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User: complete+loony

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  1. Re:Confused on Does Antimatter Fall Up Or Down? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the 2 possible outcomes are polar opposites, and it goes one way and not the other. I'd say "removes all doubt" is a fair statement. Note I didn't use the word "prove", more like doubt in the legal prosecution sense.

    But now were just arguing semantics. Oh wait, this is /. never mind.

  2. Re:Confused on Does Antimatter Fall Up Or Down? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a big difference between a belief that something is most likely true, and an experiment that removes all doubt.

  3. Re:Compression at it's finest on Spitzer's 5-Gigapixel Milky Way · · Score: 1

    I felt a great disturbance in the force. It's as if thousands of geeks suddenly cried out and changed their desktop backgrounds.

    On a serious note, anyone feeling up to downloading the ultra huge versions and finding some interesting desktop sized visuals? And how long till the images are added to google sky?

  4. Re:Simpler solution on Why BitTorrent Causes Latency and How To Fix It · · Score: 1

    If the router equally prioritizes every packet, then the app that only utilizes a single connection can still wait before being serviced. While it is possible to allocate bandwidth per connections routers rarely bother, and can't tell the difference between one connection sending 1000 packets, and 1000 connections sending one packet. The problem with TCP is when you receive an ACK packet you typically send a whole window size of data to your peer. If you receive multiple ACK's from different peers in a short space of time, you can easily flood the transmit / receive buffers of the device at your choke point (usually a modem). However if you set a hard limit in the application, so it doesn't try to send as much data as it can whenever it receives another ACK, but instead imposes a global speed limit across all TCP connections. Then you'll stop dumping so much data onto the wire at the same time, alleviating the need for QOS.
  5. Re:QoS, but only on the Telco Side on Why BitTorrent Causes Latency and How To Fix It · · Score: 1

    So set a download limit below your actual capacity as well. If your torrent application doesn't read all the available data out of the OS buffer, TCP flow control will cause the sender to back off in the same way actual congestion will. It's not perfect, since all your peers could send you a TCP window of data at the same time and still flood your connection. But it does have a noticeable impact.

  6. Re:This is what happens... on Bell Canada Official Speaks Out On Throttling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The main problem with the current state of ISP's is that they *claim* to sell unlimited / no contention internet access and have no intention of ever delivering. Instead they throttle, block, apply qos, or otherwise impose a hidden limit on the bandwidth you are allowed to use.

    If you want to limit the used bandwidth, go ahead. Just spell out exactly what those limits are in a contract with your customers.

  7. Re:Almost on Brain Interface Lets Monkeys Control Prosthetic Limbs · · Score: 1

    Tell me about it. My dad lost both his hands when he was a kid. He doesn't bother with those fake arms with hooks on them. He has had a couple of sets made up over the years, but they were never good enough. Now he's 50-ish and the most complicated artificial limb he uses is a pen, and that's only when he's typing. Oh, and he's a very successful software developer.

  8. Re:"IQ" test? on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 1

    If we fold this cube, which one will we get? Huh? Was there any other text? If it doesn't matter which way you fold it, only one of the answers is impossible.

    Which of the shapes can be added to these three to form a square?? Both the first and second...

    Sheesh who writes IQ test questions with ambiguous answers.

  9. Re:I think I heard this type of statement before.. on Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy · · Score: 1

    More than once... (see sig)

  10. Re:delusional at best on Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy · · Score: 1
    With a TPM chip, mass production isn't that hard;
    • One master CD.
    • Unique serial number on case.
    • Installer asks TPM for machine public key.
    • Serial number and public key are sent to activation server.
    • Activation server checks for valid serial number.
    • Master key is encrypted with the machine's public key and is returned.
    • TPM chip decrypts and stores the master key where you can't get to it.
    The weak point for a PC game, is that the game's executable must still be decrypted and executed at some point. You need a secure environment to decrypt and execute the game similar to Vista's video DRM scheme. That's the weakest point in the whole process.
  11. Re:Fire up the soldering irons... on Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy · · Score: 1

    Every time AACSLA change the current processing key on new discs, the key must be re-compromised. All 2^32 reachable processing keys are based on one of 512 root keys which we do not know. Each player can only generate a subset of these reachable keys. Key revocation works by no longer using a processing key that has been compromised, or any other processing key that a compromised device can generate. If we could break all of the root keys, or find a weakness in the encryption then and only then would AACS be completely broken.

    However the current software players are not careful enough to hide the processing key in memory, and they never will be. This is the current attack vector.

    There is a handshake between the host machine and the HDVD device that is supposed to restrict access to the disk's unique key. Only this part of the encryption scheme has been broken.

    It's all moot now anyway since HDVD is a dead product, and BlueRay also supports a completely different encryption scheme.

  12. Re:EXACTLY. on The Phoenix Has Landed · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem is that the steps involved in production and extraction of the isotope can also be used in the manufacture of weapons Fixed that for you. It's mostly a political problem.
  13. Re:nerd credentials? on The Secret History of Star Wars · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've just read a couple of chapters. Sheesh does this need some serious editing. While there is certainly a lot of detail, mentioning a large number of comics, movies, myths and current social climate influences that Lucas drew from. The narration is mostly chronological, but it keeps jumping slightly forwards and backwards, or rehashing the exact same idea in multiple ways. I agree with the "cliffnotes" tag. If you tried to summarise all the ideas in this book, presenting them only once each, in a much cleaner order, you could probably halve its length.

  14. Re:Bizarreness matters too on UK Teen Cited For Calling Scientology a "Cult" · · Score: 1

    (including putting dinosaur bones in place as is to fool us) Nice straw man there. The first page of results from a couple of different searches don't agree with your statement.
  15. Re:CHAR MAP on Breaking the Fermilab Code · · Score: 1
    The pairs of lines do look like a key, or perhaps the same message using 2 codes.

    The greater than sign above the 2's has been carefully drawn quite high which is probably U+02C3. The 6 might be U+031A. The 7 could be U+0553. F would be U+22B3 or U+25C1 there seems to be a couple of triangles.

  16. Re:What kind of malware? on New Malware Report Hits Vista's Security Image · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Self selection bias?

    How many of these machines were scanned only *because* an infection was already suspected or known?

  17. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? on A Virtualized Linux System For Windows · · Score: 1

    Right now I'd settle for *anything* playable that doesn't chew 100% on my windows desktop with a AMD 3500+ CPU.

  18. Re:As opposed to... andLinux? on A Virtualized Linux System For Windows · · Score: 1

    If you can get a mythtv front end working this way with an acceptable frame rate for video playback, I'd definitely be interested.

  19. Re:ridiculous on Black Holes Don't Trap Information Forever · · Score: 5, Funny

    How the hell would you know if it did? How the hell would you know if it did?
  20. Re:Sounds about right on Comcast, Cox Slow BitTorrent Traffic All Day · · Score: 1

    This is far more likely to be triggered by poorly written firmware. Stateful firewalls and network address translation require the modem to keep track of every connection attempt. If you have port forwarding setup for bittorrent, your modem will also be tracking all the remote connection attempts from other peers even though you have limited the number of connections to 50. P2P traffic can really stress test the quality of the firmware.

  21. Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" on Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade · · Score: 1

    Stateful firewall rules, and network address translation require memory to track every single incoming and outgoing TCP connection. Even if you have a NAT forwarding rule for every P2P related port, your modem is probably keeping track of every connection anyway.

  22. Re:not me on Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage.

  23. Re:Article Summary on Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade · · Score: 1

    Yes. Unless of course you both setup a similar firewall rule. The ideal solution would involve using a different network protocol that was immune to man-in-the-middle packet forgeries. Perhaps using SCTP instead of TCP, or some kind of UDP tunneling built into the bittorrent client.

  24. Article Summary on Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade · · Score: 5, Informative
    Detecting throttling;
    • Download something popular
    • Call your ISP
    • Read their terms of service
    • Glasnost
    • pcapdiff
    • Vuze plugin.
    Avoiding throttling;
    • Enable protocol encryption.
    • Change the port number to something other than 6881.
    • Tunnel through TOR or some other commercial VPN.
    To which I would add, if you know your ISP is injecting fake RST's filter them out with a firewall rule. A little more complex a task than the expected audience of TFA though.
  25. Re:"Cosmic View" and "Powers of Ten" on Life-Size Photo of a Blue Whale · · Score: 1

    I prefer powers of one myself.