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User: Fluffeh

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  1. Re:Shame on them on Clam That Was Killed Determining Its Age Was Over 100 Years Older Than Estimated · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was actually named after the Ming Dynasty - which was around when the clam started life. Even with the additional 100ish years added, the name still fits as the Ming dynasty was still around at the time.

  2. Re:You what? on Critics Reassess Starship Troopers As a Misunderstood Masterpiece · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We on the other hand thought it was a glorious parody. Not amazingly well made, but the quality of the satire made up for what the movie was lacking. If anything I dare say that it might be hitting just a bit too close to home for a number of US folks to truly appreciate. For me, it was almost like being inside a ninety minute example of Poe's Law - dazzlingly brilliant in its dark undercurrent of ghastliness.

  3. Re:Answer: No. on Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov · · Score: 3, Funny

    But be back with more wiseass comments in three days...

  4. Re:Answer: No. on Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov · · Score: 4, Funny

    They didn't mean like horses and stuff... Wow, they like totally meant Calvary - cause that's like the most common saying ever, you know, calling in the ancient name for Golgotha, the place just outside Jerusalem. You and your horses.... cavalry indeed. Preposterous!

    *sips coffee*

  5. Re:Thin edge of the wedge! on 'Eraser' Law Will Let California Kids Scrub Online Past · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even more interesting is how this will play out with caches of sites. By that I mean, site A has the eraser button in place, and everything works fine and dandy. Site B keeps caches, but doesn't let minors/users from California access it. Site B caches site A and maintains the "un-ersaed" data from the original site.

    Both sites therefore work within the letter of the law, yet the information is still online.

  6. Re:You know what curbs piracy? on Research Shows "Three Strikes" Anti-piracy Laws Don't Work · · Score: 4, Insightful

    However, you can quite easily get a family of four on a modest income to pay $10 a month for Netflix. Why this makes Hollywood brains explode I'll never know.

    Hollywood brains explode because they cannot understand why you would give away so much content for so little! I mean, movies for a whole month for $10? Are you crazy!?! They sell a single DVD for like three times that! Lets say two movies are watched per night, that's a rate of $1,800 per month for goodness sake, not this measly $10...

  7. Re:haha on FBI Cyber Division Adds Syrian Electronic Army To Wanted List · · Score: 1

    Why is it that the first thing that connected in my mind when I read waterboard and slippery slope was a huge great big slip & slide connected to the garden hose, set up in the back yard and doing huge superman dives to see how far onto the grass you can slide off the end of it...

  8. Re:My give-a-darn meter is reading negative GADs on Patent Suit Leads To 500,000 Annoyed Software Users · · Score: 3, Funny

    Instead of working something out, notifying its users, or something else, it just makes their app work poorly now.

    *cough* maps *cough*

    *sips coffee*

  9. Re:Was that really necessary? on NZ Police Got PRISM Data Before Raid On Dotcom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the upside, with this cat out of the bag now, at least it is going to be brought up in court. Kim doesn't seem to be the sort of chap who will keep quiet and just let it slide. He is probably straightening his tie as we speak and about to knock on the door of the nearest court in NZ.

  10. Re:Forget ratings, measure ROI. on Obama Seeks New System For Rating Colleges · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I simply don't understand is why US universities are so expensive. It's gotten to the point where it seems that any sort of education can only be gotten my pretty much taking on so much debt that you will be lucky to pay it back - which then forces the government to start putting in copious amounts of scholarships/funding to keep students there.

    Degree Costs in Australia

    Over here, a degree (not counting the really expensive ones like medicine) costs $15-30k and a masters $20-37k.

    The average cost (excluding the notoriously expensive universities) in the US is $28k per year.

    Seriously, why?

  11. The most amusing thing that I see in this: on Public Facial Recognition Is Making Gains In Surveillance · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find it so ironic that it's cute and I just want to give it a big cuddle...

    That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used.

    Are these privacy advocates aware that the folks who want this most are the government that they are going to ask to curtail the ability to do it? It's like asking the playground bully to ask for permission to steal your lunch money...

  12. Smart Criminals on Three Banks Lose Millions After Wire Transfer Switches Hacked · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like stories like this. If something is done really well and in a clever way (whether it was really being naughty or not) the effort, cleverness and ingenuity should indeed have its merits praised. Slashdot should have more stories like this: Hey, they did a bad thing, but look at just how WELL they did it.

  13. Re:Idiots on Info Leak Wars To Get Messier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They must have thought Christmas had come early - he was foreign, gay *and* a being labelled as a potential terrorist.

    That's not going to help the feds/governments in the long term though. The more they rough up the journalists, treat them like enemies and make their lives generally more difficult - the more they are likely to be treated in the same manner. Why go to all the trouble of being polite, redacting sensetive bits and playing by the book when you know that the next time you go through an airport, your pants are coming down and you better hope you got some lube in...

    When one team starts playing hardball, the other team often starts doing the same - and the journalists will probably see these sorts of infractions nothing short of a badge of honour - but on the flipside, the potential trouble/egg-on-face for the governments just went up and up.

  14. Re:Embrace? check. Extend? Ah, there's the problem on Google Blocks YouTube App On Windows Phone (Again) · · Score: 1

    Wrong it doesn't block ads.

    The original app did. That's when Google stepped in and dropped the hammer. They gave MS a list of things to do. Even from reading the article, the chap says that they haven't done all of these. Google wanted the app in HTML5 - the app isn't. They wanted other features implemented (which aren't for whatever reason, blame MS or Google - it sort of doesn't matter - they are not implemented) so Google has pulled the plug.

    While I am not totally convinced that at least part of this isn't Google playing tough and messing with MS, it doesn't sound like MS has a huge platform to stand on. Do what google asks so that Google will serve you THEIR content.

    From TFA:

    There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility. At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.

    I am personally not a fan of "Do as I say, not as I do..." but when you are giving your market competitor access to your content like this, it doesn't seem a totally unreasonable request, does it?

  15. Re:Aha! on Bone-Eating Worms Found In Antarctic Waters · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, they do "research" that is much less scientific.

    "I wonder if THIS whale tastes any different to the others we have caught today...."

  16. Re:No notice, no reference on Ask Slashdot: When Is It OK To Not Give Notice? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, but when people are laid off, they might get walked out the door, but they are still paid the next two weeks wages. At least that is the case in Australia. Yeah, it's certainly not unheard of that folks walk into the office one morning and get told that they have been let go - but they are always paid their two weeks + entitlements that same morning.

  17. Re:Ugggh. on US Lawmakers Want Sanctions On Any Country Taking In Snowden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These clowns don't have anything more important to work on?

    Yeah, they do, that's why they are doing this. Classic misdirection 101. Can't fix the economy? Can't do your job properly? Do something loud, big that gets noticed and likely eaten right up by the average Joe-Shmo living in Nowheresville, Mediocrity. Get into the news for being the "Good guys" after the "dangerous treason-ous US-hating, communist/socialist/terrorist". Then when (and in the unlikely case of IF) people ask why you didn't do what you were supposed to do, you can cheerfully say that you were too busy keeping the US safe.

  18. Re:How are the Chinese doing this? on Chinese Hackers Launch Zero-Day Malware At Spiritual Activists, Military Groups · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Snowden wasn't employed in a position where he had access to the Chinese espionage program. He was employed where he had access to the US programs. Maybe one day there will be a Chinese version of Snowden that will shine light on all the mischeif that the Chinese get up to...

  19. Re:No one has territory on the moon on House Democrats Propose National Park On the Moon · · Score: 2

    If the US has it as a national park, the others will likely be polite enough to avoid trashing it. That's the point.

  20. Re:No one has territory on the moon on House Democrats Propose National Park On the Moon · · Score: 2

    Actually the US has some rather "straightforward" laws about National Parks - which are also places like the Lincoln Memorial (I think they file those under National Heritage) and places that are important to the military.

    And while I totally agree that they can't really enforce it outside the US, it does actually go a long way to defining what can and can't be done there by US companies. So, actually, I think that this is a great idea. It probably takes next to no time to propose in parliament, will likely get a pass and stops US based companies using the original landing sites as a mine.

    If space travel were to get super cheap tomorrow, I would dearly love and enjoy taking a tour of the original landing sites and not look at billboards, advertising or simply find out that they got ran over by a mining rig...

  21. Re:Expect more of this. on The Black Underbelly of Windows 8.1 'Blue' · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, how many people are going to switch to Linux over this? Nobody.

    Actually, I think that this is finally starting to change. Ever-so-goddam-slowly, but in recent times, I have moved two non tech savvy friends over to Linux partly because it was free, partly because it did everything they wanted. Okay, these folks didn't go out, do the research themselves, pick their 'nix flavour and get into a terminal window - but after seeing how easy most things are, I have managed to encourage two more users to switch. A few and a good few months into their little linux saga respectively, neither would consider switching back. Disclaimer: one of these machines is merely a media server and transcoder (Ubuntu, MediaTomb and MakeMKV) but even that is a good win in my books.

    I think the biggest issue with these changes for Microsoft will be when businesses, typically their biggest proponents are going to start frowning about these changes. I dare say that for every company that switches off Windows, half their employees will change OS at home. Perhaps not straight away, but in time.

  22. Re:For the sake of saving time, on Snowden: NSA Spying On EU Diplomats and Administrators · · Score: 2

    You should use mod points where they will make a difference. Find trolls or spam, mod them down. Find that insightful comment that is still sitting at zero and give it a point. That's what mod points are for, not throwing them away because you agree with a bunch of folks that did something else first.

  23. Re:And I should care? on Wall Street To Hold Quantum Dawn 2, Cyber-Attack Drill · · Score: 1

    I hope it fails, and fails big.

    Not going to happen. Think back to when they were going broke because of choices they made with what they *should* know, namely money. Given that IT departments are cost centres, not profit centres, do you think they really try to make sure their systems are secure and bullet-proof? Or do you think they simply look at a report given to them by the company that did their security and of course that says their security is great.

    The folks probing the systems here are probably the same people that put the security in in the first place. The folks doing to probing also know that to maintain consumer confidence ni Wall Street (the average folk anyhow) you need to give them a scorecard that starts and ends with A's.

    Want to do a real test, get a bunch of black hats in there pushing buttons. Of course, if they get in... they might not just give up all the gaps in their final report.

  24. Re:Aaron Swartz should have defected to China on Aaron's Law Would Revamp Computer Fraud Penalties · · Score: 1

    Or moved into an Ecuadorian embassy on a temporary (permanent) basis.

  25. Re:wtf on Supreme Court Decides Your Silence May Be Used Against You · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While I totally agree with the meaning of this post, ie, a person can't lose their rights just because they didn't specifically say that they were using them, or they were tricked into somehow bypassing them... how does this work with say, a confession?

    If the rights of the person not to incriminate themselves cannot be taken/waived away, then surely no confession could EVER be admissable in a court of law? The courts would have to rule that the confession would breach their rights and therefore be thrown out?