Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:The real hack (Score 4, Interesting) 131

Its pretty easy - Smeadly said he was going offline on a flight that had no wifi on twitter and that he was heading back to San Diego - he also said this on twitter. So all you have to do is figure out what convention Smeadly was at yesterday - so you know the originating city - and I'm guessing maybe there were a couple flights a day from there to SD.

Its a guess, but its a pretty educated one.

This is like first level private eye stuff here - people really assume everything they do is private, and then they give people clues publicly where they are without a second thought - and then it looks all hackerish like these guys have l33t skills.

Comment Re:Security (Score 1) 62

What he didn't say - this data center is actually in a primate research lab - the entire campus is surrounded by 20 foot high electrified fence with mesh so tight it makes it difficult to scale.

Plus the entire place is coated in surveillance cameras (like every fence pole had a cluster of several sort of thing). I suspect you could leave the doors unlocked and it would probably more secure than many data centers you read about.

No I don't work for OHSU, but I live close to this campus.

Comment Re:Linux's Security (Score 1) 331

Since version 9 (they are up to version 14 if you haven't been keeping track) all code that runs in Flash is sandboxed.

Still doesn't prevent security problems though.

I think it goes without saying - if the blood is in the water (meaning your product is heavily targeted) there really is no such thing as a totally secure product.

Comment Re:The suck, it burns .... (Score 1) 179

As someone who manages about 1500+ Mac's with JAMF Casper (and another 6000+ windows machines with System Center) - you are talking out of your arse.

In my experience - MS actually issues more patches and actually has a better track record than Apple - for example I've seen them issue firmware patches that have bricked machines (to the point where they had to be repaired) - its enough of a problem I actually now wait a month before releasing firmware patches Apple delivers to see if any issues arise. I've also seen them release patches that break core OS functionality like SMB, and printing - or release patches that seemingly munged Wifi prefs.

Last year I recall one patch MS released that could cause some machines to stop booting. So far this year is the only warning I've seen from any patch they've released.

Considering the kinds of hardware MS has to support - I think thats a pretty darn good track record.

Comment Re:as one of the effected people (Score 1) 268

I'm sure there are. One thing I noticed though when they were ramping up this initiative (and I was foolishly training them) is they hated to tell anyone - "no" or "sorry thats a bug we'll fix in a patch" or "sorry thats not our issue - its a bug with the xyz driver" - they would drag these customers on for months trying various work-arounds to solve a problem - then when they did seek my advice it look me less than 15-30 minutes to deduce it was a bug - here's when we think a patch might come out.

Comment Re:as one of the effected people (Score 1) 268

Oddly enough I worked at adobe as a TAM (technical account manager) - they let me go and replaced me with 7 Indian employees. The director there was pleased as punch. I heard within a year they lost every support contract I owned - and plenty were worth millions. Funny too - he still works there.

Comment Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain (Score 1) 268

I'm a software packager and I'm represented by a union. I work along side a bunch of programmers, dba's, unix and windows admins - and we are all represented.

I like to think of our union as a catch all - they blow the whistle and step in when management fucks up. A good example of this is they screwed up the budget for raises this year - our representatives stepped in and worked with management to fix that.

I guess if you work somewhere where your managers aren't a bunch of fuckups - you probably don't need a union. For everyone else - don't kid yourself.

Comment Re:ATO - GoA 4 (Score 1) 84

You didn't even read my post - I was on a train where they did stop for someone that was on the tracks - it was a very bone jarring stop too - like so fast that if I wasn't holding on to something for dear life I would have broken my nose.

I'll give you they can't stop for everyone, but there would be conditions where they could and should.

Comment Re:ATO - GoA 4 (Score 1) 84

Right - so how many of those suicides would have been prevented if a driver saw someone on the track and was able to stop the train successfully?

I've been on the Max where we stopped and I saw a whole set of clothes/shoes on the platform - there was a kid in his undies about a mile up the track that the driver saw, did a very hard stop quickly enough and was able to get help for this youth.

See what I'm saying? Train tracks are probably the most controlled environment for AI to exist, but if you can't handle this seemingly simple condition (obstruction on the track) how can you navigate a far more complicated roadway?

Comment Re:I'm officially old I guess (Score 1) 84

Why is he wrong? I agree speech recognition is a complex problem, but today its only marginally better than when I was a child and I was born in 76. I love to play around with Google now and show it off to friends - but its not perfect - I'd say its about 60%-70% on simple stuff - Google now seems about as good as the IBM speech recognition system I got to play with in the 90's and that was pretty mind blowing.

I also used do document imaging at a university, and even the best OCR engines with the best images (often type written forms...) off the best scanners weren't 100% accurate and still had to be manually indexed by a human in the QA phase of the workflow. Driving AI on a live street in London to me sounds like 20 times as complicated a problem to solve than solving human speech patterns or recognizing type written text on paper. Not only would you have to understand moving a 20+ ton bus around in commuter traffic, but you'd also have to understand signals (hand signals, car signals, and traffic signals - imagine understanding a traffic signal where its been preempted by an emergency vehicle) and recognize speech patterns inside and outside the bus.

I've been to London and I think the bus situation there is a lot more complex than where I live now (Portland), but I've seen streets in Portland OR where a bus driver has to cross over the bike lane safely, unload/pickup people, and then cross back over the bike lane with 20+ bikes flowing through there - dozens of times in just a few miles. You could introduce bugs that could get people killed.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker

Working...