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User: Trepidity

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  1. Re:Sony vs NKVD on Sony Hack Reveals MPAA's Big '$80 Million' Settlement With Hotfile Was a Lie · · Score: 3, Funny

    Especially considering that the NKVD was disbanded in 1946...

  2. Re:Sirius on What Northern Hemisphere Astronomers Are Missing From the Southern Hemisphere · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, it's visible from most of the earth, with the only exception being really far north, north of the Arctic Circle. In the northern hemisphere it's considered part of the Winter Hexagon.

  3. Re:Ooh, I Have An Idea! on MIT Unifies Web Development In Single, Speedy New Language · · Score: 3, Funny

    But then how would you run it in a browser?

  4. Re:Haxe on MIT Unifies Web Development In Single, Speedy New Language · · Score: 1

    It's not required, no. At least not anymore, not sure if it used to be. The self-contained installer is sufficient to develop with.

  5. sounds like relevent expertise on "Star Trek 3" To Be Helmed By "Fast & Furious" Franchise Director Justin Lin · · Score: 5, Funny

    His skills in filming exciting race scenes will allow this incarnation of Star Trek to really do justice to the pod-racing scenes.

  6. Re:Can they legally jam cellular traffic? on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    That one's more clearly illegal because the mobile-phone bands are heavily regulated, so you can't transmit on them without a license. The wifi band is unlicensed space, which doesn't mean you can do whatever you want (as relevant here, intentional interference is still not permitted), but there is generally more leeway and violations are less clear-cut.

  7. Re:Fuck Cisco. on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if Cisco happens to sell a nifty WLAN management console that would let me identify those 'rogue' APs and knock them out, by any chance?

    Yes, precisely; Cisco is lobbying in favor of one of their features here. Some of their enterprise-level routers have features with names like "containment" that involve "managing" which wifi signals are available in which locations.

  8. Re:I don't quite get this... on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Yes, that remains true. The hotels are asking the FCC for permission to intentionally jam outside signals, though, which I guess would remove the need to maintain plausible deniability.

  9. Re: PC with SODIMMs? on Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4 · · Score: 1

    Samsung has some information about their packaging options here. But yeah, they're not SODIMM or another kind of removable socket. They're all intended for integration into a system-on-a-chip (SoC), via either surface-mount or package on package.

  10. Re:Why dashcams? on Seattle Police Held Hackathon To Redact Footage From Body Cameras · · Score: 1

    Incorrect. It does matter what my preferences are, and I do have a right to privacy. The camera footage should and will be redacted.

  11. Re:Why dashcams? on Seattle Police Held Hackathon To Redact Footage From Body Cameras · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's in public space, but not always a good idea to release publicly. For example, if a cop happens to be the first person on the scene of an accident I was involved in, I would prefer if that video is not released, unless it's necessary to a court case. If it were a medical first responder it'd actually be illegal for them to release film of me in that situation, under HIPAA. Cops are exempt from HIPAA, but that doesn't make it a good idea for them to completely ignore privacy of 3rd parties.

  12. Re:You'd cheer were it Exxon instead of Google on Google Sues Mississippi Attorney General For Conspiring With Movie Industry · · Score: 2

    If it were Exxon vs. the attorney general of Alabama, I'd be hoping for a way they could both lose...

  13. official statement on North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation · · Score: 4, Informative

    The North Korean news agency mentioned (KCNA) has the statement on their website. It seems to be a weird webapp that doesn't allow direct linking, but you can find it if you click on "English" at the top, then scroll down a bit to "DPRK Foreign Ministry Rejects U.S. Accusation against Pyongyang over Cyber Attack". Or just look here:

    Pyongyang, December 20 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA Saturday as regards the U.S. accusation against the DPRK over a cyber attack on a movie company in the U.S.:

    Obama, Kerry and other high-ranking authorities of the U.S. cried out for sort of counter-measure Friday, claiming that the results of the investigation into the cyber-attack on the Sony Pictures Entertainment proved that the DPRK was behind it. They, without presenting any specific evidence, are asserting they can not open it to public as it is "sensitive information."

    Clear evidence is needed to charge a sovereign state with a crime. Reference to the past cyber-attacks quite irrelevant with the DPRK and a string of presumptive assertions such as "similarity" and "repetition" can convince no one.

    The U.S. act of daring charge the DPRK with a crime based on absurd "investigation results" reveals its inveterate bitterness toward the DPRK. This is proven, as in the recent cyber-attack, by the recent urge made by a man called a "human rights special envoy" of the U.S. State Department to movie-makers that they should harass the north Korean government and keep alive scenes hurting the dignity of the its supreme leadership. The U.S. ruling quarters are working hard to divert the criticism of its administration to the DPRK as the plan of putting on show the anti-DPRK film on Christmas Day canceled due to the controversial cyber-attack, causing an uproar in the U.S.

    We will never pardon those undesirable elements keen on hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK. In case we retaliate against them, we will target with legitimacy those responsible for the anti-DPRK acts and their bases, not engaging in terrorist attack aimed at the innocent audience in cinemas. The army of the DPRK has the will and ability to do so.

    The U.S. State Secretary is going to justify the production of the movie hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of a sovereign state while trumpeting about the freedom of expression. He should know that there is punishment of libel in enforcement of international law.

    We propose the U.S. side conducting a joint investigation into the case, given that Washington is slandering Pyongyang by spreading unfounded rumor. We have a way to prove that we have nothing to do with the case without resorting to torture as what the CIA does.

    The U.S. should bear in mind that it will face serious consequences in case it rejects our proposal for joint investigation and presses for what it called countermeasure while finding fault with the DPRK.

  14. Re:Uh, is there free beer? on LinuxFest Northwest 2015 Will be Held April 25 and 26 (Video) · · Score: 1

    There is not, but there will be free speech.

  15. Re:Local attractions are great too! on LinuxFest Northwest 2015 Will be Held April 25 and 26 (Video) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Almost stone-throwing distance from Redmond, too.

  16. Re:Wheel Group on Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking · · Score: 1

    Debian does not use a "wheel" group. Some Debian-derived distros might, but Debian itself doesn't. I recently installed a Debian server, and it is not how you describe: a root password was set during install, and there is no wheel group. This was from the official Debian 7 "wheezy" installer.

  17. Re:Holy Crap on A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast · · Score: 4, Informative

    They're around in some indirect sense, but the current company named "Tucows" is mostly a different one. Tucows was a Michigan-based internet company that in 2001 was acquired by a Toronto-based company, Infonautics. Infonautics subsequently changed its own name to Tucows, because it was a better-recognized brand. So the current Tucows is largely a rebranded Infonautics, and still headquartered in Toronto. But, it does also own the former Tucows assets as well, so they persist in that sense.

    Businesses that have gone through as many rounds of acquisitions and mergers as this one have are a bit Frankensteinish, so it's hard to say what is new or old or mashed up together.

  18. Re:this is something Google does a bit better on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that's my worry. It looks like the design materials projected 60,000 daily trips once it's fully up and operating, with a 10-minute peak headway. If we make the optimistic assumption that these are all displacing single-occupant-car roundtrips, that's 30,000 cars taken off the road (in reality, some are probably displacing bus trips). Which is not nothing, but may not be enough to significantly affect congestion in or out of Santa Monica.

    I do think the smaller cars can be interesting if coupled with high-frequency service. The Copenhagen Metro is an example of this kind of "light metro", which runs only 3-car trains, but it runs them at 2-minute headways during peak times, and 6-8 minutes off-peak. But it's: 1) fully grade-separated; and 2) fully automatic train control (no driver).

  19. Re:this is something Google does a bit better on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    Will be interesting to see whether the Expo Line extension from Culver City to Santa Monica (opening 2015 or 2016) helps at all. Might not be high-volume enough to matter though, even if it's successful in terms of ridership (it's a light-rail line, not a full metro).

  20. this is something Google does a bit better on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google Maps used to send you down random side streets thinking it would save 3 minutes, which it often didn't (my least favorite was when it took you on a route that ended up requiring you to take an unprotected left through traffic, something that on its own easily ate any time savings and more). I notice they're a bit more conservative on that in the past few years; they only tell me to hop off the freeway and take a surface street when it's really going to save a significant amount of time.

    The real solution for this neighborhood, though, is to complain to their local politicians. If the neighborhood isn't intended to be a through route, it's pretty easy to make it unattractive as a through route, e.g. by making some of the streets one-way. That's not uncommon at all in traffic planning.

  21. Re:Quick question on Raspberry Pi In Space · · Score: 3, Informative

    The ISS itself uses radiation-hardened computers, but these "AstroPI" are just using stock chips. The only thing different afaict is the custom peripheral board. I would guess the duration of the experiment, combined with it not really being a mission-critical part, makes radiation hardening not needed.

  22. Re:MeritNOTcracy on Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices · · Score: 1

    How are poor white or asian boys discriminated against? They are the least likely to have had any programming experience before college, so would be treated the same as underrepresented minorities who have no programming experience before college.

    A goal of the program is indeed to retain women and underrepresented minorities, but the mechanism used to do so is solely by separating the intro classes between "have no programming experience" and "have programming experience". They believe that doing so will make the program friendlier to the people on the "no experience" category, who are more likely to be women or underrepresented minorities. But it would equally apply to anyone who has no programming experience, such as a poor white kid who has never coded before college.

  23. Re:MeritNOTcracy on Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices · · Score: 1

    Isn't this based on merit? As far as I can tell they're proposing that kids who already know some programming be put into a different CS101 track than those who can't. White and black kids who know programming would go into one track, and white and black kids who don't know any programming would go into the other one. You might expect there to be a different mix of kids in each of these groups (because more white kids have been introduced to programming before college), but the decision is not based on race.

  24. I can sort of see the appeal on Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle To Keep Up With Demand · · Score: 1

    I often buy physical books because I like to have them on my bookshelf and the tactile experience of reading a paper book... even though from a practicality perspective, ebooks are easier to refer to and carry around. So I end up often having both a paper and ebook version. If you want to do something like that with music, then I can see the appeal of vinyl over CD as the physical format: CDs have smaller artwork and are generally less interesting as objects to own and play. So might as well get vinyl for the physical copy, and an mp3 (or ogg or flac) for a digital copy, and skip the CD.

  25. Re:Let's compare these advantages to Haskell on Kawa 2.0 Supports Scheme R7RS · · Score: 1

    A similar case is when you want to deploy to a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider like Heroku or Redhat OpenShift. Scheme isn't popular enough for any of these to support Scheme apps directly, but they do almost all support Java apps. So if you can deploy your Scheme app as a Java app, you can run it there.