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Comment Re:Not their fault - oh yes!! (Score 1) 259

Oh I'm sure they think it's just as senseless, but if they don't restrict it, then Hollywood won't let them use their IP as cheaply as otherwise

No. Hulu is Hollywood. Fox, NBC, Disney (a.k.a.NewsCorp, Comcast, ABC, MSNBC,..)

They are a resale platform for slightly used content:
1. Let people re-watch recent shows. (Probably to create additional ad-revenue, stop downloads, and competition.)
2. Create an on-line show/movie portal to stop independent offers (Netflix, and Blockbuster in the past).
3. Find new income sources. (Older episodes only on Hulu plus. Media centers, android, or anything convenient only on Hulu plus.)

Not their fault? These are the people responsible for DVD regions. Think Murdoch wants to lose markets? To maximize profits, it is essentially to restrict the usage of media (and information in general) to localized markets. You don't want a movie to hit the regional market before the population is hyped for it and your merchandise is ready. And in order to control the pundit circuit and the news "outlets", you don't want a significant percentage of the population access outside sources.

Comment Re:Didn't you get the memo? Drones are for killing (Score 2) 218

The government wants to be the only group with drones and they like to use them for spying and killing rather than saving lives.

That might actually work.
Instead of calling it a "Search and Rescue Drone" call it an unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle that could be used by small units to safely scan unaccessible terrain. Then tell your local senator that you are a small start-up military contractor who needs help cutting some federal red tape to do real life testing of your beta model by using it in cooperation with local law enforcement.

(Be sure to pronounce "vehicle" as Vee-Hee-Kal and the word "federal" always with some disgust in your voice.)

Comment Re:He's right! (Score 1) 581

Yes. Unfortunately there are two messages implied in Bloomberg's statement:

1. When there is a major structural change in the industry, some people will get stranded. And retraining/reeducation will not solve all the problems. As a society we should 'have some compassion to do it gently.' Simply suggesting that everyone learns to code is idiotic and could only come from someone like the Zuck.

2. Coal miners are manual labor class beta minus. You can't teach them intellectual things.

Had he simply said "You can't teach every coal miner to code", he could have avoided stepping in #2

(I on the other hand enjoy dealing with intelligent people who do manual labor jobs. It is nice to have a HVAC contractor, who understands physics. If you watch something like ThisOldHouse, you can see what a difference a brain makes in a so called "manual labor" job. )

Comment Beard (Score 1) 136

You really need to have a beard to get it. Do you have a beard? You don't sound like you have a proper beard.

Ehhh, of course you need a beard. But the article also says, to be successful you should remove spaghetti once in a while:

Habit 7: Make time for yourself
[... ]Taking care of yourself is an important part of doing a good job."

Comment An honest mistake? - Even better (Score 1) 1

The linked Sydney Morning Herald goes on:
"Despite denying he put the bug into the code intentionally, he said it was entirely possible intelligence agencies had been making use of it over the past two years."

One can assume said intelligence agencies would run their own software review and routinely check the source code of critical security software for obvious flaws. And if some agency even states Internet security as one of their goals, one can be certain they audit new patches.

It is very, very likely that they knew about this bug and used it to access servers outside their jurisdiction, where they couldn't simply access it with a letter in their hand. It being just an honest mistakes makes it even a sweeter deal, perfect deniability.

(And no, open source doesn't make a difference, if you wear the right colored tie, you can get any source code.)

Comment A few weaks -a few years. (Score 1) 303

"known for 2 years"

No, no, this has been the code part of the stable release of OpenSSL for 2 years. The bug has only been known by non-blackhats for up to a few weeks.

Yes, the heartbeat exploit popped up just recently.
But the bug which forces users to keep data in freed buffers has been known for at least 4 years. Tedunangst calls it "exploit mitigation countermeasures" ...

Comment Not broken, just fud-ed (Score 2) 110

What if the intention isn't on cracking it but just on spreading FUD?

People are pissed off right now. That Snowden thing just isn't going away and people are looking into encrypted email options. Even people who never thought of using pgp (or regarded it as something for paranoid conspiracy theory nuts) would use it now, if it just came as an easy clickable option.

If you're some government agency, that doesn't look desirable. To make things worse, it's a web of trust, one of these pesky decentralized models. Unlike with a central certification authority, trusting one signature doesn't translate into trusting others. But on the other hand, there is no single CA that can be compromised. If you are a government agency in the business of undermining privacy, you would have to attack it one user at a time. Quite frustrating.

What to do about it?
Create some headlines like:

Fake PGP Keys For Crypto Developers Found

Hmm- looks that isn't safe either. Not worth the effort trying it out I guess.

Comment In Summary.. (Score 5, Insightful) 220

...he's not much of a "science" guy, ...
... captain obvious ...
... He's no scientist. ...
... Bill Nye the Attention Whore ...
... Mr. Bill Nye is NOT and has NOTHING to do with science ...

This out of 31 posts so far.
This on a guy who makes science fun for kids.

Beta might not be Slashdot's biggest problem,
but going the way of kuro5hin is.

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