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User: Captain_Chaos

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  1. Zero sum on Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year · · Score: 1

    Of course in theory we should then get that back in lower prices of consumer goods, since the manufacturers will of course pass the lower marketing costs from not having to buy advertising everywhere on to us. In practice of course they will keep the money, which is why I say fuck 'em and I refuse to play their game and look at their ads.

  2. What an odd name... on Feds: Red Light Camera Firm Paid For Chicago Official's Car, Condo · · Score: 4, Funny

    What an odd name for a car.

  3. Anti-phishing measures? on Gmail Recognizes Addresses Containing Non-Latin Characters · · Score: 1

    I hope they implement the same kind of anti-phishing measures that browsers are taking for displaying domain names with non-Latin scripts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

  4. Re:Next wave of phishing? on Gmail Recognizes Addresses Containing Non-Latin Characters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Worse; they will come from root@gmail.com, administrator@gmail.com or BillGates@gmail.com, only those o's and a's will be Cyrillic or something like that (can't do it here; Slashdot doesn't display them).

  5. Norse mythology? on Marvel's New Thor Will Be a Woman · · Score: 1

    This is just silly. Thor isn't someone Marvel made up, he's a loaner from a well established mythology, in which he is male. Why not come up with a new, female, superhero? It really comes across as pandering to me.

  6. As a non-American... on Privacy Oversight Board Gives NSA Surveillance a Pass · · Score: 1

    As a non-American, on whom it is apparently OK to spy as much as you want, may I just say: fuck you. Fuck you very much.

  7. Bad headline on Cisco Opposes Net Neutrality · · Score: 2

    The headline is up to Slashdot's usual standards I see. They are talking about quality-of-service, which is a common and uncontroversial measure to prioritise traffic which needs low latencies over traffic for which that is less important. They aren't talking about prioritising Comcast's video streams over Netflix' video streams! This has nothing to do with "opposing net neutrality", it's just bad, sensationalistic reporting.

  8. Re:stable magnetic field on Is It Really GPS If It Doesn't Use Satellites? · · Score: 1

    This measures the atoms passing through lines of magnetic flux.

    Remember that "lines of magnetic flux" don't actually exist. Field lines are just an aid for visualising the direction of the field, in reality the field is smooth and continuously variable. It's unclear what's actually going on here, but perhaps they are measuring the direction of the magnetic field very accurately or something like that.

  9. Re:watch the program on 5th gear on Official MPG Figures Unrealistic, Says UK Auto Magazine · · Score: 2

    people no longer drive sensibly: they are more aggressive with other drivers (not keeping a safe distance)

    Is that why traffic deaths have consistently gone down since 20 or 30 years ago? - Killed_on_British_Roads.png

  10. Re:watch the program on 5th gear on Official MPG Figures Unrealistic, Says UK Auto Magazine · · Score: 1

    people no longer drive sensibly

    [citation needed]

  11. Light on facts on Is It Really GPS If It Doesn't Use Satellites? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article is very unclear about how exactly these supercooled atomic particles tell them where they are on the globe. The impression I get is that it's just a more accurate form of inertial navigation. Or perhaps it compares the local magnetic and gravitational fields against some map of the Earth? I don't see how that would be immune to interference though, especially the magnetic part. And it would rely on an extremely accurate magnetic/gravitational map of the entire planet, which would have to be kept up to date as well as both those fields are constantly changing. Sounds very unpractical.

    I'll be very interested to see if something comes of this or if it will just turn out to be hot air and/or inaccurate reporting...

  12. Re:Just leave - So those are the choices... on UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law · · Score: 1

    ..be ruled from Brussels or join the USA?

    No, I admit that I was wrong. Just leave the EU, I don't really give a fuck what you do next. But stop trying to get all of the benefits and none of the burdens by carving out exception after exception for yourself, and pushing your prudish morals on all of Europe by sabotaging a crucial Internet freedom law just so you can stop citizens from looking at titties.

  13. Just leave already on UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law · · Score: 2

    I'm getting sick and tired of shit like this. Just leave the EU already and become the 51st State, UK! Good riddance!

  14. Accountability on UN to Debate Use of Fully Autonomous Weapons, New Report Released · · Score: 1

    If a robot killed arbitrarily, it would be difficult to hold anyone accountable.

    Whereas currently there is no indiscriminate killing with drones going on without any accountability whatsoever? What's the current body count for innocent civilians murdered by the US and its allies in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.? A few tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands?

    I doubt it would make much difference in practice...

  15. Keyless entry and start is awesome! on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    I'm genuinely baffled why a) this has not already happened and b) that it's generating so many comments and so much negativity. My ten year old car (a Renault Mégane CC) has keyless entry and start. It's awesome; I just walk up to the car and grip the handle: it unlocks. I get in and press the start button: it starts. It's very convenient and works perfectly. It's much better in every respect than the old fashioned mechanical lock and switch. To lock the doors I just press a button on the handle. All of this obviously only works if I have the keycard on me. It's even clever enough not to let me lock the doors from the outside if the keycard is still inside the car.

    It does have a backup system in case it ever should fail, which I agree should always exist. For unlocking the door the driver's side door actually has a mechanical lock hidden behind a cover in the handle which you can pop off with the emergency key, which is hidden inside in the keycard. And for starting the car you can insert the keycard in a slot in the dashboard. There's no old fashioned ignition switch.

  16. Re:Hmmm. On the edge of possibility... on Australian Exploration Company Believes It May Have Found MH370 Wreckage · · Score: 1

    I'm not familiar with the autonomous systems of the 777 but for a modern autopilot to enter a glide path as a last option as a failover would be a better idea other than to stall the aircraft and falling out of the sky.

    I'm not so sure. I know that the Boeing design philosophy differs from the Airbus design philosophy in that it gives more autonomy to the pilots and has fewer automatic protections. In the case where there are no pilots that might backfire (although I guess ultimately it wouldn't make much difference). In addition I wouldn't expect that a modern autopilot has a reaction built in for a complete engine failure, since it's never supposed to happen.

    My guess is that it would just try to maintain altitude, pitching up further and further as the plane slows down, possibly until it stalled and dropped like a brick, or possibly pitching down at some point to avoid stalling, which would still cause it to fly into the ocean at high speed and a steep angle. At some point the autopilot would probably disengage, since most autopilots are programmed to do so automatically when the plane's attitude becomes too erratic, after which there's no telling what the plane would do but it seems very unlikely that it would calmly glide towards the water (and hit it so evenly that it wouldn't break up).

  17. Pseudoscience? on Australian Exploration Company Believes It May Have Found MH370 Wreckage · · Score: 2

    I'm not convinced about the scientific integrity of this company. What they claim to be able to do sounds very vague, shady and too good to be true and there's a telling lack of concrete facts about how their technique works. The "learn more about GeoResonance technology" page is conveniently "under construction". The brief summary states they use:

    • Earth Remote Sensing.
    • Multispectral imaging.
    • Gamma irradiation.
    • Radiation chemistry.
    • NMR spectroscopy.
    • Proprietary know-how.

    Sounds a lot like pseudoscientific technobabble to me, absent more details. I'm getting a hint of Steorn here...

  18. Hmmm. On the edge of possibility... on Australian Exploration Company Believes It May Have Found MH370 Wreckage · · Score: 1

    That is close to the northernmost one of the two arcs that Inmarsat deduced the last ping must have come from, so I guess it's not entirely implausible.

    It doesn't seem likely to me that the plane would still be completely intact though, which seems to be implicit in this article. If it fell out of the sky due to lack of fuel, which currently seems the most likely scenario, it would have impacted the water at high speed and would surely have broken up.

  19. The Hague != capital of the Netherlands on Former US Test Site Sues Nuclear Nations For Disarmament Failure · · Score: 0

    The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, not The Hague. The Hague is the seat of government though, and the location of most of the international institutions like the International Court of Justice.

  20. Affirmative action == discrimination on Supreme Court Upholds Michigan's Ban On Affirmative Action In College Admissions · · Score: 2

    The notion that because an individual is a member of a group which has been or is being disadvantaged compared to other groups, that individual deserves to be favoured above members of other groups, is ridiculous. It's dangerous, unfair and unjust nonsense. It's discrimination, pure and simple. There's no such thing as "positive discrimination".

    Every individual deserves to have the same chance as everybody else, and should be judged on their merits alone.

  21. Re:Cut off your nose to spite your face on NIST Removes Dual_EC_DRBG From Random Number Generator Recommendations · · Score: 1

    Eventually it emerged that NSA had strengthened DES against secret cryptanalysis techniques that weren't generally known at the time. Many of the people that refused to use DES ended up using encryption schemes that were vulnerable to the secret techniques because they assumed the worst and were wrong.

    An excellent illustration of the downfalls of security through obscurity. The NSA could have known that would happen and that their secrecy might decrease the average security situation due to people not using the actually more secure crypto. They should have been transparent about why they tweaked the S-box values. People shouldn't have to assume anything, best or worst.

    And now of course the NSA have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted at all and nobody should ever accept magic numbers from them ever again...

  22. Re:Your first action after purchasing a router on Intentional Backdoor In Consumer Routers Found · · Score: 1

    The link also quite conveniently mentions the following tidbit: "OpenSSL was updated immediately in the DD-WRT SVN repository. It can take a view days until we can provide updated versions for all routers."

    Yes, it actually says "a view days" instead of "a few days". A typo is one thing, but that is spectacular... Did they dictate it to their computer or something?

  23. I don't understand why, in cases like this, so much attention is given to the question whether it's lawful or not.

    Who cares?! Of course it's lawful, the governments of the world have made sure to have enough overly broad "war on terror", "won't somebody think of the children", "national security" laws on the books to make it possible to find a legal loophole justifying anything. Fuck the law.

    Surely the question should be whether it's moral or not?

  24. Bell curve on How Does Heartbleed Alter the 'Open Source Is Safer' Discussion? · · Score: 1

    No matter how narrow the bell curve, outliers are still gonna happen.

  25. Assumptions? on Mathematicians Use Mossberg 500 Pump-Action Shotgun To Calculate Pi · · Score: 1

    Doesn't this rely on some rather shaky assumptions, mainly that the spread of the shotgun pellets across the target is completely random (which we know it isn't; the likelihood of a pellet hitting diminishes as you move away from the centre)?