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User: DMUTPeregrine

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Comments · 2,158

  1. Re:Bring it on, folks! on New Encryption Method Fights Reverse Engineering · · Score: 1

    This is essentially just TRESOR with a different acronym. It's already been broken.

  2. Re:TL;DR People doesn't understand the Turing test on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    Exactly! The actual Turing test is a great test, but the common modifications remove its ability to determine anything of interest.

  3. Re:TL;DR People doesn't understand the Turing test on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    You are correct, I should have said it's a problem with the popular conception of the Turing Test. The popular descriptions in the media are quite unlike the test described by Turing.

  4. Re:TL;DR People doesn't understand the Turing test on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    No, they have to talk to both a human (trying to convince the investigator that he/she is human) and a computer. Removing the foil means it's not the Turing test anymore, it's a very different test.

  5. Re:TL;DR People doesn't understand the Turing test on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with the Turing Test is that it's so often done wrong. The test is supposed to be adversarial, with two humans and a computer. One human (the investigator) has two terminals and can communicate with the other human and the computer, but doesn't know which is which. The goal of the computer is to convince the investigator that it is the human. The goal of the second human (the foil) is to convince the investigator that he or she is the human. This is then supposed to be repeated with different investigators and foils, and only when a statistically significant portion of the investigators fail is the test passed by the computer.

    Investigators should be trying to find which one is human, not simply chatting with the computer. Too often people are simply connected to a chatbot and not told that it might be a computer until after the fact, no foil is involved, etc. The test is also often declared to be passed if even a single investigator fails.

  6. Re:Communicating probabilities on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 3, Informative

    They actually do this, just the reporters strip that out.

  7. Re:Keyboard on Your Entire PC In a Mouse · · Score: 2

    Yeah! Stick the computer in the keyboard!

    You can even have a flatscreen connected to it, with a hinge so the user can adjust the angle. Then stick on a battery so it can be used for a while away from a wall socket, and you've got an innovative new product!~

  8. Re:It will be their biggest mistake on Could Tizen Be the Next Android? · · Score: 1

    Nokia loosed their market share to run free across the hills of competition. It promptly ran off and got lost.

  9. Re:Chrome needs load tabs on demand. on With Community Help, Chrome Could Support Side Tabs Extension · · Score: 1

    Except that a single tab pretty much never dies. I've not had that happen for quite a while now.

    In fact, it stopped happening about the time I uninstalled all plugins (flash, Java, etc). Probably not a coincidence. I use Chrome for the few things that need Flash, which is thankfully getting even rarer these days.

  10. Re:nothing to do with the end of the last ice age? on NASA, NOAA: 2014 Was the Warmest Year In the Modern Record · · Score: 1

    No, the ice age didn't end. The presence of an ice age is defined by the existence of polar ice caps year round. There are still ice caps. We're in an interglacial period within the ice age.

  11. Re:islam on Gunmen Kill 12, Wound 7 At French Magazine HQ · · Score: 1

    I think you've swapped cause and effect there. The cause is being uncivilized bastards, the effect is the belief in Islam.

    Civilization changed Christianity. That's why it's not the same as it was 500 years ago.

  12. Re:islam on Gunmen Kill 12, Wound 7 At French Magazine HQ · · Score: 1

    "And in fact the criminals who murdered these 12 people are not followers of Islam though they claim to do it in the name of Islam."

    BULLSHIT. That's a simple "No True Scotsman" fallacy. It's a religion, they follow the religion. An extremist, homicidal version, but it's still Islam. Just like Anders Behring Breivik is Christian. Their versions of these religions are sick and twisted, but they're still Islam and Christianity, respectively. All it takes to be a member of a religion is to claim belief, and (for some) to go through an initiation ceremony (eg baptism).

  13. Re:Well Then on Tips For Securing Your Secure Shell · · Score: 2

    It's not even about evilness.

    The NSA has a summer program where academic mathematicians (professors) can go to work. Back in the late 90s, my father (a mathematician) participated. Of course, he had to get security clearance, so they know everything important about him.

    He's now quite vocally against the NSA and their dragnet spying.

    If they're not paying special attention to former employees, especially former employees who worked on the actual crypto math, and especially former employees who publicly voice their disagreement with the organization, well, the NSA would have to be utterly moronic.

    It doesn't take evil to be a target.

  14. Re:Multi Transport Navigation on What Isn't There an App For? · · Score: 1

    Even better, the natural extension (that google maps can't do, not even partially at the moment): allow you to purchase tickets if necessary for the trip, in one go.

    EG plan a trip to a different city. Public transit from Hartford, CT to NYC, NY, takes two busses and a train. I should be able to go to google maps, plan the route as normal, click the "public transit" button (that exists), select one of the departure times, click "buy" and have it buy me bus and train tickets for that route. Instead, I have to track down the various means to purchase tickets on several different transit system's websites.

  15. Re:aggregate all my communication channels on What Isn't There an App For? · · Score: 1

    The Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Galaxy S4 both disable the input when the screen is blank. I have not owned or tried any other android phone for making calls. So at least those two (and probably the rest in the series) work properly.

  16. Re:SCOTUS can't be forced to rule on anything on The 5 Cases That Could Pit the Supreme Court Against the NSA · · Score: 1

    "First, do no harm to your corporate sponsors."

    It's not SOTUS's fault most medical textbooks omit the last four words!

  17. Re:MicroSD card? on Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Shrinking Storage Space In iOS 8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've got a 128GB micro SD card (SanDisk) that I got for $100. It works fine in my phone (galaxy S4 google play edition) which only had a 16GB version available when I got it. Even if they'd had a 64GB version, I'd have had no way to expand the storage at all.

    Now, it only works with media and documents, not with applications, and the /data partition Android uses for app data storage is small by default, but by repartitioning the internal SD card I can let it take up almost the entire 16GB and use the external SD for the extra storage. Much better than having no option.

  18. Re:Unicomp keyboards on Know Your Type: Five Mechanical Keyboards Compared · · Score: 1

    Having taken a Unicomp apart, there's definitely a steel plate in the bottom.

  19. Re:Stamps? on Librarians: The Google Before Google · · Score: 1

    Or get a micrometer or vernier caliper and just measure it.

  20. Re:fuel weight on SpaceX To Attempt Falcon 9 Landing On Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship · · Score: 2

    They're only lifting extra mass on the first stage, not the payload. So it doesn't have to move the extra mass as much.

  21. Re:Password protect your phone on Canadian Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Warrantless Cellphone Searches · · Score: 3, Informative

    For rooted phones, the Cryptfs Password app (Or any terminal emulator app) can be used to change the device encryption password without changing the unlock password. The encryption password is only needed on bootup, so be sure you have a way to quickly shut the phone down (lockscreen widget, customized power button long-press, etc).

  22. Re:Yet this doesn't explain on Ability To Consume Alcohol May Have Shaped Human Evolution · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's just due to the dilemma set up in our brains every time we try to cook: Do we cook the potato, or turn it into vodka and drink it? Do I make this wheat into bread, or beer? Add this barley to soup, or make whiskey?

  23. Re:Hydrogen atoms on LHC's 'Heart' Starts Pumping Protons Before Restart · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ionizing hydrogen DOES break apart the molecules. The molecules are held together by their electrons, removing those breaks the bond.

  24. Re:"Random" on Study: Space Rock Impacts Not Random · · Score: 2

    Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is just an application of the Fourier uncertainty principle to the quantum position and momentum wavefunctions. Since those are a Fourier pair, the Fourier uncertainty principle applies. So it's not a matter of which interpretation you pick, it's about whether QM is correct. If the behavior of quanta is not wholly determined by their wavefunctions then QM is wrong, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle might be violated, since the true functions for position and momentum may not be Fourier pairs. This is widely considered to be extremely unlikely. Also, if spacetime is quantized (there's a minimum possible distance and a minimum possible time, and all times/distances are integer multiples of these minima) then the wavefunctions wouldn't be continuous, so the uncertainty principles might not be applicable. Loop Quantum Gravity is one theory that posits this.

  25. Re:so, static == more defects? on The Effect of Programming Language On Software Quality · · Score: 1

    Nope, though it's confusingly worded.

    C, C++, JS, etc, have more instances where someone committed a fix for a bug (as opposed to new code).
    Clojure, Haskell, etc, required fewer bugfix commits.