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User: jonwil

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  1. Re:Track all prisoners - and their friends & f on Building Prisons Without Walls Using GPS Devices · · Score: 1

    You set a curfew. Either they are at work (at the times they are supposed to be working) or they are at home (at the other times). If they are not at home, the GPS system will detect that and alert the cops that they have broken the curfew (and may be committing a crime).

    Although you are right that its hard to monitor what the prisoner does when they are at home (and who they have contact with). Which is why they can use the GPS monitoring solution for crimes where the offender cant re-offend without leaving the house. If you limit their access to telephones and the internet, the list of crimes they can commit from inside their house gets even smaller. People who are either A.A risk to the community (e.g. violent offenders) or B.Likely to commit more crimes from inside their house whilst on detention would get locked up in a proper jail.

    Of course there are a whole pile of crimes that shouldn't require incarceration at all.

  2. Re:ew quicktime? on New QuickTime Flaw Bypasses ASLR, DEP · · Score: 4, Informative

    Considering that QuickTime is a core component of iTunes, if you own an iPhone, iPod or iPad, its fairly hard to avoid QuickTime and still get full advantage of your device.

  3. Re:Uh on EPA Proposes Grading System For Car Fuel Economy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, once a car has been graded, the grade shouldn't need to change unless something is done to the car that makes it more fuel efficient somehow.

  4. Re:I don't see much of an advantage... on Apertus, the Open Source HD Movie Camera · · Score: 1

    Maybe a better solution would be to find an existing camera that's A.Cheap B.Good enough for amateur cinema work (the target audience here) and C.Hackable.

    Then you go and produce a custom firmware that only records into non-patented formats.
    MPEG-LA comes knocking on your door, you can show them that the footage was NEVER encoded in MPEG.

  5. Re:Atom? on Intel To Buy Smartphone Chipmaker Infineon For $2B · · Score: 1

    Infinion DO make CPUs. They make a number of "digital baseband" ASICs (including the one used in the iPhone) that contain ARM CPUs matched to other specialized hardware.

  6. Re:Funny how TFA stats the same exploits work on Many Hackers Accidentally Send Their Code To Microsoft · · Score: 1

    Microsoft already has tools like "code analysis" that can pick up buffer overflows and stuff.
    There is no reason Microsoft couldn't produce tools designed to check .NET code for things like unsafe handling of inputs, incorrect use of SQL (i.e. using it in ways that leave you open to SQL injection) etc and warn people of potential bugs or security problems.

  7. Not sure you will get much TV these days on Fun To Be Had With a 10-Foot Satellite Dish? · · Score: 1

    I would have thought anything worth having would be encrypted or encoded (TV station feeds would likely be encrypted to stop new shows being grabbed off the sattelite and uploaded to the internet commercial free before they ever air on the TV)

  8. Re:I gotta say on First Review of Avatar Special Edition · · Score: 1

    The real question is when they are going to release the 3D version on blu-ray for all those 3DTVs.
    If there is anything that will convince home theater geeks with money to burn that they need to replace their perfectly good 2D setup with an expensive 3D setup, it will be Avatar in 3D. (everyone I know who is serious about 3D has said that Avatar is the best 3D film to date)

  9. Too many games put graphics before gameplay on EA Says Game Development Budgets Have Peaked · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter if the graphics are good enough that you can read the (made up) names on the dog tags of the enemy soldiers through the scope of your sniper rifle. If the gameplay is crap, people wont buy it (at least once genuine reviews start appearing showing how crap the gameplay is rather than paid "fluff pieces")

    The fact that demos no longer exist for many titles (on PC anyway) is also hurting things as people cant try games before they buy (and so they pirate the game to see if its any good and once they have pirated it, the incentive to buy disappears)
    Although the downside (and why games companies may not be doing demos) is that gamers may download the demo, play it, decide the game is crap and not buy the full game at all.

  10. Re:One more company takes the patent troll route on Lexmark Sues 24 Companies Over Toner-Cartridge Patents · · Score: 1

    I dont buy HPs either.
    If I want ink-jet, I buy Canon.
    If I for whatever reason wanted a Laser, I would buy an Epson or Brother or something.

  11. Re:Valve != iD I suppose on Steam Not Coming To Linux · · Score: 1

    Blizzard did produce a WoW client for Linux but it was killed by upper management and never released.

    I think the issue with WoW is that not enough gamers would play it on Linux to justify the expense of maintaining the linux port (and remember, once its been released, they would have to release Linux patches in lockstep with the windows patches which requires even more manpower.

    I think for WoW, Blizzard could do well to help the Wine developers get it working better on Wine (both by helping the devs fix Wine and by fixing WoW to not do undocumented things to Windows that Wine can't/doesn't replicate)

  12. Re:Excellent on Open-Source 2D, 3D Drivers For ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good luck getting VDPAU in the open source drivers.
    Apparently, releasing the specs required to support the hardware video decoding in the ATI chips would compromise Windows based DRM (i.e. where the app decrypts the video file and sends decrypted but compressed video data to the video card, the specs for the video decode part would let you build a program to intercept the compressed video data before it gets sent to the card)

  13. ISPs should NEVER be copyright police on RIAA Wants 'Net Neutrality' To Include Filtering · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We dont see the RIAA wanting AT&T to get involved because someone makes a phone call and plays a copyrighted piece of music through the phone. Why should AT&T need to involved when someone sends a copyrighted piece of music through the phone lines using a different protocol? (HTTP over TCP/IP over ADSL vs raw voice audio)

    Copyright law has had clear steps in it for how to go after someone who is infringing your copyright ever since it was first passed all those years ago. And the law also clearly spells out what you can do if you believe your copyright has been violated and you have some kind of link back to the person but you dont know their name.

    Of course, the real problem is that the "evidence" the RIAA (and their hired lackeys) collect is good enough to be able to send vaguely worded threatening letters but not good enough to actually stand up in court.

  14. Re:Don't target cars on Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is needed is to upgrade the Acela and give it dedicated right-of-way for as much of its run as possible (similar to what has happened with the TGV and ICE trains in Europe which have dedicated high-speed track). If the Acela could travel at the higher speeds of high-speed-trains in Europe, even MORE people would start using it.

  15. Don't target cars on Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time (especially once you take check-in, security and all the other things into account). High speed rail has none of the big downsides of air travel like the need to get to the airport 2 hours before the flight to check in, the need to pass through 3 layers of security, bans on liquids and other things, cramped seats etc.

    Now obviously trains cant compete with long-haul air travel such as New York to LA but for short haul, it could really work. (but only if its given proper high speed track and doesn't have to share that track with slow freight trains)

  16. Re:Kinda right Tony. on Aussie National Broadband Network Will Be Gigabit · · Score: 1

    Thats not true, none of the current concrete plans are proposing to use ADSL, all of them are proposing to use Ethernet.

  17. Tony abbots plan is no plan at all on Aussie National Broadband Network Will Be Gigabit · · Score: 2

    Tony abbots so-called "broadband plan" does NOTHING to address the market dominance of Telstra in so many areas of this country or the fact that so many areas of the country cant get ADSL at all because Telstra would rather push NextG than install more ADSL hardware (mostly because it has to allow other ISPs to provide service over the ADSL hardware but not over NextG wireless)

  18. The #1 problem with "net neutrality" is... on EFF Reviews the Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Deal · · Score: 1

    The #1 problem with "net neutrality" is that EVERY net neutrality proposal to come out in the US that has a snowballs chance in hell of actually being adopted has had loopholes big enough to fly an Airbus A380 through, usually under the guise of "lawful content"

    I have no problems with ISPs who want to block spam on their networks or stop denial-of-service attacks comming from (or aimed at) their networks. But there has to be a better way to word the exemptions for "unlawful content" (or whatever it is) in a way that lets ISPs block the genuinely bad stuff without being able to block or interfere with protocols like BitTorrent just because they have no way to separate legal content from illegal content.

    As for wireless, the whole "wireless cant be neutral because its bandwidth constrained" argument is garbage. If wireless is bandwidth constrained, just limit the up/down stream bandwidth a device can use at any one time (so devices cant take up all the bandwidth to the exclusion of other devices) and introduce caps on the total amount of transfer a customer can use (i.e. charge more if you want more bandwidth). The latter is what carriers are already doing, both in the US and elsewhere.

  19. Re:Working together on The Shoddy State of Automotive Wireless Security · · Score: 1

    Blame Ford (more specifically the Ford Explorer and the Firestone tire recall that led to the mandate for tire pressure sensors)

  20. Re:Net Neutrality, with conditions on Google & Verizon's Real Net Neutrality Proposal · · Score: 1

    The wireless carriers want a pass from net neutrality rules so they can be non-neutral with regards to device selection (i.e. limiting the devices you can connect to the network, restricting tethering, charging more for some phones than others)

    Under a strict net neutrality rule, carriers would not be able to discriminate based on what and how many devices you connect to the network.

  21. Re:Why has no one made a video game museum? on 'Old School' Arcade Still Popular In NYC · · Score: 1

    I have yet to see a single one of those "Multi-Game" arcade machines (either in an arcade or offered as a home machine) that is in any way legal.

    None of the games usually seen on these machines (Donkey Kong, Galaga, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Frogger, Dig Dug, Mappy, Missile Command, Centipede etc) have (to the best of my knowledge) ever been licenced by their owners for use in such multi-game machines (certainly not ones that can be made to accept coins)

  22. Re:We more places with pinball games and working o on 'Old School' Arcade Still Popular In NYC · · Score: 3, Informative

    It seems like all throughout the 20th century, whatever the young people found popular and entertaining at any given point was campaigned against by the older generations, especially in the US.

    It happened with pool/snooker/billiard halls. It happened with pinball. It happened with Comic Books. It happened with amusement arcades. It happened and continues to happen with all kinds of music including Rock & Roll, Punk, Metal, Rap, Hip-Hop etc. And its happening today with Internet Cafes. Many local and state authorities are trying to shut down or control Internet Cafes (especially Internet Cafes that offer gaming) with restrictions on opening hours, requirements for security guards and requirements to log everyone who comes into the cafe to use it.

  23. Re:FTC on FTC Introduces New Orders For Intel; No Bundling · · Score: 1

    Thats different.

    What Intel did would be like if Nokia did a deal with AT&T where AT&T would get a discount on Nokia handsets on the condition that they didnt sell handsets from Nokia competitors.

  24. Not everyone can view 3D on Filmmakers Resisting Hollywood's 3-D Push · · Score: 1

    There is a segment of the population (myself included) who have vision problems preventing proper viewing of 3D in all its forms.

  25. Re:Coral Network on A How-To Website For Australian Voters · · Score: 1

    I think part of the problem with Coral Cache is that many filtering systems (WebSense etc) completly block it (because it could be used to bypass the filtering system and access banned content)