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  1. Re:By using it on Ankle Exoskeleton Takes a Load Off Calf Muscles To Boost Walking Efficiency · · Score: 1

    Not disagreeing with you, but I was looking more towards situations in meatspace. Such as areas that are not accessible by roads. Which would be rural villages not in the US, or "wild" areas like Alaska or Northern Canada.

  2. Re:More details on Ankle Exoskeleton Takes a Load Off Calf Muscles To Boost Walking Efficiency · · Score: 1

    Frankly, I see this having more use for people "needing" to hike for long distances (10-20mi) under weight.

  3. Re:By using it on Ankle Exoskeleton Takes a Load Off Calf Muscles To Boost Walking Efficiency · · Score: 1

    But lets hypothesize that you had a need to walk 10 miles in one direction and 10 miles back. Your calf muscles aren't weakening because they're being worked, but you expend about 7% less (metabolic) energy completing the 20 mile walk.

  4. Re:I feel for them... on US Asks Vietnam To Stop Russian Bomber Refueling Flights From Cam Ranh Air Base · · Score: 1

    Good for you.

    1) You do realize that the end of WW2 and the end of the Korean War was less than 10 years?
    2) "PVA troops in Korea continued to suffer severe logistical problems throughout the war. In late April Peng Dehuai sent his deputy, Hong Xuezhi, to brief Zhou Enlai in Beijing. What Chinese soldiers feared, Hong said, was not the enemy, but that they had nothing to eat, no bullets to shoot, and no trucks to transport them to the rear when they were wounded."

    That is not the definition of a "professional" army.

    And even if they were better organized by 1979 (each soldier had a rifle, and the soldiers were all carried by truck), they really were's much more than an antiquated mass of farmers that hadn't fought an external war since Korea.

  5. Re:I feel for them... on US Asks Vietnam To Stop Russian Bomber Refueling Flights From Cam Ranh Air Base · · Score: 1

    It was also a Vietnamese military victorious over a world superpower less than ten years ago. Vietnam was basically the equivalent of the US military in that region. Vietnam didn't have a lot of air power, but it had the best trained, veteran soldiers in the region. China, on the other hand, was still an antiquated mass of farmers that hadn't fought an external war since WW2. And they were trying to thrust a million men through a pass in a mountain range (which separates China from Vietnam).

    The irony is that even though Vietnam thoroughly kicked the Chinese invader's ass, they still had to negotiate a peace with China, because China's loss was like losing a zit on its hide.

  6. Re:I feel for them... on US Asks Vietnam To Stop Russian Bomber Refueling Flights From Cam Ranh Air Base · · Score: 2

    Your error is thinking the Ukraine conflict is between Putin & Ukraine. One does not negotiate with the house servants.

    Beijing (not Peking) is full of amateur hour mistakes, particularly in its diplomacy. I laugh when Beijing whines "Why are my neighbors allying against me? It must be the machinations of the United States, not when I make diplomatic seizures of all the ocean territory up to their coasts".

  7. Re:"There is no easy solution for Vietnam." on US Asks Vietnam To Stop Russian Bomber Refueling Flights From Cam Ranh Air Base · · Score: 1

    Multi-billion? Wow, you think countries like Vietnam are stupid enough to sell themselves cheap.

  8. Re:"Special Snowflakes" and a Nominating Committee on On Firing Open Source Community Members · · Score: 1

    OWS was an experimental event anyway. Whatever "they" decide to do in the future, it will be based on what they've learned from the OWS experience.

  9. Re:There might be hope for a decent adaptation on 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' Coming To the Big Screen · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you think Starship Troopers is one of the greatest works of science fiction, you have an extremely limited exposure to sci-fi literature. I don't think I could put it in the top 100 of sci-fi novels.

  10. Re:Full blooded American here on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    Well, you must be a full blooded American, because you are phenomenally stupid.

    If no law enforcement body is compelled to prosecute a violator for convictable abrogations of law, then a directed verdict for "guilty" cannot be illegal (except in your delusional imagination). You've been watching too many pre-1960's movies. Hint, what HUAC and the FBI did wasn't legal either, in the American legal context. I didn't see either Joe McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover go to prison either.

  11. Re: Bad idea on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    A politician's honesty has nothing to do with it. Its a lawyer's honesty. Its much like dealing with Lucifer, but they are scrupulously honest where enforceable legal stipulations make them so. If you can't believe in that standard in operational integrity, then your most rational reaction when being prosecuted for a criminal indictment would be to flee the country.

  12. Re:Is there any way to block the use of old cipher on FREAK Attack Threatens SSL Clients · · Score: 1

    You could implement your own version of the SSL libraries that don't implement "weak" encryption protocols. When confronted by a client/server session that tried to default to the vulnerable mode, the client would get a "no failover" error message. The homebrew version would be no help in "forcing" a secure SSL session, and the browser/server would not be standards "compliant". Oh well. Oh, it would have to be a browser with available source code; hello firefox, goodbye safari.

  13. Re:Not a chance on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    Are you suggesting that Seal Team Six have magical powers that lets them operate inside the heart of Russian territory without the likelihood of being captured?

  14. Re:Full blooded American here on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    No its not. A plea bargain agreement is the defendant agreeing to plead guilty to certain crimes in exchange for a sentence agreed to by the prosecution. Sadly, its still possible for today's federal gov't to "disappear" a person into Guantanamo or a black site, and that is "effectively" a directed verdict.

  15. Re:Full blooded American here on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    US lawyers can form a legal agreement with the DOJ as to the form of legal prosecution which would be acceptable to both parties. My guess would be no Star Chambers, and a public federal criminal prosecution will all legal rights that a US defendant are afforded. The potential sticky point would be Snowden providing the prosecutors/DNI to the best of his knowledge, the information he did procure, to avoid a situation where sensitive information gets leaked in court, or federal prosecutors be given the ability to "close" trial sessions. And of course, the DOJ's willingness to cut their losses concerning Snowden; I doubt Snowden would agree to a twenty year prison sentence.

  16. Re:Full blooded American here on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    Ironically, any POTUS that tried to pardon/commute Snowden's sentence would get the full wrath of the US Intelligence community. POTUS's have been trying to negotiate away Pollard for years; I hope that traitor dies in a US federal prison.

  17. Re:Bad idea on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Apparently, you do not have a clear understanding of how the US legal system works. If the DOJ makes a promise in a legal contract, it will have to follow that contract. To improperly reneg on that contract would jeopardize every legal contract the US government makes across the world. The US's power is embedded in law; to publicly violate it would unravel the US. And finally, you need to get a realistic grasp of Snowden's situation. His ability to further damage the US government is probably negligible. His value in "disappearing him into Gitmo" is also zero, because it will never happen with current protocols. He's negotiating jail time for "crimes" he knows he would be successfully prosecuted for, in exchange for the US to make the best "example" of Snowden they can manage. But the US DOJ will have to agree to operate above board, with a standard criminal prosecution; no "Star" courts.

  18. Re:Bad idea on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 1

    I'd sooner trust a "dishonest" blogger like Glenn Greenwald than an anonymous coward like you.

  19. Re:Bad idea on Snowden Reportedly In Talks To Return To US To Face Trial · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, Ukraine would never trade Snowden to the US for military aid against Russia.

  20. Re:There is no problem here. on Torvalds: "People Who Start Writing Kernel Code Get Hired Really Quickly" · · Score: 1

    The abuse of the H-1B system is minimal right now, because there are roughly 100K individuals to "exploit". Its when the economy picks up, and employers want to increase the employment pool by 1 million, that's when the H-1B system is going to be used to drive down salaries. (Of course, that's assuming the system right now is being selective about who gets to be the "lucky" 100K picked.)

  21. Re:A precaution when done ahead of time. on Nuclear Plant Taken Down In Anticipation of Snowstorm · · Score: 0

    People have no clue how nuclear power plants work. The power that gets generated has to go somewhere, which is the power grid. If the nuclear power plant's connection to the grid gets severed (by bad weather, in this case), the power still has to go somewhere, or else it melts down the connecting infrastructure, and eventually triggers a nuclear meltdown situation. This is readily avoided by shutting down the reactor (before the problem starts) but since it can take a day before the reactor can be put back to operation, its a pain in the ass that management likes to avoid. Its like trying to stop a train in motion; you can't stop it with 30 seconds of advance notice.

  22. Re:Uh, don't post... on NYPD Creates Fake Social Media Profiles To Track Loud Parties, Underage Drinking · · Score: 3, Funny

    The NYPD does this to islamic prayer groups, why wouldn't they do it to teenagers?

    "First the came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist..."

  23. Re:Sexist article on Female-Run Companies Often do Better Than Male-Run Ones (Video) · · Score: 1

    Ugh, she nearly got me too. But the commercial so annoys me, its not going to happen.

  24. Re:Different responsibilities to each group on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    You're still not getting it. Management only "needs" to answer to shareholders. Shareholders are effectively "the owners". Saying management has a legal responsibility to pay its employees is based on a contract between two parties. It doesn't mean either the employees or the customers have any (legal) "right" to tell management how they should operate the company or how to conduct its policies.

    The primary responsibility to shareholders is that executives may not enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders.

    That is not the responsibility of the shareholders; that is the shareholders' prerogative. A shareholder can only try to influence policy within a company, or divest themselves from the company. Should management get involved in criminal activity, that is not the "responsibility" of the shareholder to "prosecute" or "punish" management for it. Shareholders only receive financial loss from such corporate malfeasance.

    A company has a responsibility to treat employees with dignity and respect.

    No, they don't. Its not responsibility, its common sense only to the extent there is a clear understanding between management and employee of policy. What's "good business" is not the same thing as "responsibility". One can make the claim "Trying to hire H1-Bs over a native worker is not treating the native worker with dignity and respect", but that doesn't mean the company has a legal responsibility to hire the native worker over the H1-B.

    Another sad aspect of this is the Chick-Fil-A episode with its "attitudes" towards homosexuality. There is no legal requirement that Chick-Fil-A show "respect" to homosexuality towards its customers or employees. When some gay customers, employees, and neither tried to organize a boycott towards Chick-Fil-A, it had the negative result of rewarding Chick-Fil-A's behavior by its customer base, who apparently either semi-actively prefer Chick-Fil-A's behavior towards homosexuality or feel the homosexual community overstepped in imposing their prerogatives (lets call it "respect") upon the company.

    Communism or "American Liberal" sense of "decency" has no business in dictating to a company in a capitalist economy.

  25. Re:that happens, but 11 failing quarters in a row on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    Management only has legal responsibilities to its shareholders, not "stakeholders". The US economy is capitalist, not socialist, in nature.