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User: mendax

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  1. They just don't get it on Justice Department: Default Encryption Has Created a 'Zone of Lawlessness' · · Score: 1

    The government will never get it. *THEY* are the zone of lawlessness. It is logical that the vast majority of those outside the zone, READ most of the users of this technology, want to protect themselves from those zones no matter where they are.

  2. Disqualifies Putin on Russia Says Drivers Must Not Have "Sex Disorders" To Get License · · Score: 1

    The fact that Putin is a psychopath should disqualify him from a drivers license.

  3. Is this any surprise? on When FISA Court Rejects a Surveillance Request, the FBI Issues a NSL Instead · · Score: 1

    I am not surprised in the least. The National Security Letters are really nothing more than an end-run around the courts. I'm actually surprised that the FBI even bothers with the FISA court to obtain warrants to go on its fishing expeditions.

  4. Confucius say... on Chinese Government Moves To Crack Down On Puns · · Score: 1, Funny

    Woman who fly upside down have hairy crack up.

    The Chinese government can bite me now.

  5. A fate worse that death on The Sony Pictures Hack Was Even Worse Than Everyone Thought · · Score: 1

    I'm not a big fan of Sony (although I like their electronic products because of their high quality) or big companies in general. However, a breach of this size could literally destroy the company if the amount of information that leaked yet to be revealed is even worse than what has already been revealed. The litigation nightmare this could cause in the US is appalling in itself but that could just be the tip of the iceberg because of all the corporate secrets that are now out in the open (or will be).

  6. Diaries on Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My diary is written on paper and in longhand. It's the ultimate in keeping my innermost thoughts away from those who should not know them. It's immune from PRISM and the other NSA civil rights atrocities.

  7. Stupid, stupid, stupid on Finland Dumps Handwriting In Favor of Typing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There is a definite cognitive connection between writing by hand and brain function. For example, I am a better writer when I write by hand. Furthermore, I enjoy the task better because I can to make the cursive squiggles. I use a fountain pen which makes it even more enjoyable. But then I am a luddite. I write letters by hand and put them in the mail. I do it partially because I write prisoners but I also have regular correspondents. It's much better than e-mail.

  8. Yahoo? It lives? on Firefox Signs Five-Year Deal With Yahoo, Drops Google as Default Search Engine · · Score: 1

    Well, given that I haven't used Yahoo for anything except yellow pages (and even that rarely) for ten years, I ask the question:

    Will Yahoo even survive the five year run of this contract?

  9. Re:Give it another decade - the problem will solve on The Future of Stamps · · Score: 1

    if you have an invoice or legal paper you can send deliver it yourself, you can send it by private held company like TNT, UPS, whatever but only when you send it via Polish Post (national operator) it gets so called the power of postal stamp. Legally if you choose the right delivery type it is valid as delivery in court. Such postage is still deeply embodied in legal system and I think it has some merit.

    Exactly. In the U.S., many federal and state laws assume that the United States Postal Service will be there. Furthermore, the day the item is postmarked is, for most legal documents, considered to be the day the court receives it. Thus, if you have to have something filed by a certain date, you can delay (like most people do) and wait until the absolute last minute, run to the post office, and get a manual postmark put on the envelope, the only way you're going to get a guaranteed legible one in the U.S. Furthermore, courts rely upon the postal service to deliver legal mail. Federal courts allow you to file legal paperwork (as well as get copies of it) online and some state courts are slowly moving in this direction, but there will always have to be a way to get a piece of paper to someone who is a luddite or, is in jail or prison and does not have access to the Internet, and vice versa, since Americans have a constitutional right to access to the courts.

  10. Re:Is there a fake stamp blackmarket? on The Future of Stamps · · Score: 1

    I've wondered about that myself given that the stamps the post office uses today look like some of the Christmas and Easter Seals I remember putting on greeting cards as a kid. As I recall from some discussion I had many years ago, the postage processing machinery actually does not know exactly how much postage is on the envelope. All it really knows is that there is some kind of stamp there and that it has not been canceled. I'm not sure how metered mail is processed but there must be a reason why the post office would prefer that metered mail not be mixed in with stamped mail.

    So, the answer is probably "yes", you could fake stamps but if you did how much money would you really save by doing it? You'd be better of running off some tens and twenties on the local Kinko's color copier.

  11. Re:What future? on The Future of Stamps · · Score: 2

    I doubt it, at least not anytime in the near future. Stamps do have some interesting and necessary purposes for existence.

    I write people in prisons. While some prisons and jails have e-mail systems in place through which you can write an inmate and, in some cases, the inmate can write back (Federal prisons being the best example of this) these are usually funded by a "tax" paid by the inmates in some way. For those inmates who don't want to use such services or cannot (California prisoners being one in that they don't have access to such systems), U.S. mail and stamped envelops are the only way to go. So, as long prisons don't have some other inexpensive way for inmates to communicate with those on the other side of the razor wire, stamps are here to stay.

    Incidentally, because I write to prisoners I learn all sorts of things about life there. Since prisoners are not allowed to carry money, they use a barter system to buy and sell things. There are four kinds of currency in jails and prisons in the U.S: ramen noodle soups, instant coffee wrapped up in sandwich wrap, cigarettes (if they are permitted), and postage stamps. Think of the economic depression that would occur in the prison economy if stamps disappeared!

  12. Re:Already gone on Technology Heats Up the Adultery Arms Race · · Score: 1

    I wish it were the case in California. I bugged our bedroom with my iMac. I set it up so that it looked asleep so she would not suspect that I had a hidden sound recording program running. It caught the first ten minutes of the blow job before the program reached its limit, but that was all I needed to confront her on it. Unfortunately, California has no-fault divorce so I had to pay alimony even though I had the goods on her. I will never get married again without a prenuptial agreement that is rock-solid.

  13. No problem.... on FBI Says It Will Hire No One Who Lies About Illegal Downloading · · Score: 1

    All future FBI agents will be blind and tone deaf.

  14. Re:My father is a retired corporate pilot . . . on A DC-10 Passenger Plane Is Perfect At Fighting Wildfires · · Score: 1

    But the Flight 191 incident is due to American Airlines maintenance crew not following McDonnell-Douglas's procedures in removing an engine, using a forklift to aid in remounting it and in the process damaging the mounting bolts. It had nothing to do with the design of the plane. The DC-10 had a couple problems due to design problems, these were fixed, and it became a very safe airliner. If you look at the early history of the Boeing 707 or the DC-8 you will see that these planes were much scarier.

  15. Other reactions include rapper, Tyler, The Creator, saying that having the new U2 album automatically downloaded on his iPhone was like waking up with a STD.

    Well, given that I listen pretty much exclusively to classical music, finding the new U2 album on my iPhone (if I had one) or on my Mac in iTunes would be more like waking up and seeing that my ex-wife's sister is in bed with me. Ewww....

    But on a serious note, this behavior by Apple is very unpolite, regardless of whether the album is pushed onto one's phone, computer, or cloud account.

  16. Flying chairs on Steve Ballmer Authored the Windows 3.1 Ctrl-Alt-Del Screen · · Score: 2

    I think Windows 8, that perverse boot sector virus, ought to have updated the BSoD to show a video of Steve Ballmer throwing a chair across a room. No doubt he's done that a few times in his office as the BSoD popped up.

  17. Re:H1-B and outsource are responsible for this on Oregon Sues Oracle For "Abysmal" Healthcare Website · · Score: 1

    The contractors governments often do business off-shore the work and that is one of the reasons why the projects are so shitty. But there are other reasons. Government agencies don't operate in the same way businesses do. For example, the requirements documents are NEVER frozen. Some reptilian politician gets a burr up his ass, writes some new regulations, and *POOF* the requirements have to be changed and any code already written has to be either dumped or changed to reflect it. Also, when the law changes, as happens way too often, the same problems occur. Every coder here knows what happens in these situations!

  18. Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not on Why the Public Library Beats Amazon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact that the public library is an actual place is important. Libraries are not just places to get information. They are sometimes positioned to be social centers of communities, places for those without Internet access to get that access, a quiet place to avoid the hustle and bustle of life, a place to meet friends, a place to hold a meeting, a place to do homework and study, and so on and so on. Libraries have long since been simply a place to get the latest novel or some old classic.

  19. Embargo emshmargo on Russia Cracks Down On Public Wi-Fi; Oracle Blocks Java Downloads In Russia · · Score: 1

    It would be interesting if this "embargo" lasts any length of time. Given the importance of Java in today's IT world, it would be interesting if our colleagues in St. Petersburg would produce another clean-room implementation of Java. But it'll never happen. All trade embargoes are leaky. Consider, for example, Kim Jong-il, the North Korean un-leader, and the iMac on his desk. That certainly wasn't bought at the local Pyongyang Apple store

  20. Re:Nobody kills Java on Oracle Hasn't Killed Java -- But There's Still Time · · Score: 1

    I think the problem is Oracle isn't innovating, isn't advancing the technology, some aspects of it are essentially dead, the Java Community Process is largely ignored ..

    And Sun was innovating the Java platform? How long did it take them to implement closures and lambda expressions? When did Microsoft implement them in C#? Groovy, the scripting language that was intended to be a "groovier Java" had them from the beginning. I was at the Java One when Sun announced that they would be added in Java 7. Well, that didn't happen. Java 7 was simply lame.

  21. Re:Amazing Technology on Google Spots Explicit Images of a Child In Man's Email, Tips Off Police · · Score: 1

    It knows it's evil stuff because it matches one of the MD5 tags. They don't have to look at it. I suspect that it's more of an automated process they have which spots these things and sends off info to the DOJ that then looks at it. Why do law enforcement's job more than is necessary?

  22. Re:Amazing Technology on Google Spots Explicit Images of a Child In Man's Email, Tips Off Police · · Score: 1

    RTFA....

    The Google rep said:

    Since 2008, we’ve used 'hashing' technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. ...

    We’re in the business of making information widely available, but there’s certain 'information' that should never be created or found. We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online—and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted.

    The U.S. Justice Department is almost certainly giving Google the MD5 tags of the images they have in their child pornography database and those of new images that are discovered by law enforcement, and Google is using them to identify such images in web pages they index and in the e-mails and report it to law enforcement. They do maintain one, you know.

  23. Haiku on Poetry For Sysadmins: Shall I Compare Thee To a Lumbering Bear? · · Score: 1

    I think changing the messages produced by 404 pages so that they produce haiku similar o that produced by BeOS its NetPositive browser runs into a problem would be funny, especially if the sysadmin doesn't know about it!

  24. Who Needs an Article to Tell Me This? on Why the FCC Is Likely To Ignore Net Neutrality Comments and Listen To ISPs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The government is corrupt, morally bankrupt, and will do what those with the most money want them to do. As someone suggested above, if the EFF was the NRA of Internet it would be a different matter. But, in the end, since this really is an issue of two conflicting corporate interests, and one of these interests just happens to mirror that of the people.

    Frankly, I think net neutrality will win out in the marketplace because of the things some companies, e.g., Google, are doing to let their users know that the ISP's are throttling them. The ISP's can't prevent them from doing this and ISP's customers can choose another ISP that doesn't do it, or at least offers better performance. Another possibility is that the content providers the ISP's are throttling will eventually become ISP's themselves, especially Google.

  25. Hmmm... maybe not ALL but several. They ran at 3 mips and there is an emulator.