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User: DrXym

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  1. Re:What an idiot on Silk Road Journal Found On Ulbricht's Laptop: "Everyone Knows Too Much" · · Score: 2

    Well obviously, but the smart perp would think of that situation. They would use encrypted drives. They would use shadow volumes. They would disable logging, or archive and encrypt them or routinely permanently erase them as a matter of habit. They would use virtual machines that didn't preserve state. They would route their activity through encrypted proxies in as many jurisdictions as humanly possible. They would situate their servers or computers with several locked doors between them and the outside. They'd have power switches within easy reach if the cops bust in. If they were super duper paranoid they'd even have the disks dangling above strong degaussing devices as a last resort. Preferably they'd be as far as way as possible from the United States when they did all this.

  2. Re:What an idiot on Silk Road Journal Found On Ulbricht's Laptop: "Everyone Knows Too Much" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The most likely diagnosis is the Dunning-Kruger effect. He thought himself smarter than he actually was. Add to that the fact he was running a market in illegal goods (drugs, weapons, hitmen etc.) which tends to make law enforcement throw lots of manpower at finding out who the perpetrator is and the determination to take them down.

  3. Re:What an idiot on Silk Road Journal Found On Ulbricht's Laptop: "Everyone Knows Too Much" · · Score: 3, Funny

    Perhaps that, in itself, is compelling evidence that he didn't.

    "Your honour, the defence submits that the fact that an entire room of people saw the accused stab the victim and state he was glad he did it, proves conclusively that he didn't. There is so much compelling evidence against our client that it is actually evidence of his innocence. And with that the defence rests."

    Doesn't exactly work.

  4. Re:Homeland Security? Everyone is a terrorist on Silk Road 2.0 Deputy Arrested · · Score: 1

    One day the world will be liberated and people will be free to trade. Right now we live in a Kafkaesque dystopia.

    So basically this guy was a freedom fighter? Or just perhaps he was a somewhat tech savvy dealer who didn't give a shit what product he sold or the harm it might cause providing he got his cut?

  5. 2 whole stories about a scam on Jim Blasko Explains 'Unbreakable Coin' (Video 2 of 2) · · Score: 1

    There's little money to be made from an existing ponzi so what to do? Start a new one of course! Announce a new cryptocurrency (while sitting on a pile of easily mined coins), hype it as the next in-thing to gullible libertarian types and exit with a profit. The main question is why /. is stupid enough to promote not 1 but 2 videos about it.

  6. Re:Nope on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 1

    Tizen runs over a Linux kernel the same as Android does. I doubt it poses an insurmountable challenge for other kernel based watches to reach the same level of performance. The main issue is why "smart" watches even need to be running general purpose kernels with lots of RAM and battery sapping active displays in the first place. The fact they do may account for why their battery performance is so frigging awful, more so than the software sitting over the top.

  7. Re:Nope on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 1

    Yeah and so is Blackberry. But then it turns out it only runs some apps and it's still a hassle for devs to build and test two versions of their app - one with Google services, another with some other similar but not the same API. And sign up to two infrastructures, and wade through 2 approval processes. What incentive do developers get to even bother?

  8. All you need to know on Jim Blasko Explains BitCoin Spinoff 'Unbreakable Coin' (Video 1 of 2) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All these bitcoin spinoffs / wannabes simply want to reset the ponzi scheme with the reinventors sitting at the top, holding all the easily mined out coins. That's it.

  9. Re:I actually have sympathy for the dealers on Tesla vs. Car Dealers: the Lobbyist Went Down To Georgia · · Score: 1

    A Ford is not a Tesla. They are not analogous and besides reducing the number of deals from many tens of thousands around the USA to about 10 representing each major manufacturer is quite obviously anticompetitive. That's the nub of the issue.

  10. Re:I actually have sympathy for the dealers on Tesla vs. Car Dealers: the Lobbyist Went Down To Georgia · · Score: 1
    A fixed price doesn't mean "no competition". When I buy a video game on Amazon it is for a fixed price. I don't negotiate with the site. But I'm still free to buy that same game from Gamestop for another fixed price. Because the price is fixed and the thing I'm buying is the same I am able to make a fair comparison between these two merchants.

    Buying a car is not like that. Yes Tesla has a fixed price but it's their price or fuck you. Conversely dealers DO compete but they bury their prices under so much manure that it's hard to know what they are until they've reeled you in. So neither side is right. But the competition law is there not to justify scummy sales tactics but to promote competition. If Tesla feels a fixed price is right for selling their cars then they should sell their vehicles to deals wholesale and subject to contractual obligations on how to present the retail price to customers.

  11. Re:I actually have sympathy for the dealers on Tesla vs. Car Dealers: the Lobbyist Went Down To Georgia · · Score: 1

    Really? I would love to be able to shop for a car and know that no matter where I shopped I was getting the exact same price. I absolutely HATE having to negotiate on the price, and the popularity of services like truecar suggest that a huge number of people agree with me.

    That would be called price fixing. If I go shopping for a washing machine and I visit a bunch of websites I should expect to see a variety of prices. All non negotiable, but all transparent and available. Imagine now you could only buy a Bosch washing machine from the Bosch website. There is no longer any competition on price at all. "Ah" someone might say "but you could price compare your Bosch machine to the price for a somewhat equivalent Zanussi on the Zanussi site!", yeah but you're not comparing like with like and it's still not remotely the same competition when I want a Bosch not a Zanussi.

    Why? Tesla sees dealers for the unnecessary middle men that they are. They've already shown that they would rather not enter a market than open a franchised dealership. I don't see any reason that this would change.

    Because too many states have laws that prohibit direct sales. And as I said while I think most car dealers are scum, the law is there to ensure competition, not their sales ethics. But Tesla does have the means to exert some ethics of its own and open up the sale of its vehicles at the same time. Dealers would want to be able to do after sales service like servicing, selling parts, trade ins etc. There are obvious reasons they might sign up to some franchise or programme that ensures a consistent sales experience.

  12. Re:Android is being improved too. Catching up will on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 1

    If Samsung can ensure that Android apps run perfectly well on Tizen, including Google apps like maps etc, then they're 80%+ to offering a mobile OS I'd move to if the handset was one I wanted.

    The problem is they can't. Look at Blackberry in this department. Blackberry probably has the most mature Android stack running over BB10 / QNX but it's no damned good for apps that want to run background services, or support in-app payments, or use the Google services which the impl doesn't support. Then you're talking about forking the code to produce a BB compatible version stripped of that stuff or rebuilt with a 3rd party library. And Blackberry has another issue - Android apps, run over some Frankandroid layer which almost certainly impacts on launch times, performance and memory footprint.

    I doubt the experience by Samsung would be much different. And doubtless Samsung would want to tie apps to their own store. Just the hassle of releasing an app twice, potentially in two different build flavours is enough to put devs off doing it at all. Look how bereft the Amazon store is compared to Google's. It costs time and money to support two builds through two stores of basically the same app. Doing so adds no benefit to the user or the developer. It's just a hoop they're supposed to jump through because yet another behemoth wants all the pie to themselves.

  13. Nope on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    What does Tizen do that Android doesn't? Or Windows Phone for that matter? It's just another software stack running over a kernel. Performance and battery life is likely to be little different.

    The only reason it exists at all is because Samsung sees Google taking 30% off of app sales and services and it wants that 30% for itself. That might be a wonderful motivating factor for Samsung to push this thing. For everyone else... not so much. Consumers will just see a new platform which has doesn't have the apps they want to use. App developers will just see yet another lame duck platform that they must spend inordinate effort to support or ignore completely.

    Unless Samsung money hats devs and hand out free phones like candy, they're not going to get the buy-in to their platform. And even if they do it's no guarantee - Nokia and Blackberry both went down that route trying to buy devs and it didn't pay off.

  14. Re:SUPER SLOW unless a faster than light system on Elon Musk's Proposed Internet-by-Satellite System Could Link With Mars Colonies · · Score: 1

    My point is all those ms add up, especially since there is still terrestrial on the other end. Until it's put into practice I have no idea of knowing which way it'll go and I'm enthusiastic but it's not hard to see possible issues - price of service, price of kit, capacity, download / upload limits, reliability, latency etc.

  15. Re:Old stuff. on Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships · · Score: 1

    Sounds more like Stardock's Galactic Civilizations although that was influenced by MOO too but with more emphasis on the AI. Anyway FTL is owes more than a little to Sundog which was an ancient top down spaceship sim/rpg from... FTL Games.

  16. Re:And why are you telling us? on NSA Hack of N. Korea Convinced Obama NK Was Behind Sony Hack · · Score: 1

    So they have a secret capability to spy on North Korea, and they tell us because Sony got hacked? So now North Korea knows about it and probably will do something about it? That sounds an incredibly stupid action to me.

    Or perhaps they got the info through other means but thought they'd troll North Korea - make them disrupt their own network looking for the compromise which wasn't there to begin with.

  17. Re:Well... on NSA Hack of N. Korea Convinced Obama NK Was Behind Sony Hack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How would the West feel about the release of a popular film in which the assassination of a living head of state is planned?

    You mean like if a villain plotted to kill the queen at a baseball game with hypnotised assassins with all kinds of hilarious pratfalls along the way?

    I suspect the reason it doesn't happen more often is due to legal issues, audience reception (and therefore box office) and the fear of repercussions of pissing off the people whose good graces they want to be in. It doesn't stop one book, movie and TV show after another putting fictional heads of state in perilous situations and occasionally bumping them off.

    And if North Korea did some movie about whacking Obama, it's likely it might generate some media noise but I doubt it would do much else.

  18. Re:Stands to reason on NSA Hack of N. Korea Convinced Obama NK Was Behind Sony Hack · · Score: 1

    "I can guarantee they are wrong. It has to do with a group of hackers - I will not name them - who are civil libertarians and who hate the confinement the restrictions the music industry and the movie industry has placed on art and so they are behind it."

    Oh so it was a noble cause all along. Pull the other one.

  19. This isn't enough on With Community Help, Chrome Could Support Side Tabs Extension · · Score: 1

    I won't be happy until there are tabs on EVERY side at once. And nested as well. How is Chrome supposed to be CUA compatible on OS/2 otherwise?

  20. Re:SUPER SLOW unless a faster than light system on Elon Musk's Proposed Internet-by-Satellite System Could Link With Mars Colonies · · Score: 1
    Geosynchronous orbit being around 23,000 miles away vs 750.

    At one time I was semi considering a satellite internet system because of problems getting decent broadband where I lived but I was put off by the horrific latencies (500-1000ms) and the equally horrific costs of using the system. It all looked quite Heath Robinson with the upload being via ISDN / ADSL and the download via a satellite and some kind of kludge in the middle to reconcile the two halves. I bet anyone using satellite internet has to tweak their browsers to max out concurrent requests to reduce the lag and suffers all kinds of frustrations (e.g. no games, no public servers etc.).

    Anyway 2-way satellite to 750 miles is obviously better but there would be lag there too - at least 2*750 miles for a message to go up and straight back down. Except of course it's more likely the packet goes up, gets routed to one or more satellites in the constellation (e.g. by using geo IP or some heuristic), down, across a terrestrial network and then the reverse trip. In some scenarios it might be faster than land based solutions but it could well be slower over all especially if the satellites are under heavy load.

    Still, if I had really bad internet I would be seriously interested in this solution provided it was affordable. But what's affordable to me might not be affordable even for an entire village in some places in the world, so it has issues unrelated to technology to work out too.

  21. Re:Jury of your peers on There's a Problem In the Silk Road Trial: the Jury Doesn't Get the Internet · · Score: 1

    The upside of doing this is it would speed up certain kinds of trial where the alternative is to spend months or years in trial because the matters are so complex and the possibility of mistrial increases as jurors drop out.

  22. How do you fill that knowledge gap? Nobody outside of IT is going to have a clue how tor works. Should you limit the jury selection to IT professionals?

    Tor works via a series of tubes.

  23. Re:The most beautiful thing ever! on Uber Suspends Australian Transport Inspector Accounts To Block Stings · · Score: 1

    there will always be people willing to take the risk of being caught. if they want to stop it they need to issue two fines. The current $1700 fine the driver gets and perhaps an exponentially larger fine for each infringement to Uber, say $17,000 fine for them. though drivers really should be getting suspensions too as they are placing passengers at risk due to no valid license or insurance.

    Most countries would have the powers against unlicenced taxi operators to fine them, impound their vehicle, ban drivers, even hand out custodial sentences if the offence merited it. I'm sure Australia is no exception and if people are stupid enough to operate an unlicenced taxi service (which is what Uber is), then they can enjoy whatever delights the courts throw at them.

    As for Uber, actively impeding the government might please libertarian nitwits (like Roman Mir), but I expect the courts would take an extremely dim view of such actions since it demonstrates intent to break the law.

  24. Re:Are you trying to get legislation? on Uber Suspends Australian Transport Inspector Accounts To Block Stings · · Score: 1

    Yeah how dare the government impose standards on public transportation like taxis to ensure the next car you step into is roadworthy and isn't driven by a rapist and holding Uber to those standards. The monsters.

  25. Re:I don't want VR entertainment on Ars: Samsung Gear VR Is Today's Best Virtual Reality · · Score: 2

    VR seems to be more work than fun, especially if you want to get the fully immersive shebang, which will likely require that 360-degree treadmill thingy and a nice surround sound system.

    The biggest issue with VR is it's extremely limited what kinds of games you could play with it. Racing games - yes. Spaceship / fighter games - yes. Some sedentary sports simulations - yes. First person shooter games - yes but now the cracks start to appear - how to reconcile actions like crouching, running, turning, looking between the virtual world and the real one. Basically the further you go from a seated experience, the worse it's going to become. I also expect that holds for the amount of nausea inducing too.