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User: Lab+Rat+Jason

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  1. Re:A better solution... on Smartphone Theft Drops After Spread of Kill Switches · · Score: 2

    You completely miss the point sir... the person who caries becomes more polite, not the neighbor. The neighbor has no idea who carries. Likewise, the person who commits crime is less inclined to do so because he/she can't tell who carries and who does not. Unwilling to play the odds, they move to California or New York to ply their trade. Its a win for everyone (unless you live in California or New York of course).

  2. Re:Remember the down side on Smartphone Theft Drops After Spread of Kill Switches · · Score: 1

    I'm curious what the motivation is for a person to sell their phone, take the cash, then report it as stolen. Where is the profit in this? It's just malicious. I seriously doubt that would happen enough to justify any concern by the general public.

  3. Re:Oops! on Jeb Bush Publishes Thousands of Citizens' Email Addresses · · Score: 1

    Easy... the republican trolls do it for free.

  4. Re:Automaker just as incompetent as anybody else.. on Report: Automakers Fail To Fully Protect Against Hacking · · Score: 2

    Exactly... as has been opined about dozens of times before... you can never fully protect against hacking, so automakers are always going to fail at it.

  5. Re:Even Fox gets it right sometimes on Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose? · · Score: 1

    I said nothing about people being forced to see it, and that has nothing to do with my argument. My argument is one of morality, and it is my opinion. Society has always defined a line of what is moral, and what is immoral. That line has moved back and forth through history, and depending on ideology. Scantily clad women don't bother me all that much, but more importantly it doesn't bother me that others take pleasure in watching it. That's the line I draw. But for me Murder is on the other side of that line. It bothers me that there is an element of society that gets pleasure out of that, and therefore I feel compelled to speak out against anyone who makes that type of material easily available. If you saw the video, ask yourself: what did YOU get out of it. Did you enjoy it? Did you get off? Did you get outraged, but in some weird twisted way, you enjoy feeling that rage? Societal acceptance is perhaps the purest form of democracy. Each member asserts a little pressure on the line of what is acceptable and what is not, and the line moves a little to the left, and a little to the right. It's just the way of things. But never forget: What you allow, you encourage. I am appalled by what FOX is currently encouraging.

  6. Re:Even Fox gets it right sometimes on Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose? · · Score: 1

    Wow, I'm not even sure what to make of what you just said, but I think you misunderstand my point. I'm saying that people who will be emotionally moved by these events, don't need to see the whole clip. People who get off on violence and hate do. This doesn't have anything to do with Jordan, or Japan, or the US, except to serve as the background for the debate about how much proof do you need to provide the "news" vs. how much proof you need to "sell" the news. It has to do with FOX, and their motivation for showing the whole thing. What is their purpose in showing any portion of the clip, and what is their purpose in showing the whole thing? If you say that 30 seconds is the same as the whole thing, then you truly don't understand ISIS and you truly don't understand evil. They are terrorists, and by showing the whole video and whipping people up into a frothy argument, Fox has played directly into their hands. As another commenter above has stated, Fox is practically the marketing department for ISIS now.

  7. Re:Yes. It serves a crucial purpose. on Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose? · · Score: 1

    Yes. But, that's all that's needed. Fair warning.

    So why do you think it is, that when a news reporter opens a story, they start with all the salacious details first, and then just seconds before cutting to the video, they say "this video is pretty graphic, so discretion is advised" and then instantly cut to the graphic video? I think it's their expectation that everybody children included are going to watch it, so really all they are doing is feigning concern for the younglings, while deep down, they're advertising to your sense of the macabre.

    In order for the warning to be fair, they'd actually have to give you time to get your kids out of the room before cutting to the blood and gore. It'd be hilarious if a newscaster said "so pause your DVR and get the kids out, then resume watching this horrific video"

  8. Re:Even Fox gets it right sometimes on Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The debate in my mind is this... sure it's important to see the barbaric nature of the ISIS group, but on the opposite site, you know there are people in the world who get off seeing this kind of stuff. So the issue is one of "do we show the truth, in an effort to raise sympathy for the victim, when it will inevitably become a source of enjoyment for some, and a source of sympathy for the enemy for others.

    In my mind, I think you can show enough video to prove that it really happened, such that it raises the outrage of those who's outrage Fox wishes to raise, without showing the entire 22 minutes of it. At some point, it stops being evidence of a crime, and instead becomes an orgy for masochists.

    To express this another way, imagine you were called to sit on a jury where a man was accused of producing thousands of images of child porn. As a jury member, would you want to be forced to watch EVERY SINGLE image/video, or would you at some point say enough is enough, I don't need to see that to know the guy is guilty? In some cases, it is actually necessary to do so, to ensure that justice is done. But the court certainly isn't going to release all those images to the media to convince the court of public opinion that the guy is truly guilty.

    Similarly, someone in the Japanese government should probably see the whole thing just to confirm that it wasn't a fake, and it really happened, but at that point, what purpose does it serve to show it in it's entirety? None really, except to gratify those who either support ISIS or get off on this kind of thing. If knowing it happened, and seeing a short clip of it isn't proof enough to stir up the national outrage to finally put a stop to it, no amount of video will.

  9. Re:That's why nobody sensible wants them on US Health Insurer Anthem Suffers Massive Data Breach · · Score: 1

    While I agree, it would be nice... It's a reality that we can't move backwards on this. Nobody is going to dismantle the idea of "credit for everybody", because to some degree, everybody needs credit. The only reasonable path to take is to move forward with this and improve the system.

    To some degree, what you have said is already available to you. If someone uses your identity to get credit, you can dispute it. You are welcome to sue the credit company, and you are welcome to sue the credit agencies who incorrectly besmirched your name. But it is pretty unlikely that you are going to win enough statutory damages to break even.

    The point is, you can live off cash, and not participate in the "credit" system, and by doing so, you can largely ignore any letters from creditors asking you to pay up... because if you never take credit, it's pretty easy to prove it. But in the end, you are either in the system or out of it. You can't go to an agency and ask for credit, but tell them to their faces that you intend to buck the system they have put in place. Right or wrong, it's the system we have. Change it or GTFO.

  10. Re:That's why nobody sensible wants them on US Health Insurer Anthem Suffers Massive Data Breach · · Score: 1

    The trouble here is that there are HUGE fines for allowing PHI to leak out... but it's a tiny slap on the wrist to leak everything else. So whether it's true or not, this press release appears to be a bit of PR in hopes of evading the HIPAA penalties, or at least calls for HIPAA penalties, which at this magnitude would probably crush the company like a beer can.

    It is truly time to pass two laws: 1) leaking identity info should be punished similarly to PHI, and 2) We need to move away from SSN as a credit identifier... it was NEVER EVER intended to be that... it was strictly for government identification for the social security program. It was later co-opted by creditors for lack of a better method of identifying individuals. A secure national identity where access is strictly controlled by the owner (not the government) is needed.

  11. whew! on US Health Insurer Anthem Suffers Massive Data Breach · · Score: 1

    though "no credit card or medical information, such as claims, test results or diagnostic codes were targeted or compromised.

    Whew... what a relief! I was really worried there for a minute...

  12. Re:One man's rebuttal on One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake · · Score: 1

    Run-on much?

  13. Re:Edit count whoring on One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake · · Score: 1

    I'm ROFL right now that you capitalized "the One True Way."

  14. Re:Edit count whoring on One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake · · Score: 1

    Challenge accepted: I will write a script that locates ambiguous usage of commas, and will replace them with the correct oxford comma usage. I bet I can surpass his edit count in a couple of weeks. :)

  15. Re:Big bucks? on What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education · · Score: 0

    You'll make a fine young capitalist!

  16. Re:Lies... Damned Lies... and Statistics... on Music Doesn't Feature In the Pirate Bay's Top 100 Biggest Torrents · · Score: 1

    I can sympathize that there are fewer than 100 songs that YOU like released each year, but there are lots of people who like stuff that you don't... I would argue that there are in fact thousands of songs released each year that SOMEBODY really likes.

  17. Re:Big bucks? on What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen this guy's material, but I got the impression that his work was a big improvement over the super-generic MOOC offerings. Maybe he wasn't first to market, but at least he's in a rarefied market now, and because there is no protection for it... it won't be rarefied for long.

  18. Re:Big bucks? on What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education · · Score: 1

    LOL I wish I could mod this up, but I've already commented here. Dead right!

  19. Re:Big bucks? on What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education · · Score: 2

    I absolutely agree. Coming up with the idea is harder than implementing it. Which actually speaks to another interesting thing: He has no way to protect what he is doing... he's first to market, which is why he's making cash hand over fist... but that's going to evaporate in about 2.5 seconds when other people who are equally smart go out and undercut him on price for their own tutorials... and eventually you will get that high quality education for free from YouTube. So hopefully he milks it for as long as he can, because there are plenty of people who are better coders/more charismatic/whatever trait sells... that are willing to take a piece of that pie.

  20. Lies... Damned Lies... and Statistics... on Music Doesn't Feature In the Pirate Bay's Top 100 Biggest Torrents · · Score: 2

    This seems like a pretty bad manipulation of statistics to get the story you want... Considering the breadth of the music industry, it means there is more choice, so it stands to reason that different people with different tastes will torrent different stuff. The Movie industry on the other hand releases less than 100 blockbuster films per year... so it stands to reason that with less options to torrent, certain titles will rise to the top more quickly. This is of course based on the presumption that newer titles are more frequently torrented than older titles... but that also is a reasonable assumption given that new titles are widely advertised.

    Anyways... I'm not defending RIAA or MPAA... I think they both suck and should be shut down, but I just feel like the premise of the article is suspect.

  21. Re:Big bucks? on What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education · · Score: 2

    What I'm hearing is that making apps pays worse than teaching people to make apps. By comparison yes, it's a triumph. But to everyone else with a real job...

  22. Re:I see you trollin, I'm hatin on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    Actually, I'm talking shit on that study, because it's a whitewash piece. And I'm talking shit on the "Toyota Pious", because it a horribly designed car (as I stated above), it's a hybrid, not a pure electric(a fact you grossly misstated above), and people who drive them are often the most high-and-mighty that I've ever met. Do you own a Prius? Or are you that sad little WRX owner still smarting from the lashing I gave you last week? Gotta be one of the two. So it turns out you're both trollin and hatin, and you post AC. Take of your mask.

  23. Re:Armchair engineering at its finest on Engineers Develop 'Ultrarope' For World's Highest Elevator · · Score: 1

    Last time I checked, Elon Musk wasn't pitching his ideas in Slashdot comments sections... a critical difference it would seem.

  24. Re:Armchair engineering at its finest on Engineers Develop 'Ultrarope' For World's Highest Elevator · · Score: 1

    Here's an idea: You can cut your cable requirements in half by lifting twice the weight, using a bogy:

    So you have a cable fixed at the midpoint of the building. It rises up to a pulley on a bogy, then descends to the car at ground level. When the bogey is located at the middle of the building, the length of the cable need only reach to the floor. The bogy has a cable anchored to it that travels to the top of the building, connected to the motor, and of course another cable that passes over a pulley and then is attached to a counter weight, that is double the weight of the cab assembly.

    As the motor draws the bogey up, the counterweight assists with the pull. The distance from the bogey to the centerpoint increases, which draws the cab upwards at twice the speed of the bogey, and when the bogey reaches the top, the cab has reached the top. It's technically more cable, but shorter lengths each, which solves the weight/strength problem.

  25. Re:Armchair engineering at its finest on Engineers Develop 'Ultrarope' For World's Highest Elevator · · Score: 1

    there are real lives on the line

    <slow clap>I see what you did there... </slow clap>