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User: Fex303

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Comments · 329

  1. Re:Maunder minimum was not the culprit [Re:Of cour on Little Ice Age: It Was Not the Sun · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... and the dating shows the Little Ice Age began well before the Maunder minimum. The Maunder minimum didn't cause it, very definitely.

    The only logical conclusion is that cold temperatures on earth somehow prevent sunspots. Which means, obviously, that global warming will blot out the sun due to a proliferation of sunspots caused by warmer temperatures here.

    We're doomed!

  2. Re:Act of War on US Embassy Sanctioned Lawsuit Against Aussie ISP iiNet · · Score: 1

    We're also engaged in a selective breeding program to make everything poisonous.

    We started with spiders and jellyfish. The poisonous platypus was a great success. And of course you've noticed that we invented Vegemite and poisonous beer, or as you know it, Fosters. Next up is breeding a venomous chicken and perfecting our engineering of the poison brick.

  3. Re:Users disagree with him on The Condescending UI · · Score: 1

    No. I can't honestly say that I do. Did it ever happen?

  4. Re:We should be fine... on Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication · · Score: 1

    As long as the virus does not increase the intelligence of apes.

    Or a retrovirus that is highly contagious and reduces the intelligence of human victims to near that of apes by changing brain chemistry, but leaves them alive and "OK", driven by only animal survival insticts, and permanently infected?

    Have you seen what was going down at Walmart last Friday? That ship has sailed, my friend.

  5. Re:Geez... on Baker Has to Make 102,000 Cupcakes For Grouponers · · Score: 1

    Do you have insurance? I bet you do... and it's almost the same thing

    Not quite. With insurance you're guaranteed to 'win' if something bad happens to you. (Except when insurance companies are being complete jerks.) That's the key point. If your insurance payouts were tied to something that wasn't your personal situation, say the roll of a dice, it would be gambling - but since insurance payouts are tied to you being a in situation where you really need the money, it makes a lot more economic sense.

  6. Re:Overlooking the most important finding. on Study Finds Frequent Gaming Changes Your Brain · · Score: 1

    Close to 100 girls actually admitted they play video games!

    And this outdated way of thinking is what drives them away. Think before you post.

    Yes, all the girls will be driven away from slashdot. Riiiight.

  7. Getting more common on How Cell Phone Money Laundering Works · · Score: 2

    I hear there's a lot of this kind of stuff going on in the Torgai Hills...

  8. Re:Get back to me... on All-Electric DeLorean Car To Hit the Streets In 2013 · · Score: 1

    Actually a flying DeLorean solves basically all those problems.

    ...

    It doesn't fly?! Then what's the point?!

  9. Re:Purely out of curiosity on Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac? · · Score: 1

    No, the real issue is now we're training already-smug dorks to give out unconditional orders reflexively and expect them to be followed. How long before they start expecting that to work with humans?

    Oh, I'd say about negative a thousand years... Smug dorks who like to order people around aren't exactly a new thing.

  10. Re:Celebrity? Endorsement? OBJECTION!!! TROLL!!! on Do Celebrity Endorsements on Google+ Require Disclosure? · · Score: 1

    Missing critical information that Sergey Brin isn't really a "celebrity" so much as "google founder."

    If you don't know who Sergey Brin is, you're reading the wrong website.

  11. Re:Tracking us, what? on Coming Soon, Shorter Video Games · · Score: 1

    I would like to know how they were tracking us and why we weren't told about this.

    I'm gonna guess that it's buried somewhere in the EULA. So techincally, we were told about it. And they were almost certainly tracking it when people played on consoles which phone home for updates anyhow, and I believe can send a set of info about how they've been played in the process.

  12. Re:Every person's right on Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't killing yourself be akin to repudiating your right to life? As such, killing yourself is counter to the right to life.

    By that line of reasoning, doesn't a right to free speech require that everyone talk all the time?

  13. Re:Er. Uh. on Mint It Yourself With a Browser-Based Bitcoin Miner · · Score: 1

    "CryptNet is just a simple, innocuous tuple-processing collective, man."

  14. Re:Slashdotter already on Apple AirPlay Private Key Exposed · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

  15. Re:Just keep emulating on Futureproofing Artifacts: Spacewar! 1962 In HTML5 · · Score: 2

    Because everything can be emulated in Logo?

    Actually, does anyone know if Logo is Turing Complete?

  16. The real mistake on Anatomy of the HBGary Hack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The full story will make you wince — but how many of these mistakes is your company making?

    Well, we're not going after 4chan/anonymous, so we're probably in the clear.

    I think the biggest security mistake it's possible to make is antagonizing the largest collection of bored hackers/crackers/script kiddies/associated hangers on that exists.

  17. Re:How to Exploit on Ford Building Cars That Talk To Other Cars · · Score: 1

    Step 1: Hack a transmitter to show the highway completely blocked ahead.

    Step 2: Wait for cars to stop

    Step 3: Rob the now stopped cars.

    Or, you know, go to the nearest set of traffic lights.

  18. Re:Stock Market Shenanigans on Statistical Analysis of Terrorism · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The trick being, of course, that they are all 100% worthless for predicting future trends.

    Actually, they're pretty good at predicting broad trends. It's just that they're not good at predicting specific outcomes. In the same way that understanding the odds of roulette doesn't let you predict what number will come up on a specific spin. The only way to really use the odds is to bet across the entire table to take advantage of the trend - that's what the house does.

  19. Re:How could they not progress against a known thr on Has Progress Been Made In Fighting DDoS Attacks? · · Score: 1

    According to the Anonymous.... [snip]

    Simply put, attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones, would be in bad taste.

    Right, because Anonymous and /b/ in general are such guardians of good taste.

  20. Re:I Agree With This Law on British Teen Jailed Over Encryption Password · · Score: 1

    Both of these examples are rather bizarre, and I don't really see how they would be fundamentally different than warrants for stuff IRL.

    In situation A, if you'd been keeping journal entries on paper, you'd have to show them to cops who had a warrant. Why should it be any different if you had typed it on your computer?

    In situation B, someone could leave a locked safe on your desk instead of encrypting some files on your computer.

    The law doesn't have to account for all possible options. It's generally trying to prove beyond reasonable doubt. For the most part with encrypted stuff, if it's beyond reasonable doubt that the person knows the password, I don't see why they should be able to withhold files on their computer when they wouldn't be able to withhold files in their filing cabinet. Just because it's digital, I don't see why it's different.

  21. Re:Interesting, yet pointless on Twitter Closes Hole After Attack Hits Up To 500K Users · · Score: 1

    1. Why isn't something this widely useful (publish/subscribe messaging) a protocol - logically, an SMTP extension - rather than a proprietary web application?

    Because the folks at Twitter made it, and seem to want it that way. Not ideal, but if it had been launched as a protocol it would be basically impossible to get updates and tweaks happening. There's probably a lot more to this, but basically it boils down to the fact that VC sponsored ideas are not likely to become protocols.

    2. Why does it have to be limited to 140 characters?

    This seems arbitrary, but it's a key part of why Twitter is good. You can't post long, boring diatribes. You have to be snappy and concise. That makes it possible to follow a bunch of people, since none of them can flood your feed with TL;DR garbage. The downside is that you can't discuss a nuanced topic or hold a decent debate on Twitter. But that OK, because that's not what Twitter is about.

  22. Re:Last name wrong. Not 'Kahn' on Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily · · Score: 1

    This is a geek site with attention to detail.

    Well, you got the first part of that statement right...

  23. Re:EXCELLENT interview! on Cory Doctorow On For the Win, Gold Farming, and DRM · · Score: 2, Funny

    Iain Banks did this in his Culture books, back in the early 1990s. :)

    And again in the late 2650's. ;)

  24. Re:Murphy's law on Car Hits Utility Pole, Takes Out EC2 Datacenter · · Score: 1

    fail + fail = fail, QED

    Nope. fail + fail = win

    But thanks for playing.

  25. Re:Murphy's law on Car Hits Utility Pole, Takes Out EC2 Datacenter · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Um.... Whooosh?

    Using 'grammar' as a verb is one of those linguistics jokes I love. (Actually, I love all linguistics jokes.) My usual explanation for when I've done a grammar edit on my posts (on forums which support it) is 'Edit: I'm don't grammar'.

    A key clue to this being a joke is the use of the word 'fail' which these days is often associated with LOLcats. Those damn cats have raised the use of deliberately bad grammar to an artform in and of itself.