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Comment Re:if that's true, (Score 1) 487

What is even more interesting is that it apparently automatically accepts any terms of use and provides passwords to web-based WiFi access logins, which could create some interesting legal situations (did you really accept the terms, and are you logging in with someone else's username/password)?

Did you really accept the terms if you clicked past the legal boilerplate without reading it? Because in the digital world, that's how things work. In theory, you can read and consider the consequences of the terms of use of every single service and program you use, but in practice that's a far too onerous requirement. So if your question is actually meaningful - if those "terms of use" are legally binding on the user - then the legal system is going to implode.

Comment Re:Inspire kids to be the next Woz, not Jobs (Score 1) 266

The irony is that it could be seen as "karma" that Jobs basically committed "suicide by woo", refusing to treat his cancer with any recognized scientific technique for most of a year and instead trying pretty much every technique in the book popular among the sort of person who typically believes in karma.

So perhaps all of the woo stuff actually works, but it plays in with the laws of karma ;)

Comment Re:Back Door (Score 1) 56

Can some GOP voting admirer of the Cuba embargo please tell me what is the purpose of maintaining it 30 years after the end of the cold war? Do yoy really think the Cubans yearn to have the Batista elite that fled to Miami back?

The obvious answer is: to get the vote of that Batista elite.

A deeper reason is likely that, no matter what it cost it, Cuba is a small country that succesfully defied the USA and went its own way. Empires can be unbelievably petty sometimes. And the ideologies riding them have all the tender neighbourly love of religious fanaticism without even the hypothetical possibility of judgement to curb the worst excesses. Those ideologies need to see any dissenters brought low to secure themselves, to kill off even the very idea that there might be a workable alternative. Because as soon as there is, their offers are no longer ones you can't refuse. Hence the continued attempts to demonize Communism, despite it being unlikely any idea could had succeeded any better in the broken ruins of Tsarist Russia. Burger-flippers are already talking about a living wage; imagine if they cast off the idea that they're less valuable than Donald Trump or Darl McBride and started demanding an actual fair share rather than beg for a bit more table scraps.

The GOP is heavily invested in both US national pride and state religion (Capitalism), and Cuba pissed on both.

Comment Re:Profit over safety (Score 1) 128

And doesn't making government responsible trade one problem (deliberately cutting corners for profit) for another (stifling, inattentive bureaucracy, undermotivated employees)?

It's precisely the motivation that's the problem. A private company has every incentive to cut staff and whip the remaining ones into working harder, which of course increases the chances of an accident. Safety is not cost-effective except in hindsight, and at that point Joe CEO has already cashed his bonuses. As well as he should, after all it's not his fault his underlings interpreted his constant "motivational" measures as meaning they should cut corners to keep their jobs, right?

Also, the only known ways to run a large organization are charismatic dictatorship and stifling bureaucracy. Of these, one is creative and innovative and the other implements and enforces every rule exactly as written. Which one of these sounds like a better match for a nuclear plant?

Comment Re:Web support (Score 3, Informative) 80

no, it uses WebKit while Chromium uses Blink, a fork of WebKit.

No, the new web module for Qt called QtWebEngine is based on Chromium, and yes, it is pretty much running a Chromium webview inside your application. It is the cost of having to have a standard web engine that works on all platforms, after Apple became too difficult to work with after Google left.

Comment They may install twisted pair runs? (Score 1) 56

Please don't install 2M new twisted pair runs. This is an awful idea. Fiber is cheap. Coax is pretty cheap. And both are far faster and more flexible than twisted pair.

What twisted pair is really good for (outside of the house) wireless is good at too. So install something better if you really want to upgrade versus just running 4G service.

Do not install new DSL wires. It'd be a tragedy.

Comment Re:How about Cisco and NSA backdoor? (Score 2) 56

That's not a Cisco backdoor.

That's a NSA backdoor the NSA installed by intercepting the units and installing their own hardware.

This is significantly different than a backdoor from the manufacturer which would be in all devices. That is if indeed that does exist in Huawei equipment. The Western media reports so breathlessly on Chinese companies that it's hard to tell what has basis in fact and what is just rumor.

Comment Re:A corrupt company stuggling. Boo hoo. (Score 4, Insightful) 133

No employer is impressed by a degree from these degree factories because they know the "schools" are third rate at best.

To be fair, most employers are also third rate at best and will end up staffed with third-rate employees because first-grade ones require first-grade pay and job. It's the pathological refusal to admit mediocrity is okay that causes the whole student debt crisis, since companies dream of being the next Google without any intent to invest anything towards that. It also leads to a cynical workforce that ignores even sensible corporate policies due to having witnessed megalomania and utter disconnect from reality too often.

Work all too often resembles an absurd farce where everyone lies, everyone knows everyone lies, everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone lies, and so on (my personal pet peeve is "zero incidence culture", where no incident is acceptable, thus people wait until work is finished before going to see a doctor if they get hurt to avoid getting punished for costing management their safety bonuses, leading to more sick days and sometimes mortal danger). They go through the motions anyway, since it's a kind of ritual meant to give something that theoretically exists only as legal fiction a palpable presence. The problem is, that presence is all too often heavy and oppressive, a kind of vampire sucking life out of its victims to sustain its own.

Security

Amazon's New SSL/TLS Implementation In 6,000 Lines of Code 107

bmearns writes: Amazon has announced a new library called "s2n," an open source implementation of SSL/TLS, the cryptographic security protocols behind HTTPS, SSH, SFTP, secure SMTP, and many others. Weighing in at about 6k lines of code, it's just a little more than 1% the size of OpenSSL, which is really good news in terms of security auditing and testing. OpenSSL isn't going away, and Amazon has made clear that they will continue to support it. Notably, s2n does not provide all the additional cryptographic functions that OpenSSL provides in libcrypto, it only provides the SSL/TLS functions. Further more, it implements a relatively small subset of SSL/TLS features compared to OpenSSL.

Comment Re:Drone It (Score 1) 843

But the pork all that pork, see it well be the one thing for everybody don't design/build 4 planes spend 10x on one.

If only it had been pork, at least it would be intentional and likely cheaper. This is more like bad project management with feature creep and design choices forced by (clueless) management/politicians.

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