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User: Froggels

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  1. Why do Germans expect special treatment? on Street View On iOS Pierces German Privacy Veil · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't see why Germans feel that they should have to get their knickers in such a twist over such a trivial issue.. After all Google is an American company and should be able to keep its own information on its own servers in its own country. So what if a bunch of Yanks decide they want to take pictures of Germany then store those pictures on their own computers back home? Tourists have been taking pictures for years and this type of thing has never been an issue.. If Google chooses to host content on its own servers then they technically haven't even posted any content "on the Internet". Safe harbour laws are nothing but a load of shite. Who the fuck do these God damn Europeeon wussies think they are telling us what to do?

  2. Re:You don't want the best, you want cheap. on Ryanair's CEO Suggests Eliminating Co-Pilots · · Score: 1

    "For them all this is free advertisement." Bingo Ryan Air does this type of thing on a regular basis. It's only been a few weeks since Michael O'Leary suggested that they have standing flights only. Just a simple google search will reveal several other attention getting tricks he has used in the past. One other thing about Ryan Air is that many of their pilots are new and actually have to pay a fee to fly for the company (Fairly cheap way to build hours) and once they hit 500 hours they get sacked.

  3. Privacy Concerns? on Cisco Planning To Acquire Skype · · Score: 1

    Will this now give the US government unfettered access to encrypted Skype data? Does anything like Carnivore come into play here?

  4. Why the fuss? on Hawking Picks Physics Over God For Big Bang · · Score: 1

    Science and God are not mutually exclusive.

  5. Re:the hypothesis is called "panspermia" on Bacteria From Beer Lasts 553 Days In Space · · Score: 1

    Space is very big and very old and likely a lot bigger and a lot older than what scientists currently believe. It seems that estimated age of the universe seems to increase with each generation of more powerful telescopes. To me there seems to be no reason to believe that rocks of all sizes containing spores or whatever could not arrive from other planetary systems in our stellar neighborhood. Where did all the heavy metals that we have here on Earth originate? Did they not originate from generations of long dead stars that likely had their own planetary systems? Why should some of it that material not be biological in origin? At their present speed it would *only* take about 10,000 years for the Viking space probes to reach the next closest star-system. I'm not sure if it's moving in that direction or not, but 10,000 years is only a blink of an eye in astronomical terms, so there has certainly been more than enough time for not just some but a lot of interstellar cross contamination to occur.

  6. Consoles are just watered down proprietary PCs on Are Consoles Holding Back PC Gaming? · · Score: 1

    I am old enough to have owned an Atari 2600 and what we would now call "PCs" were so expensive back then that most people couldn't afford them. "PC games" at the time were far superior to anything available on the consoles of the day. Flight Simulators are an example that comes immediately to mind. While technology may have moved on little has changed: Console games are still much harder pirate and distribute than "computer games". Even back in the 80s it was trivial for the average geeky 13 year old to copy and distribute software using the flavor-of the-day disk-copying utility, which was itself also pirated. This was for all intents and purposes utterly impossible to do with game cartridges which often cost about $60 each which was a lot. Every single game that I had for the Commodore 64 at the time was both pirated and in every way far superior to anything available on the consoles of the time. The lack of split screen and/or simultaneous multiplayer functionality and controllers on PC games is simply a marketing strategy intended to keep consoles popular. For the average consumer the only advantages to consoles is their portability and that they are far easier for dimwitted knuckleheads to setup: just plug them in and start playing. The only group who benefits from consoles are the manufacturers. By only releasing games on consoles manufacturers can not only lock down the software, but the hardware and peripherals as well. They get to own the consumer. If game publishers release their games for use on PCs they not only run the risk of their games being easier to pirate but they also forgo the opportunity to fleece consumers by forcing them to purchase their hardware and peripherals. Anyone who thinks that consoles are "better" than PCs have simply fallen for marketing lies.

  7. Webmail? on Police Want Fast Track To Get At Your Private Data · · Score: 1

    I read through TFA and nowhere is the word "webmail" or "web mail" mentioned at all, and even if it did, what would it mean for those of us who run our own private email servers with web interfaces such as Squirrelmail? I'm sure I'm not the only one among all slashdotters who does this and there is absolutely no way in hell that I am going to keep a record of every piece of email ( 99% of which is spam) that graces my server for 5 years.

  8. Re:You FAIL with "encryption is good enough" on What's Holding Back Encryption? · · Score: 1

    This is unlikely to happen unless Eve has access to Bob's private key. She won't be able to read what Alice sends her, and anything that she sends to Alice will not be properly signed. Alice will notice immediately "Bob" is an impostor.

  9. Many people don't know about encryption... on What's Holding Back Encryption? · · Score: 1

    and many more could care less. Attempting to explain the benefits of encryption to the most people is at best a waste of time and at worst makes you come across as a babbling paranoid geek with something to hide. For years I have had GPG setup so that I can send and receive encrypted email; however I can count on no more than one finger the number of times that I have ever sent a "real" encrypted email and that was to verify an oder with thinkgeek.com. I have yet to receive "real" encrypted email from anyone whether it by my bank, or any of the several companies I deal with even though my public key is readily available. I find that most people are simply confused the whole topic. What I would like to see is for the windows Thunderbird installation routine to include a security setup option that automatically downloads, installs and configures GPG for the user. More people might then start using "secure email/signing" if the option were available by default in their email interface. Self signed certificates are good enough for most people's purposes and could be dealt with by dumbed down security warnings, eg. "Do you really trust this sender...?. Once trust is properly established the only "flags" of real concern would be when a self signed certificate doesn't match the one that has been previously trusted.