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Comment Business relationship (Score 4, Interesting) 109

So does ./ have some kind of promotional relationship with startswithabang? If so you should disclose it.

The blog does have interesting material, and its appropriate for /., so its not like its bad that every article on there is making the /. front page. But its kind of odd that every article on there is making the ./ front page.

Comment Re:What underlying platform? (Score 4, Insightful) 46

Not clear if Case is claiming Blackberry's were never of interest to hackers or are just of no interest lately.

Blackberrys were until recent years very high value targets, they were the phone of choice on Wall Street, for politicians and reporters.

It wasn't that long ago repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia were telling Blackberry to back door their phones/servers or get locked out of their market which tends to suggest they must have been pretty good at something.

There is probably something to be said for phones without a third party app market if security is job one. Android in particular is a pretty juicy target for malware.

The Military

The High-Tech Warfare Behind the Israel - Hamas Conflict 402

Taco Cowboy writes The Israel — Hamas conflict in Gaza is not only about bombs, missiles, bullets, but also about cyberwarfare, battles of the mind over social media, smart underground tunnels and cloud-based missile launching systems. The tunnels that Hamas has dug deep beneath Gaza are embedded with high tech gadgets, courtesy of Qatar, which has funded Hamas with billions to equipped their tunnels with intelligent sensors which are networked to control centers enabling the command and control staff to quickly notify operatives nearby that IDF units are advancing inside a certain tunnel, allowing for rapid deployment of attack units and the setting up of bobby traps inside the tunnel.

In addition, Hamas has automated its rocket firing system using networked, cloud-based launching software provided by Qatar which can set off a rocket from any distance, and set them to go off at a specific time, using timers. "Anyone who thinks they have dozens of people sitting next to launchers firing rockets each time there is a barrage is mistaken," said Aviad Dadon, a senior cyber-security adviser at several Israeli government ministries. While Doha is allowing Hamas to use its technology to fight Israel, it's their own cyber-security the leaders of Qatar are worried about. For the Qataris, the war between Israel and Hamas is a proving ground to see how their investments in cyber systems have paid of — Qatar is very worried that one of its Gulf rivals — specifically Saudi Arabia — will use technology to attack it, and Qatar spends a great deal of money each year on shoring up its cyber-technology.

Comment Re:When will we... (Score 3, Informative) 266

"Neither Americans nor the rest of the world signed up for a fucking security agency which is no longer under anyone's control except people who feel they can do anything they want."

Uh, the CIA has been pretty much like this since its inception during World War II as the OSS and the CIA immediately after. It was reined in briefly by the Churck and Pike Committees in the 70's but that oversight and those reforms were pretty much rolled back by Reagan. Sure, they got to reach new lows after 9/11 with no hold barred torture, but the CIA has been torturing people through proxies for its entire history, so that wasn't exactly new either.

Not exactly sure why everyone is acting like this is some kind of revelation or anything new, other than its kind of amazing Brennan was foolish enough to admit to it. I predict his career at the CIA will soon come to an end, and he will be replaced with someone with larger brass balls.

The chances you all are gonna change any of this airing your indignation on /. are vanishingly small.

Comment Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 114

Didn't say it was. I just said NASA should abandon it to whomever wants to pay to keep it operating. Prettty sure its past its original end of life anyway which I think was 2010.

If Russia doesn't want to play nice, or pay to run it themselves, I doubt ESA, Canada or Japan will be able to keep it going if the U.S. pulls out.

Comment Re:How has slashdot come to this? (Score 1) 150

Utter crap. Codenomicon are very friendly to FLOSS and FLOSS developers. They're also great guys. They have been providing free test services to the Samba project for many years now, and have helped us fix many many bugs.

In case you hadn't noticed, the code they're reporting on here is closed source proprietary code...

Comment Re:Why stop there? (Score 2, Insightful) 114

Probably one of the best things NASA could do at this point is abandon ISS, stop paying for it, and tell the Russians its all theirs. There is a fair chance they would fly Americans to it for free rather than get saddled with that boat anchor.

If the Russians don't want it either its time to deorbit it. It would free up a LOT of money for more useful endeavors. Its never been good for much of anything, certainly nothing to justify the staggering price tag

SpaceX will have the ability to put astronauts in to LEO in a few years. Its not like its a crisis, there is very little for people to do in LEO at the moment other than to be lab rats for zero G physiology studies. You would think they would have done most of that work by now.

About the only point in putting people in space at all is as colonists, persumably on Mars. You can do just about everything else way better and cheaper with robots.

So until you are ready to fly people to Mars to stay, stop getting your panties in a bunch about getting them to LEO.

Comment Re:pfft, 3.5% overrun (Score 1) 132

I am nearly speechless that you would try to use the ISS as an example of a "success story". It was mind boggling behind schedule and over budget, though turning it in to an international project is partially to blame. The core is based on existing Russian design. If they had just launched that and kept it simple it would have cost a tiny fraction of what it did and accomplished nearly all the science ISS has done.

The fundamental problem with the ISS is its bled NASA and the manned space program white. NASA hasn't done ANYTHING useful, in its manned program since Skylab, other than maybe Hubble. They built Shuttle to fly to the ISS and the ISS so the Shuttle would have a place to fly. It resulted in NO breakthroughs or progress worth the price tag.

So what is your point on Falcon. I think you just agreed with me SLS is hopelessly uncompetitive and SpaceX approach is really smart.

SpaceX is trying to get to space cheaply, safely and with a very high launch rate.

SLS seems to be trying to come up with the most expensive, impractical and dangerous solution possible, just to keep funneling money to Lockheed, Boeing, ATK, etc. Its as if they are TRYING to develop a system that is sure to fail or be cancelled.

Note the proposed launch date, 2017, just long enough after the 2016 election so the next president can cancel it and start over.

Comment Re:pfft, 3.5% overrun (Score 2, Insightful) 132

"I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed"

None of NASA's major manned spaced projects are even remotely likely to succeed, they are not intended to do so any more. They are just a place to blow money, create jobs and put money in Lockheed and Boeing pockets. More importantly they buy votes in the critical swing state of Florida.

They are designed to run 4-8 years, produce nothing except votes, paychecks and contractor profits, then they get cancelled and start over. It is way easier and less risk than actually making anything that will fly.

It is not the political process that is broken, it is NASA and the political process.

Get a clue, and spend a few billion on SpaceX to help finish Falcon Heavy. I'm not sure why SLS is even on the table at this point, it isn't remotely competitive.

Lockheed and Boeing also need to be completely removed from the process. They are making a mint milking DOD contracts, they don't need to be in middle of the civilian space program fleecing NASA and taxpayers there too. They do not use money wisely, they devour everything thrown their way and produce as little as possible in return.

Submission + - UK to use Open Document Format for government documents (themukt.com)

sfcrazy writes: UK has decided to use ‘open standards’ for sharing and viewing government documents. The announcement was made by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. One of the primary objectives of this move is to create a level playing field for suppliers of all sizes. The move must put some pressure on Google to offer full support for ODF in Chrome, Android and Google Docs.

Submission + - U.K. Cabinet Office Adopts ODF as Exclusive Standard for Sharable Documents (consortiuminfo.org)

Andy Updegrove writes: The U.K. Cabinet Office accomplished today what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set out (unsuccessfully) to achieve ten years ago: it formally required compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF) by software to be purchased in the future across all government bodies. Compliance with any of the existing versions of OOXML, the competing document format championed by Microsoft, is neither required nor relevant. The announcement was made today by The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. Henceforth, ODF compliance will be required for documents intended to be shared or subject to collaboration. PDF/A or HTML compliance will be required for viewable government documents. The decision follows a long process that invited, and received, very extensive public input – over 500 comments in all.

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