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User: jaa101

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  1. Re:Not that I have anything to worry about but on When FISA Court Rejects a Surveillance Request, the FBI Issues a NSL Instead · · Score: 1

    Isn't this what Wikileaks is for? Send it there first and then tip off media outlets. Of course the anonymity feature of Wikileaks is not so important in this case since they can probably guess who leaked it but it's still going to be hard to take down.

  2. Re:BPG natively supports 8 to 14 bits per channel on Bellard Creates New Image Format To Replace JPEG · · Score: 1

    Like I said, TIFF is a container format. Saying that TIFF supports BPG is just like saying that HTML supports BPG. It's great in principle ... until someone sends you a TIFF file that uses a codec that your reader doesn't support. So I genuinely have no idea; what's the current list of software like that will correctly handle a TIFF with a BPG-encoded image inside. For example, when did/will libtiff and Photoshop first get support?

    I'm not saying that BPG files are any better in this respect at this stage, though the JavaScript decoder is nice. Obviously any JavaScript TIFF decoder would need to be _much_ bigger that the BPG

  3. Transparency is supported. Pronounciation? on Bellard Creates New Image Format To Replace JPEG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Note that, according to the BPG web site, "An alpha channel is supported" so BPG has transparency.

    How are we going to pronounce this thing? "Bee-Peg" I suppose since "Bee-Pee-Gee" doesn't roll off the tongue.

    Looks good.

  4. BPG natively supports 8 to 14 bits per channel on Bellard Creates New Image Format To Replace JPEG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the web site "BPG natively supports 8 to 14 bits per channel," which is a huge advantage. 8 bits is more of a straight-jacket than people realise and this offers a more portable way for people to pass around high bit-depth issues than camera raw files (proprietary things inside) or TIFF (a complex container format prone to cross-platform issues and poor compression).

  5. Re: Halfwits indeed on Australia Pushes Ahead With Website Blocking In Piracy Fight · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I was posting from a mobile so citing was not practical. See:

    "A Treatise on the theory and practice of Seamanship", Richard Hall Gower, 1808, p. v-vi.

    https://books.google.com/books...

    "In justice to the Author, it becomes necessary for him to state, that during his late voyage to India, Mr. Steel*, a bookseller, of Union-row, Little Tower-hill, republished nearly the whole of the 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th chapters of the first edition of this work, in a voluminous Compilation termed, "Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship." However illiberal such treatment must appear to the truly generous mind, the Author Would the more freely forgive Mr. Steel had he not* by artfully endeavouring to evade the piracy, been guilty of such misrepresentation, as has a tendency to bring his professional knowledge in question. Several deviations of this sort are contained in the 2d volume, 4to, of Mr. Steel's work, and are produced to shew that the Author has just reason for complaining."

  6. Re: Halfwits indeed on Australia Pushes Ahead With Website Blocking In Piracy Fight · · Score: 1

    The term "piracy" has been used for illegal copying for over 200 years. Not saying it's appropriate but it's definitely established usage.

  7. Re:Passwords Shouldn't Be Protected on Virginia Court: LEOs Can Force You To Provide Fingerprint To Unlock Your Phone · · Score: 1

    I definitely agree that it should take more than a simple demand from police before you have to provide a password, or any other form of authentication, for access to your data. Glad I don't live in VA. My only point was that the root of the inconsistency here between biometrics and passwords can be traced to the idea that passwords have fifth amendment protection. There are definitely many issues with requiring passwords in any circumstances, including claims to have forgotten them and around steganography. Passwords have the advantage that, even if you can be legally required to give them up, there's no way to force you do so. The most they might legally do (one would hope) is have you rot in gaol indefinitely.

  8. Passwords Shouldn't Be Protected on Virginia Court: LEOs Can Force You To Provide Fingerprint To Unlock Your Phone · · Score: 1

    The anomaly here is due to the idea that fifth amendment protections should apply to passwords. Passwords can't be incriminating*; they only provide access to existing material that might be incriminating. There have been decisions both ways on this but my money is that eventually SCOTUS will rule that passwords are not protected.

    * One potential loophole might be where someone claims their password itself is incriminating. I think the best solution here would be to allow "use immunity" for passwords and remove the rule about derived evidence for this situation.

  9. LACP is a layer 2 solution, i.e., it works at the ethernet level. The requirement here is for a layer 3 solution that works on the Internet. My guess is that there's nothing off the shelf so he'll have to start coding.

  10. Almost Beyond Living Memory on Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45 · · Score: 1

    The saddest part about this is that soon, probably, we'll live in a world where there's no living memory of what it's like to walk on another world. Armstrong and his successors are no longer young and none of the projects to return to the moon or to go to Mars look likely to happen quickly enough. Who in 1972 would have thought that they were watching the end or an era instead of the beginning? I don't think anyone's made it past 1000 miles up since then.

  11. Re:Is it really much more than goes on already? on Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied On a Whole City · · Score: 1

    This system is going to see plenty of things that aren't "in public", even without peeping in windows. What is your expectation of privacy in your backyard? Could there be a constitutional up-side in the US though? Maybe everyone will be able to have their cases thrown out due to the warrantless surveillance conducted on them prior to their arrest.

  12. Re:Perjury? on Blender Foundation Video Taken Down On YouTube For Copyright Violation · · Score: 1

    Do we know this is the result of a DMCA request? Doesn't Youtube give studios like Sony an interface to take down what they want? So then it's back to being as annoying as hell but not legally actionable in any way :-(.

  13. Tried Before; Doesn't Work on Your Car Will Tell You How To Hit the Next Green Light · · Score: 1

    This was trailed years ago in Melbourne Australia. As you approach the lights signs advise driving 60, 50, 40, etc. as appropriate but sometimes, show no speed. Drivers quickly learn that this means they need to speed to catch the lights ... so they do. Police don't like this so the trial is killed. There's no way to show legal speeds in a way that drivers can't figure out when it's best for them to speed. This can't work until we're all driving automated vehicles that set their own speed.

  14. Re:As usual, Outlook is conspicuous... on Microsoft Launches Office For iPad: Includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint · · Score: 1

    I find the iOS mail and calendar apps work well enough with Exchange. Apple may have resisted having Outlook present as a competitor to these core apps.

  15. Finland is in the EU on Finnish Police Board Wants Justification For Wikipedia's Fundraising Campaign · · Score: 1

    If it's the police initiating this then they must feel it's a criminal matter and so extradition becomes a possibility, and Finland is part of the EU. If they want to play hard ball then Jimmy might have to cut down on visits to Europe because, once he's there, it will be European courts who get to decide who has jurisdiction.

  16. Plasma: better picture, worse choice on Panasonic Announces an End To Plasma TVs In March · · Score: 1

    It's clear to me that plasmas give better quality image but I still choose LCD. The plasma issue of burn-in is the main worry but they're also more power hungry and heavy too. Plasmas easily beat LCDs for black levels, colour accuracy, response time and viewing angles but LCDs are good enough. Even if my kids didn't spend hours playing video games I know somehow there would be burn-in and then I'd want to buy a new set ... which is just a waste. Plasma being the losing technology is not all down to marketing.

  17. Cars Float, Submarines Sink on Elon Musk Making a Working Version of James Bond's Submersible Car · · Score: 2

    The fundamental engineering problem here is that cars float and submarines sink. Ballasting that car with enough weight so it's close to neutrally buoyant will ensure it performs nothing like a sports car on the road. This is the kind of issue that made lead acid batteries such a great choice for submarines in the first place.

    The best approach is going to involve minimising the volume where water is excluded, i.e., ensuring that as much of the vehicle is flooded by water as possible when it dives. At least, as a sports car, the interior is very small so they may have a chance of making it work.

  18. Re:Latency, latency, latency! on Dropbox Wants To Replace Your Hard Disk · · Score: 1

    Just because a file is shared with Dropbox doesn't mean that accesses involve a network round-trip to their servers. The files are still stored locally (on an SSD if you have one) and only synchronised when a change is made on another machine. Dropbox is not the same as a Windows "network drive" over SMB/CIFS or Linux NFS.

  19. Re:This shouldn't be necessary on Texas Poised To Pass Unprecedented Email Privacy Bill · · Score: 2

    Apparently the trick in progress here is that people already gave their email to someone else, namely their service provider. The legal logic is that this borks their expectation of privacy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States from 1967. One might hope SOTUS will revisit their decision in the light of the current state of technology but until they do you're stuck relying on legislative protect rather than constitutional.

  20. Repeating History? on California Lawmaker Wants 3-D Printers To Be Regulated · · Score: 1

    Relevant: http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-05/news/mn-913_1_soviet-union. Those who don't study history are condemned to repeat it.

  21. Re:Google is covered here. on Can Google Base Ads On E-mails Sent To Gmail Accounts? · · Score: 1

    For copyright purposes both physical and electronic mail is the property of the sender or, more precisely, the author.

  22. Not Really Freefall (Physics Lesson) on Skydiver Leaps From 18 Miles Up In 'Space Jump' Practice · · Score: 3, Informative

    Freefall strictly speaking means 9.8m/s/s which, after 228 seconds, multiplies out to 5000mph. That's an order of magnitude more than Baumgartner's speed. Wikipedia explains:

    "The example of a falling skydiver who has not yet deployed a parachute is not considered free fall from a physics perspective, since they experience a drag force which equals their weight once they have achieved terminal velocity (see below). However, the term "free fall skydiving" is commonly used to describe this case in everyday speech, and in the skydiving community."

    Still, terminal velocity for a human at sea level is about 120mph which is 4.5 times slower than the quoted 536mph. Taking the square root gives an atmospheric pressure 2.1 times less than normal which translates to him popping the 'chute at about 25,000. Actually he had a pressure suit which would probably slow him down so it could have been higher than that.

  23. Re:JPL impact risk table on Asteroid Will Make Close Pass To Earth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since we can predict the next (2013) close approach very accurately we're very confident it will be a miss. Therefore that approach doesn't rate a mention in the table.

    The trouble comes in that, while we know the 2013 approach distance will be greater than 0km from the surface (>6400km from the centre) there's still some uncertainty. The earth is massive and the close approach will cause a relatively large change in the orbit of DA14. The size of the change is inversely proportional to the square of the approach distance. Thus even a small uncertainty for 2013 results in a large uncertainty for subsequent approaches. Celestial billiards at work.

  24. Everyone Must Understand the Voting Process on In Theory And Practice, Why Internet-Based Voting Is a Bad Idea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In my view an important property of any ballot is that the great majority of people must be able to understand the whole process. That's the only way for people to have confidence that there's a reasonable chance of detecting and preventing rigging. It also rules out pretty well any form of electronic voting. Internet security involves very serious maths that very few people can handle.

    Around here we still write numbers in squares on pieces of paper and drop them in the ballot box. It works. The cost is tiny compared to the cost of government. I just can't see the advantages of more automation being worth the risk.

    People might think it weird that an IT guy would have this luddite view but I think, on the contrary, I'm better placed than most to know what could go wrong.

  25. Re:The Vertically Challenged Planet on New Horizons: One Billion Miles From Pluto · · Score: 1

    You do realise they do course corrections? Yes, the maths they do is neat, especially when they need to take relativistic effects into account. There's a limit to how accurately the spacecraft can set its course so they plan to fine-tune multiple times during a mission.