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User: Fat+Cow

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Comments · 197

  1. Down the stack... on The Great JavaScript Debate: Improve It Or Kill It · · Score: 1

    Maybe they should specify an open VM API next time, rather than a language. The LLVM VM instruction set is open. What's the downside of that?

  2. Re:Voting? on What Exactly Is a Galaxy? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't seem like the definition of a scientific term is something that should be left to a democratic vote. Public opinion with regards to science is never a good thing to rely on (creation vs evolution, naturalistic healing, etc).

    It's not really a scientific term. No theories depend on the definition of a galaxy.

  3. Re:160 seconds? Windows? Bad example on The Case For Lousy Passwords · · Score: 1

    Because the attack is quite general - it applies to any system that stores password hashes. And it's only applicable when you have the password hashes, so limiting attempts per IP isn't relevant.

  4. Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that on Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions · · Score: 1

    Income tax is on income, not capital gains. He wouldn't have been paying income tax on his share sale anyway.

    In the very summary, Brad Smith claims that this tax applies to capital gains as well as dividends and other income

  5. Re:Even so! on Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits · · Score: 1

    You're probably talking about life expectancy at birth.

    Life expectancy at age 70 is 85.11 in the UK and 85.51 in the USA according to WolframAlpha

  6. Re:Not more "safety features" please on Vans Drive Themselves Across the World · · Score: 1

    Do you have a reference for this decrease in US traffic deaths and some indication that the decrease was caused by these safety features?

    I ask because I've previously read (in a book called "Risks" that I can't find on amazon) that only seat belts clearly increased safety, all the others were marginal, statistically insignificant or made things worse. Their hypothesis was that people drove more recklessly to compensate.

  7. Re:Autonomous vehicles on Vans Drive Themselves Across the World · · Score: 1

    It's the migration that's the problem. We already have the roads whereas building rail to every house runs into the chicken-egg problem.

    Also, if you end up building rail to every house, the trains or pods will still have to deal with people crossing in front of them

  8. Re:Not a chance. on Facebook Patents Location Social Networking · · Score: 1

    When they brought it to market is irrelevant. It looks like they filed this patent in 2007, which predates foursquare.

    However it was filed after dodgeball. From wikipedia, dodgeball required you to text your location rather than auto-detecting it from the gps. The claims in the facebook patent specify auto-detecting your location so it doesn't sound like dodgeball is prior art.

    Was there something prior to 2007 that was already doing this? Maybe brightkite or loopt?

  9. IMAP with maildir backend on Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I migrated all my old personal emails to gmail using IMAP. You can use this to migrate between different on-disk formats like maildir, mbox and pst. I had all my email in yahoo and pulled it down using POP to a maildir, then used an IMAP mail client to copy it across to gmail. Then I regularly back them up from gmail to an on-disk maildir format using mbsync. I picked maildir because it's open and seemed better designed than the alternative, mbox. It's not completely standardized though. I've seen PSTs become corrupt so I try and stay away.

  10. Re:As I said in the previous story about the Hayab on Hayabusa Returns Particles From Asteroid · · Score: 1

    I would aim for the non-rotating parts

  11. Re:But will this work in your company? on How Google Decides To Cancel a Project · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This _should_ be a cash cow for the shareholders. If these companies can't invest this money profitably then they are morally obligated to return it to the shareholders.

  12. Re:Stimulus? on $6 Billion Proposal For High-Speed Internet Grants · · Score: 1

    Here's my theory...

    There's less incentive for the wealthy to start new businesses if their customers in the bottom 50% don't have any money to spend on the service.

    People in the top strata always have money. They're currently "investing" it in low-interest low-risk investments like treasury bonds. We need them to invest in high-return/high-risk ventures like new businesses. Giving them more money doesn't help the situation because they already have money, we need to give them more customers.

    I think we're on the other side of the Laffer curve.

  13. Re:Is the OP serious? on Ubuntu Ports To ARM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    True - after all, Debian has had an ARM port for years and that didn't have any earthshaking impact.

  14. Re:I feel a slight sense of jealousy on Amazon's Cloud Data Center To Follow Google To Oregon · · Score: 2, Informative
  15. Re:From TFA... on Huge Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Off · · Score: 1

    But when the waters rise, the people who live in the areas due to be flooded aren't going to take drowning lightly. They'll kill you to stay alive.

    Or maybe they'll just build dikes, like the Dutch.

  16. Re:Backups, backups, backups! on What Do You Do When the Cloud Shuts Down? · · Score: 1

    Wuala is doing exactly this

  17. Last Legionary Quartet on Sci-Fi Books For Pre-Teens? · · Score: 1

    The Last Legionary Quartet by Douglas Hill

  18. Re:Garage Nukes on Nuclear Warhead Blueprints On Smugglers' Computers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's not intellect, it's prosperity. And those 6-7 kids are more prosperous than their parents were and will almost certainly have much fewer children as well.

  19. Maybe respect the constitution first of all? on What Would You Do As President? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ironically, there are 2 themes co-existing in comments in this thread...

    1) Support for Ron Paul
    2) Proposing that the president do a bunch of stuff that he has no power to do (stepping on Congress' toes)

  20. Re:The moral of the story is: on Even My Mom Could Hack These Sites · · Score: 1

    The only ID that's really important to the hosting company is who's authorizing the monthly payments. You should be able to get an authoritative answer from the credit card owner (or whatever).

  21. Re:Selective keying using the whole .exe from memo on AACS Hack Blamed on Bad Player Implementation · · Score: 1

    It's probably not in plaintext in the exe, but they do have to have it in plaintext before they use it.

  22. Re:Cell phone service evolution on Apple Turning Cell Phone Market Upside Down? · · Score: 1

    There's a scarcity here - you get an assigned slot/frequency band to use when you call, so they can't really go to flat rate. Then again...how does Cricket do it?

  23. Re:Open standards on FCC Nixes Satellite Radio Merger · · Score: 1

    The FCC doesn't have power over these companies - that's why Howard Stern went there in the first place

  24. Re:Yes. on Are More Choices Really Better? · · Score: 1

    In this case, the extra choices are not there because different people want to do different things. They're there because the software and/or hardware doesn't work optimally.

    e.g. Why wouldn't you want to hibernate rather than standby if your machine has been sitting idle in standby for a few minutes? Maybe because your hardware, your drivers or your software doesn't support recovering from it. Similar unsatisfactory reasons apply for all the other choices.

  25. Re:Cat 5e? on The Fiber to the Premises Install Process · · Score: 1

    it's odd that he put in a network and then transfers his new movie to his thinkpad by sneakernet (thumbdrive)