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Comment: Re:Keypad (Score 1) 398

by Wallslide (#43920279) Attached to: Keyless Remote Entry For Cars May Have Been Cracked
A relatively easy way to defeat such an attack is to have LCD-based numbers, and have the number location change each time the keypad is turned on. I've stayed in places with such security, although until now I just figured it was to prevent other people from figuring out your code by watching where you press. Preventing key-wear due to consistent use seems like a much better reason to have such a system.

Comment: Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 1145

by Wallslide (#43818945) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care
A regular sized Subway sandwich in Japan is called a 'footlong', despite most units being metric there (and when they aren't metric, they most certainly aren't imperial-based in the British or American sense. Room-size is often measured in 'tatami mats'. Oddly enough, there are different standards for those depending on whether you're from Tokyo or Kyoto.).

Comment: Re:Can't offer much (Score 1) 509

Parent here. I wanted to emphasize that from the point-of-view of a particular role, such as Web developer, the necessary-to-understand concepts and skills can change drastically. Think about when that role started, how all one needed was knowledge of simple HTML, and some file-serving mechanics. Now to write an application, one must understand so many new-with-respect-to-web-developers-of-old concepts and skills that someone who had pigeonholed themselves into a specific role could quickly become obsolete. One cannot say that a web developer from 10 years ago can just apply their knowledge to writing webgl fragment shaders for implementing a webgl GUI interface because the 'underlying principles never change'. Sure there were people doing those sorts of things at SGI in the 1980s and 90s, but they sure as hell weren't web developers.

Comment: Re:Can't offer much (Score 1) 509

It's perfectly doable to raise a family while staying current on programming languages. It's not as though the underlying principles ever really change, which is why experienced programmers can pick up new languages with consummate ease once they grok the underlying concepts. What you're talking about are idiots who think 'the world' is middle managers who will strip mine your life to get the project done a week earlier. Newsflash, older programmers aren't less capable, just less willing to be fed a shit sandwich than younger programmers.

The underlying concepts do change. People make the mistake of equating programming syntax with software development, which just isn't the case. Sure, syntaxes might be similar, but the concepts you have to deal with are rapidly changing. Going from imperative to declarative programming models. Worrying complex caching issues. Understanding GPU programming models, shaders, and using matricies to transform vector spaces. Asynchronous programming models. Concurrency models. Strategies for distributed state propagation. Various database technologies and their pros and cons. Mobile application development involving complex state management, and having to worry about power efficiency.

You can't just think about development as working with code, because you're inevitably using that code to interface with something, to do some work. Working with new interfaces often require you to understand new underlying concepts. Even if the syntax for manipulating those interfaces works the same as it always has, the logic requires you to stay on your toes, and to learn.

Comment: Re:what's the killer ap for bigger CPU on cell pho (Score 1) 276

by Wallslide (#43214109) Attached to: Galaxy S 4 Dominates In Early Benchmark Testing


I can't believe this was labeled insightful. I have a device less than a year old, and with a faster CPU I would be able to surf the Internet faster, and type an email faster. With a newer, more efficient processor, I'd get longer battery life. Rendering webpages on a phone is still slow compared to a desktop machine. There are many cases in which I am waiting for Chrome to render a webpage on my phone, and when there is lag between pressing a link to open it, and the web browser responding to my input. As for typing emails... many Android keyboards have fairly advanced predictive text functions, and on my phone there is often perceptible lag... more often when the keyboard is first loading, but also sometimes while typing.

Comment: Summary inaccurate (Score 1) 273

by Wallslide (#43032307) Attached to: What a 'Six Strikes' Copyright Notice Looks Like

I read the article. In the summary, the following is stated:

"The article outlines some of the CAS's failings, such as being unable to detect infringement through a VPN"

The article says no such thing. The reference to VPNs in the article states that if a user is always tunneling through a VPN, Comcast will be unable to inject data into their datastream, and thus the user may never see a "popup" warning in their browser. Added to the fact that users may not be aware that their Comcast service comes with a Comcast email account (or they may never check it), and there is no guarantee that a user will ever see a warning sent by Comcast.

Open Source

+ - Don't Panic About Closed Source MySQL Extensions->

Submitted by
jfruhlinger writes "Oracle has released proprietary extensions to the open source MySQL database, seeming to reinforce the worst fears of those in the open source community who opposed Oracle's acquisition of MySQL in the first place. But open source observer Brian Proffitt urges you not to panic: This dual source strategy really isn't unusual in the commercial open source world, Oracle has already released a bevy of open source improvements to the database, and anyway the EU extracted a commitment to keep MySQL open for another four years when it approved the Sun-Oracle merger."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Not just a malware trap (Score 1) 180

by Wallslide (#36986034) Attached to: Java 7 Ships With Severe Bug

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but relevant to the OP...

In Linux everything I need comes from one or more trusted software repositories, and all of the updates are performed through the same tool in the same way, so I do not need to familiarize myself with the different update systems for different pieces of software.

In iOS everything is downloaded and installed through the app store, updates are similarly pushed through a single (presumably trusted) source. Same with Android and the various marketplaces and presumably with Windows-based smartphones. (Symbian and RIM aren't really in the game anymore, and it is likely related to this.)

So that leaves Mac OS X and Windows as really the only predominant platforms where you grab stuff from every which where and install it. And IIRC, even Mac OS X tries to consolidate the updates into a central tool (I remember Java and Adobe updates coming through the Mac OS X update tool).

I expect that this model will prevail and within 5 years the majority of software for any system (Windows included) will start coming through central repos (or "App Stores"). Linux has been there for over a decade, but hasn't got their act together with respect to branding, ease-of-use, and revenue sharing (Ubuntu is bridging that gap). So if we can get to a point where software is signed, or at least has a verifiable hash, and it all comes from the same trusted place, then a lot of these issues will be moot.

On Android you can download from third-party sources, including app stores which operate separately from the Android Market. Additionally, those applications have free reign to update themselves. The Amazon App Store must be downloaded outside of the Android Market (due to it being a competing service), and updates itself independently.

Comment: Blindtype does this better... (Score 1) 45

by Wallslide (#36870604) Attached to: IBM's Morphing Touchscreen Keyboard Interface
The article discusses a keyboard that makes subtle adjustments to the keys. Take a look at this software though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9b8NlMd79w It looks much more interesting, with the keyboard software able to infer the orientation and scale of the virtual keyboard from your keypresses alone. They show how it basically transforms everything on the fly depending on where your keypresses are. Google bought them some time ago, and I've been waiting for it to be integrated into Android.

Comment: Re:Ha Ha, mine goes to 11 (Score 1) 615

by Wallslide (#36346574) Attached to: Cheap GPUs Rendering Strong Passwords Useless
And to further complicate things, the password that it gets at the end might not even be the right one. Sure, it will work for the specific type of hashing algorithm whose hashes you bruteforced, but if it's just a collision and not the actual password a user used, then it won't work at other sites which use a different hashing algorithm.
