crutchy - Slashdot User

Submission + - "fiscal cliff" merely a distraction (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by crutchy on Friday December 28, 2012 @07:42PM

crutchy writes: Is the "fiscal cliff" just a distraction? The real cliff would seem like a currency crisis as defined by the Triffin dilemma.

The US has enjoyed huge financial advantage and potential for more than half a century, but I really feel sorry for American youngsters, who are set to inherit a financial disaster the likes of which the world has never seen before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma

Submission + - TPPA and ITAR?

Submitted by crutchy on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @03:37AM

crutchy writes: A VP from the US Chamber of Commerce has said "the agreement would [include] restricting potential protectionism measures over... international data flows."

I wonder if this will mean restricting protectionism measures like ITAR?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Should Bill O'Reilly be taken off the air? (youtube.com)

Submitted by crutchy on Saturday August 18, 2012 @06:31PM

crutchy writes: No doubt millions of viewers watch Bill O'Reilly for two reasons:

1. because he's entertaining in the same way as a clown at a circus is. It's not what he says, it's how he berates his guests and loses it night after night. I'm sure he could increase his viewer ratings even more if he physically assaulted someone... maybe a grieving widow of a soldier killed in Iraq. Of course Bill has absolutely no idea that none of his viewers take him seriously as he's deluded in his egotistical fog and thinks he's God's gift to journalism, but that's also the reason why his brand of entertainment is so unique... his ignorance of the laughter that results from his outbursts is sort of analgous to the Truman Show in a way. The problem with comedians like John Stewart is that their humor is deliberate, whereas Bill is like a comedian that believes his own jokes, which is truly priceless and it's not surprising that Fox gave him a prime time slot.

2. because he gets on his soap box night after night and makes a complete fool of himself, and viewers watching feel better about themselves... his says something completely rediculous and I think "wow I would never say something as stupid as that, especially on TV" and it makes me feel better about the world I live in because if a twit like Bill O'Reilly can make it on television, anyone can

...but what about the children!?

If you're a parent who allows their children to watch his filth, you should be ashamed of yourself, but what about the parents that don't care (as mentioned by Bill when talking with Marylin Manson here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6n5Oi4714o)? Being as young and impressionable as they are, they may not realise that what spews out of Bill O'Reilly's mouth is complete and utter nonsense.

Should he be taken off the air... for the children?

Submission + - Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) cracked (cso.com.au) 3

Submitted by crutchy on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @05:35PM

crutchy writes: "Security researchers released two tools at the Defcon security conference that can be used to crack the encryption of any PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) and WPA2-Enterprise (Wireless Protected Access) sessions that use MS-CHAPv2 for authentication."

"Marlinspike's advice to businesses and VPN providers was to stop using PPTP and switch to other technologies like IPsec or OpenVPN. Companies with wireless network deployments that use WPA2 Enterprise security with MS-CHAPv2 authentication should also switch to an alternative."

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1208.html#2

Submission + - Future of fibre optics (usc.edu)

Submitted by crutchy on Wednesday June 27, 2012 @06:09PM

crutchy writes: Twisting up to 8 beams of light into a helix to multiply the amount of data that can be throughput in a single fibre

Submission + - currently downloading official galaxy s2 ics update

Submitted by crutchy on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @03:12AM

crutchy writes: currently downloading official galaxy s2 ics update

Submission + - Corporate news is Nazi propoganda (pacificfreepress.com)

Submitted by crutchy on Saturday March 10, 2012 @09:32PM

crutchy writes: Under the UN Charter it is the ultimate war crime for a nation to initiate an aggressive war against another country that has not attacked it or that does not pose an “imminent threat” of attack. And given that even Israeli and US intelligence officials concede that Iran is not at this time making a bomb, and thus cannot hope to have a working one even a year from now were they to begin a crash program, there is simply no imminent threat.

Not once, in any of these daily reports on the Iran “crisis,” has any report by these news organizations interviewed a source who could point out that, what is being discussed is the most serious of all war crimes.

What we are getting is not news. It is propaganda.

Submission + - Could Apple become the next SCO? (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by crutchy on Monday February 13, 2012 @04:45AM

crutchy writes: If ever you needed an illustration of the absurdity of the U.S. patent system, just check out the four things Apple just sued Samsung for.
Also, from: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-sues-samsumg-for-slide-to-unlock-2012-2
Apple Inc.’s newest lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Co., set for a hearing May 2, increases the number of Samsung devices that Apple argues infringe its products.
The two companies have filed at least 30 lawsuits against each other.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Microsoft scam calls

Submitted by crutchy on Friday January 27, 2012 @04:49AM

crutchy writes: Have you received a call from someone purporting to be from Microsoft? What have they asked you and what responses you have given? Can you offer any colorful ideas to others that may receive these calls in the future?

Submission + - Thorium key to future base load electricity? (google.com.au)

Submitted by crutchy on Sunday September 11, 2011 @10:56PM

crutchy writes: I was reading in an IEAust (http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/) magazine about the case for thorium as a fuel for nuclear power generation. While I generally support nuclear power for base load power generation, I'm aware of its risks and obstacles to widespread use particularly in Australia. On face value there appears to be a lot of promise in Thorium. There will always be those that oppose it of course (vested interest is a powerful motivator), but a quick Google search reveals that tehre doesn't seem to be that much negative publicity surrounding it yet; a story by The Guardian received many comments debunking the article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium). For those that have never heard of it, have a squiz at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel). Keeping in mind the huge projected demand for energy in the future and that carbon is a naturally occurring substance (so treehuggers who think it should be illegal to fart need not reply, although NOx & SOx emissions should definitely be on the environmental agenda regarding current energy generation technologies), I'm interested to help get some debate/discussion about Thorium going on slashdot to see what arguments there are. No doubt there will be many armchair experts out there with strong opinions both ways, but as an engineer working in the power industry I want to hear both sides. This may well be flamebait, but the future of electricity generation is topical lately and important, so I don't think this sort of discussion is irrelevant. Who knows; maybe there is the odd politician reading that may have the balls to speak up (not likely but we can only hope).

Submission + - Google buys Motorola's mobile phone division (news.com.au)

Submitted by crutchy on Monday August 15, 2011 @10:46PM

crutchy writes: "GOOGLE stepped up its assault on Apple by buying Motorola's smartphone business for $US12.5billion."

"The acquisition of Motorola Mobility is Google's biggest purchase to date and a deliberate move to bolster the adoption of its Android software, which is used in millions of mobile phones."

"The deal gives Google access to Motorola's patent trove — thought to be about 17,000- at a time when the fight for dominance in the highly lucrative smartphone market has descended into a patents war, with Microsoft and Apple suing Motorola and Google over a string of alleged patent infringements relating to Android."

Submission + - The future of consumer parallel computing? (stackoverflow.com)

Submitted by crutchy on Monday August 08, 2011 @07:08AM

crutchy writes: Why should we be limited to booting a PC with "real" devices such as usb sticks or hard drives with conventional operating systems on them? Could a GPL'ed IDE driver be modified to sort of work in reverse? Take an old PC, configure the bios to boot from IDE, strip out everything but the power supply, mobo, ram and processor, connect an IDE ribbon cable (long one) between this stripped down machine to another fully functioning machine (running Linux obviously), install a customised IDE driver, and boot the stripped down machine by tricking it into thinking its booting off a real bootable IDE hard disk. Wham bam thankyou ma'am you have access to another CPU and more ram without the bottleneck of ethernet. I'd also need a customised Linux kernel on top of the customised IDE driver because I don't just want to use another computer as a bootable storage device; I actually want to harness the stripped down machine's cpu and ram as if I was running my program on it locally.

Submission + - Is SHA-512 the way to go?

Submitted by crutchy on Saturday June 04, 2011 @07:36PM

crutchy writes: When I was setting up my secure website I got really paranoid about SSL encryption, so I created a certificate using OpenSLL for SHA-512 encryption. I don't know much about SHA (except bits that I can remember from Wikipedia), but I figure that if you're going to go to the trouble (or expense) of setting up SSL, you may as well go for the best you can get, right? Also, what would be the minimum level of encryption required for say online banking? I've read about how SHA-1 was "broken", but from what I can tell it still takes many hours. What is the practical risk to the real internet from this capability? Would a sort of rolling key be a possible next step, where each SSL-encrypted stream has its own private/public key pair generated on the fly, and things like passwords and bank account numbers were broken up and sent in multiple streams with different private/public key pairs? This would of course require more server grunt to generate these keys (or we could take a leaf from Google's book and just have separate server clusters designed solely for that job), but then if computing performance was a limiting factor, the threat to security of these hashes wouldn't be a problem in the first place. I guess with all security infrastructure, trust becomes a more important factor than technical abilities. Can I trust that my SSL provider hasn't been hacked (or at least snooped)? How do I know some disgruntled IT admin hasn't sold the private key of his company's root CA to the same organisation that developed the conficker virus? It would certainly make for a more profitable payload. I've read some of Bruce Schneier's work (I'm subscribed to Cryptogram) and he tends to highlight the FUD that surrounds internet security, and I agree that there is a lot of FUD, but complete ignorance and blase attitude toward security can also be taken advantage of. Where is the middle ground?

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