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Comment Re:They are right. (Score 2) 409

Let me ask you this:

Why would -any- copy demand a citizen turn off his or her video/audio recording device if they "have nothing to hide"? It's because they don't want their asinine behaviour to be broadcasted on Youtube and entered as evidence in their/your trial. -They- want control of the evidence to ensure your conviction/their exoneration. How many times have we heard "oh, the cameras weren't working" when it benefited law enforcement?
Check out the case of this man convicted and sent to jail for recording police. He was convicted by a jury (idiots, that disgusts me), but the judge stated "In our Republic, the actions of public officials taken in their public capacities are not protected from exposure. Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police."

All officials of all branches of all government must be scrutinized at all times. Without scrutiny we most certainly will fall into tyranny (assuming we already haven't).

Comment Re:right from the white paper (Score 2) 195

I do. 99% of all people have a seriously misguided concept of trust. Companies and citizens alike cannot maintain an allegiance to any person because they must bend to the will of law enforcement (notice I did not say 'law') and judicial commands (yes, it actually says "commands" in a subpoena).

If law enforcement officers successfully beg a judge, they can order any person or company to do anything they want (like spying on you, becoming an agent of the state). It's as simple as that. Do -not- trust anyone. If they have been subverted, you will not know until it is too late...Ladar Levison wanted nothing but to maintain Lavabit -- his own business predicated on security/secrecy (when it came out that he handed over SSL keys to authorities, no matter the reason, his business would crumble). The (federal) state compelled its demise under threat of -perpetual- imprisonment and fine, and so it fell.

Having said all that, even a non-NIST entity cannot be trusted. If a non-NIST crypto protocol contains any weaknesses, whether intentional or not, assuredly the NSA will obtain or discover it.

Comment Re:news for nerds... (Score 0) 262

Taiwan cares a fuck about what is going on inside of mainland china.

What does that even mean? Maybe you meant "doesn't give" instead of "cares", or maybe "cares a fuck load"?

Anyway, try reading your crap before posting so at least one other person can understand what you are trying to say.

Submission + - Obamacare Website violates GPL (weeklystandard.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to the Weekly Standard, the troubled Healthcare Marketplace website (www.healthcare.gov) uses code from DataTables.net, dual-licensed under GPL 2 or a BSD license, without attribution, even going so far as to remove the copyright notice. While the effort is undoubtedly a complex software engineering project, the lack of scruples is only slightly more troubling that the engine was designed by a company that apparently didn't realize that client-side code is easy to examine.

Submission + - Rogers/Fido cellular service out nation-wide (globalnews.ca)

inject_hotmail.com writes: Cellular carriers Rogers, Fido, and Chatr are currently experiencing a nation-wide outage, which began at approximately 6:00pm EDT (22:00UTC) 09-Oct-2013. All cellular voice services are inoperable, however, the company claims that data and text services are not affected. Some customers are reporting brief periods of service. Attempts to reach Fido's customer service line (1-888-481-3236) failed during their normal business hours; however, once their automated system came back online, it reports that some customer phone number are not recognized by their system.

Comment Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score 1) 325

The law says that contracts can't permit unlawful acts -- no matter what, under any circumstance...I'm not sure why we all accept this behaviour. That being said, and if this spying is now legal because a) it's not a human doing it, and b) it's "agreed upon" by two of the parties involved (ignoring third parties of course!), why not use computers/robots to everything corporations want to do but aren't permitted to do by law?

People have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their electronic communication. It's -called- "mail" for crying out loud...mail is one of the most protected forms of communication! The programmers who programmed the scanning engine, and all the way up the chain, should be charged with wiretapping. Just because they use a proxy to conduct their dirty work doesn't mean it's now magically legal.

Comment Re:Horrible, horrible memories... (Score 1) 210

I used 7 a little bit, 9 Advanced, and 10. I developed on 9 Advanced...variable watches and script debugging helped a LOT...so I could at least nail a problem down when FMP interpreted the code improperly.

FMP needs to eliminate the need for a mouse driven script manager. Maybe they could provide an option for beginners to use it...but let use real devs use a text editor.

Comment Re:Horrible, horrible memories... (Score 1) 210

From 2000 to present (thankfully, not so much in the present). My client isn't really interested in paying for a long development cycle, so the only way I could get away from FMP was to introduce them to the idea of VB6 (this was a while ago, now) with SQL Express...It worked, and now I have to look forward to the day when I get to port the code to VS2008 or 2012...joy. (I still don't know why MS would get rid of control arrays, and itemdata on combo boxes)

Comment Horrible, horrible memories... (Score 1) 210

Oh gawd, this is causing flashbacks of FileMaker Pro programming...I want to poke my eyes out with rusty daggers, and cut my right hand off with a drill press...

(For those who have had the pleasure of never being forced to "code" in FileMaker, it's a "database" programming environment similar to, say, MS Access in that it's a self-contained relational DBMS; however, adding "code" is done by using your mouse, with relatively few control structures. It's not free-form coding, it's predefined lines in a listbox where the "programmer" can add conditions to IF or LOOP blocks, iterative lines might not work sometimes, etc. Kludge City. All this designed for a 17" monitor with disproportionately-sized dialog controls. Imagine all the fun you can have!)

Comment Re:What person thinks this is OK? (Score 1, Informative) 191

Next news on slashdot:

Shocking! Researcher discovers hitting submit on the login page of Gmail actually TRANFERS ALL YOUR CREDENTIALS to Google.

Hey asshole, pay attention. The issue here isn't that a first or second party is getting the password, it's that the third party is...the third party doesn't need it at all. Let me spell it out for you: This would be similar to Mozilla, Microsoft, or Apple transmitting your password to themselves just because you are using their browser.

Indeed, this is how it has always worked on BlackBerry devices, so I'm not quite sure why this is news. Anyone who didn't already understand this simply doesn't have any technical imagination.

Comment Re:Really interesting part (Score 1) 658

Ok, maybe you are technically savvy enough to install/configure software yourself...but most users aren't. Good luck to them getting Adobe to understand their environment beyond "format and call us back" when something goes wrong and the thing won't install.

IBM did something similar years ago (circa 2003) when they opened IBM branded stores (they demanded customer lists from authorized resellers, who had to fork them over to keep their authorized status)...IBM sold directly to the public and all the customers of resellers, in effect eliminating the reseller channel. What happened? Resellers boycotted, and IBM did a quick about-face due to a massive drop in sales when they realized that they weren't selling as much new stuff and spare parts (people call their computer guy when stuff goes sideways, and this is a pretty big segment), and had very crappy expertise in the field and when handling the public. Major manufacturers reeeaaallly want the margins on retail sales, but they also reeeeaaally don't want to deal with the public (with exception of Apple). Ever had to deal with a major manufacturer before? I have. It sucks. It's SO depressing knowing that I'm basically on my own. Most do whatever they can to spend $0 on support and disclaim responsibility (even though selling direct gives them the margin to pay for this support. Assholes). There's a reason why we have retail centres...these places are populated with the people that can best handle the (local) population. We need them.

Good luck Adobe, but I predict they will try it, fail, and go back to the "buy it" or "rent it" choice.

Comment What am I missing? (Score 1) 96

CentOS 5.0 release: April 2007
CentOS 6.0 release: July 2012
CentOS 5.9 release: January 2013...wait, what?

Did I miss something?

At least they're not cutting off update support for an older version...that's kinda nice to see...I don't think many people were waiting on the edge of their seat for it though...

(I use CentOS exclusively on my hosting servers/as guest OSes and think it's great)

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