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User: beelsebob

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  1. Re:Why are they storing this data anyway? on Encrypted PIN Data Taken In Target Breach · · Score: 1

    I don't understand why any part of the PIN machine with firmware has access to the PIN at all. The key pad could easily simply route the inputs to the chip on the card, and generate a response from the PIN input, and a challenge there. Only then would the data leave the card/keypad, and be accessible by the firmware.

  2. Re:Why are they storing this data anyway? on Encrypted PIN Data Taken In Target Breach · · Score: 0

    What's even more confusing, is... why does this data ever leave the card?

    Why does the bank not send a challenge, have the response generated, on the card, with a hash of the pin and the challenge, and verify the result?

  3. Why do I have to write a subject? on Encrypted PIN Data Taken In Target Breach · · Score: 0

    What the hell was Target doing holding onto PINs in any form, encrypted or not...

  4. Re:How's that supposed to help? on Tesla Updates Model S Software As a Precaution Against Unsafe Charging · · Score: 1

    Except in the luxury market, they recognise that trying for the upsell is a bunch of annoying bullshit, and that their customers are paying more to avoid it. Though certainly the "free" inspection is a very good plan. That said, they possibly want to avoid the liability for it if it goes wrong (not very luxury of them).

  5. Re:I support Mr. Mikko Hyppone on F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen Cancels RSA Talk In Protest · · Score: 3, Informative

    Just type alt-u, then o ö.

  6. Re:"So who needs native code now?" on Asm.js Gets Faster · · Score: 2

    What makes you think this can't be done in C (at least C with apple's block extension)?

    99% of the "elegance" of this is the particular framework in use, not the language.

  7. Re:Theft is an emergency situation. on Putting a Panic Button In Smartphone Users' Hands · · Score: 2

    It may not necessarily be as urgent as other types of emergencies, but theft is often considered important enough for responsive police action.

    If people's lives are not in danger, it's not an emergency.

    You can quite happily call the police on their normal number to report a theft.

  8. Re:history, itself, repeat, etc. on Bitcoin Exchange Value Halves After Chinese Ban · · Score: 1

    More like (nearly) thirded, it's gone from $1215 down to $425.

  9. Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 1

    Isn't capitalist theory that competition will drive prices down towards the cost of production level?

    Yes... but it's wrong.

    If capitalism doesn't work as advertised, then just index everything.

    I'm not sure I get your argument. It seems to be "\forall y . !capitolism => y". You seem to be saying "well if *this* won't work, then clearly we can reduce all other systems to absurdity". Have I misunderstood?

  10. Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 1

    That's an interesting idea actually... Subsidise LED Bulbs by $14 each (which effectively makes them free), then tax electricity at an extra 4 per 1000 kWh. The tax will register as near nothing for most people, they'll get "free" bulbs, and the taxation will pay for them exactly.

    Of course, our friends opposing "big government" would not like this solution, and the reality is that all this would result in is the LED bulb producers charging $28 for them instead of $14.

  11. Re:Seriously? on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 1

    Well, just for the sake of argument, lets assume that electricity is $0.01/kWh...

    Incandescent: $25.82
    CFL: $8.55
    LED: $15.34

    Even at these rates (which are *way* below what anyone pays) the LED comes out cheaper than the incandescent. At only $0.04, the LED overtakes the CFL too.

  12. Re:Constraints on insulation on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 1

    However, building techniques that build sealed houses with carefully controlled air flows (that extract the heat from the air before exchanging it with nice fresh stuff from outside) can lead to homes that are extremely energy efficient, even in these circumstances.

  13. Re:Seriously? on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Uhh, I'm not sure "LED costs $144.49 over 30,000 hours, while incandescent costs $187.82" really backs up your claim that LEDs are more expensive ;)

    Your estimates are also based off $0.10 per kWh, which is cheaper than even the cheapest states in the US. You also vastly overestimate the power consumption, and cost of LED bulbs. I recently bought 4.5W LED bulbs that are as bright as 60W incandescents, for $13.99 each in safeway.

    If you redo the sums for the cheapest $0.11 and sane price for LEDs, you get $205.82 for the incandescent, $47.55 for the CFL and $28.84 for LEDs.
    If you do the sums for an average $0.14, you get $259.82 for the incandescent, $59.25 for the CFL and $32.89 for LEDs.
    If you do them at the most expensive rates in the US ($0.18 per kWh), you get $331.82 for incandescent, $74.85 for CFL and $38.29 for LEDs.

    That, for me, makes the choice pretty obvious.

  14. Re:We vote on leaders not lightbulbs on US Light Bulb Phase-Out's Next Step Begins Next Month · · Score: 2

    The reason we care about the 40 and 60W lightbulbs is because for each 1000W computer being left on permanently there are 10000* 40 and 60W light bulbs being left on needlessly sucking power.

    * Actual numbers made up on the spot, but honestly, I would expect that we're talking this order of magnitude or higher.

  15. Stop treating her like a child on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Secure Your Parents' PC? · · Score: 1

    People who are treated like children behave like them. Give her the responsibility to sort it out when it goes wrong, and she'll quickly become an adult and learn how it works.

  16. Re:There is a linux magazine? on Linux Voice Passes Its Crowdfunding Target · · Score: 1

    It's like one of those "build your own boat" magazines, first issue only $0.99 *

    Each one comes with a tiny bit of source code that you must manually type in to lovingly craft your own linux distribution.

    * Future issues $99.99

  17. Re:Maybe the Patent Office will notice on JPMorgan Files Patent Application On 'Bitcoin Killer' · · Score: 1

    But its not bitcoin, and you can actually spend the money anywhere you want, because in the end it is delivering real money to real accounts from other real accounts.

    But this will then become invalidated based on the fact that europe has had the concept of free bank transfers for decades.

  18. Re:Are you kidding? on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 1

    The point is that firmware bugs are *not* widespread –SSDs fail at 1/10th the rate that HDDs do.

  19. Re:Write limits on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 1

    What makes you think that the drive firmware doesn't reuse sectors that are already in use?

    Hint: If you have 1.6GB of drive in use, and 400MB at 800 write cycles, the drive is not going to sit on it's thumb and carry on writing to the 400GB that's near death, it's going to move 400GB of data, and then write to the fresh, unused sectors.

    Yes, this causes a small overhead of an extra write, which is called "write amplification". The practice of this situation is though that it only multiplies up writes by about 1.2 times, so even taking that into account you're still talking about 440 year life span.

  20. Re:Are you kidding? on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I dislike SSDs because when they fail they do it catastrophically.

    Huh? The typical failure mode for an SSD that hits its write limit is actually to simply become read only. Compared to an HDD's likely "all your data is gone", I'd hardly call that catastrophic.

  21. Re:Write limits on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 2

    Not true, failure rates for SSDs are an order of magnitude lower than those for HDDs (around 0.5% for SSDs vs 5% for HDDs per year)

  22. Re:before anybody pops pills on Diet Drugs Work: Why Won't Doctors Prescribe Them? · · Score: 1

    No, we have nice labels on all our foods that show how much heat will be generated if you burn it fully, not how many calories you will get if you eat it, nor how many calories you will get it if you eat it in combination with another food that inhibits or aids its digestion. The latter is the reason for the former – it's impossible to label foods with how many calories you will get if you consume them, because the number of calories you will get if you consume them depends on many factors, including, but not limited to, the gut fauna, the metabolism, the other foods consumed, the state of the body, the amount of sleep you've had, ...

  23. Re:Write limits on Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014 · · Score: 2

    Of course, that spread across a 2TB drive, means needing to write 2PB of data before the drive dies, so at even a fairly high usage home user's 10GB per day, that'll be 550 years before they have problems.

    Why do people still think SSD write limits are an issue?

  24. Re:before anybody pops pills on Diet Drugs Work: Why Won't Doctors Prescribe Them? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not true at all. An extreme example would be 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 2 lego bricks. Both contain a fairly similar amount of energy. Only one of these will actually make it into your body if consumed.

    This example is obviously dumb, but it's true of all foods –varying amount of the energy in those foods will actually make it into your body. Worse, varying bodies will get varying amounts of energy from them. This can be caused by bacterial fauna, metabolic rate, genetic efficiency of processing, the body's current state and hence it's desire to store or dispose of foods, etc.

  25. Re:No, they don't work on Diet Drugs Work: Why Won't Doctors Prescribe Them? · · Score: 1

    This is something that I've found very strange.

    Why do people come up with strange beliefs? Fat cells screaming to eat! Maybe a good analogy but is it really true?

    Yes, it's been repeatedly demonstrated that there's a correlation (and in fact causation) between having a lot of fat cells, and having your body become less efficient at processing fats and sugars, and that that has a consequence that your brain will start requiring you to consume more of them, become hungry earlier, crave more sugary items, etc.

    If someone challenges them, then they hit Google and find some article and reaffirm their beliefs.

    That's because these are scientifically demonstrated beliefs.

    My weight touched that obese BMI of 30 but managed to get my BMI down to the low 20s by losing over 50lbs. In my case, I find that my weight problem was due to some very strange beliefs I had been keeping and so questioning these beliefs and experimenting out of them was what worked. Everyone has different reasons for the weight problem but for me that was the problem.

    Good on you, though you've actually gone from the third most healthy (in terms of long life) weight category (obese class 1), bordering on the healthiest (overweight), into one of the ones that's correlated with average length life (normal) bordering on one of the ones correlated with very short life (underweight). The point being made is that yelling "eat less, do more" at people is not the be all and end all of this. There are many reasons why that will not work, that have already been covered. More so, there are even reasons why the yelling itself will hinder the problem (reinforcing psychological problems, making people think 'it's all my fault', and in doing so increasing the urge to eat).

    My point is that maybe we should be experimental and not dogmatic when it comes to weight loss.

    I agree, which is why the idea that doctors are only allowing one of many possible routes to weight loss is pretty abhorrent to me.