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Comment: The real problem here... (Score 1) 341

by BenJeremy (#47408797) Attached to: Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies

...is that instead of "saving" you on premiums, it will only be used as an excuse to tack on more to your premiums.

We already see this with credit ratings. Having trouble paying your bills, even though you pay your car insurance on time? Here's a nice 20% price hike to punish you.

This is the way this always works, particularly with an industry that you are legally mandated to do business with.

Comment: Should have filed in Nevada (Score 2) 346

by BenJeremy (#47375685) Attached to: Goldman Sachs Demands Google Unsend One of Its E-mails

...and used Microsoft's legal team. They would have gotten the gmail.com and google.com domains and then it would just have been a matter to use Microsoft name servers to commit a DoS attack against gmail's hackers, erm, users.


Comment: Re:Hijacking Business (Score 1) 495

by BenJeremy (#47362657) Attached to: Microsoft Takes Down No-IP.com Domains

Try finding the damn tech support number at Microsoft... for those who are affected, call this number and ask for "Operator": 800-642-7676

At least voicing our angry concerns, and failing any resolution (that won't really happen, but perhaps we can overload their ticket system), call their legal and corporate affairs office (425-706-7863, in the parent post).

I was directed to the "Pro support team" - if they try and sell me Azure services I am going to freak. That's just outright illegal - hijacking and shutting down a competitor to sell business?!?!? I don't care if that is the unintended effect - it is still incredibly unethical and illegal.

Comment: Affected me (Score 3, Informative) 495

by BenJeremy (#47357357) Attached to: Microsoft Takes Down No-IP.com Domains

I don't serve anything important... but I usually post images through my local server and upload to imgur "through the web" - it took several retries when I tried to do this a short while ago, and now I know why.

Thanks, Microsoft.... you can't just take over no-ip and then run it through crap servers that can't handle the loads.

Comment: Re:Where's my medal? (Score 1) 191

by BenJeremy (#47338725) Attached to: An Army Medal For Coding In Perl

Yeah, I got a couple of those during my time in. I did a few things to improve productivity and spent a lot of time teaching people how to use PCs (The amazing, Tempest-certified Z-248! Running Enable!). I think I had performed over 200 one-on-one classes in the ~3 years I was at that particular unit.

Tweaked the EDL-based print spooler we ran to get print from Camp Lejeune so we could store more than 65,535 lines of print (hmmmm maybe it was 255 lines)... that made it possible for the "night shift" person to come in @ 5am and still get all the print off and ready by 7am... before, we had to start at 10pm to get the same amount of work done. It seems that both communications and printing were faster if they weren't performed at the same time, by at least an order of magnitude.

Comment: Where's my medal? (Score 3, Informative) 191

by BenJeremy (#47333521) Attached to: An Army Medal For Coding In Perl

I wrote a nice database system to track inventory cards and print out cards that were pretty much identical to the forms our S-4 used back in the late 80s in the Marine Corps. It was much better than the system they had used - which relied on removing old cards, and filling out, by hand, all new cards every time a piece of equipment was checked out or checked in. It helped alot with leakage... and worse, with equipment that was supposedly checked out, but had actually been checked in (and the Marine would then have to incur replacement cost).

There were other things I worked on, but this one had a significant impact on our effectiveness as a logistics unit.

Comment: Always thought this was a joke anyway (Score 1) 199

by BenJeremy (#47310035) Attached to: FAA Bans Delivering Packages With Drones

Seriously... who the frack thought this would EVER be practical? It's like that nonsense "beer delivery" drone - except there was no way that drone could deliver a 6-pack, let alone a case of bottled beer to anybody. Range, payload, maintenance, control, and fuel all mean a big "NO" to delivering packages by "drone" for at least the next few decades.

It's a JOKE. Apparently, a brilliant one, because slashdotters still believe that something useful could be delivered in a practical manner this way.

Comment: Re:The author's example doesn't add up. (Score 2) 289

No, your analogies suck. We have never bought an SSD expecting it to randomly meet the specs. If you buy anything expecting i to randomly meet the expectations advertised, you are a stupid consumer.

We buy parts like SSD drives based on the specs. We expect them to meet the specs... every single item of that model should meet or exceed the specs. Exceeding the specs is a nice bonus, but not required.

A better analogy is buying an intel quad-core i7 CPU, rated at 4ghz, but getting a dual-core i3 part (no hyperthreading) that runs at 2.8ghz, but stamped with the exact same i7 part number, the only change being a revision number.

If I was a reviewer, I'd continue to review Kingston and PNY parts, with a huge caveat notice that this manufacturer is known to degrade performance by more than 50% in regular production models by substituting inferior parts. I'd also offer projected benchmarks of those crappier production parts based on previous incidents. Eventually, the manufacturers would get the message.

Comment: Re:PNY wasn't caught (Score 3, Insightful) 289


Damn witch hunts!

Comment: Exiting the SSD business? (Score 2) 289

They must be... because I can't think of a faster way to poison the well and scare customers off than cheating them. The Kingston move is downright shocking... whoever is making the calls for their SSD parts needs to be fired ASAP, and some serious damage control needs to be put into play if they ever want to continue selling SSDs.
