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Comment: Better to leave it up (Score 1) 243

by pseudorand (#43743649) Attached to: Irish Judge Orders 'The Internet' To Delete Video

Seems better for the 'victim' to leave it up. He can then claim slander and sue whoever posted it AND anyone who reposts it elsewhere. The burden will then be on those douches to have those companies remove the video. Net effect: People will learn to be more careful when posting untrue stuff about others and the Internet will be transformed into a bastion of truth.

Possibly I'm a bit over-optimistic.

Comment: Re:And... (Score 1) 618

> no one seriously expect a tablet to be a PC
As a sysadmin that doesn't get to approve IT purchases but has to support them once they're here, that is absolutely NOT true. Most of my users want an iPad. Most need to be told that they ALSO have to have a desktop or laptop to actually do their jobs.

Comment: Has anyone else on slashdot heard of a computer? (Score 1) 675

by pseudorand (#43657073) Attached to: US Senate Passes Internet Tax Bill 69 To 27

Why is everyone whining about thousands of taxing jurisdictions when we have computers? This is nothing more than a business opportunity for a few groups of tax lawyers and programmers who start a few companies that make software that throws a tax calculation into the point-of-sale software that most businesses, even small ones, probably already use. It will be a bit of a SNAFU to set up initially, but then will work fine, no matter how complicated various levels of government make the tax code. It will cost a bit, but it won't break the bank. Think turbotax and the dozens of other personal tax-prep software packages. Same thing.

And the benefit? There are two:
1) State and local governments can now collect taxes from all the citizens who benefit from their services in a fair manner.
2) We stop unnecessarily wasting fuel shipping things across state lines to save a few bucks in taxes.

And if you just don't like taxes, don't you at least like the ones that pay for roads, safe water, police officers and firemen more than you like the taxes that pay for bombs, warships, and subsidized corn, sugar and other nutritious foods?

Comment: Re:Privacy? (Score 2) 508

by pseudorand (#43559441) Attached to: NYC Police Comm'r: Privacy Is 'Off the Table' After Boston Bombs

You do realize that you just posted that comment /on the Internet/, right Mr. Jhon (if that really is your name)?

Jay: All these a**holes on the internet are calling us names because of this stupid f***ing movie.
Banky: That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously. Stopping the flick isn't gonna stop that.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/quotes)

Comment: You can't handle the truth! (Score 1) 297

by pseudorand (#43538983) Attached to: Overconfidence: Why You Suck At Making Development Time Estimates

I'm actually very good at estimating how long a software project will take me. But if I told you the truth, you'd tell me not to do it because it's too expensive. That's not to say I'm a selfish liar. You also don't realize the benefit you'll get from this properly working software. Trust me, it truly will be well worth the cost (yes, even the real cost that I don't tell you about). And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I think most of us experienced software developers know this. Some of us don't admit it even to ourselves, but it's true. We know if the software will benefit you. We know if we can do it or not. And we know how long it will take. If it's not a net benefit, we know that and we'll talk you off that ledge. If it is, we'll say whatever it takes to help you take that leap.

Comment: Re:"In-browser popups?" (Score 1) 273

by pseudorand (#43038163) Attached to: What a 'Six Strikes' Copyright Notice Looks Like

Almost all good points, but...

> Just because you think you're being clever, doesn't mean it'll work. As a further hint, how does the SSL certificate for any page verify that you're on
> www.google.com without trusting the DNS response from the network (answer, it doesn't). Sure, there are solutions (DNSSEC, etc.)

Yes, in fact, it does. The SSL cert verifies that you're on www.google.com because that's the entire point of the SSL cert. You trust the certificates of the CAs that shipped with your browser. One of those CAs has signed the cert provided by the host your connecting to. The cert itself contains 'www.google.com' in the Common Name field. You foolishly believe that the CA did some sort of meaningful verification that whoever they gave the signed cert to owns www.google.com AND that that person too the necessary precautions to protect the private key corresponding to the cert. But assuming all that is true, the MITM can't present an SSL cert for 'www.google.com' that your browser won't complain about.

So yes, you can trust that your ISP can't spoof an SSL connection even if they control DNS.

It will be interesting to see how ISPs actually do those warnings though. One would assume they will transparently route traffic like a wifi hot spot as you suggest above. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them just used DNS or something that smart consumers could circumvent. I would be surprised if they did the MIMT HTML injection thing though. Seems to legally risky to alter someone else's content. Plus, I think a lot of consumers would be horribly freaked out to learn that their ISP can do that, which would be bad for business.

Comment: Re:Pathetic. (Score 1) 841

by pseudorand (#42900409) Attached to: Elon Musk Lays Out His Evidence That NYT Tesla Test Drive Was Staged

> My home router keeps more detail than it took to debunk this story.

To be fair, your home router was designed by and for and unholy alliance between telcos, the MPAA and the RIAA to generate false evidence that you're pirating their crap content. Tesla is merely trying to protect their own reputation.

Comment: Re:Brogramming??? (Score 1) 432

by pseudorand (#42813033) Attached to: Is 'Brogramming' Killing Requirements Engineering?

> You might. To me iterative development is where you explore different designs as you go. However you generally know whether you're building a cash register's
> firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package before you start.

Ya, the cash register's firmawre, a strategy game or an accounting package is what you figure out in the 1 hour to 1 day you spend gathering a very scant initial set of requirements. Then you go code something so you can have those same discussions again, this time with a somewhat working piece of software as a visual aid.

> I'm not sure the appearance of a fad like XP quite amounts to a discrediting...
It's not fads like XP and agile that attempt to capitalize on common sense that discredit the waterfall model. It's the fact that most of us, in one way or another, do iterative development. And the fact that the dinosaurs that don't can't keep up and are slowly dieing off.

The reason it's a pain point is that those dinosaurs are dieing so slowly instead of in a mass-extinction. They feed not off of quality software and valuable contributions to the economy like they should, but off of long-standing relationships with other old geezers in charge of companies and governments who make decisions based on personal relationships rather than results and reasonable IT costs. There's lots of very expensive and inefficient software development still going on and it pains me to see it.

Comment: Re:Brogramming??? (Score 1) 432

by pseudorand (#42764835) Attached to: Is 'Brogramming' Killing Requirements Engineering?

> ...building a prototype without knowing what it's for
I'm not sure if it's 'brogramming', but it turns out this is exactly how it SHOULD be done. We call it iterative development.
The "specifications focused engineering" you babble about was called 'waterfall', and I'm pretty sure the 1) Develop Requirements, 2) Code, 3) ???, 4) Profit model was discredited long ago.

In the 21st century (and most of us had figured this out by the late '90s) we say fuck step 1, do #2 as quickly as possible then wash (aka refactoring), rinse, repeat. Step 3 turns out to be "get it into production" which means sales for a commercial product and internal use for something developed in-house. #4 comes after a few of those wash, rinse, repeat cycles, assuming you do it right.

Granted, you may have to replace true "production" use with some (usually expensive) simulated testing for things like medical equipment and nukes. But for non-safety stuff (and I'm guessing that's the majority of code written today), requirements development occurs only after you have real users get their hands on a real end product.

This is also why languages like C and in fact languages in general sans some middleware like Rails, Drupal or J2EE simply aren't the way to go for most projects. If you can't do #2 and have a working product for users to touch and feel really, really quickly, your project will probably be more expensive to develop than it's worth.

Comment: Why would Iran attack us now? (Score 1) 215

by pseudorand (#42673155) Attached to: The One Sided Cyber War

Say you're Mr. Ahmadinejad and your hackers report that they have access to all kinds of critical systems in the US and Israel. The US takes down your nuclear facility with a computer virus. Do you:

A) Take down US systems in retaliation, causing damage but revealing your enemy's weakness such that they have a chance to fix it.
B) Do nothing. Keep the fact that "all U.S. bases are belongink to Iran" a secret so that if the US ever does attack militarily you can deal them a serious blow at a more opportune time.

Revenge motivates petty individuals. Nation-states are motivated by intelligence, survival and strategy.

And any good nerd knows that the answer to the question of "have you been hacked?" is always "Not that I know of".

Comment: Re:can someone please explain to me (Score 2) 505

by pseudorand (#42565193) Attached to: How Verizon's 'Six Strikes' Plan Works

WTF is wrong with you people?

I agree with all the "I don't want it if it comes with DRM, commercials, poor resolution and buffering delays" and "All the content is barley watchable crap anyway" comments. Except that I actually mean it. If you say that and then you pirate it, you obviously do want it and are willing to steal it. If you say that and then pay for it but bitch about it on the internet, you actually do want it and are willing to put up with the DRM and commercials. I'm not. I won't steal. I won't waste my time consuming poor quality, commercial-laden content. Instead, I go read a book. Or spend time with my family. Or bake a cake. Or post a bunch of "holier than thou" troll-comments on Slashdot.

But the rest of you don't. The rest of you pirate and pay and drool all over yourselves to consume all that poor quality, barley watchable crap produced by Hollywood (okay, Peter Jackson did a passable job). And that's why it's such crap. The rest of you consume it no matter how bad it gets.

How about this. Make a New Year's resolution not watch no more than 2 hours of TV or movies a week in 2013 -- free, paid for, pirated or otherwise. Cancel cable if you have it. Cancel your Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. On the rare occasion that there's something worth watching pay-per-view or buy an antenna if you must, but don't guarantee them ongoing monthly revenue just to see the miniscule amount of watchable content. Deprive them of their audience until only the best of the best survive. Make them come up with some actual good stories and pay only if and when you consume them. And for goodness sake can someone please just kill 3D already.

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