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User: amRadioHed

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Comments · 4,239

  1. Re:Interesting quote on The Next Net · · Score: 1
    "Interesting for many here that the new guy at the head of the IETF seems to give this issue such emphasis."

    You mean just like the standards that make the existing net work?
    Of course we all know that the current standards the net uses are open and documented in various RFC's, but you can bet that companies like MS would love to see this change. That's why this comment is interesting. It good to see that the head of the IETF doesn't plan on caving in to the interests of BigCorp as groups like Congress tend to do.
  2. Re:This is completely bogus. on Faulty Chips Might Just be 'Good Enough' · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Chaotic is not really the opposite of deterministic. At least not to mathematicians. In math chaotic refers to complex systems where a tiny change in the beginning state results in a huge change in the end state. In fact, that is the same as in a computer system. Complex systems studied my mathematicians are unpredictable only because it is impossible to have perfect knowledge of the state of a complex system, not because they are non-deterministic.

  3. Re:One place to look on The Continuing Hunt for PATRIOT Act Abuses · · Score: 1

    Excuse me, but how the fuck do you know all these guys being held are bad guys without due process? Due process is the way that we determine if someone is guilty or not.

    You knee-jerk facists really piss me off. I have no problem with a just punishment being applied to someone shown guilty of some sort of wrong doing, but you can't just go into a country, round up every kinda guilty looking guy with a gun (in a culture where everyone has a gun), call them terrorists and toss them in a cell to rot. That's just horribly foolish and small-minded.

  4. Re:Corporate contributions are already disallowed on Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We need to reduce the cost of political ads on *our* public airwaves.

    How about we do one better any just eliminate political ads on our public airwaves. Try as I might, I just can't see any benefit to political commercials. They are full of mudslinging and sound bites that certainly leave the viewer less informed rather then more informed.

    If we could cut the official campaigning down to less then 6 months, but during that time focus on debates and real discussion of issues we would have both better informed voters and cut the cost of the election down by huge amounts.

  5. Re:obligatory war crime comment on Pentagon To Send Robot Soldiers to Iraq · · Score: 1

    Interesting questions you raise. Certainly the rules of engagement would have to be much different than for a human soldier. If a human soldier is walking down the street and gets attacked by some civilians then it's fair for that soldier to defend himself, but a robot? It doesn't seem right for a drone to defend itself with force under any circumstances. It should reserve any force for either known targets, or to defend an actual person who is threatened.

  6. Re:Flamebait on Pentagon To Send Robot Soldiers to Iraq · · Score: 1

    It's technology that will sahpe the future, and it's that we should be looking at.

    Wrong. The technology is only a tool of those who control it. You can feel free to post about how gee whiz neat the technology is, but the implications of it are determined by how it's used.

  7. Re:what about the other leachers? on Mobile Users Plug-in Anywhere They Can · · Score: 1

    I don't agree with your assumption at all. A bookstore makes its living through selling books, not letting you read the whole thing in the store. The chairs, I would assume, are there so you can sit down for a bit, not so you can take off your shoes and read through the entire novel without paying.

    Actually, he was right. I worked for Barnes & Noble and the chairs were there for you to sit down, get comfy and ready. The official policy is you could stay as long as you wanted to. No, you can't take your shoes off (at least in stores with cafe's, but probably others as well). Sleeping in the store is frowned on, but if you just dozed off while reading it's ok. A manager would probably only say something if you were asleep for a long time, or slept there frequently.

    I also have a lot of experience as a customer of bookstore's of various sizes, and I've never seen one that discouraged people from just sitting and reading.

  8. Re:A Consistent Universe and Other People on What Do You Believe Even If You Can't Prove It? · · Score: 1

    Well, maybe because the atheists' claim for the Thruth is the only proof built on scientific proof... all theories without proof are, well, as you say, essentially trolls. And we all see on slashdot how well people respond to that kind of reasoning..

    You mean agnosticism, don't you? Atheism is as unproveable as theism.

  9. Re:George W Bush is from New Haven, Connecticut on The Super Superhighway · · Score: 1

    As a Connecticut resident, I too like people to think he's a Texan.

  10. Re:Question... on High-Speed Video Using a Dense Camera Array · · Score: 1

    Those distortions have nothing to do with the array, it is a problem that any single cheap camera of the type that used would experience with fast moving objects. It's explained quite clearly in the article.

  11. Re:No NORAD Santa tracker this year kids... on Ho, Ho, Ho · · Score: 1

    I had no idea there was a religion that believed in small elves forced to build millions of toys to be delivered by a fat man in a red suit driving a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer.

    Of course there is. Santa is the god of our nation's predominant religion, Consumerism.

    (OTOH, nothing wrong with a little Santa in moderation. Merry Christmas to all!)

  12. Re:What everyone wants to know.. on Walmart Offers Sub-$500 laptop With Linspire · · Score: 1

    crippled to prevent a Windows installation

    What a curious use of the word crippled. Are you sure you didn't mean to say liberated, or unshackled?

  13. Re:Is it April 1st ? on Legal Rights for Computers · · Score: 1

    No offense, but computers already do alot of that. Of course these functions have to be programmed in first, but it's much like a human, a human has to of had some trainin in some way todo the same thing.

    As far as knowing a lot of stuff, yeah computers already are great at that. But the other part, maybe you misunderstood what I meant but I am talking about taking what you know and coming up with new ideas based on it. In other words, problem solving. In this area compueters are terrible. There has been limited success like with computers that can generate logical proofs and other relativly simple things, but nothing anywhere near what could be called ingenuity.

    Like you said, the functions do need to be programmed into them by us first, but we have a lot of learning to do before that will happen.

  14. Re:Free Speech & Free Association on Legal Rights for Computers · · Score: 1

    Are you kidding me? Free speech zones are put in place to keep dissenting views away from the press and the president's supporters. Same reason why anyone found with a Kerry pin was forcefully removed from the audiance at Bush's campaign stops. Same reason why any dissenters are gone from Bush's cabinet while the fools and sycophants get awarded medals. Same reason why the only ones invited to Bush's recent economic summit where people who toed the administration's line on economic policy. Are we seeing a pattern yet? The Bush administration is made up ideologues with no patience for opposing viewpoints.

    How exactly do you think the free speech zones would prevent assassination attempts? Do you think would be assassins walk around with bullhorn's and huge anti-bush posters?

    BTW, I think Bush maybe a form of primitive AI, and as such I would grant him the same legal rights as a person. Does that qualify my post as on topic?

  15. Re:Documentation? on Legal Rights for Computers · · Score: 1
    Once again, I'm not saying that ignoring due process was ok in this case, I'm just saying that the number of people this could happen to is extremely small...
    ...but growing. I won't be happy until the number is back at zero where it belongs.
  16. Re:Is it April 1st ? on Legal Rights for Computers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well said, I almost entirely agree with you. The one point I disagree with you on is that they computers will never be smarter than the smartest human. I'm certain at some point they will be.

    What makes one person smarter than another? Probably two major factors: knowing a lot of things, and being able to put what you know together into meaningful ways. Certainly computers will have no trouble knowing more than a person, with the added benefit of not forgetting some things and confabulating others.

    As for being able to organize and relate things, certainly the ever increasing clock speeds will help, but as you said what it really comes down to is us writing the code to make the machine intelligent. I'm sure when we cross that hurtle we will have no problem surpassing our own intelligence. Just as when we figured out how to make an engine it didn't take long for it to catch up to our own performance and pass it by orders of magnitude.

  17. Re:Death Penalty for Corporations on Diebold to Pay $2.6M Due to Insecure Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    There governement already has the ability to abrogate a company's corporate charter. It's a power they haven't used in about a century. Back when they last did this corporations weren't the all powerful entities that they are now.

  18. Re:Weird on Election Day May Go Away... In Florida · · Score: 1

    What's the you say? 2 weeks less of listening to politicians campaigning everywhere you look!?

    You've sold me. In fact, why just 2 weeks? Let's make it 2 years!

  19. Re:Rendezvous? on Preview of KDE 3.4 · · Score: 1
    So it will work on AIX if you are running KDE? What about Gnome? or Afterstep, or if you are using the command line.
    Just seems like it is in the wrong place. Sort of like making your Browser and Email client part of the OS and not Apps
    I agree that this seems like something that would be better implemented elsewhere, but it is the KDE developers who are implementing it. From their PoV within KDE is probably the easiest place to implement it and so far as support in some other windowmanager why would you expect them to care about that?
  20. Re:you have a right and duty to question Google on Google Revises Usenet Search · · Score: 1
    ...it should be perfectly OK for Google (or anybody else) to blanket cities with microphones and cameras, use face recognition and people tracking software to identify individuals, record every interaction and conversation, and make all that data available searchable on the Internet. I don't think that's a good thing, and even if you want to argue that you like it, it definitely represents a huge change for how things operate, and that's not something a company should just be able to decide on their own.
    The difference, of course, is that when talking to someone on the street you assume that your potential audiance is the few people on the street around you close enough to hear. Also, if there is someone near that you don't want listenting, you can see them and take that into consideration. Posting all your real world conversations on the internet would be a huge difference.

    However, when you post to Usenet you know that your potential audiance is, well, anyone. Anyone at all in the entire world. Google's archiving those postings doesn't change anything.

    Of course you can argue that the potential exists for a hidden microphone to be listenting to your public conversations, but that is clearly an exceptional case and nobody on the street assumes that their conversations are going to be broadcast on CNN.
  21. Re:Paper trail not enough on Berkeley Researchers Analyze Florida Voting Patterns · · Score: 1
    Georgia uses the Diebold machines. Badnarik, the libertarian candidate got 17,000 votes there, more than any other third party candidate in any other state. If the republicans "rigged" the election, as you propose, why in the hell would they give a third party candidate so many votes?
    Yeah, that's a great question. Why indeed. It doesn't make sense that a supporter of Bush would want to shift votes from a candidate who had a very good chance of winning to a candidate that had no chance of winning.

    There were documented cases of fraud in this election, however I have heard of none in Georgia and have no reason to believe there was fraud there. Regardless, the argument you gave against fraud in Georgia sucks. Really.
  22. Re:Ice ice baby on How Negative Thermal Expansion Works · · Score: 1

    Here's a simple experiment to prove water-ice sublimates. Look in the back of your freezer at those ice cubes you made in April and never used. Remember how when you first made them they filled the whole tray? Now they are much smaller. There's the proof. Overtime the ice sublimates.

  23. Re:Dupe! on U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry if my comments were offensive to you. I understand that the US military is probably the most efficient military that has ever existed, but sadly that title is much like "Most Honest Politician Ever". Congratulations... but don't think there isn't still an enormous amount of room for improvement.

    The problem is that I can't dismiss civilian casualties as just a consequence of warfare in general. Especially in this particular war. We are supposedly there to save the people of Iraq from the tyranny they have been living under (at least that is the administration's story now that no WMD's or legitimate ties between Sadaam and attacks against the US have been found). If that is truly the mission, than every single civilian casualty is a failure to meet that goal and hence should be seen as an unacceptable error. Civilian lives should be defended every bit as much as you would defend the lives of the men and women you are fighting with. If they are not, then what exactly is being fought for?

  24. Re:Dupe! on U.S. Military To Create Its Own Internet · · Score: 2

    See the enormous number of civilian casualties in Iraq? There have been many thousands, though the exact number is impossible to come by. I would call that incompetence. Any military success we have is by brute force and a whole lot of money.

  25. Re:Slackware? on What Your Choice of Linux Distro Says about You · · Score: 1
    1000 extra tasks running, each one using 1Mb RAM, you've run out of memory.
    What the hell kind of insane distro's have you been using where you had anywhere near 1000 extra processes running by default?

    On my Mandrake box I have all sorts of servers enabled, and KDE running with several open applications and terminals and numerous panel applet's running. I must have at least a million processes running, right? Nope, turns out I only have 142. If I count threads (we're stretching here) it's still under 300. Let's be realistic, your powers of hyperbole astound me.