Posts by a_yank_lurker 4138 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013
Oracle and Rutgers, one is a third rate (if lucky) software vendor while the other is a third rate state university. Rutgers has had such poor reputation that many New Jersey college age kids never considered going to the "flagship" state university unless they were desperate. (Rutgers is the official state university of New Jersey; there is no 'University of New Jersey'.) So it seems like they were made for each other.
Normally Lame Ducks take a caretaker role doing the bare minimum to keep the government functioning until the new President is sworn in. Obama has done several administrative and political actions that seem to be giving everyone the "finger".
The issue of tossing out Russians over the hacking seems to be silly because hackers can be based any in the world. So tossing out a few bodies looks good for getting a perp walk in the media but not much else. Also, in Pennsylvania, the judge throw out the recount claims of hacking after reviewing the PA procedures and practices. He found that the alleged hacking was a fiction in the minds of Stein and her funders. Since other states follow similar procedures and each state has its own system hacking an election is not that easy. Each state will have different equipment, methods, and procedures. Thus to hack the election, the Russians would need to guess which states are going to be critical to hack and figure out appropriate methods to hack each state. In the case of PA, the state allows, apparently, each county to use one several approved methods. So in PA you would need to hack at the county level. In the US there are about 3000 counties/parishes/boroughs (states are inconsistent in their terminology).
Also, in Michigan the recount found major problems with Wayne County (Detroit) unrelated to hacking; more like old fashioned ballot box stuffing. In Wisconsin, the recount (again no evidence of hacking) increased Trump's total by about 150 votes - a reasonable swing statewide for either candidate.
Applying Occam's Razor, the Russians are interested in the outcome of the election. They will attempt to hack political parties and campaigns probably for information. They are not likely to have the fine grained local knowledge to stuff the ballot box successfully. These comments can probably be said about any competent (and most incompetent) spookhauses.
So the better question, is what does making the Russians the evil heavy gain the donkeys? Trump does not seem to be enthusiastic about getting involved in any shooting wars. So unless his hands are tied, he is likely to have a very different policy in the Middle East. This means US policy towards Russia will be changing to probably a less hostile one.
@Adam 52 - I see a mixed bag of stuff that many home users will never care about. There are plenty of good photo editing software available on Linux (some commercial), virtual machines run on Linux, games are a problem only for gamers. The others seem to be more specialized needs even Excel.
Excel (all of Office really) has no real version control so if someone sorted the data and did a save then after a few minutes there is no way to undo the change. Sometimes there is temp file created which has the changes which is automatically deleted after a few minutes. Unless the sorter saves the two versions the original order will be lost.
One of my pet peeves with Excel is when importing a CSV file (at least how it is set at work) is it auto imports using the site settings for dates. Some of our reports have a custom, programmed date format in the CSV file which is forwarded to our customers. Queue autoimport, every so often the programming group gets a ticket to fix the date format in the Excel file. This means we have to verify the CSV file has the correct format and write up a reply saying this one is on Slurp not us and next time try sending some hate mail to bozos in Redmond.
I am more concerned about data security than device hacks. Personal data thefts almost always involve getting data on a large number of people (millions). Looking at the numbers at the worst ~1/3 of all American's health/account data is wandering around the internet. Depending on the number of duplicate records it's more likely 1/4 of all Americans are affected. IoT device hacks can have serious consequences like death are not likely to target large numbers of patients at any one time, more like onesy, twosy at a time. Also, hacking an IoT devices is not likely to get the financial data which is what most hackers are after. Now, if you wanted to kill a specific person hacking the IoT device might create some interesting investigative problems for the local donut eaters.
I doubt the flight crew knows how to check the device addresses and numbers. Plus they do not have the information handy in flight, not exactly something that is normally important to a flight crew. Also, once someone got the relevant data it take some time to find someone who could identify the device.
One of the key patents used in mobile phones was from the 1940's and Nokia (nor Apple) filed it. It was filed by Hedy Lamarr (the actress) and musician friend for frequency hopping. Nor did Nokia invent radio communications, a rather basic invention since smartphones are radio transceivers.
May be a storm in a teacup. When a plane crashes there is the possibility of 100+ deaths real quick. So there needs to be a real concern about how the systems are interacting when needed and how they are isolated. Given that security is hard for experts, some concern is warranted about the security of avionics, etc.
Part of the problem is writing workable code that correctly covers all situations. At this point in the development of autonomous vehicles this is not surprising. However there is a tendency to rush the technology out too early forgetting that software problems almost certainly will kill people.
Another problem with online voting.
Online voting is a snake oil sold to the dimmest members of the human race (aka Congress critters or the local equivalent). It is alluring because it supposedly rids elections all the problems such as hanging chads, etc. that other methods have. However, the problems other methods have are normally solvable with much less effort.
Because the powers to be do not want a paper trail or an easy audit trail. Its easier to manipulate the results and very difficult to prove it was done. Also, if looks like the results are not what you want you can blame the crazy Ivans for subverting the election.
(Wh)Oracle most valuable product is their relational database. As far as dbs go there is nothing spectacular about it. There are competitors with solid relational databases and there are other db systems which may be a better fit for one's specific situation.
Solaris has always struck as Unix clone/derivative with nothing special about it except the availability of paid technical support from Sun. Much like Red Hat Linux but without the clones (Centos) and close relatives (Fedora) being available.
Point is the jurisdiction will matter. Outside of the US, US court civil judgements would not prevail. Leisure Suit's minions would need to sue in the appropriate country which means that country's laws could play havoc with the shakedown. In the US, depending on the precise circumstances one might force the suit into federal court not state (CA) court.
According to an ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Department of Homeland (In)Security tried to hack Georgia (US state) voting databases, etc. (http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/more-states-confirm-cyber-attacks-sourced-to-dhs/476227320). And apparently Georgia was not the only state attacked. So who was doing the hacking? It appears the only proven group was the ferals not some crazy Ivans.
According to local Atlanta, GA news reports it is state sponsored (http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/more-states-confirm-cyber-attacks-sourced-to-dhs/476227320). However, it is the feral Department of Homeland (In)Security behind the attacks. I did not realize Putin was moonlighting as DHS official.
I have known "users" (a very loose term for some) that refused to take any computer security seriously even after having a serious malware infection. So having an idiot complain that something is not working when it is obviously working is very annoying. Sometimes the best solution is to sit tight and do nothing because nothing is broken.
Patents are a federal matter not a state matter. All of these cases are in FEDERAL court. Patents and copyrights are specifically mentioned in the Constitution with Congress being able to enact legislation granting patents and copyrights for the "promotion of arts and sciences".
@Paul Slater - US states have no jurisdiction in patent cases. This is purely a federal matter. The normal practice is to sue in the defendant's federal district court (for a company, where they incorporated/headquarters) not a any venue in the country. This has been ignored by the courts for too long. The Nine Seniles might accidently get this right.
This lawsuit is federal not state which means the federal labor laws are at issue. Discrimination is illegal under both federal and state laws but federal is the preferred venue to sue. Right to work states do have laws against employment discrimination - a charge that often is very difficult to prove in any state. Violating these discrimination statutes will leave the company open to lawsuits. Right to work is misunderstood to mean there restrictions on employers - what it means is the employer does not need to have a cause such insubordination to can someone. However, competent employers even in right to work state try to minimize employee/staff churn and avoid canning people with a reason even a lack of work.
What Disney did is despicable and probably a violation of multiple federal laws if the US Dept of (in)Justice would bother to investigate.
Read the opinion of the federal judge in PA who told Stein to bugger off. The PA system does not connect to the Internet, ever. Plus some PA counties use optical scanning of paper ballots, apparently each county can use whatever state approved system they want. Basically for the Russians to throw PA to Trump would require physical access to the equipment. In one county, the estimate was it would take 4 months for Allegheny County's machines to be hacked. The claim the PA is antiquated may be true but it is so antiquated that it does not connect to the Internet.
Now, take the PA situation and multiply 51 times (50 states plus DC) and Russian hacking seems rather unlikely. Also, the hacking would likely have to started about the time of the first caucuses and primaries. Apply Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is the US voters in key states voted for Trump over Clinton and the results are accurate. And Clinton ran an incompetent campaign at best.
There are couple possibilities for this. First the Russians did hack and throw the elections. Or the donkeys are smoking some good weed.
Russian hacking is risky for the Russians. If proven, it could be a legitimate causus belli. It would more likely anger Americans and unite the country for a war against Russia much like Pearl Harbor did in WWII against the Japanese. Ask the Japanese how that turned out. I am inclined to think Russians would not be so stupid as to risk a war with a very angry US. Putin seems to have a good grasp of history.
Donkeys smoking weed is possible as they do not want to admit they lost the election to a buffoon because the "rubes and other assorted white trash" voted for him. It's to shattering to their delicate egos to admit they have a problem. Regardless of the fact the donkeys have written off the "rubes and white trash" as scum whose only purpose is to obey their minders. And the "rubes and white trash" decided to remind them who is boss - the voters.
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