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User: zAPPzAPP

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Comments · 483

  1. Re:Not "buying" on Finance Firm Bloomberg Goes In For $80,000 On Ubuntu Edge Project · · Score: 1

    'storm the offices' is a weird legal strategy.

    So if not for that small moral issue, they are free to take the money and do whatever the hell they want with it?

  2. Re:oh man, what a mess on Xerox Photocopiers Randomly Alter Numbers, Says German Researcher · · Score: 0

    From the article (yeah, i know...):

    "This is not an OCR problem (as we switched off OCR on purpose), it is a lot worse"

    The machines are altering the scanned pictures.
    And they seem to do this in locations where there are numbers in the picture.
    AND they seem to do it so that the altered image still contains numbers at the same location. Just different ones.

  3. Re:Cooperation wins big time. on Paper: Evolution Favors Cooperation Over Selfishness · · Score: 2

    Cooperation is the intent. Coordination is required to make it happen.

  4. Re:I just say on Ask Slashdot: Should More Math and Equations Be Used In the Popular Press? · · Score: 1

    I would expext that anything that could be expressed in a simple enough equation, could also be described in words easily enough.

    But the first example in the summary mentions the Heisenberg uncertainty. Concepts like this are hard to describe in words, but the equations are just as hard to grasp. They are usually completely made up of often obscure variables, each of them standing for another equation, or an abstact concept of its own.
    Unless you happen to know each of these, you will not be able to make much sense of the complete equation.
    Trying to discover their meaning will quickly lead to even more unknowns for anyone not yet familiar with the topic.

    Most people understand the language of the equation itself, which describes the relation of it's parts to each other, But if the parts of the equation are unknowns, how much use is that?

  5. Re:Dear Russia, on Russia Proposes Banning Foul Language On the Internet · · Score: 1

    I think the hope is that the UN will be so split about any minor issue concerning the internet, that they will at worst endlessly debate and vote on censorship, but nothing will ever get done. So basicly the internet will forever be left to it's own devices.
    This hope is not unfounded, given the previous record of the UN not getting stuff done.

  6. Re:Mass Drivers as Alternatives? on "Slingatron" To Hurl Payloads Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    I am not sure I get this.

    If the path into orbital passes through earth, what keeps you from building your spacegun on that exact exit point on the other side of earth in the first place and point it into that direction?
    Somewhere surely you will have to leave the insides of earth and approach orbit with that path. Which means there is a valid path from earth crust into orbit.

  7. Re:Woo-hoo 3 feet!!! on Long Range RFID Hacking Tool To Be Released At Black Hat · · Score: 1

    The 125khz chips can be read from several metres if you use the right setup.

    It's just usually not the desired. Applications based on these chips often use the limited range to do more selective readings.
    Say you want to read ONLY the tag on a single item in a stack and not pick up the other tags close by.

  8. Re:Woo-hoo 3 feet!!! on Long Range RFID Hacking Tool To Be Released At Black Hat · · Score: 1

    I have developed RFID reader applications for the 4102 (125khz) chips and we could read them easily from 3-5 metres.
    Provided we used the right antenna (directional) and maxed the power output of course.

    Such a setup might be to big for disguised hacking.

    Still, a lot more of 'a few centimeters' should be no problem at all. Given the goal of hacking someone from afar, these previous 'hackers' have failed pretty hard if that's all they got.

  9. Ebonia on E-Voting Source Code Made Public In Estonia · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Didn't know they had electricity in Ebonia.

    You'd think all that mud would cause short circuits...

  10. Re:US congress - Are you listening on New EU Rules Require ISPs, Telcos To Come Clean Within 24 Hours of Data Breaches · · Score: 1

    Given that there are several differences in state laws both in the U.S. and EU, you should better ask that.

  11. Tabletop Particle Accelerator on Texas Physicists Create Tabletop Particle Accelerator · · Score: 1

    The Snotzogga.

  12. Re:Not good enough. on Aaron's Law Would Revamp Computer Fraud Penalties · · Score: 1

    That just means they can choose which case to prosecute and which one to dismiss because of 'too much work'.
    Which would give them even more power.

    When everyone is a criminal, but we only go after the ones that we do not like for whatever reason, we can just forget the whole justice thing all together.

  13. Re:What?!? on World Population Could Reach Nearly 11 Billion By 2100 · · Score: 3, Funny

    There can only be so many different people.
    The trick is to spot all the doubles and save on diskspace and computing power!

  14. Didn't we learn this is a stupid idea? on Hackers Spawn Web Supercomputer On Way To Chess World Record · · Score: 1

    This idea is not exactly a new one.

    Just recently there was that thing:
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/05/02/technology-esea-bitcoin-mining.html

    The efficiency is so bad, coupled with expected user backlash, it is a dangerous joke at best.

  15. Re:For $4 there is no reason not to buy it on Latvian Police Raid Teacher's Home for Uploading $4.00 Textbook · · Score: 1

    Nowhere does it say he did not buy the book.
    Most likely he did buy it.

    The infringement happened, when he tried to publish text on his website. I don't see how buying the book, or buying any number of books for that matter, would have helped.

  16. Re:Is it real or just a concept? on New Camera Inspired By Insect Eyes · · Score: 1

    Aside from that, it is a camera.
    Yet there are no pictures said camera took anywhere in the article.

    When writing about an image taking device, the first thing right below the headline should be an image taken by said device.
    You know, like in the old saying about pictures vs. lots of words.

  17. How do you know both cards performed the same task on AMD's Open Source Linux Driver Trounces NVIDIA's · · Score: 2

    Maybe the Open Source driver does not support all the same features the NVidia one does?

    I mean who can see from their screen if the GPU really did all of the 100+ flashy named video processing tasks and whatever else it was supposed to do?
    Maybe it flunked on a certain texture-whatever effect and did a faster, almost as good one?
    Maybe NVidia puts more auxillery tasks on the GPU, like physics stuff?

    How can we compare the 2 drivers, when one of them is closed? And they dont even run on the same cards for AMD/NVidia...

  18. Re:The only winning move.... on New Console Always-Online Requirements and You · · Score: 1

    'People' are not me.
    People have their right to do what they want. If they want the Xbox no matter what, who am I to tell them they are wrong?

    I generally hate preachers and I am not going to become one over a gaming console.

  19. Re:The Cloud is RAM, apparently on Why PC Sales Are Declining · · Score: 5, Funny

    No silly.
    The cloud is the new floppy disk.

  20. Re:Always a letdown. on European Researchers Propose Quantum Network Between Earth and ISS · · Score: 1

    I know the analogy, but I always wondered how you can tell your switching-machine works, if you are not allowed to check.

    As far as I can tell, the result of checking is random and it is still random after the machine 'switched' something. So nothing really happened.

  21. Re:The French article had ZERO hits ... until now on French Intelligence Agency Forces Removal of Wikipedia Entry · · Score: 4, Funny

    Which means, no one else knew about it!
    Finally Slashdot is delivering real news!

  22. Re:compromised, fullstop. on French Intelligence Agency Forces Removal of Wikipedia Entry · · Score: 1

    Or maybe they expect that as long as the article exists, someone may be dumb enough to edit in something really important.
    Must not have happened yet.

  23. Re:Le effect Streissand. on French Intelligence Agency Forces Removal of Wikipedia Entry · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unlike the usual cases, the Streisand effect does not really fit here.
    Sure it will happen.
    But the french intelligence agency does not care about 'public attention'. They care about what information other intelligence agencies can obtain about their bases.
    And if those are interested in said base at all, they will find the info wikipedia has on it, with, or without Miss Streisand's help.

  24. Re:Grading is about feedback on Automated System Developed To Grade Student Essays · · Score: 1

    I'd suspect your grammar and autism hits come from your keywords: nouns, sentences, essay, grade
    These combined suggest a certain context.

    As you switch them around, you lose hits that came from common verb-noun combinations and are left with only those from keywords.

  25. Re:correlation on USPS Discriminates Against 'Atheist' Merchandise · · Score: 1

    What does this have to do with Occam's Razor?
    Between 'someone got themselves a new pair of shoes' on one side and the whole mess that forms theist culture and worldviews on the other, which for some reasons still unknown to me leads to the spiriting away of packets in the name of god (?), I'd say the former is clearly the simpler theory.