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Michael

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  • Jan 05, 2017 @ 02:42pm

    Re: Electronic pre-COUNTING is okay

    Human readable paper ballots.

    Electronic voting provides a QUICK pre-count for the news.

    MANDATORY human re-counting provides the official tally.

    That is how you have a secure election that also had fast (pre) results.

  • Jun 30, 2016 @ 02:42pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Malmstroem...

    Addressing one specific point:

    The -EXTREMELY CLOSE- vote has revealed a deeply dividing population within the UK. The government has lost it's mandate of representing and enacting the will of it's population.

    More than anything else, the vote is also a vote of no-confidence in the leaders, all of them, within the UK. A complete reset and re-election should occur before any further actions are taken; including the actual invocation of any BRexit mechanism.

  • Jun 10, 2016 @ 10:12pm

    Re:

    Define 'storing'.

    Is it storing if I query a remote system for data and use the results somehow that is stored locally?

    What if those results are in memory?

    What if that memory is swapped to disk for some reason?


    Does this geographically silo data?

    What happens if two contacts are in different countries/regions?

    How is data that the two happen to share (knowledge of each other's contact information, shared messages, etc) to be handled? It can't be stored exclusively in multiple countries.

  • Jun 07, 2016 @ 10:13am

    It is a dark day for justice when my default gut feeling is the desire for the FBI to fail in this case based on the over-reach, incompetence, and their lack of checks and balances that would have helped protect everyone's interests.

    It is a dark day indeed when I feel that the wrongs of the FBI are automatically greater than those of some guy committing thought crimes (I hope that is the actual extent).

  • Jun 06, 2016 @ 08:00pm

    Re: Penalties aren't working

    There are a number of factors that would help here.

    * There should be no more eternal secrets; things should be re-evaluated every so often, with a maximum limit of ~4-5 years between reviews.
    * Each review should be by a completely different group.
    * The full unredacted contents of a secret should be hashed (fingerprinted) and published so that each reviewing group can confirm they are reviewing the same knowledge.
    * Ideally said reviews should be both internal and external.
    * External auditing, in a wide circular mesh of checks and balances on the whole system, should validate the veracity and operation of the system.
    * Whistleblowing should -always- be reported to external agencies (preferably at least three) which should reach their own conclusion on the matter and feed the results back in to the auditing/secret reviewing system.
    * Whistleblowing should -always- be anonymous (though obviously if very few know the secret...)

  • Jun 03, 2016 @ 06:17pm

    Update Repositories

    Windows Update REALLY should have a /list/ of repositories to install packages matching a given form from.

    This way a vendor could setup a model specific repository and just point the user to that / have a single URL that they click that asks the user to confirm adding the repo to Windows Update.


    Of course they'd never do this, because the point isn't to keep users up to date, it's to deliver junk-ware and vendor lockin...

  • Apr 11, 2016 @ 02:26am

    Re: Re: -- Why encryption doesn't matter

    Encryption wouldn't matter nearly as much if the money, physical resources, and social networks of those involved in actions of terror were traced; you know, /actual/ investigative work which has been so painstakingly designed in to modern law and civil operation.

    If the government agencies were doing their actual jobs instead of spying on the mostly harmless banal existence of the citizens they've sworn to protect then encryption or not wouldn't matter from the perspective of terrorism.

  • Oct 30, 2015 @ 04:18pm

    accountability through transparency

    If the entire budget, taxes received to money spent, were fully documented (optionally with classified items being release and review date sealed to specific periods), then this wouldn't be nearly such an issue.

    Of course for that to have teeth falsifying such a report should be considered defrauding the entire taxpayer base (that many /counts/ of fraud) as well as reason for automatic termination.

  • Oct 28, 2015 @ 12:35pm

    Please sort by state first, then last name?

    It would be much easier to find out who to not re-elect if this were sorted by state first, then by last name.

  • Sep 20, 2015 @ 11:15am

    Re: Also Of Note

    Or at least to use a spelling checker before writing something out.

  • Sep 03, 2015 @ 02:50pm

    Re: Re: Okay, I've read enough Lessig. When your first chapter glosses 20th century history without mentioning

    That's not entirely true. The 'least bad' systems we currently know of (due to real world experiments) are /not/ pure capitalism; any more than notable strawman alternatives (the corrupted form of socialism that festered in Russia/the USSR) are pure socialism/communism.

    The best systems tend to be ones that are more moderate; systems that have social safety nets, regulations to dissuade externalizing costs to the commons or others. I think, for example, that you would agree public roads, walkways, plumbing and even power systems are generally quite beneficial and necessary to a modern standard of living. The same is true for other 'basics' within a system. There are simply some elements that are too urgent, or based on physical locality, for competition to be an effective solution at an end user level. For other systems competition is better focused on various contractors servicing a platform's needs.

  • Aug 26, 2015 @ 04:51pm

    Re: Re: Re: What a joke.

    He never was 'crazy', but as ever it is difficult for him to share his vision and message in a way that makes sense to those outside of the field.

    I very much appreciate how forward looking and 'wear a tinfoil hat for the right reasons' he has been and for founding the Free Software Foundation.

    At the same time I think it is unfortunate that a more charismatic spokesperson has yet to eclipse the very notoriety you reference with true celebrity.

  • Feb 18, 2015 @ 09:37pm

    A loss of respect

    It's actions like this which re-enforce the loss of respect that the public has for supposedly honorable upholders of the laws of the land.

    However it is the divisive, destructive, and doomed attempt at forgetting the lessons of prohibition that create a rift of trust and establish an us vs them mentality in the first place. The solution is to attack the issue from an entirely different vantage point; to deprive criminals of things which the public is willing to buy from them. To give the public a safe, regulated, taxed, legal way of exercising personal freedoms in ways that do not harm others.

    End the silly war on terror and a waste of taxpayer dollars which could instead be re-invested in enriching the infrastructure and economy. Stop the outward flow of money to foreign crime rings and instead capture it locally. In all aspects, taking a more reasoned, historically informed, adaptive to matters of fact approach is the true solution to the loss of respect in all directions.

  • Feb 03, 2015 @ 01:58am

    Re:

    As I said shortly after the attacks; when I saw how America as a nation reacted.

    We blinked, they won. (They successfully instilled irrational /terror/.)

    Should some security improvements have been made (like cockpit doors, and passengers willing to rebel instead of flying off like cows to some random tropical non-extradition country)? Of course they should have; but we went further. We stripped our selves of freedom and dignity for no just end.

    The major almost-attacks since then have all been thwarted by an awakened public reacting to danger themselves.

  • Jan 29, 2015 @ 01:22am

    Re: Not how that works.

    The routing table in Linux is capable of sending most packets out of one interface and other packets out of another via normal rules (more specific route prefix equates to higher metrics on systems, so you could add a route per address).

    A larger question will be if the device radio package is capable of maintaining a connection to that many different channels of frequency at once. For devices with multiple radio channel support it might still be worth it to route time insensitive data (email, non-interactive things, buffered video streams (youtube)) via one channel and high priority stuff like phone calls over another.

  • Jan 09, 2015 @ 02:51am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    That and those logic grid puzzles where you had to go over a very scant list of weaselly worded statements and extract every last drop of fact possible.

    As you said, it's about being precise and clearly organizing your logic in to a set of dominoes that cascade to reveal a clear result.

  • Jan 08, 2015 @ 10:28am

    Willing to move but...

    Within the metro area I currently live I am willing to move to get 'proper' service. Though the only places that currently offer this as an option tend to be extremely high rent apartments with limited deals that, due to lack of competition and reliance upon single less large companies, might become defunct thus rendering the move moot.

    I also rather dislike how, very often, multi-dwelling-units have 'agreements' that prevent competition.

  • Dec 23, 2014 @ 02:07am

    Location of camera?

    How much of that biometric data is tied to the camera being head instead of body mounted? Surely there are some body generated indicators, however a vastly increased number must result from the type of movements a user knowing they are filming makes.

  • Nov 07, 2014 @ 01:18am

    DLC news - now Free Advertising (super effective)

    It's such a shame that following that famous Will Wheaton rule is newsworthy.

    Still, achieving increased longevity of a given game, widening the potential fanbase, and getting everyone already bought in to the platform to promote it to anyone they know who doesn't already have a copy (but might play it) is probably more valuable than the nickle and dime squeezing and overheads on sales that would otherwise accompany the DLC.

    Plus, various news outlets will also give a publicity spike since it is, sadly, noteworthy.

  • Oct 30, 2014 @ 09:12am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Two wrong (pizzas) do not make a right.

    Chicago can keep their casserole (please call it something other than Pizza) and New York can keep their grease soggy shingles (they probably were pizza when fresh from the oven).

    A proper pizza has a thin, crispy, flavorful dough.
    A proper pizza has rich, zesty, abundant tomato sauce.
    A proper pizza has just the right blend of cheeses to clad that foundation.
    Toppings are optional; sprinkles on top of this vessel of food perfection.

    (Larger chains I like the pizza flavor from: Round Table Pizza, Pizza Haven, Pietro's Pizza (sp) (haven't had either of them in years, still in business?), and though it wasn't as flavorful the /old/ Dominos recipe was quite easy to digest and the only pizza I could reheat properly without ruining it.)

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