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Comment Re:Yet another reason to abandon physical media. (Score 2) 107

> If you watch your movies via streaming, this is not an issue. 2015 people, 2015.

Yes. In 2015 there's still plenty of stuff that's not available via streaming or is only available at a price that most people aren't interested in paying.

Some us actually use this stuff and don't merely talk about it.

The movie I was streaming just flaked out, that's why I came over here to make sure the Internet connection was still up and say hi.

Comment Re:As a Developer of Heuristic AI ... (Score 1) 531

Glad to be of service. The more we hamper idiots trying to make self-improving intelligence without precautions the better. And yes, once neurosurgeons can use their intelligence to produce indefinite increases in intelligence in their subjects, the same danger applies to them./p>

Where do people think this property of intelligence comes from?

WE are only THEORETICALLY capable of making something more intelligent than ourselves. Increasing relative intelligence might be an exponentially difficult task. It's obviously not easy. It may take the same amount of work * time for something more intelligent than us to make the same relative advancement. It may take MORE work * time to improve by the same amount.

We don't even know how much effort it will take us to make the first step.

Comment Re:The banned weapons (Score 2) 318

From your own source:

There has been much debate of the allegedly poor performance of the bullet on target, especially the first-shot kill rate when the muzzle velocity of the firearms used and the downrange bullet deceleration do not achieve the minimally required terminal velocity of over 750 m/s (2,500 ft/s) at the target to cause fragmentation.

Not only are you wrong, you are so wrong that the round is actually criticized for not causing enough damage.

From what I was told in the service the round was designed to wound not to kill on purpose. If you wound someone, one of their comrades has to drag them back to cover. You thereby take two enemies out of the fight. But hell, what would the armorer know.

I think "designed to wound" is a reassuring way to say "technically not as lethal". We switched to smaller ammo for logistical reasons, to carry more ammo, and statistically less lethality is not a bad thing for the reason you mentioned, it's just not the real reason we switched to 5.56. Way I look at it is, without increasing the weight or cost, is there any obvious thing you can do to make a 5.56 nato round more lethal? The FMJ is for penetrating body armor, and only increases the chances of having exit wounds. So it was light, cheap, and "lethal enough" - not designed to be less lethal, in my opinion.

Comment Re:Google don't care about you (Score 1) 51

You don't have to like or trust Google(and you shouldn't) to agree that "Hey, let's quietly change rule 41 so that all you need to 'remote search'(by means tactfully unspecified) a computer anywhere is the approval of a judge, doesn't much matter which, from one of the 94 federal districts, rather than one at least vaguely related to the matter at hand!" is...perhaps...a bad move.

I was always told the Internet didn't have borders, and an IP isn't a person, blah blah blah... now people want to somehow pin their citizenship and legal jurisdictions to their IP when it suits them.

Reality is catching up to the Internet, and it's free spirited nature isn't going to be a legal smoke screen much longer.

Comment Re:os x IS certified official Unix (Score 4, Insightful) 393

You've got to admit, it is a bit sad/disappointing the number of people who are invested in Linux but actually like (and often prefer) OS X. What does that say for the rest of us who are wondering if expending the time and effort to learn Linux is worth it if many people who are influential in its development prefer OS X?

And yes I know, you didn't actually say outright that you prefer OS X, you merely said you liked it. I wonder how long it'll be before that changes though...

You don't marry an operating system, you can date all of them. How would anyone know what they really like if they limit themselves?

If you can't say five good things about an operating system, then you probably don't know it well enough to judge. Take that as a challenge to learn more. If you have fun doing that kind of thing.. otherwise go by whatever shows up on monster the most for all I care.

Comment Re:Why find new jobs? (Score 1) 307

There is no Utopia anywhere in the world, never has been and never will be. Human nature prevents such a system. Sure, I think the majority would be up to share, but there is a minority of people that would take without contributing to society, and the other end of the spectrum would contain people that abused that system to get more than their share.

Wait, in YOUR utopia you have to work for stuff? In mine we all float down a river on inner tubes with endless supplies of sunblock and limeade.

Comment Entitlement (Score 1) 755

We aren't all "good at coding", or paid to work on Software Libre: that means that those people who are need to be much more responsible, and to start — finally — to listen to what people are saying.

When was the open source or free software spirit EVER "Have it your way", like some kind of unpaid Burger King?
You can't vote with your wallet with free software. Unless you pay for it, and my wild guess is most people don't.

If you can code, you can vote. Maybe. If someone accepts your patches. Not everyone wants to make money either.
If you can't code, can't pay, and have a problem with what you get - get a job and/or learn to code.

Comment Re:why is this even a thing??? (Score 2) 31

My understanding is that the military does have a completely isolated network for critical combat communication, but like any other global-scale organization, they're still probably reliant on the now-civilian internet because of the efficient communication it provides. For instance, communication with contractors, other countries' military forces, and so on are all vital for day to day operations, and probably can't be accomplished with a military-only system because of the sheer scale and scope it would require.

I just don't think it's as simple as saying "the military should not be on the internet". They either have to try to use it safely and securely, build a completely separate and parallel internet, or go without it. Granted, there's obviously a percentage of material that should always be air-gapped for maximum security, but the bulk of bureaucratic day to day communication and coordination only needs to be reasonably secure, and can probably safely live on the standard internet given reasonable precautions.

They have more than a few, and I seriously doubt very much reliance on the Internet because even mediumish sized businesses use private connections between themselves rather than some VPN over the public Internet for critical communications. I'm not saying they don't use the Internet, because you can get to it from their non-secure networks, but their private networks are comprehensive. Anything classified is on those air gapped networks.

Anyway, the purpose of our military is to defend US. They've got their own shit locked down better than most private organizations would tolerate. The way the Internet was designed, there isn't much the government can do for the rest of us without employing some sort of Great Firewall of China, or... TALK about the problems... like this journal.

You are right, "XYZ should not be on the Internet" is not the answer. Like abstinence in teenage sex-ed, it can't be THE answer, it's not good enough. The private sector is getting screwed right now, and even if it works for some of us, we can't keep shouting abstinence at the problem.

Comment Re:Co-Conspirators? (Score 1) 188

This. One thing I have never understood this sequence:

1. Cop searches car illegal.
2. Court tosses out evidence.

So far so good. No qualms there with the court....

3. Cop is NOT charged with a crime, continues working

That never made any sense. If the search was illegal, he didn't have the authority to do it...so it was....by very definition....outside the parameters of his job. He was NOT acting as a police officer if he was conducting an illegal search.

In fact, if anything he was denying a person their civil rights under color of law....which is a felony. Why should he NOT be charged? Why should a prosecutor even be allowed to know about such an event and not bring up charges?

And no, I am in now way saying such evidence should be used.... I understand fruit of a poisined treee, I just don't understand allowing trees to be poisoned and hoping nobody notices next time.

Give us a link to the law violated in 1. for starters. Is it state, federal?
Then give an example of one of us, random people on the street, breaking that law, and walk us through you bringing what charges against that person, in what court, etc. etc.

Comment Re:I understand the words (Score 4, Informative) 54

Strangely enough, there is this concept called THE FUCKING ARTICLE which often (but not always, this is Slashdot after all) contains useful hints about WHAT THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT.

After that, it's all reading comprehension and a few minutes using your Internet-search-engine-of-choice.

Which article, there are eight links in the summary. DDOS, pilot, miniseries, TV, film, game, mobile, internal project names, failed kick starters... WTF? o.O

as fans tried to figure out just what the %&#% was going on last night, you should probably prepare yourself

So, the people who CARE about this garbage don't know what's going on either, and it's here WHY?

Comment Re:What about the banks? (Score 1) 57

>We see in case after case how all it takes is single insider at a company—in this instance, allegedly, a receptionist in a dentists' office—to set an identity theft ring in motion, which then tries to monetize the stolen information by purchasing Apple goods for resale or personal use

Those people can do that because of the horribly insecure payment methods the banks impose on everyone. If crime requires motive and opportunity, then it's the banks who are providing the opportunity.

What about them? They got screwed.

What did payment systems have to do with this, it was identity theft and credit fraud. That they bought gift cards and high value electronics are just SOP with any scam like this.

Comment Re:SSH (Score 1) 88

Sorry but as far as I'm concerned key management shouldn't be a part of the process that's handling connection authentications, etc. Why can't this be an outside protocol entirely? For decades, we've been waiting for some kind of automated decentralised, anonymised key-store and surely the effort going into securing this very dangerous piece of code would have been better put into moving the problem away from SSH and allowing multi-protocol use of such things.

If you trust a server by accepting its public key, it is by definition, trusted, for as long as its private key is secure.
Only the initial trust needs to be verified by humans, and with a chain of trust, even that can be nearly automated by adding your organization's CA key when systems are deployed (I'm in an imaginary world where SSH key management has caught up with the rest of the world).
The older a private key gets, the more likely it has been compromised, maybe by VM cloning, backup media leaking, etc.

To address that, you should change the keys periodically. Prompting the user is pointless, because the connection is trusted.

WHOA, let me back up a minute, you did know your session data is actually encrypted with symmetric keys right? ... and those keys are in similar fashion changed on a regular basis without your knowledge?
If you didn't know that, well.. that explains 99% of the ignorance I'm seeing on this page.

SSH's key management is an absolute joke, but this is a step in the right direction at least. The only thing I can imagine is the authors figured people would be using kerberos in all but the smallest shops... and I'm being nice assuming SSH's kerberos integration is any good.

Comment Re:Other than the obligatory security theatre... (Score 1) 110

... just what would the fighter escort hope to accomplish? Are we really ready to order fighter pilots to shoot down airliners over a phoned-in threat? I guess all it'll take now to spook passengers and completely disrupt air travel in the U.S. is a few bozos with bunch of pre-paid or stolen cellphones.

IDK, observation maybe? Or did you want to hope for cellphone videos to explain what happened?

Comment Re:I have an even better idea (Score 0) 304

Let's just enforce existing laws and get dangerous drivers off the road. THERE IS NO RIGHT TO DRIVE. If you are a dangerous driver you can and should be taken off the road.

I was a safe driver for 11 years; no tickets, no accidents, no "close calls", no complaints. Then one day I was driving to the airport early in the morning, got distracted by my radio, didn't notice that the traffic light was red, and ran right into a car that was (legally) crossing the intersection.

My question: should I have been driving for those previous 11 years? If not, why not? What kind of test would you have had me take to show that I was a dangerous driver? Or, if I was a safe driver except on that one morning, how would your plan have prevented my accident?

The fact is, most people are safe drivers most of the time. Except for when they're not.

OMG! You're saying the red light camera didn't dissuade you from driving through a red light??!!!!11 /snark

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