Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

@Charles 9 Re: @AC GET OFF MY LAWN

So which comic book did you read and found the ad to send $5.00 to get a JD degree?

I suggest that you actually learn the meaning of the term vexatious litigant.

Khosla is the one being sued. He's not the person using the law to harass others. In fact he does have some law in his favor .

Being forced to pay the opposing counsel's legal fees doesn't make you a vexatious litigant.

They sued him and the legal costs could be considered in part the damages that they could claim.

(It depends on the case and type of case whether or not you can collect for your legal fees.)

Because of the ramifications by naming someone a vexatious litigant, courts loathe to use that term and find someone to be a vexatious litigant.

The closest I've seen recently is a lawyer in Chicago who got in to a massive fight with his condo association over dogs, even to the point where his wife attacked a dog walker in an elevator and claimed she attacked her. You can find it in the Chicago Tribune. And yes I know some of the people involved.

@John Savard Re: Boo Freakin' Hoo

Ok,

Here's the thing. This is the complicated part.

Khosla is correct in that there is no easement.

So, specifically, the prior owner did not grant an easement to the city (public) which would have ended this issue when Khosla bought the property.

There is no fraud on the part of the city, county or even state. There is no 'right of way' document. This is why Khosla has legal standing not to allow people to trespass on his property. If we were only dealing with an issue of an easement... Khosla would win. But there's more to it...

There is a law however that forces Khosla to grant access to the beach because he has 'land locked' a piece of public land. (Actually there are a couple of laws which force him to grant access.)

Khosla is also correct in that he faces unknown downside in terms of potential liability if someone is hurt on his property.

The issue is that you have a couple of different laws at work and there is a conflict in how the laws are being interpreted. (Hence you either hash it out in a room full of lawyers or you go to court.) Khosla wants to keep people off the beach, so he's not going to cave. We know his position.

The simple solution would be for Khosla to sell a strip of land to the beach. He could be forced to sell via eminent domain, however the mayor has political aspirations. Note that city offered $380,000 for the land, Khosla said it was worth 10 million. (He should be careful in what he asked... )

What is being set up is that the city will use eminent domain, and Khosla will sue because he will claim the city is not giving him fair market value. Thus tying it up in court for a few more years.

Here's where it gets interesting. 90 acres sold in 2008 for 32.5 million is $361,100.00 an acre. While I haven't seen the map, it sounds like the city wants to buy one acre for the access for $380,000.00 .

On the surface it seems reasonable, given the price he paid. Even if you were to double it... its still far short of the $10 million Khosla countered with.

IMHO if the city were to offer him $500,000.00 for the acre it would pass muster. (Meaning its over the fair market value. )

Of course, here's the downside for Khosla.

If he were to claim that the property was worth $10 million, and the city did pay that... then his other property (89 acres) would also be worth 10 million. So he should be taxed at that level. I don't know what the property taxes are in California, but you can bet he'll be seeing red for a while.

If Khosla was smart, he would sell the land and be done with it. He has no upside.

Re: Alzheimers?

I think you're the one with Alzheimers.

McNealy was talking about the little people Billionaires can afford to buy privacy.

@Kev99 Re: Federal public lands law

And Khosla doesn't own the beach.

Just the property surrounding the beach.

So if you can get to the beach you can surf.

I agree that there should be a statute in California law that would force Khosla to grant access.

But there isn't.

The city could use eminent domain.

Khosla could sue if he believes that the price is too low. And he could keep it tied up in court for as long as he wants to, unless the city gets a sympathetic judge. The mayor didn't use eminent domain because he has poltiical aspirations and someone with a couple of billion dollars can buy influence to shut him down.

Note: If I have miles of coast line and the first 500 feet of shore is public land, its the 501st foot that starts the private property. Of course one person couldn't buy all that land. However if its a cove, then its possible.

@Ian, close but no cigar... Re: All you really need

You trespass and you first get a ticket. Then after a while, you go to jail.

You damage the property (e.g. knocking a gate down), you can be sued and also charged and go to jail.

What you need are a couple of boats, some very large speakers and a copy of Wagner.

Remember the beach is public property. What's to stop a group of people to show up at dawn coming in to the beach playing Ride of the Valkyrie and throwing a loud party?

Khosla can call the police, but they would still have to get to the beach...

If the city is sympathetic to the beach goers.. ;-)

So what you really need is an LST or a duck.

@AC Re: GET OFF MY LAWN

He won't be thrown in jail.

He's buying time.

The solution is for the city to use eminent domain. He'll use his lawyers to drag it out for as long as possible. A good lawyer and a friendly judge could short circuit that as well as the appellate courts.

Kholsa knows he can drag it out and the case could languish for years.

Khosla doesn't care about being important or missed. He's got his money and his friends.

I agree that Khosla is going to lose in the end, but he's doing this out of spite.

@Fan not so Obvious Re: Political catering

Clearly you're oblivious to the law.

I suggest you actually read up on Easements and rights of way. (Google can be your friend)

Once an easement is given, its hard to remove. (It can, but in this case... it wouldn't happen.)

The prior owner would have had to file for an easement that is then part of the property title. No easement, Khosla can be the grumpy old man yelling for the kids to get off his lawn.

The city screwed up because they could have used eminent domain at any time. It has nothing to do with changing zoning laws.

The fact that the mayor wants to be governor and doesn't want to piss off the ruling elite, that is the problem.

The state of California screwed up because there apparently isn't any law that forces someone who owns the property surrounding another one to be forced to grant an easement of access to that property. This does exist in other states. Or if the law does exist, why it wasn't used by the plaintiff's lawyers.

@Notas Badoff Re: Over my dead body!

It doesn't work that way.

The previous owners screwed up in letting the public have access including putting up a storefront without having given an easement to the city to allow public access.

Once an easement is granted, its very difficult to remove the easement. (Both parties have to agree.)

So that would have avoided any of this mess.

The other remedy would have been for the city to use eminent domain.

They could easily do this an force Khosla to sell at market value. (Since the city sets the property taxes, they assess the value of the property.) So had Khosla said 500K and the city 380K, the city would have bought at 500K. (The legal costs would have exceeded the difference)

In other states, when you have one property that is surrounded by another property where there is no viable access to the land, the other property owner has to grant you access.

So while the beach is public property, Khosla's property surrounds the access to the beach. So the courts should have forced Khosla to grant an easement. Since they haven't done this... I guess its not a law in California.

Khosla should have lost this by now, were it not for the political ambitions of the mayor who could have used eminent domain which the courts would have allowed.

@AC ... Re: But...

The moral of the story is to first learn what you are talking about.

The DAs always talk hard and the harder they talk, the more likely the case against the person is BS.

They want him to take the plea deal because its a win for them and they can notch their belt and move on.

The question is what evidence does the FBI have against him?

In terms of getting an indictment, any evidence that is proffered is accepted at face value to be true. Its at trial when the defense team can take apart the evidence and convince a jury that he is innocent.

Taking a plea deal is an admission of guilt in exchange for a lighter sentence.

If they have real solid evidence, he should take the deal.

If they don't. He shouldn't.

If he's completely innocent, he shouldn't, and should fight it.

With a felony conviction, he could be free to go back to the UK, however, he will have no career in IT, and could be limited where he could travel. Some countries will refuse him entry because of his conviction.

I am not suggesting he is innocent or guilty, but that you need to understand the situation of what is real and what is not. You have a twisted fantasy of the guy being sent to supermax for a white collar crime.

Gen Pop would be way more dangerous, depending where he is sent.

@FuzzyWuzzy? Put down that crack pipe son, its rotting your brain.

I guess you don't bother to read or pay attention to some of the news stories... Stop me if you've heard this one... There's this company called Waymo that was recently purchased by Uber...

There are more stories like that where a programmer who worked for a trading company got jail time for stealing proprietary code he wrote when he went to work for another company.

The point is that as an employee, your work is owned by the company and you have no writes to the work unless the company expressly grants you rights to them.

You want to work on an Apache project? When you submit code, you are agreeing to indemnify Apache if they get sued and you are explicitly claiming ownership of the work so that you can grant Apache license to use it.

Salesforce is in trouble and can be sued for the termination.

The issue is that they first approved the presentation. They then attempted to cancel it before they were to present. If the claim that they didn't see or get the text before the presentation started, is true, then they shouldn't be fired because they were unaware that the presentation had been rescinded.

If the company can prove that they saw the text and said 'oh fsck it', then they would have been right to terminate.

I'll wager that the company will give them a heft severance settlement to quiet things down.

BTW, if you take your code with you... you are breaking the law and you can be sued. Even if you win the lawsuit, it will still cost you massive amounts of money and could get you terminated from your current job.

@Daedalus Re: News indeed

Affinity cards is one way to track customers while at the same time the store has all of the credit card purchases made by customer.

Its when you have the Store branded affinity card selling your shopping history to a third party that you start to have issues.

With respect to Google, they have connected two separate PII data sets that create a really criminal bit of snooping.

Suppose you are diabetic. So they start to show you adds for diabetic products. and then tie back your pharma purchases for drugs and glucose meter supplies back to you. Along with your other prescription meds.

That's a no no and it would be illegal under HIPPA.

Google's only defense is that they can 'protect' the information, all the while they are snooping on you worse than the government.

Free clue. With the government they have laws. Google just laughs at it and does what they want until caught and threatened. Another free clue. Google can always sell your data to the government of your choice. (Now you wonder why they were cozy with the Dems? ;-) Moffit field use at a low price including a discount on fuel? ;-)

Re: Back in the day

The article talked about an improvement in the temperature and efficiency over current methods by a factor of 2.

You can go online and find YouTube vids on MIT research in to Fusion and their take on R&D outside of the large scale Tokamacs ?sp? where they want to use the plasma shape to help with its efficiency.

The issue is to raise the temps and the longevity of the 'burn'.

And yes... its still just 50 years away.

I blame Bush, Obama and Congress over the past 12+ years for killing high energy funding.

The interesting thing is the super conducting materials used to help create the magnetic fields has advanced. Kinda cool. So you should check out the vids.

@Kevin Re: Love the comment...

Most PhD papers are meh. Meaning that they aren't as radical or disruptive.

This is really cool work and it shows that the tools you get from the OEM isn't always optimized.

This should make those working for the vendors stand up and say 'doh!' .

Again Thumbs up for a good job.

@DougS Re: Not just to protect stored communications

Actually no.

First, if you're storing data in an encrypted format, you need to be able to decrypt the data for use. So you would be better off decrypting and then encrypting the data over time with newer methods.

Keep in mind that there's a cost to the decrypting that you incur when you want to use the data. ;-)

At the same time... the data will lose value over time.

Think about this... 70+ years after WW II, what is the operational value of deciphering the Japanese or German codes?

Encryption should be strong enough to protect the data as long as the value of the data exceeds the cost of the encryption. Keep in mind that you will also have protections around the data which reduces access to the data in the first place.

@Milton Re: @ Mark 65 Possible deadly flaw - compromised software

Using your army training.

The concept is to generate a single use pub/pri key as the initial wrapper for the counter party to send you a random secret.

Then you can further use the shared secret...

Simple concept.

The issue being raised was that the random secret wasn't so random.

But if you have a random noise file, changing the offset in to the file will increase the randomness instead of sharing the same file each time. If you were to then change the length of the seed and hash it using a strong algo (e.g. SHA-2) you will have a fairly unique number of a fixed length that is well ... more random and harder to find over time.

Note: If I use the same secret over and over and only generate a new pub/pri key, then its possible to break it w a powerful enough quantum computer. If the secret is not the same... then you will have a bit harder time, now wouldn't you?

Does that make sense?

@Milton ... Re: @ Mark 65 Possible deadly flaw - compromised software

WHOA!

You misunderstood my comment.

From the article:

The issue that was being raised was that the lack of randomness in the responder's payload.

Yes you are correct. All I would want is a random start point in to the noise file. Yes, even though the file of random noise is random, I wanted to add more randomness by offsetting the starting point in to the file.

Most people download a random noise file than try to generate one themselves. (There are actually web sites that sell random files. )

So if I have a 8KB random noise file, I could randomly set the offset such that I can generate multiple sets of 4K or 8K strings that are less likely to be repeatedly sent to the counter party.

I don't need to do the hash, however the hash would be smaller than the 8K file and would be faster.

The key to this is that the pub/pri key is being generated on the fly and is used one time (implied) and then you're sharing a random secret back. The implication is that the random secret is also one time. Thus sending the same random 8K secret would reduce its effectiveness. By randomly changing the starting point would increase the 'randomness' in the process. If you take a random length and hash, you would increase the randomness with a potentially long enough value that changes each time.

Does that make sense?

Yo! Zalazny wantabe ... Re: @ Mark 65 Possible deadly flaw - compromised software

One of the assumptions of intelligence is that you assume your opponent has perfect intelligence. Thus they'd have the noise file as well. The proposed solution here is far better than your approach. Nice one, though.

Love your lit reference to a fantasy/fiction character that can never die...

But you missed the point.

No. Perfect intelligence would be that they have the same random noise sample. Thus if you use a less than random number generator, it would be possible to generate a series of pairs of random numbers (offset and length) and could then generate the same hash that you use. (Assuming that they also know which hash you are using.)

But the attacker doesn't have your random noise file, nor do they know which hash algo you're using. So they can't easily find your seed. Which is the point.

Note: I was responding to a fellow commentard who believes that FOSS is better than a proprietary solution. Which in this case isn't true. I just created a simple way to generate a secure random number that would be very difficult to break. The whole example was how to get a more random number or seed for your encryption algo than one from simply using a random number generator which you may find to be less than random...

@ Mark 65 Re: Possible deadly flaw - compromised software

Actually no.

There are other ways to increase randomness.

Imagine using the random number to find a seek position in to a file of random noise. Then a second number to get its length. And then take a hash for your random value.

Now tell me how a quantum computer can break that since they lack the actual random noise file.

It may not be the fastest, but it will do the job

@AC ...Re: Why go Anonymous you coward!

Sorry, but I am one of those contractors that gets called in to do the heavy lifting. I've worked in telco where 80% of the work was done by contractors/consultants. And this product became the cornerstone of the company. Of course every one of us contractors pushed ourselves to do our best work and we were a band of professionals.

Smaller teams of seasoned experts will always outperform the marching masses... regardless as employee or contractor.

When the contractor believes that he's only as good as his last project... he has skin in the game.

Why go Anonymous you coward!

<side rant>

Look you silly git, when you have a real comment that no one in their right mind will find offensive, why hide yourself? Or do you just like the Guy Fawkes icon? :-P

</side rant>

25% is a huge number. When you hear it from the government, admitting their failure, we know that they are guessing on the lower side and that the number is much higher.

As an IT professional, I look at some of the projects that failed and I have come to realize that its more than just setting realistic expectations, but that there aren't enough highly skilled developers working out there at all levels.

<rant>

Too many IT people lack the core training that you get from a solid engineering program. Boot camps can teach you to code, but they don't train you in the theory or how to think about solving a problem.

Too many HR types hire in staff who couldn't design or program their way out of a paper bag. Too much focus on agile where its really just a set of iterative waterfall projects and isn't really all that agile because if you need to correct a previous sprint, you've upset their apple cart. RAP/RAD is now becoming a lost art.

Sorry to say, but if the UK gov were to actually spend $$$ and hire top notch guys who have mastered their craft, they would end up spending less overall on the project and come out ahead. Of course this goes back to the real problem... There aren't enough of us to go around and those who are around end up competing with people who cost 1/2 of their rate and lie on their resumes to get the job for which they are not qualified.

</rant>

I apologize for the rant but seriously, this industry is so f-'d up its insane. On both sides of the pond.

Re: C is an excellent language for security...

Like its been said.

If you can't master C, then you'll never be a Jedi Master.

And Like I said above.

Never put a regular driver in an F1 car and expect good things.

@AC Re: C is an excellent language for security...

Spoken like a person who never mastered the C language.

If you've never learned to code in C, then you'll never be a jedi master.

Said as an old Jedi Master who's written a couple of C programs/apps and an embedded OS still in use today around the world.