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Comment Re:Summary of Story (Score 1) 240

by ruin20 (#27518789) Attached to: Privacy In BitTorrent By Hiding In the Crowd

I wouldn't worry about being taken to trail for this, I'd be worried about search warrants being issued based on this data. In other words, if you fall into a community downloading mixed materials, some public domain, some copyrighted, a conviction on one member of the community would be used to subpoena the other members. The idea of "Because you are part of a community illegally distributing protected works, we want to search your hard drive for illegal obtained data" doesn't seem like it would be too far of a leap for the courts. By that time they're done, you've lost productivity and probably hired a lawyer... so just the accusation is a big enough pain that it'd be a hassle.

Of course I don't see how this program protects you from that. It simply obscures which data and connections are important to you, but it doesn't hide the connections. I would imagine that you'd want to identify a person by "his connections contain this subset" and that answer would still be true with or without the program.

Comment No, I think the converse is true (Score 2, Insightful) 693

by ruin20 (#26801103) Attached to: You Are Not a Lawyer
That a lot of times people (judges) simply DON'T UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS OF A TECHNICAL ARGUMENT and rule the way they want anyways. This is why patent suits were always held in west texas and this is why the RIAA will withdraw losing cases only to forum shop in an effort to push the suit again.

The fact that all the evidence the RIAA offers shows a link to the computer AND NOT THE USER seems to be something that people (lawyers, judges) IGNORE shows they don't actually care about the FACTS. Until you start taking photos of people through their webcams as they do naughty things, or come up with a way to show exclusive use of a devise or connection, then this still happens to be evidence wrongly taken into consideration.
Cellphones

Keeping in Contact With Family, From Afghanistan? 176

Posted by timothy from the and-don't-say-learn-pashto dept.
LiNKz writes "Within a short while I will be heading to Afghanistan and in the interest of keeping in communication with my wife and family I've been looking at different means of it, from VoIP to cellular services. I'm not sure how well connected or how stable of a connection the base I'm deploying to has, which means VoIP might simply not be an option. I have, however, noticed in my searches that Afghanistan has recently boomed with cellular coverage though that too seems to be difficult to ascertain. I'm curious if the Slashdot community has any information or experience regarding international cellular services offered in this country and the means of obtaining it."

Comment I'm questioning the value (Score 2) 57

by ruin20 (#26729751) Attached to: Wind Farms To Receive Future Wind Forecasts
Unless the concern is about freak high winds that exceed the capacity of the farm and pose a threat to the systems operating there, I don't see the point. Couldn't they be better served by surveying locations? Shouldn't their model be based on average output, and wouldn't historical data be a much better indicator for that? I mean it's not like there's a lot you can do to control how the wind will be blowing and the systems are hopefully already actively synced with the direction of the wind. The tie in to the grid has to be an active process anyways, in case of failure, and is produced as a byproduct of a conditioning system anyhow. Is there something I'm missing here? Is this really cheaper than sending out a guy with a weather balloon?

Comment In related news... (Score 3, Informative) 147

by ruin20 (#26552469) Attached to: Cape Wind Ready To Bring First Offshore Wind Farm
seagull populations decrease as biologists note heavy shark populations near turbines.

think I'm joking right?

there's already a lawsuit

1300 raptors are killed annually. Among them are 70 golden eagles that are federally protected. In total, 4700 birds are killed annually.

although I'm sure these are a little better planned out then they're predecessors I still haven't heard anyone talk about this in a long while.
Power

Cape Wind Ready To Bring First Offshore Wind Farm 147

Posted by timothy from the confident-predictions-led-to-the-big-dig-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Cape Wind Project, a wind farm of 130 turbines to be built in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod, can finally move forward as they have been given a green light by the US Minerals Management service. Leaders from labor, civic, and environmental groups across Massachusetts and the country hailed the release of the report, as it is the final federal environmental report needed for the long delayed and much scrutinized project to finally move forward. When completed, Cape Wind will be capable of supplying up to 420 megawatts of electricity, potentially offsetting as much as a million tons of carbon emissions and saving more than 100 million gallons of oil every year. But the environment wont be the sole beneficiary of Cape Wind. It will likely be a boon to out of work Massachusetts residents, as well, given that as many as 1,000 green jobs could be brought to the Bay State in addition to a significant supply of clean, renewable energy."
United States

Tech-Related Volunteer Gigs 252

Posted by CmdrTaco from the open-source-hacking-counts dept.
jeffomatic writes "Here's a question for Service Day: what kind of volunteer opportunities are available out there for the technologically-inclined? I'm a software developer and I'm wondering if there's anyone in the field engaged in pro-bono work, like IT or teaching or web design or whatnot. I'm not at all above rolling my sleeves up and working at shelters or the local park, but it occurs to me that my professional skills might be usefully applied in the service context as well. I'd like to hear about what other people are doing, in terms of projects, time commitments, organizations, etc." Or just commit a patch to your favorite project.

Comment Re:Answer is obvious? (Score 1) 284

by ruin20 (#26518423) Attached to: US CTO Choice Down To a Two-Horse Race
Despite popular opinion, there are plenty of hard working people in the government. Problem is we have no mechanism to fire people so when someone screws up really bad where they don't deserve a second chance, there really is no way to get rid of them. So they sit on their thumbs. If you know a government employ who is not hard at work its either because they can't be trusted with real work (either incompetent or too lazy to be trusted with completing the task on time)

The real issue here is that in this situation I would want to see an individual from the private sector because when you work for the government you really don't have metrics on profit. Since the returns on investment are largely intangibles and have little for comparison it is difficult to quantify value. Because of this I want someone who can come in and at least have an idea of profit and value instead of just having to make things better. Even when you do have metrics on the improvement, it's hard to compare actual costs and apples to apples because a lot of costs are hidden in the details. Try finding a comparison for Boston's "Big Dig" for example and compare cost versus vehicles processed by the highway and make a percentage comparison. After that how do you factor in all the congestion that went on during the project? It's all very subjective.

I don't know what all their credentials for the job are and I don't know why they're not pulling someone from the airforce or pentagon who deal with the most high tech and high assurance programs in the government (I'm thinking the working level brains behind AFATDS level system like the Joint Integrated Fire Control System, for the airforce should be plenty competent for this). Some one from a systems engineering background instead of a admin/management background. You want change and solutions hire someone who's actually ran a program that produced a product.

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