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Comment And... (Score 2, Insightful) 296

And how much time was lost from (1) employees needing to learn a new system, (2) reintegrating email onto a new client platform, and (3) finding a new way to conduct patching. (Microsoft, for all their deficiencies, is better than its competitors at keeping patches up-to-date. I'm looking at you, Apple.)

I'm not saying that the move may not be correct in terms of dollars and sense, but please answer these questions before blowing sunshine up my ass.

Comment Re:FUD filled.... (Score 2, Informative) 212

Emergency Diesel generators usually have compressed air starters. There is a tank of compressed air connected to the engine's cylinders to get it turning over. There is usually a powered valve holding the compressed air in. When the power fails, the valve opens releasing the air and the engine starts tuning over. Then the Diesel supply gets started (mechanical pump driven by the engine).

Comment Re:PBS covered this (Score 1) 377

by WillAffleckUW (#47532887) Attached to: Western US States Using Up Ground Water At an Alarming Rate

Surprisingly, no. The vast use of water is for water-intensive crops and for industrial and commercial uses that tend not to be in cities per se.

Should people in cities use less water to maintain lawns of non-native plants that they water during the day when the water evaporates? Sure.

Will doing so radically alter the water usage? No.

The primary drivers are the water-intensive crops (largest) and the commercial and industrial uses of water (second largest).

When doing triage, look at the biggest sources, not the smallest. If you don't fix the hole in their heart, they can't pump enough blood even if you patch the small leaks in the limbs.

Blaming others (e.g. LA vs farmers) is easy and fun, but it frequently accomplishes nothing.

Submission + - Experian breach exposed 200 million Americans' personal data over a year ago

Submitted by BUL2294
BUL2294 writes: CNN Money is reporting that, prior to the Target breach that exposed information on 110 million customers, and prior to Experian gaining Target's "identity theft protection" business from that breach, Experian was involved a serious breach, to which nobody admits the scope of. Their subsidiary, Court Ventures, unwittingly sold access to a database to a Vietnamese fraudster named Hieu Minh Ngo. This database contained information on some 200 million Americans, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birthdays, work history, driver's license numbers, email addresses, and banking information. "Criminals tapped that database 3.1 million times, investigators said. Surprised you haven't heard this? It's because Experian is staying quiet about it. It's been more than a year since Experian was notified of the leak. Yet the company still won't say how many Americans were affected. CNNMoney asked Experian to detail the scope of the breach. The company refused. "As we've said consistently, it is an unfortunate and isolated issue," Experian spokesman Gerry Tschopp said."

Submission + - Is encryption for the public now a myth?

Submitted by TechForensics
TechForensics writes: We all know the TrueCrypt story-- a fine, effective encryption program beginning to achieve wide use. When you see how the national security agency modified this tool so they could easily overcome it, you'll probably understand why they don't complain about PGP anymore. The slip that showed what was happening was the information that NSA "were really ticked about TrueCrypt" either because they couldn't circumvent it or found it too difficult. From the standpoint of privacy advocates, NSA's dislike for TrueCrypt was evidence it was effective.

Next, NSA directly wrapped up the makers of TrueCrypt in legal webs that made them insert an NSA backdoor and forbade them from revealing it was there. It's only because of the cleverness of the TrueCrypt makers the world was able to determine for itself that TrueCrypt was now compromised. (Among other things, though formerly staunch privacy advocates, the makers discontinued development of TrueCrypt and recommended something like Microsoft Bitlocker, which no one with any sense believes could be NSA – hostile. It then became logically defensible, since NSA was not complaining about PGP or other encryption programs, to posit they had already been vitiated.

This is the situation we have: all of the main are important encryption programs are compromised at least in use against the federal government. Whether NSA tools are made available to local law enforcement is not known. This all begs the question:

Does the public now have *any* encryption that works? Even if we can see the source code of the encryption algorithm the source code of the program employing that algorithm must be considered false. (TrueCrypt was the only program NSA complained about.) In the case of other software, it becomes believable the NSA has allowed to be published only source code that hides their changes, and the only way around that may be to check and compile the published code yourself. Half the public probably doesn't bother.

Okay, Slashdot, what do you think? Where do we stand? And what ought we to do about it?

Comment Re:Strabismus (Score 1) 550

by smellsofbikes (#47528823) Attached to: Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 Years Later

You don't have to be wildly strabby or exotropic to get some (potential) benefits: if your eyes are struggling to maintain fusion, you may read more slowly and suffer more eyestrain than if you had vision therapy, without knowing that you're fighting your own eye muscles. Simple use is lousy training, it turns out, much like just walking lots doesn't help people with screwed-up knees.
It might not do anything for you, but a consult with an optometrist who knows a bit about vision therapy may be worthwhile.

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