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User: jandrese

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  1. Re:got spyware? on Careful What You Post, the FBI Has More of These · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They're going to bust you for destruction of federal property. You can argue that it was put on your car on your property, but I wouldn't expect to get very far. If a police car pulls into your driveway and parks there for 15 minutes while the cop runs down some suspect, you don't suddenly own the car.

    That said, the FBI should really put a sticker on the things that says something like "Property of the US Government, if found, call 1-800-XXX-XXXXX".

  2. Re:No, they have it wrong... on Milky Way Is Square(ish), According To New Map · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But if the Galaxy if flat and the Earth is in the Galaxy, that means the Flat Earth Society was right all along!

    Insane theories 1, regular theories like a million.

  3. Re:Buddy of mine picked it up on Final Fantasy XIV Launches To Scathing Reviews · · Score: 1

    Hell, even with the story and minigame problems X was still pretty good.

  4. Re:What happens if you destroy it? on College Student Finds GPS On Car, FBI Retrieves It · · Score: 1

    You'll know when you're either blown up or sent to jail.

  5. Re:What happens if you destroy it? on College Student Finds GPS On Car, FBI Retrieves It · · Score: 1

    They'll probably charge you with destroying government property if you were to mess with the device.

  6. Re:solar & wind power on Solar Power On the White House · · Score: 1

    So why not just patent the damn thing like any sane person would have done? The whole story is classic con man/crazy inventor material. I bet he even pulled out the "But the chemo companies don't want to see this product! It would ruin their business!" line? Just like how the "magical 200mpg carburetor" folks claim that big oil is keeping them down? It's all a load of horseshit.

  7. Re:It means nothing to Android. on Verizon, 4G and iPhones · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, why would Apple care about the largest mobile phone provider in the US? It's such a mystery.

  8. Re:solar & wind power on Solar Power On the White House · · Score: 1

    Yes, it certainly had nothing to do with his untested claims and his refusal to allow the FDA to perform safety and efficacy studies on it. It was all about the profits man.

  9. Re:Dislike button... on Top Reason for Facebook Unfriending Is Too Many Useless Posts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If it's really a problem, why not post a comment on the next "OMG, it's a huge one, made a big splash today!" with a simple "TMI!" or a short but eloquent comment to the fact that nobody wants to see those updates.

    A "dislike" button is just going to have them sending you a message going "why didn't you like that?" anyway, so you might as well just avoid the rigmarole and tell the exactly what the problem is right from the start.

  10. Re:It was easier for me to just unfriend Facebook on Top Reason for Facebook Unfriending Is Too Many Useless Posts · · Score: 1

    You need to find better friends.

  11. Re:A Libertarian World on Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee · · Score: 1

    They tried that for awhile with a $500 fee. Turns out that the bums who didn't pay the $75 fee also won't pay the $500 fee, and the fire department was having to turn most of them over to collectors and still getting almost nothing out of it.

  12. Re:Even if you could... on Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet? · · Score: 1

    For the purposes of these discussions, cells are generally considered to be much too large to be counted as "nanomachines". Still, they are a good example of what is capable with nanotechnology. Unfortunately, we don't have any good examples of organic beings capable of operating in deep space. Well maybe that's fortunate since I really wouldn't want to be in a real life Zerg Rush.

  13. Re:You are correct, but on Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet? · · Score: 1

    The fundamental physics problem was mentioned in TFA! Namely that you would need to bring 530 times as much fuel as the mass of your craft to make it there with the antimatter Orion engine.

    Accelerating a human scale ship (it will be big) up to any discernible fraction of c with conventional explosions requires an absolutely staggering amount of energy, orders of magnitude more energy than have ever been created on Earth. The scale of the problem is staggering, it would be by several orders of magnitude, the largest project ever undertaken by Man--even counting massive projects like the federal highway system.

    The only possible scenario where something like this would even have a ghost of a chance is if aliens showed up in orbit and said "In 500 years we are going to blow up your sun to make room for an interstellar bypass, and here's proof", and the entire economy of the world suddenly shifted towards getting people out to some other solar system. Even then it's doubtful that we would make it.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's entirely hopeless. Just don't get all starry eyed about visiting other planets. The cold hard reality is that there is nothing on the radar that would make it even vaguely practical anytime in the foreseeable future. Maybe ramscoops, but who knows what the odds are on those panning out. And sorry, even if there were some tremendous scientific breakthrough tomorrow, it would almost certainly not going to be ready for actual use in your lifetime.

  14. Re:Even if you could... on Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nanomachines can only do all of that stuff because you haven't thought through the problems yet and realized the limitations. How you power a machine that small, or make it intelligent, or give it sensors, or pretty much anything is still a lingering question. Once you get past the sci-fi aspects, nanomachines start to look depressingly limited. Self replicating nanomachines are especially nutty, given how complex such a device would need to be.

  15. Re:You are correct, but on Can We Travel To That Exciting New Exoplanet? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem. These are fundamental physical limits of mass and energy we're talking about. Literally the only chance we have of getting to another solar system is to discover an entirely new branch of physics that somehow makes interstellar travel feasible. Probably the best bet is to copy it from visiting aliens, if any ever bother to visit.

  16. Re:Bad GUI and no CLI: way too common on Take This GUI and Shove It · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here's something you might want to try: Next time you're on a Windows box, open up a cmd prompt and type "netsh". You might be surprised what you can accomplish from the commandline, at least if you want to mess with the network settings.

  17. Re:JPEG 2000 was boon on Google Releases New Image Format Called WebP · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The assumption with JPEG2000 is that it's going to be torpedoed by some jerk with a patent if it ever takes off. That's why nobody is willing to invest too heavily in it. They were already burned by GIF, they learned their lesson the first time.

  18. I think I know the first customer on Jaguar's Hybrid Jet-Powered Concept Car · · Score: 1

    Jet Jaguar approves of this vehicle.

  19. Re:IP on Microsoft Rumored To Buy Second Life · · Score: 1

    It's .net based? Well that would explain why it's slow as balls.

  20. Re:Fix it? That's not what I read... on Las Vegas Hotel Vdara an Accidental Death Ray · · Score: 1

    I'm suspecting that said plants would need to be replaced on a very regular basis, as they get baked to death by the intense sunlight every day.

  21. Fix it? That's not what I read... on Las Vegas Hotel Vdara an Accidental Death Ray · · Score: 1

    The end of the article basically has an employee going "maybe we could get some plants to put in there or something", that doesn't sound like fixing it to me.

  22. Re:Sounds great - too bad I won't be buying it. on Review: Civilization V · · Score: 1

    For what it's worth, Valve promised at once point that if they ever went under, that their last release would be a global unlocker for all of the games you purchased with Steam.

  23. Re:hypocritical ignorant victim on Man Gets 12-Year Jail Sentence For Planting Child Porn On Enemy's Computer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shit, it's basically impossible to keep your computer "sufficiently secure" from anybody who has physical access to it all weekend like a co-worker. If someone wants to plant something on your machine, they're going to be able to do it. Even if you're paranoid and encrypt your hard drive and take your laptop home with you every night someone can still come in and stick a keylogger in your keyboard. Then it's just 10 minutes one lunchtime and you're forced to literally live under a bridge, alone and penniless until you die. That's the power of invoking one of our cultures most forbidden taboos.

  24. Re:Wow... so everything is aggression then on Some Countries Want To Ban 'Information Weapons' · · Score: 1

    Hey man, it's a free country.

  25. Re:Wow... so everything is aggression then on Some Countries Want To Ban 'Information Weapons' · · Score: 1

    That's the problem though, their own citizens hear outsiders badmouthing their government on the internet and suddenly those state run media guys just don't seem quite as trustworthy anymore. Maybe all of those minority ethnic guys didn't just commit mass suicide after all... Maybe it's possible to have a government with some form of accountability to the people... Why are we letting these jerks rob us blind and not give anything back anyway?!?