mexican. But you would have to Buy another robot.

    (Hear in Oz they often just abseil down the buildings on a climbing rope. Can bounce all over the place, would be fun to do ... once. (They do use a second backup rope as well.) )

  5. Pump water instead on Denmark Faces a Tricky Transition To 100 Percent Renewable Energy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Pumping water up a hill and then produce hydro power at peak times. This is an established technology, maybe 60% efficient. There is one setup here near Brisbane AU. Things do not have to be exotic.

    (You do need a hill, Denmark may need to rely on its neighbors.)

  6. "Watson" is no one thing on Does Watson Have the Answer To Big Blue's Uncertain Future? · · Score: 2

    In IBM "Watson" appears to just be a vacuous marketing term for anything vaguely related to Artificial Intelligence. Any technical details are very sparse.

    Sure there was the very clever program that won Jeopardy!. But then IBM is saying that they want to use "Watson" for medical diagnosis. That is about as different a problem as you can get. And if the term "Cognative Computing" means anything at all it suggests the use of perceptron networks, which are not generally used for either the Jeopardy Watson or medical diagnosis.

    So it is a bit like asking "Will software related stuff save IBM?". I don't know whether IBM can be saved, but it is pretty likely that if it can that it will have something to do with software.

  7. Re:Einstein and the atomic bomb on Computer Scientists Say Meme Research Doesn't Threaten Free Speech · · Score: 1

    Do you have any reliable reference for the Calculation Error?

    If it were true then it would add weight to the stupidity of dropping the bomb on Japan, and thus telling the Soviets to build one too.

    Anthony

  8. Re:Einstein and the atomic bomb on Computer Scientists Say Meme Research Doesn't Threaten Free Speech · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure that your history is wrong. The Germans were on the trail of building an atomic bomb without help from Szilzard. The problem was that by they time the realized it might be feasible it was too late to develop one before the war would end, so it was not actively pursued.

  9. Police police police police on Ford Develops a Way To Monitor Police Driving · · Score: 1

    That's who polices policemen.

  10. Where is the real info on Google Car? on Will the Google Car Turn Out To Be the Apple Newton of Automobiles? · · Score: 1

    Certainly the TFA is junk, and recognizing a traffic light would be relatively easy to do. But why is there no real information on the Google Car that is public? All I ever find is vague marketing blurbs and misleading statistics.

    It would be very interesting to know what it really can and cannot do. And how the software was put together. Do they build a full scene graph or just use 2 1/2 D modelling? How do they go about the planning issues? Etc.

    But nothing. Just marketing hype. So TFA is actually good if it flushes out some real info.

  11. The old dialogs will remain, unloved and grow old on The Classic Control Panel In Windows May Be Gone · · Score: 1

    The new dialogs will be dumbed down so they are useless. The old dialogs will remain but have zero development effort to maintain them. So in order to find things you need to know when the OS features were added, and thus what type of dialog to use. Or know the third party apps to use, like Sysinternals used to be.

    Remember that sys admins and slash dot readers are less that 1% of PC users. They are irrelevant to Microsoft. Be like Apple iPhones, that is the key to success.

  12. I'd say that the fear is being managed remarkably well. For a small threat it has been raised into a major issue, with the promise of additional funding for homeland security. Fear is good for business.

  13. Re:Duh! on Ask Slashdot: Handling Patented IP In a Job Interview? · · Score: 2

    +1. I'm surprised we have not seen this already. Given that people filing personal patents are likely to already be experts in the field, and therefor employed in that field. Just make absolutely sure that you have plenty of written evidence that your employer asked you to implement what violates your patent.

    As an employer, I would not employ anyone that had a personal patent. Red sign. Anyone that self interested is not going to be my puppy. And he will keep any good ideas he has while working for me to himself so that he can patent them later.

  14. Re: Oracle on Google Takes the Fight With Oracle To the Supreme Court · · Score: 1

    The original purpose of copyright was to *promote* creativity. The current purpose is to protect mickey mouse, 70 years after production.

    Legally it is pretty obvious that an API is copyrightable. If Google had used the same ideas in the API, but expressed them differently with different function names, arguments etc. then fine. But this is an exact copy.

    The law is, of course, bullshit. It is the SCOTUS job to defend the law. Fortunately we can rely on our elected representatives to improve laws as circumstances change ... not.

    IBM and others have a long history of patenting pointless aspects of plugs and interfaces to prevent competition.

    (I always thought that it was dumb of Google to copy the API. Why risk everything on a legal case?)

  15. PKI is plain wrong, use SRP, no need for CAs on Security Collapse In the HTTPS Market · · Score: 1

    SRP enables strong security from weak passwords. It does NOT rely on Certificates Authorities at all.

    Never heard of it? Then have a look at

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  16. Great Outsourcing Opportunity on Mangalyaan Successfully Put Into Mars Orbit · · Score: 1

    Instead of spending billions for NASA to maintain the ISS and other dubious enterprises, why not just pay ISRO some of our small change to do it for us. I bet you they could have put a rover on Mars for less than the cost of the wheels on Curiosity. For the cost of Curiosity we could have a rover on Pluto.

  17. Re:Muslim claim *they* are the victims. on Australian Police Arrest 15, Charge 2, For Alleged Islamic State Beheading Plot · · Score: 1

    There are no doubt a small minority of Muslims in Australia that just might commit violence. The sort of unreasonable, widespread and unjustifiable arrests and other attacks by the Federal Police might just be enough to push them off over the edge.

    Remember, that terrorists do not just kill people "because they are evil" as we are told. It is because they are fighting for a (mad) cause which they are willing to die for. With this sort of action the police might just push a few of them over the edge. Plus our recent attempts to stop them going to Syria, which means that the Australian government is essentially supporting the truly evil regime of Bashar al-Asshard.

    If a bomb does go off that is great news for the Federal Police and Asio. Much more funding, even more powers, happy days.

    That was the effect of the Sydney Hilton Bombing back in 1978. Despite the fact that it is almost certain that in that case the police planted the bomb! (It was not meant to explode.)

  18. What's in it for the Democrats? on Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion · · Score: 1

    Obviously the embargo is nothing to do with the less than perfect human rights in Cuba and everything to do with the large and very vocal Cuban community in the south that hate Cuba with a passion. (Castro et. al. are not angels, but they were never as nasty as Pinochet etc.) The bay of pigs was embarrassing but long before the far more embarrassing Vietnam war, yet Vietnamese are now friends.

    But what is in it for the Democrats? The US Cubans hate the democrats anyway and will never vote for them. So why would Obama do such an obviously wrong thing with this endless embargo? Is it just habit?

  19. Amazing to use such a crude programming language on Project Zero Exploits 'Unexploitable' Glibc Bug · · Score: 2

    One that a slight slip anywhere in millions of lines of code could produce random memory corruptions with unpredictable consequences. Who would have believed that anybody would even dream of using a language with constructs such as ptr++. And we are surprised to find bugs...

  20. Re:Critical Path on Why Do Humans Grow Up So Slowly? Blame the Brain · · Score: 1

    +1. And obviously so.

  21. Re:Every other answer is worse on UK Police Warn Sharing James Foley Killing Video Is a Crime · · Score: 1

    +1

  22. Re:Send a robot on Off the Florida Coast, Astronauts Train For Asteroid Mission · · Score: 1

    +1. Astronauts are obsolete technology, get over it. People may soon become obsolete for many other tasks as well.

  23. Background Radiation on One Trillion Bq Released By Nuclear Debris Removal At Fukushima So Far · · Score: 1

    An at least vaguely meaningful measure might be how much it raises the radiation in given environments compared to the background radiation. If 1% then it is not very significant regardless of how many trillion Bequerels are involved.

  24. Re:And today on Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45 · · Score: 1

    The experiments on the ISS are almost worthless. A solution looking for a problem. Certainly not worth their huge cost. The reason for having the ISS is most certainly not the science.

    And for the enormous cost of servicing the Hubble it could have simply been replaced, several times over if necessary and with the latest technology each time.

    The new Webb telescope will not have any human servicing, being too far away. If it needs any, a robot will be sent up to do the job.

    Anthony

  25. Re:That's not an Orion... on A Look At NASA's Orion Project · · Score: 1, Insightful

    -1. What, exactly, would that achieve? Better to send some better robots to Mars that can actually dig some decent holes and look for life. Humans are obsolete technology for space exploration.