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User: buravirgil

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Comments · 108

  1. Re:Minimal Trust: on Security After the Death of Trust · · Score: 2

    The paradigms shift along the sea changes and no patterned pulse cannot be read. But Bob Dylan sings better than I will ever post: Strike another match. Go start anew.

  2. The Psuedo-sanctity of Life on Interviews: Ask Freeman Dyson What You Will · · Score: 0

    I don't know if you are familiar with Louise B. Young's book The Unfinished Universe, or the convention of capitalizing the term Form as biologists once capitalized Life, but could you speak to the notion that "life" in cosmic contexts is often speculated about in terms of being "seeded", i.e., that the Earth was set on its path of evolution by an asterioid, and not a phenomenon that might be spontaneous and by terms yet discovered, such as organisms attending smokers on a sea floor?

  3. Re:2020 on IEEE Launches 400G Ethernet Standards Process · · Score: 1

    We (US) don't manufacture stuff. But its investment, design and license does qualify as "make".

  4. Re:promises, promises, promises on IEEE Launches 400G Ethernet Standards Process · · Score: 1

    I appreciate the accuracy you address. Text by the character was my memory from a carrier in Los Angeles in 2005. And I live outside the US and benefit from Skype, Google's clients and FaceTime, so the very trend I call to question is observed by the premise I frame somewhat. But what compelled me to post what I did was the attention granted to public and reported technological advances versus its shadow? Its scrutiny? Thanks for replying.

  5. promises, promises, promises on IEEE Launches 400G Ethernet Standards Process · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I can't cite it, so it never happened, but the transfer of data, its more intensive examples, benefits corporations and governments and corporations and governments only. Human to human contact, such as voice calls, were promised to be ubiquitous and free because what worth corporations would derive from digital technology's rapid growth dwarfed what benefit an individual might. Instead, a text message is given charge by the character. An international call is distinguished from a local one. Maybe somone smarter than me can apply the addage about moving tapes in a station wagon to this latest mind blowing transfer rate and suss a conundrum of data capacity: Its storage versus its distribution. Whole library of congresses shall be traded between great power in the blink of an eye while the rest of us are to have thin clients driven by ad revenue.

  6. Re:TRS-80 all the way, baby! on Radio Shack TRS-80 Vs. Commodore 64: Battle of the Titans · · Score: 1

    Meh. The original Sinclair, before the Timex merger, with mylar keyboard and an adhesieve sticker masquerading as a heat vent, came with 4k ROM and 1k RAM. Around that same time, Sagan's Cosmos was on the TV and his book reported a typical virus held 1.4K of information. So I had managed to code (in a high level langauge thanks to some very smart people) a safe-cracking game, with graphics, and very short text adventure with less memory than a virus. According to Sagan, that is. The Trash-80 (I didn't know anyone calling their color TRS-80 "coco") was a coveted machine and dominated Christmas sales for a good three years sitting out front of every Radio Shack in every mall in America. Missle Command just made you ache. And that was the market...arcade experiences, several boards housed in a cabinet, approached by a single microprocessor with a reasonable price point. I don't know why anyone would compare a TRS-80 to the Commoder 64 because the Vic-20, Atari 400 and TI-994a were its competitors.

  7. As IBM Once Said: THINK on Ukrainian Attack Dolphins Are On the Loose · · Score: 1

    Hoax? Sure, but think of a dolphin in a pool throwing out clicks designed to traverse leagues and fathoms of seawater-- an enclosed pool would function much like an echo-chamber. Oh, but we are learning their language... IN AN ECHO CHAMBER? Through the 80s, I recall NASA soliciting primary school students for ideas about what experiments might be conducted on the space shuttle in 0g conditions. And that was very thoughtful. But it was public relations to suggest something other than the cargo of satellites to be launched from low orbit now forming a sphere of space junk so dense further "research" is imperiled. The science of training animals is highly classified, and likely of a sordid history to be revealed. Stories like this will confound what fog of war surrounds the practice.

  8. Re:Nice catch theodp on Microsoft: the 'Scroogled' Show Must Go On · · Score: 3, Funny

    Watson was built for Colossus to design next Summer's fashions. They'll have to be really smart this year. Vibrant colors shan't suffice.

  9. So on Facebook's Graph Search Is a Privacy Test For Internet Users · · Score: 1

    Take the road less traveled.

  10. Re:Forget about it. on Odds Favor Discovery of Earth-Like Exoplanet in 2013 · · Score: 1

    I'm unsure why "going there" is so typically the response to news like this. Galileo (16th century) kicked off a method to simply COUNT the planets in our system. By the 20th century, science had methods to determine what COMPRISED those countable objects. Since my childhood, the age and dimension of the universe has ONLY been extended. Given our advancement through WAR, imagine beings beyond such waste and what empirical method grants... Keep Watching the Skies, because it's a sure bet they're Watching You! Moreover (doesn't everyone love to say 'moreover'?), the 20th century SUCKED at describing LIFE. Early biologists used to capitalize the damn concept. Louise B. Young countered this hubris by capitlizating the term 'Form' in her book, The Unfinished Universe, 1986. The pretense of 'sustainable conditions' didn't predict ocean floor smokers. Our understanding of bacteria (the 'third' world) is inane and we've attempted to communicate with dolphins by holding them in what is essentially an echo-chamber. I love the book and movies of Solaris, and I've just told you why. Can we "go" there. Really? What makes you think it would be allowed?

  11. Re:Nostalgia is over-rated on High School Reunions — Facebook's Newest Victim? · · Score: 1

    Stop looking into the past. Leave Facebook behind and go make new friends that know you for who you are today, not who you were yesterday.

    Vengeance is mine sayeth http://reunion.com/

  12. Rose by any other name on TSA Has 95-Year-Old Remove Her Diaper For Screening · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can stink. While the War on Drugs (patent pending) is being comically questioned in Congress, the TSA has always, and continues, to countenance its spirit as 'terror'. Drug interdiction is the concern and naked ambition pursued by "securing" airports with the Patriot Act. Termed "controversial invocations" by Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_the_USA_PATRIOT_Act What this incident revealed is an established "thinking" of TSA agents, akin to police popularizing incidents of mothers hiding crack in a baby's diaper, and that no one is above suspicion. And extreme acts are how agents of power assert policy. Should there be a "rule"? In what regard? Ages 55-100? People in a wheel-chair? This action is a form of active propaganda-- because if we can all condemn this action as too extreme, actions upon everybody else is all the more normalized.

  13. Re:Windows Phone 7 and VOIP on Microsoft Buying Skype for $8.5B · · Score: 1

    Agreed...Nokia's purchase is being ignored by flamers as well. I recall speculation about a Google phone, around the time of the bandwidth auction-- a claim that an ad-based model of telephony was being considered, but died due to the limited screen space. I recall when person to person calls were predicted to be free-- as in beer-- its cost piggy-backed on the inevitable growth of more data-intensive services. Instead, it's $1.99 ringtones and charges for text messages. And just to have something else to yell from my lawn: Microsoft's contract to digitize the Library of Congress was a crime against humanity.

  14. Re:He'd have screwed it up. on How Sun Bought Apple Computer (Almost) · · Score: 1

    The WWW was created on NeXT hardware.

    citation needed

  15. Re:Mostly irrelevant on Physicists Call For Alien Messaging Protocol · · Score: 1

    This is Eleanor Arroway, transmitting on 14.2 megahertz.

  16. Re:As a rabid lefty on Former Student Gets 30 Months For Political DDoS Attacks · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Wasn't Ohio the front line at the time? Diebold? Sequoia? Non-auditing black boxes?
    I see fighting fire with fire a whole world gone blind scenario, no pun intended, but I can't 'judge' DDoS attacks as good or bad.
    Color me unsurprised good-old-boy networks contracting out the voting process county by county across the nation have their profits poorly scrutinized while this villain is symbolically sentenced.

  17. gold on IT Security Salaries Expected To Rise In 2011 · · Score: 1

    "Industries forecasting particularly strong demand for IT professionals in 2011 include business services, transportation and healthcare."

    "There is a strong need for IT professionals in healthcare in particular. We've seen a strong demand for IT professionals, from developers to help desk, to assist with the conversion to electronic medical records," Reed noted."

    Pfft. Only corporations will steal medical information, through regulation. And breaches will still be whole databases left in a taxi on a laptop. Transportation? Business services? Keeping safe the growing gambling gold, posted just below, is a more likely source of a spike in salary dollars.

  18. Re:Exactly. on What Tech Should Be In a Fifth-Grade Classroom? · · Score: 2, Funny

    Supercomputers should have been +1 funny.
    But since you've answered in a serious tone, I'll suggest planetariums for every class.

  19. Begun, the drone wars have. on Defending Against Drones · · Score: 2, Funny

    --Winston Churchill.

  20. Governments Sanction? on Google To Restart Talks With China · · Score: 1

    I thought governments lie.

  21. Re:Electric? on Cool NASA Tech That Will Never See Space · · Score: 1

    The inflatable structures are able to handle projectiles better than the stiff walled structures since they have some give to them and can disperse the energy across a larger area. The fact that they pack well is just bonus.

    Pfft...packing well is not a "bonus." More like necessary. As to projectiles...placing great certainty with a basic principle of physics absent on site testing, when it comes to living quarters, is the stuff of fiction. Speaking of fiction, I thought it was established long ago inhabitation of the moon involved excavation.

  22. Re:Odd Reference to Berners-Lee on The Web Way To Learn a Language · · Score: 1

    And HTTP has almost nothing to do with a preponderance of version numbers...
    Engelbart on the other hand...

  23. Electric? on Cool NASA Tech That Will Never See Space · · Score: 1

    Was not the first lunar rover electric? Deep Space Network? Sounds like Microsoft. Inflatable habitats? Yeah, I guess it packs well, but damn. In the shape of a clown?

  24. MoToRoLa & Go-Ogle on Google Phone Could Drive Apple Into Allegiance With Microsoft · · Score: 1

    Have I missed a mention of MotoRola? Or the break from MotoRola Jobs made over "power" processors? Or MotoRola's apparent bowing out of the cellular market, despite the success of Razors, only now to return with Go-Ogle? To a global market soundly held by NoKia? Or the bandwidth that Go-Ogle negotiated? Because AT&T can barely handle the iPhone as it is.

    The "fight" is over whether wireless services will be a subscription service of monthly bills or an ad based medium on a screen removed from a desk.

    Both will exist, but it is likely the average of $50+/month that the telephony companies have enjoyed from every account holder will end. The rub is a parameter of time. No one knows. Verizon cut a deal with Microsoft because Google wouldn't bother as Google threatens both endeavors. From my perspective, such efforts of branding are the delusions of over-paid advertising companies.

    What phone companies have been charging for the past 10 years is near extortion. We all need a phone, but supposedly want a phone with the latest feature. You can see it in every Verizon store-- the posh and large floor space for a few products. An ever present security guard. The salespeople dress and behave in a manner more fitting a broker or corporate executive than a geek selling technology. These are, to me, indicators of bored middle managers inventing a reality. ...there was a geeky dream once that simple voice connectivity would become free, paid for by the profit of more data intensive services. But the gadget grew with a camera and games and an organizer and a music device until finally we experienced phones that prohibited sampling any sound a user might wish to be used as a ringtone for the latest fad-- only $1.99. Branding...bah. Tacit cooperation of distribution and content providers...more likely.

  25. Pitts? American Homeless? on How American Homeless Stay Wired · · Score: 1

    Allegorical anecdotal astroturfing advocating alignment a la angelesia.