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User: KibibyteBrain

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Comments · 190

  1. Re:Pedos, drug lords, and terrorists take notice!! on Researcher Finds Hidden Data-Dumping Services In iOS · · Score: 1

    Yup, because the law-abiding can't know about these features so members of the former group use this to fund their illicit activities.

  2. The Good News? on Peer Review Ring Broken - 60 Articles Retracted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Peter holds a very high standard for himself, I'm sure.

  3. Re:Pretty much completely infeasible. on YouTube Legally Considered a TV Station In Italy · · Score: 1

    Where do you draw the line, though? For example, would you demand all politicians cash out their 401k's or other stock-holding investment accounts because technically they own a company in those arrangements? "Owning a company" is a litigiously vague statement, and anything less broad could be viewed as discrimination.

  4. Re:The Inquisition Lives! on One Tip Enough To Put Name On Terrorist Watch List · · Score: 1

    No, what made the witch trials unique was one could be CONVICTED on a single accusation. We aren't quite there yet...you can however be detained indefinitely on a single accusation...

  5. Re:Good advice - Always use your ISP for DNS on Beware of Using Google Or OpenDNS For iTunes · · Score: 2

    Why use your ISP for DNS? Chances are their servers suck, and they will insert spam links for failed resolutions to add insult to injury for their horrible service. Find a server that is 1) geographically close and 2) measurably performs well. I personally use this tool for locating a DNS server that measurably works well with my connection: http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm .

  6. Re:Photon-specific or driven by temperature? on New Solar Reactor Prototype Unveiled · · Score: 2

    Sunlight naturally allows this thermochemical cycle to occur, assuming that the device is allowed to cool at night. With other heat sources(geothermal, etc), you would need to remove the device to cut off the heat source for the "off" period of the duty cycle. Also, that makes this device less appealing than it might seem, as this "19%" efficiency cited doesn't mean you only get even 19% of the heat power of your source put in as power out, but thats only during the "on" period of the duty cycle. This may allow more flexible, if even a bit less efficient ways of converting heat to energy in "constant heat source" applications produce higher average power output from the same source.
    That is probably why these researchers are pushing it for solar power applications, as its strengths(fair decent efficiency for the cost) stand but its [obvious] negatives(cycling) are a built in limitation of all solar power systems.

  7. Re:No surprise on Microsoft Ready To Talk Windows On ARM · · Score: 1

    .NET apps CAN be shipped as pure IL assemblies but as far as I can tell in the real world this is more rarely done than it could and probably should be. .NET assemblies can be compiled into platform-specific assemblies with some Frankenstein mix of pre-complied code in them, and there are many, many .Net apps built targeted for the x86 platform, and which only world when build in such a fashion.

  8. Re:Common sense says... on Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear · · Score: 1

    The facts in this case are unique. The allegations of distress are not related to a right/expectation of privacy. Rather, they are emotional damages related to the fact this person has a psychological disorder, and claims it was aggravated by Google posting this particular picture. I think the legal interpretation of exactly what Google would and would not be liable for in that case is pretty complicated.
    For example, walking up behind most people and shouting "boo!" may seem to hardly be considered an offense worth a civil court's attention, but if that person had a heart condition or PTSD, perhaps it could cause objectively demonstrable damages the court could rule on, depending on the laws and customs in the jurisdiction.

  9. Re:WebM versus H.264 on 80% of Daily YouTube Videos Now In WebM · · Score: 0

    Not that I really care, but the Bible says neither; it says "lo tirtzach", which means neither kill nor murder. Just because modern English has two specific common words specifying generalness of killing a human doesn't mean all languages are bound to.

  10. Re:Tampering! on Kinect Hacked, Adafruit Bounty Won · · Score: 1

    That's not true at all. By communicating with the Kinect device over USB actively you are using the software within, and therefore bound to a SLA to use such software in the device(at least, as validly as a SLA would apply to any other use of software like the more common screen+keyboard use model).

  11. Re:Tampering! on Kinect Hacked, Adafruit Bounty Won · · Score: 1

    That's not true; Kinect has its own software/firmware stack running in the unit which could be protected by a SLA as well.

  12. Re:Progress seems to have stalled on 10th Birthday of ASIMO · · Score: 1

    Oh, you mean like every other advanced research program in the world? It seems like these days research that takes any significant capital expenses at all is out of the question in the corporate world unless it is directly tied to a product planned to be shipped in the next 5 years or so at most. Even when you see references where it seems like research purely for technology enhancement, nine times out of ten under the curtain it was actually just work tied to a failed product development cycle(and one that probably would have been successful with more preemptive, long term research in that area to back it).

  13. Re:cfdisk /dev/sdb; mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 on USB 'Dead Drops' · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hate to break it to you, but the first thing a Windows boxen will do when it is then plugged into the drive then will be prompt the user to format it, NTFS, sort of making this hardly any real fix, and really just more annoying to the projects spirit as whatever pdf of the Anarchist's Cookbook or whatever "contraband" files these kiddies will be spreading at these dead-drops will be deleted twice.

  14. Re:I agree with the other posters on USB 'Dead Drops' · · Score: 1

    This smells more of "art project" than an actually practical RFC of how to effectively exchange information in secret offline.

  15. Re:Excellent on USB 'Dead Drops' · · Score: 1

    This is possibly the one thing you could do both so computationally irresponsible and absurdly dorky that even your obscure *nix machine is going to be royally pwned if you use these frequently.

  16. Re:Why warming and not cooling? on Calculating Environmental Damage From Space Tourism Rockets · · Score: 2, Informative

    It all depends on if the particulate, after settling, causes a net reflection or absorption of radiation. This would depend on the precise chemical makeup of the particulate, the altitude dispersed, and the process that dispersed it(temp, pressure, velocity, etc).

  17. Re:Stop burning stuff perhaps? on Global Warming's Silver Lining For the Arctic Rim · · Score: 1

    Crude oil will still be useful for petrochemicals, regardless of innovation and policy in green energy. And using crude oil as the source for such chemicals can in some instances be more green than alternative processes, assuming they even exist for the desired compounds, and don't require price-raising re-purposing of the food supply for product materials, either. Probably the second best reason to stop burning fossil fuels for energy after environmental concerns is preservation for other useful purposes.

  18. Re:Cause and Effect on Audio Analysis Brings New Revelations From Kent State Shooting · · Score: 1

    A military force is not really trained to pick targets; they are trained to efficiently kill enemy combatants once given an order and to wait and act on further orders. They were given such an order before acting, and they pretty much responded the only way they were trained to respond.

    This is just a fundamental problem in using law enforcement officers not trained for riots, much the less actual professional soldiers trained mostly for combat, as police when BS like this happens. Yet it seems like the USA we have a record of consistently using the wrong tool for the job when it comes to resolving crisis situations, or in this case more of situations politicians and citizens with outdated world views and value systems don't like, whether at home or abroad. And then we in hindsight blame it on the wrong tools chosen why they responded wrongly rather than the engines of society that stupidly selected them.

  19. Re:The easy way out on GE Closes Last US Light Bulb Factory · · Score: 1

    It's not as simple as that as you still need a DC-DC converter assuming we can't come up with some magical DC supply that matches the forward voltage characteristics of diode designs now and in the future, and this still needs some way to dump heat(albeit, far less than also needing to sink the inefficiency of the AC-DC process as well). Even then I'm guessing eventually most LEDs will actually be driven with a PWM still which would need to be in unit, as well as requiring some sort of moderately sized capacitor to deal with the huge inductance long DC wall wiring would have.

  20. Re:sounds pretty libelous to me on Plagiarizing a Takedown Notice · · Score: 4, Informative

    He didn't saying that Commodore USA is a hoax or con merely that he is "assuming" they are, which I presume is a way of trying to say he will treat them with such skepticism in his actions. While probably not the clearest wording those still mean different things. Something like the difference between writing"Joe is a murderer." and "Until proven otherwise, I am going to assume Joe committed the murder."

  21. Re:wheres the story? on White House Fingers PlayStation As Obesity Culprit · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, look at any fat kid and you will notice one constant among them: fat parents. Its not genetics, but overall lifestyle.
    I play video games more than ever now and have attained a below-average BMI and am well past what my doctor calls "clinical fitness" since ditching a car and biking to work every day. Singling out any one factor of lifestyle is missing the point; its overall lifestyle composition that matters.

  22. Re:Huh? on FTC Wants Browsers To Block Online Tracking · · Score: 4, Informative

    Flash cookies FTL! And when that starts to fail more, advertisers can always rely on server-side stateful tracking using whatever identifying tokens they can get(ip address, user agent, etc) to track users. The only real way to stop tracking is to compel the trackers to stop trying. Even elaborate measures like TOR can and have failed to completely prevent tracking.

  23. Re:About Software on Windows Vulnerable To 'Token Kidnapping' Attacks · · Score: 1

    It does not checks to make sure it has access to enough memory to load the string "hello world" into standard output. It also do no checks to see that the stack size allows it to return 0.

  24. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? on Fastest Graphics Ever, Asus ARES Rips Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    I don't know, while for almost anyone reading this thread such a mentality is true, if I were a millionaire gamer I guess it would be stupid NOT to get one of these. Mind you some people in this world pay more than $1200 for clothing, or even dinner.

  25. Re:And the other half of the story... on UK Video Game Tax Cuts Sabotaged? · · Score: 1

    Increasing the VAT will barely raise revenues if it does at all; it will mostly just lead to less consumer spending. A "handout" for the games industry might encourage a studio or two to move to or increase its operations in the UK, which would almost certainly raise revenues at least directly, maybe even net them some direct tax, and the halo effect on the surrounding economy from new jobs and investment cannot be underestimated. And I'd assume it would be a relatively effective incentive measure vs. using similar incentives for other industries as AFAIK they'd be the only nation with such a program.