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Comment failed media (Score 4, Interesting) 66

My dad had one DVD fail. Not a scratch on it.

What was so bizarre is the way it failed. The defective DVD obviously would not play, but it also would not eject from his DVD player. The drive didn't think that it had a disk in it, but the eject button would not work either. I had to go over there and partially disassemble the player because there was no supplied eject disk hole to use in his player. The player itself could have been bricked because you needed to actually open the drive first in order to disassemble it correctly. But I wasn't going to let a little detail like that stop me.

I brought the DVD home to analyze it and it was toast. I could only extract one low-res video track from it and everything else was completely unreadable

Comment Sunday rally in cryptocurrencies trading (Score 1) 156

As the inside traders make off like a bandit on the trading floor. I would like to be a fly on the wall and find out who prompted Trump to make this announcement. They obviously knew that would send the currency much higher and they could take their profits early.

On the other hand, its a really bad time for the Government to be throwing money at a cryptocurrency, right after the planned announcement, thus sending the price even higher right as the Government gets ready to invest. The scenario here is the price goes up, the Government invests, and Trumps cronies cash out and make off with what would be the Governments money in disguise of cryptocurrency. Then the price comes back down after all the fanfare and the Government lost money on the deal.

Comment Security measures are important (Score 4, Insightful) 35

I use to do work for the US Navy at our lab and network security was an extremely important consideration. The tactical systems needed an air-gap between the weapon systems and any other system with some form of external communications. Even entry ports for remote maintenance were of great concern because the satellites used for that session might be breached by a foreign adversary who could then enter the the ships infrastructure. Keeping all these cell phones and other equipment completely separated is more difficult than it sounds, so regular security scanning an monitoring for alternate pathways between various system is extremely important to look for. All you need is one bad actor to plugin some device to the local network and all the security goes out the window. Prevention of any rogue connections between networks must be monitored and enforced.

There must also be a way to terminate all external "general" communications that is not mission critical on a moments notice. All mission critical traffic must be characterized and alarms go off when undocumented traffic is seen. Not doing all of this is only going to entice the Russians and Chinese to infiltrate the systems waiting for their moment to disrupt everything. If they are smart, you won't know until they throw the switch.

Having so many devices on board makes it all that much easier for the adversary. One cell phone running a rogue app on it might be all it takes. Remember, each cell phone has GPS and knows exactly where the ship is, where the Chinese/Russians wish there was a big hole in the water instead. Every single cell phone must therefor be monitored to ensure that GPS is disabled while out at sea. Devices that are not properly configured for mission security will definitely sink ships.

Comment Computer room? (Score 1) 192

Do you remember your high school's computer room?

Yes, it was called math class where they showed us how to use this thing called a slide rule. Unfortunately they would not let us actually use one in class or on homework, but they did show us how they worked, just in case we decided to go to college.

Never did figure out how to program that slide rule to play Doom, but a couple of years later I built a computer from a kit in my dorm room because I could not get into the "introduction to computers" class that I needed in order to graduate. Apparently there weren't yet enough card readers for the number of students that wanted to get into that class, and I had my own computer in my dorm room with a keyboard and TV monitor. I could do graphical stuff, not just punch cards and print outs. My dorm room was in effect "a computer room", but that wasn't in high school.

Comment ChatGPT must now... (Score 1) 169

ChatGPT and all the like software must not regurgitate all the conspiracy theories and fake news rather than what is true. Being True, scientific, or logical, is a media bias, and should be the only bias ever allowed. The new edict is likely because the Liar-In-Chief doesn't want to be corrected by a computer. In fact that would be the best use of AI at the moment, just to keep up with the new administration.

Comment somebody's missing (Score 1) 106

"made up of the Treasury secretary, attorney general and chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with other agency heads,"

I didn't see any prominent software security experts on that list. What could ever go wrong?

Comment I want to buy these people a clue (Score 1) 225

Anyone who is considering 3D-printing a firearm is likely quite capable of building a 3D-printer. Kits are out there, so are they going to start serializing 3D-printer parts now? You know that you can 3D-print 3D-printer parts don't you? So, ere they now going to force all 3D-printers to embed special codes directly into the printed product so that these parts can be traced, like with office printers? How far down this rabbit hole does it actually make sense to go.

People who want to break the law can currently just go to the street corner and buy a cheap gun there. Making one is more about self-satisfaction than performance or cost. Buying a printer and operating it is definitely not going to be cheaper than the street corner approach to getting one. Printed guns have historically been about as dangerous to the owner as it is to the other person they intend to use it on.

Comment handles 60,000 customer calls daily (Score 1) 41

Ok, Define the word "handles". When I make a call to customer support its an exercise in futility. I go round and round trying to figure out how to get a human on the other end that can answer a non-standard question. Automating that first conversation with a bot that doesn't know anything does not help one whit. Though to be honest, the Bots are just as capable of dropping my call as any human is. For that one measure they certainly get an 'A' rating.

Comment 6th Grade Math Class? (Score 2) 78

I didn't even know there was a such thing as a calculator at that point. There was a thing called a slide-rule but nobody was allowed to have one until you got to high school. My first calculator was second hand and it cost me over $100, and I couldn't bring it to high school to use it. The first time I was able to actually use one for class work was in college, circa Fall of 1976. Definitely not 6th grade Math Class.

Comment '[Human Generated]' Signal Decoded (Score 0) 39

Its not like an 'Alien' actually generated this signal. Its just a man made signal coming from equipment we put on Mars. What's with calling this an 'Alien Signal'. Extra terrestrial (not from Earth) perhaps. The sensationalism of media headlines can be so misleading.

Comment wromg direction, you google brainiacs... (Score 1) 64

I want to know how many hours/minutes ago it was uploaded. I get tired of seeing news articles that are a week old. Even "newly uploaded" filters don't get rid of this old junk. Now they want to prevent me from even ignoring this old stuff? How are you supposed to know what is current and what is old then? The stupidity of this amazes me.

Comment Re:Send me money (Score 2) 136

I don't think its being advertised as a campaign donation, but as a commercial product.

I think the point is there is no limits on contributions because its not a political donation. You can toss as much money into the wishing well as you like. So far he has grifted over 79 million dollars from political hacks and stupid investors.

As with anything he touches, this will fail, because he never follows up to ensure any businesses success. He just looks for ways to let other people hold the debt while he walks off with their money. For instance, who is paying for the servers with the block chain and website to take your money? Once he has your money you no longer matter to him. Like standing there after a rally and expecting a bus to take you back to your car in the heat of the desert.

Comment Re:Finding it. (Score 1) 58

A FLIR camera on the cold side of the spacecraft should be able to identify this leak. The warmed internal air will escape through the opening and will quickly decrease in temperature as it expands into the void of space. The temperature gradient of this stream of gas should be visible providing the Sun is not heating that particular surface of the spacecraft. A spacewalk when on the dark side of the Earth should be able to help find this leak. It may only be a pinpoint where the gas is leaking but there will be a definite thermal anomaly at that location.

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