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User: mwilliamson

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  1. plausible deniability at work on Facebook Now Supports Jabber/XMPP · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've been using the pidgin plugin for a while now, but it seems a little flaky. This will be rather nice to have a standards-based protocol. This also means I have plausible deniability now as to whether or not I'm logged into facebook all day. ;-)

  2. cleartext unencrypted nation-wide traffic on US Congressman Announces Plans To Probe Wikileaks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So what is the big deal? This data was sent out unencrypted from many transmitters all across the nation. It would have been (and still is) very easy to intercept. There is no data security. Those considering it a secure medium have simply been mislead. Congress, as a whole, is rather ignorant of these technical concepts. There are programs that use a soundcard for data capture, but for best results make sure and use the receiver's discriminator output, not the filtered audio out. Google for "POCSAG and FLEX decoding" for all the goodies and software you need to do your own intercepts. -Michael

  3. Bugatti Veyron for cheap coming up on eBay For Millionaires · · Score: 1
  4. Re:Is this statement misleading? on First Public White-Space Network Is Alive · · Score: 2, Informative

    Uh, no. Range is not a function of signal power. It more is a function of the overall signal/noise ratio and the sensitivity of the receiver. This includes noise introduced in the transmitter, natural/other noise, and noise introduced in the receiver. An antenna system with gain can both concentrate and attenuate signals, depending on the directivity and where its pointed.

    BTW, I got over 1400 miles out of a little 0.3 watt ham signal, but thats no where near as impressive as Earth still being able to receive signals from Voyager 1 and 2 nearly 10 billion miles away. That's impressive.

    -Michael

  5. glad its not considered terrorism... on Lori Drew Cyberbullying Case Dismissed · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Finally a sane ruling. I'm happily surprized a court didn't rule that breaking a website's T.O.S. is an act of domestic terrorism, punishable by loss of citizenship and infinite water boarding at guantanamo followed by an eternity in hell.

  6. Linux BIOS Project? on No Windows 7 XP Mode For Sony Vaio Z Owners · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can the bios be re-flashed with something more useful?

  7. Re:Speaking from under my tinfoil hat... on Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo · · Score: 1

    The local oscillator in your standalone GPS creates a signal too :-) (albeit very tiny)

  8. Tax Funded GPS...why the hell should we pay? on Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Never, and I repeat, NEVER agree to pay for GPS "service." You already have in your federal taxes. These ***hole cellphone companies that charge you for GPS are full of themselves. I will never use a phone-based GPS if it costs me a penny extra. Vote with your wallet.

  9. SSN is an IDENTIFIER, not AUTHENTICATOR on Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anybody or organization using an SSN as both an identifier and a form of authentication is stupid, irresponsible and should be held accountable 100% for breach of whatever resource they control. The problem is in the "shared secret" type use of a damn 9-digit number, with a few of the digits already known based on state of birth.

    Want a list of ssn's for every state? Here's all of them. Have fun.

    -Michael

  10. Re:Didn't know he was the kinky type.. on NASA Requests Help With Von Braun's Notes · · Score: 1

    What's so kinky about morse code? http://fists.org/

  11. Re:Format Suggestion on NASA Requests Help With Von Braun's Notes · · Score: 1

    obviously, bittorrent to distribute the resulting set far and wide.

  12. Format Suggestion on NASA Requests Help With Von Braun's Notes · · Score: 2, Funny

    group-iv tiff + ASCII, key-value metadata descriptor in XML. Keep it generic.

  13. Lithium, a limited natural resource? on New Lithium-Air Battery Delivers 10 Times the Energy Density · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems like this is the holy grail for electric vehicles, and we can finally stop burning dinosaur juice in our little bitty engines and realize the economies of scale of burning dinosaur farts in really big and efficient prime movers. This is all well and good, but how plentiful is lithium, and can it be recycled easily (I suspect yes)? -Michael

  14. Re:Don't "waste" the heat or the water on Data Centers Work To Reduce Water Usage · · Score: 1

    Open systems are used because evaporation carries away far more heat than a closed-loop system. To illustrate, the 6-cycle engine (standard 4-stroke + steam stroke) needs no cooling system whatsoever, and only carries about as much water as fuel.

  15. Another solution. on Data Centers Work To Reduce Water Usage · · Score: 1

    http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=27.605462,-97.306359&spn=0.013139,0.021544&t=h&z=16 Suck in ocean water from one area, blow it out in another. This plant sucks water from the Laguna Madre (the body of water between the Texas coast and Padre Island) then spills the water into the Oso Bay, which is in turn connected to the Corpus Christi bay. This plant is a natural-gas fired plant, but evidently had coal in mind with the docks...cooling water and fuel via the same route.

  16. I wonder how the evaporative losses are with this! on Data Centers Work To Reduce Water Usage · · Score: 1

    http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=28.768261,-96.047201&spn=0.103977,0.172348&t=h&z=13 I noticed this a few weeks ago while flying over the area. Yes, this is nuke site.

  17. Goes to far on Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Copyright does not give the property holder the right to tell users what color/brand glasses they are allowed to wear when reading a particular title and this is really no different. Amazon/Kindle should stick to their guns and let the end user decide to turn on the TTS engine or not. Besides, most people can read a lot faster than even the fastest discernible speech.

  18. Re:Blind Them!!! on A Surveillance Camera On Every Chicago Street Corner? · · Score: 1

    Not when the yellow period is shortened to increase the ticket yields, which I've not yet seen myself in my location, but have heard about. I'm not one to advocate running red lights, but if going up against intentionally shortened yellow lights, I say countermeasures are appropriate and justified. If a locale wants to play dirt, this'll shield their dirt.

  19. Blind Them!!! on A Surveillance Camera On Every Chicago Street Corner? · · Score: 1

    Here's a neat idea. I really want to do the same with my license plate for the stupid redlight cameras in my city, but was thinking a few strong camera strobes with an IR filter set up as a slave flash would work better.

    http://www.hacknmod.com/hack/blind-cameras-with-an-infrared-led-hat/

    This IR hat hack is cool, but needs to be modified to regulate the current through the LEDs or they'll burn out quickly.

  20. payback period question on Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade? · · Score: 1

    I wonder how long a GW satellite would have to operate to capture the amount of energy required to build the PV arrays and the rest of the sattelite, the rectenna, and match the energy consumed in producing and operating the spacecraft used to put it into orbit. Its my understanding that the amount of energy used to create PV arrays is pretty substantial alone...years worth of operation on earth. I hope this is a lot better both in efficiencies creating the modern PV panels, and in capture efficiencies.

  21. ...and we're paying $0.20 USD for 100 bytes SMS! on All Korea To Have 1Gbps Broadband By 2012? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Why the hell are we still paying for text messages? Yeah, I know this is offtopic, but it's just freaking sick that the rest of the civilized world is much more forward thinking than here in the US in terms of data services. Why do we tolerate being the cell oligopoly's little bitches? This is f***ing madness.

  22. Re:What would you do? on US Army Files Found On Second-Hand MP3 Player · · Score: 1

    ...possession is 9/10th of the law.

  23. What would you do? on US Army Files Found On Second-Hand MP3 Player · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, I'd just overwrite the device with a utility such as dban then keep my mouth shut, forever. This is the advice I'd offer anyone in this sort of situation. I actually take it a step further in that I dban _every_ used storage device I get without first looking to see what is on it, so I have no clue if I ever received something via a second-hand device that I should not have.

  24. Re:Global Warning on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 2, Funny

    I know how to make beer, so will bring the beer to the BBQ. I hear slow roasted long pig goes well with a good cold brew.

  25. Redhat/Fedora has had this for years on Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview · · Score: 4, Informative

    talk about prior art...if this survives the challenge I'm leaving.