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User: fafalone

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  1. Re:Sometimes an old system is best on US Voting Machines Cracked In 90 Minutes At DEFCON (thehill.com) · · Score: 1

    Well then why don't you have your physical ballot company hire an army of lobbyists and start buying off state politicians, like Diebold et al. did to get them replaced in the first place. No better way to secure your god-given right to profit at the expense of the average person.
    Just ditch that whole 'confidence and security' spiel; nobody cares about that.

  2. Re:No I think he's a failure on Feds Crack Trump Protesters' Phones To Charge Them With Felony Rioting (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 2

    Oh come on, I hate the orange menace and his evil goblin AG as much as anyone (as my comment history would show), and they represent a great threat to many important areas where we've made progress (the tiny bit of drug policy reform Obama managed inc. civil asset forfeiture (legalized theft), trans protections, womens health coverage, DOJ oversight of local out-of-control police depts, etc), but you can't seriously be claiming that Trump and Sessions are in any way going to move us back to blacks-only bathrooms, lunch counters, and back of the bus.
    The absolute worst you're going to get is encouraging states to have voter ID laws which have a disparate impact on poor voters, which then in turn hurts minorities more because they're more likely to be poor. It does no one any good to discredit grievances about the countless serious abuses of this dumpster fire presidency by claiming they're bringing back Jim Crow.

  3. Re:well yes, do it here too ! on China Forces Muslim Minority To Install Spyware On Their Phones (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    It will come soon. All of your cloud files and emails if you use Google/MS are already hashed and scanned. First for child pornography, which being something horrible not too many objected. Now increasingly for copyright enforcement. I have no doubt Windows will soon scan your local files too, and like the cloud it will start with CP, which you can't object to without being labeled a pedophile yourself. Then copyright. If you think the list of banned materials won't expand, and that particular groups won't be targeted, you haven't been paying attention.

  4. The police didn't kick in his door, shoot his dogs or throw stun grenades in a crib.

    They would have, had this taken place in the US (or, tellingly, a 3rd world totalitarian state) instead of Hungary. If little Bou Bou gets a flashbang in his crib because they're looking for someone with petty non-violent drug charges, and shooting dogs is the police's favorite sport (one cop has shot 60 himself now)... imagine an evil computer hacker interfering with an American company and their God-given right to earn profit, a far more serious offense.

  5. As for backdooring encryption, the fact that governments can openly push for it without having their asses handed to them by the people at whose pleasure they allegedly serve, is so wrong in so many ways that it's simply mind-boggling.

    Ah see what you're missing is that it's not that they don't care at all, it's just preventing the government and hackers from reading all your private info pales in comparison to the far more important issues that determine who people vote for, like which bathroom transfolks should pee in.

  6. Re:What? Why? on Russia Says in Talks With US To Create Cyber Security Working Group (reuters.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What does anything you said have to do with Trump or Trump's objectives? Trump doesn't care about historical conflicts, doesn't care about those other countries, wants to work with Russia specifically, doesn't care about their technological astuteness, and absolutely 100% does not care what people like experts and scientists think in cybersecurity or any other subject. He's flooded the swamp with sycophants, and the Republicans won't oppose anything he does no matter how horrible because it would compromise The Party, and it's Party First, their own interests second, and the best interests of America or the people exist only as a soundbite they talk about to advance #1 and 2.

  7. Ethics? I pay for the TV subscription. Anything that airs on TV I can watch doesnt even approach unethical. So that's virtually all shows, movies, and music. My fair use right to record and format shift doesn't cease to exist because I obtain a copy easier, or because the media companies have an ongoing campaign to prevent personal copies of what you legally watch.

  8. Re:Slipper slope on Porn Websites in UK Ordered To Introduce Age Checks From Next Year (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    A lot of people don't realize it, but the US bans some porn made between consenting adults too, under obscenity laws. E.g. Max Hardcore, who was sent to prison for it. It's survived extensive appeals too, and in modern times (2000s). And Sessions will probably be worse than Ashcroft. Yet for some reason those disgusting crush videos are ok (small animals being stomped to death). US vs UK are locked in an epic quest to be crowned Ms. Puritanical Oppressor, with the talent portion being a Hypocrisy-Off with who can allow the most awful violent content.

  9. Re:Lots of things make sense on US Appeals Court Upholds Nondisclosure Rules For Surveillance Orders (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    What's really sad that if put to a vote today, the Bill of Rights would never pass. Not with a popular vote, and definitely not with state or federal legislative bodies.
    Your comment is taken as sarcasm here, but it's frightening just how many people would think it's serious and agree with it 100%.

  10. Re:US Appeals Court Is Wrong on US Appeals Court Upholds Nondisclosure Rules For Surveillance Orders (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    So what? When has blatantly going against the plain meaning of the constitution ever stopped the courts from letting the government do whatever it wants? My favorite is still the drug war... a federal domestic police force has the right to raid your home, imprison you, and seize your assets, when you've broken no laws of your state, simply for growing a particular type of plant, because, get this, because you grew it yourself, that means you didn't buy it from someone else, and that someone else might then buy less from yet another person, who may possibly be in another state, and this somehow effects the market.. so it's all good because the feds can "regulate interstate commerce". Yeah right, that's not even in the same universe as what was meant.
    There's also such classics as 'what the cop says his dog said counts as probable cause to tear your car apart', and the ever-lovely 'the cop said he smelled marijuana, so it's reasonable to conduct a roadside cavity search if they can't find the drugs you so obviously have in your car', and 'the NSA can go ahead and spy on everyone, because nobody can prove they themselves were surveilled, and they're not entitled to find out.'

    So yeah they're wrong here too, but the courts don't care, they're there to rubber stamp civil liberties violations, not do something like actually protect the people.

  11. Re:The FCC should make a simple rule on State Prison Officials Blame An Escape On Drones And Cellphones (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    Do you have any idea how much it costs to bribe a guard to bring in a cellphone? Or pay to borrow someone elses? A lot more than the regular phone costs. Prisoners get years more time if they're caught with a cell phone, or months/years in solitary for lifers, they're not going around letting poor inmates chat with their families out of the kindness of their heart. And eliminating prison commissary just isn't a helpful suggestion, it will backfire, if you were speaking to luxury items beyond phone calls.

  12. Re:This discussion has come up on I2P... on Sci-Hub 'Pirate Bay For Scientists' Sued by American Chemical Society Over Cloned Site (ibtimes.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    People cheer when the FBI breaks Tor to seize a child porn site. We won't cheer when they inevitably use the same abilities and legal precedents to enforce copyright law against Tor sites and users, but it's too late. When we complained about them compromising the whole Tor network, we were informed anyone who doesn't support absolutely any method to stop CP is simply a pedophile themselves.

  13. Re:What could possibly go wrong? on 'Call For a Ban On Child Sex Robots' (bbc.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Recently I came upon a case that's even more absurd than that. In New York, a man was arrested for 'manufacture of child pornography', when he was already on supervision for the same charge. Must be some child abusing monster right? No, it turns out all this clown did (both the new and original charge) is cut children's faces out of catalogs and glue them on pictures of an adult pornstars body. Sick yeah, but illegal, nevermind the same charge as someone recording sex with a toddler? You've got to be kidding me.

  14. Re:Seriously? on 'Call For a Ban On Child Sex Robots' (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Yet another example of sadomoralism: "This activity is so morally repugnant that laws should absolutely ban it no matter how much worse the collateral damage is than the original activity." and "Your sinful behavior is hurting yourself, so we're going to hurt you even more to stop you from doing it."
    It's an extremely destructive line of ultra conservative and usually religious thought (apparently, that it's evil overrides the 'judge not' and 'love thy neighbor' bits). The biggest example is of course the drug war. "You're destroying your life with drugs? We're going to lock you in a cage for a few years and saddle you with a felony conviction!" and "It doesn't matter how much prohibition increases the harm drugs cause society, drug use is so evil it has to be banned, and stopped no matter how much of the bill of rights we have to piss on, irregardless of the fact it can never work and doesn't actually reduce drug use!"
    So along those same lines now we get "Having sex with a childlike doll/robot is so horribly evil that we absolutely can't allow it, now matter how many more children are actually abused because of it!" Degrees of immoral don't matter, you'll just have to find another way to reduce child abuse, no matter how much you've been unable to already, because allowing some pervert to manage his urges by doing something gross and morally offensive but involving no actual harm to anyone else, is offensive to me. There's some evidence the net balance of child pornography might fall to the 'satisfies urges to prevent hurting a real child' side, but the material is so morally offensive that even saying it's worth considering whether the ban on mere possession is a net harm or a net good now that there's no longer such a thing as a commercial market will get you labeled as a pedophile or apologist/sympathizer, and even if conclusively proven to be true, decriminalization would never in a million years be allowed. Expect the same with child sex dolls/robots (the UK already will arrest you for importing a child sex doll, not to mention Australia with its 'no small breasted women in porn even if they're 30' garbage).

  15. Re:Fascinating on Kanye West Is Leaving Tidal Because the Company Owes Him Money (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    It's a miracle of technological convergence. Back in the old dark ages, nerds had to go to two different websites to read about the things they cared about, computers and the Kardashians and who they're having sex with. But no more! Slashdot's revolutionary innovation of covering both of the things nerds care about is a huge step forward in synergistic apps.

  16. Re:Both are bad on While Chrome Dominates, Microsoft Edge Struggles To Attract New Users (neowin.net) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Firefox is 100% dedicated to becoming indistinguishable from Chrome. They've been continually dumbing it down and shitting up the UI for years, and soon they're trashing the one remaining bright spot, plugins. Losing NPAPI plugins wasn't the problem, the real issue is coming this November with the elimination of XUL. The new WebExtensions offers far less power and customization. The only reason I don't use Chrome now is because of its god awful extension capabilities, so once Firefox is similarly crippled the last reason to use it flies out the window. They don't understand how they got a large userbase, don't understand why it shrunk, and don't understand that their current userbase doesn't want ChromeFox and cloning Chrome won't attract new ones.
    So no, nobody is going to be moving to Firefox, nor should they, and their existing userbase will largely be abandoning them this year. I'll be using a pre-57 version for as long as that's viable, then that's it.

    You say Yes to Opera, but does it really offer a compelling alternative to MS/Chrome like Firefox used to? Doesn't seem that way. The Pale Moon fork of Firefox seems like the only reasonable alternative at this point. But that's never going to be mainstream. So Edge v. Chrome here we come.

  17. Re:I use Edge for Netflix and nothing else on While Chrome Dominates, Microsoft Edge Struggles To Attract New Users (neowin.net) · · Score: 1

    I honestly don't think it's about piracy protection. It's definitely not about hard protection, because even their 4K streams are currently available on pirate sites. And preventing casual piracy could be done in any browser. So what does that leave? I suspect they're being paid or threatened to limit support to whatever particular technologies MS or possibly the film studios want.

  18. Re:Profit is a tax on productivity on 24 Women Allege Sexual Harassment By Investors, and Another VC Gets Demoted (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    (men are far more likely to be convicted than women for the same offense and once convicted men serve considerably longer prison sentences).

    And according to a certain Federal District Judge, this is right and just, because women commit crimes for less evil reasons than men do, so they deserve far lesser sentences than men for the same exact crime, which was his response to commentary on an article suggesting they should rarely receive any time, to which he strongly objected because they deserve less, not none. In stark contrast to his normally excellent and eminently reasonable comments, this coming from a sitting federal judge was shockingly sexist and offensive to the notion of equal protection:

    After sentencing both women and men for drug crimes over the last 25 years I confess to frequently sentencing women less harshly than men in those types of cases. Why?

    For reasons I donâ(TM)t understand, women caught up in the drug trade frequently lack a meaningful sense of self. In that respect, there is a stark difference between male and female offenders. As a class, women are, or so I think, (1) more easily and quickly addicted than men; (2) relatively incapable of independent thought and (3) child-like in their need for approval from their male co-defendants. Where I cut women drug offenders a big break is under Rule 35b after they have ratted out their male counterparts. That act of self-preservation, while not unique to women in and of itself, is often the first time those women have stood up for themselvesâ"not so for most men.

    (I've put his name and the site/article this took place at on blast before, so I'll refrain from publicly doing it again, anyone who really wants to know can just msg me)

  19. Re:What's the big deal? on Windows 10 Will Soon Protect Files and Folders From Ransomware (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    And what percentage of Windows users do you think even understand that sentence?

  20. What a wonderful parallel universe you must live in where nobody is scared to act against the best interest of the owner of their company, even if there's not an official directive, because they'd never be penalized by a hugely coincidental yet officially unrelated action.

  21. Re: SJW extremists, beware! on Google Announces New Measures To Fight Extremist YouTube Videos (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Oh please, people like you never acknowledge the central problem with 'use the bathroom of your genitals': if a transman like Buck Angel walked into the ladies room, women would flip their shit. And after he asserts he has a vagina, what is the reaction supposed to be? Call the cops because he's indistinguishable from a normal cis-man and have them examine his genitals? Have to drop his pants or show his ID to an attendant or any woman that asks? Entirely unworkable or excessively oppressive no matter what, because without verifying the parts of everyone entering there's no way to keep normal men out of the womens room in a system where using the one for your parts is legally mandated (and not just ignored), because unlike with transwoman you can rarely tell a transman from a biological man. And that's the part you have to address, because no man really gives a shit when a woman comes in to use the mens facilities, trans or not. Mandate and get it perfectly enforced, women wind up *more* uncomfortable.

  22. Re: Just to keep it straight on my scorecard on Physicists Discover A Possible Break In the Standard Model of Physics (futurism.com) · · Score: 1

    By the time we have the technology to move people to another planet at a technology level, materials and economic cost that is less than just fixing our own planet (assuming you're not talking about within our own solar system, which are all already far more hostile than even the absolute worst climate disaster on earth) it will be because the sun is going to explode, assuming we don't just kill ourselves from our own inventions in the 5 billion years before that happens.

  23. Re: Anti-Apple Bias on The Right To Repair Movement Is Forcing Apple To Change (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    You mean 'which word did I really mean' checker, since as you point out, lessor is a word, probably wouldn't even show up on most grammar checkers with that usage, and definitely wouldn't show up on spell check. Sure was a nice glass house you had though...

  24. Re:What *can* FCC do? on FCC Can't Cap the Cost of Cross-State Prison Phone Calls, Court Rules (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    What's surprising is that they even consider it "purely intrastate". Well, not surprising actually, just sad. Protecting people from being exploited doesn't get the same constitutional exemptions that punishing people does.
    The same courts say that the federal government can arrest and imprison you for a plant you grow on your own land exclusively for your own consumption, because that means you're not buying it from someone else who potentially might get their supply from a source that might be in another state, and that effects the market, so that's enough to call it interstate commerce that the feds can regulate (Wickard v. Filburn, Gonzales v. Raich). With a reading like that, the fact that the same wires cross state lines and the same company does business in other states and almost certainly some information about the call is stored on a computer in another state, well that's clearly even more of an interstate activity! But sadly for prisoners and their families they don't qualify for the Drug Exception to all limits the constitution places on the federal government.

  25. Re:Dangerous tools on Opioid Dealers Embrace the Dark Web To Send Deadly Drugs by Mail (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Just a point of clarification to an otherwise good post... Diamorphine is frequently used in the UK. The full mu agonist semi-synthetics are not clinically all that different from eachother. Diamorphine, as most know, is 3,6-diacetylmorphine that is rapidly, before receptor binding, deacetylated into plain morphine in the body. It's superior to morphine in some measures too; for example if someone already tolerant needs rapid IV relief from acute pain, morphine and codeine are inappropriate as a large amount at once triggers a painful histamine release. Hydromorphone and oxymorphone share similar profiles, but you'd be hard pressed to find an addict that didn't consider those as good or better than heroin anyway. Bias again diamorphine, as a pharmaceutical product, is derived pretty much exclusively from the additional harms associated with black market preparations of it.