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User: moderatorrater

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  1. Re:Just wondering on A Virtualized Linux System For Windows · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linuces. The 'x' is only the nominative singular form, for everything else you use c + ending.

  2. Re:It's about time on US Senate Asks for National Security Letter Explanation · · Score: 1

    Correction: some of them left contradictory documents that go a long way towards explaining where some of their heads were at. 55 delegates attended, more than 5 different plans propesed, and a lot of dissent (leading, in part, to the creation of the bill of rights). Compromises were put in place, and the final arrangement was not the idea of any one or even three people, it was a balance of the needs of many people.

    With 55 people contributing on behalf of 13 political bodies, claiming to know what the framers intended is, at best, overly optimistic.

  3. Re:And on the plus side. of plus-size.. on Fat People Cause Global Warming, Higher Food Prices · · Score: 1

    Oh, so you don't really understand Darwinism. Unless you get heart disease or have a stroke before you hit sexual maturity, this is irrelevant Exactly, because as soon as we can't reproduce, we completely disappear from the lives of our families forever!

    Either that or else having a strong support system, including and especially those who no longer reproduce, tends to increase the odds of survival for the children. This is especially true in today's society, where the older one is, the more likely they are to be able to help a family member in need. I couldn't even begin to pay for food and lodging for my extended family, but my grandparents can and are for the family reunion. They're not rich, but they're comfortably retired and they own their home. If they were to die, then our available resources to ensure survival would suffer quite a bit.

    It makes me wonder if menopause was built into the human body because an infertile woman who takes care of her offspring is going to have more survive than a woman who keeps having babies until she eventually dies in child birth. Even if that's not the case, for a family-oriented society such as ours, our actions help the viability of our offspring long after we stop reproducing.
  4. Re:It's about time on US Senate Asks for National Security Letter Explanation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The intent of the framers was not to create a fixed/rigid document to define government for all time, but to allow, nay, encourage citizens to change that government and document to suit all people in the pursuit of freedom and happiness etc. No, no, the intent of the framers was to tenderize meat more efficiently, and they knew that to produce meat tenderizer in the bulk that they wanted would require that government stay out of the way. Everything else was incidental to the framers' opinions.

    In reality, it was a large group of men who all had differing opinions of what government should be and who all are now dead, and therefore unable to tell us what they intended. That's why they left a document to base the government on, so that we wouldn't worry about their intent, but the one document they left us with legal force. Intention should only be considered far enough to determine the meaning of archaic words because anything else cannot be independently verified.
  5. Re:thought crime on Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's a difference between telling the age of a girl with clothes on by an amateur and telling the age of a naked girl with doctors there pointing at physiological signs that are very reliable (distribution of fat, proportions, etc). That said, I would hope that if there's any doubt at all that the girl would have to be found first so that her age was without question.

  6. ridiculous straw man on Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That arguments ridiculous. There's nothing inherent in being black that makes them more likely to commit crimes, the root cause is in society and culture. Also, they don't actively seek out being black, whereas you're not born with a thumb drive full of kiddie porn. This is closer to speeding laws, where a certain behavior hasn't harmed someone else yet, but it's increasing the probability of you hurting someone in the future.

    Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people. Putting someone in jail for kiddie porn is completely reasonable to me, although I do think the process is emotionally charged to the point that it's hard for justice to be done in these cases. It ends up smelling like more of a witch hunt than anything, but, as CS Lewis said, witch hunts are completely reasonable if witches exist.

  7. Re:thought crime on Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act. Yes, yes it would be. As it stands they prosecute people who have the image but didn't commit the act. Those who seek sexual gratification from these images are likely the ones who are going to pursue the actual act in the future, or so goes the reasoning.

    What I find interesting about that is that a similar law was struck down in the supreme court a few years back. I'm surprised they'd pass a law so similar, seeing as how it's likely to get struck down in the future. Does anyone know what the differences are between this one and the one that was struck down?
  8. Re:You seem to be the problem on Keeping Customer From Accessing My Database? · · Score: 1

    They could run intensive queries, I guess. But unless you've got million+ row tables that are being accessed concurrently by tens of clients, this shouldn't be much of a problem. Intensive queries using non-indexed columns joining three large tables (and million+ row tables weren't uncommon at some relatively small places I've worked at) would absolutely kill performance, especially if they're not careful to avoid locks, and who knows whether they're using a qualified developer or their son's friend who knows about comptuers. Add in the security issues and it's very reasonable to not want people going through the database. Depending on the data kept in the database, it could open up legal risks to let the customer into the database.
  9. Re:Why? on Keeping Customer From Accessing My Database? · · Score: 1

    Well intentioned or not, your response is like telling someone who's asking for directions that they are lost It's more like telling them that you need to know where they're going.
  10. stuffed animals lol on Warhammer Producer Discusses Australian Launch, Game Details, and More · · Score: 2, Funny
    Continuing the quote:

    Of course, EA made sure that he got extradited and charged in the US with terrorism and crimes against an endangered species, but we all had a really good laugh about it.
  11. Re:I'm not sure that holds up on IE 7.0/8.0b Code Execution 0-Day Released · · Score: 1

    And if we ever have an OS with equal market share we'll be able to evaluate the truth to that statement; for right now, there isn't another OS with the same level of scrutiny from developers, white hat and black hat hackers, so there's very little chance that we'll get a fair comparison.

  12. Re:Well, obvious stuff: on Fermilab Calls For Code Crackers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another possibility: a blank represents a 0, a mark indicates a 1, giving us binary. This fits better with the hex in the middle of the page, since three binary go into one hex. The symbols don't make any sense, however, so if that's a key, then it's going to just translate it into another code.

    If I weren't at work, I would try translating the hash marks into their hex equivalent, storing that, then translating the hex to the symbols that were given and storing that separately. The symbols may mean something to someone other than me (some of them look hebrew, but some of them definitely aren't; perhaps astrology symbols or something else?), or it may be that the key in the middle is a red herring and that the hex itself codes for something (ascii being the most likely generally, although a quick glance seems to indicate that some of them would code for non-display characters).

    Most likely a hoax all things considered. A (accidentally?) clever hoax, considering the hex in the middle and the many interpretations of the vertical lines, but most likely a hoax nonetheless.

  13. Re:I have Cox High Speed on Comcast, Cox Slow BitTorrent Traffic All Day · · Score: 2, Informative

    I hate everything about Cox. Their customer service is horrible and not at all knowledgeable. I had to explain to the Cox agent how much I was paying for cable while she was looking at my account. I've had mistakes made in my service, slow speeds, long wait times, and billing mistakes. Comcast was much, much better to work with, and if that doesn't give you a good idea about how bad Cox was, nothing really will.

    On the internet end it's really slow, too. On their highest tier of home internet service, I get 40 kps on bittorrent and no more than 100 for regular downloads from the internet.

  14. Re:Huh? on Judge in Capitol v. Thomas Considers New Trial · · Score: 1

    His point is that a gay man can get married, he just has to get married to a woman.

  15. Re:misread it on Swiss Man Flies With Jet Powered Wing · · Score: 1

    Don't get to excited, those things blow.

  16. Re:Galileo? How about Bruno on Vatican Says Alien Life Plausible · · Score: 1

    I'm sure he's really pissed off right now that they haven't apologized.

  17. Re:move jobs voluntarily on Techies Keen to Keep Jobs In the Family · · Score: 1

    From what I've seen and read, 1.5 years is the average stay for a programmer at a job, so if anything I think 86% is too low. It seems like employers are willing to give existing employees a 5% raise when that employee is able to get a 10% raise to go to another company. Companies are willing to pay more for the employee the don't have than for the one they do.

  18. Re:UFO Expert on British "X-files" Released to Public · · Score: 1

    Did you at least have breakfast or coffee waiting for you?

  19. Re:British 'X-Files'? on British "X-files" Released to Public · · Score: 1

    Yeah, these declassified documents are nothing like the "X-Files", they're full of strange characters who believe they alone know the truth, strange stories that make very little sense, and the occasional humorous anecdote that doesn't quite fit with the others.

    I forgot how I was going to make that point.

  20. Re:Do you skip all the ads? on Youngsters Skip DVR Ads Less Than Seniors · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I also have Adblock I wouldn't equate skipping ads with a dvr to adblock. With the DVR, it requires forethought and actions on my part whenever an ad comes on. With adblock, I just turn it on and occasionally right-click on an ad to get it to work. I also usually watch TV with my wife, so we can talk and "interact" during the commercials; sometimes we even get so into the interaction that we have to pause the commercials.
  21. Re:stupid stupid stupid on Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable · · Score: 1

    You can search for the optimal result, but generally that'll take more retries than the random retry, although you'll be able to optimize the result more fully.

  22. Re:Is this old "news" they on slashsuck on Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't know how this got modded down considering the two insightful points he brought up.

  23. Niel Turok on Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins · · Score: 5, Funny

    Niel Turok was quoted as saying, "I'll also help defend the starving African children from rampaging dinosaurs, free of charge."

  24. Re:stupid stupid stupid on Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I also remember some games being broken because you could save, and if the battle didn't go how you wanted it to, you could reload and try again. Nowadays, games tend to save the generator's seed so that things go the same way.

    The point is that encryption, proper randomization, etc are HARD and prone to a lot of errors. That's why you commit changes upstream, so that the people who did the work in the first place are able to review the change and let you know if you changed something vital to the security.

  25. Re:I'm Suprised on USAF Considers Creation of Military Botnet · · Score: 1, Troll

    Two things: the government has so many computers it could have a fairly formidable botnet on its own. The second this is that, well, why not have it open source? Open the source and let everyone see what it can and can't do. The problem I see with that is that a quantum computer could overcome the encryption and doom us all...