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User: king+neckbeard

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  1. Re:Alternate idea on US/UK Will Stage 'Cyber-Attack War Games' As Pressure Against Encryption Mounts · · Score: 1

    No, I know it's PR, I'm just wishing that they would actually do something constructive instead of trying to look good.

  2. Re:Alternate idea on US/UK Will Stage 'Cyber-Attack War Games' As Pressure Against Encryption Mounts · · Score: 1

    In practice, it would be better, and this process can and should be incredibly open, with, at most, a small period of nondisclosure until the bugs can be fixed and patches distributed. This is in line with best practices, and it would limit the ability for such accusations.

  3. Re:Cameron passed the NSA test on US/UK Will Stage 'Cyber-Attack War Games' As Pressure Against Encryption Mounts · · Score: 1

    Can't we just work together and find a safe place to put all of our authoritarian politicians, maybe Yucca Mountain? It was designed to handle dangerous materials for long periods of time.

  4. Alternate idea on US/UK Will Stage 'Cyber-Attack War Games' As Pressure Against Encryption Mounts · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about, instead of playing war games, you use the same resources to actually secure the vital infrastructure that we get regular scare stories about, or audit widely used FOSS before the next shellshock or heartbleed?

  5. Key problem:people are looking for a yes/no answer on Lawrence Krauss On Scientists As Celebrities: Good For Science? · · Score: 2

    If I had to guess, there are both positive and negative effects on celebrities as scientists, dependent upon enough factors that there's no good way to make a headline. The effects a celebrity scientist has are dependent upon why people identify with them, how the public reacts, and of course what the scientist does. If the results of celebrity scientists are making cool posters for dorm rooms and/or being eye candy, then yeah, they probably aren't doing much for it. But, if they are testifying before Congress to act on scientific data or fund research, or encouraging people to improve their critical thinking skills, they are immensely helpful. It's also important that they stay on that side of the line. Discovery Channel and shows on the Discovery Channel have had issues with that.

    If you really want to advance scientific literacy, you're going to have to dispel the idea that it's common for something to have virtually only positives or only negatives, as in reality, those kinds of things are quite rare.

  6. Re:Nonproductive persistence on Education Debate: Which Is More Important - Grit, Or Intelligence? · · Score: 1

    There is no perfect way to avoid fruitless effort, but a number of steps can be done to minimize them, including understanding of defining principles for how something functions.

  7. Re:The Full List on Education Debate: Which Is More Important - Grit, Or Intelligence? · · Score: 1

    I feel like it's a set of traits that seems tailored to fit a very narrow mold. Favoring optimism over pessimism, for example, is problematic. This is especially true if, in practice, what is emphasized is simply being optimistic, as opposed to the more specific traits mentioned, like being able to continue after failure and realize potential opportunities.

  8. Re:Actually... on Ancient Planes and Other Claims Spark Controversy at Indian Science Congress · · Score: 1

    Nuclear warfare and a society with that kind of tech would leave behind much more than civilization we've found so far, and India is the second most populous country in the world by a rather large margin, which would make it harder to hide something there than the Amazon. Also, in order for them to develop the kind of technology to have a nuclear state, they would need to have had advanced farming, and would have had to have had a bigger population than the rest of the world combined at that time to have the manpower to have developed such things. Occam's razor is screaming that this is just a bullshit theory that's been made up.

  9. So, still useless... on European Researchers Develop More Accurate Full-Body Polygraph · · Score: 1

    If the makers are claiming 75% and nobody is trained against these kinds of polygraphs, they probably won't be a bit different in the real world any further than 5 years from now.

  10. Re:SF Economic Plausibility on Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners · · Score: 1

    Of course economic plausibility is tied to economics, and if the economics change, so does the plausibility. If fuel gets cheap enough and piloting these things is automatic, the price difference could be minimal, thus making them much more practical.

  11. Re:Actually... on Ancient Planes and Other Claims Spark Controversy at Indian Science Congress · · Score: 1

    Nuclear war that destroyed a civilization would probably leave some kind of trace, as would a civilization that advanced. The burden of proof would lie with those making such an outrageous claim.

  12. Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl on Vinyl's Revival Is Now a Phenomenon On Both Sides of the Atlantic · · Score: 1

    http://www.kanyetothe.com/foru... Appears to be an example to the contrary, with a pretty noticeable difference of a fairly recent release, and I know a number of digital remasters have a lot of that going on, with The Stooges' Raw Power being one of the most egregious examples.

  13. Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl on Vinyl's Revival Is Now a Phenomenon On Both Sides of the Atlantic · · Score: 1

    There are no technical advantages to vinyl, but assuming an album was mastered completely analog, it would be less susceptible to being fucked up by a producer trying to maximize loudness, as well as other effects of overproduction.

  14. Re:Automated manufacturing on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    But then, most small businesses fail pretty quickly.

    And that's precisely the advantage. It's an environment that is quick to cull out those that are managed poorly. TBTF businesses obviously aren't subject to the same kind of pressure, so incredibly bad habits can remain, especially if the government backs them when they fail. Centralization of wealth leads to the "all of your eggs in one basket" problem, which is obviously a very unsound strategy.

  15. Re:Automated manufacturing on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    And we benefit greatly if wealth is hoarded by people who are great at making investment decisions.

    Well there's your problem. Nobody is great at making investment decisions. White noise is a better and more stable investor than any strategy, and a large number of small businesses would bear a stronger resemblance to white noise than a concentrated power structure.

  16. Re:Automated manufacturing on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    I wasn't advocating anything other than aspiring to a state where we lack a need for a government. I also pointed out that jumping straight to L/F would have problems because the evil fuckers have had the scales tilted in their favor for so long that the system would be imbalanced to a point where repair would be a slow process if it even happened. If we are going to jump to L/F right now, we would have to offset it considerably. For example, take 90% of the net worth of the top 1% and 50% of the top 5% and redistribute it. Until that point, suddenly going L/F is not going to have any chance of closely modeling a free market. Get off you libertarian witch hunt and actually read what posts are saying instead of trying to pin someone down to an ideology so you can pull out your irrelevant talking points.

  17. Re:We don't need a new money on Bitcoin Gets Its First TV Ads · · Score: 1

    You yourself are making some pretty ridiculous assumptions. You seem to be assuming that leadership can be perfectly competent, and that a single, unified piece of clockwork can run everything. The problem is that humans are often incompetent and always have a limited perspective. We also get tired and make mistakes. If our economy is overly structured, the flaws of humanity are compounded throughout the structure. KISS is an engineering principle for a reason.

  18. Re:Automated manufacturing on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    Yes, a number of people are obscenely rich. Not because of how much they have, that's not a problem. If we had the means to do so and physics didn't get in the way, it would ideal to have every person on this planet be so wealthy that Bill Gates would look like a pauper. The problem is that the obscenely rich have used trade barriers, business regulation, other legislation, and just plain brute force to take from the general public to obtain those riches. While I am a big proponent of a society that no longer has a need for government, government has already created a huge mess, and has done so for millennia. That means that even if the free market economics stuff is right on, we still have to compensate for generation of evil fuckers in power first.

  19. Re:Pop Ctrl can't happen in an entitlement society on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    Except the changes here aren't primarily genetic, and no, evolution has not always preferred big families. Big families are a good way to get over carrying capacity, which can result in everybody dying. In fact, some species are capable of performing abortions if offspring would be a nuisance at this point.

  20. Re:Automated manufacturing on The Coming Decline of 'Made In China' · · Score: 1

    If we don't have jobs because there's no more productive work to do, then we could, at least theoretically, live lives of leisure and self-improvement. For the remainder of jobs that do need human labor, we might adjsut schedules to that having something like George Jetson's 'grueling' 1 hour a day, 2 days a week job is the norm.

  21. Re:Not mistakes when you're accumulating patents.. on The One Mistake Google Keeps Making · · Score: 1

    Fortunately for Google, you can do just about anything you want with your patents, no matter how destructive your decisions, so long as you keep screaming intellectual property at the top of your lungs until they leave you alone.

  22. Re:Gentle... Rocket? on BU Students Working On a Cheaper, Gentler Suborbital Rocket · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure that DVDA is not typically exclusive to Jews.

  23. Re:Cheaper on United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info · · Score: 2

    The majority of most people in most fields are morons. An enormous bureaucracy does not insulate against that fact, and may often provide a large degree of protection. However, it may be that their moronic set of countless rules and factors makes prices essentially random white noise, and that random white noise is better than any coherent strategy, which would mean that their success is actually DUE to them being morons that make a decent RNG.

  24. BREAKING NEWS on Being Colder May Be Good For Your Health · · Score: 1

    The body burns fat to stay warm. No shit. It's not as if a calorie being defined as an amount of energy to heat up water or the extensive use of animal fats as fuel could have made that more obvious.

  25. Re:Humans are oxygen sinks on Trees vs. Atmospheric Carbon: A Fight That Makes Sense? · · Score: 0

    It's not an excuse, it's just showing the shortcoming of your plan. We need to dismantle the whole thing, not just cut off one head of the Hydra.