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User: coastwalker

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  1. Re:Hell hath no fury .. on Indiana Man Gets 8 Months For Teaching How To Beat Polygraph Tests · · Score: 1

    Agreed. No other nation on earth uses polygraph testing to my knowledge.

    The questions are very likely borderline 'insane cult' in the first place. "have you ever or could you ever engage in activity X" where X is any one of the thousands of marginally useful laws or government approved behaviors (Say missionary sex position for example).

    No wonder the default foreign policy is 'bomb the fuck out of them and worry about what to do next later'. The requirement for government workers to have an imagination must have been eliminated by polygraph testing decades ago.

    This is just one more thing that makes America look bad.

  2. Re:fud on IAB Urges People To Stop "Mozilla From Hijacking the Internet" · · Score: 1

    Agree, If I want targeted ads from a vendor I will enable their cookie, otherwise they can fuck off. NoScript is also essential in Firefox and should be built in as well.

  3. Re:I'd like to look but... on Watch the Crab Nebula Expand Over a 13 Year Period · · Score: 1

    Try vimeo and vimeocdn

  4. Re:Prescription integration on In UK, Google Glass To Be Banned While Driving · · Score: 1
  5. Re:They can't get all of us on Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds · · Score: 1

    No to have maximum effect you need to search from two different accounts at the same ip. Or some other suspicious combination of metadata. Unfortunately it means that anyone who isnt in the normal distribution of metadata is most likely to be picked up by machine intelligence. This is the most frightening thing about the future. If you are in a minority, any minority, you are a suspect. Are you normal?

  6. Predictable on 'Space Vikings' Spark (Unfounded) NASA Waste Inquiry · · Score: 1, Troll

    Remember folks its all about Bread and Circuses. Seriously I wonder why we bother to pretend that society still exists.

  7. Re:But ... But ... But ... on Energy Production Causes Big US Earthquakes · · Score: 1

    So long as the damage is insured I cant seem much of a problem. The Gas released reduces the US dependance on oil from bits ot the world that need arbitrary wars to keep in line. Every activity carries risk, it just seems exciting because the risk is actually happening at home instead of to some worthless savages living outside the US.

  8. Re:Not to be confused with Personal Computer World on PCWorld Magazine Is No More · · Score: 1

    You forget MacByter, sadly missed.

  9. Re:and expensive on How Silicon Valley's Tech Reign Will End · · Score: 2

    It looked like hell in 1991 when I visited from the UK. The highways must be just one big parking lot by now.

  10. Re:Or install Postgres, Mysql , and.. on Ask Slashdot: Getting Exchange and SQL Experience? · · Score: 1

    Of course if you follow this advice to avoid MySQL you will never work for a start up or a growing medium sized enterprise, particularly if it does high tech engineering. Why pay for corporate software if you are smart and can cope with open source alternatives? For craps sake whats the difference between SQL syntax? A different A4 printout? Who just does just admin these days anyway, low paid drones running a banks server farm? Almost all real jobs end up needing other skills anyway. Business process experience and analysis skills are worth more than any syntax skills. Even if you are completely clunky with the syntax there are hordes of businesses looking for people with the skills to turn their wishy/washy aspirations into business processes, even if you have to spend a couple of evenings reading the manuals on the blasted tool before you can do anything.

  11. Re:ITT: on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My you do enjoy broadcasting your superior view of the world and how we should just be getting on with being entertained. The original trek does have the reputation for taking an idea about humanity and throwing it into a fantasy scenario where we could see the idea evaluated. So enjoy your empty action movies by all means but some people would like to see a bit more than that.

  12. Re:meh on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a good reason that the middle ages spoke Latin and that we still teach Greek plays. Once something has been done well it is difficult to beat it. 60's idealism driven Star Trek is very unlikely soil for our miserable in-looking times to beat.

  13. Re:Not Science Fiction - not Trek on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 1

    Star Wars is cowboys and Indians in space and just as objectionable to the global village.

  14. Re:6 word review. on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 1

    "The Wrath of Khan" is still the best. I haven't really bothered with the rest.

  15. Re:Censorship != Damage on Syria Falls Off the Internet Again · · Score: 1

    Here you go https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/ - a well known "rebel" blog says:

      #yallasouriya 12:39 am on May 8, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment

    #Syria Internet dial up info
    Pass this to #Syria, a way to get back into internet

    Dial up access #Syria: +46850009990 +492317299993 +4953160941030 user:telecomix password:telecomix OR +33172890150 login:toto password:toto

    IT HAS STARTED – INTERNET CONNECTION IS BEGINNING TO GO OUT IN SYRIA!
    The local news media in #Homs, Syria said it would happen and it has begun. Warn your Syrian friends to be prepared for the worst, and pray for the best. God Bless Syria!Black heart (cards)

    via Anonymous News Network & Hope Merrett

    URGENT: Please share with media and humanitarian organisations

  16. Re: Not a civil war. on Syria Falls Off the Internet Again · · Score: 1

    Correction to a factual error. The Israelis bombed Syrian government installations - reputedly to destroy weapons en-route to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

  17. Re:Censorship != Damage on Syria Falls Off the Internet Again · · Score: 1

    Interestingly I saw a prediction of this in the comments section of the Guardian newspapers Syria coverage a couple of weeks ago. The comment noted that this would be in order to hide violent action by government troops.

  18. Re:It's like deja vu all over again on Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment? · · Score: 1

    Whats with Excels default search being inside formula?, what kind of brain dead moron set it up like that? - The answer has to be that Microsoft products are designed by the Marketing department and they are crap at what they do. Its really time that Microsoft sacked the lot of them and started again.

  19. Re:Great Content on YouTube To Offer Subscription Service This Week · · Score: 1

    Neil DeGrasse Tyson is all over youtube https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=neil+degrasse+tyson&lclk=long

    And there is a lot more interesting stuff than him https://www.youtube.com/user/setiinstitute

    YouTube currently has more new good stuff to watch each day than I have time to look at. You should try using the search function.

  20. Re:I should be shocked and appalled... on Former FBI Agent: All Digital Communications Stored By US Gov't · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In 2007 we were using "A single NarusInsight machine can monitor traffic equal to the maximum capacity (10 Gbit/s) of around 39,000 256k DSL lines or 195,000 56k telephone modems. But, in practical terms, since individual internet connections are not continually filled to capacity, the 10 Gbit/s capacity of one NarusInsight installation enables it to monitor the combined traffic of several million broadband users.". The Wikipedia page doesn't seem to have any real updates since 2007. Of course traffic has increased since then, but I doubt they bother to store streaming video of Justin Bieber from YouTube - which is reputedly 98% of all bandwidth consumption apart from pron.

      What was the size of the LHC storage by the way? Oh, that's right, in 2010 it was "About 50PB of tape storage, handled by a set of robotic storage hardware. Still, they've been finding that disk storage is working well, and have scaled that up to 20PB worth of storage." http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations/

    However the good news is that in 2011 "Our annual data consumption was estimated at 9.57 zettabytes" on the internet. A difference of 21-15=6 orders of magnitude. http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/07/our-annual-data-consumption-estimated-at-9-57-zettabytes-or-9-57/ So unless NarusInsight can find and throw away a million times more Bieber than your snarky comments on Sub Reddit, "Revolutionary rodents against the government" they don't have that on disk yet, But they could probably record all telephone conversation.

    I seem to recall that rumor used to have it that only all calls in and out of the USA were monitored, it would not be at all surprising to find that the capability to monitor all internal calls were available. The only reason it might not be happening is that the transcontinental calls route through a finite set of fiber or satellite links, whereas call data on the internet in the USA could route through a very much higher set of nodes that would need to be monitored to capture the data.

  21. Re:I should be shocked and appalled... on Former FBI Agent: All Digital Communications Stored By US Gov't · · Score: 2

    Er, you folk all asleep or something? "FBI Confirms 'Magic Lantern' Project Exists. And Carnivore gets renamed DCS1000" quote from 2001.

    The only argument still going on is whether to let the local traffic department mine the data and Jail the lot of you. Oh and to admit that they collect the data so that the phone conversation can be played in front of the judge before sentencing.

    How naive can you people get? its been bloody obvious for years that "Terrorists" have been caught before they did any harm using their communications. Doing the conventional police work to get a conviction must be a right pain in the proverbial. No wonder every police force on the planet desperately wants this data to be allowed in court.

    Remember folks, you've got nothing to feat if you've got nothing to hide from data mining applications. They only have the last ten years worth anyway so whats the problem?

    OK I might be exaggerating a bit. but by how much?

  22. Re:Playing the race card again on Florida Teen Expelled and Arrested For Science Experiment · · Score: 1

    A vigorous reaction does not an explosive make. In fact you have to confine the vigorous reaction in a container that fails when a sufficiently high gas pressure has developed in it from the reaction. Effectively you could also define a sealed bottle with fermenting sugar solution inside it as "mixing known explosive chemicals together" by the definition of "explosive chemicals" you are using. I don't think an exploding lemonade bottle is a felony, though it could easily take your eye out.

  23. Re:This is here, because? on Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes · · Score: 1

    Politicians who murder any organized civil group are more than atheists, they are very efficient at maintaining themselves in power. They will expunge religious groups from society along with any power structure that poses a threat to their power. Politicians can also run churches and do fairly gross things to keep power, see Catholicism and the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. I don't think that thee is any casual link between bad behavior and your God orientation.

    The article could be read as saying that atheists correlate with mental illness. Thats rather different to saying that belief in a god correlates with good mental health outcomes but it is just as valid a statement to explain the data. Take care when using a correlation.

  24. Re:Cable news not what it was supposed to be on A Critique of the Boston Bombing News Coverage (Video) · · Score: 1

    I quit watching TV in 1983 in the UK because even then it was apparent that everything on it was heading towards being packaged as limp light entertainment. 24 Hour news took the news all the way. I feel sorry for my parents who still watch it and are depressed because they think civilization is falling apart. There is lots more going on in the world than rapes of 11 year olds or measles outbreaks or bombs at Marathons, a million refugees from Syria or two or three habitable planets being found come to mind - but "news" is all about what scares the crap out of you because we can spin it to sound like it might happen to you - tomorrow!

  25. Re:That's nice... on Kepler-62 Has 2 Good Candidate Planets In the Search for Life · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Human beings are never going to get outside the solar system, the distance is just too great to get them to even the nearest star as bags of cells in water. But there is a reasonable chance that we can both transmit and receive information from other civilizations - all be it completely asynchronously. If we get really good at robots we might be able to seed a few local stars with self repairing robots with a range of science fiction purposes, but we will probably never know if they make it. Our current lifestyle is more likely to lead to human extinction before such grand objectives are attainable however, we are doing a lousy job of ensuring our own long term viability on the earth currently and it doesn't look likely to change soon. Heck its good fun though!