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User: lgw

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  1. Re:But seriously speaking ... on Searching the Internet For Evidence of Time Travelers · · Score: 1

    Imagine living in a more brutal time in our history. Someone in your neighborhood legitimately has "special" abilities, such as precognition. They would very likely be ostracized, ejected from the community, or killed

    Wait, what? Shaman really is the world's oldest profession. We've been giving people who claim special powers added respect for so long and at such a basic level that making up woowoo nonsense is the oldest and most basic specialized trade of our species.

  2. Re:This is why I like being old on The UK's Internet Porn Filter and Fighting Censorship Creep · · Score: 5, Funny

    You have a sexy voice Linda. What are you wearing? Obscene content you say? Describe it to me in detail, so that I can make an informed decision.

  3. Re:Hey dawg.. on Chinese Icebreaker Is Stuck In Ice After Antarctic Research Vessel Rescue · · Score: 1

    Funny but true. Global Warming would be a falsifiable claim, and such things can only negatively affect research funding. How about "Theory that Shit Happens" - that one should be safely fundable for generations!

  4. Re:Not everything is about software security. on Unencrypted Windows Crash Reports a Blueprint For Attackers · · Score: 1

    They really made this confusing in Windows 8 (as with everything else in Windows 8). In Win7 and before, it wasn't so bad.

    However, I have the same complaint about Firefox, and I'm sure there are many other popular applications that phone home on a crash by default.

    We really need an OS with all applications jailed by default, but the only good one is SE Linux, and the NSA has destroyed my trust in everything they've touched.

  5. Re:Speculation will never go down on Congressman Accepts BitCoin For His US Senate Run · · Score: 1

    Do you really think the niche of providing online transactions to people who are distrustful of other currencies is a failing?

    The only niche BTC fills right now is online transactions for illegal goods. You don't need to "trust" USD in order to buy a pizza on a credit card. Heck, if you expect hyper-inflation, a month's float on the credit card makes it an ideal currency.

    The niche BTC can't fill is a stable store of value, mostly because that's not what currencies are for. Nor it particularly important that a currency suffers from inflation, as long as the rate is low enough to not be a hassle day-to-day (once you have to spend your pay at lunch because it's useless by dinner, then inflation's a serious problem). As long as a currency holds it's value well enough a month at a time, it serves the needs of mediating barter.

  6. Re:I like the idea on Congressman Accepts BitCoin For His US Senate Run · · Score: 1

    Speculation in BTC is trivially small in absolute amounts compared to speculation in other currencies. The problem is the ratio of speculative trading to normal use - most BTC activity is speculation, not "paying for stuff". That's the balance that would need to shift to dampen the swings in BTC value.

  7. Re:More people have died on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1

    No, you've missed my point entirely.

    It's quite possible that most of the deaths on the continent were caused by a single black man: a slave on the Conquistador's ship who was sick with smallpox when they landed.

    Any massacre of Indians in the 18th or 19th century is utterly trivial in scale when compared to the toll wrought by disease in the 16th and 17th. Those natives we fought in North America were the remnant population, still recovering after ~95% losses due to European diseases. Seriously, do they teach anything beyond "hate whitey" in history classes these days?

  8. Re:Ban or Censor? on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1

    Wow, is confusing "rights" with "means" so indoctrinated on the left now that you use them interchangeably?

  9. Re:The 21st Century is on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1

    Did you even read the post you replied to? How does the history that Northern whites wanted each slave counted as 0 people, while Southern whites wanted each slave counted as 1 person, so they compromised, single out one group in class in the present and make them feel bad and isolated over something they can't change?

  10. Re:Myth of PC on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1

    Uh not quite. The neocons want to push the bible as their narrative

    I don't think that word "neocon" means what you think it means. A "neocon" is someone who supports a strongly pro-Israel policy in the middle east, and is often used with a wink and a nod as an anti-Semitic epithet. So, no, the Bible isn't the correct book for a "neocon" rant.

  11. Re: or consider this on The Hobbit and Game of Thrones Top Most Pirated Lists of 2013 · · Score: 1

    For books and for CDs, there are fine stores for digital versions of the content. It's easy to pay if you want to (but won't buy any more physical media). For DVDs, the digital alternatives are just crap, and it's damn hard to pay if you want to (but won't buy any more physical media). The MPAA needs to get with the times.

  12. Re:More people have died on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    That's a terrible comparison. Most of the deaths (as many as 90% of the population in Central America and 95% in North America - staggering numbers) were inevitable as soon as anyone, for any reason crossed the ocean.

    Your hated for religion seems an irrational compulsion - have you talked to anyone about it?

  13. Re:More people have died on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 2

    nations founded on religious "values" are only too happy to slide back into barbarism. There is a direct, inverse relationship between how religious a nation is and how equitable and egalitarian it is.

    Your knowledge of history is sadly lacking. The truth in Western culture is that for about 1000 years, the Church and the State balanced on another well. There were vile, hateful people in both, but each acted as a check on the worst excesses of the other. The dual power structure really helped protect the common man (OTOH, he did pay taxes to both, and each family owed a son to each).

    But evangelical Christians for instance, believe that it ultimately doesn't matter what you DO in this life, good or bad, because either your name was written in the Book of Life at the start of all time or it wasn't and if it was

    You're knowledge of Christian sects is worse. "Evangelicals" are mostly about religion-as-popular-entertainment. You don't get 10000+ member mage-churches by spending time on Calvin and Luther and sin, but by putting on elaborate and entertaining stage productions each week, carefuly tuned to make people feel better for having attended, not making anyone feel bad or guilty. You may be thinking of "fundamentalists", may of whom believe just what your wrote - they're at the opposite end of the spectrum of modern Christian sects from the evangelicals.

  14. Re:Ban or Censor? on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 1

    "Privilege" is a hammer to beat down arguments without having to actually have an argument. It's the new "that's racist".

    Used books stores are still around. Books passed hand-to-hand (a tradition for banned books) are still around. Poor as I was growing up, I could scrape together bus fare and a couple bucks for books every couple of weeks, which goes petty far in the deeply discounted section of half-price books. I also took the bus to the library regularly, but there was better stuff in the used book stores. The school library was largely irrelevant.

  15. Re:The 21st Century is on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd give you odds it's the reverse - that someone searched through an eBook library and banned every one with racial epithets regardless of context.

  16. Re:The 21st Century is on 53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ellison's Invisible Man is banned? Dammit, I was forced to read that (very slow-paced book about racism) in high school. Hours of my life I'll never get back! Why couldn't you have banned it earlier? Whyyyy?

    Actually, that one baffles me: unlike, say, Huck Finn, Invisible Man is primarily about racism: of course it depicts racism and racial stereotypes; illustrating just how messed up we were was the point of the story (the man was "invisible" in the sense that no one ever noticed he was a person, deserving basic consideration).

  17. Re:Clearly losing money? on The Hobbit and Game of Thrones Top Most Pirated Lists of 2013 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Trying to dress up piracy as some sort of moral stance Against The Man is pathetic and sad. Pirating shows because you're cheap or broke is a fairly minor sin, but pretending its some sort of social protest is really childish.

  18. Re:SSD drives are fast, but they suck for reliabil on Power-Loss-Protected SSDs Tested: Only Intel S3500 Passes · · Score: 1

    FYI, those backup tools exist, though tape backup was sadly removed a while back. They're not part of Windows Explorer, nor should they be IMO. In Windows 7 it's in the control panel, and named Backup and Restore. Fuck Windows 8.

  19. Re:Moral of the story on USB Sticks Used In Robbery of ATMs · · Score: 1

    The scary thought is that all these ATMs are just as vulnerable to remote attacks. I don't know any details about that side, other than they're mostly on dial-up so you can just call them and hack them, but apparently they are very vulnerable (I would guess there's a default password that's rarely changed, or something equally inane). If the attacker wants magstripes and PINs instead of the cash in the machines, there's no reason to ever be near one.

  20. Again, you are coming off as disingenous by making such obviously too-far-reaching arguments. I'm sure any country's basic SIGINT operations are valuable enough for some level of mitigation of asymmetric threats.

    So what do you say about the recent review that found that 0 terrorist threats were averted by the NSA's broad-reaching data gathering?

    What needs to happen is for their evil deeds to come into public view (many have, I'm sure many other relevant ones will sooner or later). And then for judges, under no threat of NSA Kompromat/LOVINT/SEXINT, to rule these practices as blatantly in violation of human and constitutional rights. And in fact as basically treasonous. Because compiling a LOVINT/SEXINT database of your entire nation, or all of humanity, is simply too dangerous a tool for the neo-stasi to get ahold of.

    Yes, sure, but we see judges split on this already. If the NSAs budget were set to 0 (the worst possible fate for any government organization), it would stand as an object lesson to future US intelligence organizations for generations to come. As there's no current major power threatening war, I don't see any significant downside to simply ending the NSA and letting other agencies pick up the slack. Sure, our SIGINT would be bad for a couple years, but it's just not that valuable in peacetime to begin with. And we might instead focus on the HUMINT which has proven itself useful.

  21. No, if he worked for the NSA he'd be posting with your account. Just some lover of totalitarianism - they're shockingly common these days.

  22. Re:Moral of the story on USB Sticks Used In Robbery of ATMs · · Score: 2

    In most countries it depends on the ATM - there are many different kinds of ATMs installed in many different ways. Is there really some standard in the UK? Are there not cheap ATMs in convenience stores that are very different from the big ATMs next to banks?

    Pretty much all ATMs these days have a camera, sure, but it typically records images on storage in the ATM. After the attack, it's going to have whatever comical pictures the attackers want it to have.

  23. Re:That's what you get on USB Sticks Used In Robbery of ATMs · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's what you get from running Windows on ATMs, lol.

    No, it really isn't. I've seen this demo'd at a security conference, and the OS has nothing at all to do with the attack. ATMs have a USB port which can be used to replace the firmware. The port is behind a simple lock, not in the vault with the money.

    This attack replaces the OS on the ATM with the image the attacker provides. What the OS was before the attack really isn't all that relevant. The fact that images aren't signed or anything is.

  24. Re:Hero on Former CIA/NSA Head: NSA Is "Infinitely" Weaker As a Result of Snowden's Leaks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So far, there's no evidence that the NSA was doing anything of value. Sure, in theory they have a mission which might possibly be valuable were it focused the right way, maybe. Maybe. But half their mission - making info security better for Americans - is now permanently destroyed. No one in crypto circles will ever trust the NSA again: they burned that bridge and lost their ability to give back to the public sector.

    So all that's left to the NSA is SIGINT, and that's have proven worthless for asymmetric threats. Yes, it would be good to have SIGINT the next time a major nation goes to war, but at this point I'd rather it wasn't the NSA doing that. Let the NSA die, and the legitimate SIGINT role can pass on to military intelligence or some other group with no motivation to spy on US citizens, or steal secrets from foreign companies to share with US companies.

  25. Re:There's a question about that at Skeptics on Parents' Campaign Leads To Wi-Fi Ban In New Zealand School · · Score: 1

    The Sun is also one heck of a bright radio source, microwave source, x-ray source, and so on. Even indoors, I suspect you'd have to swallow a WiFi router to get more of any kind of radiation from it than the Sun.