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User: Apu

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  1. Re:When is a bank not a bank on PayPal Withholding Indie Game Dev's €600,000 Account · · Score: 1
  2. Re:Would be interesting for home plumbing on Pneumatic Tube Communication In Hospitals · · Score: 1
  3. Re:Paging Ray Beckerman on ASCAP Starts To Act Like the RIAA · · Score: 1

    No, it's more important get people out of danger first. You don't discuss how to put out a fire while people are burning inside.

    Who taught you how to fight fires? You not might discuss INSTEAD of acting but you definitely discuss BEFORE you run in and get trapped yourself. "Hey, Chief, this wall looks like its going to collapse! Let's go through the back door instead."

    Plus a little discussion can lead to a great benefit overall: the firefighters & bystanders stay safe. Some go in to do the rescue of those already in danger, some stay back in case the rescues get trapped, still other fight the fire so it doesn't spread and put the neighbors in danger, etc.

  4. Re:When you're hiring lawyers... on Johnson & Johnson Loses Major Trademark Lawsuit · · Score: 3, Informative
    From the summary of the previous Slashdot article:

    Lately the ARC has begun licensing the symbol to third parties to use on fund-raising products such as home emergency kits.
    In fact, this was the reason for the suit. Not that the Red Cross was using the symbol but that they were using it for commercial products which potentially competed with Johnson & Johnson's own products.
  5. Re:Lower repair costs. on FTC to Scrutinize Contactless Payment Technology · · Score: 1

    Except, of course, that the cost of card fraud is borne by the merchant, not the card issuer.

    Fixed.

  6. Re:I will be more curious... on FCC Ends 700 MHz Auction · · Score: 1

    The shared public/private access would not have been free access. Public safety would have paid for access, though the first "chunk" of access would be at below-commercial rates since public safety gave up some of its spectrum for this network to be built.

    "The FCC paired the upper band D block (a single 10 MHz nationwide license) with 10MHz of public safety spectrum located next to the D block, and conditioned the D block license on an obligation to negotiate with public safety representatives towards the construction by the D block licensee of a nationwide public safety network. The idea was that a robust, dedicated public safety network would be built to the specifications of the public safety community, and in exchange the commercial licensee of the D Block would be permitted to use the public safety spectrum (in addition, of course, to the D Block spectrum) when it was not otherwise needed. Absent this private participation, funding for a shared public safety network was unavailable." -- http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1370

    The sticking points were instead things such as "the network must be able to serve 99.3% of the U.S. population by 2019," "the need to be 99.9% reliable" and pre-emption over other users for public safety's 10 MHz of spectrum. See MRT Magazine for more info about the proposal.

  7. Re:So what's the problem with insider trading anyw on JP Morgan's Insider Trading How-To On Wikileaks · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not an expert but, in my understanding... A wash sale isn't illegal in and of itself. You just can't claim the interim loss as a tax deduction.

    Market manipulation is another issue entirely but that gets murkier.

  8. Re:I don't have a cellar on Underground Freight Networks · · Score: 1

    Thus, southerners wonder why the hell we all have underground rooms.

    Is that why it took so long to find the Underground Railroad?

  9. Re:5 reactors? on Reactor Shutdown Darkens South Florida · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok, in Florida you probably don't have to heat that much during the year(?) but its rumored that there are unfriendlier places.

    Tropicana can use the steam. I'm sure others can too.

  10. Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything? on Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World · · Score: 1

    And someone should redraft RFC 4271 to give routes an "owner", so If you receive a update on your router from someone not the owner you just discard it. In this way, an router can only update their give block.

    Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean. But, as I understand your proposal, you would break a common use for BGP routing: multi-homing.

    ISP A "owns" IP addresses/routes including 1.1.1.0/24 which they let Customer C use since Customer C has a connectivity from them. ISP B "owns" 2.2.2.0/24 and they let Customer C use it because C has connectivity from them.

    C runs BGP routing so they can still be reached if either of the two lines go down. They advertise 1.1.1.0/24 and 2.2.2.0/24 to both providers and, even if the link to A goes down, the 1.1.1.0/24 machines can be reached via B and the 2.2.2.0/24 machines can be reached via A. They also get faster access to A and B's other customers since a user connected to B won't have to go through X, Y and Z to get to A and then to C; they can just talk to B and then to C.

    Now, if only the "owner" can advertise routes, then C can't advertise A's IP addresses to B and B's addresses to A. No more multi-homing and now you're back to relying on A to be up 100% of the time if you want to reach 1.1.1.0/24.

    Okay, so "C" gets permission to advertise A's routes as part of their contract for connectivity. But B is a competitor to A and its not in A's interest to let them advertise their routes when they can just make C pay for more connectivity to A as redundancy. So now B can't advertise the 1.1.1.0/24 route since they don't own it. Now, when A goes down, B can reach 1.1.1.0/24 because C told them about it. But nobody else can because B isn't allowed to tell anyone else.

    The answer isn't "ownership" of routes. The answer is to use the filtering mechanisms already in the spec and think about what routes you are accepting from (and sending to) others. Of course, when the PHB is breathing on your neck to get the change made now, even the best plans can fall apart unless the other party is being responsible about what they are accepting (and sending) as well.

  11. Re:Are they kidding? on Yahoo May Re-Consider Google Alliance, Rebuff Microsoft · · Score: 1

    Its certainly possible they believe it. Think of the breakup value of the company, not the current stock price.

    Yahoo is a lot more than a search engine. In fact, for those that remember Yahoo back when it had a stanford.edu URL, it was intended to be an Internet directory not search engine. Sites were added manually, categorized, etc. not crawled.

    But now there is Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups, and Yahoo Messenger which are all (individually) very popular in their respective fields. And there is Yahoo Stores which tons of small businesses use to run their online operations -- my company does consulting for one (in-house systems maintenance) that easily moves millions of dollars of merchandise each year exclusively through a Yahoo store.

    Short-term, $46 billion might look nice. But there is a lot more to Yahoo and the Board can certainly consider the long-term as well as other options, internal or external. Remember, this is not the first offer from Microsoft they turned down; Microsoft just went public this time trying to force their hand.

  12. Re:The Arrogance of Stupidity on The Curse of Knowledge Bogs Down Innovation · · Score: 1

    A remote with the buttons needed for the common tasks and a menu for the less common tasks doesn't preclude an easy-to-use menu system as well.

  13. Re:Or.. on The Curse of Knowledge Bogs Down Innovation · · Score: 1

    Didn't your MacBook come with a keyboard AND remote? One for the simple, commonly needed functions and one for the more complex tasks?

  14. Re:That is freedom OF on FCC Plan Will Result in Freedom Of or From the Press? · · Score: 1

    Mandate local ownership by setting a maximum of 50% of the radio stations in a market that may be owned by any company or individual not headquartered within the station's reception range. Not that I'm disagreeing with the spirit of your suggestions but the devil is in the details...
    • Clear Channel NYC, Inc. will own stations in New York and Clear Channel LA, Inc. will own stations in Los Angeles, whether or not they are subsidies of Clear Channel (based in Texas) or independent licensees of the Clear Channel brand or whatever other paper structure you want.
    • I can watch Superstation TBS anywhere in the country so its all in reception range.
    • I can buy a copy of today's Washington Post printed in some Seattle suburb. Which Washington is it local too?
    Its only because of those details and the need to digest them that I think one-month from public comments to vote is too short a period of time.
  15. Re:Photos on Some 7-11s Become Kwik-E-Marts · · Score: 1

    We have two 7-11s and three Dunkin Donuts in our five square mile Springfield, New Jersey. The only true Springfield if you ask me... http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-conte st.htm

  16. Re:Subject on The End of Broadcast TV as We Know It? · · Score: 1

    Any chance you were watching Jeopardy via a third-party? For example, the cable company will often replace the original commercials with their own. The TV station could have kept the crawler going and the cable company just replacing everything (audio & video) with their own content, programatically.

  17. Re:Plant Respiration on $25M Bounty Offered for Global Warming Fix · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I suppose that's an idea though- if there were a catalyst that could fix carbon dioxide into an organic molecule, and do so at reasonable conditions of temperature and pressure, it might provide a useful way of recycling carbon. For example, if you could react carbon dioxide with methane to produce acetic acid, you could pull two greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and use them to make an industrial product (and one which could be conceivably then be used as a feedstock for plastics and fuels). Currently, this process uses carbon monoxide and methanol (made from steam reforming of methane, actually), in the presence of a metal catalyst- it seems like it could be done with CO2 and methane instead. Even if the economics might not be as favorable, the benefit in sequestering greenhouse gases might be worth it. Question... Did you think of this idea before the back of envelopes calculations or after? Because, if after, than the bounty is already doing its thing. Whether or not your particular idea is really feasible isn't the key -- as others have pointed out, it would probably take more money to make sure every idea was really feasible. The bounty is making people think of things they didn't think about before and imagine the possibilities. "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." - Carl Sagan
  18. Yahoo Engineers or Yahooligans? on Yahoo Map Engineers Prank Google · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are the chances that Yahoo engineers did this vs. the chances some third party setup a yahoo.biz website for "The Dude's Fish Store" and Yahoo! Maps indexed it and added it to their mapping system? I vote for the third party candidate.

    Seems to me its easy for anyone to setup a site with Yahoo and it would be easy for Yahoo to use data already in their systems to make their map more complete or even just as a starting point for adding data to the new system. Unless its part of Google's unique business strategy, I doubt their website is hosted by Yahoo and as easily added to the dataset.

  19. Re:Take it one step futher on Congress Pushing Open Access for Government-Funded Research · · Score: 1

    All software, classifed or not, that is written by those with a U.S. government paycheck is essentially open-source since works of the U.S. government cannot be copyrighted.

    http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#piu

    On the other hand, if the government hires an outside contractor to write the software, it depends on the contract.

    http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/23/1320238.shtm l?tid=117

    http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/21/0150231.shtm l?tid=117

  20. Re:I've seen this before.... on Filter-foiling Gibberish Becoming A Spam Staple · · Score: 1

    You never know. Basically, it would just be steganography using words instead of images, movies, sound files, etc.

    After all, even if you wanted to buy cheap Viagra, are you really going to buy it from an e-mail advertising "80% Less for Vl@GRA! 2.75$ today x bdxgn wcybx x" Maybe if you put together the 16th word out of every V1@GRA e-mail, and formed a sentence, you would find the plans for their next attack.