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User: __aaltlg1547

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  1. Re:NASA's mission on Draft NASA Funding Bill Cancels Asteroid Mission For Return To the Moon · · Score: 1

    Who else got a chance to land a rover on Mars? Who gets first crack at data from those rovers?

  2. Re:I have some better ideas: on Legislators Introduce Bill To Stop Set Top Boxes From Watching You · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What if some customers want to be watched? I assure you, there are many such people. Why do you think there are so many people with Facebook privacy settings wide open? Instead, make it so you can't make any of the cable services dependent on it. Then users who don't want to be watched can cover the camera port. Of course, even then, they'll attempt to manipulate you. They could show you only the most annoying possible ads if the camera port is covered, but show you ads that they have calculated will be less annoying to you if they can see you. No camera? Nonstop ads for penis pills, laxatives and feminine hygiene products.

    Even basic ad targeting is more profitable than untargeted ads they shovel at us now. Why advertise high-end cars to people who can't afford them? A camera in your living room could tell that what you really might be interested in is a new couch and you probably don't have a lot of money to invest, or that you have young'uns or don't and tell whether it would be likely to be profitable to show you ads for diapers and toys.

  3. Re:The important word is "should" on Draft NASA Funding Bill Cancels Asteroid Mission For Return To the Moon · · Score: 2

    If it contains trillions of dollars worth of "rare Earths" we're going to need a new name for those elements.

  4. Re:The important word is "should" on Draft NASA Funding Bill Cancels Asteroid Mission For Return To the Moon · · Score: 1

    How is that sexier? We put men on the moon in 1969. A repeat of that trip doesn't show new capability. Capturing an asteroid is much more ambitious. We're talking solar system engineering here.

  5. Re:Let's be real. on How the Linux Foundation Runs Its Virtual Office · · Score: 1

    Email is not a solution for questions that must be answered quickly. That's what phones are for. People do not feel compelled to answer emails promptly. If somebody sends you an email, the implied priority is: read this when it's convenient. When you call on the phone, the implied priority is: we need to talk right now.

    Also, it's not always possible to work on something else without serious impact. There is often a large difference in the immediate importance of what I am working on currently and my next highest priority. The same is true for many other people in my organization. When that's the case, any switch to another task will likely cause a big loss of either productivity or schedule time or both. My organization and many others do development on schedules. If you don't finish tasks on time, the delay and loss of productivity flows down and impacts eventual delivery and profitability.

  6. Re:Let's be real. on How the Linux Foundation Runs Its Virtual Office · · Score: 1

    I agree, in part. However, in my experience there is no substitute for being able to walk into someone's office and ask them a question.

  7. Re:stratosphere? on Google Floats Balloons For Free Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    WiFi is short range. WiMax is long range. This is more like WiMax, if it isn't WiMax.

  8. Re:In the end? on Google Floats Balloons For Free Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Add a flotation device and GPS tracking beacon and they can recover most of them.

  9. Re:In the end? on Google Floats Balloons For Free Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    It's cheap hardware. On average, Google thinks they will make more on the service to pay for the attrition.

  10. Re:Tech specs on Google Floats Balloons For Free Wi-Fi · · Score: 2

    Is there any reason not to use hydrogen for this application? It's much cheaper. These balloons run unattended. They could be designed to automatically vent their hydrogen if their altitude gets too low. That would prevent any danger to people on the ground.

  11. Re:Highways on Ancient Roman Concrete Is About To Revolutionize Modern Architecture · · Score: 1

    Ha. That's not dictated by unions. It's dictated by contractors that don't have any incentive to finish the job in a reasonable amount of time. When incentives are built into the contract, they finish on time.

  12. Re:Such a bullshit title on Ancient Roman Concrete Is About To Revolutionize Modern Architecture · · Score: 2

    So there's no such thing as lime and tuff? Of course we can use this method today, if they really have the formula now. I think Portland cement has been used for the last 200 years because it is cheap. This will not be as cheap, but in applications where corrosion is a particular issue, e.g. dams and in particular in salt and brackish water, it might likely be used.

  13. Re:What a great idea! on Prosecutors Push For Anti-Phone-Theft Kill Switches · · Score: 1

    Not really. People mostly steal stuff they can sell. Nobody buys phones that won't work as phones.

  14. Re:Security begins with Linux on Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised · · Score: 2

    A computer for work should be a tool, not a toy, and user preference should not be the highest priority. Security should be first.

    For most businesses, first is maintainability via tools that your IT staff knows how to use, then user preference, then productivity, then security.

    For businesses with well-run IT departments, it's either productivity, security, maintainability, preference or security, productivity, maintainability, preference.

    The latter schemes are both valid, depending on what your business's security needs are.

  15. Re:What data? on Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised · · Score: 2

    Perhaps they just copied everything in in her user profile. If I were going to hack somebody's computer, that's what I'd do. Grab it all while you can and sift it later for whatever you're looking for. You never know when she's going to change her password and you lose access.

  16. Re:Welcome to the Botnet on Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised · · Score: 1

    Or it could have been another news organization using her to do their research for them. It's so embarrassing to get scooped.

  17. Re:Better security might help on Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised · · Score: 2

    What do you mean being discovered? Of course the NSA and every other security agency in the world wants early access to zero day information. And the NSA has the budget to pay for them. If you think ordinary citizens and businesses are under attack from the NSA, imagine how much effort is bent on extracting the gigatonnes of Top Secret information such an agency has on file. I'm not saying the NSA is above using the information for nefarious purposes. They are, after all, a spy agency. But they also have a counter-espionage side and those guys are very busy trying to keep their information systems secure against every other spy agency in the world.

  18. Let's be real. on How the Linux Foundation Runs Its Virtual Office · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How much do you think office space in San Francisco costs? It's cheaper to have the developers work from home and use their own computers instead of leasing office space and providing the stuff people need to do their work.

    So they rent a tiny office a little off the beaten track so they at least have a mailing address and it's no doubt close to somebody who can actually go by and pick up the mail, and maybe it has a room big enough for a small meeting.

    Whether working from home is more effective, I really don't know, but I doubt it. There are all kinds of issues that come up that can be resolved in five minutes or less if you can just talk face to face with the right person. I can't count the times I've spent hours on things that could have been resolved immediately if I had just had access to somebody who wasn't around at the moment.

  19. Re: And water is wet on Snowden's Big Truth: We Are All Less Free · · Score: 1

    You missed Charles II. He was deposed by Parliament. Seems like it's unlucky to be a king of England named Charles.

  20. Re:Explain... on New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions · · Score: 1

    I believe that legally, the phone records aren't yours, they are they are owned by the phone company. So the government isn't searching you, they are searching the phone company.

    That's true. They can *ask* the phone company and the phone company can give it to them if they want to.. What they can't do is compel the phone company to hand over its records. Or rather, they can because the courts are issuing illegal warrants not supported by probable cause and way too broad to have anything to do with investigating crime. The question is, if the phone company had said, "No way, this warrant is illegal. It's a fishing expedition. Get a proper warrant that doesn't say you can have all our records, signed by a judge who went to law school.," I wonder what the government could have done. Would they take the phone company to court and expose their spying program?

  21. Re:I agree with Lewis Black on Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar · · Score: 2

    Sounds like Permutation City by Greg Egan. Also Eternity by I think Greg Bear. No doubt there are others.

    The more valuable you are to (living) society, the closer to real time could be allowed to run. If someone is making great achievements for humanity, they could be simulated in faster than real time, but they would have to slow down or instantiate avatars to interact with live humans.

    Another strangeness is that once freed from human bodies, people's simulacra could alter themselves to enhance or remove cognitive capacities. Some of them could become truly alien.

  22. Re:I agree with Lewis Black on Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar · · Score: 1

    Much more intelligent is questionable. We're mostly better informed and better socialized. A good deal of that is due to modern education systems and the sheer fact that there are a lot more of the older-and-wiser folks as a proportion of the population. Compare the middle ages. Most of the knights and lords who ruled the feudal world were what we would now consider young men, if not boys, simply because people didn't tend to live as long. They didn't have the benefit of a lot of older, wiser people to advise them. Imagine the sort of culture modern inner-city youths would build for themselves if they didn't have the rest of us to hamper them. Well, you don't have to imagine it: look at what gangs do.

    As for the "seven sins," yes, they're biological in origin, but even the Roman Catholic Church that defined them really defined them as excesses. There were normal expressions of the same urges that nobody but the most extreme and puritanical considered sinful. For instance, wanting enough things to live reasonably comfortably was not thought of as a sin. Wanting it enough to steal, cheat and kill to get it was a sin. Although I'm not religious (not anymore), I still consider the 7 deadly sins useful concepts for teaching children about morality and illustrating the difference between acceptable and unacceptable thought and behavior.

  23. Re:I agree with Lewis Black on Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar · · Score: 1

    Many deaths today are still tribal wars. What do you think people are really killing each other over in Iraq and Palestine and Indonesia and Burma and Somalia and Sudan and Congo?

    The real objections to humans living forever (or for multiples of a natural lifespan) are practical.

    1. We can't do it yet.
    2. There aren't enough resources even if we could

    That said, I'd make myself young forever if I could. I've been middle aged for a decade now and it sucks, compared to being young.

  24. America: We want that here! on Apple Revises Warranty Policies In Europe To Comply With EU Laws · · Score: 1

    Call your Congressman. Send him a postcard.

  25. Re:Explain... on New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions · · Score: 4, Insightful

    More importantly, the law needs to be changed so that without the warrant, that specifically names the persons and places to be searched and the things to be seized they can't compel a search. What the NSA finds that's already in the open (e.g. a public profile on Facebook) is fair game. No warrant required because it's not an invasive search. But if they want your email or phone call records, they shouldn't be able to compel a search without a warrant that names you, issued upon probable cause that your email contains evidence of a specific crime. The 4th Amendment is really clear and Americans never gave the NSA or the FBI or anybody else permission to ignore it.