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Comment It's hard to vote out the Gestapo... (Score 4, Insightful) 208

by Grog6 (#47070403) Attached to: NSA Surveillance Reform Bill Passes House 303 Votes To 121

They know everything about you; all it takes is a "gentle reminder" and this bill is turned into a termite-eaten stack of drivel.

I didn't expect any different, It just means they had enough on enough people to effectively gut it before it was passed. We really knew that already...

If it really meant anything, this bill would have contained a passage giving Snowden immunity, as long as he testifies against everyone else inside the Govt that violated the constitution with respect to their illegal activities.

"It's not illegal when the President does it!" didn't work for Nixon, it should not have worked for Bush or Obama. Everyone should be in Jail, at this point, lol.

WTF has our country become?
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Comment Shielding is a good thing. (Score 1) 123

by Grog6 (#47034913) Attached to: Radioactivity Cleanup At Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 25 Years On

There IS a good reason for burying these things in the deep earth.

Some of the radionucleides' Gammas and Neutrons are good for 10 feet of dirt for 50% absorbtion.

100 to 1000 feet is where I'd start considering storage, due to shielding. Remember, neutrons will extend the zone of radioactivity over time. :)

IDK if Yucca mountain is the best possible place to store this stuff, but based on Fukushima, where it is now is much, much worse.

Comment Re:Amen, brother Amen! (Score 2) 522

I never used EDLIN with DOS, only with CP/M. I really hated it. :)

IBM's BASIC editor was the first WP program I used on DOS; I'm still using the PWB Editor that came with Macro Assembler 4. :)

I still have a machine that can play Duke3d and Leisure Suit Larry, lol. :)

To have to duck around here, you have to say "EMACS can't..." and follow that up with pretty much anything. :)
Firefox

How Firefox Will Handle DRM In HTML 361

Posted by Soulskill from the backed-into-a-corner dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last year the W3C approved the inclusion of DRM in future HTML revisions. It's called Encrypted Media Extensions, and it was not well received by the web community. Nevertheless, it had the support of several major browser makers, and now Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal has a post explaining how Firefox will be implementing EME. He says, 'This is a difficult and uncomfortable step for us given our vision of a completely open Web, but it also gives us the opportunity to actually shape the DRM space and be an advocate for our users and their rights in this debate. ... From the security perspective, for Mozilla it is essential that all code in the browser is open so that users and security researchers can see and audit the code. DRM systems explicitly rely on the source code not being available. In addition, DRM systems also often have unfavorable privacy properties. ... Firefox does not load this module directly. Instead, we wrap it into an open-source sandbox. In our implementation, the CDM will have no access to the user's hard drive or the network. Instead, the sandbox will provide the CDM only with communication mechanism with Firefox for receiving encrypted data and for displaying the results.'"
The Internet

Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades 286

Posted by Soulskill from the doubling-down-on-being-jerks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a letter released on Tuesday and addressed to the FCC chairman, a group of the U.S.'s top ISPs have warned that if the FCC re-classifies the internet as telecommunications, then innovation would slow or halt and network upgrades would be unaffordable. 'Under Title II, new service offerings, options, and features would be delayed or altogether foregone. Consumers would face less choice, and a less adaptive and responsive Internet. An era of differentiation, innovation, and experimentation would be replaced with a series of 'Government may I?' requests from American entrepreneurs.' They add, 'even the potential threat of Title II had an investment-chilling effect by erasing approximately 10% of some ISPs' market cap.' Ars Technica highlights earlier doomsday predictions by AT&T. The FCC is scheduled to vote May 15 on the chairman's recent proposal encompassing this reclassification option that the ISPs vehemently oppose." Reader Bob9113 adds that a protest is planned for the same day by those who oppose the FCC's plans.
Security

Do Embedded Systems Need a Time To Die? 187

Posted by Soulskill from the upgrade-or-perish dept.
chicksdaddy writes: "Dan Geer, the CISO of In-Q-Tel, has proposed giving embedded devices such as industrial control and SCADA systems a scheduled end-of-life in order to manage a future in which hundreds of billions of them will populate every corner of our personal, professional and lived environments. Individually, these devices may not be particularly valuable. But, together, IoT systems are tremendously powerful and capable of causing tremendous social disruption. 'Is all the technologic dependency, and the data that fuels it, making us more resilient or more fragile?' he wondered. Geer noted the appearance of malware like TheMoon, which spreads between vulnerable home routers, as one example of how a population of vulnerable, unpatchable embedded devices might be cobbled into a force of mass disruption. Geer proposes a novel solution: embedded systems that do not have a means of being (securely) managed and updated remotely should be configured with some kind of 'end of life,' past which they will cease to operate. Allowing embedded systems to 'die' will remove a population of remote and insecure devices from the Internet ecosystem and prevent those devices from falling into the hands of cyber criminals or other malicious actors, Geer argued."
United States

Kerry Says US Is On the "Right Side of History" When It Comes To Online Freedom 261

Posted by samzenpus from the everything-is-good dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Addressing the audience at the Freedom Online Coalition Conference, Secretary of State John Kerry defended NSA snooping actions saying: 'Let me be clear – as in the physical space, cyber security cannot come at the expense of cyber privacy. And we all know this is a difficult challenge. But I am serious when I tell you that we are committed to discussing it in an absolutely inclusive and transparent manner, both at home and abroad. As President Obama has made clear, just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should do it. And that's why he ordered a thorough review of all our signals intelligence practices. And that's why he then, after examining it and debating it and openly engaging in a conversation about it, which is unlike most countries on the planet, he announced a set of concrete and meaningful reforms, including on electronic surveillance, in a world where we know there are terrorists and others who are seeking to do injury to all of us. And finally, transparency – the principles governing such activities need to be understood so that free people can debate them and play their part in shaping these choices. And we believe these principles can positively help us to distinguish the legitimate practices of states governed by the rule of law from the legitimate practices of states that actually use surveillance to repress their people. And while I expect you to hold the United States to the standards that I've outlined, I also hope that you won't let the world forget the places where those who hold their government to standards go to jail rather than win prizes.' He added: 'This debate is about two very different visions: one vision that respects freedom and another that denies it. All of you at the Freedom Online Coalition are on the right side of this debate, and now we need to make sure that all of us together wind up on the right side of history."

Comment Re:Humanity is Sick and Twisted (Score 1) 608

by Grog6 (#46837227) Attached to: Are Habitable Exoplanets Bad News For Humanity?

We've always had somewhere to go to escape the "assholes"; that's how America was founded.

Of course, we stole most of it, and handed out blankets laden with smallpox to people with no immunity at all, but hey, that's the way it was back then.

The movement to the frontier is what drove most of the innovation in the last 150 years or so; now the War Machine is the only source of most of the funding in the "Free World".

Expanding to space requires you to be locally sufficient for all your needs; can't wait a week for a shipment of o2, lol.

Working in space would definitely thin the herd, tho. :)

Comment Re:Maybe not extinction... (Score 2) 608

by Grog6 (#46837125) Attached to: Are Habitable Exoplanets Bad News For Humanity?

There seems to be more overall effort into the obstruction of further progress, than to encourage it.

If we don't get off the planet, there will be an extinction eventually; either an asteroid or a "terrible mistake".

Either way, dispersal is really the only option in the long run.

If it weren't for the politicians, we would have had more moon missions, and the Shuttle wouldn't have turned out to be the clusterfuck it turned out to be.
(If you were along for the ride, the shuttle program was supposed to be completely different; missions every week...)

Comment Re:Model M Keyboard FTW (Score 1) 702

by Grog6 (#46810687) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Tech Products Were Built To Last?

The cord that I ended up getting with the keyboards I bought ended up making my day today; I rebuilt an old Isa bus system to use with an MCA card, and I needed a 5 pin pre-ps2 keyboard.

I bought 5 of those with the models ms, lol.

I'd love to find one of the ones you have, those come in really handy for programming; there's Nothing like unassigned macro keys. :)

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