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Comment Re:You know what they call alternative medicine... (Score 1) 517

Yep, that's basically what I've been doing - tracking kcals in, use a polar HR strap and software to calc burn rate.

The numbers are pretty clear. I lose weight through diet. Not having a large McDonalds shake (880kcal) is worth more then 2 days at the gym (~800kcal). So I decide that the chocolate shake is not worth 2 days worth of gym work. Which points out the value of gym work. It lets me place a value on those calories, which resonate emotionally ('two days at the gym?!? no fscking way is that shake that tasty!")

Min

Comment Re:Don't buy it then (Score 1) 704

Remember here we're discussing a private space, not a public one. While I fully endorse anyone's right to express themselves (inside the rule of law, which is arguable in some of these cases, but we'll set them aside for the sake of argument) that right only extends to the public space, not a private one, be it physical or virtual.

I challenge anyone to go into Disney World, and start shouting the same sort of vitriol that takes place in the public channels of $insert_game_here and see how long it takes until you're politely, but firmly told that you are not welcome in their private space, and that you will be denied entrance in the future. Why should game companies handle unruly patrons in any different manner. All their TOSs expressly forbid many of these activities from occurring, but for years game companies have turned a blind eye with the attitude that if it bothers you, you should be the one to mute the offender.

Can anyone imagine Disney suggesting you ignore the crazy guy shouting racist slurs on the corner of main st?

It's frankly about time we as a community grew out of our collective teenagehood and developed some maturity.

Min

Comment Re:A tragedy (Score 4, Funny) 162

Security dept: (n) A deptartment in a company that if it doesn't exist will cause the development department to be directly blamed for anything that goes wrong. See also: (n) scapegoat.

Seriously, my IT dept calls us "the latex department" because if we're involved they're protected. Otherwise they get the blame.

Min

Comment Re:A tragedy (Score 1) 162

I agree there are companies out there like that. I'll say though, if a developer comes to me with security issue, it'll get addressed in my company. We (the security dept) has a seat at the decision making table when we select which tickets get worked on, and the power to red ticket a release until a security bug gets addressed.

That being said, one could argue that the reason we have that authority links back to the full disclosure movement and the impact of incidents like the Targets and the TJ Maxx ("What do you mean it couldn't happen here? Don't you think Target said the same thing a week before it happened there?").

If you don't have a security dept that will back you on these things, then someone hired the wrong ppl for the security dept.

Min

Comment Re:Still abusive (Score 5, Insightful) 511

OK, I'm going to rant a bit here, and it's not specifically directed at the parent comment.

Hashs are NOT a form of magic pixie dust you spread on information to make them magiclly private.

Consider:
You enter your SSN, the app hashes it and then sends it to me to compare against a hashed list of SSNs from some other source. I never get your unhashed SSN.

Are you safe?

No. There is NOTHING preventing me from hashing every possible SSN and comparing them. the total number of possible SSNs (ignoring for the moment that I can narrow the attack space significantly by ruling out SSNs that have not been issued yet) is not computationally prohibitive to search, even salted.

OK, now bringing us back to the case in point.

Does hashing the DNS address provide you any useful privacy preservation benefit?

Well Valve has already said that they have a list of DNS addresses they're searching for. Ergo, they have hashed that list ot compare against your DNS. How hard would it be to hash the $(sites viewed as evil by your cultural/legal framework) and compare it to your hashed DNS list. Trivial.

Do you feel like your privacy is preserved?

Min

Submission + - Slashdot Beta Woes 16

s.petry writes: What is a Slashdot and why the Beta might destroy it?

Slashdot has been around, well, a very long time. Longer than any of it's competators, but not as long as IIRC. Slashdot was a very much one of the first true social media web sites.

On Slashdot, you could create a handle or ID. Something personal, but not too personal, unless you wanted it to be. But it was not required either. We know each other by our handles, we have watched each other grow as people. We may have even taken pot shots at each other in threads. Unless of course you are anonymous, but often we can guess who that really is.

One of Slashdot's first motto's was "News for Nerds" that Matters. I have no idea when that was removed. I have not always scoured the boards here daily, life can get too busy for that. That excuses my ignorance in a way. I guess someone thought it politically incorrect, but most of us "Nerds" enjoyed it. We are proud of who we are, and what we know. Often we use that pride and knowledge to make someone else look bad. That is how we get our digs in, and we enjoy that part of us too. We don't punch people, we belittle them. It's who we are!

What made Slashdot unique were a few things. What you will note here is "who" has been responsible for the success of Slashdot. Hint, it has never been a just the company taking care of the servers and software.

— First, the user base submitted stories that "they" thought mattered. It was not a corporate feed. Sure, stories were submitted about companies. The latest break through from AMD and Intel, various stories regarding the graphic card wars, my compiler is better than your compiler, and yes your scripting language stinks! Microsoft IIS has brought us all a few laughs and lots of flame wars to boot. Still, we not only read about the products but get to my second point.

— User comments. This is the primary why we have been coming here for as long as we have, many of us for decades. We provide alternative opinions or back what was given in the article. This aspect not only makes the "News" interesting, but often leads to other news and information sharing. It's not always positive, but this is the nature of allowing commentary. It also brings out the third point.

— Moderation. Moderation has been done by the community for a very long time. It took lots of trial and error to get a working system. As with any public system it's imperfect, but it's been successful. People can choose to view poorly modded comments, but don't have to. As with posting anonymous versus with our own handle it's an option that allows us to personalize the way we see and read what's on the site. And as a reward for submitting something worth reading, you might get a mod point of your own to use as a reward for someone else.

Why we dislike Beta and what is being pushed, and why this will result in the end of an era if it becomes forced on the community.

1. Bulky graphics. We get that Dice and Slashdot need revenue. I have Karma good enough to disable advertisements, but have never kept this setting on. I realize that Slashdot/Dice make money with this. That said, the ads sit away from my news and out of the way. I can get there if I want it (but nobody has ever gotten a penny from me clicking an ad... nobody!), but it's not forced into my face or news feed.

2. Low text area. I like having enough on my screen to keep me busy without constant scrolling. Slashdot currently has the correct ratio of text to screen. This ratio has never been complained about, yet Beta reduces the usable text area by at least 1/2 and no option for changing the behavior. I hate reading Slashdot on mobile devices because I can't stand scrolling constantly.

3. JavaScript. We all know the risks of JS, and many of us disable it. We also have an option of reading in Lync or non-standard browsers that many of us toy with for both personal and professional reasons. This flexibility is gone in Beta, and we are forced to allow JS to run. If you don't know the risks of allowing JS to run, you probably don't read much on Slashdot. Those that allow JS do so accepting the risk (which is admittedly low on a well known site).

4. Ordering/Sorting/Referencing. Each entry currently gets tagged with a unique thread ID. This allows linking to the exact post in a thread, not just the top of the thread. In Beta this is gone. It could be that the site decided to simply hide the post ID or it was removed. Either way, going to specific posts is something that is used very commonly by the community.

5. Eye candy. Most of us are not here for "eye candy" and many have allergic reactions to eye candy. Slashdot has a good mix currently. It's not as simple as the site starting with a r-e-d-i-t, which is good. That site has a reputation that keeps many of us away, and their format matches my attitude of them (s-i-m-p-l-e-t-o-n). At the same time, it's not like watching some other "news" sites with so much scrolling crap I can't read an article without getting a headache. The wasted space in beta for big bulky borders, sure smells like eye candy. Nothing buzzes or scrolls yet, but we can sense what's coming in a patch later.

The thing is, the community cares about Slashdot. We come here because we care. We submit stories because of that, we vote because of that, we moderate because of that, and we comment because of that. At the same time we realize that without the community Slashdot loses most of its value. We respect that we don't host the servers, backup the databases, or patch the servers. Slashdot/Dice provide the services needed for Slashdot.

It's a give give relationship, and we each get something in return. Slashdot gets tons of Search hits and lots of web traffic. We get a place to learn, teach, and occasionally vent.

Look, if you want to change default color scheme or make pre-made palettes for us to choose from, we would probably be okay with that. If you want to take away our ability to block ads by Karma, or move the ads to the left side of my browser window, I would be okay with those things too.

If you want to make drastic changes to how the site works, this is a different story all together. The reason so many are against Beta is that it breaks some of the fundamental parts of what makes Slashdot work.

User input until recently has not been acknowledged. The acknowledgment we have received is not from the people that are making the decision to push Beta live. We told people Beta was broken, what it lacked, and we were rather surprised to get a warning that Beta would be live despite what we told people. People are already making plans to leave, which means that Slashdot could fade away very soon.

Whether this was the goal for Dice or not remains to be seen. If it is, it's been nice knowing you but I won't be back. A partnership only works when there is mutual respect between the parties. A word of caution, us Nerds have good memories and lots of knowledge. The loss of Slashdot impacts all of Dice holdings, not just Slashdot. I boycott everything a company holds, not just the product group that did me wrong.

If that was not the goal of Dice, you should quickly begin communicating with the user base. What are the plans are to fix what Beta has broken? Why is Beta being pushed live with things broken? A "Sorry we have not been communicating!", and perhaps even a "Thank you" to the user base for helping make Slashdot a success for so many years.
Google

Google Glass User Fights Speeding Ticket, Saying She's Defending the Future 464

Nerval's Lobster writes "A California software developer dubbed an explorer by Google and a scofflaw by the California Highway Patrol appeared in court to fight over the purpose and usage of wearable electronics. Cecilia Abadie denies she was doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone when she was pulled over by the CHP Oct. 29 of last year, but proudly admits wearing her early edition of Google's Google Glass augmented-reality goggles. She just doesn't agree with the CHP's contention that Google Glass is a television. Abadie, who works at virtual-reality sports software developer Full Swing Golf and was one of the first 'explorers' chosen by Google as early testers of Google Glass before they were released, wears the goggles for as long as 12 hours per day, using them both as a way to pull email, driving directions and other information into her view and to push pictures, Tweets, updates and other information out to professional and social networks in a process she describes as 'living in transparency.' The California Highway Patrol, unfortunately for Abadie, considered wearing Google Glass to be the same as watching television while driving. One of the two citations Abadie was given was for speeding; the other was for 'driving with a monitor visible in violation of California Vehicle Code 27602.' Fighting that perception in court is 'a big responsibility for me and also for the judge who is going to interpret a very old law compared with how fast technology is changing,' Abadie told the Associated Press for a Jan. 16 story." A court commissioner in San Diego dismissed the Google Glass ticket, saying he could find no evidence that the device was in use while Abadie was driving.

Comment Re:Too bad (Score 2) 277

I read it somewhere:

We all manipulate, we ask people to please pass the salt instead of saying pass the &#(@#ing salt you *#(*$@$(*@$ing $*@$"

Me thinks that if you're going to need help with an electric bill in the future, it might help to occasionally engage in a bit of manipulation on the please pass the salt level.

Comment Re:Sorry, correction . . . (Score 1) 94

Truecrypt.

Paying for something is not an implicit guarantee of quality. In point of fact we use Wickr at home for casual level messaging. Why? The guys behind it are known in the infosec community and therefore have a reputational stake in not doing dumb things. Additionally it has survived an audit by forensics professionals where snapchat failed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwW9g_SQn9Y

Min

Comment Self defeating? (Score 1) 296

In the case where this becomes popular or common place in an urban centre, wouldn't the process of discharging, and then immediately recharging after peak power times, cause the peak power times to shift due to the demand for recharging - eventually negating any benefit?

Comment Re:very understandable (Score 4, Interesting) 784

Just dropping in to add a few facts to the rhetoric:

Point Blank, by Gary Kleck, pg 165, citing a study by Wilson and Sherman, 1961:

âoeAt least one medical study compared very similar sets of wounds (âall were penetrating wounds of the abdomenâ(TM)), and found that the mortality rate in
pistol wounds was 16.8%, while the rate was 14.3% for ice pick wounds and 13.3% for butcher knife wounds."

So a single GSW to center of mass is carries a 16.8% mortality rate.

From Wikipedia:

"In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with unspecified firearms.[48] The likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a firearm.[49] For example, the mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.[50]"

OK, carry on.

Min

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