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  1. Re:2.6 million? on Diebold to Pay $2.6M Due to Insecure Voting Machines · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Who would you put in jail? The entire Diebold company?

    Sounds good to me. Send the marshalls to padlock the doors and block their bank accounts, and hold it that way for the duration of the sentance. Even if it's just a slap on the wrist, say, six months. They might end up defaulting on other contractual obligations, and some innocent bystanders might lose some money, but that happens all the time when criminals go to the slammer. They can always sue.

    Of course, there might be some individuals who're due to do some time also.

  2. Re:Also on USPS Service Kiosks Taking Pictures of Customers · · Score: 1

    Ever hear of the UniBomber? This is specifically because of him. You used to be able to drop off a sufficently stamped parcel in any mail drop. After the UniBomber scares you were required to take packages over a certain size and/or weight into the office in person.

    Bull. That restriction (or "deterioration of service", since it is less convenient and more costly in time) was introduced during the panic after the crash of TWA 800, which they thought went down because of a bomb.

    Of course, they finally figured out that TWA 800 went down because of defective wiring. But curiously enough, the degraded service stayed even though the justification for it turned out to be bogus.

  3. Re:That's easy... on Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam? · · Score: 1

    Oops. Didn't for me. Maybe Firefox's popup killer or the collection of "don't go there" IPs in my firewall stopped it. It did seem a little too easy to be true.

  4. Re:That's easy... on Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam? · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can't read the article it's paid subscription... unless someone has a link to more than the first couple of paragraphs.

    You just have to click through about five pages of ads.. but there's no animation or sound or anything, so you can click NEXT as soon as the page loads.

  5. Re:90 MPH???? on ZAP Smart Car Approved for Sale in the US · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just wait until someone gets in a head on collision with an SUV (most of them are nearly 3 times the weight of these cars -- The driver of the SUV feels almost nothing

    Just wait until that crappy SUV gets in a head on collision with a Freightliner. Only a moron would drive anything smaller than a Freightliner. Good thing the Liebherr isn't licensed for onroad use, or we'd all have to drive one of them.

  6. Re:Please ? on Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted · · Score: 1

    I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of [spam]. If you don't like reading spam (some weird people actually do want to buy penis and breast enhancement toolkits) - get a filter.

    Maybe your time is worth nothing. So why don't you come around and set up a filter for me? I don't want to be unreasonable, I could live with 1 or 2 pieces of spam per day. But absolutely no false positives. And I'll need it stopped on the server, before it eats my bandwidth. I'm getting a couple of hundred pieces per day. Right now Postini filters my mail (and since my ISP has to pay them for that, it increases my monthly cost), so I only get actually receive 20 or so pieces per day. Mostly those fake Rolex ads and bounces from spam where the spammer is forging my domain as a return address. So will you can take care of that? By next Tuesday?

  7. Re:Canadians are fooling themselves. on Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens · · Score: 1

    The idea of Canada as a seperate country from the U.S. is outddated nonsense...The best solution would be to make Canada a commonwealth of the U.S.

    Why not make the US a possession of Canada? We could split into, say, 3 provinces (politically, it probably wouldn't be possible in Canada to have the new provinces outnumber the original ones): the West Territories, the Middle Territories, and the East Territories. Then we'd bitch about Ottawa, but we probably wouldn't be attacking other countries for purely political reasons.

  8. Re:Vote! on Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens · · Score: 1

    in the case of an MRI, [the reason it will be done for a poor person] is the hospital's fear of negligence lawsuits.

    Fascinating. So you're saying that the US system works because of lawsuits. So to get more equitable health care, we need more lawsuits. In which case the high cost of malpractice/negligence insurance is a proper and necessary part of our health system, because the bastards can't be counted on to provide care without.

    hospitals are businesses. They will provide services to everyone, and usually charge them what they can pay.

    You must live under different market rules than I do. Where I live, under capitalism, most businesses charge what the market will bear, not "what people can pay". If they can charge more without reducing the demand for their trade, or running afoul of regulation, they do so.

  9. Re:Great! on New Technique Could Trace Documents By Printer · · Score: 1

    maybe if the Democrats didn't take their own propaganda so seriously, they wouldn't have instinctively believed that memo to be genuine.

    Maybe. But if you will recall, the guy's secretary said (paraphrase): "It's a forgery, but the content is accurate." So, if you're looking at content rather than typography, it's an easy mistake to make.

  10. Re:In their defense.... on MPAA Blames Linux Australia Notice on Human Error · · Score: 1

    Are not DMCA takedown notices sent under penalty of perjury?

    The only part of the notice that's "under penalty of perjury" is the part where the sender says he's acting as an agent for the copyright owner.

  11. Re:Pirate to Pirate? on Curing a Corporate Virus Infection · · Score: 1

    how do you stop windows from sharing the harddrives

    Windows shares don't have anything to do with it. P2P programs (at least, all the ones I'm familiar with.. the KaZaa clones, Soulseek, WinMX, Piolet, Limewire, Bearshare, Shareaza, Gnucleus, BitTorrent, ES5, a few others) share specified directories or files. Usually the default is something like C:\Program Files\Shareaza\Downloads, but that can be changed by the user. (I have one particular set of folders that I share, the same folders for every program.) Some programs will scan your HD looking for media files and offer to share them, but you're not obliged to accept the offer. I think at one time, there was a braindead program (maybe KaZaa) that offered to share C:\ but I don't recall ever personally seeing such defaults, and some programs will not accept such a setting even if you want to do it.

    how would you know you never experienced ANY security problems? The average user doesn't even know when s/he has 12 viruses lurking around on their system.

    Obviously I can't prove that there are no security problems that I am unaware of. (Leaving aside the "security problem" involving other parties who may take offense at one or another file that I share, but that's an innate risk in any non-anonymous sharing.) But reports of security problems are rare, unlike the situation for people who use IE/OE, where new problems seem to be a weekly event. And yes, there are people who don't notice they are infected with viruses until their machine dies under the load, but I'm presuming a minimal level of competence, reasonably current AV software, and the understanding that any downloaded executable needs to be carefully checked before running it. Anyone who can't meet that standard will probably run into trouble no matter what they're running, or not running. I routinely run p2p programs, follow p2p news, am significantly more paranoid than the average user, and do tech support for one such program; if there were any significant known problems, I'd have heard about it.

  12. Re:Pirate to Pirate? on Curing a Corporate Virus Infection · · Score: 1

    the more effiecent a p2p network is, the less secure it requires your computer to be

    That's bull. You normally have one, maybe two ports open to incoming, and exploits have been rare. The insecurity normally revolves around 1) morons who share their entire HD, or 2) morons who download L33t Pr0n War3z without considering that "NudeBritneyAndWarthog.scr" may not be a benign file. (Some p2p progs attempt to foolproof themselves by limiting the folders that can be shared, and blocking files with executable extensions, but we all know that fools can be quite ingenious in defeating safety interlocks.) I've been running various p2p programs 24/7 for years, and have never experienced ANY security problems (if we don't count uploading files to unknown parties).

  13. Re:Well he fucking *killed* someone! on Home Defense, Geek Style? · · Score: 1

    Anti-gun activists in Louisiana brayed that the streets would run red with blood if such a law were passed, and the law was passed, and, of course, blood hasn't run down the streets...

    Hey, in Louisiana it's cool to shoot kids in Halloween costumes. News story Who'd know the difference?

  14. Re:been debunked on Home Defense, Geek Style? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    who's going to defend us against the cops. I recently had a cop DRAW HIS PISTOL ON ME because I didn't want to listen to his lecture about why he was blocking the road, and instead decided to turn my car around

    And just how did your gun ownership protect you? Did you then draw your weapon on the cop? Were you successful in neutralizing his threat?

    Or are you saying you retreated and will deal with the situation from ambush next time? Because it's obvious that whoever draws first has the upper hand.

  15. Re:To suggest this is almost criminally stupid on Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors? · · Score: 1

    Without the liscence and the academic discounts, the taxes on [grain alcohol] would make it prohibitive. Not to mention that you need special permission to get the non-denatured stuff.

    But Everclear (95% ethanol) is readily available in many locations. And if you have any left over from the cleaning project, you can throw it into the punch at the party afterward.

  16. Re:Narnia is challenged too! on Top Banned Books of 2003 · · Score: 1

    BTW, my sister-in-law would like me to pass along a magic word: "disfellowshipped". She says this word will make the aforementioned brand of god-peddlers flee in horror and not return.

    A word as awkward and clunky as "disfellowshipped" will certainly make lovers of English flee in horror. I don't know about the god-peddlers, though.

  17. Re:So What? on Top Banned Books of 2003 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    and what of childrens' innocence? are we to destroy it as early as possible simply to appease the PC goddesses?

    But how do you protect your child from hearing that somebody like George Bush is in power?

  18. Re:Our gov't at work on Senator Blacklisted by No-Fly List · · Score: 1

    it was the federal law that required convicted felons be removed from voter registration lists.

    Ah, that would be... FALSE. It's up to the states. Felon voting restrictions by state

    in your tinfoil hat world. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris personally programmed this database so that it would only exclude blacks who would vote Democrat.

    Nope. People at that level don't get their own hands dirty (granted, Nixon and the tapes was an exception), they have others do the work for them.

  19. Re:Old-fashioned librarians are great people on Librarians to the Rescue · · Score: 2, Informative

    many librarians have been very active in the destruction of the historical record they are supposed to be preserving, in their active efforts to badly microfilm, then pulp, historical newspaper collections.

    Cites?

    Didn't think so.


    Well, it's probably more library administrators (some of who are librarians) fighting to deal with inadequate budgets and space, and the demand for (and sexiness of) newer technologies (Internet access, CDs, etc.) that enroach on existing physical space. You want cites?

    Do we want to keep our newspapers?
    Novelist buys and saves old papers to avert their destruction

  20. Re:What's your point again?? on VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You · · Score: 1

    The terms forbit you to transmit information that may "give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or (ii) encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law"

    So if you talk about suing Vonage, or anyone else for that matter, you have crossed the line (by definition, lawsuits involve civil liability). Actually, in a country like the USA where anybody can sue anyone for anything, the "give rise to civil liability" clause potentially covers just about everything you might say. If you talk about anything that would violate any nation's law (North Korea's, say, or the laws of the thugs who run Burma, or Sharia law of the Islamic Republics), you have crossed the line. If you verbally defend your country when it has violated international law (say, the Convention Against Torture), you have crossed the line.

    No, maybe that wasn't their intent, but that's the way they chose to write it.

  21. Re:That's a horrible "warranty" .... on Kensington Laptop Locks Not So Secure · · Score: 1

    If your laptop, bike, etc ever gets stolen and you try to claim the compensation money from the lock manufacturer, you will find that there are many restrictions on actually getting that money. That is because, as with any other insurance scheme, many unscrupulous people try to get the compensation money by dishonest means.

    And many unscrupulous companies try to prevent giving out compensation money by dishonest means. Yes, we know.

  22. Re:900mhz? on 2.4GHz-Friendly Phones? · · Score: 3, Informative

    We're talking about cordless, not cellular. You furriners need to read for comprehension.

    Some GSM cell phones run on the 900MHz band (880-960MHz).

    Some US cordless phones run on the 902-928MHz band. But thanks for your insightful comment anyhow, AC.

  23. Re:All NEW cars on NTSB Recommends Black Boxes For All Cars · · Score: 1

    I think the NTSB or anyone pushing these black boxes are more concerned with accident reconstruction than big-brother-esque monitoring.

    I expect you're right about the NTSB. And if recording is limited to under a minute, and can only be accessed by physical connection to the unit, it wouldn't be much use to anybody except the NTSB, insurance companies, and accident investigators.

    But let's say they stick a little more RAM in and the recording time goes to 4 hours. Or that the data can be accessed remotely (perhaps to provide automatic notification to emergency responders in case of accident). Or that there are ways to access the data that don't require an accident first. You don't think Ashcroft's Homeland Security police would want access? Remember, in a mere 2 years the "Patriot Act" (which was supposedly to fight terrorism) is being heavily used for cases which have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. And if Ashcroft's Army can have access, should we deny it to other security forces, Boss Hawg, the tax people (so they can verify your mileage claims), your employer and your wife's divorce lawyer? The printout would read like MapQuest driving instructions. "He drove 0.5mi due south @ 36.4mph, turned right 90 degrees, drove west 1.2mi @ 42.7mph, parked, ignition was off for 2.5 hr..."

    It's the triggers that we need to make sure are protecting our privacy and I'm very confident they are.

    That's where we differ. I'm convinced that if it can be abused, it will be. I think I've got history on my side.

  24. Re:All NEW cars on NTSB Recommends Black Boxes For All Cars · · Score: 1

    these [automobile black boxes] record maybe the past 40 seconds

    That's cool, I don't have any problem with 40s. But I notice that you put in a vague qualifier as to how long the time is. So has everyone else who has mentioned a time (is it 30s? 7s?)? Could it be that you don't actually know? Could it be 4h, or 4 months? Probably not, today. But storage continues to get cheaper, if it's 40s today, won't it be 4m next year, and 4h the year after that? 4 hours I do have a problem with, because now it's into a surveillance timeframe. Especially if the data can be accessed without an intervening crash, either manually or wirelessly.

    it's not big brother trying to issue you the tickets cops aren't there to see but helping the police reconstruct what happened if you're involved in an accident and to help your mechanic out and find some problems easier

    No, it's not "trying to issue tickets". But the important question is, can it be used for that? Because if it can, some cop or prosecutor will do it. And then they all will. If it only records the last 40s, I wouldn't think it would help my mechanic much.

  25. Re:Ernest Miller wrote about this... on Using P2P To Make Gov't Documents Easy To Find · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All US Government documents are public domain (non-copyrighted) so any web site could put them up for static download without fear of DMCA attacks.

    Are you under the illusion that the DMCA is the only possible way the government could attack a website?