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User: gartogg

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  1. Re:Connection Error on White House To Drop Details of Cyber ID On Tax Day · · Score: 1

    You know, by fixing elections.

  2. Re:Connection Error on White House To Drop Details of Cyber ID On Tax Day · · Score: 1

    You don't understand. If the system is closed enough, the designer never has to worry about these hypothetical audits you suggest. That frees him to make REAL money designing software.

  3. Re:Bribery fines are funny on IBM Charged With Bribing Korean, Chinese Officials · · Score: 1

    Which doesn't mean that we are doing a good job; large governments breed corruption.

    I heard about this one guy, he's the skinniest morbidly obese person in the world! Only 400 pounds.

  4. Re:Bribery fines are funny on IBM Charged With Bribing Korean, Chinese Officials · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dissolve companies that are caught doing these things; force receivership and sell off the assets. The executives involved would be jailed, and 95% of the workers would continue wherever their particular business ended up.

  5. Re:I call shenanigans on Contents of Leaked HBGary Emails Reveal Wrongdoing · · Score: 3, Informative

    RTFA.

    There were contracts and delivered goods with 0-day kits to both government and corporate sources.

  6. Re:US patents are stupid on LG Wants PlayStation 3 Banned From US Market · · Score: 1

    1. (comparative of `bad') inferior to another in quality or condition or desirability; "this road is worse than the first one we took"; "the road is in worse shape than it was"; "she was accused of worse things than cheating and lying"
    2. (comparative of `ill') in a less effective or successful or desirable manner; "he did worse on the second exam"

  7. Re:US patents are stupid on LG Wants PlayStation 3 Banned From US Market · · Score: 1

    How would you suggest running the patent office - the rest of the world generally does a worse job and/or relies on US patents.

    You have a limited budget, and those skilled enough to investigate won't work for the money you can afford to pay them. Oh, and you have a legal requirement to deal with patents in a given time frame.

  8. Re:Try to understand ID first, please on Teachers Back Away From Evolution In Class · · Score: 1

    Nope.

    The basis of ID is exactly opposed to the basis of Evolution. Evolution posits that the way to understand scientific truth is to use the scientific method. The basis for Intelligent Design is that there is something other than natural processes that caused life, and we can phrase it in a pseudoscientific language to mask the fact that it is unfalsifiable and not a scientific theory at all, simply an assertion. As a contrast with this, Darwin (On the Origin of Species) wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

    Where Behe (Darwin's Black Box) says that falsifying intelligent design only requires replicating evolution in the lab. It's been done repeatedly. He insists on a "Evolution of the Gaps," where once something is shown to be able to evolve, there is something else that is irreducibly complex. Take hormone-receptor complexity; it is an example of "Irreducible complexity" frequently used. Or it was, until this:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5770/97

    Considered, examined, rejected.

    Sorry.

  9. So the super-rich are screwing everyone... on The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite · · Score: 1

    Cumulative inflation over the 20 year period being discussed is over 50% (a bit over 2% per year). The absolute dollar wages for high school graduates is flat over the time period (~$50k), and the wages for college grads is up only 10%. (From ~$87.5k to ~96k, reading the graph)

    Both groups are paid less - the relative wages are spreading, but only because high school grads are getting screwed more than college grads.

  10. Re:Caps on Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates · · Score: 1

    You then have a problem with caps, not speed. It's a real issue, but a different one.

    And ratio? Operator? What are you using, some kind of ftp site? Torrents don't have ratios. (Unless you are using one of those private illegal sites, in which case, it's not your ISPs fault you don't want to follow the law.)

  11. Re:Evil commenting on evil on Why Sony Cannot Stop PS3 Pirates · · Score: 1

    But everyone IS willing to copy a game off of his USB drive onto their laptop. Or copy from their friend who got it from him, etc.

    And worst case, people used to leave their computers downloading overnight (gasp) to download one of those 5mb massive games like Doom on a 14.4 modem - this isn't different, expect that torrents are easier to use than Usenet ever was - and there is no need to ask for reposts of expired disks.

  12. Re:Why not go after the companies hiring the spamm on The Significant Decline of Spam · · Score: 1

    That's not the point; if they actively benefit because of spammers, and their distribution method currently allows it, then they could stop it. This means that economic pressure on manufacturers will stop the spam.

    But it's not true, and manufacturers don't like it. Drug producers don't like people buying knockoffs and Canadian drugs at reduced prices.

  13. Re:Seriously? on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 1

    To start, there is a story on the front page of /. Today.

  14. Re:Why not use dogs? on Auditors Question TSA's Tech Spending, Security Solutions · · Score: 1

    A dozen dogs per airport would still be an order of magnitude cheaper than the amount we spent on less effective technology. And the ability for handlers to search is equivalent to the TSAs current powers, but at least then I know that there will be the understanding that the system is fallible. If cost were the issue, we'd be much better off with the dogs.

    As a bonus, dogs + simple metal detectors would reduce time needed by an order of magnitude.

  15. Re:Seriously? on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 1

    Facts are facts, but the choice of facts matter. The questions chosen were done so to pick ones that Fox has misled viewers about.

    But there are plenty of facts FOX watchers know that non-Fox watchers do not. There is a value judgement, and I think that the fox conservatives have gone a bit too far, but I can pick facts to bolster the other side pretty easily.

    As I said above, can liberals list companies that got a bailout as well? Can they talk about tax rates, or Tea Party candidates? You might say these are specific examples chosen to prove a point, but the U of M researchers did the same thing.

  16. Re:Seriously? on Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed · · Score: 1

    To amplify this, let's ask the MSNBC crowd about the appreciation of the price of gold and the level of overall government debt, or what size the bailouts were and which companies were involved, and the FOX viewers would arguably come out on top.

  17. Re:Shakespeare? on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    So you are saying that the book of jude clarifies what happened more than a thousand years earlier? Hard to believe that it's authoritative. Oh, wait, the bible is literally true. (Unless you're Jewish, then you don't need to read the second half.)

  18. Re:Excel spreadsheets for banking and stock exchan on Windows Cluster Hits a Petaflop, But Linux Retains Top-5 Spot · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter what large means to you; you weren't involved in the discussion. It also does not speak well of your abilities with numbers if "days" means nothing to you. It's multiple, as in more than one.

    A 10gb database may not be huge, but the complexity of the convolutions that need to be performed on the location losses to find the loss curve is a bit difficult. Some re-insurers have an arbitrarily large hardware budget (in the millions per analysis machine, since they only need a couple,) and the software maxes out its ability to use multiple processors after 16 or so, and so HPC solutions in windows would be very useful.

  19. Re:Excel spreadsheets for banking and stock exchan on Windows Cluster Hits a Petaflop, But Linux Retains Top-5 Spot · · Score: 2, Informative

    Any other application built for windows has the same issue.
    I work for a company doing modeling for insurance, and the software for catastrophe modeling (RMS, AIR, Eqecat,) all are windows only. The simulations and models take days to run for a large data set, and the software/modeling companies aren't about to switch off of windows for the software licensed from them, and there is nowhere else to go.

  20. Re:this just encourages them on T-Mobile G2 'Permaroot' Achieved · · Score: 1

    But picking the definitions to suit your ideological goals is?

    One standard usage of "Free Market" is where supply and demand determine the price of goods; if cartels and monopolies form, the supply/demand cause is replaced by cartel or monopoly pricing, which disassociates the supply and demand.

  21. Re:Sure you can. on Global Warming's Silver Lining For the Arctic Rim · · Score: 1

    First, you are wrong.
    http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/03/new-study-clinches-it-the-earth-is-warming-up/

    I dislike the power grab by governments, but... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/09/im-skeptical-of-denialism/

    Don't claim it's not true, point out alternative solutions. Unless you have been doing the research and have access to some data no-one else does that casts these claims into any REAL doubt.

  22. Re:Tornado Strength? on Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes · · Score: 1

    Do you work for FM Global? That's what they preach for a living; it's true, and a fair point, and most builders don't have the correct incentives to build homes and buildings with risk in mind. Once it's sold, developers get to pocket profits.

    I'd actually be more interested in what this does to regulatory requirements for buildings across the country.

  23. Re:homes made of wood on Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes · · Score: 1

    It wasn't a tornado. Sorry. (I live in queens.)

    It was just very windy in a place that isn't used to it. The wooden prefab apartments in flushing didn't fall down either - And they are basically all wood frame + sheet rock.

  24. Re:Tornado Strength? on Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This will be used to refine vulnerability functions for modeling. The buildings can't/won't be built to withstand the forces, but they can reduce the insurers uncertainty about how much damage will be caused, and therefore how much to charge for an insurance policy.

  25. Re:Tornado Strength? on Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes · · Score: 4, Informative

    To clarify, the smallest hurricanes have a larger geographical footprint than the largest tornadoes. A hurricane cannot form in a small area, and a tornado cannot be that large; the difference is in intensity. Tornadoes have much faster winds. Despite this, hurricanes are a larger source of damage.

    In fact, the largest losses to insurance due to tornadoes+hail+wind in a given storm is just over $2bn, which is a big yawn compared to a large hurricane loss. It wouldn't make the top 20. Average loss per year for insurers due to hurricanes in the US has been higher than that, in the last 15 years or so. (And insurers are better at not paying claims for hurricanes, since "storm surge" is excluded due to it being flood.)