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User: rabidMacBigot()

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  1. Software has already killed people on What Happens When Software Companies Are Liable For Security Vulnerabilities? (techbeacon.com) · · Score: 1

    ...software takes an increasingly starring role in an expanding range of products whose failure could result in bodily harm and even death.

    Not a security vulnerability - as in, no malicious actor exploiting a security flaw - but killing people? BT,DT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  2. Re:Didn't even have to RTFA on Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Trump just agreed that it's okay for everyone to not file the reports they were already not filing. This is a non-story that shouldn't have garnered any attention or discussion.

    Eh. You know the saying about how everyone commits around 3 felonies per day just because it's impossible for any one person to know the whole internally-conflicted canon of contradictory laws? This is the federal government version of that. Eliminating it is good. "Hey, person I want to fire, did you complete the Y2K analysis for that project?" "No... nobody's bothered with that crap in years." "Aw, so sad. I'll have to note that on your performance review."

  3. Re:Bullshit on NSA Links WannaCry To North Korea (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Even if they had hackers, would they have computers for them?

    They actually have their own Linux distro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  4. Re:Tsk tsk on Undersea Cable Break Disrupts Life In Northern Mariana Islands · · Score: 1

    Did you know? HAM radio is an acronym for "Ham is not an AcronyM" ;)

  5. Re:much more energy in wind on WaveNET – the Floating, Flexible Wave Energy Generator · · Score: 1

    Can you expand on this please? Why is the velocity cubed?
    Not that I know anything about this stuff, but it seems like water should have more energy. 1,000Kg/m^3 for water compared to like 1.25Kg/m^3 for air. It seems like the difference in mass would blow away (HURRR) any but the most extreme difference in velocity.

  6. Re:In Japan on 3D-Printed Gun Earns Man Two Years In Japanese Prison · · Score: 1
    Well, he said:

    ...the thing is there is a limit and family and friends of existing hunters usually get preference.

    which seems to restrict it to the well-connected (people with connections are often said to be well-connected), and

    Ammo... can only be purchased at very specfic places - and the prices are outrageous. The yearly license fees on the guns are apprently pretty expensive too.

    which seems to limit it to the rich (people who can afford to spend lots of money on expensive things are often rich). Of course, I am a simple man with simple answers.

  7. Re:More fun when they're way off on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 1

    That's a nuclear submarine reactor/generator/throttle control panel.

  8. Re:I know ... on FTC Awards $50k In Prizes To Cut Off Exasperating Robocalls · · Score: 2

    Meh, I get more junk snail mail than junk calls, and even though snail mail doesn't actually interrupt what I'm doing, its still pretty annoying because of the environmental cost and the cost of recycling, which is born by the council (and hence the council tax payer).

    Yes, but in the US, at least, bulk mailing subsidizes ordinary first-class letters. It's annoying, but it's the postal equivalent of advertisements on the radio - the noise pays the bills for the signal. I have no idea if it works that way in the UK, though.

  9. Re:Wired's Hacker Tourist wrote of Alexandria, Egy on Egyptian Forces Capture 3 Divers Trying To Cut Undersea Internet Cable · · Score: 1

    That Hacker Tourist is Neal Stephenson, so the article has the verbal density of a neutron star and is intensely fascinating. I read it a while ago, pretty good stuff.

  10. Re:Units and news on Astronomers Catch Asteroid In Near-Miss Video · · Score: 1

    I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

    A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

  11. What does the net look like from the PRC? on Google Highlights Censored Search Terms In China · · Score: 2

    Has anyone got any good articles, documentaries, or personal experiences about what ordinary Internet use is like in the PRC? Does filtering or censorship show up as a brick wall "COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY CONTENT FORBIDDEN", or a passive "sorry, no such content found"? How often does it affect ordinary daily browsing? If ordinary browsers are aware of it, do they generally develop a seething resentment of it, or a shrug-and-live-with-it accpetance (or resignation) like some western employees whose workplaces filter access? I'd be interested to read something objective about what the filter actually is, what it does, and how the Chinese generally feel about it.

  12. Re:Still torture on Taser International Wins Lawsuit to Change Cause of Death · · Score: 3, Informative

    While I strongly oppose to subduing anyone, the best would be to use tranquilizer darts. Works like a charm on animals (appropriate irony). Fast acting and relatively pain free.
    People die every day from anesthesia administered by highly trained, licensed, expert anesthesiologists with access to the best in modern drugs and equipment. I really hope you don't think that a cop can just shoot a magical one-size-fits-all tranq dart at a 250lb thug on PCP and a 95lb teenager and safely send either or both to magical sleepy land. That only happens in the movies. A taser is probably significantly safer.
  13. Re:Beware the intertubes on Belgium May Prosecute the Church of Scientology · · Score: 4, Informative
  14. Re:Uh-huh. on Linux Foundation Calls for 'Respect for Microsoft' · · Score: 1

    Microsoft deserves repsect for essentially supporting every device and every peice of hardware on the market, a feat which Apple doesn't even try to do and that Linux is spotty on. Whether or not all the drivers you get end up being WHQL signed or not, they do make the effort and there is an impressive list of device compliance.
    They don't do a damn thing besides publish a driver API. Hardware vendors are the ones that do the heavy lifting to support their devices.
  15. Re:the distinction... on Senate Majority Leader Takes On File Sharing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And which party is pushing the free speech-sodomizing "fairness doctrine", allowing the government to dictate what private broadcasters can say about politics? Just come off it. Democrats voted for the Iraq war. If you don't like the war, don't fucking pretend that your pet congresscritters had nothing to do with it. There is no lesser of the two evils.

  16. Re:Add the tag "loser" on Man's Vote for Himself Missing In E-Vote Count · · Score: 3, Funny
    The guy's wife didn't even vote for him.
    Women can't vote.

    Can they?
  17. Freshwater isn't that bad... on Want a Cool and Quiet PC? Dunk it in Oil · · Score: 1

    We use fresh water (not deionized, just desalinated) to cool electronics on my boat (an SSN751-class submarine). Thing is, we don't bathe the gear in it, we have radiators and heat exchangers that transfer heat from components to air to metal to water and then to entropy (the ocean). Not as efficient as a mineral oil bath, but since the water only stays in the pipes, it's far less likely to destroy some critical equipment.

  18. Just make it up. on BusinessWeek on Hacker Hunters · · Score: 1
    Agents (armed with) MP5 semi-automatic machine guns swooped in...
    If you don't know what kind of weapons they had, MAKE IT UP and MAKE IT SOUND SCARY, even if it DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.
    Were they driving Volkswagen hatchback sport/racing pickup trucks? Was the house a four-story duplex ranch single-family apartment?
  19. It's a movie. on Review: U-571 · · Score: 1

    Was it entertaining? Yeah. It was entertaining. I don't think it was intended to be a thought-provoking movie, and I don't think it was trying to make any sort of point. If it was, of course, it kind of failed. So? It was entertaining. I liked it.

  20. Re:*ROFLMAO* on When Spammers Try To Sue You · · Score: 1

    eek, now we have a Sci*ntology connection with spammers. Chilling!

  21. Re:User level is DANGEROUS for malicious code! on Huge security hole in Internet Explorer for MacOS · · Score: 1

    nidump(8), reads the specified NetInfo domain and dumps its contents to stdout. What's NetInfo? It's the MacOS X (derived from NeXT?) way of storing system info like user accounts, groups, passwords, hostnames, interfaces, etc. On OS X (and Server), most of the config data that would be stored in /etc on other Unix systems is stored in a NetInfo database in a hierarchical format. Machines can also be configured to use a remote NetInfo server. More info can be found in the 'Understanding and Using NetInfo' PDF.

  22. Re:ALL Muslims... on First-Person Account Of Today's Attacks · · Score: 1
    Anyone who claims they dont all feel this way is flat wrong. They ALL silently pray for, and desire, the TOTAL elimination or conversion of ALL OTHER PEOPLE ON EARTH;
    Are you a troll?
    maybe.
    Are you wrong?
    most definitely.
    I am a Jew. I have many Muslim friends. I read the Torah in the original Hebrew. They read the Qur'an in the original Arabic.

    We are all Americans. We all go out on a Friday night, with our Christian and Pagan and agnostic and atheist friends. We have fun. We talk. We enjoy each other's company.

    My Muslim friends don't desire the eradication of non-Muslims any more than I lust after the money of gentiles, any more than our Christian friends want to convert us to save our souls, any more than our Pagan friends sacrifice babies, any more than our atheist friends attack our beliefs.

    And all of us are horrified by this attack on Americans, just as we are disgusted by violent actions against people anywhere in the world. One of my greatest fears right now is of violence and civil rights violations against my friends.
    You are wrong and ill-informed. We all hope for justice.

    Have you donated money, blood, or otherwise, to ease the suffering of the stricken? We have.

    All of us.
  23. Re:Well that's the most useful thing ever on Recreating The Lost Art Of Damascus Steel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More neat katana tricks: the aesthetically and functionally perfect curve of a katana doesn't form until the nearly-finished blade is quenched, and it forms naturally - it's not forged in. The differing hardness and thickness on either side of the blade causes it to cool and contract at different speeds, forming the curve. The steel on the back of the blade is also much softer than the steel of the edge, which is why you'll see people in movies deflecting and parrying with the back of the blade. This allows an enemy's weapon to bounce off the softer steel so the hard edge doesn't chip or shatter.
    At least, I think so - that's what I heard from a friend who was a blacksmith for a while.

  24. Re:Three Browsers? Feh! At LEAST 5. Maybe more... on BSD User's Review Of OS X · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can get lots of ports for Darwin/OS X from my ex-roommate at geeklair.net/downloads/, including Postgres, Lynx, nmap, sendmail, qpopper, ViM, sysmon, ncurses....

  25. Offtopic:As a professional web developer... on Mozilla 0.9.3 Released · · Score: 1
    I mean, when you drive on public streets, the city government doesn't tell you that you should be driving a Toyota.
    That's because it's assumed you should be driving a Toyota ;)