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User: elwinc

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  1. Maybe it's time to tax intellectual property on TPP Scuttles Attempts To Fix Orphan Works · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, I get it, intellectual property is a real thing and needs a certain amount of protection. But you know what? Protecting property costs money! I own a condo and I pay taxes on it - something like 2% of the property value per year! Obviously the tax rates for IP need to be set at a reasonable level, but if a company is claiming x billion dollars of IP, perhaps they ought to pay a tax of a few hundred thousand for property protection. And if they lapse in their tax payments, perhaps their ownership rights lapse too, just as the city or state would take over my property if I stopped paying taxes.

  2. Denali: It Ain't a River in Egypt! on "McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali" · · Score: 1

    According to http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... Mark Twain?

  3. Mod Parent Up on IT Pros Blast Google Over Android's Refusal To Play Nice With IPv6 · · Score: 0

    Mod parent up!

  4. Re:That's pretty surprising for 2015 Android IMO on IT Pros Blast Google Over Android's Refusal To Play Nice With IPv6 · · Score: 1

    Android supports RDNSS for IPv6, but not DHCP for IPv6. Basically, there is no need for DHCP in IPv6. There is no need for an IPv6 address to be dynamic. Your carrier has multiple ways to supply one or more global IPv6 addresses to your mobile device, and to renumber the devices under its control at any time. Since your carrier is responsible for routing the IPv6 packets from your mobile device, it's up to your carrier to assign IPv6 addresses. For use on a local network, your device can also use IPv6 stateless auto configuration. Also, none of these options exclude any others: IPv6 assumes devices will have multiple addresses at the same time. Finally, IPv4 and IPv6 are not mutually exclusive. If you are behind a firewall, using addresses like 10.x.y.z or l192.168.x.y, then your device is capable of using IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously.

    On my android 4.1 phone, connected via Verizon, I can see both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address. On my phone, tap Settings, scroll to the bottom, tap About phone, then tap Status, and you'll see a field of two IP addresses. With wifi turned on, I have a 192.168.x.y address on my home wifi network. If I turn wifi off, I get an address that begins 100.71, presumably assigned by Verizon and globally routable. With or without wifi, I have a second address with 8 fields, much longer, beginning 2600:1000. That's clearly an IPv6 address assigned by Verizon. Whether or not Verizon will route my IPv6 packets is another question.

  5. Re:DUHHHHH on Kaspersky Explains Why They Won't Say Who Hacked Them · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whoever hacked Kaspersky was probably hunting moles. From the outside, it looks as if Kaspersky has been positively brilliant, revealing state level actors, cracking stuxnet, duqu, & duqu2. But what if some other state level actor had been feeding Kaspersky? What if spies, not security researchers, told Kaspersky where to look? It would be worth a lot for the authors of stuxnet etc to be able to confirm or deny that Kaspersky worked without help. That's the best reason I can see for hacking into Kaspersky.

  6. Re:I don't get it on Supreme Court May Decide the Fate of APIs (But Also Klingonese and Dothraki) · · Score: 2

    Actually, Sun Microsystems made a VM and, in 2006, released it under the GPL. So the only real question at this point is whether there is anything in Dalvic that was not released by Sun in 2006-7. Oracle can hope for control over a few small crumbs, but most of the cookies in the Java jar have been free and open source for over 9 years.

  7. Re: False: Sveriges Riksbank Prize on Fixing China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions For Them · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exactly. For example, every time Krugman gets involved in a debate about the banking sector, it becomes clear why he got the award. The Honorary Nobel Prize he got was handed to him by the head honchos at the Swedish Central Bank, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when his views are heavily leaned towards a more finance sector friendly Keynesian way of thinking.

    So trying to boost his credibility with this "Nobel Prize" will only work on people who don't know what kind of a rigged anti-prize it is.

    Absolutely false. The Riksbank gets its authority from the Swedish Parliament.

    As you can see in this photo, Krugman is being handed his Nobel by King Carl XVI Gustaf who is a strictly ceremonial head of state. The King may be a customer of the bank, but he isn't a honcho at the bank; Parliament controls it.

    However, figurehead Carl XVI Gustaf has no say in who gets the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; that is decided by this group of professors. Not the Sveriges Riksbank at all. Yeah, I know, you've got a conspiracy theory to explain why all these professors are puppets of a bank. Bullshit.

    I just don't get why people post lies on the internet that are so easily checked on the internet. Makes no sense dude; for a ten second chuckle, you've branded yourself a liar in the Slashdot community. Where's the win in that?

  8. Re:Moto X on Ask Slashdot: Do 4G World Phones Exist? · · Score: 1

    I think the thing to do is have two SIM cards; one for USA and the other for the UK. That's what I did on a trip to Italy, and I'm assuming not too many band differences between Italy and Scotland. With that in mind, hopefully my Moto X experience in Italy will be helpful for someone.

    I took a stock Verizon Moto X to Rome, Italy. No unlocking, no rooting, no special side-loaded apps; just a plain vanilla Moto X. I pulled out the Verizon nano SIM and plugged in a T.I.M. (Telecom Italia Mobile or something close to that) nano SIM. It just worked! (Note: you'll need a paper clip or earring stud or something to pop the tiny SIM tray.)

    When I boot the phone with the foreign SIM card, it first asks for a 4-digit SIM PIN. This number is printed on one of the cards from T.I.M. Then the phone puts up an annoying message: "Sorry, this SIM card is from an unknown source". Then it goes to the home screen, and all is good. Two small annoyances: you have to enter the 4-digit SIM PIN every time the phone boots (you get 3 tries at the PIN - after that I don't know what happens); and it seems to want a reboot about every 2 or 3 days - the symptom is data seems very slow or gone, but a reboot (with 4-digit SIM PIN) makes it all good again.

    In the place along the top notification bar where the phone would (in the USA) display the "4G LTE" logo, in Rome it would often display "H+", presumably indicating some kind of HPSA+ connection. I know nothing about European signaling standards, but presumably H+ is good.

    We used voice and maps pretty heavily: for example, speak the command "navigate to the Borghese Gallery," choose walking, and you're on your way. Mostly it could understand my english names for places: the Pantheon, the Vatican Museum, the Trevi Fountain, etc. If I had an Italian street name or piazza name, I'd have to type that in (for example, it never understood the voice command "nearby gelato" or "nearby gelateria."). On the other hand, commands like "find nearby ATM" or "find nearby artist supply store" worked pretty well. YMMV

  9. Re:None of the baggage of C? on Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift · · Score: 1

    According to https://developer.apple.com/li... Swift includes several C pointer types.

    C Syntax ---- Swift Syntax

    void * ------ COpaquePointer
    Type * ------ UnsafePointer
    Type ** ----- AutoreleasingUnsafePointer

    There are several more C pointer types on that page, but you get the flavor. You can take that C baggage into your room, unpack it, and make it all home-like.

  10. Re:Just what we need, another C++ clone on Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift · · Score: 1

    ... a badly implemented subset of C++

    You mean like C++?

    Not exactly. I have no particular objections to the implementations of C++ I've encountered.

    Nope, it's the design of C++ that makes me want to scream...

  11. None of the baggage of C? on Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Many sites are reporting Swift as having "none of the baggage of C."

    However, they also report that "Swift code can still be mixed with standard C and Objective C code in the same project."

    Seems to me that if you can call C routines, C can happily malloc() and free() the heap and leave stale pointers into freed heap. Likewise, C can happily point into the stack and leave pointers into stale stack frames, and point past the end of arrays, etc.. I don't think they can get rid of the "baggage of C" withoud building all kinds of performance killiing safety checks into the C code. If I'm wrong about this, please don't hesitate to let me know!

  12. Re:Off-topic Swift baggage on Apple WWDC 2014: Tim Cook Unveils Yosemite · · Score: 1

    Many sites are reporting Swift as having "none of the baggage of C."

    However, they also report Swift code can still be mixed with standard C and Objective C code in the same project."

    If you can call C routines, C can happily malloc() and free() the heap and leave stale pointers into freed heap. Likewise, C can happily point into the stack and leave pointers into stale stack frames, and point past the end of arrays, etc.. I don't think they can get rid of the "baggage of C" withoud building all kinds of performance killiing safety checks into the C code. If I'm wrong about this, please don't hesitate to let me know!

  13. Re:I cooled off on Samsung... on A Different Kind of Linux Smartphone: Samsung To Sell Tizen-Based Model Z · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that TouchWiz layer is pretty annoying.

    Check out Motorola. The Moto X (4.7" diag) is very highly reviewed & I like mine far better than my earlier Samsung Galaxy Nexus. My mom must bought herself a Droid Maxx (5" diag) that's pretty good also. Being owned by Google, Moto keeps its UI pretty close to pure android.

  14. Re: Myth of the Obama Bank Bailout on Sifting Mt. Gox's Logs Reveals Suspicious Trading Patterns · · Score: 5, Informative

    .... Do you remember those hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers money, Obama and his team of banksters handed over to commercial privately held banks?

    Not quite. Not quite.

    Personally, I recall the $700 billion dollar TARP program advocated by Henry Paulson and signed into law by George W. Bush. Can you provide us with links describing the Obama bailout program you refer to? (Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath).

    I also recall Obama announcing that the banks had paid back their loans with interest, such that the government made a profit on TARP.

    In summary, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts!

  15. We knew the gist already on Official MPG Figures Unrealistic, Says UK Auto Magazine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We pretty much already knew that the MPG we saw on the sticker was higher than the MPG we would actually be getting. Hence the phrase "your mileage may vary."

    But we also know that the sticker MPG numbers are good for comparing among similar cars, and that's mostly how we use the sticker MPGs. Kudos and thanks to 'What Car?' for calculating the 19% offset figure. I wonder if they could tell us how the offset varies among different types of cars. Maybe SUVs vs econoboxes vs sports cars have somewhat different offsets.

    BTW, I would bet that different driving styles, lead foot vs hypermiling, makes a bigger differnece than the 19% calculated by 'What Car?'

  16. Train stations, malls, emergency exits ... on Google Rumored To Be Making 3D-Scanning Tablets · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree, this could be used invasively, and I'm not in any hurry to show the world the interior of my house.

    That said, this could be incredibly useful in public spaces.

    For example, you get off a bus in New York's Port Authority terminal, 2 stories above ground, and you need to get on a subway to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. It would be very helpful to have stairwell & corridor directions to the correct platform. Suddenly smoke starts pouring out the lead car train in that maze of platforms. It would save lives if people, not only on site up upstream from the affected area, were suddenly told to reverse course and clear the exitways. It could be like traffic for pedestrians.

    Another example:

    You have a factory full of pipes and valves and 2000 amp busbars and 440 volt 3 phase machinery. You've always painted your piping different colors (raw materials, steam, cold water, product, etc). Now you would like to be able to pay someone to build a digital model of the whole factory, including locations of every pipe, valve, switch, gauge, etc. The cost of building that digital model used to be prohibitive; suddenly now it's reasonable. With the digital model, you can plan improvements better, find potential safety issues, target repairs, etc.

    So yeah, I get that it could be invasive, and we need to make sure it's not. It could also be incredibly helpful.

  17. 2000000/(365.25*20) = on How Virtual Reality Became Reality · · Score: 2

    2000000/(365.25*20) = 273.785 lines per day; 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year.

    If we assume a very heavy work schedule of 3000 hours per year, approx 60 hours per week, that's 66.667 lines per hour of fully debugged working code. Seems a bit of an over-estimate to me. (Exaggerate? I don't know the meaning of the word!

  18. Re:Peer review on Momentous Big Bang Findings Questioned · · Score: 1

    Interested readers might also like to see what the Catholic Church itself wrote regarding the 1992 pardoning of Galileo. They cite a mutual misunderstanding, and place blame on both sides. Here's a quote from a portion blaming the Church:

    Galileo was finally condemned by the Holy Office as "vehemently suspected of heresy." The choice of words was debatable, as Copernicanism had never been declared heretical by either the ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium of the Church. In any event, Galileo was sentenced to abjure the theory and to keep silent on the subject for the rest of his life, which he was permitted to spend in a pleasant country house near Florence.

    I think the fact that in 1992 the Church itself, after more than a decade of studying Galileo's case, concludes that Copernicanism was Galileo's suspected heresy, should lay the question to rest. Heliocentrism, AKA Copernicanism, was indeed Galileo's heresy.

  19. Re:Peer review on Momentous Big Bang Findings Questioned · · Score: 1

    Actually, the funny thing about Galileo is that he wasn't so much challenging the Bible as he was challenging Aristotelian ideas that got conflated with scripture. A few years ago I asked two Jesuits and a Protestant minister (on separate occasions) where in the Bible I could find statements about geocentrism. They all told me that the Church at the time was full of Aristotelian "science" and that the source of geocentrism was Aristotle, not scripture, though one fellow did note the "sun stopped in the sky" line from Joshua.

    Galileo's famous "ball drop experiment" (whether or not it really happened at the Leaning Tower of Pisa) proved Aristotle wrong in one case (Aristotle claimed that heaver objects would fall faster). Galileo's observation of four of Jupiter's moons proved that not all objects orbit the earth or the sun, and that, combined with observations of the Earth's moon, Venus, and Mars, gave him the idea that maybe smaller object orbited bigger ones. These views also opposed Aristotelian teaching, but just like with the ball drop, Galileo arrived at them with some evidence in hand, after observation.

    Therefore, I don't think it's fair to say Galileo touted geocentrism without empirical evidence. Without proof, certainly, but not without evidence. And again, the funny thing was that Galileo wasn't so much opposing the Bible as opposing Aristotle.

  20. Re:suspend GPS? on Russia Bans US Use of Its Rocket Engines For Military Launches · · Score: 1

    There are enough errors in the parent that I think a few corrections are necessary.

    (1) The USA GPS system was designed from Reagan's 1983 directive onwards to be used by both civilians and the military, and to provide better accuracy to the military. The first GPS satellites were launched in 1989. So it's not really accurate to say "when the system was opened up to civilian use in the late 90's."

    (2) The "discrepancy" in civilian signals was known as "Selective Availability" (SA) by "dithering" the clock, and it was designed in from the start so that if an enemy tried to use civilian GPS, civilian GPS could be degraded worldwide without disturbing military GPS. That doesn't mean SA was always enabled. In fact, during the Gulf War, there was a shortage of military GPS units, so the military handed out civilian GPSs and turned off SA.

    (3) The " idea of checking GPS against a known good reading" has three forms: differential GPS; only useful locally for work like surveying; WAAS, designed and implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration; and NDGPS, which is still being implemented on US land by Dept of Transportation (it's fully for US waterways thanks to the Coast Guard). WAAS is what you're using now unless you're a ship captain. The point is that except for local surveying equipment, the "someone" who made GPS better is your federal government. This is not a case of clever entrepreneurs outsmarting the government, this is another case of the government providing a new infrastructure that enabled new industries and widespread benefits.

    (4) The reason President Clinton turned of the global selective availability dithering is because by then the GPS constellation had a new ability to deny civilian GPS regionally. So it's not accurate to say, as you did, " that the military eventually discarded the idea of putting in an intentional margin of error for civilian signals." In fact, the military has a better method than ever for putting error into some regional civilian signals. http://archive.wired.com/polit...

  21. Re:Peer review on Momentous Big Bang Findings Questioned · · Score: 1

    Religion also has peer review; witness Martin Luther. However, disagreements often result in forking the religion, not down-grading one, unless you count popularity. If you count popularity and forking, then indeed there is peer review roughly equivalent to science and the difference is blurred, for good or bad.

    Galileo's peer review came a few hundred years too late. Torquemada was never peer reviewed. Neither were these Popes.

    Conclusion: in religion, peer review is more the exception than the rule.

  22. Re:Great! How to evade the Amazon patent on USPTO Approves Amazon Patent For Taking Pictures · · Score: 1
    The workflow goes

    Start

    Activate Rear Light Source

    Activate Front Light Source

    Position Subject

    ...

    To evade the patent, you could switch on both lights at once!

    Or you could position the subject before you turn on all the lights!

    Or you could vary the order in many other ways. It's a really stupid patent because it's so easy to evade.

  23. Re:Wonder material on Graphene Could Be Dangerous To Humans and the Environment · · Score: 2

    Then again, 90%-95% of asbestos (crystotile) used wasn't carcinogenic, and the remaining 5% of asbestos used was only carcinogenic to smokers. http://scienceworld.wolfram.co...

    Thanks for the excellent link. It does NOT support your summary. For example: "amphiboles are more potent than chrysotile in the induction of fibrotic lung disease and associated lung cancer" does NOT mean chrysotile is non carcinogenic. Similarly, "Asbestos-induced cancer is found only rarely in nonsmokers" does not support your claim that amphibole asbestos " was only carcinogenic to smokers."

  24. Just another facet of post 'Citizens United' USA on Google and Facebook: Unelected Superpowers? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Supreme Court's 'Citizens United' decision makes it possible for billionaires to pour unimaginable amounts of money into each election cycle. Some of thse billionaires lean right, like the Koch brothers, and some don't like Google's owners. Personally I would like to see Congress pass laws reversing 'Citizens United,' but until that happy day, we're kind of on the sidelines as the big players battle it out.

  25. Re:So, don't use Google Apps on Google's Definition of 'Open' · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Agreed. For me, the big draw of standard Android is maps/navigation/traffic. Decent speech recognition is the cherry on top. Being able to whip out my phone and say "navigate to airport" is worth a lot to me. The premise of the original article, "One of Android's biggest draws is its roots in open source" just doesn't ring true for me. In fact, I doubt it's true for the vast majority of Android users. I would suggest that Android's biggest draw is the price vs feature tradeoff. I'm aware that we aren't getting the main google apps for "free" but for many people they are getting them at an acceptable price.