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  1. Re:Good Read. on Computer Scientist Looks At ICBM Security · · Score: 2, Informative

    to be fair WW1 and WW2 were just another in the long line of European wars going back to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire when the French conquered most of Germany. short time later a bunch of French conquered England and then went to war with the rest of France for the next few hundred years.

    the French, Germans and English have been fighting each other on a regular schedule for hundreds of years. after the Spanish drove out the Moors the Spanish added themselves to the regular conflicts. When the Russians became a unified nation they added themselves as well and the sides changed every so often as former allies went to war and then became allies again. for a while the English and the French were bitter enemies for hundreds of years until the mid 1800's when the allied themselves against Prussia and the new nation of Germany

    i've read that if you extrapolate the casualties of the 30 Years War to modern population numbers than it was a lot more destructive than WW2.

    with the EU and other global organizations we seem to have broken the cycle for now

  2. Re:And the Futuristic Safety Mechanism Is ... on Computer Scientist Looks At ICBM Security · · Score: 1

    i think the movie was a bit different than the book and more dramatic

    i never manned a missile silo, but the night duty i did in the army we always had to log the most routine things and someone from the higher HQ would stop by a few times a night to make sure everything was OK. I bet in a missile silo they had to communicate with the HQ on a schedule as well and lack of communication would set off someone having to drive there and check things out

  3. Re:And the Futuristic Safety Mechanism Is ... on Computer Scientist Looks At ICBM Security · · Score: 1

    i imagine that the procedure is to notify your Missile Wing HQ if you kill your "buddy" for trying to launch a nuclear missile without permission

  4. Re:And the Futuristic Safety Mechanism Is ... on Computer Scientist Looks At ICBM Security · · Score: 1

    i bet they had weapons and live ammo with them so if you tried to break into the safe by yourself your buddy might have to shoot you. or beat you with something else from behind while you are concentrating on breaking into the safe

  5. Re:some of the usage is ridiculous on Angry AT&T Customers May Disrupt Service · · Score: 1

    Verizon and AT&T already have 5GB limits on the tethering plan they sell as an extra to a data plan. problem is the 3% of iphone users are tethering and not paying the extra fee. and now they are crying they will have to pay

  6. Re:some of the usage is ridiculous on Angry AT&T Customers May Disrupt Service · · Score: 2, Interesting

    at least during the workday. i checked my usage on my account page and it averaged 100MB per day

  7. some of the usage is ridiculous on Angry AT&T Customers May Disrupt Service · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i have an iphone 3gs and i max out at 2GB per month if i stream pandora almost all day for a month. the 3% AT&T is talking about use 20GB or more and reading some forums people brag how they did it by jailbreaking and tethering or using some banned apps.

    the unlimited data plan is if you follow the TOS. jailbreaking and tethering is against the TOS so expect almost everyone not to care when AT&T implements a 5GB or 10GB max data per month and charges you a lot of money for anything above that. my wife uses less than 100MB per month on her iphone and most people are less than 500MB per month

    the only people the new charges will hurt are a small minority who aren't playing by the contract anyway

  8. Google wants your data on Ads To Offset Cost of Unlocked Google Phone? · · Score: 1

    there is a company selling data only/VOIP cell phones through AT&T and there was a rumor that Google was going to sell a data only cell phone for $20 a month through AT&T. abovethecrowd.com had a nice post about Google's business model and how they share add revenues.

    I bet this phone will be data only and use Google Voice for everything. AT&T doesn't care since they want to be a dumb pipe. Google will make money because everything you do on the internet will be logged in their servers and they will sell the data to everyone

  9. Re:Use the backups on The Trial of Terry Childs Begins · · Score: 1

    he was a network admin and the passwords were for switches and routers. sure you can reinstall the Cisco IOS, but then you have to set up the VLAN's, BGP and other crap that will result in massive downtime for things like traffic lights and mass transit which is networked these days.

    one time our network guys screwed up spanning tree and it took 30 minutes to rebuild it from scratch. meanwhile no one had any kind of network access

  10. this is why governments are outsourcing on The Trial of Terry Childs Begins · · Score: 2, Insightful

    between this genius who thought everything belonged to him and people like I met in my 1 year of working as a consultant for a government agency it's not wonder government is outsourcing. i met this one admin years ago who refused to let his NT domain be part of the larger NT network and it caused all kinds of permissions issues. funny thing was that because of the union rules they couldn't make him do it. and the only reason he refused to let his NT domain work with the others in the organization is because he wanted his own private island to manage that the other admins above him couldn't touch.

    so now i get daily emails about how LA and other local governments are going with Google Apps and Gmail. I bet a lot of it has to do with the fact that they can let their unionized admins rot in a hole doing nothing while progress happens

  11. Re:PayPal is a scam, should be regulated, FTC asle on PayPal Offers $150,000 In Developer Challenge · · Score: 1

    i agree that paypal needs to be regulated, but most problems are people not following the instructions. like when you accept payment make sure it's only from verified people and send only to confirmed addresses. and use a tracking #, insurance and signature confirmation for expensive items. the #1 rule is only send to confirmed addresses. i haven't sold on ebay for a long time but my rule was anything over $15 or $25 had to go to a confirmed address. my auction stated that all paypal payments had to be sent to confirmed addresses.

  12. Re:Unlocked FTW on "Nexus One" Is Google's Android Phone · · Score: 1

    apple tried that with the original iphone. it was $600 and didn't require a contract although it was locked to AT&T because they gave Apple $750 million to help with development. the tech media loved it and said how it was the next cool strategy. it was a colossal failure and AT&T started subsidizing it a few months later

  13. rumor is that it's going to be all VOIP on "Nexus One" Is Google's Android Phone · · Score: 1

    there was a story last month that Google was going sell an all VOIP phone that would work on AT&T and only cost $20 for the data plan. no voice plan required. there is even some company i read about months ago that sells special versions of cell phones that need a data plan and no voice plan and all the phone calls are over VOIP. all on AT&T

    AT&T is working overtime on it's being a dumb pipe telecom strategy.

  14. Re:there is no such thing as net neutrality on AT&T's Net Neutrality Doublethink · · Score: 1

    they own the fiber for their own network, not for the last mile to people's homes. that is the most expensive part of every network to lay, maintain and support.

    the ISP's are always complaining with the bandwidth problems at the last mile or on their networks a hop or two from the last mile. In AT&T's case it's at the tower level since you need thousands of towers to serve some markets. and AT&T's profit margins are a lot lower than Google's. Maybe Google should start their own cell phone service and rent towers from the few companies that lease out towers to AT&T and VZW?

  15. there is no such thing as net neutrality on AT&T's Net Neutrality Doublethink · · Score: 1

    unlike regular electricity you can do a lot of things with the electrons coming over the internet wires

    Google and the rest of the silicon valley upstarts want to stream all kinds of data and grab most of the profits while avoiding large capital investments into low return markets like broadband access for people. the ISPs are in a constant upgrade mode and want to stop the cycle. every time they upgrade their networks and start to pay the interest on the bonds some other company makes up some new service to bring the network to its knees.

    people talk about obscene ISP profits, but Google has profit margins that no ISP dares to dream of. for all the revenue ISP's bring in, it's a very low profit margin business

    personally i think that ISP's will always be dumb pipes since their plans to extract more profits are always too grand and slow moving and silicon valley is a lot faster at coming up with new ideas. but it's not black and white where Google is the good guy and ISP's are evil. Google wants the profits while having someone else pay the high capital costs to run the last mile connections and manage them

  16. Science has always been this way on The Science Credibility Bubble · · Score: 1

    Revolutionary idea is first rejected and ridiculed by the establishment for years or decades until there is finally enough evidence for it. then that idea becomes the establishment and the cycle repeats itself until the next revolutionary idea.

    dinosaurs to birds, evolution and natural selection and a long list of others all started out fighting the establishment. a lot of our current views on dino's didn't get accepted until after Jurassic Park came out.

  17. Re:How in the heck did he get 1000 apps in the sto on Dev Booted From App Store For Inflated Reviews · · Score: 0, Troll

    i'll read Macrumors a few times a week and they'll post links to blogs that tell the whole story. like with Rogue Amoeba and how the Mac Dev kit says you can use pictures and Apple told them exactly what they did wrong and they decided to just quit developing for the iphone

  18. Re:How in the heck did he get 1000 apps in the sto on Dev Booted From App Store For Inflated Reviews · · Score: 1, Troll

    don't believe the hype, most apps are approved quickly and with no issues. every single rejection that was hyped this year had real issues with it that Apple addressed with the developer and the dev chose to ignore it and become an attention whore. the one exception i read about was tweetdeck. Apple pulled the app due to bugs in a new release and it took a week for the bugs to be fixed and a stable release to make it to the app store.

    if it wasn't for Apple doing a good job filtering, most developers would send buggy messes to the app store and fix it later. i already see a bunch of apps with nonsense advice like to completely uninstall it and reinstall it in case of problems.

  19. why would an adult talk to another child? on Canada Supreme Court Broadens Internet "Luring" Offense · · Score: 1

    other than situations where they answer the phone and you ask to speak to their parents or they are visiting your kids. why would an adult need to communicate with someone else's child over the internet?

  20. Re:Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more fo on Devices To Take Textbooks Beyond Text · · Score: 2, Funny

    because the next cool and hip thing is a dumbed down, overpriced but cool looking tablet that limit your ability to do whatever you want on a computer.

  21. Re:hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists on The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism · · Score: 2, Informative

    perfect example is the congressman from california a few years ago who was thought to have had an intern killed that he was supposed to have an affair with. the media "alleged" he was guilty before he was even arrested

  22. the newspapers screwed up their business model on The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism · · Score: 5, Interesting

    for years the model was to sell the newspaper for the cost of print and let advertising cover everything else including the profits. in the late 1990's the newspapers should have bought up Ebay and Craigslist or at the very least started a competitor. instead the trust fund babies who run most of the newspapers allowed their content to be commoditized by Google, they lost the advertising market probably because they thought it was beneath them to go online. and now they are crying. the WSJ was an exception to this for a few years, but there are some good financial bloggers out there now that will give them a lot of competition.

    I remember 10 years ago if you wanted to sell your apartment in NYC you had to advertise in the NY Times and pay their ridiculous rates. and the supposedly liberal pro-blue collar newspaper that the NY Times is supposed to be has the snobbiest RE section i've ever seen. on sundays you would see people walking around with a copy of the Real Estate section checking out buildings to buy in. these days the realtors still advertise in the NY Times but it's a generic add with the same properties that probably aren't on the market anymore and the goal is to get people to call the office. not to sell a specific property. all the properties for sale are listed on redfin, craiglist, MLS which is open to everyone now

    and there have been so many new immigrants in the NYC area lately that it makes sense to advertise in their ethnic non-english newspapers as well.

  23. Google hates anything that is offline on Google Abandoning Gears · · Score: 1

    event the iphone app is just a front for the website. For Google Reader I use MobileRSS that downloads the first few lines of my feeds so i can read them offline in the NYC subway.

  24. Re:patches may make Win 7 not genuine on Microsoft Investigates Windows 7 "Black Screen of Death" · · Score: 1

    i visit the Mac forums because i have an iphone and a Mac Mini as well as a bunch of PC's. Apple is just as bad. some of the oldtime Mac users will even tell you never to buy Apple hardware when it's first released and buy a silent revision that comes out a few months later. and they say that most products have problems. the big thing now is DOA quad core iMac's due to crappy packaging

  25. Re:Nice of them to change the color on Microsoft Investigates Windows 7 "Black Screen of Death" · · Score: 1

    it's a joke

    i can count the number of blue screens and viruses i've had on my windows PC's in the last 10-15 years on one hand.

      and i am counting each finger only once.