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User: Swift+Kick

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  1. Did anyone actually read the linked article? on Russian Influence Campaign Sought To Exploit Americans' Trust In Local News (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    The article says these accounts never actually posted misinformation:

    Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.

    It's strange that Tim Mak opens the article with this:

    Russia's information attack against the United States during the 2016 election cycle sought to take advantage of the greater trust that Americans tend to place in local news..

    You can't have it both ways. Either the Russians did, or didn't, and the article itself says they actually didn't, an dthat it's likely they were playing the long game, waiting for the right time.
    However, the last presidential election doesn't look like it was what they were aiming to derail.

  2. Well, yes there is that link, but odd that all other stories in the page include links in the summary.

    It'd be nice to have some sort of consistency, don't you think?

  3. Am I missing something, or there's no link to the actual article?

    I thought /. had editors ...

  4. Re:Yeah 22 seconds? on New Video Shows Shot Down Drone Hovered For Only 22 Seconds · · Score: 0

    If they're parked illegally in your back yard, I don't see why you couldn't.

  5. Re:Really Bearhouse? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 0

    Let me try to clarify my statements a little, hopefully you'll understand what I'm trying to say if I use your tone.

    Look here, fuckstick:

    I understand the "fuckin' topic" just fine. You're simply ignoring everything that doesn't fit into your "OMG AARON SWARTZ WAS SO DREAMY!@#@!#ONE!!ELEVN!@" posterboy-for-lesser-penalties bullshit.

    Quoting articles friendly towards Swartz that make false comparisons doesn't help your point. I mean, the ThinkProgress article refutes its own title in the second-to-last paragraph. Did you stop reading it too when it no longer fit your notions of legality vs morality?

    Look, one more time:
    Penalties for 'electronic' crimes may seem to be harsh when compared to 'physical' crimes. BUT, a single electronic crime have thousands of 'victims', whereas that is a little more difficult in a physical crime.

    Penalties are compounded when you have multiple instances of the same crime (this means, for example, if you rob 10 banks, you may get 10 individual bank-robbing charges). So, someone like Swartz could get hit with serious time for relatively minor crimes.

    Aaron got the book thrown at him because he and his holier-than-thou legal team thought they could work (and beat) the system due to his connections, and failed when he went face first into a prosecutor trying to put some notches on his/her belt.
    He got hit with charges for every fuckin' count possible that was in the books they could charge him with. Was it excessive? According to you, yah. According to me, maybe, but it's the law, and he knew what he was doing, and they wanted to make an example out of him. Agein, he KNEW because he almost got in trouble before for the same exact type of shit in 2008 when he downloaded over 2 million articles from PACER. That time, he didn't get in trouble because they were public court records, but he dun' goofed with JSTOR.

    Stop talking about 'the bare basic facts' when you have no fuckin idea what you are talking about.
    You want facts? The fact is there's your fairyland, and there's the real world. In the real world, you think you can break the law, and you end up with your ass handed to you, simple as that. Now, I understand that some of you liberal-art-major-cum-Starbucks-barista-indigo-children types have a hard time understanding that strange concept, but you better wise up quick, fruitcake. Lef's tough, get a fuckin' helmet.

    Was this easier for you to understand? If so, great. If not, go fuck yourself.

  6. Re:Really Bearhouse? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 2

    The trouble with folks like you is that you lack the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

    Good luck in your endeavours.

  7. Re:Really Bearhouse? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 1

    jaywalking is a crime

    murder is a crime

    should jaywalking and murder have the same punishment?

    They shouldn't, and they don't.
    However, let's use this analogy for a second.
    A jaywalking ticket is about $40-$100 in NYC (let's assume it's about the same in Brooklyn, where Aaron lived). If he had purposefully jaywalked a few thousand times because he was fighting jaywalking legislation and was hit with fines for each instance when he finally got caught, should he not be punished for each offense?

    then ask yourself: did aaron's punishment fit his crime

    What punishment? He killed himself before he was punished, so we'll never know.
    What we do know is that he was offered a plea deal that would have him in jail for 6 months in a low security prison, which him and his lawyers rejected because they wanted to go to court to fight the charges. The prosecutors then proceeded to throw the book at him, and then he offed himself when he realized shit got real.

    If you believe in something strongly enough, you should be willing to accept the repercussions and be prepared to become an example. Using your previous reference to racial segregation laws, Rosa Parks was arrested and went to court for her refusal to follow the bus segregation laws. She was tried for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance, and she lost. She paid her fine and court costs, then appealed. The rest is history.

    Aaron is not an example of anything, stop putting him on a pedestal.

  8. Re:Really Bearhouse? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    for this they are treated with more severity than actual murders

    That's a false equivalency and you know it. Murder and filesharing are prosecuted differently, because the law handles them differently.
    You are prosecuted based on the number of offenses committed; i.e. you murdered one person, you get one murder charge (plus whatever other charges apply, like conspiracy to commit murder, whatever).
    Of course, if you're 'sharing' 1000 files, you could be looking at 1000 charges (one per file) if you run into a DA that has an ax to grind (or political ambitions, or whatever).
    And you can negotiate a plea in both cases (which Aaron refused to do in his case, btw).

    again, i'm not saying that file downloading is exactly like daesh, i am trying to make you understand how brutal punishments are not respectable and in fact result in worse social conditions

    That's condescending, and also irrelevant. Comparing punishments from religious-based idiologies and secular law is like comparing apples to oranges, because they're disproportionate by their very nature. They were intended to be so.
    Please stop that.

    rather than the agenda of the corporations who have bribed the government to make the punishments so cruel, which is what you are really defending with your words: not morality, but corruption

    And now we go into the 'evil corporations' bit. Was wondering when we'd get to that.

  9. Re:fix the contrast on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's a stupid comparison.
    If the submitter wanted to be honest, he'd compare this guy's conviction to others that comitted similar crimes, like David Ray Camez, who ran carder.su, or the LulzSec guy.

    Aaron Swartz was a man-child that couldn't handle the fact the I'm famous on the interwebz defense wasn't going to fly, and his actions would have repercussions.
    I'd say there's no comparison whatsoever.

  10. Really Bearhouse? on Finnish Teen Convicted of 50,000 'Hacks,' Receives Suspended Sentence · · Score: 2

    Contrast this to the treatment meted out to Aaron Swartz, and the Pirate Bay team.

    Yes, let's contrast the behavior of a teenager to that of adult men and women who are well-aware of any legal repercussions yet engage willingly and knowingly in criminal activity...

    Really?

  11. My specs... on Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer? · · Score: 1

    My desktop is currently a refurbished HP Z800 workstation with some upgrades:

    - 2x Intel Xeon X5675 @ 3.07 GHz
    - 48GB DDR3 SDRAM
    - NVidia Quadro 5000 (waiting for a EVGA GTX980Ti to arrive)
    - 5x Samsung EVO 500GB SSDs (RAID-5)

    The SSDs were an upgrade, it came with a single 300GB SAS disk. Also upgrading the video card, since the Quadro is ancient.
    Had been using a older Dell XPS720 since 2006 or so, figured it was time to upgrade to something better that won't need any significant upgrades for another 5+ years.

    I have other boxes in my home lab, but this is my gaming+everything else box.

  12. Another complete waste of time... on Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop · · Score: 1

    So after you go through the bullshit in the link, what they're trying to come up with is a MacBook Air-equivalent with 'custom developer profiles'?
    They already have a number of laptops that are essentially perfect for 'web development'. Some of the others here commented on the Latitude series, etc. I'd like to offer my own personal example.
    I have a Dell Precision M6400. I bought it 2 years ago off the Dell outlet site for about $2k. Shortly afterwards, I bumped up the specs a little, so here are the current specs:

    - 17" screen with 1920x1200 resolution
    - Core 2 Due T9800 @2.93GHz
    - 16GB DDR3 RAM
    - Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M
    - 2x Samsung 256GB SSD drives in RAID-1

    I run Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on it as my main OS. It's the perfect foundation for VMware Workstation 7.1, which I use to run my virtual machines. I have one the following VMs running daily:

    - Ubuntu 10.04LTS server - for testing
    - Ubuntu 10.04LST desktop - my main work environment
    - CentOS 5.8 - for testing
    - "Unnamed storage" vendor virtual cluster with 3 virtual nodes - also for testing

    I run *everything* on this one box. VMware gives me the flexibility to try new releases, test against newer packages, etc. Need to test something else? Fire up another VM.
    What better self-contained development environment could you ask for? No MacBook Pro or Air could beat that, except for weight (~8lbs on the Dell vs ~6.5lbs on the Macbook, and almost nothing on the Air).

    This Project Sputnik is a waste of time for Dell, and they should fire the gullible idiots that fell for the bullshit fed to them by Stephen O'Grady.
    Dell would be better off by just focusing on either standardizing the hardware they use across their laptop lines, or providing updated drives for the hardware they use.

  13. Re:good on NYPD Dismantling Occupy Wall Street Encampment · · Score: 1

    ...I have BS and MS science degrees from good schools. I haven't been able to find a job since finishing grad school - almost two years ago."

    Your degrees in Geology are not exactly that useful, unless you actively try to market yourself to companies such as the oil & gas business. Have you tried that?

    If not, the first thing I'd suggest is to fix your resume. That 'Jr Indiana Jones' pose is not helping you. Familiarize yourself with both MS-Word and PDF formats, and make an effort to make your resume presentable, rather than 'spending lots of time organizing your photos'.

    You're obviously doing OK, if you're visiting places like Bangkok, London, etc., so if you haven't been able to find a job, I'm just going to blame you.

  14. Re:Global warming is a lie! on Inspector General Investigated For Muzzling Inconvenient Science · · Score: 0

    Physics is not Climatology. And Nobel Laureaute status is nice, but you'd be surprised at how many Nobel Laureates fly off into cloud-cuckoo land.

    Kinda like Al Gore, who's a Nobel Peace Prize recipient but isn't exactly an expert in Climatology... oh wait.

  15. Re:What's going on Vimeo? on Vimeo Sued For Audio Infringement · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hi!

    You may not upload commercials, infomercials, or demos that actively sell or promote a product or service.

            * Exceptions: independent production companies, authors, musicians, non profits, churches, artists, and actors may show or promote the work they have created.

    From here. Arguably, a 'indie'/solo-guy developer that wants to show his game falls under under this exception.

    Can you tone it down just a tad, please?
     

  16. Use DomainKeys.. on Are You Using SPF Records? · · Score: 0

    SPF records are easy to implement, but also easy to subvert (as one of the other posters already mentioned in his comment's link).

    You should really look into implementing DomainKeys instead, which (while a little more difficult to set up) are almost required if you do any kind of significant email volume.
    Yahoo, Gmail, MSN/Hotmail, and AOL pretty much require that you have DomainKeys implemented if you want to email their users, otherwise you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a blacklist someday.

    Postfix can easily be set up with DomainKeys support using dkimproxy, check it here: http://dkimproxy.sourceforge.net/

    Good luck!

  17. Re:What on US Government Using PS3s To Break Encryption · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're right. The submitter didn't read the article (or lacked the reading comprehension to understand it).

    The article says that "the networked Playstation 3s can process 4 million passwords per second, cutting down on the time necessary to find the correct combination.". Nowhere does it say that a single PS3 can do that.

  18. Re:Discoverable URLs on Comparing Microsoft and Apple Websites' Usability · · Score: 1

    Say you want to learn about Safari. You go to apple.com/safari, as you'd expect. What if you wanted to learn about Internet Explorer? You need to go to microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

    Really? You really think so? Funny, it worked just fine for me.
    Try it. Just type in http://microsoft.com/ie in your address bar, press Enter and see what happens.

    Who could have guessed that without a search engine?

    Obviously not you, since it seems you didn't even try it.

  19. I've been doing this for years in Linux... on Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio

    No need for a fancy Dell either, it works just fine with any soundcard, and I bet it sounds a lot like whatever this dude's doing (maybe even better).

    Try it sometime!

  20. This might be new in the desktop OS market... on Microsoft Patents the Crippling of Operating Systems · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... but it definitely isn't in other areas.

    A number of NAS and SAN vendors ship products with features disabled on the OS until you pay a 'licensing fee' to unlock the features. NetApp, Isilon, and EMC/Clariion are just some I can think off the top of my head that do this.

    Technically, it isn't quite the same as say, unlocking Windows 7 Ultimate from the Home version, but it's fairly common practice in the enterprise world.

  21. Please correct the summary... on Anonymous Blogger Outed By Politician · · Score: 1

    The pseudonym of the blogger in question is actually AKMuckraker, who is the author of The Mudflats blog.

    I mean, come on... it's only on the second paragraph of the HuffPo link you posted:

    "Mudflats blogger "Alaska Muckraker" (AKM) rose to blogger fame almost instantaneously..."

    *sigh*

  22. OP needs to get his speed convertion right... on Netflix Throttling Instant Video Streaming · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In his blog lambasting Neftlix, he says:

    "Bringing up the Status window I noticed my download performance was a far cry from my 7 mbps speed, but rather a measly 0.48 mbps, about 1/14th the speed of my line"

    In the article summary above, he's now saying 48 kbps.

    0.48mbps is actually 480kbps, so he's off by a factor of 10, which (while still pretty crappy) makes it sound much worse than it actually is. So which one is it, OP?

  23. Fix the thumbnail, sam.. on DHS To Use Body Odor As a Lie Detector · · Score: 2, Informative

    It breaks the main page.
    C'mon, it's not that hard to resize it before posting.

  24. Re:I'm Confused on Microsoft Says No Profit In Vista-XP Downgrades · · Score: 1

    At that point I broke out of the analogy realizing it doesn't apply, because people can't make their own Windows.

    The original article was about a lady suing because she wanted version X of Windows installed, and the PC maker is bundling version Y, and charging extra to install version X.

    What I've been trying to say (which you either missed or I wasn't clear about) is that there are dozens of PC maker out there to choose from, some if which may provide what she wants, and others that don't. If she can't find a PC maker that can give her Windows XP pre-installed, she can pay someone to do it, build her own PC and install whatever she wants, or not buy a PC at all.

    There is no reason why she should be suing someone because they don't sell what she wants at the price she wants to pay.
    What next, sue a car dealership because the factory stopped offering candy-apple red as a color option in the new models?

  25. Re:I'm Confused on Microsoft Says No Profit In Vista-XP Downgrades · · Score: 1

    But how would newcomers to Windows know about Newegg?

    If someone is insisting on XP instead of Vista on their computer, I think it is safe to assume they're not newcomers to Windows.
    It's also not like Newegg is the only place selling copies of XP Home. Just do a Google search, and you'll see a number of results for Amazon and a number of other retailers selling it.

    Or do you think newcomers to Windows should just start with Vista?

    I don't know what newcomers should start with. Personally, I think that Vista got a bad rap from the beginning because Microsoft released it before it was an actual finished product. Vista SP1 works pretty well, if one overlooks some annoying things like UAC.
    It's a lot easier to use than most Linux distributions out there.

    I run Vista64 Ultimate on my desktop, with VMWare guests for Ubuntu 8, Centos 5.2, and FreeBSD. Rock solid, all the time, and I don't have to jump through hoops to have all my hardware recognized. Once you get married and have a family, you realize you just don't have the time to 'tweak this or that' just to get some simple stuff to work, that should work from the beginning.