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Comment Windows 10 = iPhone 6 (Score 2) 644

Wait... what? Multiple desktops, same apps behave properly as fullscreen tablet apps or desktop windows, snapping control, hybrid menus, launch/switch/end gestures (copied from WebOS and Unity), a task view with app and desktop preview... Every single one of these features has been out for years on Linux (and most on Android or OS X), in much more polished form. It's 2014 and the Windows team is just now figuring out how to have two window managers co-exist? How very retro!

Windows 10 vs. Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora/etc = iPhone 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy/Note series...
The dominant/big-name brand is _years_ behind and floating forward on market momentum.

Comment No sensible person ever though it was impossible (Score 2, Informative) 174

But even here, again, when you look at a typical OS X desktop system, now many people:

1. Have apache enabled AND exposed to the public internet (i.e., not behind a NAT router, firewall, etc)?

2. Even have apache or any other services enabled at all?

...both of which would be required for this exploit. The answer? Vanishingly small to be almost zero.

So, in the context of OS X, it's yet another theoretical exploit; "theoretical" in the sense that it effects essentially zero conventional OS X desktop users. Could there have been a worm or other attack vector which then exploited the bash vulnerability on OS X? Sure, I suppose. But there wasn't, and it's a moot point since a patch is now available within days of the disclosure.

And people running OS X as web servers exposed to the public internet, with the demise of the standalone Mac OS X Server products as of 10.6, is almost a thing of yesteryear itself.

Nothing has changed since that era: all OSes have always been vulnerable to attacks, both via local and remote by various means, and there have been any number of vulnerabilities that have only impacted UN*X systems, Linux and OS X included, and not Windows, over very many years. So yeah, nothing has changed, and OS X (and iOS) is still a very secure OS, by any definition or viewpoint of the definition of "secure", when viewed alongside Windows (and Android).

Comment shared wonder at the bigness and oldness of it all (Score 1, Insightful) 173

The key part: "darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light." I'm the last person to push theology, and not remotely christian, but that's... poetically pretty.

Yes, the waters were here long before us, before the earth, before (our) star. I don't have to agree with anyone's religious tales to appreciate and share a sense of wonder at the bigness and oldness of it all.

Comment overthinking the problem (Score 1) 138

They're overthinking the problem. It's in Georgia. All's ya need to do is give BillyBob's thousand-year-old grampy a decent slingshot and a bucket of marbles, and tell him you'll pay him $250 every time he can hit one of those tiny little gummint spy planes.

Better yet, get him to tell his fishing buddies about the prize, and his buddies, etc... until you have a low level permeation thru the community. Just remember to pay 'em (and pay out of the set's lunch fund on an obfuscated line item that says something suitably snarky like "humble pie" or "tasty crow".) Oh, and tell 'em old guys: you can't eat what you catch, but you can resell the parts on ebay.... :)

Comment Re:Is minecraft really 'creative'? (Score 1) 174

Oh, wow, dude... Calm down. Have some water.
I gotta say, "goosestepping neckbeard" is the best thing I've been called in weeks. And no, a low UID only means I showed up. Just like you did.

I could type something nice about Minecraft, but I already did in another thread today: stuff about minecraft being an excellent UI for 3D printer data.

And try not to lunge so hard at obvious trollage. :)

Comment HEY NOTCH!!! (Score 5, Interesting) 105

The killer app for a commodity 3D printer would be a MineCraft-like interface. I was talking to my teenage kids and their friends about the 3D printer that sits unused in their school lab, and they all complained that the software was incomprehensible. But since they all create amazing structures in MineCraft, I suggested the obvious.... the idea of a crafting UI for 3D design had them jumping up and down yelling “HELL YES we would use that to build amazing things.”

Notch? Are you busy just now? Don't you have some spare cash and free time?
Howzabout a 3D crafting UI that looks like a holodeck room and adopts the standard controls for MineCraft to frame up basic block structures, plus some of the better mod controls for curves, smoothing, and multi-size blocks?

User scenarios would follow something like this:
- Adjust the size of the room you want to work in,
- Rough design using building blocks off the hot bar,
- managing multiple materials or colors from the inventory,
- more complex design with other objects (maybe compound objects) from the crafting table,
- fill/smoothing/spanning following the methods/controls of some of the better mods,
- view/flythrough, save functions, import, export, etc...,
- .... and finally printing.

I’d buy it. Seriously, I would plunk down a grand for the hardware in a heartbeat if the design GUI was fun to use.
(And HP needs to get on the stick, if they want to extend their "ink" market... :)

NOTCH!!! Seriously, you need to get on this.
DREMEL!!!?! Seriously, you need to talk to Notch.

Comment What's your suggestion for intelligence work? (Score 1) 504

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

Comment Wow... (Score 1) 232

I have been in a few jobs where the managers were verbally and/or emotionally abusive. In both cases I left ASAP.

THIS. Life's too short to put up with loser companies.

That being said, one needs a financial cushion of 6 months-ish. The easiest way to do that is to skim off 10% from every paycheck, no matter what.

Remember, you canâ"and should!â"evaluate the company you work for, daily. If they "fail the interview" (i.e., it is more hassle to work there than to find another job) then it is time to Let Them Go.

Comment Re:Bad idea in NJ too. (Score 1) 364

Today that enlisted man would have been tasered, beaten, and arrested for assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.

Not necessarily. A large minority of the enlisted are white...

- T

True. It's possibility the cop would have made-out with him or become drinking buddies with him instead.

Comment Re:Bad idea in NJ too. (Score 1) 364

A friend of mine was nailed last month in NJ for simply picking up her mobile device and a cop happened to see her (yes, illegal to operate a hand-held device in NJ). She uses the phone hands free via bluetooth. She was using it as a GPS, in a town she didn't know well, and couldn't see the screen due to sunglare. She learned a hard lesson that day (as did a bunch of others) after a $160 fine and a mandatory traffic court appearance away during working hours. She now has her phone mounted in a better position rather than putting on the seat so she isn't inclined to pick it up. Judge said that met State requirements - at least in his court.

A funny story - back in the late 80's, when radar detectors were all the rage, one of my enlisted men got pulled over by a VA Trooper. As the trooper approached, the kid got out of the car and threw his $200+ state-of-the-art radar detector on the ground smashing it into pieces and calling it a worthless POS. Trooper shakes his head and starts to laugh. Kids asks why? Trooper responds that they don't use radar in VA - they use VASCAR. But, he was being pulled over because his tail lights weren't working correctly and the trooper simply wanted to warn him about it.

Today that enlisted man would have been tasered, beaten, and arrested for assault on a police officer and resisting arrest.

Ahhh, progress...

Comment Re:difference between driver and passenger? (Score 2) 364

I suppose the same way PawSense detects whether a cat or a human is using the device: when you text and drive, you have a funny way of using the device - because you're constantly switching between texting, putting down the device and driving, picking it back up after 10 seconds, and doing that over and over, as opposed to a human that's fully committed to the task of inputting text.

How would that be different than someone, say, texting while masturbating in the passenger seat of a moving car? A lot of sudden awkward pauses, shifts in position, device gets put down to pinch a nipple.

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