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  1. Re:Do you get the feeling? on Magistrate Suggests Fining RIAA Lawyers · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, I assume not even a fine like this will slow down the RIAA. They will probably just move on to their next questionable tactic and keep going.

    Or the fines get treated as a "business expense". Jailing the lawyers might be far better at hindering the RIAA.

  2. Re:What if my name REALLY is "John Doe" on Magistrate Suggests Fining RIAA Lawyers · · Score: 1

    Can you imagine if your name really was "John Doe"? Imagine the fun you could have showing up for court dates with alibi's for everything. "No, your honour... I was at a marriage ceremony on that date and I have 200 witnesses as well as photographic and video evidence"

    Especially if you were the groom and the bride was called Jane.

  3. Re:is it April 1? ( Not Yet...) on Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? · · Score: 1

    We do in fact seem to hear a lot about "Inept Terrorists" in the news, although the news never reports them as inept, rather they spin it as the brave efforts of the police narrowly avoiding massive catastrophe.

    As well as reports of terrorists who are actually far more competent. But the mainstream media more or less refuses to call anyone who isn't somehow Arab or Islamic a "terrorist" regardless of their actions.

    Never mind the fact that the plan the morons had concocted was so bad they would at most hurt (or kill) themselves, and if they got really lucky a few bystanders. Good example was a recent case where some "terrorists" had loaded their cars up with cans of gasoline and then planned on lighting them on fire believing this would lead to massive explosions (this happened over in England btw).

    They also put a few propane tanks in the car for decoration. Whilst failing to make much use of the weapon they actually had. That being the car.

    Anyone who knows about these types of things knows all you're going to get is a big hot fireball as the car burns down, and that's about it (might work if you had a proper fuel air mixture, but just dumping containers of gas in a car isn't going to cut it). So yeah, plenty of inept to go around.

    So inept they couldn't even manage to watch Mythbusters!

  4. Re:No Harm, No Foul on Lawyer Puts $10k Bounty on Blogger's Identity · · Score: 1

    Mr Niro states he wants to find out who the blogger is.

    Not quite he also expresses various conspiracy theories about who the blogger may be working for...

  5. Re:So long as said blogger is truthful.... on Lawyer Puts $10k Bounty on Blogger's Identity · · Score: 1

    If the lawyer gets a few hundred thousand emails/phone calls/letters suggesting it was a neighbor of yours and that you have proof, the few who are telling the truth with be lost in the haystack --so to speak.

    Especially if there are plenty of people claiming it's Elvis, Osama Bin Laden, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, George Bush, Gordon Brown, Kevin Rudd, etc, etc.

  6. Re:warning labels on New 4100 Lumen Flashlight Can Set Things On Fire · · Score: 1

    I don't get why 4100 lumens is going to set things on fire - a home projector can often output 5000-7000 lumens and I haven't seen them cause any fires recently.

    Typically these have a reflector which only reflects visible light. They might also contain filters which only transmit visible light. In addition to having fairly exotic lamps. Thus the output is mostly visible light.
    This device uses a regular incandescent lamp with a reflector which reflects everything. If this puts out 4.1 kilo-lumens of visible light it's likely to be putting out considerably more as infrared.

  7. Re:Omg on New 4100 Lumen Flashlight Can Set Things On Fire · · Score: 1

    It pumps out so much light that there is a recoil when you switch it on!

    How much of it's output is actually visible light though?

  8. Re:radioactive sodium too on Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak · · Score: 1

    The leak was in teh SECONDARY LOOP. It wasn't any radioactivity in it.

    The problem with sodium is chemical rather than nuclear. It reacts rapidly, sometimes explosivly, with all sorts of common materials.

    but the only thing nuclear about it was that it occurred in a nuclear power plant. The same thing would be much less likely to occur in the radioactive primary loop, because that counts as part of the nuclear island and is hence under much stricter safety requirements.

    How secure is that section of the plant against explosion, fire and corrosive materials? Also without the secondary loop what is keeping the core cool. You cannot just switch off a nuclear reactor...

  9. Re:radioactive sodium too on Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The big issue here is that the government lied to its people and the fact that they lied was covered up. We need more stories like this of governments around the world because it might just put a dent in the (very dangerous) "government is your friend" mentality that is especially prevalant in the USA.

    It's possibly more "government is your friend and anyone who thinks otherwise is a nutjob conspiracy theorist(tm)".

    Personally I wish the definition of treason were expanded to include "issuing false statements to the people with the intent to deceive when done by any government official" or something to that effect.

    This would be "high treason". The idea is that crimes committed by members of government are automatically more serious than those committed by the "plebs". Since these people have more ability to both do harm and hinder any criminal investigation.

    This isn't Athens where people were chosen for public office by lottery.

    In Classical Athens lotteries would even be used on a day to day basis.

    These are people who seek power and have worked very hard to get it. What's wrong with giving them a reason to be cautions with how they use it?

    Especially given that people who seek power are often the least suitable to have it.

  10. Re:radioactive sodium too on Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak · · Score: 1

    Na-24 beta decays into Mg-24, which is stable and not dangerous.

    Unless it catches fire.

  11. Re:Swiss independence on Anti-Piracy Group Violates Swiss Law to Track File Sharing · · Score: 1

    The Swiss signed the Berne Convention.

    It would be kind of ironic if they didn't.

  12. Re:Kickbacks on Anti-Piracy Group Violates Swiss Law to Track File Sharing · · Score: 1

    All they have to do is go to the police, claim that their copyrights have been infringed to some degree that would make it criminal, and then the police would be supposed to investigate.

    The police's investigation may well include investigating the complainant. Rather than just passing on the complaint to prosecutors.

    They tried exactly the same thing in Germany. The only difference apparently was that the German police and judges quickly figured out that the record companies didn't have any intention whatsoever to actually follow through with the roughly 10,000 criminal cases that they wanted the police to investigate,

    In other words the German police did actually investigate.

    so in Germany the police decided that they have better things to do than wasting their time on filesharers.

    Those "better things" certainly should have included prosecuting the record companies for "wasting police time" or whatever the German equivalent is. AFAIK this didn't happen.

  13. Re:Swiss independence on Anti-Piracy Group Violates Swiss Law to Track File Sharing · · Score: 1

    I expect the civil suits to be dismissed with prejudice (or whatever the civil code equivalent is) and countersuits for fraudulent prosecution to proceed.

    They should probably also send the Swiss equivalent of the BSA into Logistep too. After all it wouldn't be the first time that an "anti-piracy" entity was enguaging in quite a bit of "piracy" themselves.

  14. Re:The REAL Villains Here on Anti-Piracy Group Violates Swiss Law to Track File Sharing · · Score: 1

    The real villains here are the Swiss prosecutors who are going along with this scheme. They should be ashamed -- and Fired!

    Or even face a firing squad composed of the Swiss citizens who's details they allowed to be leaked. Given that summary execution is the traditional punishment for High Treason.

  15. Re:False positives? on Cell Phone Radiation Detectors Proposed to Protect Against Nukes · · Score: 1

    So if normal phones are used for this, what's stopping terrorists from decoding the signal they send and putting timed devices in bins all the way down a street? Set them off, watch the response teams flock to that location, and then attack on the other side of the city.

    Or attempt to kill the specialist response team which shows up.

    Isn't there a security law that states something along the lines of "always consider how a security measure can be abused"?

    There might well be for security professionals. These people understand that security is a process and that those attempting to subvert things may well be just as smart as those attempting to secure things.
    Whereas the people who come up with these ideas tend not to know too much about security. Hence their fondness for advocating complex machines as a "solution".

  16. Re:False Positives on Cell Phone Radiation Detectors Proposed to Protect Against Nukes · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not necessarily... Radiation isn't a single monolithic thing. A massive dirty bomb made out of an alpha emitted wrapped in lead to stop secondaries will be almost undetectable by a device buried inside the nice plastic case of a mobile phone.

    You only need lead if whatever you are using is a gamma emitter. Both alpha and beta radiation is stopped by "tinfoil". A phone case painted with metal paint would probably be all the shielding you'd need.

    If you have a system like this running, the hypothetical bad guys will know about it and will take action to prevent detection.

    Or set off something fairly harmless which will trigger the detectors and cause a panic.

  17. Re:Online "library" on Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller · · Score: 1

    There is a "limited" number of books released to this online library and books are automatically "returned" within 5 days.

    The whole "return" thing and associated databases lending libraries use are because of the limitations of physical books. In the "digital world" a library can have every book it carries always available. No problems with several people wanting the same book at once or books being stolen/defaced.

  18. Re:How long have we been saying it? on Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, I have. I don't agree with it, but there are certainly a lot of teenagers out there who regularly download gigabytes of music (some of which no doubt they will never even listen to) without the slightest intention of ever buying any.

    Which dosn't have any effect on record companies sales figures. There are three possibilities; download instead of buy; buy because of "previewing" through download and would just do without in the absence of a download. What actually matters for music sales is the first two. (Whilst the industry likes to pretend that the only the first happens the reality is that the majority of downloaders are probably in the third catagory.)

    I also know a girl who always seems amazingly proud of the fact that her family can get knockoff DVDs of films that aren't even out in the cinema yet.

    Which indicates a problem with the current movie distribution system. Television also has similar issues.

  19. Re:Nuke the phishers on Phishing Group Caught Stealing From Other Phishers · · Score: 1

    What is stopping a law enforcement agency from putting out a 'phishing' kit that actually phished the phishers?

    Are law enforcement actually interested in persuing these kind of criminals in the first place?

  20. Re:First impressions on MPAA Botched Study On College Downloading · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but stealing does not work that way. Theft means one thing and one thing only: To remove physical property from someone so that they may no longer use it and to keep it in your possession.

    Without the permission of the owner, of course...If you go into someone's house and use something, it's not theft. It's tresspassing.

    Unless what you use is some kind of consumable. e.g. you eat their food.

  21. Re:Human Error on MPAA Botched Study On College Downloading · · Score: 2, Funny

    Only if you accept the hypothesis that the MPAA are comprised of humans. I favour the theory that they are, in fact, a consortium of daleks.

    There really is no reason to go insulting Daleks, especially since they can count...

  22. Re:No, not the Avionics... on Failed Avionics a Possible Cause of BA038 Crash · · Score: 1

    In two other instances in large jets of engine failure by fuel starvation (Air Transat 236 and Air Canada 143), the failure of the engines was not simultaneous: one engine kept working for a few minutes longer than the other.

    In the case of the Air Transat flight the cross feed valve was open, which is as near as you can get to "both engines on the same tank".

  23. Re:Summary Correction on Failed Avionics a Possible Cause of BA038 Crash · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe that's your current thinking, but it doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Turbine engines don't "switch into reverse". They do have thrust reversers, but that's a mechanical device that redirects the exhaust flow. They're typically activated in the "last stages of landing" i.e. after the plane is fully on the ground.

    There are a set of interlocks involving both weight being present of the landing gear and the wheels rotating to prevent the reversers deploying.

  24. Re:No, not the Avionics... on Failed Avionics a Possible Cause of BA038 Crash · · Score: 1

    Pointing fingers and throwing blame about serves nothing, just like the guy above saying something about Iranians. We really should have something similar to a Godwin for Terrorist/Bush/Iranian bullshit that people post.

    The term you are looking for is "conspiracy theory"...

  25. Re:No, not the Avionics... on Failed Avionics a Possible Cause of BA038 Crash · · Score: 1

    A simplistic example: they could have been running both engines off one tank - which went dry - though another was full - or both engines were being fed from a common fuel pump which failed, etc. These things *shouldn't* happen - but the investigation will tell...

    The design of a typical jet's fuel system means that you just cannot have engines running from the same tank. Each engine has it's own tank (in the case of a twin such as the 777 this is the entire wing tank). Fuel can be fed from other tanks into the wing tanks but this typically happens early on in the flight.