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Comment: Re:Why (Score 1) 215

by rioki (#47430171) Attached to: After NSA Spying Flap, Germany Asks CIA Station Chief to Depart

In addition Jürgen Klinsmann was the head coach of the German national team. He brought a good part of the current top players together. The current coach (Joachim Löw) worked under Kliensmann. Löw basically learned his chops under Klinsmann and as such there was little the NSA could have found out that Kleinsmann did not yet know. A testament to the knowledge and talent of Kliensmann is the fact that the US team got so far. (2:1 against Germany is not bad either.)

Comment: Re:Why only 12 rockets per year? (Score 1) 79

by rioki (#47429947) Attached to: SpaceX Wins FAA Permission To Build a Spaceport In Texas

Probably some haphazard environmental impact study. But once SpaceX has the foot in the door and a need to launch more, it probably can be arranged to higher limits. If they can lay pipelines through a Alaskan wildlife preserve, they can launch more rockets from a national park in Texas.

Comment: Re:"Rare talents"?! (Score 1) 586

by rioki (#47415029) Attached to: Normal Humans Effectively Excluded From Developing Software

The novice developer writes code he does not understand.

The mediocre developer writes code that only he understands.

The great developer writes code that everybody understands.

I would say yes, it takes some skill and experience to create simple to understand program. This does not mean that your average programmer can not hack together a functional program. But even your requirements of 2 years worth of training and experience is way more than the TFA would like, it falls more along the lines of "learn programming in 8 hours" type of requirement.

Comment: Re:Who's at fault for this? (Score 2) 229

by rioki (#47413489) Attached to: Avast Buys 20 Used Phones, Recovers 40,000 Deleted Photos

I would wager that the real impact is the opposite. It is like used games, on the surface it looks like a "lost sale" but in reality it provides liquidity. The used phone market then fuels the new pone market, since those that sell the phone do not have / don't want to spend the money on their yearly upgrade cycle. On the other hand those that buy the used phones don't have the money to spend on a new phone. Even though they may have spent the money on a lower end device, it is not a lost sale, since as mentioned before they supported the sale of a high end device, which again has a higher profit margin.

But if MBAs would also get that, that would be great.

Comment: Re:detroit vs SV? (Score 1) 236

by rioki (#47358331) Attached to: Google, Detroit Split On Autonomous Cars

Funny you say that, Mercedes has multi zone thermostats and fan controls with an auto setting. Getting this right is not that hard. They have been doing this since the 90s and it works quite fine even in their lower end cars. The only thing that boggles my mind is that they think you can have one side of the car at 18C and the other at 25C. I always put them at the same setting. Now that they are digital (HW knob & LED display) they could offer a sync option...

Comment: Re:those ARE a problem. Mechanisms, not results (Score 1) 263

by rioki (#47297007) Attached to: The Supreme Court Doesn't Understand Software

"A method of rendering a 3D animation in real time on a computer monitor is patentable subject matter." Just because you don't understand the subject matter does not make it patentable. Your example is a really bad example because it takes 2 coordinate transformations, one linear interpolation and 2 comparisons to go from geometry to pixels. From that point on it is just copying them from video memory to a screen. To anybody with a math background these are a really old hat and just because two specific matrices does not mean it is patatable. Computer graphics are a really bad filed for patetens because you are either in the field of basic math or trying to replicate physics.

Although I don't think that patents are inherently bad, the current burden of proof for software patents are inherently low. As being listed as inventor on two patents and having seen a few others, you can not claim that I totally do not have a clue how the system works. How I and few of my colleagues came to being "inventors" was, we just did out daily work of solving mediocre to boring problems and then someone comes along and is awed in his naivety and pushes us write a few pages about the "invention". This goes by lawyers and a few months later you are an inventor on the patent. To this day I have never invented anything, I just look around me and into other fields and am quite good at applying new ideas to old problems.

Maybe the LZW patents and similar groundbreaking algorithms may be worthy of a patent, but the current status quo you can throw out 95% of the patents, because any person with a modest intellect will come up with a similar solution to the given problem. The only difference is that patent holder had the problem first.

Comment: Re:Law vs. Normal Request (Score 1) 207

by rioki (#47252517) Attached to: Ikea Sends IkeaHackers Blog a C&amp;D Order

A cease and desist letter does not have to be threatening at all. For example take this C&D letter from Jack Daniel's to an author that used an JD inspired book cover: http://www.buzzfeed.com/bfeld/...

Just because you have a certain legal requirement to do something, does not mean you need to be a total prick about it.

Comment: Re:Oh my ... (Score 1) 253

If you think Gitmo is a paradise you're the idiot. It's not a hell hole but it's still a prison.

I don't think he was referring to the area around Gitmo and towards the soldiers on guard duty. Sure the "inmates" have a hard time, but the soldiers are on a tropical island and have off duty hours.

Comment: Re: 7.1a for x64 linux (Score 1) 146

by rioki (#47210173) Attached to: Auditors Release Verified Repositories of TrueCrypt

Only if you can handle the keying material properly. The problem with one time pad is that the keying material needs to be as much as the message to encrypt. Now if you want to transfer 1 GB of data you need 1GB of keying material. This material needs to be shared with the receiving end. Although a one time pad is mathematically proven safe, the burden is shifted from the problem to keep the message safe to keeping the keying material safe.

Comment: Re:lawl. (Score 1) 417

by rioki (#47202441) Attached to: Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs

You mean like France that totally does not have nuclear ICBMs and of the fiercest special forces or the UK with still entertains one for the largest navies of the world and operates one of the few VTOL aircraft with lot's of operational flexibility or Germany with Tank battalions few can rival technologically and operates sizable air defense force. Just because European nations don't hang out their military dong all the time does not mean they can't be reckoned with. The US military primarily only serves as pork barrel spending and has only little real geopolitical meaning. Sure the US invaded two countries in the last decade, but on a political scale that rather backfired. Also putting 300 $ more in education of civil infrastructure would not hurt either.

Comment: Re:How about Kindergarten? (Score 1) 253

by rioki (#47201255) Attached to: Kim Dotcom Offers $5 Million Bounty To Defeat Extradition

As it happens, you are wearing a red shirt. But it's a total non-sequitur. "Why do you care about my shirt?"

What does copyright infringement have to do with the color of shirts?

I would like to watch Game of Thrones, here is a reasonable amount of money. To watch Game of Thrones you need an HBO subscription, go buy a HBO subscription. Ok that is a bit pricey, but fine, I would like a HBO subscription, I currently live in Germany. Sorry, you must live in the US to get an HBO subscription. Ok, is there a different way to watch Game of Thrones? You can buy the DVDs. OK do you have region 2 DVDs? No we only have region 1 DVDs. Ok so my options are paying you money and circumvent the region coding, aka "copy protection" and potentially get 3 years jail time and not paying you money and torrenting / downloading the movies and potentially get 3 years jail time. You know there are occasionally situations where people will outright refuse to sell you a legal copy.

Comment: Re: Not surprising. (Score 4, Insightful) 378

I would disagree with you, the classical term hacking is used for any mode penetration. The difference between the late 80s/early 90s and today is that companies have started to implement reasonable procedures, like changing default passwords... Remember most hacks are still done through some sort of social engineering.
