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Comment Re:An educated workforce (Score 2) 164

Try it yourself. You might find out that to be successful at it requires skill and education. I have family there that are one of two families left in a several hundred mile radius that are still farming successfully. All the rest gave up or gave out. Between droughts, harsh winters and fluctuations in feed prices it isn't as easy as watch some cows munch grass, and yes, they are educated and have dedicated fiber running straight to the farm that far surpasses the quality of dsl I can get in the city here in Florida.

Comment Re:Slight (Score 2) 208

Right, and how is the firmware on the drive for your non-magnetic media holding up after that EMP blast? You did remember to load a copy of the firmware onto a disk too, right? Oh, and the bios for the computer you were planning on restoring to, and the hard-drive firmware and other various chipset firmwares? I think come an EMP blast you had better set the computer aside and know how to be a dirt farmer before you starve. Even if you get your own files restored it is unlikely you will be able to do much else unless you plan on helping the telco reprogram all their equipment to get the network back up etc. In the meantime, you starve.

Comment Re:just kill them already (Score 5, Funny) 179

Car analogy: I told the used car dealer to stop selling that garbage and just send all his vehicles to the dump. I mean they were all from like 2007 or before! I mean seriously, who uses a car that old (except for all the retro ones that were sold up until 2012 - and those suck too. They aren't hip at all)? They don't have the latest rear view cameras and other safety equipment or anything. It is no secret if you buy the after market warranty you can get your crappy old car fixed, but if you don't it isn't my problem you can't get parts when you need them because you are a dumb poopy pants. I throw everything away because there is a newer model that surely must be better because new and shiny!
The Media

DreamWorks Animation CEO: Movie Downloads Will Move To Pay-By-Screen-Size 347

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks Animation, speaking at the Milken Global Conference in California, opined that the future pricing model for movie downloads will revolve around screen size. In his view, larger screens will incur larger download prices. As he says, 'It will reinvent the enterprise of movies.' Unclear is how physical dimensions, rather than just resolution matrix, will be determined. Will we soon be saying 'hello' to screen spoofing?" Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP? Aside from the implication that this would mean more DRM (and seems pretty unworkable, but with the rise of locked bootloaders on even x86 hardware...), the prices he predicts seem alright: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99."

Comment Re:If it ain't broke... (Score 1) 100

That is a terrible policy. I spent a long night at an office of a fortune 500 company for that very reason. They didn't see any reason to apply bios patches because they were just to add support for newer hardware, not to fix any sort of vulnerability. Fair enough. Several years went by and their terminal server had a processor go finicky on them. They determined the available spares included processors that were compatible. I asked "has the bios been updated to support the newer processors?" I was assured that they do regular patching and it would not be a problem. I arrive on site, install the new processors and get no post. A bit of troubleshooting and we determine it doesn't recognize the processors because the bios was out of date. Really long story shortened - we had to shutdown another server, pull the processors, install them in the problem server, boot, patch the bios, shut down move the processors back in the donor server, and then reinstall the new processors. Of course this was in a server room that was an overstuffed shoe box so a number of acrobatics were required to get the servers extended to a point they could be worked on.

So what should have been a 10-15 minute processor replacement ended up causing several hours of downtime and the unscheduled shutdown of another server.

Don't be lazy!

That said, as someone else stated, I usually wait a couple months to patch (especially HP) unless it is considered a critical issue or I have a straightforward fail-over plan. HP has screwed my arrays etc. more than once with their quality updates.

Comment Re:Dumbest trend ever (Score 3, Funny) 55

No, you don't understand. All the little internet connected things in your life like your thermostat with infrared sensor and tv with camera and xbox with 3d imager and phone with gps and toilet with butt activated hemorrhoid sensor all send their little bits of data back to the big intelligence in the cloud. This way the great data architects of Fort Meade know you need some anal cream, a diet, and some new pants. They might also recognize that you are a danger to yourself if you continue to play WoW. But if you stop playing you might be upset about your surroundings and be a danger to others, so you get a new online friend to help you play even more hours each day. I think the Internet of Things is quite Intelligently Designed. In fact, I think everyone else who supports it should all spread the word by using a hashtag for intelligently designed internet of things #IDIoT
Open Source

Build an Open-Source Electric Car In About One Hour 188

First time accepted submitter joe5 writes "Like what Elon Musk has done and want to go all Etsy and build your own electric car? That's apparently now possible now thanks to the OSVehicle Tabby — dubbed the first "Open source vehicle" (memo: it may be cool, but it ain't the first). The OSV guys are taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater or four-seater configurations going for €500. Then you click to add options. (Note: seats is an "option" so that's the level of luxury you are dealing with here.) When the transaction's complete, OSV sends the parts to your home and you can download the plans and start building. Since the Tabby is open source, OSVehicle will also look to a community of owners and tinkerers for suggestions and recommendations."
Government

Lawmakers Threaten Legal Basis of NSA Surveillance 206

Nerval's Lobster writes "The author of the Patriot Act has warned that the legal justification for the NSA's wholesale domestic surveillance program will disappear next summer if the White House doesn't restrict the way the NSA uses its power. Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed unless the White House changes the shocking scale of the surveillance programs for which the National Security Administration uses the authorization, according to James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), an original author of the Patriot Act and its two reauthorizations, stated Washington insider-news source The Hill. 'Unless Section 215 gets fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will get absolutely nothing, because I am confident there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize it,' Sensenbrenner warned Deputy Attorney General James Cole during the Feb. 4 hearing. Provisions of Section 215, which allows the NSA to collect metadata about phone calls made within the U.S., give the government a 'very useful tool' to track connections among Americans that might be relevant to counterterrorism investigations, Cole told the House Judiciary Committee. The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate."

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