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User: Falos

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  1. Re:But what if... on Researchers Print Electronic Memory On Paper · · Score: 1

    > is that copyright infringement?
    Copyright lawyers have prepared the below flowchart to help identify what they will consider unauthorized copies or infringement that are potentially actionable:

    Is it a day that ends in 'y'?
    Then yes.

    Is it a day that doesn't end in 'y'?
    Then super yes.

  2. Game theory on Why Are the World's Scientists Continuing To Take Chances With Smallpox? · · Score: 2

    It's an inferior move to reduce your options and throw away something irreversibly. You don't delete documents when you have abundant storage, you don't discard items in a video game with endless inventory.

    I'll accept that having poorly tracked, poorly secured, poorly vetted, poorly restricted, and/or poorly located samples keeps them from being a benign non-factor as above.

    I don't accept that throwing them away (the ones we know about) is the only counter. Hell, we can spare a few grams of payload and put one in space.

  3. Re:Correlation is not causation on Experiment Shows People Exposed To East German Socialism Cheat More · · Score: 1

    This. They want to label the subjects? They can barely group them as isolated "East German" "West German" properties, to say nothing of the endless properties (GP suggests poverty) that result if so.

    I only have an ordinary understanding of the scientific process, but I'm pretty sure you can't take "Group 1 cheated more than Group 2" and shoehorn in the identifier cause.

  4. Wow on Method Rapidly Reconstructs Animal's Development Cell By Cell · · Score: 4, Funny

    When they can track everything every individual cell has ever done, you know it's time to rein in the surveillance state.

    Seriously though, promising tech.

  5. Re:Hoping this is not as bad as it sounds on White House Approves Sonic Cannons For Atlantic Energy Exploration · · Score: 1
    JMJimmy July 20, 2014 @03:42PM (#47495819)

    >The proposal does call for a "ramp up" period where the sounds get louder and louder.
    >

    I'm thinking you were hasty on knocking down the idea and assumed the one-off.

  6. Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow on New York Judge OKs Warrant To Search Entire Gmail Account · · Score: 1

    Doesn't need to be interesting. The average ("Three felonies per day") isn't interesting if only by definition. If anything, someone who absolutely couldn't be implicated would be the interesting outlier.

    But I'm guessing you had "real" concerns in mind. "Maybe one day law enforcement will scale back and only hunt those," he failed to say with a straight face.

  7. Re:Where's BroTech? on ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source · · Score: 0, Troll

    I bet you think you're funny, huh? You a comedian or something, dork? Here's a nerd joke for ya: Why don't you make like a tree and GTFO?

  8. Re:Why is it silly? on FBI Concerned About Criminals Using Driverless Cars · · Score: 1

    Are you implying that a bunch of code written for carefully and precisely observing traffic law (driverless cars move like a bus driver shuttling a pope made of glass) with the assumption that the usage environment is simplified by said law (moving in simple lines, road markers, etc), is [a bunch of code which is] going to perform superior to humans in the unpredictable and dynamic environment of a getaway?

    I'm willing to accept that this technology could be exploitable or unsafe. It could, just maybe, have a marginally useful application in crime. But I'm not seeing it here, and I'm not expecting it tomorrow.

    If anything, LE should be delighted at the idea of remote control, surveillance, etc. when cars are on TIOT.

  9. Re:mnemonics on Selectively Reusing Bad Passwords Is Not a Bad Idea, Researchers Say · · Score: 1

    Strong passwords are healthy, and acronyms (which I strongly advocate) deliver extremely high defensive complexity with little increase (now passphrase) in user's complexity; so little they might actually do it.

    However, password reuse kills a user whether it's strong or not. If I hack into some photosharing socnet crap and get your password, chances are I now have access to a lot of your services. Even if I don't use the loot directly, I'll sell off the credentials or data (SSN) to others.

  10. Think outside the ivory tower on Selectively Reusing Bad Passwords Is Not a Bad Idea, Researchers Say · · Score: 1

    A throwaway password tier is something that legitimately increases the casual's security against the obvious (http://xkcd.com/792/) and might actually catch on. Something like "grandma1!" is perfectly fine if she leaves it down at the facetweets and socnets while using something different (hopefully stronger) for her bank account.

    But hey, if you think soccer moms and surfers are just as likely to indulge a "Sandbox-contained PW manager in a secure virtual OS" tutorial as the five seconds it takes to tell them "Hey, use a special password for those super important sites, 'kay?" then knock yourself out.

    Good luck fitting it on a billboard, though.

  11. Re:Congratulations? on Marvel's New Thor Will Be a Woman · · Score: 2

    Troof.

    But I guess it's okay; "this Thor isn't that Thor" or maybe even "No relation, never heard of him." if that's the case.

    More than historical accuracy, what gets me is the parading. It's not even self-righteous parading, it's more like astroturf. If I was one of those social justice zealots, I'd have to ask myself whether I was being pandered to and exploited.

    I don't agree with refuting OR supporting a product or media or art because of the creator or other unrelated details. I don't check if my oil change mechanic donates blood, I don't check if my waiter was a (convicted?) sex offender, I don't ask about my barber's stance on gun control - I ask what a haircut costs.

    This is all tangential though; Thor's a chick superhero and I take the "Okay - so?" stance. A healthy one IMO.

  12. Re:Maybe they issued an apology, but if they fired on Comcast Customer Service Rep Just Won't Take No For an Answer · · Score: 1

    If they think it'll be good damage-control publicity, they will. The only thing more disposable than him (probably tier-2 retention) is the tier-1 slaves.

  13. Unprovidable keys on UK Computing Student Jailed After Failing To Hand Over Crypto Keys · · Score: 1

    Gag orders and such have already been flaunted; the law comes up with bullshit to try and force childish "you can't do that!" rules and other simpleminded "solutions" that seemingly box things in. Then people circumvent it with deadman canaries that they can't be accused as "responsible" for.

    My immediate reaction was a 24-48h deadman that locks up and send the decrypt to someone random on a list. The list includes sythetic names. By nature the message obviously signifies duress (or death) and the messenger will make an appropriate approach.

    "I can't decrypt it. That's not a figurative claim; I literally do not have the capability to decrypt it, and I don't know who does."

    I'm sure people more clever than I could imagine solutions better than my proof-of-concept.

  14. Re:Why yes, we should blame the victim here on Tor Project Sued Over a Revenge Porn Business That Used Its Service · · Score: 2

    The law needs to protect the incapables who can't secure information themselves physically (eg safe, vault) or digitally. The law doesn't need to protect (it can't) those who think distributed information, that is, data in the wild can be owned or controlled. Either it's a secret or it's "compromised", like it has been since the beginning of human communication - it's just faster now. We don't need more cases of plebs getting convicted over public-facing data, over servers with no authentication or credentials, over "private" data that shows up in a GOOGLE SEARCH. I didn't RTFA though; "Photographs she owned" is ambiguous.

  15. Re:Better still on A Brain Implant For Synthetic Memory · · Score: 2

    I can't tell if you're intentionally describing Dollhouse or not.

  16. Walt Disney on How Tim Cook Is Filling Steve Jobs's Shoes · · Score: 1

    "I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man."