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User: RightwingNutjob

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  1. Re:Causation of other things? on Woman Suffers Significant Weight Gain After Fecal Transplant · · Score: 1

    Could be. Yet another reason giving out antibiotics like candy can cause more harm than good.

  2. Having crossed paths with this fella about 10 years ago, you're not too far off. Minus the racism.

  3. Re:We need to "up" the game... on State Television Says Iran Launches New Satellite Into Space · · Score: 1

    And as an American, I'd rather live in India or South Korea over Iran and North Korea. Same way I'm sure many many people would have rather lived in late 50's America than late 50's Russia.

  4. Re: I love the snark here on State Television Says Iran Launches New Satellite Into Space · · Score: 3, Informative

    In fact, the US Navy's Transit satellite navigation system was conceived when JHU engineers used a computer to determine the exact orbit of the satellite from the doppler shift of the beep received on the ground and realized that if the orbit of the satellite were known a priori, the computation was equivalent to locating yourself (ie a ship) on the surface of the Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

  5. Re:And he wonders why there's no wage and job grow on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 1

    Whoosh much? I was referring to the strawman kleptocrat government badguys in the book as the source of Obama's inspiration.

  6. Re:Obama did not propose this.... on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 1

    Still a dumb idea, no matter where it came from.

  7. Re:Did Obama literally just say... on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 1

    You are correct. A fair tax code will tax all types of income and transactions at the same rate so that there is no incentive to hide, dodge, and evade at the expense of investing in your organization and paying dividends to your shareholders. A smart and far tax code will set the tax rate to be about the same as those of foreign jurisdictions to avoid pushing capital offshore.

    If there were a flat (say 15 or 20 pct) tax on income, capital gains, and foreign purchases sold to americans, etc, there would be no way to dodge and no incentive to go offshore, because the tax rates elsewhere are the same, and there's no way to structure a payment or income source in a way that avoids taxation at some point along the money's route. The only way it escapes taxation is if it is flat-out transfered abroad and stays there, at which point it gets taxed abroad at a comparable rate.

    But then the tax lawyers would be out of work, and guess who tends to run for Congress?

  8. Re:It's much more complicated than this... on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 1

    Look deep enough and the company is either a bank (which despite private sector propaganda is very much an arm of the federal government) or is a government contractor staying afloat on no-bid contracts, subsidies, and other sweetheart deals. If there's no bailout mechanism, organizations like that shrivle up and die.

  9. MIT? on NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What? They're afraid MIT is full of Pats fans?

  10. And he wonders why there's no wage and job growth on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Does Obama huddle up with a flashlight and a copy of Atlas Shrugged under the covers every night thinking that it's some kind of instruction manual? Every time I start to warm up to the guy a little, he pulls this kind of nonsense to remind me why I voted against him.

  11. Re: A sense of scale on Spire Plans To Use Tiny Satellites For More Accurate Weather Forecasts · · Score: 1

    Correct, and the ionosphere is not where the weather all is.

  12. Re:A sense of scale on Spire Plans To Use Tiny Satellites For More Accurate Weather Forecasts · · Score: 1

    OK, my bad. Somebody who's an RF type: Remind me again if the two GPS bands (civil and military) are chosen for their immunity to or responsivity to atmospheric parameters.

  13. Re:track record on US Air Force Selects Boeing 747-8 To Replace Air Force One · · Score: 2

    Several 757s are configured for use as Air Force One when the President is going somewhere too small to handle a 747. Honestly, I think risk-averseness is driving the decision to stay with the 747 more than anything else. The president's plane has always been the biggest 4-engined Boeing built, and what's the point of changing that when you don't have to. Will it cost more than some other option? Maybe, but all things POTUS bleed cash anyway, so is it worth modifying a design that fits into a 747 now and having to debug it later for at best a marginal cost savings?

  14. A sense of scale on Spire Plans To Use Tiny Satellites For More Accurate Weather Forecasts · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is missing in this notion. Meaningful Earth observation from space is done with cameras that take up more physical space than a cubesat. Yeah, you can squeeze several high definition cameras into a cubesat, but the moment you realize that you need something other than visible band, temperture control on the ccds, and the power-aperture to beam that stuff down to earth in a meaningful timeframe, you've built 1500lb worth of overhead around your tiny little cubesat and you're back in GOES and NPP land.

  15. Re:If it's accessing your X server, it's elevated on Why Screen Lockers On X11 Cannot Be Secure · · Score: 1

    Exactly. You need to control the hardware with physical security, or none of your fancy software solutions are valid. And yeah, then you have to worry about vendors, and where the factories are, and do you pay your security guards enough.

  16. Re:If it's accessing your X server, it's elevated on Why Screen Lockers On X11 Cannot Be Secure · · Score: 1

    Here's the problem: if you care about security to the point where screen locks are serious business, you've gotten yourself into a contradictory set of requirements: both trusted and untrusted users have physical access to and execution priveleges on a terminal. If you really suspect that your users are untrustworthy enough to steal credentials in this way, the answer is to not have a screenlock at all but to push the security barrier further into the system. The terminal is dumb and has no security model, but to access and/or interact with your proprietary information, the user types credentials into your own custom coded application or web form through a browser and it logs him out after N minutes and requires reentry of the credentials. He's not allowed to run any code on your system, and all the directories, executables and shell scripts that are run in the course of interactring with the terminal are marked 755 or 744 as appropriate so that he can't modify them, and the tmp dir resides in a ramdisk that gets wiped between sessions. Then it doesn't matter if everything is permitted over the X11 protocol, because there is no way to spoof anything from that untrusted terminal. Physical security goes a long way in obviating risks from software vulnerabilities, where practical. And if the data being guarded is sufficiently important, it will be made to be perceived as practical.

  17. Re:Visible from Earth? on Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk To Surpass Hubble · · Score: 1

    Speaking of... how do they intend to control stray sunhlight reflecting off of this giant disk?

  18. Re:Then there was War Plan Red on Plan C: The Cold War Plan Which Would Have Brought the US Under Martial Law · · Score: 1

    And if memory serves, as recently as the 1860's, the Brits were supplying arms to the Confederacy, so in the late 19th century, it wasn't all smiles and sunshine the way it has been since WW2.

  19. Re:It's a little early on Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Food That Contains DNA · · Score: 1

    Someone with a biology degree, quick! at what cooking temperature does DNA break up?

  20. Re:Just give the option to turn it off... on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    Hippies jumping in front of priuses?

  21. Re:India? I don't think so... on Fields Medal Winner Manjul Bhargava On the Pythagorean Theorem Controversy · · Score: 1

    Which is all the more impressive considering that it was the current dear leader that invented mathematics, theorems, and the abstract concepts of proof and discovery.

  22. Re:I think the thing being missed here on Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners · · Score: 1

    Just came back from Shanghai last week. 15 hrs there, plus an hour+ on each end going through baggage check and customs. 13 hrs back plus same overhead. I'd call that burning a whole day in each direction.

  23. Re:I think the thing being missed here on Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners · · Score: 1

    Depends on who I am. If two days of my time wasted on travel costs more than the price difference, I'd definitely pay. If it's less, but not too much less, I'd pay. If its work that only I can do and it needs to be done sooner rather than later, there's no good way to put a dollar amount on it, but I'd probably pay. If it's just for me and not my company and I can afford to blow an extra 10k to treat myself, I might pay. And it depends on the savings. If 7hrs to Europe gets cut down to 1 hr and 15 hours to Asia gets cut down to 1 hr 30 minutes, people would pay even when it's a financial looser, because even if you don't charge/make 500/hr, you might still hate flying enough to eat the cost difference anyway.

  24. Re:nope on Ask Slashdot: Resources For Kids Who Want To Make Games? · · Score: 2

    My sarcasm detector is registering a 50% confidence metric, but I'd still rather work with, listen to, and play games by people who aren't ignorant about the war of 1812 and the cotton gin.

  25. Re:Wheel Group on Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking · · Score: 3, Informative

    Leaving a blank root password during install on Debian disables login access to the root account from any terminal or the root console. There is still a root account, but it can only be accessed with sudo -s; su - by a user in the wheel group.