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User: KublaiKhan

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  1. Broken article link on CryptoLocker Gang Earns $30 Million In Just 100 Days · · Score: 2

    Or was this meant to trick us into reading about Zuckerberg?

  2. Re:5th Amendment on Drone Kills Top Al Qaeda Figure · · Score: 2

    Are we in a declared war, then?

    For that matter, can you declare a war with al-Qaeda?

    Not that I particularly object to this guy's death, but the legalities are potentially troubling.

  3. The classics are best on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives? · · Score: 1

    A very large hammer

  4. Re:I'd rather have a phone with 789 at the top... on Ask Slashdot: Calculators With 1-2-3 Number Pads? · · Score: 1

    That's what I came in here to say.

    But then, given the number of smartphones people are using, you could conceivably get an app to remap the softkeys on the phone's face into the proper alignment.

  5. GPS isn't the only thing they have on North Korea Forced US Reconnaissance Plane To Land · · Score: 2

    US Military pilots have other means of navigation than GPS. During times of actual conflict, these systems are used in order to prevent just these sorts of situations.

    During peacetime, though, there's the possibility that the military's use of these resources could interfere with civilian flights--so unless there's an actual war going on in the area, they'll stick with the peacetime stuff.

    That's not to say that these other methods are jam-proof--but anyone attempting to jam them will have to work hard enough to make themselves a target for an anti-radiation missile.

  6. Didn't Apple ever read the netiquette FAQ? on Apple Ordered To Pay $8M For Playlist Patents · · Score: 1

    Even kids these days know not to feed the trolls.

  7. Functional Programming will love this on Cheaper, More Powerful Alternative To FPGAs · · Score: 1

    With proper implementation, you could build chips that essentially are functional programs with this, and swap between programs as required. Fans of Haskell would likely realize some interesting benefits.

  8. Re:Great idea... on Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry · · Score: 2

    Perhaps the idea can be refined.

    If Google were to partner with Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon and buy up the whole shebang, it could be reformatted into something more useful for everyone--say, some kind of not-for-profit venture (and hence not interested in competition, meaning that the smaller labels wouldn't be squashed) that focused on distributing music to people and money to the artists, and promoting the work of various artists of merit.

    You know, like how the RIAA was originally supposed to be.

    Providing standard, known licensing terms to everybody as part of the setup, so everyone could compete on the same ground, would probably do more to help the music industry than anything else.

    The reason I suggest a 'partnership' of this sort is to prevent any monopolistic tendencies--regardless of the intent to not be evil, owning the vast majority of the music industry does more or less amount to a monopoly, and the SEC won't like that.

  9. Re:More like a platform of no gaming future on Browsers — the Gaming Platform of the Future? · · Score: 1

    NaCl has some possibilities here. It offers a framework for more or less arbitrary x86 code inside a browser framework--so yes, you can have your 4X or your RPGs or even your FPSs inside a browser just fine.

  10. Re:microsoft bob? on Getting Computers To Recognize Facial Expressions · · Score: 1

    Wasn't Microsoft Bob the source of "clippy"?

    Perhaps if I make a rage-face at the computer, it'll run away and delete its system files...

  11. Why did it do that? on Getting Computers To Recognize Facial Expressions · · Score: 1

    If you have to ask why it did that, then you either need to learn more about how computers work or pay attention to what you're clicking.

  12. Re:No surprise really on DHS Eyes Covert Body Scans · · Score: 1

    So given that sousveillance (not a typo; look it up) has emerged as a counter to the prevelance of CCTV, is there a way to detect the use of XRays in public fora?

    There's some not-too-terribly effective geiger counters out there, but I don't think those do XRays too terribly well. Film badges, while effective for measuring a daily dose, are hardly going to tell you where you got it from.

  13. So this would be like email, fifteen years ago? on Facebook Linked To One In Five Divorces In US · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm fairly sure there were stories like this going around when email became popular, and people started using it to, y'know, communicate with each other.

    Before that, cellphones--telephones--hell, I bet even the telegraph was implicated in adultery.

    (WHAT.ARE.YOU.WEARING.STOP
    SIX.SKIRTS.HOOPS.CRINOLINE.BUSTLE.CHEMISE.HAT.STOP
    NO.GLOVES.YOU.NAUGHTY.WENCH.STOP)

    And back before that, it was letters.

    Anything people have ever used to communicate has been implicated in adultery, because that's sort of how to set up a liason, ain't it?

  14. Re:I'll be first to say WTF on Polynomial Time Code For 3-SAT Released, P==NP · · Score: 1

    At least atmospheric-noise-derived one time pads will still be valid. Pity to have to go to that, though.

  15. Re:Not the best of all possible worlds on Cosmological Constant Not Fine Tuned For Life · · Score: 1

    Never said I'd live to see it in person. Be nice to know the species, with adequate preparation, could conceivably continue.

    \O'course, if some more research went into cryogenics...

  16. Not the best of all possible worlds on Cosmological Constant Not Fine Tuned For Life · · Score: 2

    I find this somewhat comforting. The Earth is becoming less and less 'special' with new worlds being found nearly every day now--worlds that may sustain life. Now it turns out that the universe is 'flawed' from our perspective, too. In a way, it's sort of optimistic--there's a way that it could be better, and the possibility arises that maybe it'd be possible to find a 'better' place.

  17. Where's that future I was promised? on Virgin Mobile To Start Throttling Broadband2Go · · Score: 1

    Now how the hell am I supposed to get a full VR Metaverse pipe when I'm shreddin' the Santa Monica on my Smartwheels(tm) if I can't get any kind of pipe up to the Street? Totally lame.

  18. The market will decide on Google vs. Bing — a Quasi-Empirical Study · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google's primary business function is 'search', though they've attempted to diversify with documents and the like.

    Microsoft's primary business function is documents and the like, though they've attempted to diversify with search.

    There's a very low barrier to individual users to choose between them for either (given that MS has put its document processing online for free, last I heard) so, in the end, it's likely that the superior product (whether marketed better or actually better) will triumph in marketshare.

    Bring this back up in 18 months, and we'll likely see some clear differential if there really is an actual difference in the applicability of either one's functions.

  19. Re:Frequency of Spam on Spam Volume Spikes After Holiday Respite · · Score: 1

    That, and the students' own systems. Most non-CS students aren't going to be at anything other than "normal end-user" levels of savvy--and apparently normal end-users actually buy stuff from spam, because it keeps coming, and it keeps being popular.

  20. Re:Data over power lines? on California County Bans SmartMeter Installations · · Score: 1

    That's a situation that P2P would be helpful for--seed meters with a (signed) firmware flash, then have other meters poll their neighbors every N hours for the current revision number and suck it down if they don't have it.

    Depending on your network, you could have it distributed in fairly short order.

    (This way, you're using your bandwidth more effectively, y'see.)

    Idle thought: connectionless multicast updates, with a repeating transmission of the same content over and over again, and bittorrent-style glue on the receiving end. Absent any interference, all the meters would get it at once; with interference, it may take a few repetitions to assemble all the packets.

  21. Re:I have a much more ambitious vision on The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn · · Score: 1

    Your wish for a world full of complacency causes me discomfort.

    Will you excise yourself from my perfect world?

  22. Re:How is this newsworthy? It's just common sense. on Deferred IT Maintenance Is a Ticking Time Bomb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oh, is -that- the way to get your boss to authorize expenditures?

    I need to make some friends in the news media.

  23. Re:What's so different? on Does Windows Phone 7 Have a Data Transmission Bug? · · Score: 0

    This also seems similar to a story that came out a while back regarding mystery data xfers on the iphone, though in that case, IIRC, the mystery xfers were not applied to the plan's data cap.

  24. Re:A lot like Windows after all on Android Trojan Found, Spreading From Chinese App Stores · · Score: 2

    You're right, it isn't fair to blame Windows for user-supplied malware.

    However, that does not mean Windows is any more secure; not all windows malware is user-supplied.

  25. Re:How to play Chinese Monopoly on VoIP Now Technically Illegal In China · · Score: 1

    Those FCC rules that I referred to in the post up top specifically block that now. Someone wasn't paying attention.