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User: coastwalker

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  1. Re:Unfair on 'G20 Geek' Byron Sonne Cleared of Explosives Charges · · Score: 1

    I think that if you shout fire in a crowded theater and there is no fire you deserve a poke with a sharp stick. This isn't the smartest way to complain about security theater.

  2. Re:You know it's coming on The Rise of Chemophobia In the News · · Score: 1

    That would be the deadly E290 in European food additive laws which if inhaled leads to rapid death but is used with impunity in fizzy drinks by the oh so evil puveyors of soda like Coke!! Oh those evil E numbers!!!

  3. Re:Cyber Warfare on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 1

    So the logical thing to do is send a jamming signal missile straight down the emissions to blow up the trucks. Isnt it time we ran out of patience with North Korea?

  4. Re:Why? on British Broadband Needs £1bn More Funding · · Score: 2

    There is no economic value in super-fast broadband to rural areas. The only value is to super-fast broadband infrastructure companies who would like to have the taxpayers money to give us a boost during the recession. Where is the need for fat pipes to empty rural landscapes. We could have a much better economy if we first got rid of all these self serving think tanks sponging off the small proportion of us who actually create wealth. I despair.

  5. Re:why people stuck to... on Mozilla Ponders Major Firefox UI Refresh · · Score: 1

    Totally agree. It goes along with the final collapse of western civilisation, descent into imbicillity along with politicians claiming that their opponents are traitors and should be killed. The B Ark had far smarter people on board than 99% of the current population. The new management in China might have jobs for you recycling heavy metals or something.

  6. Re:Is it me... on Star Wars Exhibition Explores Human Identity · · Score: 2

    Actually it was cowboys and Indians all over again. I thought it was derivative shit when it came out and I still think it is derivative shit. Like most blockbuster movies it has to be the lowest common denominator tosh in order to attract the maximum number of punters over the doorstep into the theaters. Don't get me wrong, it makes entirely suitable entertainment for children and grown ups with insomnia.

  7. Re:High Res graphics == Expensive on If You Resell Your Used Games, the Terrorists Win · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Looks to me like the industry has peaked. The genre certainly has, its first person shooter or its not a game. Now the failing business model is being used to warp reality just like the music business. fuck em i say.

  8. Re:Another Wayout Flying Teapot on Posting Photos of Olympics Could Land You In Court · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and don't forget the Astrophysics video's on YouTube, specially ones to do with group theory, dark energy, inflation, Leonard Suskind and Engadget podcasts about dogs wearing spectacles.

    Actually I haven't seriously watched any Olympics since 1980 on account of having a life, though I can watch some Wintersports because I enjoy snowboarding holidays.

    I am seriously not looking forward to the wall to wall coverage of this soft drink and leisure wear advertising festival coming up in London this summer.

    The brand protection bullshit being talked about sums up just what a mindfuck the whole thing is. I hope the London tax payers enjoy paying extra taxes for the rest of their lives to fund this idiotic charade.

  9. Re:Hook on Opiates on Indian Man Charged With Blasphemy For Exposing "Miracle" · · Score: 1

    "though shalt not kill" is another brain dead out of date and evil religious law.

    Now we are surrounded by brain dead bodies on life support systems or worse people who are in unimaginable pain being kept alive for the moral sensibilities of religious zealots. In addition we have a planet dying of over exploitation, countries over-run with starving children all because birth control is regarded as killing.

    The religious meme has stolen mans spiritual instincts and put them to use paying for churches which cause suffering and wars. I don't think that we have perfect institutions to create secular law but they are a major step forward from stupid religious law.

  10. Re:Good Timing! on MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030 · · Score: 1

    That makes two of us - hey this could be a movement! What shall we call it?

    Its not religious, they all aim at growing their churches and we are not against population decline.

    Its not consumerist for the same reason.

    Its not heathen, at least not the all plants and stuff keep on growing the way they always did kind.

    How about the Heathen Hedonists? Have fun until it aint fun anymore?

    Sounds good to me, what do you think?

  11. Re:Culmination of a dream on The Supreme Court To Rule On Monsanto Seed Patents · · Score: 2

    What is most scary is that no one seems to have noticed this going on. Even worse are the patriotic right wing who have decided that anyone complaining about the above list is a traitor who is at war with the US. Hopefully you will muddle through without actually having a holocaust or civil war but the signs are growing worse not better.

  12. Re:Sharing data between Metro and desktop versions on Firefox Demos Prototype Metro Interface · · Score: 1

    Windows 8 is like a steaming turd that obscures my view of the next decade running updates of windows 7.

  13. Re:Then what's the point? on EFF Files Brief To Allow Users Access To Their MegaUpload Files · · Score: 1

    There is no way I am going to store anything in the US, I need to move my .com domain out of the US too. Its clear that private cyberspace users have no reasonable legal rights. Its convenient for the government and big business but I wouldn't want to live in a backward hell hole like that.

  14. Re:Why stop there? on A 'Radical Manifesto' For Computer Teaching In English Schools · · Score: 1

    Completely agree. I learned set theory, venn diagrams, ladders slipping down walls and eventually solving second order partial differential equations thirty years ago. I've had to teach myself statistics and compound interest in order to make stuff to sell and feed myself. There has been and still appears to be a bias in British education to teach abstract fashionable academic things rather than something that a filthy capitalist worker might find usefull to make money out of. British education is run by sponging elitist left wng academic swine who go from private school to oxbridge then the civil service and have been fucking up this country since the begining of the last century at least. Our nice chap but appearing increasingly useless Prime Minister Cameron is all you need to look at to see that this is probably true.

    At least the set theory makes normalising databases intuative...

  15. Re:Imagine this in the hands of the Republicans on Obama Campaign Deploys New Cellular Weapon · · Score: 1

    So you are saying that the US is a different country under different political parties. I'm surprised that you dont get rid of the enemy within with a bit of genocide just like the Syrian government. How can you live surrounded by such traitorous scum? I suppose you havent found a big enough hole to bury two hundred million people in yet. I wonder how many tons of meat that is?

  16. This is better than the alternative on British Government To Grant Warrantless Trawl of Communications Data · · Score: 2

    It beats me that anyone thinks that this is not already going on. What I want is the practise regulated by law, Why do you think we are resorting to locking up people without trial?

  17. Re:Hey wait a sec on LulzSec Leader Sabu Unmasked, Arrested and Caught Collaborating · · Score: 1

    It has become hard to win a war unless it can be characterised as a police action operating under agreed law. It is also true that things that labled as wars are still being fought under law about which there is a lot of dispute and that these are wars which are destined to fail because they are not "police actions". There was sufficient agreement under international law to grant leathal support to the popularist movement in Libya but the legal disagreements about Syria leave us standing aside whilst the appparently fractured opposition is systematically exterminated. Involvement in Libya was a police action, involvement in Syria would be a war. Wining a shooting war against Iranian nuclear weapons capability is going to be pretty difficult until we legally outlaw the nuclear fuel cycle that makes plutonium and replace it with one that does not make weapon materials. I suspect that the Chinese will give away thorium cycle nuclear power reactors to any nation that doesnt have traditional Uranium based reactors. The world is on a path all be it shaky to a more civilised future. I'll grant you that its still pretty shaky though.

  18. Re:Over before you know it... on Ask Slashdot: What Would Real Space Combat Look Like? · · Score: 1

    The opposition will sit a long way away and drop rocks on the relevant portions of your planet. If they are a space borne technological civilisation (potentially human) they will take advantage of your weakness. Chasing around in space will be won by the side that can harvest matter from convenient rocks the quickest. Spacecraft will never meet to do battle, delta v will see to that. The side with access to the most potential energy for moving assets will win.

    Civilised entities will disclose assets before a shooting war and one side will capitulate after simulation before entropic degradation. It is unlikely that the earth would remain habbitable given our current political maturity. A hot war would probably trigger a biowar and all interconnected habitats will die (on both sides) e.g. planets. (See Catseye by Andre Norton).

    Any entity capable of getting from another sun to ours will expect to exchange mutually benificial information and co-exist or will exterminate the human race with a virus. Shooting wars are for children, the grownups dont use it unless they find dangerous bugs that get in the way.

    Sorry, no space opera is imminent. Evidence for this is that we are already at the cusp at home. War as a method of influennce is already at the point where it is almost useless. Police actions against insane minorities is the only viable place for force - and its only possible where there is some consensus on what the law that the police enforce is. Eliminating nuclear weapons and locking up pirates will be a good test of how good we are at that as a lifeform.

    More worrying is the possibility of civil war inside nations with apparent consensus over the law, ideaological terrorism.and resource stress.

    Having said that, space opera is great entertainment.It will be won by firing ball bearings at the predicticted position of the opposition after their trajectory is determined. One half mv squared sorts the problem out when v is several thousand miles per hour.

  19. Re:Sensationalist "journalism," needs real analysi on Leaked Heartland Institute Documents Reveal Opposition To Science · · Score: 1

    I have sympathy with what you say, fine prose. But debate will move with the position taken by the organisations response of course. You cant plead for rumor and speculation to be shut down given the fact that this is how the world is these days. Unlike the world of our media sources which present a story as entertainment and move on to the next juicy titbit the online world takes a story and starts with the soundbite (which is all this story really is at the moment) and then follows it through the twists and turns of data to the fading echos. This is phillosophically not unlike that which the scientific method uses to reach a conclusion and it is good.

    The "climategate affair" turnned out to be without substance, no one was found to be behaving badly or trying to mislead anyone, it mainly turned out to be nerds pissed off at being trolled. I agree this piece of information we are discussing could well turn out to be of minor importance in the understanding of what we should do about the climate question.

    However it does raise the question about whether people with economic power are meddling with our world view in opposition to our individual interests for their own gain. This is a more important question than whether we should be taking precautions agains Bangladesh going underwater or propping up distasteful regimes who can sell us oil. For 40 years I bought into the idea that we had to fight a disgusting cold war against a Soviet regime that put people in gulags because of their resistance to a bad political system, a war that was poisonous to innocent developing countries. I put up with it because it felt right.But I dont think that I am going to sign up to a status quo that hands my life and that of my children, or the rest of the world over to the self interest of the super rich. Particularly after our cherished capitalist system hit the rocks with the rich taking the profit and leaving the tax payers to pay for the failed risk. Lets see how the story develops.

    We are tired of silence, we will have openness in our political systems, we want evidence and facts and most of all we want to be able to take our own decisions just like democracy promised we could.

    On this one I will go out on a limb and suggest that Anonymous might take an interest in this over the next few years, particularly as there are going to be a huge number of skilled, unemployed and very bored youngsters around. I dont think they are reading Heartlnnd sponsered blogs or watching Fox news, why would they?

    Its different this time, they are online, they are smart and have a terrible sense of humor, bless em.

  20. Re:I'll second that. on TomTom Satnavs To Set Insurance Prices · · Score: 1

    I'm not interested in it either because I break the speed limit occasionally when it seems safe.

    Also please don't tell me that I'm going to be following sports cars fitted with this garbage driving like motor-homes because the insurer has set a (low) G force limit on cornering?

    Death is too good for these people, I think they should have some poetry read to them first.....

  21. Re:This is only proposed set of rules on New EU Legal Privacy Framework: We're Not Kidding · · Score: 1

    As someone who is involved in putting in place processes to cope with legislation like this I can only say it sounds like yet another ludicrous set of disincentives for small businesses. So every business needs a data protection officer, the ability to respond to a query within 24 hours, gold plated toilets, forms to fill out in triplicate. I'm all for ensuring consensual use of personal data but I am completely against legislation which mandates a bureaucratic process to implement it which means that I end up with more people administrating this sort of thing than actually working for the business. The western world is drowning under the weight of inefficient bureaucratic processes, no wonder all the work is emigrating to the far east.

  22. Re:wow on Anonymous Takes Down DOJ, RIAA, MPA and Universal Music · · Score: 1

    Well it appears that the elite end of Anonymous are revealing themselves to be anti social criminals. I was fine with a little irritating disobedience from the concept of Anonymous raising the temperature of the debate. But I think that the concept is now in deep decline and I hope that we get most of the dangerous ones in jail as soon as possible. The worst thing about their current behavior is that it threatens to justify SOAP in the eyes of the public and "Anonymous" should go to jail just for that. I do not think that freedom of speech is in any way similar to the right of spoilt teenage American boys to steal mindless entertainment products. Grow up, get a job and earn your right to consume the trivia you think is important. Meanwhile the rest of us grown ups have important philosophical and political arguments to be had about the way the world is run. Sod off anonymous, we are tired of playing with you.

  23. Re:Did anyone see the hacked site? on Anonymous Hacks US Think Tank Stratfor · · Score: 1

    this is the first time that I have seen Anonemous do something that wasnt being orchestrated by creative level headed people (Scientology campaign) or was obviously a bunch of script kiddies being given access to a popgun and a big bad wolf to go and beat on because it was funny (with denial of service attacks). This was according to the story a theft of 200Gb of data from a security news aggregator. Who the hell cares exscept for most sane and rational people who will conclude that anonemous ought to be locked up and kept on bread and water for a long time, possibly forever. This looks far more like a play to permanantly discredit the concept of anonemous. Personally I am surprised it took this long for someone that anonemous have pissed off to take the opportunity to destroy them convincingly because its a piece of cake. All it would take is to hire some criminal hackers to do something thoroughly unpleasant and pointless - if this carries on for a week I think the job will be done.

  24. Re:This is where I worry. on Anonymous Hacks US Think Tank Stratfor · · Score: 1

    Exactly. So where in this amusing debate on the evil ways of Statfor and whether they deserved to have it stuck to them is a single question of whether the Anonemous who have claimed to do the dirty deed are in any way related to any of the previous members of the loose flakey cabal which we think of as anonemous? I bet you a Big Mac that the turgid crowd currently wreaking havoc on the system of tubes are actually no friends of any previous holders of the title anonemous and are actually just a seriously unpleasent bunch of either morons or paid assasins. What makes you think that they are not in the employ of the Scientology organisation? Take a careful look at their language, is it current, is it believeable that they are who they say they are? Or did a committy of suits orchestrate this stuff? Its too soon to tell right now but I smell a rat.

  25. Re:Slashdot... on Do You Really Need a Smart Phone? · · Score: 1

    And what exactly entitles you to claim that the most expensive product on the market is what everybody ought to be using. Unless it is what some lifestyle marketing drone managed to lodge in your read only conciousness? A smart phone is an amazing piece of technology but it doesnt follow that everybody needs one. I have several laptops, a DSLR, Point and shoot, Digital audio recorder, cheap PAYG cellphone, GPS, Video editing PC etc. Why would I need a childrens toy (performance wise) of a smartphone? For sure it's great for the kids to find the nearest Burger joint when they are out roaming the town. But grown ups are usually a bit more organised and dont need that $80 a month gadget in their pockets, especially when they need something that has enough battery life to take away for the weekend without a crappy phone charger.

    Oh its so cool to be swiping away on your smartphone spy gadget mobile - what can you be doing? checking out your extensive share portfolio? selecting the most radical new tune on the underground? No bloody chance, you're obviously just another looser playing Angry Birds because you dont have the imagination to do anything else.

    A smartphone is 99% a toy for entertainment and there is almost nothing it does that makes it an essential part of life. There isnt anything wrong with toys but dont make the mistake of claiming some sort of moral technological high ground for its users. Grow up children.