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Comment: Terrible, misquoted translation... (Score 5, Informative) 334

by boazarad (#35219620) Attached to: On Retirement, Israeli General Takes Credit for Stuxnet Attacks



Comment: Have you ever tried "restoring" from Flickr? (Score 1) 680

by boazarad (#34949678) Attached to: How Do You Store Your Personal Photos?
Flicker is indeed saves full resolution images, but getting them all back in case of hard drive failure is quite an ordeal. It took me over a week, and a python script to do it - I wouldn't recommend it to the faint of heart (see comment below).
Flickr is nice for sharing, but don't relay on it as a backup.

Comment: Beware the cloud! (Score 1) 680

by boazarad (#34945892) Attached to: How Do You Store Your Personal Photos?
When uploading to photo sharing sites - beware!
I just finished moving my photo collection OUT of the cloud and I have to say, getting my 33,000+ photos BACK from Flickr (which is relatively open, as cloud photo services go) was not an easy task.
Cloud photo storage is plagued by compression and data loss (picasa), by warrantless unrecoverable deletion (Flickr - of a paid account! and obviously - Facebook) and other reliability/survivability problems.

Personally, as an avid photographer, I can't sleep soundly unless my photos are backed up in at least three places, one of the offsite. I accomplish this using a local mirrored drive, and the great cloud backup service - crashplan.
A mirrored drive would be tricky in your case, but you could use a USB hard drive connected to a family member/friends always-on computer. Back up to that using either the crashplan client (which is free for such uses, and works great) or rsync, syncback or any other homebrew solution. Pair that with a cloud backup service, and you should be fine.

Most importantly, never relay on the cloud as your single backup strategy - the internet is full of horror stories of people who THOUGHT they had everything backed up in the cloud... a USB drive sitting at a friends place is much easier to verify.

+ - Homebrew "OnLive" over a local lan?->

Submitted by boazarad
boazarad (1252292) writes "Online gaming service "OnLive" seems to have proven that high-resolution games can be "streamed" over a fast-enough internet connection. This got me wondering — why can't I use my gigabit home network to stream my favorite games from my high-end home-office bound computer, to my weaker and older HTPC in the living room? I've searched online, but can't seem to find anyone that has even tried accomplishing this. VNC or Terminal Services obviously won't cut it. Maybe the slashdot crowd has heard of such a project?"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Two pictures are the way to go (Score 1) 976

by boazarad (#31827628) Attached to: Red-Light Camera Ticket Revenue and Short Yellows
Here in Israel - red light cameras work just as the OP suggested - they take two pictures - the first showing you entering the intersection while the light is red, and the second - showing you already in the intersection.

I once had to make an emergency stop at a traffic light, and ended up stopping with my front wheels in the intersection. at this point the light turned red, and I was obstructing traffic - so i reversed about a meter to get out of the intersection which triggered the red-light camera. Thanks to the two picture system, I never got a ticket.

Comment: How impartial... (Score 1) 2

by boazarad (#26289947) Attached to: Microsoft Uses WGA to Obtain Record Jail Sentences
How surprising, a twisted misleading summary regarding Microsoft...

Microsoft obviously discovered the counterfeiters through users submitting information willingly - if WGA finds your copy of windows to be unlicensed, it offers the option of squealing out rouge salesman, and possibly rechttp://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=2893689eiving a free copy of windows for your trouble.
(oddly enough - the eligibility for a free is determined by the quality of the counterfeit software you purchased - only high quality fakes will earn you a free license).

This is one case were I doubt microsoft had gained any useful information without the consent of the users it belonged to.

Comment: Re:BSOD (Score 1) 725

by boazarad (#26169665) Attached to: British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
God help us if the reactor is going to be run by a windows machine...
That would really put the "of DEATH" in BSOD
With any luck, the reactor is still controlled by custom crafted micro-controllers, or even analog equipment. All the new windows machines should do there is provide a monitoring utility, or at most a control interface.

Comment: Re:BSOD (Score 1) 725

by boazarad (#26166999) Attached to: British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
Subs usually tend to maintain radio silence and acoustic silence under water. transmitting anything would be like sending out a homing beacon for any submarine hunting vessels that may be about. For surveillance or phoning home, a sub will usually climb to periscope depth and sneak out a directional antenna. Underwater "radio" systems are mostly designed for communication with a friendly ship, when climbing to periscope depth would pose a safety risk (collision etc.).
and yes, I do realize that the data transmission is acoustic, not electromagnetic.

Comment: Re:BSOD (Score 1) 725

by boazarad (#26162061) Attached to: British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
My point was that as far as espionage is concerend, on a closed system like a submarine - no choice of operating system would give you any measure of added security.

Plus - if I wanted to infiltrate a military computer system, I'd probably use a man in the team whose job is to audit and build the source code of the os/software :)

Arguably, it might be much easier getting an operative into the submarines CREW.

Comment: Re:BSOD (Score 1) 725

by boazarad (#26160323) Attached to: British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
- "Our operative finally infiltrated the shipyard, and is trusted by his superiors to preform regular maintenance on all the ships computers"
- "Wonderful, begin data collection immediately!"
- "There is one problem sir"
- "What is it?"
- "The ships computer are all running linux!"
- "OMG were screwed! we could never hack THAT!"

Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.