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User: gorzek

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Comments · 1,208

  1. Ugh. on Newspapers Cut Wikileaks Out of Shield Law · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is unfuckingbelievable. The so-called journalists offering up Wikileaks as a sacrificial lamb should be ashamed of themselves.

  2. Re:I don't understand on Microsoft Patents OS Shutdown · · Score: 2, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, "patent patenting" joke kills YOU!

  3. Re:It's not "Free" to begin with. on 'Free' H.264 a Precursor To WebM Patent War? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The point is that Firefox doesn't need to implement any codec whatsoever. Just pass video decoding to the OS, and worry about whether the OS supports the codec in question, be it in hardware or software.

  4. Re:Already used in the UK on Building Prisons Without Walls Using GPS Devices · · Score: 1

    Exactly. And what's most frightening is that this happens to otherwise ordinary, well-adjusted people It doesn't take a particular "type" of person to become an abusive tyrant. Pretty much anyone will do it under the right circumstances. That's what was most unsettling to the scientists conducting these experiments--and why they were cut short for fear of causing real psychological or physical injury to people.

  5. Re:Already used in the UK on Building Prisons Without Walls Using GPS Devices · · Score: 1

    Just like inmates get to sue guards that beat on them, right?

    Not saying this is a terrible idea, considering inmates are likely to be abused no matter the circumstances of their punishment. If a remote zapping device is used, though, you would at least be able to track every time it's used and under what circumstances, so it should make abuse less of a problem--assuming there is actual supervision going on, of course.

  6. Re:Buy one get one? on NIH Orders Halt To Embryonic Stem Cell Research · · Score: 1

    A Palin endorsement appears to be quite toxic for Republican/Teabagger primary candidates, lately. While Palin might be attractive to ~20% of the electorate, the rest are scared shitless of what she might do if she got her hands on real power. Neither moderates nor liberals like her, generally speaking.

  7. Re:Buy one get one? on NIH Orders Halt To Embryonic Stem Cell Research · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why? What do the Republicans have to say that would be convincing to anyone but their fellow travelers? I say let 'em get up there and display their stupidity for everyone to see.

  8. Re:Buy one get one? on NIH Orders Halt To Embryonic Stem Cell Research · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree. The Democrats should call the GOP on their threats to filibuster. Make them do it!

  9. Re:Typical Dinosaur Mentality on Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age · · Score: 1

    Now I know what's really wrong with the "old timers": their sense of humor has expired.

  10. Re:Translation on Developer Demands Pirate Bay Not Remove Torrent · · Score: 1

    Well, it's not like TPB would remove the torrent in the first place, so he might as well turn it into a PR win. "Look at the morons who can't even crack my software properly! Point and laugh, everyone! HA-HA!"

    That is a savvy businessman.

  11. Re:Irrevocability of public domain dedication? on Glibc Is Finally Free Software · · Score: 1

    Don't you pretty much disavow your responsibility by putting something into the public domain? If no one owns it, no one can be responsible for it, I would think.

  12. Re:FTS: on FCC Fights To Maintain Indecency Policy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought the whole purpose of the V-chip and the TV-[X] ratings was so that content didn't have to be restricted. Parents could just set their TVs to not show anything above, say, TV-PG. And yet we still have this insane push to censor broadcast TV.

    Only in America can a show about investigating grisly murders run for 20 years but a couple seconds of titty is worth millions in fines.

    (But I love Law & Order.)

  13. Re:Why I despair on GPS Tracking Without a Warrant Declared Legal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even in the comments to this article, at least one person echoed the common sentiment, "I don't do anything illegal so I have nothing to worry about."

    People seem oblivious to the fact that, if these sorts of encroachments are tolerated, authorities will only seek more and more power--until something you do every day actually is illegal, and we'll have the monitoring infrastructure to back it up and enforce it.

  14. Re:For me on Should Developers Have Access To Production? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The whole article is absurdly vague, anyway. Sometimes developers need access to production--such as on a critical system--and sometimes they don't. Had the article between written toward a narrower domain, something more specific than just "Web sites," it might actually be useful. As it is, it's too light and fluffy to have much real-world impact.

  15. Re:For me on Should Developers Have Access To Production? · · Score: 1

    Judging from your attitude, you must be a joy to work with. :)

  16. Re:For me on Should Developers Have Access To Production? · · Score: 1

    Production hacking very rarely breaks anything, fortunately. The system has been developed for 20+ years so it has a lot of fault tolerance built into it by now. The worst possible case is a break in script fulfillment, which might happen for a couple minutes out of an entire year.

    I'm sure it's going to give me gray hairs, though.

  17. Re:For me on Should Developers Have Access To Production? · · Score: 1

    I make changes directly in production on a pharmacy benefit management system. If I screw up, people can't get their pills.

    It's fun to live dangerously. :-p

  18. Re:What a coincidence on RIAA President Says Copyright Law "Isn't Working" · · Score: 1

    The only way you could do it is to have some massive database that can quickly and easily identify a work as copyrighted or not based on a small sample of it. This kind of "fingerprinting" already exists for music. Not sure about video. Getting it all together into one big database would be a real pain, though--and so would legally forcing YouTube, et al to use it.

  19. Re:Game Over on The Misleading World of Atari 2600 Box Art · · Score: 1

    Am I the only person to notice that it apparently says "SNATCHO" in the lower-left corner of the rendered title screen?

  20. Re:Bland and inoffensive on Windows 95 Turns 15 · · Score: 1

    OSR2 was pretty nice, as the 9x versions of Windows went. FAT32, USB, pretty stable. It still sucked to high heaven but I kept an OSR2 machine around to play Win95/DOS games on once I switched to 2000 for daily use.

  21. Re:What about short distance? on Is RFID Really That Scary? · · Score: 1

    Consider the cost involved in a) deploying enough tracking hardware to be meaningful, b) implementing the infrastructure to carry the data, and c) putting enough storage behind it to hold records indefinitely, and it is not hard to conclude that this is a rather impractical, expensive endeavor with very little potential payoff.

    Collecting data is a big part of the problem. The US government already collects vastly more data than it can effectively analyze. You basically have two possible approaches: targeted surveillance, which is much cheaper, easier, and reliable; or blind collection backed by advanced data mining, the latter of which is still in its infancy.

  22. Re:Either that on Google's CEO Warns Kids Will Have to Change Names to Escape "Cyber Past" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't believe how many people are misinterpreting the GP's post.

    If the penalty for a sex crime is death, or even "just" some kind of obscene torture, you create a perverse incentive to not leave a witness--in short, you are better off killing your victim since the penalty is going to be the same, and at least with a dead victim you have a better chance of getting away with it.

  23. Re:Convenient on Linux X.org Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, fixing a bug might take a line or two of code.

    But the time required to fully test it and make sure it doesn't break anything else? That's where all the real costs are. It's why Microsoft doesn't generally have a fast turnaround on Windows security fixes.

  24. Re:So. on Employees Would Steal Data When Leaving a Job · · Score: 1

    It may not be, but most people aren't going to fight over 2 weeks' worth of unemployment when they were quitting anyway.

  25. Re:So. on Employees Would Steal Data When Leaving a Job · · Score: 1

    I've had friends who turned in their 2-week notice and were fired on the spot. No severance, obviously, and they couldn't get unemployment, either, since they'd tendered a resignation.