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User: SuricouRaven

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Comments · 11,749

  1. Re:Math, do it. on Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs · · Score: 1

    Paying not to farm? The US government doesn't just pay farmers not to farm, it then issues massive amounts of direct subsidies and subsidized insurance insurance coverage to those that do farm. The agricultural industry has a very powerful lobby, not least from being a major industry in some politically key regions.

  2. Re:Good on them! on India Frees Itself of Polio · · Score: 2

    They plan fifty years ahead, but the plans get thrown away and rewritten from scratch every two years.

  3. Re:Good on them! on India Frees Itself of Polio · · Score: 3, Funny

    There's a common rumor in Afganistan that the Polio vaccine is actually a potent lifetime contraceptive, distributed by western powers in order to keep Muslim women from breeding in readyness for a planned Christian invasion.

    The most unbelieveable part of that is the idea of a government planning so far ahead.

  4. Re:it'll be back on India Frees Itself of Polio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The old terrors of disease have been eradicated in developed countries for so long that even the cultural memory is fading. People do not fear a disease they know absolutely nothing of.

    Just ask people what the symptoms of cholora are. Most of them probably don't know, and that's still endemic in parts of the world.

  5. Re:What can we do to stop this? on Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online · · Score: 1

    I've done that once, on some code that infringes a software patent. Such things don't bother me here in the UK, but I didn't want to attach a license granting rights to what is likely illegal in the US.

    It's one of the most popular programs I've written - probably because Microsoft later released a utility of similar purpose under the same name. I'm sure most of the people coming to the website for it are looking for the Microsoft one. It's got more functionality.

  6. Re:Yo-ho, Yo-ho on Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online · · Score: 1

    It's because of the effects. The cost of making a movie has grown ridiculous - audiences demand big-name actors, sophisticated effects and on-location shooting. That means movie-making is a big investment, and a studio isn't going to gamble their money on a high-risk project. They want something with a good track record of financial success. That's why most major movies now are either franchises, sequals, or stick to well-trodden genre formulae.

  7. Re:Great news on Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online · · Score: 1

    The scope of that case was greatly lowered by a subsequent one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd.

  8. Re:Great news on Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online · · Score: 1

    Does that include the WoW updater? It's a torrent client, but Blizzard doesn't label it as such. Presumably they don't want to be associated with 'shady' technology like torrents.

  9. Re:Great news on Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Apparently Back Online · · Score: 1

    Until police realised that red light cameras make the most money for them in just that situation.

    It's widely rumored, and probably true, that many cities actually shortened the yellow phase in order to increase accidential red-light violations. More fines that way.

  10. Re:These people must be terminally stupid.... on Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net · · Score: 1

    Of course you havn't heard of it. That's the point. The NSA may or may not lend some support to law enforcement operations, but if they do then they'll be careful not to let the general public find out.

  11. Re:Great News !! - dumb criminals = easy catch on Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net · · Score: 2

    He had a good run though. Ran the internet's premier public drugs trading website for years before the law finally caught up with him. I think that's quite impressive. He should have quit once he was wealthy enough to never have to work again - taken his millions, destroyed the site and all evidence, emigrated and disappeared. He didn't know when to quit.

  12. Re:These people must be terminally stupid.... on Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net · · Score: 1

    The NSA isn't concerned with street crime. Or crime in general. They can't use their vast powers for law enforcement, as that would mean revealing sources in court. Classified sources. At most they may take part in some 'parallel construction' techniques - sending a bit of off-the-record information to police that can't be used in court, but can be used to more easily obtain evidence that can, like telling them which car to stop for a 'random' drug search.

  13. Re:Laugh on Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net · · Score: 2

    Is there an agreed upon tattoo code? I'd imagine there is a lot of national and even regional variation.

  14. Re:Online footprints nearly reach fingerprint pari on Tweets and Threats: Gangs Find New Home On the Net · · Score: 1

    As a general rule, anything in which the word 'cyber' appears can be dismissed. This has been the case ever since popular misuse of the term 'cybernetics' caused its meaning to shift.

  15. Re:Here's another project that needs funding on Mars One Studying How To Maintain Communications With Mars 24/7 · · Score: 1

    Technologically it's possible. The issue is resourcing. It'd be a mega-project, ranking as one of the most expensive things mankind has ever done. Is there the political will or public drive for something like that?

    As for desireable, that's easy. We have to get off this planet sooner or later, because somewhere out there is the Big Fuckin' Rock that's going to hit us. Perhaps not for a few years, perhaps not for a few million, but it will happen.

  16. Re:Lagrange Points! on Mars One Studying How To Maintain Communications With Mars 24/7 · · Score: 1

    Because we don't have that many things to relay to. It's not worth launching a whole new comsat - and an expensive one too, given the power needs and extra delta-V to make earth escape - up there just to avoid the occasional week or so of interrupted communication to robotic missions. More practical to just put the rovers into a holding state and wait for the signal to come back.

  17. Re:Every 780 days on Mars One Studying How To Maintain Communications With Mars 24/7 · · Score: 1

    10 days? They'll lose material for one episode. Easily solved: Mid-season clip show.

  18. Re:Identical twins on Mars One Studying How To Maintain Communications With Mars 24/7 · · Score: 1

    It's an obvious attempt to represent textually the drawn-out syllables indicative of sarcasm when spoken.

  19. Re:The law does not care ... on Australian Teen Reports SQL Injection Vulnerability, Company Calls Police · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That the good Samaritan gets away with it has little to do with the law as written - according to the law, it's still vandalism. What actually happens is the prosecution service decides that, in this instance, the law is best left unenforced. This discretion is important, as it's the only way to manage the very complicated system of laws - everyone commits crimes, every day. If every crime was prosecuted, most countries would need to imprison their entire population.

    It goes out the window if you manage to upset someone in a position of wealth or power though. Do that, and they will easily find something to prosecute you for.

  20. Re:The correct way to "inform the authority" on Australian Teen Reports SQL Injection Vulnerability, Company Calls Police · · Score: 2

    What about sending the information anonymously?

    Though this will likely result in a low-level communications clerk dismissing your message as some paranoid crank before it even gets to the technical staff.

  21. Re:Ends of Moore's Law in software ? on End of Moore's Law Forcing Radical Innovation · · Score: 1

    EBCDIC strings are prepended with a magic number. It's the EBCDIC representation for "GETOFFMYLAWN".

  22. Re:Multivac on IBM Dumping $1 Billion Into New Watson Group · · Score: 1

    Contrast it with Google's approach: http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html

  23. Re:Just wait till it hits YOUR discipline on IBM Dumping $1 Billion Into New Watson Group · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're thinking of seed AI: A program capable of self improvement. The better it gets, the better it can make itsself, which means it can thus get even better. A positive feedback loop that potentially leads to something far beyond human capabilities or understanding.

    Watson isn't that. It can answer questions, but it has no ability to comprehend complex problems, and it certainly cannot devise novel solutions. It is essentially a highly sophisticated knowledge-based search engine. Perhaps one of Watson's successors, in a few decades.

  24. Trust no-one. on Canada Quietly Offering Sanctuary To Data From the US · · Score: 1

    If you really care about keeping that data confidential, keep it in your own computers! If a government agency wants it, at least then you'll probably find out.

  25. Re:Ends of Moore's Law in software ? on End of Moore's Law Forcing Radical Innovation · · Score: 1

    If bit 7 is set... is that character unicode, or an old upper-ascii accent?