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User: Nihilanth

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  1. Re:Super DMCA and anonymity on Ask Prof. Felten About DMCA's Effects · · Score: 1

    This is an excellent point, but i fear the people entrusted by corporate america to enforce their doctrines may use the fact that many people don't understand the significance of what you said to bend the rules. Amazing what lobbying dollars can do. Just look at how the execution of the current DMCA was twisted and abused to serve the purposes of big business.

  2. Re:Fills a non-need with a nifty non-solution on LCD Screens Double as Speakers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a common occurance of innovation being poo-pooed because the masses can't think of any way to apply it except to a desktop PC.

    I wouldn't mind seeing this in my PDA or Cellphone (this would make a handy speakerphone), or in a handheld gaming system (the gameboy SP EX AR TL BW!!), or a tablet PC (where's the sound coming from? its c-r-a-z-y!!), or a laptop.

    How about weather resistance. Speaker aperatures can let in water, but a weather-tight LCD screen that can project sound might be a boon indeed.

  3. Re:Without a doubt.... on What's Your Favorite Underappreciated Movie? · · Score: 1

    i loved donnie darko...but it disturbs me..i watched it twice to get everything out of it, and i could basically summarize the whole movie scene by scene, but it disturbed me to the extent that i think i would lend it to someone rather than watch it with them. I watched it for the first time with two good friends, and we all just kinda...i dunno. we couldn't even discuss the movie afterward, we just parted company.

  4. Re:I just don't get it on New Animatrix Trailer Available · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would be foolish not to reserve judgement until seeing AT LEAST part two of The Second Rennaisence.

  5. obvious priorities on Texas Rep Wants To Jail File Traders · · Score: 1

    what possible justification could there be for punishments for possession of small amounts of harmless substances or intellectual property outweighing the punishments for things like -rape- or -vehicular manslaughter-?

    just remember who makes the laws in this country. its not us, its the lobbying groups.

  6. Re:Let's start with congressmen's children on Texas Rep Wants To Jail File Traders · · Score: 1

    lawmakers themselves evade responsability for things like DUI, money laundering, racketeering, etc. Why would their families be vunerable to things that no one really considers a crime but those lawmakers and the industry?

  7. Re:That's what you get for relying.... on U.S. May Reduce Non-Military GPS Accuracy · · Score: 1

    the same is true of the highway system and the internet, you know.

  8. Re:Wood?!?! on Do-It-Yourself Fibre Channel Array · · Score: 1

    why stop there? I had the idea, long ago, of building a computer inside a refrigerator, with sealed holes for the wires to connect to the interface devices (this was before i heard of refrigerated cases)

  9. Re:ReplayTV has been able to do this since the 400 on Modular Home Network PVR at CeBIT · · Score: 1

    Sonicblue's also coming out with a DVD player that can play any media on your PC through 802.11. Pretty swank for just $250

  10. Re:Why pound on this guy? on Shelter: A Quest for Non-Toxic Housing · · Score: 1

    ok..ill try to make my point one last time...

    no antibiotics = suck

    too much antibiotics = suck

    use of antibiotics, just like use of anything that our so-called civilisation, used in moderation, is beneficial.

    use of these technological advances blindly, and without thought of the concequences, leads to ruin on the personal level.

  11. Re:Why pound on this guy? on Shelter: A Quest for Non-Toxic Housing · · Score: 1

    wrong. it decreases the effectiveness of your immune system, while increasing your dependance on anti-biotics to keep you healthy. Anti-biotics are helpful, but proscribing cipro every time you get the sniffles leads to some pretty nasty stuff.

    People who have to use hand sanitizers in their every day work see this first hand. They have a little biology lab going on on their hands, where the weaker bacteria are killed off, and stronger and stronger ones evolve until nasty hand infections become more prevalent.

    >>I mostly have done that...I spend most of my life indoors with all these nasty chemicals, and I drink diet soft drinks by the gallon....no cancer or diseases so far, but stay tuned....

    you missed the point, which was, you'd be burned by the sun much easier if you haven't been exposed to it for the first 20 years of your life. Maybe i should have chosen a more simplistic example. ...hmm...that was the simplest one i can think of.

  12. Re:Social engineering on Ask Security/Cryptography Expert Paul Kocher · · Score: 1

    there's no such thing as reliable biometrics, thank goodness. I've long misplaced the article, but there was a really good on posted on..hey...it might have been slashdot, about simple ways every form of biometrics can be defeated with household items. My personal favorite was gently lowering a plastic bag of water onto a fingerprint scanner, the surface of the bag and the oil residues from the finger do the rest.

  13. Re:Alternative to uid/pw logins to establish ident on Ask Security/Cryptography Expert Paul Kocher · · Score: 1

    My solution to this was a tiered-priority scheme. I have a "strong" password that I use for anything linked to my credit card, a different strong password that i use for anything on my intranet, and a "weak" password that i use for things i don't really care too much about, like forum registrations and community websites that aren't linked to anything relevant.

    There are dozens of places i need to use a password, but i don't see a real reason to use a different one for each site.

  14. Re:Benign purpose not a privacy issue on Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags · · Score: 1

    its not a privacy issue because the technology isn't powerful enough to track everybody minority-report style.

    Now, if RFID tags suddenly became REMOTELY REWRITEABLE, uniquely identifiable, impervious to microwaving and -embedded into your brain-, then i would say it would be a privacy issue.

    As it is, even if every product we bought had rfid tags in them, there would be no appreciable impact on privacy.

  15. Re:Why pound on this guy? on Shelter: A Quest for Non-Toxic Housing · · Score: 1

    300 years ago in europe or america or anywhere, people weren't getting pumped full of antibiotics at an early age.

    Do you have any idea what that can do to an immune system?

    try staying indoors for 20 years or so, then go sunbathing.

  16. Re:Social engineering on Ask Security/Cryptography Expert Paul Kocher · · Score: 1

    simple. just replace people with computers.

  17. Re:wasted effort on Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags · · Score: 1

    how would it fall off if it's woven into the clothing?

    Besides, there's a lot more to retail than clothing for inventory control. That's what everyone here is harping on, because its the easiest to conceptualize inadvertantly leaving the store with it.

    Walk into a staples sometime (a company that has to hire outside help to do inventory) and imagine the time and money that would be saved by taking inventory by pressing a button.

    Now think of a distribution warehouse. These tags aren't only useful in the stores, but distro warehouses that have hundreds of thousands of products rolling in and out constantly could be operated more smoothly and efficiently if the inventory tracking was automated.

  18. Re:wasted effort on Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags · · Score: 1

    Maybe if the RFIDs had a standardized numbering system where each RFID for a given product was unique. Are you familiar with the concept of an SKU? For example, if you're a store that sells underwear, a pair of size 32s might be 102-1545, where a size of 34s might be 102-1555. This number is all an RFID tag would need to have to be useful for inventory control.

    If you swept a room of RFID tags, all you would get back would be each stores SKU number for that peice of merchandise. Now, if you knew exactly what combination of RFID tags to look for, you would be able to pick him out of a crowd at an accuracy of 15 feet, but no personally identifying info would be passed along. RFID tags, as far as i know, would be read-only.

    since the tags would be read-only, there would be no way to enter your personal info into it. it would be possible to associate your personal info with it (unless you purchased in cash), but only if each rfid had a uniquely identifying serial number (which would have to be, i remind you, universally applied to every manufacturer and every retailer that utilizes them.)

  19. Re:i think i found a new sig on John Perry Barlow On The Dangers of DRM · · Score: 1

    this, i think, is the paradox that makes every political "party" not worth the morphogenetic bandwidth wasted on them. If the conservatives waste and the liberals enslave, the Block Party starts sounding better and better.

    We were really on the same page, im sorry if it sounded like i was contradicting you, i probably just had trouble sorting out what we were saying.

    Corps. are truely "private tyrannies". I would entreat anyone reading this to read some noam chomskey.

  20. wasted effort on Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ::sigh:: this really isn't a privacy issue...no matter how fun it is to make it into one.

    you ever worked retail? you evern have to do inventory yourself, instead of having the luxury of a contractor doing it for you? it kinda sucks. becing able to query a transmitter for physical inventory counts is a lot cooler that couting everything by hand/scanner. Since these tags can't be read more than 15 feet or so away, and can be fried by exposure to your microwave oven, i'd say just don't sweat it

    this is just a corp. cost saving tool, to decrease overhead and save the time and money of drudge-like inventory procedures..

    i'm the biggest conspiracy freak when it comes to orwellian surveillance schemes, but this technology just isn't headed in that direction.

    there are much bigger fish for us to fry, if you look around and take notice of them.

  21. Re:The shape of a doughnut? on The Universe May Be Shaped Like a Doughnut · · Score: 2, Informative

    oops..i got it backwards.

    imagine travelling across the SURFACE of the torus.

    whoops!

  22. Re:The shape of a doughnut? on The Universe May Be Shaped Like a Doughnut · · Score: 2, Interesting

    the donut analogy is a bit of a gloss. The interior space of the torus dosen't represent the three dimentional space we inhabit, rather, the path you take around the inside of the torus is supposed to represent all three dimentions, simplified as a vector in the torus...so, picture being inside the torus, and travelling all the way around the interiour of it and coming back to where you started...well..there's no way to visualize this situation for all three dimentions, but the torus is as clear as you can make it. Don't think about what happens if you travel to the inner or outer wall, that would be equivilant to "leaving" space in this simplified abstraction.

  23. Re:i think i found a new sig on John Perry Barlow On The Dangers of DRM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the difference is merely a syntactical one. When industry lobbyists effectively control governmental decisions, they ARE the government (we just don't get to vote for them). The laws that get passed are extremely plastic in the face of the industrial-military complex (the bill of what now?)

  24. Re:Usefulness? on Toshiba To Show Laptop Fuel Cells at CeBit · · Score: 1

    good point, i forgot how limited the rechargeability of those things were. I suppose its more of a psychological difference than a material one.

    now that i think of it, walking down the street with a pouch full of methanol cylinders attached to one's belt -would- be pretty "leet"

  25. Re:Usefulness? on Toshiba To Show Laptop Fuel Cells at CeBit · · Score: 1

    although this does sound very convenient, it results in an additional recurring cost of using your laptop. I would be interested to see a cost comparison between the amount of electricity required to recharge a laptop battery, and the cost of the methane refil.

    i'd be hesitant to tack on another frequent recurring cost on top of all the other ones (food, cigarettes, etc).

    Maybe if there were methanol fountains in public places? that would be cool.