rainsford

93 ms·

601.
by rainsford 13y ago
To be honest, I found the final article more confusing than anything else. It was certainly well written, but it didn't make much of a connection for me between the recent news coverage, or even the email privacy bit at the beginning
602.
by rainsford 13y ago
This article is pretty silly. The example of "ringer" offered by the author specifically refers to instances of products that are made way better than what's available to the customer in order to mislead people about what th
603.
by rainsford 13y ago
Maybe I'm just not "getting it", but this seems like an incredibly odd decision. It is not a revelation that plaintext email can technically be looked at by people beyond the sender and recipient. And it's not clear wh
604.
by rainsford 13y ago
Because companies don't employ people to be nice or because they can afford to, they employ people because the money they make doing so is more than the amount it costs to employ those people. Even a rich, successful company may fire
605.
by rainsford 13y ago
I'm not sure looking at the pure money saving in terms of lower energy is the way to go, since a lot of the benefits are more intangible than that. The ability to detect when you're away, automatic scheduling and easy control fro
606.
by rainsford 13y ago
I'm sure it will be a consideration, but I wonder how MUCH of a consideration it really will end up being. The loudest voices against the government in the current debate seem unlikely to be people who would work for the government un
607.
by rainsford 13y ago
I don't trust other secure email providers, and to be honest, I don't trust Lavabit or SilentCircle...at least I don't trust them as far as they suggest I should trust them. I trust providers that offer encryption to prevent
608.
by rainsford 13y ago
I think you hit the nail right on the head. "Encryption" at a low level, like using AES to encrypt a block of data, is pretty easy. But you need a lot more than that to build an encryption system like a secure communications cha
609.
by rainsford 13y ago
And also historically speaking, nations with the kind of relative power that the United States has have behaved far, far worse towards other countries. There are things the US could improve upon, but the bar has been set impressively low b
610.
by rainsford 13y ago
I don't know exactly who Hayden was talking about, but various people on the Internet have done a lot more than "express support". Calls for "revolution" and "rioting in the streets" seem to pop up in com
611.
by rainsford 13y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but I could see an argument being made for a "numerical aspect" to privacy protections. The idea of a reasonable expectation of privacy as a standard seems well supported, and I think it could apply to this
612.
by rainsford 13y ago
Yeah, I guess I'm not quite getting why I (or anyone else) should be upset about this. Using unmanned drones a handful of times in cases where I would imagine a helicopter would have previously been used sounds pretty reasonable to me
613.
by rainsford 13y ago
Well yes, the whole point of the 4th amendment is so that we can "trust" (in the sense of feeling comfortable with) the government as a whole when it comes to searches because of the requirement for a warrant. In other words, the
614.
by rainsford 13y ago
I found the almost throw away shot the article took at Spideroak to be kind of odd. While I'm sure they comply with the law, their service would not seem to allow them to very easily "decrypt on command". In fact services li
615.
by rainsford 13y ago
The interesting thing to consider is that, from a 4th amendment perspective, the technology the author is discussing in theory goes way, way beyond protecting any rights found in the 4th amendment. I think this may have been the point of th
616.
by rainsford 13y ago
That's an interesting point, but I think it's difficult for journalists to demonstrate the transparency required for them to be both biased and trustworthy. Factually supporting your view doesn't mean as much when you'r
617.
by rainsford 13y ago
Just out of curiosity, I ran the same tests on my Linode (cheapest/1 GB plan) and got impressively different results for 2 of the 3 tests. My disk speed test was very similar, but my memory and CPU tests were well over twice as fast as the
618.
by rainsford 14y ago
Initial perceptions shape the views people have of each other...it's not just about how people view southerners. I'd guess from your post that you have certain preconceptions about "liberals" and "intellectuals" that aren't always accurate
619.
by rainsford 14y ago
While the author seems to blame his political opponents for the perception of GWB as unintelligent, a more balanced analysis should probably also consider what Bush and the Republicans did to further that idea. When you use words like "eli
620.
by rainsford 14y ago
Not at all true. There are many applications where a fast hash function is desirable and speed does not really impact its security. File integrity, for example, is less of a burden to check with a fast hash and the attacks you'd mainly be
621.
by rainsford 14y ago
Even in a meritocracy, those making the decisions need some way to both gather and screen candidates. Properly utilized personal relationships (as opposed to nepotism style situations) can be a good way to do both. Maybe Dropbox and Airbnb
622.
by rainsford 14y ago
I know the idea that conservatives are persecuted by liberal academics is a popular one. But isn't it more likely that what the article is talking about is due to rural vs urban or academic vs non-academic backgrounds and experiences rathe
623.
by rainsford 14y ago
It does seem safe to say that technically they really dropped the ball. The inadequate estimation of server load combined with the (apparently difficult) task of adjusting to the actual load suggests at least a few groups of people didn't
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by rainsford 14y ago
To each their own, but honestly I don't view DRM as "the real controversy". To me, the more important thing is that I paid them for a product that doesn't really work properly or reliably. Had SimCity shipped with on online play requireme
625.
by rainsford 14y ago
That was a pretty interesting writeup and I always like it when companies are totally (and quickly) upfront about negative events. One thing that occurred to me though is that performing a hard reboot of the routers required calling people
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by rainsford 14y ago
And I'd argue that that's a good thing. Being able to get an official comment and maybe some future consideration of the issue from the White House is one thing, but being able to substantially impact policy by getting a relatively small n