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User: suutar

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  1. Re:real vs pretend on Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies · · Score: 1

    I would have thought that would be pretty much a no-op. "Here's my W2, I took the standard deduction." What could they look for?

  2. Re:Were are the folks who started it? on Funding for iFind Kickstarter Suspended · · Score: 4, Informative

    they didn't get the half million. Kickstarter shut it down before the transfers.

  3. Re:The relevant part on Mass. Supreme Court Says Defendant Can Be Compelled To Decrypt Data · · Score: 2

    from what I've read, the interpretation is that you may not be forced to _create_ evidence that may be used to convict you at the request of a government entity. Answering a question from a government employee is creating statements that didn't already exist. Filling out a form is creating documents that didn't exist. Evidence that they already have can be followed up. Evidence that is known to already exist can be demanded (blood samples, DNA samples, papers in a safe), and the fifth won't help because you're not creating anything.

    Following this interpretation, data on the drive already exists. Taking the fifth when asked if you know the password may be allowable, but once knowledge of the password has been admitted, it's down to the "demanding evidence that exists" category and the fifth doesn't help.

    I'm not saying that's the ideal answer, but there is a certain logic to the position.

  4. Re:Zediva all over again. on Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo Streaming Service · · Score: 1

    It's not illegal for you to do those things. It's illegal for him to accept money for it if he doesn't have a license pass you the data that his equipment has captured.

  5. Re:What's wrong with luxury? on Federal Judge Rules US No-fly List Violates Constitution · · Score: 1

    Because one of the government's justifications in the past has been that it's not really that much of a hardship, and judges tend to try to avoid flat out saying "my predecessors and colleagues were idiots and their rulings were bullshit." So instead we're going with the "well, that may have been the case before, but not so much now, so we're going to rethink this."

  6. Re:Is there a 'less nerdy version'? on Evidence of a Correction To the Speed of Light · · Score: 4, Informative

    photons and neutrinos both travel at approximately the same speed in vacuum - "the speed of light"
    However, when it comes to going through a non-vacuum, like a star, neutrinos have a straight shot because they don't interact with anything and the photons have to run through a pinball game (or a pachinko game, if you've seen those) until they actually get out. Best estimates of the time difference to date are about 3 hours.
    Because of that, they would expect to see the light about 3 hours after seeing the neutrino burst, but in this case it looks like it was 7+ hours instead.
    This guy (if I'm understanding it right) is saying that even "in a vacuum" light does enough zig-zagging to add a few hours to the transit time of a 163000 lightyear trip.

  7. Re:Everything is an algorithm on The Supreme Court Doesn't Understand Software · · Score: 1

    Perhaps it should only outlaw things that we know how to reduce to mathematics. Software is a gimme. Lots of mechanical engineering stuff can be reduced to math; that's how we can simulate it. So maybe not so much need for patents there. Serious biochemistry (e.g. drug research) isn't fully simulatable yet (hence folding@home), and arguably that's the stuff that needs to keep patents. I'm not sure where something like chip fabrication technology falls on that scale, but I think it's closer to the "not quite simulatable yet" side...

  8. Re:just label ISP's as common carriers already on U.S. Democrats Propose Legislation To Ban Internet Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Agreed. But what is preventing them from doing it in a way that costs less but does degrade the service sold to others?

  9. Re:All about the symptoms on US Agency Aims To Regulate Map Aids In Vehicles · · Score: 1

    I will cheerfully support this. Any function that should work for a driver in motion should not be touchscreen. You can put a touchscreen in front of any/all passengers if you want.

    Maybe this is the solution to the GPS issue too. The passenger seat can program at speed (if there is a passenger in the seat who is buckled up), the driver seat can only program while stopped.

  10. Re:Can they start regulating back-seat driving, to on US Agency Aims To Regulate Map Aids In Vehicles · · Score: 1

    And (infrequently) a stuffed rabbit.

  11. Re:Monthly quota? on Comcast Converting 50,000 Houston Home Routers Into Public WiFi Hotspots · · Score: 1

    They'll probably just attach all traffic associated with your login to your account, whether it's on your cablemodem or on the wifi (if the wifi is comcast-customer-only, they'll have to have some way to authenticate that you're a comcast customer). Which will suck if/when someone gets your credentials (either by sniffing the radio or setting up a fake hotspot).

  12. Re:Too dangerous to keep digitally now? on Kids With Operators Manual Alert Bank Officials: "We Hacked Your ATM" · · Score: 1

    It's true, though. Security _plus_ obscurity is great, but if obscurity is an _important_ part of your security system, there's a problem.

  13. Re:On the other hand... on Driver Study: People Want Fewer Embedded Apps, Just Essentials That Work Easily · · Score: 1

    I use my nav system mostly to see which of three or four routes that I know is least bogged by traffic.

  14. Re:Government ISP? on Hundreds of Cities Wired With Fiber, But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable · · Score: 1

    No, but I do think years ago Yahoo and AOL had a lot more interest in customer happiness than Comcast does now.

  15. Re:Government ISP? on Hundreds of Cities Wired With Fiber, But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable · · Score: 1

    If it's implemented as you imply, I'd be fine with fast lanes too. I just don't think it will be.

  16. Re:Police complaints about releasing data on How Open Government Data Saved New Yorkers Thousands On Parking Tickets · · Score: 1

    I think the term you want is 'apalled'

  17. Re:The Real Story Should Be... on How Open Government Data Saved New Yorkers Thousands On Parking Tickets · · Score: 2

    indeed, they claim to not have heard from a citizen ("we have received no complaints")

  18. Re:That's not true and you know it. on Pirate Bay Co-Founder Peter Sunde Arrested In Sweden · · Score: 1

    even in a quantized universe, 2 still doesn't have a rational square root.

  19. Re:Low hanging fruit but where's the juice? on I Want a Kindle Killer · · Score: 1

    And then there's folks like me, for whom the tablet is the "computer you can drag between the living room and bedroom". I use mine to read, play solitaire, play other games, do web searches, remote control the cable box, read email... pretty much all my day to day computer usage except listening to music (phone, in car), make phone calls (phone), and Quicken (laptop in office).

  20. Re:Theory as it stands is wrong on The Big Bang's Last Great Prediction · · Score: 1

    Ah, gotcha. You appeared to be comparing 0.08 to 0.007 and I missed the e vs a part.

  21. Re:Theory as it stands is wrong on The Big Bang's Last Great Prediction · · Score: 1

    Or, going the other way, 0.08542455 ^ 2 => .007297353742, and 1/0.007297353742 => 137.035977061724

  22. Re:Theory as it stands is wrong on The Big Bang's Last Great Prediction · · Score: 1

    "they like to remember it as the inverse of its _square_" (emphasis mine). You need to take the square root of your 0.007... to get the comparable number. sqrt(0.0072973530) is .085424557359 and sqrt(0.007297355) is .085424545652, each of which, rounded to the proper number of figures, matches Feynman's figure.

  23. Re:Fake scarcity to drive up 'value' on Comcast Predicts Usage Cap Within 5 Years · · Score: 1

    Those figures sound very reasonable to me. I'd be fine with $20 + $0.15/GB, and I'm a heavy user. Thanks for the explanation :)

  24. Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create... on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 2

    I can understand why Comcast might prefer not to upgrade just because of Netflix traffic; it costs them money. But if that's what their customers want (and apparently, that's what we want, because we keep causing Netflix to send us data), that's what they're supposed to do. That's their job, transport the bits I ask for to me.
    If they have to charge me more to cover the expenses, I can understand that (though looking at their profits, I'm not sure they really have to). But I consider it duplicitous for them to charge Netflix, who then has to charge me; I get charged either way, so Comcast isn't doing it for my benefit, they're just trying to deflect blame to Netflix. And in the process, now all of Netflix's other customers who aren't on Comcast get to subsidize their Comcast customers.

  25. Re:One person a bottleneck doesn't create... on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Michael Mooney is complaining that a business is not willing, or unable, to increase the size of their infrastructure, at a significant cost, to accommodate for OTT (over the top) providers such as Netflix and Youtube.

    For providers and data demanded by Comcast customers. I also complain about that, but I'm not in a position to get quoted for it. Does that make it less valid a complaint?
    Keep in mind, every bit Netflix ever sent me was at my request. I am responsible for that traffic. Why is Comcast trying to charge someone else for my choice?