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User: gumbi+west

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  1. Re: No surprise there on After Weeks of Trying, UK Cryptographers Fail To Crack WWII Code · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your point can only be this: the set of messages that might reasonably have been sent can be guessed as the deciphered text. The actual encrypted data gives you zero information on that if the OTP was used properly.

  2. Re:Difference layer effect is even easier, on Ask Slashdot: How To Catch Photoshop Plagiarism? · · Score: 3, Funny

    "It's fun to do this with NASA photos of the moon, some of them have lens flares added from photoshop. :) (you can recreate some the lensflares pixel perfect...)"

    Not at all, those are the files photoshop's lens flare is based on.

  3. Re:Translation: on Tesla Motors Sued By Car Dealers · · Score: 1

    Uh, no. It just means that they use their huge leverage to over price the cars before they sell it to the dealer. Same eventual over-price to consumers for desirable cars and under price for undesirable cars.

  4. Re:Fuck those greedy bastards. on Tesla Motors Sued By Car Dealers · · Score: 1

    It actually continues to work past 92%, that is where it was when JFK took office and, at the time, interviews with people earning 92% they said that if the tax was raised they would work more hours. This, by the way, implies raising taxes would increase "job creators" work.

  5. Re:More importantly on US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here · · Score: 1

    They had no intention of balancing the budget on the advice of every sane economist on Earth.

  6. Re:More importantly on US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here · · Score: 3

    Congress does not write the budget, the President makes a budget proposal that congress changes by less than 1% and then passes. Typically, the changes are just red herrings put in there for them to change.

    Technically, congress passes an outline of a budget with total dollar amounts for each agency that the President fills in, but congress hasn't had a working budget process for about 10 years.

  7. Re:Economics not physics on Physicists Devise Test For Whether the Universe Is a Simulation · · Score: 1

    When executed properly, Vernam ciphers map to any message of equal or shorter length with the same probability, so no information can be gained about them. There really is nothing required to solve them.

  8. Re:$AVE on Overseas Commercial Flights on Air Force Lab Test Out "Aircraft Surfing" Technique To Save Fuel · · Score: 1

    By this logic, I could use metal utensils on a flight over US airspace... but I can't.

  9. Re:Wow on Curiosity Spies Unidentified, Metallic Object On Mars · · Score: 1

    Even if there were bricks of gold sitting on the surface of the moon, it would not be cost effective to go get them. It's very far from pat.

  10. Re:pharma? on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    That is moronic. Once the first patent expired the drug would be off patent. What they do is patent the method of making the drug and litigate this like crazy. Bush pushed for (and got a law) that limits this to three years.

  11. Re:Drug Patents on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    Yes, they do, but millions is the cost of a drug that fails in stage 1, if it makes it to stage 3, then it costs billions.

  12. Re:Hear that apple?? google???!? on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    Not actually sure Google and Apple wouldn't be happier in a patent free world. Apple learned in the 1990s, after MS copied their OS, that you have to focus on innovation and make copy cats out of date and this works better than litigation. At the same time, they still do litigate because, why not?

  13. Re:I guess he read my sig on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    News flash: I don't have the source code for my OS.

  14. Re:Drug Patents on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    It might be more efficient, but there is the question as to if it would ever actually happen.

  15. Re:Drug Patents on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 2

    Testing a drug costs billions of dollars. A company isn't going to invest that because some executive's child is sick, it has to maximize share holder value for an MBA to give it a green light.

  16. Re:pharma? on Another Call For Abolishing Patents, This One From the St. Louis Fed · · Score: 1

    There is pretty clear evidence that without patents, big parma does not produce tested drugs. Testing a drug costs billions of dollars and there is no way that anyone would undertake that if they didn't think they could make billions on the other side.

    Now, you could argue that we would be better off awarding value to cures than drugs, but that would require someone placing a value on cures (something I'd be happy to have the government doing, but others might not like that so much).

  17. Re:This is 'small', This is 'far away'. on Aircraft Carriers In Space · · Score: 1

    I was thinking the same thing. Also, space is dark and huge. Getting 3 light minutes away from something would be so stupendously lucky that you would basically never do it. When you did, you would need to know exactly where it is to point your camera in that direction so you could see it. And it would probably take you 20 or 30 minutes to find the blip and then get statistics to be sure it was a ship and not something else.

  18. Re:Nokia is not necessarily ahead in 3D on Why Apple Replaced iOS Maps · · Score: 0

    If I followed google maps to work, it would take me twice as long or get me killed (I'd have to burst through barriers to do the latter). It is constantly trying to get me to go on a freeway that is one way the other way. None of them are really there yet.

  19. Re:They rejected 16% salary increase over 4 years on Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups' · · Score: 1

    Wow, I hope you had you tin foil hat on when you typed that. The CPI is not linked to military or civilian federal employees pay. Nor is the CPI linked to medicare, pensions, or social security. A different index, that is linked to wage inflation, is used for increasing social security payments. Military and civilian pay outs are based on a law passed annually by congress and was much higher than the CPI before Obama and is zero now.

  20. Re:No matter what the outcome actually is.... on Victory For Apple In "Patent Trial of the Century," To the Tune of $1 Billion · · Score: 1

    Cars existed before Ford came along, he brought the production line to auto production.

  21. Re:So much for stealth on US Navy's High-Resolution Radar Can See Individual Raindrops In a Storm · · Score: 1

    While this radar is probably too big to put in a fighter

    You can say that again. I don't know if you have seen a tico but the old version of this could never get up in the air, much less on a fighter. (there are a total of four of those huge octagonal panels.)

  22. Re:I would rather NASA would catch a near-miss on Astronomers Catch Asteroid In Near-Miss Video · · Score: 1

    Yeah, NASA has never thought of this, great ideas!

  23. Re:Space station altitude.... on Astronomers Catch Asteroid In Near-Miss Video · · Score: 1

    I think I had you as a professor in a math class.

  24. Re:Are you guys stupid or something? on No Intelligent Aliens Detected In Gliese 581 · · Score: 1

    Yes. You transmit in a band, so if you looked at a RF power by frequency chart, it would look like a (rounded) picket fence with the signal power going up and down on the pickets as the RF sources have / don't have data to transmit.

  25. Re:Are you guys stupid or something? on No Intelligent Aliens Detected In Gliese 581 · · Score: 0

    So we could never see our own Dr. Who episodes from 50 years ago bounced back to us?