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User: richardellisjr

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  1. Re:Five Star on NHTSA Gives the Model S Best Safety Rating of Any Car In History · · Score: 1

    You may not have as much "metal on metal" but the big issue with used electric cars is battery life. If I remember right the batteries are only suppose to be good 5 years or so with significant performance degradation after that. Unfortunately the batteries are one of the most expensive parts of hybrid and electric cars. With my wife's hybrid replacing the batteries which we'll likely have to do in the next couple of years would cost about half what we paid for the car (we bought it used at about a year old).

  2. Re:Why does the cynic in me. . . on No "Right To Be Forgotten," Says EU Advocate General · · Score: 2

    I've been wondering if there is a way to break the face tag feature, was curious what everyone else things. Basically the system as I understand it works by users tagging you in photos they take. If that step isn't done facebook has no way to know your face. So what would happen if you seed it with conflicting information. For example find a picture of some random model (or alternatively another person with a dislike of being tagged) and have as many friends as possible tag the individual as you. Repeat this with several other faces and facebook should be adequately confused. Thoughts?

  3. Re:Clever guy on The Hunt For LulzSec's Missing Sixth Member · · Score: 1

    There's a more likely reason he hasn't be identified. I'd bet Avunit was caught first and outed or helped out Sabu and the others in exchange for no jail time and not being publicly named. If you think about it Sabu doesn't appear to have gotten much of a break for helping the FBI, the best offers would go to the first turncoat... Avunit. But maybe I'm wrong, perhaps he really is that good.

  4. Re:Phonetically similar in another language? on Apple Loses Trademark Claim Against iFone in Mexico · · Score: 1

    Even though phone as in iphone isn't written correctly in Spanish they still pronounce it the same way. My sister in law, who was born and lives outside Mexico City says IPhone the exact same way we Americans do. In fact the the word telephone pronounced in Spanish is exactly the same with the addition of an "o" at the end.

  5. Re:You wish you were this guy on Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found On SUV · · Score: 1

    That begs another question, was the GPS on his car while he drove the car into Mexico. If so then I bet the government broke some laws. I can't imagine it's legal for them to track people across borders like this. I imagine Mexico would have some opinions about the US government monitoring people in Mexico, probably wouldn't do anything about it though.

  6. Re:Cambodia on Swedish Court Finalizes Jail Sentence For Pirate Bay Co-Founder · · Score: 2

    I think he was making a Somalia Pirate joke.

  7. Zombie apocalypse on Fukushima: What Happened and What Needs To Be Done · · Score: 1

    I think we've learned that nuclear power has risks but is still much safer and efficient than most of the other possibilities.

    On a related note do nuclear plants have the capability to shutdown cleanly? Otherwise the upcoming zombie apocalypse means I need to get the fuck away from any nuclear plants since zombies usually don't make good nuclear engineers.

  8. Re:Nice car on Meet the Virginia-Built 110MPG X-Prize Car · · Score: 1

    I don't know, I looked at buying a motorcycle for commuting everyday and decided against it due to safety factors. This looks like it would get better MPG and be almost as safe as a regular car.

  9. Re:Troubling on ISP Owner Who Fought FBI Spying Freed From Gag Order · · Score: 2, Informative

    The letter was sent to him, and specifically told him he couldn't share it's contents with anyone. So unless he could prove the letter was stolen or his lawyer posted it he'd be screwed. And if the lawyer posted it he'd probably be disbarred unless he said the client approved the posting in which case where back to him sharing the contents. No matter which way you cut it if it got out he's more than likely going to jail.

  10. Re:Of course they can on Denials Aside, Feds Storing Body Scan Images · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately they do enhance security a little, although I strongly believe the enhanced security doesn't actually make anyone safer. I look at this way I could hire a virtual army of body guards to patrol outside my house and I'll be pretty safe from a break in. But that level of protection against something that's extremely unlikely to happen is just retarded. Terrorist some day will probably succeed in killing more Americans in our home country... however spending billions of dollars and completely destroying our privacy isn't justified by the possible death of even a couple of thousand people.

    Oh and what these devices are really meant to detect are deadly things that a metal detector or sniffer can't detect. Such as broken glass, a true ceramic knife (most of them have metal in them purely to be detectable by metal detectors), or even a sharp stick (or pencil... wonder when they'll be banned). Keep in mind that any of these items could have been used by the 911 terrorist and would have been almost effective (if not as effective) as the box cutters they used.

    The feds and specifically TSA are really just trying to see how much they can get away with before the public complains. I fully expect, (if these things are allowed to stay) that in five years you won't be allowed to have any liquids (acid can be really dangerous), batteries, pencils, pens or, shoelaces (can be very effective to strangle someone with). What we'll be left with eventually will be a plane full of people in their underware reading books... oh wait... I've had some nasty paper cuts before :-)

  11. Re:Snowball's chance in hell... on WikiLeaks 'a Clear and Present Danger,' Says WaPo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ever hear of Manuel Noriega and Panama?

  12. Re:SSH on Tunneling Under the Great Firewall? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not sure if this is what your referring to but I use a SSH socks proxy and tsocks under linux quite a bit to allow proxy unaware apps to be use it (like RDP). The only issue I have with this setup is DNS. Since it primarily uses UDP not TCP for lookups they are all performed against the locally configured name servers not the remote. I haven't found an elegant solution for this yet but your network.proxy.socks_remote_dns config may help a lot (I've never heard of that before).

    For the original submitter, I understand your reluctance to being restricted and object to the idea of the great firewall as much as the next guy, however is completely open access really worth breaking the law there and potentially being imprisoned in China. Also keep in mind that while you may object to the concept of the firewall but you are a guest in the country and breaking any countries laws while as such is really disrespectful. If you really don't like the law don't travel there, if your trying to make some sort of political statement (which I doubt) then best of luck to you... China isn't well know for being good sports about that sort of thing.

  13. Re:Wikileaks.... on With World Watching, Wikileaks Falls Into Disrepair · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem with torrents is that anyone can see the IPs getting the files, and in some cases it may be as important to protect the source as it is to protect those wanting information. If you can imagine an oppressive regime trying to stop the spread of some information would likely try to find the individuals in possession of the information... which would be anyone that connected to the torrent.

  14. Re:Not true on How Did Wikileaks Do It? · · Score: 1

    Wish I had mod points, nailed my view of what happened exactly. The only thing I'd disagree with (which you left out) was the shooting of the van. I'm having a hard time coming up with a good reason for that, but I do think you'd have to be a complete idiot to drive into a battle with your kids, good samaritan or not. And no, the shooting hadn't been stopped for remotely long enough to think it was safe.

  15. Re:What about the legal threats? on NewEgg Confirms Shipping Fake Core i7s · · Score: 5, Informative

    That wasn't NewEgg, one of their suppliers (not the culprit) threatened to sue.

  16. Multiple ISOs on one flash drive on The Hidden Treasures of Sysinternals · · Score: 1

    Speaking of booting from an ISO on a flash drive... does anyone know a way to store multiple ISOs files on a flash drive so that you can choose which to boot from? Would make installing the various OSs I use a lot easier than searching for the correct CD/DVD each time I install.

  17. Re:Google may lose China... on Google.cn Attack Part of a Broad Spying Effort · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm wondering if or when Google will start to develop software to get around the great firewall of china. If you think about it they can pull out and will still have a large portion of the worlds search business. If they then release something to make getting around firewalls easy, they can get the search business in china without having a corporate presence there simply by being "the" search engine.

  18. Re:Tablet market seems like the ultimate niche on CrunchPad Being Re-branded As JooJoo · · Score: 1

    I don't take vacations like that, but I do travel a lot and a 15 to 20 hour trip (where power isn't available) each way will kill most devices. I'm personally waiting for the battery life on a netbook to reach 15 to 20 hours before I buy. I'm hoping some of the up coming arm based ones will fit the bill.

  19. Re:paper in your wallet on Best Tool For Remembering Passwords? · · Score: 1

    Hypothetical situation, say I want another admins password. What's to stop me from picking his pocket getting his wallet, photocoping the password list, then putting the wallet back. Then I just have to try each password in the list one a day until I get the right one? Granted I have to be good at picking pockets but that would give me access to everything.

  20. Re:paper in your wallet on Best Tool For Remembering Passwords? · · Score: 1

    You hit upon my greatest aggravation with passwords. It annoys the hell out of me when a website or application tells me that my 12 character mixed upper and lower character with symbols password isn't valid because there isn't a number in it.

  21. Re:Kid won't know what to do when an adult on Children's Watch Allows Parents To Track Their Kid · · Score: 1

    As someone who spends a lot of time around Mexico City (my wife's family lives there) I'd love to buy one of these for each of my kids. There are far too Americans getting kidnapped in that area for someone to argue that it's not worth the price. Of course it probably wouldn't take long for a kidnapper to find it and get rid of it, but if it takes 30 minutes that may be enough time.

    And additional FYI, they aren't just kidnapping the rich anymore. Now they've resorted to kidnapping for several thousand dollars which makes anyone in that area very vulnerable.

  22. Re:windows on ARM exists on Foxconn and Hon Hai Both Planning ARM Smartbooks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They can release windows for arm but one big problem will remain, none of the apps users want will run under arm. Linux however doesn't have this issue, there are already huge package repositories for arm, and what isn't there can easily be compiled and added. I'm not an apple guy so I have no clue how they got around the problem.

  23. Re:Backwards on Emergency Government Control of the Internet? · · Score: 1

    If I remember correctly the Romans didn't really care much either way, it was his "people" who got pissed off.

  24. Re:SSD on Best Home Backup Strategy Now? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I haven't read all the threads in this article and someone may have proposed a similar resultion. My proposal is thus (word for the cautious I'm still working out the details of this): first off find some one who also wishes to backup their data (in my case it's my father). First etup an rsync going between the two computers (this will need two rsync cron jobs on each side). Second setup either a versioning file system or have the files somehow check out and in the files to version control as it's doing it's thing (this is the part I haven't worked out yet). This theoretically will work in my situation since my father is buying the same NAS I have (a DLink DNS-323 which I can't praise enough for it's hackability) since only have to work out the logistics for one OS and one piece of hardware and only have to wory about firewalls.

  25. Re:Unfortunate on Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter · · Score: 1

    The big difference is when you own land you pay taxes on that land which gives something back to the community. Those taxes can be quite large making owning large areas of land very expensive. With internet real estate there are not taxes and the cost to own large amounts of it is really small so there isn't anything preventing excessive speculation.