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Comment Re:"some weakness" (Score 1) 465

That was not the error they were dealing with and there is no way for you to spend someone elses bitcoin.

The issue as I understand it, is that someone was forging a transaction ID on an existing deposit or withdraw. Thus tricking the system into transferring the coin a second time. So they had a pool of coins that everything went into and came out of. If I deposit 25btc into the account there system credits my account 25btc. If I withdraw 25btc then it debts my account. All of this keyed to the bitcoin transaction ID. If I forge that transaction ID taking the same 25btc deposit packet and send it again with the forged transaction ID. There system would credit my account a second time, even though the coins were never deposited into the pool. I could then withdraw 50btc, which would come out of the pool of coins because there system thinks I have more btc than what is really there. The only way they would have caught it is if they did a month end and reconciled the numbers in there web system to the number in there btc pool wallet. Which they should have been doing EVERY MONTH!

In simple terms balancing the books is.
You take the account total at start of month.
You take and apply the debts and credits to the total.
You validate that the total you have come up with is the same as the account total
You sign off on the total for the month and close out the month locking it from change.

Comment Re:Uh? (Score 2) 734

No, they will tax you under the guise that production and disposal of the solar panels creates large amounts of pollution. This costs money to take care of and you should be happy to pay it, you really dont want to pollute the planet do you?

"They'll come at you sideways. It's how they think. It's how they move. Sidle up and smile. Hit you where you're weak." -- -Shepherd Book (Serenity)

Comment Just as expected (Score 0) 351

I am not surprised, when people scream that the government should do something about an issue they never stop to think about the government and what it really can do.

When there is an issue, the government has three options in it's tool box to fix it.

#1) Make it illegal
#2) Declare war on it
#3) Throw your money at it and hope it goes away.

So, they started subsidizing your healthcare (With your own tax $$). They paid to have an exchange created (With your tax $$). The exchange had security issues. Well they can fix that as well, just through more of your tax $$ at it and hope it will go away.

While all this is going on they are obviously hurting for tax $$ as THEY sent me a letter telling me that my wife and kids do not exist and they are instructing the company I work for to change my W4 to single male and to withhold the maximum amount until I send the IRS PROOF that I have a wife and kids.

Comment Re:How is this sueable? (Score 1) 409

There is no requirement in the law, that the person be a US citizen. Only that the company be a US company and the employee is one employed in the US. It even includes potential employees who are immigrating provided they will be working in the US.

I once got in trouble for sorting resumes into two piles. Ones where I could pronounce the last name and ones where I could not pronounce the last name. I have over 50 qualified applicants and needed a way to cut it down to a manageable number. Seems that is illegal to do.

I ended up laying them out on the floor and throwing 10 pennies in the air then calling in the 10 resumes they landed on. Turns out that random chance is a 100% legal way to sort resumes.

Comment Re:News for Nerds? (Score 3, Interesting) 586

I do agree with the quote to some extent, however history gives us the answer.

In the 1800's the AMA (American Medical Association) began convincing states that they did not need to regulate the education of Medical doctors if they simply required that the doctor graduated from an "AMA Approved College". To date it is a requirement in ALL States in the US. Once the AMA had that in law they began increasing the requirements to become a doctor and restricting the number of allowable students per class. Thus restricting the flow of Doctors into the American market. One example of this restriction that comes to mind is Veterinarians. To be a Doctor (MD) you have 10+ years of schooling and an internship. The be a Veterinarian you have 8 Years of schooling on multiple species including Human and a Vet is capable of handling most of what a GP (General practitioner MD) does.

So, lets put this into some perspective.

There are 396 lawyers per 100,000 people in the US.
There are 125 Veterinarians per 100,000 people in the US.
There are 2.4 Doctors per 100,000 people in the US.

Comment Re:To be honest your boss is right (Score 1) 383

And all of this will be followed by the CEO/Director/Manager saying

"Gartner says we should only need one admin per 500 servers and 10,000 network ports."

I have been told this over and over, while trying to manage over 300 one off 10 year old servers, putting in 90 hours weeks, and running 250+ tickets in queue. The same CEO/Director/Manager then complains that you are not doing your job because you have 250+ ticket in queue.

Turned out the best solution was to find another job and quit.

Submission + - 12 Things Developers Wish the CIO Remembered

Esther Schindler writes: Every CIO wants to build a development team that’s hard-working, loyal, and devoted to creating quality software. The developers are willing! But they want CIOs to lead them and understand their needs. Andy Lester writes an open letter explaining what developers hope their CIOs keep in mind to motivate them and make them happy.

For instance:
  • We need to be protected from the rest of the organization.
  • We don’t ask for stuff just for the hell of it.
  • Be glad we spend so much time on automated tests.

Read his list, and see if there's anything you'd add, or with which you disagree. (Wait, this is slashdot. Of course you are going to disagree!)

Comment Re:Maybe won't make any difference (Score 1) 142

I think he misquoted it, which caused the confusion.

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
-Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At the End of the Universe

So it is a finite number divided by infinity == as near to nothing as makes no odds

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 4, Interesting) 293

What we have is a phenomenon that is not explained by the calculated mass of the universe. As a filler we have titled it "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" and given it a mathematical correction to the calculations.

The mass issue is fixed if we realize that the size of the universe is larger than the visible horizon. Meaning it is bigger than we can see. With that we can assume that we can only see 13% of the whole universe and that the reset of it is too far away to see. Now, run those numbers through the formula to calculate the expansion rate of the universe and you get some great results!

The energy issue disappears when you realize that the closer an object is to a gravity well the slower time moves. Thus there is a large time differential between the edge of a given galaxy and intergalactic space. This time differential accounts for the perceived added gravity.

Better yet, paint it hot pink and put an SEP field around it. It is a better solution.

Submission + - Healthcare.gov may be a 'black swan' (computerworld.com)

dcblogs writes: The problems at Healthcare.gov may qualify as a black swan event, something that's difficult to predict and is disruptive. The disruptive consequences have been severe enough to prompt President Obama to express dissatisfaction with the site, and his administration faces the risk that the site problems may force it to adjust the deadlines of its signature policy project. A U.S. House hearing Thursday offered no assurances that the site will be fixed soon. Healthcare.gov's 55 contractors had only two weeks to conduct end-to-end testing prior to launch. Months of testing were needed, said contractors at this hearing. Approximately one out of six IT projects face exploding costs, according to Alexander Budzier, a researcher at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. Budzier and Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor at Oxford's business school, have gathered data from 4,300 worldwide IT projects in the private and public sectors whose typical costs range between $1 million and $10 million. IT projects perform worse than physical projects, such as large dam construction, where one-in-ten may see cost blow-outs, said Budzier. In IT, 18% of projects turn into outliers that "really run out control, and that's a usually high rate," he said. Other studies also point to high IT failure rates. A Gartner study put large IT project ($1M and above) failure rates at 28%. Standish Group says 41% of IT projects above $10M are failures. A 150% or more cost overrun could put Healthcare.gov in the black swan category.

Submission + - Can Nintendo Survive Gaming's Brave New World? (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: Jon Brodkin talked to indie developers (including the creator of "Super Mario Bros. Crossover"), former Nintendo employees, and a number of others about where exactly Nintendo went wrong over the past few years. Their conclusions? Nintendo made a number of mistakes, including a lack of an indie-developer ecosystem, a refusal to license out core properties such as Super Mario to other gaming platforms (or even iOS and Android), and platforms that don't appeal to hardcore gamers. While the developers suggest Nintendo is taking steps to broaden its horizons, such as by reaching out to smaller studios, it's questionable whether such efforts will succeed in a world where the PS4 and Xbox One are about to enter the market, and iOS and Android are swallowing up mobile gamers' time and dollars. What do you think?

Submission + - British and US take a dim view of BYOD for government workers (citeworld.com)

rsmiller510 writes: We've seen private sector businesses embracing Bring Your Own Device in a big way and finding ways to balance protecting company data and employee privacy, but the US and British governments are reluctant to join their business counterparts and offer similar policies either out of timidity or security concerns. If all were more concerned with protecting from the data, to the apps and finally the device, it might change their point of view. The flaw in the government approach is to see the device as the key part of the security, when it should be the last part, not the first.

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