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User: gizmo2199

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Comments · 183

  1. Re:Go Ross, Go! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ordering a hit on someone is still illegal, high-stakes or not.

  2. Re:Go Ross, Go! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 1

    He's facing life in pound-me-in-the-ass prison, and the "Government" caught him red-handed, so to speak. Any leverage he might have would be as an informant, which, if he's sane he'll agree to. But at least he might get out in 10 years.

  3. Re:yeah, ok, whatever. on Online Creeps Inspire a Dating App That Hides Women's Pictures · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that applies to men more-so than women. Even plain-looking women get a lot of messages on the internet, whereas the man has to be an underwear model to get the same kind of attention.

  4. Unworkable. on Online Creeps Inspire a Dating App That Hides Women's Pictures · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " If a woman is suitably impressed by a man's answers, she can make herself visible to him. "

    It seems pretty unworkable to me. I suppose these women must be a mix of Angelina Jolie/Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence, to insist on being anonymous.

    What I don't understand is why would a desirable man put up with all of these games just to view a woman's picture? If a man is attractive enough to get replies and messages from women on online dating sites in general (most men can easily send out hundreds of messages to get only a handful of replies), presumably he's attractive enough to go on other sites that don't make the man jump through these hoops, just to view the woman's picture, let alone go out on a date.
    Which means that the men who are willing to put up with these kinds of hoops wouldn't be attractive to these women in the first place.

  5. Re:I call BS on this one.... on Obama Administration Argues For Backdoors In Personal Electronics · · Score: 1

    Madisonian Democracy is like that by design. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

  6. Re:Simplification into irrelevance on Developing the First Law of Robotics · · Score: 1

    It was doing what it was programmed to do! What do you think a human being would be to a robot anyway, if not other moving objects it has to keep out of a hole?

  7. What 3-Laws? on Developing the First Law of Robotics · · Score: 0

    I never understood why any one would believe a "robot" would be beholden to any laws at all. I mean, the first application of truly autonomous machines would be in the military or private sectors (shipping, manufacturing, etc.). Of course military robots are going to kill people, and industrial robots are only going to keep people from dying in so far as its good for the bottom line. Do you really think the main concern of a manufacturer of a self-driving delivery truck will be keeping it from running -over some pedestrian?

    The whole 3-laws thing is really just more of this geeky infatuation with technological Utopianism that finds no analogue in the real world, and which dismisses the inherit and counter-intuitive complexity involved in technological development.

  8. Re:Haven't they read The Stand??? on How to Maintain Lab Safety While Making Viruses Deadlier · · Score: 1

    Except if there's ever an accidental release, it's going to matter very little what their intentions were in creating the strain.

  9. Re: So ... on How to Maintain Lab Safety While Making Viruses Deadlier · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Until one day the Level 1 vial ends up in the incinerator, and the Level 4 vial ends up in the trash can, because, you know, shit happens; end result, millions dead.

  10. The Cloud? on Ask Slashdot: Linux Login and Resource Management In a Computer Lab? · · Score: 1

    What about scalable cloud instances that students pay for out of their tuition fees? That way if they want to use 32GB of ram and 12 cores for their hello world.c program, they can do so without affecting other users, but they have to pay?

  11. Re:Seriously, an iphone? on Chinese State Media Declares iPhone a Threat To National Security · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IDK, a smartphone is the perfect spying machine.

    Not only do people keep their whole lives on their phone, email, pictures, documents, passwords, social media accounts, but the same device is fully portable, has a GPS receiver, picks up and connects to open wifi APs, has a microphone, and accelerometer.

    So you can find out what your target is up to, what he's planning, who he's talking to, where he is, and how fast he's moving, and by extension you get acces to his digital life.

  12. Does your CPU spy one you? on Chinese State Media Declares iPhone a Threat To National Security · · Score: 1

    Let's say a hypothetical security service, such as the Norway Safety Alliance (NoSaal), wanted to collect intelligence by putting in a backdoor, secret registers, or something in a CPU manufactured by another hypothetical entity called Ingal, how would they do it?

    What intelligence gathering capability could you include in a CPU that would 1) not interfere in the normal functionality of the PC, or otherwise be detectable by the end-user?

    I've read that an entity like nosaal could read the electrical hum of the CPU from a distance to determine what it's doing, or maybe grab crypto keys that way.

    But could Ingal actually put code or some other way dope their CPUs without anyone knowing?

    And more importantly if that's the case, what could we do about?

  13. Re:Yay big government! on Police Recording Confirms NYPD Flew At a Drone and Never Feared Crashing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, I think you're logic is fallacious. You're not looking at the functional power wielded by either party. Since the US is a democracy which holds private property, including the assets of a corporation, as the highest form of freedom, the government can't take that property without due process.

    This process is handled through the court systems, which works with lawyers and Judges, and juries. The only lawyers that work for the government are criminal prosecutors, and they make less than corporate lawyers. So government lawyers would only be involved in a criminal case against a private corporation.

    Therefore, in civil suites, corporations get get the best private attorneys money can buy. This includes lobbying the government to pass certain laws in their favor. And the corporations that pay for the right lawyers, can get away with anything they want and $$$.

    So, in reality, in the American capitalist system of government, it's the government that's beholden to private interests, since they make more money.

    If you can't see this, you've been watching too much Fox News.

  14. Re:Life on Mars? on Dubai's Climate-Controlled Dome City Is a Dystopia Waiting To Happen · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it starts to look really, really expensive, and thus less and less likely. Face it: colonizing space is the dream of the future, and it always will be.

  15. I guess on YouTube Issuing "Report Cards" On Carriers' Streaming Speeds · · Score: 1

    the internet is a series of tubes after all. And data packets are gumballs.

  16. Re:UV on Plastic Trash Forming Into "Plastiglomerate" Rocks · · Score: 1

    I think it has to do with the fact that the plastic trash melts either by campfires or lava and can't be carried by the wind or water, so it gets buried, thus no sunlight. This buried melted plastic gets fused with sand and coral to form a stone.

  17. Re:240,000 jobs for robots? on EU Launches World's Largest Civilian Robotics Program; 240,000 New Jobs Expected · · Score: 1

    This doesn't make sense to me. On the one hand, a big reason for automation is that you can easily replace a broken component with another one. If an army of technicians were required to fix a robot, who would buy it? On the other, a large part of creative destruction in the modern era is that 1 new job replaces many old ones, unlike the example of the car replacing the horse an buggy. Innovation no longer replaces specialized craft-labor (required for building a buggy) with huge factories full of workers (required to assemble a car), it replaces that factory with very few specialized knowledge workers an loads of automation.

    "With the current state of robots, you're talking about taking away the most dull, dangerous, and dirty jobs out there"

    But we're not talking about the current state of robots, like robotic arms painting a car, with a highly specific set of pre-programmed instructions
    The future of robotics alluded to here ranges from automated package delivery, robotic supermarket clerks and checkout counters, to automated fast food service.
    There's no technical reason at the moment why something like an automated drive-through burger place couldn't exist

    But really though, future advances in AI could even put most lawyers out of work, what with autonomous systems which fill out contracts, deeds, divorce papers, etc, jobs that are already being outsourced.

    So it's pretty naive to think that only dangerous blue-collar work would be subject to robotics and automation. And it's not unreasonable to surmise that unemployment in 50 years might be 20%, a society where the wealthy build and own robots and their labor, while everyone else picks-up the scraps.

  18. Re:Good on UK Ballistics Scientists: 3D-Printed Guns Are 'of No Use To Anyone' · · Score: 1

    It can just be a metal tube. Aluminum would be terrible for instance, and it would have to be rifled, to give the bullet spin so it doesn't tumble through the air.

  19. Re:Wait... on Chelsea Clinton At NCWIT: More PE, Less Zuckerberg · · Score: 2

    "McCain picked Palin who is probably smarter than Biden"

    What evidence are basing this on? It took Palin 5 years and 3 different colleges to earn a BA (in communications). The totality of Palin's government experience before she became governor was 10 years as city councilor and mayor of a town of 5,000 in Alaska. Biden, in addition to a law degree, was a well-respected U.S. Senator for 40 years. He served on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees.
    Moreover, since losing, Palin has made some pretty questionable decisions regarding her public persona. Nobody takes her seriously as a political contender any more.

  20. Undeniably not on Chelsea Clinton At NCWIT: More PE, Less Zuckerberg · · Score: 1

    "the right policies that could help put Computer Science — which is undeniably the most important 21st Century skill..."

    Isn't this a bit like saying: in the 1950's undeniably the most important skill was operating and repairing TVs and video transmission equipment.

    Just because a technology's new, doesn't make it the most important. If anything skills making pharmaceuticals and treatments for human diseases is a much more important skill, let alone robotics and engineering.

    There's only so much you can do with a compiler, OS, or a database after all.

  21. Re:The Canadian Exodus.... on Retired SCOTUS Justice Wants To 'Fix' the Second Amendment · · Score: 1

    "I mean machine guns should be fine"

    You do know that machine guns are mainly used to fire at advancing infantry, and kill dozens of people at the same time. In other words, they're truly weapons of war, not for hunting or self-defense. Why would the average person need one again?

  22. Re:Shh... on KDE and Canonical Developers Disagree Over Display Server · · Score: 1

    Apropos, does Wayland support hardware accel: vdpau, vaapi? No point in having a newish gpu if you can't use those.

  23. Re: Ponzi scheme on Cryptocurrency Exchange Vircurex To Freeze Customer Accounts · · Score: 1

    Also, gold isn't worthless, it's a very good conductor and highly malleable and would probably see more wide-spread use in electronics, if it weren't so expensive. Bitcoin on the other hand...

  24. Re:my daughter on Who's On WhatsApp, and Why? · · Score: 1

    This guy, huh?!?

    Has malicious command in his sig, replies with a Star Wars reference.
    He must hate it when his mom goes into his room to do the laundry.

  25. Re:They still have not caught a single terrorist. on TSA: Confiscating Aluminum Foil and Watching Out For Solar Powered Bombs · · Score: 1

    This is a useless statistic, as it's LEGAL to carry a gun on a US airplane, with certain restrictions obviously. What kinds of guns are these? Were they loaded?
    It's like saying the TSA discovered 1,000 bags of potato chips.