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User: aNonnyMouseCowered

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  1. Small time thievery on Tracking a Bitcoin Thief, Part II: Illustrating the Issue of Trust In Altcoins · · Score: 1

    Well yeah copying isn't stealing ...

    But I've heard rumors of really big time players in the bitcoin "market" who sell large volumes of bitcoin to THEMSELVES, a very real possibility given the anonymous nature of bitcoin addresses. This causes the value of bitcoin to rise, which then attracts the attention of the smaller players, who buy into the hype thinking, "OMG, bitcoin's going to rise to $$$$ again!". Which of course isn't likely since only a few people are buying and selling bitcoins, each through multiple addresses that artificially inflate the number of people apparently buying and selling bitcoins. When these big time players decide to bail out, the price of bitcoins sinks back to its normal market level (whatever that is).

  2. Re: The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    "Any claim that this "saved lives" is complete fabrication. It was the murder of 250,000 people that people try and justify with a false claim. We happened to win the war which means our side did not face a tribunal for war crimes. Numerous Germans were put to death for killing far fewer people."

    I wouldn't go so far as to call it complete fabrication. Could a better way have been found? Most probably. But think of it this way. This was the nation that invented the concept of "kamikaze". You conveniently forget that the death and destruction that Imperial Japan inflicted across Asia and the Pacific. This isn't the infantilised Japan of Sailor Moon and Hello Kitty. Google Rape of Nanking or Bataan Death March.

  3. Re:Oh Please Edge Detection and Motion Detection on fMRI Data Reveals How Many Parallel Processes Run In the Brain · · Score: 1

    The news report just confirms what Ray Kurzweil has been say all along about the hierarchical structure of the mind. What makes for thought happens at both lower and higher levels of the mind. Basically, if something gets recognized at the higher level, the lower levels don't kick in. If something is difficult to recognized at a higher level, then the lower levels start working until some pattern or part of a pattern emerges.

    A rough example of how this works: suppose you see the back of a curly haired woman at a supermarket near your house. Your wife is curly haired. Mistaken identity occurs when you assume that the curly haired woman is your wife because:

    (1) The woman you saw was curly haired.
    (2) You saw the woman in a place your wife is likely to frequent.

    You'd be less likely to instantly presume the curly haired woman is your wife if you happened to see her, say, in a topless bar (if you know your wife doesn't visit or work at such places). Now if you see a curly woman in an unfamiliar place, your mind works harder at trying to recognize the woman, until maybe you figure out the woman isn't your wife but a drag queen wearing a curly wig.

  4. What about Debian Hurd & kFreeBSD? on Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork · · Score: 1

    If systemd is going to be the default init system on steroids, where will that leave the non-Linux ports of Debian, which prides itself in being THE "universal operating sytem" (go ahead Google for the phrase, first hit is Debian)? Insisting on hard dependency on systemd is going to creat problems for Debian Hurd and kFreeBSD, unless systemd has already been ported to those systems? https://www.debian.org/ports/h... http://www.debian.org/ports/kf...

  5. Fusion or fission? on Lockheed Claims Breakthrough On Fusion Energy Project · · Score: 0

    From the linked article before Reuters edits/corrects it: "U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fusion reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle."

    WTF Are the conspiracy theorists correct? The US military already has secret fusion reactors. Makes me wonder whether the article is just a poorly edited press release. Otherwise, why is there a need to spend Billion$ on ITER. Compared to ITER, the Lockheed project, if true, would be peanuts.

  6. Re:Paperless office? Not in my lifetime on Apple Releases CUPS 2.0 · · Score: 1

    "Not in my lifetime or yours."

    Don't jinx it, man.

  7. The coming robotic divide on Amazon Robot Picking Challenge 2015 · · Score: 1

    The problem isn't human pickers being replaced by robot pickers. I see that as progress. The problem is if, like in most fiction/movies/anime about a robotic future, the robots would wind up being controlled by a few gigacorporations or some central administration akin to the military. If every Joe or Jane can own his or her own private robot, great. However, news like this has me worried whether the dystopian future will be a technological divide between those who have robots and those who don't.

  8. Re:IN OTHER WORDS? on Systemd Adding Its Own Console To Linux Systems · · Score: 1

    I assume you're mainly a Windows user who use Linux only for the non-graphical (server, etc) stuff. Systemd is bad but it's not the Metro of Linux. The Metro of Linux would be either Unity3D (Canonical/Ubuntu) or Gnome Shell (Fedora/Redhat). These are both GUIs analogous to Metro. The rise in the popularity of Ubuntu derivative LinuxMint can be attributed to its use of its own more traditional looking desktop environments (either Cinnamon or Mate) in place of Unity. So there's clearly been a an anti-Metro-like pushback in that area.

    Systemd is something else. Most desktop users probably won't notice it. And that's what makes it worse. A Systemd bug is going to be way nastier than Shellshock.

  9. More improbable than a million spaceships to Mars on Elon Musk: We Must Put a Million People On Mars To Safeguard Humanity · · Score: 1

    So basically you're saying let's have Peace, Freedom, and Love for everybody here on Earth. That's far more wishful thinking than dreaming of a million spaceships setting off for Mars.

    What technology (gun, car, airplane, microchip, Internet, etc) has managed to eliminate the old ills of poverty, war, etc? We don't need money to fix those problems, we need a change in atittude as a species. We need to eliminate the old supersititions (religion, racial biases) and newer isms (communism, etc). And then we might just have enough time and resources to fix not just the Earth but to terraform Mars as well.

  10. Re:Patches for 3.x bash versions? on Apple Yet To Push Patch For "Shellshock" Bug · · Score: 1

    Redhat has patched the bug right down to RHEL 4, which has bash 3.0 which is even lower than Apple's bash version:

    https://access.redhat.com/arti...

    Since it's GPL I suppose Redhat has already released the source code for their GPL-2 bash versions at the same time as the installable binary updates?

  11. Re:~/.cshrc on Apple Yet To Push Patch For "Shellshock" Bug · · Score: 2

    "Oh, you think you're kidding ... but the problem isn't just bash ... it's that Apple uses bash in place of sh."

    A long time ago I used a non-Intel version of MacOSX that had tcsh as the default shell. So the parent might not be joking if .cshrc was part of the tcsh installation (tcsh has its own config .tcshrc but also reads .cshrc). If that's the case, well, none of the c-shells suffer from this bug. I wonder why Apple made the change. tcsh is BSD licensed as it's (or was) the default NetBSD (FreeBSD?) shell. Are there any OSX services that actually depend on some bash bug/feature not implemented in say, tcsh, zsh or any of the other permissively licenses shells?

  12. Not all OSX versions affected on Remote Exploit Vulnerability Found In Bash · · Score: 1

    "The (ancient) version of bash that ships with OS X appears vulnerable."

    Some really ancient versions of OSX shipped not bash but tcsh, which was (is?) the NetBSD default shell. So who's going to write the anti-bash rebuttal to the famous "Top Ten Reasons not to use the C shell": http://www.grymoire.com/unix/C...

  13. Re:Bash needs to remove env-based procedure passin on First Shellshock Botnet Attacking Akamai, US DoD Networks · · Score: 1

    You're a developer so you should know more ;) I mostly use zsh myself, but I'm curious as to what benefit or convenience feature this behavior gives to bash? Also are "normal" uses vulnerable or just web servers?

  14. Mind probes are next on FBI Chief: Apple, Google Phone Encryption Perilous · · Score: 2

    I'm thinking of a future sci-fi scenario where a person who refuses to "cooperate" with a federal investigation is compelled to undergo a mind probe to ferret out the "criminal" data in his neurons. Seriously, we're already cybernetic in that a smartphone or PC can already be considered an extension of our brains, an additional storage pool for our memories. Where goes the right to remain silent? At most an uncooperative witness or suspect should be made to choose between jail time or unlocking his smart phone (which I see as the cybernetic equivalent of testifying).

  15. Re:Emma Watson is full of it on Emma Watson Leaked Photo Threat Was a Plot To Attack 4chan · · Score: 1

    "Help, help, we're being oppressed!!"

    Well, son, you should report your teacher to the principal.

  16. Like Microsoft Encarta? on U2 and Apple Collaborate On 'Non-Piratable, Interactive Format For Music' · · Score: 1

    No, I thinks this would be more like those ancient multimedia encyclopedias that came out on CDROM. Or maybe like those kiddie edutainment titles where you click on characters/object to make them dance, jump etc.

  17. Conspiracy theory on iPhone 6 Sales Crush Means Late-Night Waits For Some Early Adopters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apple planned the outage to make the iFaithful salivate more and to prove to the tech press that demand is high.

  18. Re:RT.com? on Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion · · Score: 1

    It's downright retarded. China is more of a threat than Cuba is to US. Why not a trade embargo against China?

  19. Discounted not free on Publishers Gave Away 123 Million Books During World War Two · · Score: 5, Interesting

    6 cents a book at current prices seems more like Amazon's discounted books business model. So it's not exactly free. Hell even brick and mortar stores conduct cut-price "sales". And at war time, reading books would have been a luxury both at home and at the battlefield. So selling them at the cost of production or at lost is more likely investing for the future loyalty of customers.

  20. Re:Eurasia vs. oceania on New US Airstrikes In Iraq Intended to Protect Important Dam · · Score: 1

    The significance of your list assumes that Country = Country's Government. That might be more or less the case for most Western countries with a democratically government. But what about the Arab states. We have no way of knowing if the masses of those countries are actually sympathetic to IS cause (sympathetic until they actually have the chance to live other it). So while a certain Arab government might condemn IS, their support for any US military action might be just that, fighting words without any bite. Who knows if this will turn out to be a coalition of one backed up by a peanut gallery of nations unwilling to contribute a single soldier or even let their territory be used as an operations base.

  21. Re:So.. on NVIDIA Sues Qualcomm and Samsung Seeking To Ban Import of Samsung Phones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know if the patents legitimate or not. They could be legitimate (ie approved by some patent office and not yet invalidated by a court) and still be bad patents. But a high-profile IT company that starts filing patent law suits can only mean one thing, the company has peaked and is on its way down. So maybe you should start looking for your graphic card and cellphones elsewhere? (AMD suing Intel is a different thing, since it concerns Intel's supposed monopolistic business practices.)

  22. And why does Russia need to expand? on Invasion of Ukraine Continues As Russia Begins Nuclear Weapons Sabre Rattling · · Score: 1

    "A country of merely 140 million, this may well be Russia's last chance to expand its borders until the end of history, so if that is Putin's goal then now is the time to play his hand as hard as he possibly dares to."

    And that is what I don't understand. Russia is probably one of the most underpopulated but most resource rich countries in the world. Why does it need to expand its borders when it's already the LARGEST country in the world?

    I can understand if China wants the South China Sea to be its private oil field or fish pond so it can feed its billions. I can understand the Germany of old starting two world wars in a bid to increase their Lebensraum (living space). Ditto with Japan and Britain in their imperial wars of conquest. But Russia wanting even more territory? Or is it natural resources? Maybe the Siberia is too cold? Then Putin should be extending his dick south, not west.

    This is plain nuts. They might as well send a space force to take over Mars. It's much bigger and the inhabitants are less hostile if any.

  23. Reports are still too sketchy on In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The reports (the Atlantic article is an opinion piece about the local reports regarding the incident) are too sketchy at this point to decide if there's a good probable cause for the teacher to be arrested (besides his having written a presumably controversial book, which is not a good reason for somebody in a presumably democratic country to get arrested).

    What it does reveal is the attitude of the local reporters who appear to be somewhat supportive or at the very least neutral to the police action. I know, a news report is supposed to be objective. But I don't see any mention in the quoted parts of the news reports about the teacher's free speech rights. The "first ammendment" comment is in the Atlantic article not the news reports. Since these are local news reporters they probably also reflect local biases. Possible threats to safety are given more importance than any free speech rights.

  24. A foretaste of the future on Reported iCloud Hack Leaks Hundreds of Private Celebrity Photos · · Score: 1

    I remember reading a book by Arthur C Clarke (I think it's something called Light of Other Days), where surveillance has become so pervasive because the technology to do so has become penny cheap everybody assumes everybody will be spied on. When that point is reached, then you'll have to take it for granted that somebody somewhere has a revealing photo of you. Does the shower head have an embedded nano-camera? What about that coffee mug?

    So maybe when that time come people will just try to look their best everywhere whether it's in the crapper, bed or kitchen. In bed people will simply avoid embarassing/humiliating positions unless they want to be known as the hideous kinky type.

    Worse than having a leaked photo of your naked self is having a leaked photo of your warts, love handles and other ugly spots. If you're built like a body builder or a supermodel, your nude photo can well become part of your professional resume. Who knows, maybe some celebs are deliberately careless about their nude photos because subconsciously they want the whole world to see how beautiful they are even when they're not wearing designer clothes?

  25. Re:Nothing really new on Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure if Google already has a solution (I still use a highly anonymous payment system called cash for most of my financial transactions). But all Android needs is the right API and vendors can potentially design their phones to that spec using components from any of the dozen or so semiconductor manufacturers that matter (Samsung, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc). I mean why can't the hardware component of the payment system not be a "standard" like Bluetooth or 3G? The software part is clearly Google's problem, but the supposed fragmentation of Android isn't an unsurmountable hurdle for a unified mobile payment system.