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Comment: Re:git blame of the bug please (Score 1) 303

by pseudorand (#46698263) Attached to: OpenSSL Bug Allows Attackers To Read Memory In 64k Chunks

Looks like snhenson most recently committed the two places final s2n() macro call the above linked article identifies as the line that finally sends data, as well as the n2s() that got data from the remote connection:


Not sure which is worse, using the unsanitized user input (which it seems he MUST have known was user input) or the copy-n-paste coding.

Sorry for the public shaming, but it seems he'd better at least make a case that he's not on the NSA payroll. Of course mistakenly relying on user input is the sort of mistake we've all probably made at least once, so it's quite believable that it was an honest mistake.

Comment: Re:How? (Score 1) 516

Where the heck do you live that you can buy even a studio apartment for $10k? And even if you can, you'll spend $20k/year in gas getting to your job (not to mention the time you waste in the car). Okay, maybe if you get mad cash working an oil field in the boonies, but for most of us who have to live in a city to be reasonably close to work...

I agree with you that people should consume less, not demand huge, new houses, drive their cars until they can't possibly be fixed, and I do all that. My car is a 1998 I live 45 minutes from work because houses cost twice as much near my office. And I have a family, so I can't just rent a room (which is how I lived cheaply when I was single). But for the $800 of our mortgage payment that goes to interest, taxes and insurance, we can only rent a small apartment or condo, so borrowing and buying truly makes more sense.

What I'm really complaining about is the tax code and the fed's monetary policy. If you're paying 3.5% (i.e. earning -3.5%) on a mortgage and the stock market earns, on average, 8%, every extra dollar put in your 401k instead of paying down your mortgage is earning you 4.5%/year. But now that money is at risk for those years (and we have one once or twice a decade) where the stock market actually drops.

Tax and monetary policy should encourage people to save, not gamble. It /should/ be smart to pay off your mortgages and thereby distribute wealth rather than consolidate it at the top. Tax the capital gains the same as income. End the mortgage interest deduction but let us withdrawal from retirement accounts without penalty or taxes to pay off the mortgage on a single, primary residence (with some reasonable cap, say $500k). When Americans start actually owning their homes instead of the mortgage company owning it, we'll have less need for social security and medicare and be less resistant to cuts in those programs. And we'll save cash too, now that we've paid off our mortgages early, making us dependent on ourselves, not handouts from the Uncle Sam.

And the feds should NEVER bail out the markets. If we'd all owned our homes instead of having so much of our asses in the markets, we could have just let the big firms fail -- only a small percentage of very wealthy Americans would have been hurt much by that, and all of them could have afforded it.

And the fed should target a 0%, not 2% inflation rate. Would this hurt stock market growth? Of course, but that's fine. This free ride of a market averaging 8%/year just makes the rich (who have a larger % of their assets in the market) richer. Let it fail. Let it decline. But let the middle class get out first.

Comment: Re:hate the name (Score 1) 230

by pseudorand (#46538737) Attached to: Facebook Introduces Hack: Statically Typed PHP

Okay, stupid name aside, this is awesome. I've never had a single good thing to say about Facebook or Mr. Zuckerberg, but this could totally change that. Lots of devs disparage PHP, but they're all idiots -- PHP is heavily used because it's heavily useful. I haven't used HACK yet, but if it's not a buggy piece of junk might truly be great. I've yet to find a language that lets me go dynamic when I'm prototyping but gradually type when I see fit. So...Sweet!

That said, static typing isn't all it's cracked up to be. Java being the prime example, it makes for some very wordy code that's often tedious to change. And of all the bugs I fix in dynamically typed languages, very few are caused by treating something as the wrong type.

Comment: Re:How? (Score 2) 516

> don't borrow money. Ever.

I know that seems like common sense, but the very rich have engineered it so that it's stupid NOT to borrow money. This is what makes us all slaves. You HAVE to borrow money because if you have decent credit, a mortgage is as cheap or cheaper than renting. Saving won't work due to inflation.

But that's why the financial system is rigged. The middle class has to borrow from the rich and pay them, making them richer. We also have to put our money at risk in the stock market because savings will LOOSE value to inflation. And because the middle class has our assets there, the government has to bail out the market when it collapses like it did in 2007/2008.

We need:
1) The fed to target 0% inflation
2) Tax policy to encourage owning property and paying down mortgages more quickly, rather than paying the rich interest.

Or maybe just a good old fashion french-style revolution with guillotines and all. Actually, I think we're getting pretty close to that one, unfortunately.

Comment: Like you haven't though of that for years (Score 1) 234

by pseudorand (#46467871) Attached to: How the NSA Plans To Infect 'Millions' of Computers With Malware

Okay, everybody, stop your whining. I'm pretty sure every one of us reading slashdot has had somewhere near the middle of his or her to-do list something along the lines of "script mass exploit of remote computers in case I ever need to give the entire world a big F-U". There it is, just below "implement monitoring for everything" and just above "stock up for immanent apocalypse" (which fell a few spots in late 2012). It probably won't ever float high enough to actually make much progress on, but we've all though of it. If you could get someone to actually pay you to work on that one in a semi-legitimate fashion (i.e. NOT the mafia or Russian government), wouldn't you jump at the chance?

Comment: Re:Rule of Law (Score 1) 519

by pseudorand (#46430283) Attached to: Massachusetts Court Says 'Upskirt' Photos Are Legal

> If laws can be "interpreted" to go beyond their plain meanings, then it becomes difficult for those subject to them to figure out what is prohibited.

Really? Apparently you haven't read much of the law then. If that were the case, the we pretty much haven't a single law on the books, as just about anything written by lawyers and judges that I've ever read, the constitution itself being a prime example, is vague to the point of being useless. Maybe that just because I'm a computer programmer and when writing code anything ambiguous doesn't even compile, but lawyers and judges have got to be the group with the absolute worst grasp of language.

Comment: Re:Why so many trucks? Why not railroads (Score 1) 242

by pseudorand (#46399819) Attached to: Walmart Unveils Turbine-Powered WAVE Concept Truck

And what's wrong with subsidizing something we all use and benefit from? Those who can pay more do in the form of higher property taxes (the rich actually pay a smaller percentage to the feds income/capital gains tax, but that's a different story). But in return the can hire people at lower wages and patronize businesses with cheaper prices because those businesses can hire people at lower wages. Without the subsidy, we'd either have crime, a revolution or higher wages.

Comment: Re:They are all paid too much (Score 0) 712

by pseudorand (#46297979) Attached to: Are Bankers Paid Too Much? Are Technology CEOs?

> It would distort the free market and no one would take the risk...
Risk? What risk? The DOW did hit ~7k briefly, but last year it broke record highs on a daily basis. If you happened to be the idiot who sold at 7K, you lost. If you just kept your money where it was, you're doing pretty well. And why is that? Because congress plunged us deeper into debt and the federal reserve printed money like it was going out of style. And in the long run, those things will disproportionately hurt the lower and middle class in the form of higher taxes* that stifle job creation and inflation that erodes wages and savings.

So why would our government do this when there's obviously a lot more poor and middle-class voters than rich ones?
> ...and who is the shareholder? Your elderly mom, YOU, etc

Ah yes, that's it. Because the system forces all of us to take the same risk, independent of our financial means.
Between FDIC and NCUA, each adult can have $500k of government-insured bank and credit union deposits, far more than most of us have in liquid assets. Why would we possibly put our money at risk in the stock market? Because they pay almost no interest, yet government policies almost ensure inflation and profits in the stock market. So while we won't loose our deposits to bank fraud or runs on the bank, they'll slowly decrease in purchasing power. So instead we have to put it at the same risk that the very wealthy take in the stock market. Which means that when those systemic risks actually happen, the government HAS to bail out the markets or everyone, rich or poor, looses. This means the tax payer is actually on the hook to make sure the rich stay rich.

* Why do taxes and inflation hurt the poor and middle-class more? Because wage increases always trail inflation. And because the rich make most of their money through capital gains, paying 15% federal income tax while the rest of us pay more. We also pay a higher percentage of our salary in social security and medicare (there's a cap on how much of your salary is taxed for those). And since we have to spend more of our salary to survive, we pay a higher percentage of our earnings in sales tax. So I'm all for a flat income tax, but it has to take the place of all other taxes.

Comment: Re:Why the hype? (Score 1) 274

by pseudorand (#46231547) Attached to: The Death Cap Mushroom Is Spreading Across the US

Nothing in the Amanita genus is easy to id considering that it's a huge genus which includes a very large number of both the most commonly found and most poisonous mushrooms.

Now, if you mean that the genus, rather than the species phalloides is easy to identify, okay, maybe. But distinguishing A. phalloides from it's edible cousins is in no way easy, and you've got to be pretty dumb to eat anything that looks similar unless you have a degree in Mycology and/or decades continuous of field experience in the region where you picked it. There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters, as the saying goes.

This is especially the case when other both edible and choice species like Bolets, Morels and Chanterelles are relatively easy to identify, have no poisonous lookalikes (assuming you have the experience to notice key characteristics). Of course, they're much harder to find, but...

Comment: beta_feedback (what I just sent) (Score 2) 2219

by pseudorand (#46189425) Attached to: Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds!

Why not start at the beginning and tell us why the heck you're redesigning in the first place.

I read you're little "WE HEAR YOU" post. And no, you're still not listening. If you were, you'd know that we like slashdot just the way it is. No redesign. Why are you trying to change it at all?!? We're all baffled. Your stupid little post just said "we'll slow down". But nobody asked you to "slow down". We /told/ you to stop. Just don't touch anything.

If, for some unfathomable reason, you think you do need to change things, why don't you start by explaining why. Why are you trying to make /. look just like Ars Technica? Are your revenues hurting and you need to work more ads in there or increase readership to charge more for your ads? What gives. Why change it at all?

And if it's is revenue-related, why not just ask for money like Wikimedia. I donate to them every time they ask because I value their service. I'd give /. $5 ever once in a while too. I don't want to click on any ads, nor do I want to sign up for some paid account (I rarley log in anyway). I just want to read my FA's and comments. (Okay, maybe just headlines and comments).

Comment: Re:No company can build well with a bad spec (Score 1) 275

by pseudorand (#45589565) Attached to: How Much Is Oracle To Blame For Healthcare IT Woes?

Really? Don't blame Oracle, a huge and well funded IT company that claims to be the best of the best?

The defense of both the healthcare.gov contractor and Oracle keep whining about requirements not being defined until late in the game, but anyone with experience in software development knows that "requirements" evolve over time and iterative development is the only way to do any project of any significant size. Now who do you think is in a better position to know that and manage the project accordingly: A state or federal government official or the head sales guy at an IT consulting firm?

Buyer beware is still a bit true, but in 21st century America, and especially when accepting public money, it should be /seller/ beware. You can't (or shouldn't be allowed to) sell an obviously inadequate product or service and get away with it.

Both Oracle and the healthcare.gov contractor are 100% culpable. They should be in a position to know what they were getting into and should not have gotten into it if it's so poorly defined that they can't deliver.

IBM (another company I hate) actually did this right when they bowed out of that contract for a supercomputer for some university and just paid the associated fines. If you're the IT expert, it's your job to know how these things work and say if and when it can't be done.

Comment: Re:Pearson (Score 1) 663

by pseudorand (#45329591) Attached to: A Math Test That's Rotten To the Common Core

Slashdot needs to up the maximum score a comment can get just for this comment. Give it a 10, and give Pearson a -6.02x10^23.

That said, I'm doing pretty well in life because I can figure out WTF the complete idiots at Pearson were thinking slightly more often than not. So possibly preparing kids early for the idiocy that is professional certifications isn't all bad for the kids. But for society, which needs a useful mechanism to determine someone's qualifications, things look pretty bleak.

A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.