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User: hugg

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  1. So innovative on Nathan Myhrvold's $500 Cookbook Now an $80 iPhone App · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder how the culinary specialists that first developed the techniques in his book are getting compensated for their innovations.

  2. Article translation on Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety of Dams · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/hacker-breached-dam-database/:

    "Chinese hackers" = “the Chinese government or military cyber warriors” according to unnamed officials

    "sensitive U.S. army database" is a database where users are emailed their username and password in cleartext

    "Non-government users can query the database but cannot download data from it" (???)

  3. Security fees on Is Bitcoin Mining a Real-World Environmental Problem? · · Score: 2

    I don't think many critics actually understand the dual purpose of mining. It's not only to govern the supply of new money, but also to protect the block chain. Many attacks require that the attacker control more computational power than 50% of the network, which is a lot of hardware.

    Eventually mining slows down and transaction fees become the dominant reward for mining new blocks. So transaction fees will essentially be the "security cost" for protecting the network against a centralized attack. It's anyone's guess where they'll eventually stabilize.

  4. Conversion on Is Bitcoin Mining a Real-World Environmental Problem? · · Score: 3, Informative

    "About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact"

    982 MWh/day / 24 = ~41 megawatts

    Come on reporters, convert brain-dead units into normal units.

  5. Dissenters were all progressives on Supreme Court Disallows FISA Challenges · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hopefully the President will still get the chance to appoint more progressives to the Supreme Court to protect us from his policies.

  6. With all due respect... on Patent System Not Broken, Argues IBM's Chief Patent Counsel · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Economists also tell us that 75 percent of a company’s value is attributable to its intellectual property (IP) — and that IP-intensive industries contribute $5 trillion per year to the U.S. economy. These industries account for about 35 percent of gross domestic product and 40 million jobs, including 28 percent of the jobs in the United States."

    The report linked in the article discusses copyright, trademark, and patent-intensive industries. Patent-intensive industries are the *lowest* employer of the three, around 4 million as opposed to the 40 million jobs cited. It's misleading to lump all three industries together.

    The same report lists another interesting metric, which is percentage of self-employed workers for each industry. Patent-intensive industries have the lowest number of self-employed workers, at 2.2% (vs 16% for copyright-intensive industries). This indicates to me that patent-intensive industries do not support capital-poor startups very well.

    Of course I would expect counsel for the top patent recipient in the U.S. for two decades running to have differing opinions from my own.

    Source: http://www.uspto.gov/news/publications/IP_Report_March_2012.pdf

  7. it's optional on White House Releases Trusted Internet ID Plan · · Score: 1

    Don't worry, they point out that use of the system is completely voluntary. Just like owning a mobile phone or participating in interstate commerce.

  8. Re:Let's test it on DHS Seizes 75+ Domain Names · · Score: 1

    Xtifr, my somewhat-cheeky comment was just pointing out that speech can be censored as a side-effect of these takedowns. And we have seen that whenever government gets a new capability that makes certain things more convenient, they tend to push it as far as they can (e.g. pen register requests). I think the torrent tracker was included here as a trial balloon to see just how bright that line is.

  9. Let's test it on DHS Seizes 75+ Domain Names · · Score: 1

    I'd like to know what would happen to a site that is 50% torrent search and 50% political speech.

  10. How it Works on TheSpaceGame — Design Your Route To Jupiter · · Score: 1

    I'm very confused why a computer couldn't just iterate through millions of iteration of the equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert's_problem) and pick the best.

    Heck you could even use my old game: http://code.google.com/p/exoflight/

  11. Dave's not here mam on Sifting Authorities From Celebrities On Twitter · · Score: 1

    Probably not, because many domains don't have Twittering experts. Go look for experts on programming language research, for instance. The terms used won't even appear in search results. If it can't be marketed, it won't be on Twitter.

  12. The Dishonest Casino and Hidden Markov Models on Math Indicates Pollster Is Forging Results · · Score: 1

    There's not enough eigenvectors in this thread...

    http://controls.engin.umich.edu/wiki/index.php/Occasionally_dishonest_casino:_crimes_or_just_noise%3F

  13. Ice machine? on Air Force & NASA Fire Off Green Rocket · · Score: 1

    "Spacecraft might one day refuel on the moon or Mars using plain old ice."

    Isn't there not a lot of water on the moon and Mars? In fact isn't there not even a lot of hydrogen?

  14. Re:Wait, really? on US Life Expectancy May Have Peaked · · Score: 1

    I'm sure excessive booze and partying takes its toll (if only to leave less time for exercise) but I believe the cancer stats about NOLA. My dad who was in the ANG down there talks about how many of his friends were lost way too early to cancer. I'm sure there's as much money spent keeping it "anecdotal" as there is money spent covering up the illegal waste dumping.

  15. Port shmort on The Problems With Porting Games · · Score: 1

    Cry me a river .. Back in the day we had to port arcade games with real sprites and dedicated sound chips to computers with 1 bit per pixel graphics and 1 bit sound (seriously). Oh, and controllers? You'd get the "key down" but not the "key up". Now get off my lawn :)

  16. Re:Faith is gone. We need a better way! on Three Indicted In Huge Identity/Data Breach · · Score: 1

    Including any kind of active circuitry in the credit card would severely impact the cost of shipping dozens of "free credit cards" to those who shouldn't be trusted with a lemonade stand.

  17. Wow on Microsoft Trial Misconduct Cost $40 Million · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can any law-talking folk explain how the $290 million figure is derived? And if the state of Texas collects tax on this award? Not being conspiratorial, I really don't know much about the follow-the-money aspect of these cases.

  18. Moon is not a subset of Mars on NASA's Cashflow Problem Puts Moon Trip In Doubt · · Score: 1

    Not surprising ... the political will barely existed to get us to the Moon in the first place, even though we had the fear of the Red Menace pushing the program along and fast-tracked it to take place within a decade. The biggest problem with Constellation is that it requires a Moon shot as a prerequisite. We've learned everything we need to from that dusty old rock, visiting it again is just an excuse to keep aerospace dollars following for another couple decades.

  19. Divide and conquer on Why Do Games Still Have Levels? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because it's easy to divide the game design tasks among several designers by level. It's harder to show "emergent behavior" on a Gantt chart.

  20. Re:I happen to disagree. on SAS CEO Blasts Old-School Schooling · · Score: 1

    In college we had "Deutsch Tisch" which was an excuse to go to the bars and speak German poorly while drinking prodigious amounts of beer. Now THAT'S interactive.

  21. Couldn't find it... on Building a Programmer's Rosetta Stone · · Score: 1

    I was looking for some code to help me load-balance a busy server that was just posted on Slashdot ... all I found was code for this old Applesoft BASIC wiki server.

  22. "Metacrap" on The Need For A Tagging Standard · · Score: 1

    This article makes some succinct points about the fallacy of relying too-much on metadata.

    I find tags useful for personal collections, but it breaks down because my mental map is different from anyone else's. Heck, I'm often inconsistent from day to day (sometimes I use UPPERCASE_CONSTANTS, sometimes camelCaseConstants, etc)

  23. Re:No, any DRM scheme is wrong on Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful? · · Score: 1

    I think another paraphrase of the previous poster's thoughts might be "Laws should be enforced by people, not by machines."

  24. Best floppy disk labels ever on 10th Annual Wacky Warning Labels Out · · Score: 4, Funny
  25. Rating system on What's Different About Vista's GUI? · · Score: 1

    I remember our sysadmin showing me an earlier beta of Vista, and how one Explorer window rated his database backup files "5 stars" ...