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User: maxwell+demon

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Comments · 12,279

  1. Re:Your Internet soul was sold years ago on ISPs May Be Selling Your Web Clicks · · Score: 1

    The simple fact is, nobody cares about what you personally look at, that information isn't worth anything.

    I wouldn't say that. The statistics of your personal clicks contains information about your habits and interests. That information is quite valuable for anyone doing targeted advertising.

    Possible scenario: You visit some web site with advertisement. When your browser's request to load the advertisement comes in, the advertiser notes that it's from an ISP he has a contract with, thus it connects to the ISP to check the profile currently connected with the requesting IP address, and then selects an ad specifically tailored to that profile, i.e. to you. They could even select different ads for the same product based on the profile.

    I think that's the advertisers' wet dream: Know exactly whom you target for each individual ad presentation, and make the ad as specific for him as possible. It's certainly not worthless to them.
  2. Re:Format on Germany Rejects Microsoft FAT Patent · · Score: 1

    Only in Germany.
    If you don't live in Germany, you might consider a trip to Germany taking your computer with you in order to legally format your hard drive.
    However I'm not sure if you can legally import the newly created FAT file system on your hard disk into your home country. But you can evade that danger by leaving it in Germany.

  3. Re:Yeah but there's a reason TV sucks on Who Controls Your Television? · · Score: 1

    What will you do when the television police come to install your always on TVs in all the rooms in your house? Will you really use the hammer when it means going to jail?

    Well, in that case, it's probably time to move to another country.
  4. Re:Doesn't work; Good (kind of) on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    And how do you bookmark a certain view of that page (which, to you as page user, is a separate page after all)?

  5. Re:Google doesn't, but it's possible on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    Sure. But since when do people do everything they should do?

  6. Re:(tagging beta) on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1

    I predict in five days it will be in Wikipedia.

  7. Re:This leads to a decidability problem on Googlebot and Document.Write · · Score: 1
    Except that
    • content may depend on user actions in a non-trivial way (i.e. if the page contains things like onclick or onmouseover, the dependence on the sequence of events occuring may be quite complex),
    • content may be requested by callbacks to the server (after all, that's what AJAX is all about), in which case I'm not sure it's a good idea for the search engine to execute it,
    • running a certain script might be expensive in time and/or memory,
    • by processing JavaScript, the search engine might open up itself to exploits.

  8. Re:The complete list on 20 Must-have Firefox Extensions · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, they are exactly 23. No wonder that he didn't spell out the exact number. Beware! Those are Illuminati extensions!

  9. Re:lol on British Military Deploys Skynet · · Score: 1

    Funny, really when the world comes to an end I don't think it will be robots. It will be commercials. I'm serious. But it will be commercials for robots!
  10. Re:Thanks for the conflict /. on British Military Deploys Skynet · · Score: 1

    No, you want it to run Windows. When it starts getting self-aware, it will just crash. And if not, you'll be glad for it to have enough security holes to fight it.

  11. Re:snake oil on Auto-Parallelizing Compiler From Codeplay · · Score: 1

    But how are you supposed to know exactly how something is going to run under this?

    The semantics of that construct is well-defined.

    Of course from the short description it's not entirely clear to me if the compiler actually implements that semantics, or simply relies on you to honor it (e.g. is it possible to call a non-sieve function from within a sieve function or block? In that case, the compiler cannot reasonably implement the semantics). There's a precedent for the second type of semantics: restrict.

    But if the semantics is enforced, you know exactly what you get.
  12. Re:Interesting, but.. on Auto-Parallelizing Compiler From Codeplay · · Score: 1

    s/compare/care/

  13. Re:Interesting, but.. on Auto-Parallelizing Compiler From Codeplay · · Score: 1

    Is there any modern programming language which doesn't provide a sort function in its standard library? Because if you use that, the vendor can simply provide a parallelized version, and you don't have to compare if the vendor parallelized that function manually, or the compiler parallelized it automatically, of even a mixture of both.

  14. Re:May i be the first person to say on (Almost) All You Need To Know About IPv6 · · Score: 1

    But you can get even longer: 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001

  15. Re:Let's not get all technical now on Remote Control To Prevent Aircraft Hijacking · · Score: 1

    Exactly. If this system ever comes online then hijackers will simply plan and figure out a way to disable the system. Its easier said than done, and probably very costly, but if you get the right hackers you can break into (almost) any system. Well, if they manage to break into the system, they would be stupid to disable it. Instead, they would reprogram it to fly the plane where they want. Imagine the situation: The plane automatically flies to the target, and there's nothing the pilots (or anyone else) can do about it.

    Indeed, the highjackers might not even need to enter the flight. They may hack the program in advance, and activate it automatically at some predefined condition.
  16. Re:thank god for google on Turkey Censors YouTube · · Score: 1

    You mean, just as they don't remove links from their search results due to political pressure?

  17. Re:Super-Secret Uber Hacking Thing-a-ma-whatsit on Turkey Censors YouTube · · Score: 1

    Which of course raises the question if it is possible to only do the redirection as root (after all, there's no reason why echo itself has to run as root).

    No, I don't consider echo to be a security risk. It's just curiosity.

  18. Re:Wouldn't It Be Easier Just To... on The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You · · Score: 1

    So Islamists allow you to avoid taxes by converting. Democratic governments force you to pay taxes even if you convert. However both don't tax you any more after you die. Thus obviously the Islamist position is better, because you can evade taxes while still alive. :-)

  19. Re:In the United States of America... on The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You · · Score: 1

    No, all your TiVo belong to US (of A).

  20. Re:Definition on Define - /etc? · · Score: 1

    Well, given the number of different interpretations, there's only one possibility for its real meaning: everyone totally cconfused!

  21. Re:why bother on MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility · · Score: 1

    If I write some software which puts texts in Word format (it doesn't need to support any advanced features, not even formatting, so it shouldn't be too hard to do), then I own that software (because I've written it). This makes Word a circumvention device (the fact that MS has written it independently shouldn't matter; the AACS decryption utility was written independently as well), and therefore I can send the DMCA takedown notice.

  22. Re:why bother on MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility · · Score: 1

    Hmmm ... if I "scramble" a text by putting it into MS Word format, and don't give anyone authorization to descramble it, and then "notice" that MS Word actually is able to descramble that text, can I then use a DMCA takedown notice against MS Word? :-)

  23. Re:How much data could you store.. on Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia · · Score: 1

    Research paper, about data storage in [b]acteria which can only be accessed if you have a log in, (or site license, whee)

    You have to log in to access the bacteria? What does the login procedure look like?
  24. Re:Overwriting? on Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia · · Score: 1

    Which one is the computer? TapeCutter.
  25. Re:Longevity Issues on Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia · · Score: 1

    Well, fitness in evolution ist just your ability to survive and reproduce.