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User: jenkin+sear

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  1. Re:Wow, it only took 30,000 complaints... on FTC Targets Massive Car Warranty Robocall Scheme · · Score: 1

    They aren't complaining about legal behavior, are they? These dirtbags are breaking the law.

    If it took 30,000 calls to the cops before they got off their butts and investigated a robbery, would that be appropriate?

    If they have 100 credible reports of an organization involved in lawbreaking, they should investigate. And they should get off their fat asses far quicker to save everyone the enormous time and trouble.

  2. Wow, it only took 30,000 complaints... on FTC Targets Massive Car Warranty Robocall Scheme · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Holy crap, the FTC did NOTHING until more than 30,000 complaints were received. You'd think the threshold would be a hell of a lot lower. Your tax money at work- thanks assholes.

  3. Re:AdaFruit on Best Electronics Kits For Adults? · · Score: 1

    One lady, actually, the inspiring Limor- http://www.ladyada.net/bio/index.html . FWIW, June 22 is Sunday, so it's not a ton of time to wait.

  4. AdaFruit on Best Electronics Kits For Adults? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been having fun buying and building the various kits available from http://www.adafruit.com/ . You need to solder to do them, but that's really really easy.

    The Arduino projects are particularly cool (the ethernet and the WAV shields are cheap and fun) so you can do electronics as well as program microprocessors.

    Velleman has a bunch of kits too; many are for little kids, but I built an interesting USB breakout kit (USB control of a bunch of output and input lines).

  5. Re:Imagine that on Hacked iPhones Confirmed As Bricking With Latest Update · · Score: 0, Troll

    better analogy:

    You buy a chevy. The dealer says you can only use Shell gas. There's no Shell station in your neighborhood, but you find a little funnel you can put on your gas tank lid that lets you put in Mobil gas. You go to the dealer to get your free oil change, they notice you put the attachment on your gas tank lid, and they pull out a shotgun and start shooting your engine. Why? they had a deal with Shell, and they have to enforce it or the deal's off.

  6. Re:Stock plummetage on SCO Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, it plummeted as the insiders and people with inside knowledge traded out- trading is halted as soon as chapter 11 is filed. It might be interesting to see who actually sold today in the minutes prior to the announcement. The SEC has been known to take a close look at that in the past.

  7. Re:For once.. on SCO Loses · · Score: 1

    I was wondering the same thing. It sure seems like you could find SCO in breach of contract, which would potentially void their license, and end their business.

  8. Re:And all of a sudden.... on SCO Loses · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This is a pretty good summary of microsoft's involvement in funding this underhanded attempt to shut down linux:

    Paying the license fees could indicate that Microsoft simply believes SCO's Unix ownership claims have merit. But doesn't arranging the BayStar investment reveal Microsoft's ulterior motive? After all, why would you want to help prop up a company that is demanding millions in royalty fees from you?
    That may not be far off the mark, according to a key BayStar executive.

    "Microsoft obviously has an interest in this, and their interest is obviously in keeping their operating system on top," says Larry Goldfarb, managing partner of BayStar.

    Without naming names, Goldfarb explained that BayStar received a call from a "senior" Microsoft employee, but not Chairman Bill Gates or Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "When they started telling me what it was, I wasn't shocked (that) this was something they'd like to see prevail."


    Google "Michael Anderer SCO" for more.
  9. Re:Maybe? on Blade Runner at 25, Why the F/X Still Matter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The director's cut of the DVD makes it pretty clear; Decker's eye flashes just like the replicants, and there's these weird little origami unicorns everywhere. I kind of preferred the ambivalence of the original... but not the voiceover. ecch.

  10. Re:Factually inacurate on A Field Trip To the Creation Museum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or the book of Job; it's damn hard to read that and think that the only one out of the three main characters (Job, God, and Satan) who wasn't a complete dick was Satan...

    The guy is a true believer, and what does he get? His stuff is stolen, his children are murdered, his house is burned down, he gets cursed with the plague, wanders around in the wilderness, loses his friends, etc- and the whole thing is some lame test of his belief.

    It's pretty clear that not only is God a setup artist, he's a malicious one as well. Maybe I'm just pissed about the 6 million of my co-religionists that he had chucked into ovens back in the 40s, but it's obvious that if there is a supreme being, he's probably an asshole.

  11. Extraordinary Claims... on BBC Kicked out of School Over Wi-Fi Scaremongering · · Score: 1

    Show me a rigorous, controlled, double-blind study or smegg off.

  12. Re:Journalist? since when? on SCO Legally Assaults PJ of Groklaw · · Score: 1
    Well, the bloggers are right. Otherwise, you have the government involved in certifying who is a member of the protected class of journalists, and the first amendment of the US constitution starts to go up in smoke:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


    The only person who gets to pick who's allowed to practice journalism in the US is the person involved.
  13. Re:I hate Star Wars on Serenity Trounces Star Wars · · Score: 1

    Fair enough; I was thinking more about the WW2 fighter pilot movies for the dogfighting scenes, and the obvious nazi influences on the stormtrooper's name and darth vader's helmet, which sure looks similar to something you'd see the German soldiers wearing. Star Wars was clearly riffing on all sorts of ideas; feudal japanses samurai, nazis, dogfights, ee doc smith-style space opera and all the rest. But a lot of the original movies' sensibility seems descended from golden-age pulp SciFi of the 1940s, which seemed to often feature square-jawed americans duking it out with space nazis.

    Also, I think there is more than a little resemblance between solo's blaster and a luger; granted, it isn't a mauser...

  14. Re:I hate Star Wars on Serenity Trounces Star Wars · · Score: 1

    Firefly was a space western, in much the same way that star wars was a WW2 movie.

  15. Re:Embrace, extend... evolve on Microsoft Joins OpenAjax Alliance · · Score: 1

    Nah, they'll just sit on some submarine patents around XmlHttpRequest, and then sue Firefox out of existence.

  16. Re:won't survive on Truth in Ratings Act Reintroduced · · Score: 1
    We have this pesky thing in the US called "the constitution". It prevents the government from engaging in massive censorship, which is what a rating system translates to. There are exceptions- commercial speech isn't protected, nor are some kinds of classified information, as is work that is patently obscene.

    Censorship and rating systems in the US are implemented through voluntary trade associations in order to get around this problem. There is no law that mandates that the idiots in the MPAA must rate all movies- you can release a movie without their ratings perfectly legally. However, it will be difficult to get distribution.

    The point is that a replacement for the MPAA can be created if they screw up badly enough that everyone is unsatisfied with their work. You don't get to just drop government censorship if they mess it up.

    if a system like that can survive, why not a governmental one run by professionals with clearly visible criteria and an appeals process that is fair and doesn't have a religious component?

    Was this part a joke? Have you ever been to visit the professionals at the DMV? You really want Sen. Brownback picking who sits on the panel?

    The system may suck now, but involving the government isn't the answer...

  17. Re:18%? on At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No frickin way is it 18%.

    Broadband reports has US broadband penetration at 47%.

    You're saying that half of all broadband users are capable of downloading a bit torrent client, running it, finding divx, installing it, and getting the movie to run... sure, they could be downloading quicktime movies or WMV files, but any of these combinations is equally challenging to your mom, your grandpa, and your brother in law- 1 person out of 5 is a hell of a lot of people.

    The US population is roughly 300MM. 18% of this is 54 million people. There's no way that there are 54 million people actively downloading 4GB movie files...

    Free is attractive, but it founders on the seas of technical illiteracy.

  18. Re:For the same reason F&A VPs don't become CE on Why Don't More CIOs Become CEO? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're absolutely right.

    CEO's come from a company's profit centers- sales and marketing. COO's come from a company's cost centers- operations, production, and IT. COOs rarely jump to become CEOs. The board that picks the CEO is almost always interested in maximizing profit, never interested in minimizing loss.

  19. just like becoming a writer on Tech Jobs For a Student? · · Score: 1

    It's exactly like becoming an author:

    Write Something.

    Download Ruby, download eclipse, download visual studio express- they're all free. Play. Pick your favorite. Buy a few books. Spend some time each day doing it, pick the part that interests you, and do more of it.

    When you've got some experience, volunteer for an open source project and keep learning- or find a job that offers training, and go to town. There's a million ways to do it...

    but you have to start with step 1:

    Write Something.

  20. Re:Rather have leprosy on EMI Exec Says 'The Music CD is Dead' · · Score: 1

    Very nice! I had always (mis) attributed it to ogden nash, of course. Thanks!

  21. Re:Rather have leprosy on EMI Exec Says 'The Music CD is Dead' · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I did, which is why I didn't say it was an EMI CD. The point (which you are apparently not able to grasp, so I'll spell it out for ya) is that every time somebody bundles extra stuff on a CD or a DVD, it seems to come with it's own player that phones home, it's own executables, it's own spyware, and (in Sony / BMG / Colombia's case) an actual rootkit. There's no altruism here.

    Maybe you need to stop jumping to conclusions and actually read the comments before calling people names?

  22. Rather have leprosy on EMI Exec Says 'The Music CD is Dead' · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wasn't the last additional material we found on a CD a rootkit?

  23. Re:The default password is... on Googling for ATM Master Passwords · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought it was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start ...

  24. Re:Two questions please... on Early Testers Say Vista RC1 Not Ready · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Completely new TCP/IP stack


    Am I the only one who sees "Completely new TCP/IP Stack" and thinks "Massive security holes bound to be lurking just below the surface?"

    Why would you rewrite the stack that you (finally) got the damn bugs out of?

    I guess it technically isn't re-writing, since they lifted the majority of the stack from BSD in the first place, but hey, did this wheel really need to be reinvented?
  25. Re:Devil's advocate on Net Neutrality Is Just "Mumbo Jumbo" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think there's another issue, and that is how net neutrality is actually regulated and enforced.

    Basically, we'd need some government agency to step in and start suing people if unexpected blips start appearing on traceroutes... or high latency pings... or whatever. Detection is non-trivial.

    After you get past detection, you need to figure out which government agency is going to get this job. Likely candidates include the FCC and the ... FCC. And there isn't a more venal, corrupt, or retrograde beauracracy out there. They are entirely in the pockets of the Telcos and the large network operators- not to mention idiots like Sam Brownback, Ted Stevens, and Rick Santorum.

    Giving the FCC the right to regulate internet traffic seems to me to be a worse situation than an idiot provider shooting themselves in the foot and trying to hold people up for ransom- as we see with AOL, new technologies come along and old business models that rely on walled gardens get destroyed.

    A neutral network is absolutely desirable. I question the wisdom of relying on the government to enforce it. If the marketplace is unable to produce it, then we should look to technical change and boycotts of bad providers (ie, no web pages for comcast users, enforced by L3 at the backbone) rather than relying on incompetent Senators and their 24-year old interns to set technical policy.