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Comment Sierra Nevada - - I love their beer! (Score 1) 127

I love their beer!

Really they want to challenge because the government favored Boeing by 1.5B over SpaceX which they favored by 900M over SV?

It's all fair in a corrupt faux government.

Cure the "bitcoin replaces fiat currency and that's what makes the yoke of governments work" music.

E

Comment Enjoy the conference and enjoy the show (Score 1) 182

Your description of the work environment sounds great, and it's awesome you recognize and appreciate that. High pay comes with high stress, high responsibility, and worse working conditions. Lower pay comes with less stress, and better working conditions. You have that -- be happy!

Your employer can't pay for you to go to the conference. That they offered to pay for the training (if you get yourself there) is better than zero! Some would call it half-assed but it's all about that glass with water and how you see it.

Treat it as a vacation to Las Vegas (one of the cheaper places to visit) and during that vacation... IF YOU SO CHOOSE you can attend a seminar/conference that your employer is willing to pay for. If you don't, it's a vacation.

Hotels are inexpensive both on and off The Strip. Rental cars are unnecessary but $20/day (seriously). Food is plentiful and cheap so long as you walk through a casino to get to it. Drinks are free while gaming. There are shows all over the place.

If it was my job and I really wanted to attend this conference I'd book a reasonable hotel (I love Mandalay Bay or MGM or Planet Hollywood) close to the conference, get a flight in on a cheap air carrier (American formerly AmericaWest and SouthWest and JetBlue are three popular options), take a $9 shuttle or $20 cab from the airport, and party my little ass off until conference time. I would get myself tickets to see a show or two while out there.

Instead of begging for $$$s, ask who wants to come with and make it into a party-atmosphere for a small group. Well worth digging into the credit-card for the once-in-a-decade experience. Have a bachelor's party/bachelorette party atmosphere without the wedding. Skip the limo :)

Enjoy the trip. Enjoy the show!

Ehud
Tucson AZ
Full disclosure: I go to Vegas about 4 times a year.

Comment Clue #1: Nobody calls it Cyber except Doctor Who (Score 2) 103

While you're looking for "the cyber threats" you might as well just buy a modern dictionary. Nobody calls anything "cyber" anymore and the number two threat is malware... right behind the number on threat... the NSA.

Cyber-think your way out of that one, NSAmen. Time is short. The cybermen are coming.

Comment Re:1993 All over again (RFC-1935) (Score 1) 101

The distinction is lost when the trailing period is left off.

NAME should in some search list match matching TLDNAME if one exists,
but the ambiguity if NAME exists in NAME.TLD (or, hello, name.GOBSofCCTLDS) let alone
NAME.subdomains.TLD means it's now a user problem.

The point of RFC-1535/1536 was to provide predictability in the resolver's traversal of its
available options. Computers are supposed to be predictable, predictive, and repeatable.

And yet... some domain resolver lookup yesterday may fail tomorrow because unrelated to
the domain in which NAME is being resolved, ICANN has alowed NAME. to be registered.

Ick.

E

Comment Still no jurisdiction (Score 1) 38

Lots of posters are asking why ISPs are not getting fined... why the FCC hasn't done anything... and nobody's asked the important question: "What CAN the FCC actually do?"

This article by CommLaw (really great outfit that analyzes communication, broadband, ISP, VoIP, and carrier law) puts it in great perspective:
http://www.commlawblog.com/tag...

The FCC is unable to regulate ISPs since they deregulated them and declared them not to be common carriers. The reason that the FCC won't make ISPs be common carriers is (as has been discussed before countless times) the incumbent carriers DON'T WANT the ISPs to get the privileges (and lower rates) of being carriers... so they lobby hard to prevent anyone else from being carriers.

That leaves the FCC in the position of putting out these stupide "reminder memos" because they really have no enforcement actions to take. That's why they've done nothing.

Ehud

Comment Wikimedia SCREWED UP (Score 4, Informative) 51

They should have filed a response. ANY response. That locks the case in and makes it impossible for the complainant to withdraw it without consent.
Then they could have filed the SLAPP response.

By delaying (likely to get way too many unnecessary ducks in a row, but that's how lawyers work) they now have lost that opportunity. The complaint will be filed again -- not necessarily in California -- and including elements that can't be dismissed by SLAPP elements.

What a shame.

E

Comment DMCA safe harbor irrelevant and hard to get (Score 5, Insightful) 92

The real question cleverly ignored by these rights-maximalists is
"Is the ISP/provider responsible for the content posted by others."
As we know, absent *ACTUAL INDUCEMENT TO INFRINGE*
the answer is no. There is no secondary liability to ISPs nor
reponsibility as per the CDA sec 230.

Now if the ISPs *ACTUALLY INDUCE* (see Napster and possibly Mega,
or so USDOJ says), then there is a POSSIBLE liability.
THAT's the only thing providers need to fear, but instead they knee-jerk
take down material.

Note that the DMCA notice is not "DMCA Takedown notice" but rather
"Notice of ***CLAIMED INFRINGEMENT***" (emphasis mine).

A "safe harbor" doesn't mean that a LACK OF A SAFE HARBOR means
instant guilt/civil liability. That is a fact lost on most knee-jerk ISPs.

ISPs should pull up their big-boy shorts and quit taking it in the pants
from every email-script that tells them to take down content because DMCA.

E
my script verifies that this is true under oath and here's my script-copied
pgp signature because dmca.

Comment FREE app that doesn't exist MAY HAVE less features (Score 1) 214

So a FREE app (#1) for a small subset of people will soon be replaced by another FREE app (#2) for a small subset of people and the author thinks that #2 will have less features than #`1 but of course it will only affect a small subset of people.

Well tea in China may get expensive next year too.

Don't be beholden to one company, be it Apple, ChinaTeaCo, or anyone. Then you don't have to whine when one app you didn't pay a dollar for FREE app (#1 or #2) you don't feel like wadding up tissues and crying. Man up. Or woman up. Either way quit whining.

Free market. Haven't heard about it? That's where you can go buy things not made by Apple. Then you're not beholden to their stupid movements, bowel or market.

E

Comment Re:RTFA (Score 2, Informative) 268

...don't get convicted for it...

If you read the original article... the daily dot says "Collins and Barry were acquitted in 2005, the AP added."
If you read the AP article the headline "Former Prisons Chief, Viapro Exec Acquitted" gives you a clue that
the content includes "A federal judge acquitted a former Texas prisons chief and a Canadian businessman..."

Acquitted is LIKE convicted only just the exact opposite.

E

Comment The FAA lacks jurisdiction (Score 4, Interesting) 199

This has been debated before but here's the recap.

An administrative judge ruled in 2013 that the FAA does not have the authority (in other words it has not been given this authority by Congress) to regulate model aircraft including balsa-wood planes, paper-airplanes, radio-controlled (r/c) planes, helicopters, quadcopters, hexacopters, etc. This is established fact. The FAA elected NOT to appeal this.

The FAA has attempted to levy _one_ fine against someone flying a 'drone' (see above for disambiguation with quadcopters, hexacopters, etc. and realize it's the same thing) and THAT was the time the administrative law judge shot them down and hard.

The FAA can write whatever they like in the Federal Register.
Step 1: Get Congress to give them the authority. Until then the FAA lacks jurisdiction*.
Step 2: Get Congress to fund enforcement actions under this authority. Until then the FAA won't [be allowed to] enforce anything.
Step 3: Profit.

Ehud
commercial helicopter pilot
Tucson AZ US

* A previous poster said that "if you can put a piece of paper between it and the ground the FAA has jurisdiction." This is not true. The FAA's jurisdiction comes not from simplistic experiments with tree bark pulp and thin slots, but from the Code of Federal Regulations. It's all in there. Too boring to quote tho.

Comment "more profitable" doesn't mean "making a profit" (Score 3, Insightful) 67

The slashdot headline says "..Back in Profit." Unfortunately not so.

The original article is informative. Under Chen's leadership Blackberry has
increased their profitability so they are no longer losing so much money.

They are, however, NOT PROFITABLE. Their loss prior to some accounting
tricks (that will make the number worse) is $0.11/shr. That means an
investor holding 1000 shares just lost $110 (if he/she sold them).

While profitability as a measure of how well a company performs is good,
and acknowledging that LOSING MILLIONS is a lot better than LOSING
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS (see e.g. Radio Shack)... Blackberry has a
long long way to go.

The article ends with the two avenues Blackberry is pursuing: hardware and
software (how inventive, right?)
- Hardware: they're going to try and create Internet enabled gadgets. As
Blackberry's core hardware competence has always been its bundled
business services this is a big departure. They fight uphill against
Samsung watches, Apple gizmos, Google's Nest, etc.
- Sofware: They bought the right to allow their product to access the
Amazon Play Store (android apps from Amazon only). The win here
is they prove their product REALLY CAN run android apps. The lose
is that instead of opening it up to the Google Play store (most
android apps) they've allowed a limited (by Amazon) subset of apps,
and most designed to siphon extra $$$ and hand them off to Amazon.
This is something we can expect to see Amazon touting as a win in
it's 10Q.

I wish them well. I was surprised by the headline. BlackBerry is
doing well to reduce loss, and less loss is higher profitability, but
they're still chewing threw their cash and unless they stem and
correct that they will be gone.

E

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