Posts by Keith Smith 1

Expert gives Congress solution to vote machine cyber-security fears: Keep a paper backup

Re: @Keith Smith 1 -- Need to seperate casting and counting of ballots

Unless some takes your dead jnles ballot.

Re: Need to seperate casting and counting of ballots

A friend and I have discussed this very thing multiple times. 'ELECTONIC' voting should be two simple steps.

1) Go to touch kiosk, select your choices, when complete printer attached prints your votes in text and barcode/target.

2) Review paper and take it to agent at scan station, who scans it in, verifies it and you leave. If you goof paper goes in the shredder, and you start over.

Paper is maintained on site/whatever until the results are finalized.

Basically the current cardboard pen setup, just printed reliably on regular 8x11 or a4. You secure the scanner/hopper/counter machine/paper as appropriate. At the end of the day you re-scan the paper to validate. NO Exceptions! Recounts are by rescan only. Codes/targets on paper can have enough ECC info to prevent faulty reads.

User dialled his PC into a permanent state of 'Brown Alert'

Re: Always try putting up an RGB pattern first

Red always seems to be the issue. Pop cover, smear flux on passthru pins from connector. Heat pins one at a time with 40w pencil iron. If solder drops on pin add some, then clean off excess flux. (Water soluable fluxes tend to be very active) VGA notorius also for cold joints at the external ports, even on panels.

Re: Unplugged cable

Unfortunately, many people are somewhat green/yellow colorblind.

Qualcomm is shipping next chip it'll perhaps get sued for: ARM server processor Centriq 2400

Re: "suitably fat caches"? maybe not quite

Huh? Your argument does not make sense.

64 Cores in a single package. . . vs 4 16 core or 3 24 core or . . . Apples vs Oranges. When intel comes up with a 64 core package maybe but L3 is a shared resource, so the comparison doesn't make sense.

Samsung to let proper Linux distros run on Galaxy smartmobes

Re: Some if this is already possible ...

+1 on Hackers keyboard. Typing on it now. . . Now if we could just disable the right mouse click android insanity. . . For 20 years left mouse select, right mouse operations. Not effing exit/close/back.

Chinese smartphone cable-maker chucks sueball at Apple

Re: Beijing Intellectual Property Court

<rant>

Liberal anti-corporate clap-trap mostly. Your cigar smoking corporate execs who sit around and figure out how to oppress the workers have a small problem if there is competition. And it may take a bit of time but it will show up.

I listened to a roofer here complaining that he was getting $900 a square to lay down a roof, but now the mexicans where coming in and doing it for 200, and he couldn't make any money and their quality stunk. My thinking is if someone can even lay a roof for 200 a square then you were drastically overcharging at 900. My dentist charged me 750 for a crown, and the endodontist another 1300 for a root canal. Next go around I go to MX and pay 200 for the crown and 250 for the root canal. . . With a 5 year guarantee on the crown! I hear so much BS on why it's 4 times more in the US, but I can say this. The US offices had marble counters, tile floors brass railings, and the Endodontist was only in 4 days a week, 1 paitent in the AM, one in the PM. I spent 2 hours with my mouth wedged open in the US getting a root canal. as the PM patient. In MX it was 30 - 45 minutes for the root canal (much better even if less gentle). Dental staff was in there 6 days a week, a bit assembly line-ish, but it took 2 days back to back start to finish. I'll tell you why things are more expensive here. The people doing the work feel entitiled and are lazy more often than not. I would rather pay $350 a square for a better quality roof job, but if your not willing to earn it, too bad for you.

Products are no different. Much of the Apple IP is dubious at best. Patenting square things is somewhat obtuse, but most companies don't jump all over new tech until it's proven to make money. At that time what we need is a way to protect true IP, and as the inventor of that IP you should have a pretty good head start on getting it out the door.

As far as not being able to sell a cable that works with an iPhone, tough luck. Some idiot bought a product that only works with the manufacturer's cable, it's on him to pay the confiscatory prices, or buy a different product. Quit whining and make something else.

</rant>

Don’t buy that Surface, plead Surface cloners

BS . . . Re: There is no such thing as an LTE SIM card

Not to burst your bubble, but there are indeed LTE and NON-LTE SIM cards. Pretty much any SIM today will be an LTE capable SIM. Since the SIM defines the customer id, carrier protocol and frequency maps I think you could definitely call it an "LTE" SIM. However the old GSM SIM's for AT&T et. al. are not LTE capable even if you stuck them in an LTE phone. One could ask what LTE bands are actually supported on the LTE radio components. Now that would be useful information. "Only works in China" is not really useful here in the states. It's also about how many bands the device supports. Often you can get AT&T to work but only on one supported band, which can make things sketchy. Verizon LTE bands are rarely supported outside the US/North America YMMV.

Intel Atom chips have been dying for at least 18 months – only now is truth coming to light

Just now catching up. . . Double Bit

My personal 1815+ croaked about a month ago. . . Just bought another, and sent this one back. Then I get an advisory notice, about the 25 Cisco 4331's we bought last year. Gotta replace them all for a bug that will brick them in an eerily similar manner to my Syno, can't get it to turn on. Turned to my cohort at work, and said 'Wow that is the exact issue my Syno had, wonder if was related'. I wonder no more. . .

I/O: New Google design language will RULE OVER 'DROIDS

Re: For all the metro haters

People do not get annoyed with "change". They get annoyed with "change just for the sake of change".

IPv4 addresses now EXHAUSTED in Latin America and the Caribbean

IPV6 Sucks

<rant>

IPV6 has never been adopted because it sucks. It came into being at a time when 32 bit computing was pushing limits, so some idiot decided to jump to a 128 bit ( so we would never run out) hex notation instead of moving to 48 or 64 bits tagging on a couple more octets on the front that were implied zero. While they were at it they made it 100% incompatible with the current scheme, from notation to packet headers to "FIX" the problems with IP.

Tossing backward compatability was abundantly stupid; similar arguments were used to try and get CPU's to use 128 bit addressing. Fortunately level headed engineers shot most of that stupidity down. Even today most hardware doesn't decode more than 48 address bits because it's approaches pointless. 2^64 is a fraking big number. It all goes back to the old story of paying me a penny a day but double my salary every day for a month. Most people can't even grok compound interest. When you repeatedly DOUBLE something, the numbers get really really really big down the line. I wonder, if INTEL had a chance to rethink the 64-bit "ITANIUM" RISC vs x86 compatability if AMD would even be around.

(TCP)/IP itself was somewhat slow in widespread adoption. Internal networks runing IPX/burst were noticeably faster without the added overhead of IP packetization. It was adopted because it was fairly simple and allowed compartmentalizing and routing traffic more easily in wide area environment than other solutions at the time. ( I want an X.25 PAD! ). IPV6 packet overhead is a topic for another thread.

Changing an IP address from a 32 bit entity to a 64 bit one could have been done with a minimum of fuss, about the same as 'time_t' moving from a signed 32 to 64 bit entity. Once the libraries were adjusted, and the packet headers re-aligned, with some compatible extent marker traffic could have been trivially routed by the network stacks, but noooooo....

I'm a geek, I dissect packets for a living, but Im sorry 55.125.145.200.55.101 is a bit easier to grok than 45:26:AF:B7:2C:5A:99:27:39:87:26:45:67:89:FA:4C. Now just at a glance can you tell if I have all 128 bits there? And before you hand me the leave out zero's crap, don't even go there. I can't remember the rules. FF::01 but not FF:07::05::01, blah, blah. and if you don't need all that then why did you put it there in the first place? Don't get me started on the MAC address bullsh*t.

We "ran out" of phone numbers too. We fixed it by adding numbers to the front

7657 -> 5-7657-> 495-6757 -> 703-495-6757 -> 01+ 703-495-6757

Not by re-creating completely new dialing rules and changing to hex dialpads on the phones.

For 95% of folks NAT is quite sufficient and adds a modicum of security to most networks. As I recall IPV5 was on the right track then de-railed. Religious rants on NAT do not impress.

</rant>

PS Yea, I'm old. I've been doing this a LONG time, and I miss NOVELL. :).

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

Re: Nifty

Arnie / Eraser

The LINUX TABLET IS THE FUTURE - and it always will be

Re: Android

The best command line interface is tcsh not bash. Bash is better for scripting.

The GPL self-destruct mechanism that is killing Linux

Re: @Pete : Divide and conquer

XOh my. . . 1366x768 you say. Please buy an oem windows XP and give an install shot on that baby and tell me if you are any more successful. Ie I call bullshit on the argument. Your comparing a Vendor pre-installation with a customer install. I've had no end the first grief with 1366x768 on XP with various video cards.

And the worst film NEVER made is...

Umm. . . Ishtar missed the list ?

Ishtar. Campy movies have some redeeming ridicule value. Ishtar I actually walked out of. That two big name actors would actually star in such drivel. . .

Maybe I'm too old.

Google to FCC: Protecting Street View coder didn't derail probe

Re: Deserving

Your analogies are flawed. Deeply. Unencrypted WIFI is like putting speakers on the outside of your house with microphones in every room. Then you want to complain when the neighbors listen to what's going on at your house.

It's active vs passive.

If you leave your front door *open* then someone might wander in passively. If they turn a doorknob that is active.

If you throw your wallet out your car windows at a homeless person. . . You must mean to give it to him

Don't get me started on clothes, but if you dress raunchy and go up to a star athletes room at 2am don't come crying to me that you were raped.

The rest of your argument is non-sequiter.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: Like it or not, this Linux grows on you

Has anyone ever heard of squeeze? Or sid?

I find it rather amusing. Ubuntu is just a layered addon to a sid snapshot. Ubuntu "Server" is a joke. I've finally managed to retire most of the 10.04 server boxes I inherited and replace them with squeeze. If you want a stable system run vanilla Debian and put the packages on you like. You will get the added benefit of sysvinit among other normalcies. If you want to bleed on the edge with all the snivel. Well 12.04 baby.

Hard-up Iceland plumps for cheaper open source

Re: License fee vs transfer costs

The argument doesn't wash. If you pick the wrong fork, you simply switch, generally with very little pain or change. OTOH commercial software often just dies on the vine and you get stuck with migrating to something totally different. Then again as a person who get's paid more to implement the more painful change. . .

NetApp will jack up disk prices next month

WTF

A 15% increase. Nice. I just got quoted US$15K for a dozen in a shelf 2tb ea. Nets like 8tb. So our margin on cgs goes up 2 points. We jack up prices 15. Nice

Tesla pre-sells all 2012 Model S output

calorie storage

Until electrics can store the energy of liquid volatiles in the same space and weight with the same speed and convenience of replenishment it ain't happenin'

LightSquared admits it will knock out 200,000 sat-navs

Umm, didn't they PAY for the bandwith?

So, I paid for the spectrum within a guidline. . . Spent cash to develop a product that uses it. Then got stopped because a product in a different spectrum cannot handle me using my spectrum that I paid for. . . GPS needs to either buy more spectrum or shut up.

Help! My Exchange server just rebooted

Eggs and baskets

So what are saying is that putting all your crap in a giant database is a good idea? True unless it vomits. That way it's all gone. I've never had the problems with a Maildir mailstore an LDAP database and a davical calendar, but would be the first to admit it isn't as slick. Something about just being able to copy some files to make a backup has always apealed.

Oracle wins round one in bare-knuckle Android patent suit

sigh

lose java, use python, deal done.

RUSTOCK TAKEDOWN: How the world's worst botnet was KO'd

Thank You Microsoft

No love lost here for Microsoft, but I'm glad to see they have become pro-active in helping fight this SPAM crap. Whining about how bad Windows is, is counter-productive. It (Windows) exists and it's good to see MS using some of it's vast resources to shut these folks down. They have the resources and the low-level code access to both detect and pursue this junk.

It's about time they stepped up to the plate.

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

Dogfight Much?

Spoken like a true vetran pilot. . . NOT. Flight to climb is important, and so is being able to get out of the way. A missle traveling M2 does not turn on a dime. Way, way too many factors to dismiss anything. If ducks could shoot back, we wouldn't have as many duck hunters.

Sigh, Really?

I'm afraid there are some Isriaeli pilots who may disagree, along with a few of my relatives who flew in s/e asia and other places. Tomcat was a joke with all the fancy missles. Kept falling into the ocean. F18 and 16 were a different story. Then of course the AWACS up there to watch and protect. Lots of toys indeed. Apache is one awesome machine though.

World shrugs as IPv4 addresses finally exhausted

Nice Soapbox

"NAT doesn't exist in IPv6-land"

Hate to burst your bubble. NAT doesn't exist in IPV4-land either. (N)etwork (A)ddress (T)ranslation and in particular the oft used IP Masquerading aspect of it is a construct of some nifty programming against the IPV4 stack on a router. The same nifty programming can be applied to pretty much any network protocol from raw ethernet packets to some high level esoteric custom stuff. NAT is a high level gimmick, not part of the IPv4 packet slinging specification.

I can program my routing machine interface to sling packets any way I see fit as long as I present the proper IPvWhatever on the WAN side.

Just because the plumbing pipe changed it doesn't mean you can't run your water thru an R/O, It just means you have to buy a few new fittings.

BFD. Film at 11

There are plenty of IP addresses. Too many outfits own huge blocks they don't use. Only 10 to 20 pct of addresses are actually used. This will simply change and ISP's will simply take control of the numbers.

Canada? The computer vendor says no

SuperPad FlyTouch 2

My kids got me a SuperPad for xmas. Dual TF slots android 2.1 w/market. Plays h264 720p just fine. Can't get hdmi on the 60 plasma to work. Screen is resistive. I get about 4 hours of video. CCplayer will even play 960x540 xvids. Dual usb wifi and rj45 enet. Lots of issues latest updates help. Less than 300US.

Honestly a fun toy. Typing this on it! Android is pretty stable but I would like it to be a tad more powerful. this is 800mhz 192mb. It needs to be 1.2ghz 512mb. The rest of the spec is peachy 2gb flash is plenty with the abundance of usb and tf. Worth the 200+ from china to figure out I'd rather tote a netbook :). Acually of the USB keyboard worked better it could almost replace the netbook.

Sprint introduces $10 smartphone premium

Not Crappy

"CDMA is a crappy, proprietary technology that the rest of the world ignores"

No it's not. CDMA *was* a drastically superior tech to GSM, at it's original inception. It allowed 10 times as many voice calls in the same spectrum as GSM. It was also more expensive to implement, and required more licensing (Qualcom tech I think).

Both GSM and CDMA have changed rather drastically over the last 5 years, and GSM has been re-engineered to come much closer to CDMA in terms of efficiency. Still not there AFAIK. Frankly most of the European carries blew it by adopting GSM. Many of the Blackberry handsets are dual CDMA/GSM units for the world travelers.

The SIM card has never really lived up to it's promise either. A friend has a very large bucket of SIM cards in his phone store. The problem is all phones are not created equal, and the API's are changing constantly to the phones. Further *all* the carriers are forced to subsidise handsets, which pretty much trashes the SIM card model. Generally moving a SIM card from one phone to another will get you voice, and text if you are lucky. Anything else is very hit an miss even within manufacturers.

With the advent of "The Cloud" (pffft) you can store all your phone data offline nowadays anyway. Further, in response to the earlier rant. the government doesn't need to be involved at all in deciding what fee's a carrier charges. If they were you could watch your bill double pretty quickly.

Vote with your wallet and/or your feet. A Cell phone is not a "right". If you don't like it get rid of the thing.

California's green-leccy price system will stifle plug-in cars

umm Not that lossy

Your loss figures seem a bit high. Me thinks u fudged to some really worse case. About 5 points on a conversion. AC/DC conversion is much lossier if you have to regulate voltage, but we are regulating current. Switching regulators can hit 98% and up.

Intel shells out $1.5bn for Nvidia tech

Your joking right?

Your kidding. Most of the latest android devices have a builtin hardware decoder for h264. A bit flakey at present but give it 6 mos. The round of phones/pads will have dual core ARM chips to go with improved h264 decoding hardware. They will use about 1/20th the power of a pc and easily be able to decode 1080p to a 1920x1080 screen flawlessly.

Exim code-execution bug, now with root access

Wow

What a security troll . . .

I've bypassed the Debian/Ubuntu Exim for the last 3 years. Been using Exim since Smail post MMDF. I've had so *few* issues with Exim as an MTA (just get me started on sendmail) but frankly the default Exim compiles left out built in "C" library support for SPF and SRS, so I've been compiling by hand for years. Unlike the crazy kernel numbering, the "Upgrade" or "Update" from 4.69 to the 4.71 and 4.72 I'm using is a simple re-compile. All the Exim releases are pretty much bugfixes or integration of other long tested 3rd party add-ons and libraries.

I know it's hard to believe but API style changes in Exim were actually confined to the major release numbers, you know 2.x, 3.x, and now 4.x (years ago I might add).

The attempt by the distro vendors to complicate er uh, simplify the configuration is unbelievable. But even their crazy config schemes regress with the latest exim builds. AFAIK very little core functionality in Exim has been even deprecated over the years, even moving from 3.x to 4.x I cannot recall any show-stoppers, just minor tweaks and more functionality.

Finally I think the fact that vendors never bothered to "update" from 4.69 to 4.70, 4.71, and 4.72 had more to do with the overall stability of the MTA from the start, since it "just worked" they never felt compelled to update it every 1/2 hour. Patching 4.69 is *STUPID*. 4.72 *IS* 4.69 with 3 cumulative patches (READ THE FRAKKIN' RELEASE/PATCH NOTES!). If the distro vendors want forgo minor updates it's their fault. This bug was fixed years ago, 4.70 WAS THE SECURITY PATCH. There are no API regression changes 4.69 to 4.72 that I'm aware of.

Tehran conscripts Ninja masters to crush democracy

Gimmie a Seal

Give me a US Navy Seal or Army Spec Ops guy over your 'Ninja' any day of the week.

Nvidia taps Transmeta team for x86 chip, claims analyst

One Word, Linux

If NVidia puts out a quality GPU/Chipset/CPU setup, they could pretty much own the linux market on the small footprint hardware side. Their linux support is the best in the industry, (Don't get me started with AMD/ATI). I keep dealing with the flakey intel stuff, the dog-slow VIA stuff, and the arcane AMD stuff. Give me a Mini-ITX Mobo with an NVidia GPU, Chipset and CPU, under $100, that doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on, and I'll buy it.

No, VMware doesn't own server virtualization

Performance / ESX / VMware

ESXi has rather narrow hardware requirements, and the new management and consoles of both VMware 2.0 and ESXi are weak at best. Having an actual full blown OS underneath your HV adds a bunch of flexability to your mix. VMware currently has the market because it's tools were much better, and it's products were more stable. The latest console fiasco is stunning IMNSHO.

VirtualBox (Sun) allows one to set up headless VM's that console connect from any RDP client. This is a Huge win IMHO. Further I've found I can run VirtualBox and a couple of VM's on very modest hardware, like a 1.6 Atom with 2GB of RAM running Slackware and XP on top of Ubuntu9.04, something I was flat unable to do with VMware. Someone enlighten please, Will Microsoft's product run anything but Microsoft software? I would truly be suprised if it did.

Long term if VMware wants to hold market share, they need to lose the sorry console client, and do something about the performance. VirtualBox is not there yet, but a little polish and it's going to eat VMware for lunch. I've re-scripted the startup/shutdown for VirtualBox, and have 7 VM's running on some heavier hardware. I think VMware is getting the IBM throw more hardware at it mindset., where you add more blades.