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User: bill_mcgonigle

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Comments · 18,097

  1. Re:Hmmmmm on Hillary Clinton Declares 2016 Democratic Presidential Bid · · Score: 2

    If Saddam was still in power, ISIS wouldn't have been a threat to them. We weakened Iraq.

    It's not merely that subtle. The USG actively funded and trained the groups that became ISIL. Now that Iran is funding their opposition, the USG can fund both sides of the conflict and be both allies and cold-war opponents with several of the participants.

    Did somebody mention "stop meddling"?

  2. Re:WTF on Daredevil TV Show Debuts; Early Reviews Positive · · Score: 2

    Also, for complex plotlines (see: "Lost"), people tend to forget important events that happened weeks prior

    In my day, we had to remember dialog from three years back to appreciate B5. Might be why it got cancelled a few times...

  3. Re: What the hell is going on a the USPTO? on After EFF Effort, Infamous "Podcasting Patent" Invalidated · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nah, this idea has been invalidated by economists.

    The cost to replicate complex inventions is about 65% of the original cost and the overhead of paying the talent to have on staff to do the work (they insist you fund their own research instead of sitting idle) is almost 35%. The Patent argument boils down to dithering about a 5% difference and the consumers prefer to reward the inventors most of the time. Establishing and enforcing the patent monopoly winds up costing society more than that 5%, so the net effect is privatized gains and socialized losses.

    Now there are industries that government screws up a priori, like pharmaceuticals, but patching that disaster with patents just adds insult to injury.

    Speaking as someone who was just offered a drug for a family member that costs $320,000 per ounce (beyond the budget) I can tell you the current system doesn't help regular people at all. Bristol Meyers execs - they're doing just fine.

    The current system *does* work very well - for certain classes of men. And the claims that people will stop inventing without monopoly enforcement ignore all the available data and human nature.

  4. Re: Marijuana's capacity to REVEAL TRUTH on Cannabis Smoking Makes Students Less Likely To Pass University Courses · · Score: 1

    "Social Contract" is just bullshit Rousseau made up to replace the Divine Right of Kings, which had gone out of favor.

    State your preference and add "social contract" to the end - it's easy and profitable.

  5. Re:Yet more proof the legislators are clueless on US Blocks Intel From Selling Xeon Chips To Chinese Supercomputer Projects · · Score: 1

    There needs to be an active mechanism in government that weeds incompetence and ignorance out of the system.

    You're looking for competition. That's the opposite of government.

    There are many types of governance - you can't pick the one that eschews competition (government) and say, "we need competition in it". That would be to undefine it.

  6. Re:You stupid bastards... on ICANN Asks FTC To Rule On .sucks gTLD Rollout · · Score: 1

    So WTF does the FTC get to decide on global things for?

    Are you confusing a widely-acceptable excuse with a logical predicate?

    ICANN just needs to say, "look, we ran this by the FCC and they said it was OK". That will satisfy most people that ICANN is in the clear and maybe that rightsholders shouldn't bother tying up the courts for a decade.

    Oh, and then ICANN says, "here's where to mail the check for the ICANN fees." Do you think they truly care if the FCC has jurisdiction or if their money keeps coming in?

  7. Re:Time to stop considering individual components. on Intel's Core M Performance Is Erratic Between Devices · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Having a Core i7 will not actually feel more responsive in everyday tasks compared to a Core M if the i7 is paired with a spinning rust disk and the Core M has a PCI E SSD.

    Cool - I'll transcode a 900MB .dv clip to h.264 with ffmpeg on my 4-core hyperthreadding i7 (the low-power model, even) with a simple drive mirror, and you run it on your Core M with a PCIe SSD (on a Mac even), and let's see when each job finishes.

    (as usual, use the right tool for the task)

  8. Re: Warning!!! on 'Let's Encrypt' Project Strives To Make Encryption Simple · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "on the right side of history" This phrase has always confused me. Unless you are a prophet or time traveler, how do you know you are on the "right side" of history until a significant enough time has passed?

    Look at long-term trends.

    Two thousand years ago personal freedom was rare and people were the per se property of their Sovereign. Warring was common, dueling was how arguments were settled, and people drowned their extra babies. Human life had fairly little social value and everything was controlled by the whims of the Gods, regardless.

    In the more advanced civilizations today, people can do pretty much whatever they want in terms of personal liberty, and there's a bunch of obfuscation to disguise the fact that they're still owned by their Sovereign (because they wouldn't accept it consciously). Cooperation is markedly increased, resulting in the march of technology.

    The safe bet is for the trend-lines to continue towards more tolerance, more personal freedom, more blessings of enhanced communications and technology, and a sunset of the nation-state as the pervasive governing mechanism.

    There's no guarantee, but the trends are very strong with only slight perturbations, so to bet against it is a fools' errand. To bet on more authoritarianism, more mercantilism, and more central planning while betting against more peace, more tolerance, and more liberty is a great way to be considered a fool, in history books written far enough into the future (there are always short-term gains for such sociopathic behaviors, so don't expect the history books written tomorrow to judge yesterday's tyrant harshly).

    Historians in 3015 may judge this post harshly, but I wouldn't bet on it.

  9. Re: Warning!!! on 'Let's Encrypt' Project Strives To Make Encryption Simple · · Score: 1

    then what the fuck have we to lose by figthing for what's right?

    Comfort and complacency? If you set the value of freedom to zero, there are still other benefits to be enjoyed. Perhaps you've heard of "bread and circuses"? (this isn't a new problem).

    I'd rather be suicidal and on the right side of history than get to live a meek, shallow little existence cowering in my hole waiting to die

    Realize that you're in a small minority. And in a democracy, the majority gets to enforce their view on you that your freedom doesn't matter.

    "The blessings of liberty are occasionally fought for and earned by the few, then temporarily bestowed on the undeserving masses, to be lost again when they forget why they had achieved happiness".

  10. Re:You stupid bastards... on ICANN Asks FTC To Rule On .sucks gTLD Rollout · · Score: 1

    They decided to go ahead anyway.

    Of course they did - 18 cents on every single domain registered goes to ... ICANN! Why get 18 cents from every trademark holder when you can get 18 dollars?

    Now they are shocked, hurt, and betrayed that someone would be using one of the new TLDs for less than upstanding purposes. What utter fools.

    I doubt they care. They want the FTC to bless it as free speech so they can wash their hands of any culpability.

  11. Great, Let's Build IFR's on The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, where are all the environmentalists demanding we build integral fast reactors as fast as we can? We have a huge 300,000 year light-water-reactor waste problem, a huge CO2 problem, and only one source of energy that can satisfy all the demand that humans have and will have as the other billions are lifted out of poverty. There's only one known technology that cleans up the mess and provides the power.

    But how does solving the problem concentrate power in the hands of governments, right? Big shocker that it was Al Gore who lead the charge to cancel the IFR program. Total coincidence. That's why Obama won't even take Branson's calls about building them now, on his dime.

    Just tax carbon and the oceans will be saved, amirite?

    The silver lining is that China will build them and eventually America will be forced by the harsh realities of economics to buy them from the Chinese manufacturers, as China replaces the US as the center of industrialization. Unless Americans start refusing to be controlled by sociopaths first.

  12. Re:Clickbait-ish Headline on Has Google Indexed Your Backup Drive? · · Score: 2

    There's no adequate way to fix this either, because if it's opt-in

    If a NAS is doing uPNP on purpose or is acting as a router, then the NAS manufacturer has an obligation to provide appropriate guidance to their users. If they don't then their reputation should be thoroughly punished in reviews.

    Oh, but why buy a $120 NAS when there's a $20 box available on eBay?

  13. Re:Systemic and widespread? on The Courage of Bystanders Who Press "Record" · · Score: 1

    Hmm, a few minutes of google-fu shows the number of "civilians" killed by police in 2013 ... to be 320.

    Your google-fu is weak ( just going with the theme - assume bad lip sync). You found an artificially-depressed number. The FBI even refuses to keep track (google that!) so a new person looking at the field should hardly be expected to find good data.

    This site has the simplest, and best methodology available to date, and therefore the best data set. It does not try to assign any kind of blame or degree to the homicide, just reporting the incidents. If anything, it's an under-reporting as it relies on media coverage.

  14. Re:Are non-China users safe? on Apple Leaves Chinese CNNIC Root In OS X and iOS Trusted Stores · · Score: 2

    This confirms the absolute uselessness of this whole 'certificate' thing, except for tracking purposes of course.

    It's not useless, but it's only half of the equation.

    The cert says, "we trust that this site belongs to this entity". That's one-way.

    What needs to happen is that sites need to publish in their DNS(SEC) that they trust the same CA(s). That completes the mutual agreement on trust, which is currently missing. There are a few competing RFC's on the best way to lay this out, but what CNNIC shows is that we need to stop bickering and deploy this yesterday, accepting that "good enough" may not be perfect but it's *way* better than nothing. 'Better' is what version 2 is for.

    May we engineers save us from ourselves.

  15. Re:"lived out high democratic ideals" on The Courage of Bystanders Who Press "Record" · · Score: 1

    Recording people is being used by people of every though process - right or wrong it's blackmail,

    That's absurd. Blackmail is specifically a promise to keep something secret in exchange for consideration.

    This is the opposite of that - the brave young man brought forward the video so that all may know it. That's called shining light on corruption.

    You can't just call the opposite of blackmail "blackmail" and expect the effort to be recognized as anything but somebody trying to demonize a patriot.

  16. Re:Nope on US Started Keeping Secret Records of International Telephone Calls In 1992 · · Score: 2, Funny

    which detailed how the NSA were intercepting all international calls by methods including replicating the phone-company satellite base-stations

    That's crazy tinfoil-hattery libertarian nutzo Echelon talk, dude.

  17. Re:Of Course on Bell Labs Fighting To Get More Bandwidth Out of Copper · · Score: 4, Informative

    On the flip side, it isn't like we've seen massive DSL advancements recently (At least ones that have made it to consumers).

    Here's a Slashdot piece from 1999 talking about how G.Lite is coming to displace ADSL sometime soon.

    A now-ironic editorial tag asks whether it might be deployed before 2020.

  18. Re:Yeah, right. on Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Bans Salary Negotiations To Equalize Pay For Men, Women · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Apparently Reddit must suck already for women. Most places pay men and women the same, on average, for the same job with the same level of experience. It's in over $200K jobs where a disparity still exists, which is the CxO level, mostly (or if you ignore factors like type of job or years of experience and just compare headcount or age).

  19. Re:First, manhole covers are not always round on The Key To Interviewing At Google · · Score: -1, Troll

    If I were the hiring manager, I'd expect an employee to know that the question only applies to round manhole covers. Pedants are rarely productive.

  20. Re:Is Elon Musk at Solar City going to hire them a on Feds Boost Goal To 75k New Solar Power Workers By 2020 · · Score: 1

    Is Elon Musk at Solar City going to hire them all?

    Maybe. The Feds have absolutely no idea how many solar workers the market will require - they just pull numbers out of their asses to fool some people into thinking that they should keep their cushy jobs on the taxpayers' dimes (err, debt instruments - total unfunded debt/tax obligations are now $1.4M per worker). Almost all government estimates of future markets are wildly incorrect.

    Musk may well even have a better model of workforce requirements than DoE, and he doesn't ask for the assignment of the productive labor of the unborn.

  21. Re: edgerouter.. on How Ubiquiti Networks Is Creatively Violating the GPL · · Score: 1

    photocopiers often run ancient unpatched versions of BSD.

  22. Re: Licensing? on TrueCrypt Alternatives Step Up Post-Cryptanalysis · · Score: 1

    Exactly - any claims are unenforceable. Whoever calls their fork "truecrypt" will have more success.

  23. How Many Features? on Google Rolls Out VP9 Encoding For YouTube · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was dismayed to click on the YouTube video editor today to be told I need a modern version of Flash to use it. I remember back to 2010 when YouTube was going to go all html5 within a year or two. It's amazing how the YouTube division can't afford to hire people to work on these things...

  24. Re:Money on Google Rolls Out VP9 Encoding For YouTube · · Score: 3, Interesting

    bandwidth costs Google money

    Bandwidth costs everybody money. The worse your options are, the more large bitrates cost, and those costs rise rapidly.

  25. Re: A hit-piece of a submission... on Why Is the Internet Association Rewarding a Pro-NSA Net-Neutrality Opponent? · · Score: 0

    Right, but net-neutrality is good for the NSA because it decreases peering points and allows for mandatory government decryption, so his positions are quite contradictory. This may be a good indication that he's just reading talking points.