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User: mrchaotica

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  1. Re:Web server for printing... on Apple Releases CUPS 2.0 · · Score: 1

    What does a GUI have to do with a web server? You could write a graphical front-end to lpstat (etc.) without bothering with the HTTP and whatnot and it'd probably turn out better.

  2. Re:What happens with no ID? on Federal Government Removes 7 Americans From No-Fly List · · Score: 1

    "The rest of you can go on ahead," they said, as if we mighty fly on despite the loss of a teenager.

    I bet it would have given the airline an excuse not to refund the rest of your tickets, if you had missed the flight.

  3. Re:Too bad... on Wind Power Is Cheaper Than Coal, Leaked Report Shows · · Score: 2

    There's an easier way to think of it: consider how much space 500 houses take up. Now consider how much space one windmill takes up. The windmill isn't very big compared to the houses, is it?

    Also, consider how much farmland it takes to feed the people in those 500 houses. Then consider that you can stick a windmill in the middle of a field and it only displaces crops in the area occupied by its tower's base (plus some room for maintenance and maneuvering), not the width of the blades.

    If you take the example of a small town and plop a single windmill in Farmer Bob's cornfield, you can power the whole town. If you put a windmill in Farmer Joe's soybean field too, you can power that town and the next town over. If you put a few windmills near every small town you might (I haven't done the math) end up with enough leftover power for all the big cities.

    The point is, 80k windmills sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

  4. Re:Possible solution on Netflix Video Speed On FiOS Doubles After Netflix-Verizon Deal · · Score: 1

    The only trouble is that Netflix doesn't necessarily know who my ISP is. Maybe one day I'm watching it at home on Comcast, then another day I'm watching it on my phone with T-Mobile, then another day I'm watching it using a restaurant's wi-fi. For it to be "fair," Netflix would have to keep track of which ISP everybody was connecting through at any given moment and then pro-rate the surcharge.

  5. Re:I wonder how much we can trust it on Tiny Wireless Device Offers Tor Anonymity · · Score: 3

    The very reason Truecrypt died was because they couldn't trust future compilers for Windows.

    [citation needed]

  6. Re:Sounds like a good idea on Smart Battery Tells You When It's About To Explode · · Score: 2

    It seems to me that one easy way would be for the battery to just quit working entirely. People will figure out that it needs to be replaced, even if they don't know the precise reason why.

    In fact, I even know of a revolutionary device that could be used to accomplish that function: it's called a "fuse."

  7. Re:Everybody Panic! on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    Remember that any suit that can protect the wearer against virus is also impermeable to air. That means the suits heat up. They are sweating profusely as soon as they get their suits on, and they can only remain suited up for less than an hour before roasting in their own juices. When every surface is soaked in sweat, it's impossible to recognize when it's the patient's infectious sweat or your own.

    We have the technology to make climate-controlled underwear (although admittedly it might be hard to find a way to exhaust the heat without compromising the seal).

    We know the best practical approach is to use a buddy system, and have them help each other. Even so, the first buddy to disrobe is still handling the infectious materials while helping the other to strip, so they still have to be vigilant.

    It seems to me a good plan would be to have the person on the next shift suit up, then help the person on the previous shift remove his suit. That way, the only person at additional risk is the last person in the chain.

  8. Re:Research on How Spurious Wikipedia Edits Can Attach a Name To a Scandal, 35 Years On · · Score: 1

    How do we know what the audience "prefers?" Simple: the "industry association" of propagandists hires Nielson to poll a carefully-chosen selection of the most brain-dead, white-bread Americans to decide whether they prefer the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist A or the misinfotainment perpetrated by propagandist B. (Seeing a broadcast of actual facts isn't a choice, of course, so exactly nobody "prefers" it.)

  9. Re:Claim is BS. on Liking Analog Meters Doesn't Make You a Luddite (Video) · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the Honda CR-Z, but that isn't exactly very popular (in fact, it's a flop; I'm surprised they still sell them).

    What did they expect? It was supposed to be the successor to the CRX and (first-gen) Insight, and was way worse than either of them. They should have made it out of aluminum, at the very least.

  10. Re:Pixie Dust on Lego Ends Shell Partnership Under Greenpeace Pressure · · Score: 1

    Yep. For example, my old VW runs on biodiesel just fine, and all I had to do was replace the fuel injector return lines with Viton ones. (I might have to rebuild my fuel pump with Viton seals too, eventually.)

  11. Re:Pixie Dust on Lego Ends Shell Partnership Under Greenpeace Pressure · · Score: 2, Informative

    You joke, but their newest ship actually has sails!

    From Wikipedia:

    The ship is also designed to be one of the "greenest" ships afloat, and to showcase this quality, it runs primarily using wind power, with a 55 m mast system which carries 1255 sq meters of sail and is backed up by a "state-of-the-art hybrid". On board the ship can store up to 59 cubic meters of greywater and blackwater, avoiding the need for disposal at sea. All materials, from the paintwork to the insulation, have been chosen with a view to sustainability, and each component has been supplied with transparent ethical sourcing.

    (It still uses diesel engines for maneuvering in port, of course -- I'm honestly surprised they don't run the engine on biodiesel. Maybe it's a logistical issue?)

  12. Re:DOJ Oaths on National Security Letter Issuance Likely Headed To Supreme Court · · Score: 2

    I misspoke. I was trying to say that supporting or agreeing with the First and Second amendments are not mutually exclusive. Or in other words, that -- contrary to what "conservatives" would have you believe about "liberals," or what "liberals" would have you believe about "conservatives" -- lots of people think it's good to have the right to free speech and the right to bear arms.

    And by the way, they're both all-encompassing: The First Amendment affirms your right to say whatever the fuck you want, especially things the government doesn't want people to hear. The Second Amendment affirms your right to self-defense, especially against a tyrannical government. They are nothing less than rules written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.

  13. Re:DOJ Oaths on National Security Letter Issuance Likely Headed To Supreme Court · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To argue that some silly law or court ruling overrides the First Amendment should be a criminal offense.

    Replace "First" with "Second", and your statement is still perfectly valid.

    Yes, yes it is.

    Nobody except moronic, hyper-partisan fuckwads (on "both[1]" "sides[2]") ever argued that the First and Second Amendments were mutually-exclusive, you know!

    ([1] in actual reality (as opposed to the Bizarro-world perpetuated by the propagandists we call "mainstream media") there are more than two points-of-view on any given issue, and they are not all equally valid.)

    ([2] the only way to be on a "side" is to blindly worship the totality of a party's platform instead of forming your own ideology. If that describes you, go tear up your voter registration card and then kill yourself, for the good of humanity.)

  14. Re:clock speed is not the right comparison on Ubisoft Claims CPU Specs a Limiting Factor In Assassin's Creed Unity On Consoles · · Score: 1

    Oh, sorry -- I didn't mean to bash Nintendo specifically; I mean to bash consoles in general (especially when used to play multi-platform games).

  15. Re:clock speed is not the right comparison on Ubisoft Claims CPU Specs a Limiting Factor In Assassin's Creed Unity On Consoles · · Score: 2

    Maybe you didn't target your game properly.

    Many Nintendo games run in 1080p and 60 frames/second on the Wii U which is much less powerful...because Nintendo makes that their target when deciding how much AI and graphics detail to put on the screen at once.

    In other words, "cripple your game so it'll run on proprietary pieces of shit instead of letting it be as good as it possibly could be on a real computer."

  16. Re:Argument from authority on Carl Sagan, as "Mr. X," Extolled Benefits of Marijuana · · Score: 1

    Disregarding the fact that i kan reed pulled his number from the "national institute of rectal studies," in principle, it's possible that both numbers could be true. Maybe there are 'about 40,000' people currently imprisoned for marijuana, but there are millions of people who were jailed marijuana at some point in their lives. (Or maybe there have been millions of instances of people being sentenced to jail for marijuana, which is a different statistic again.)

  17. Re:Sure... too bad they DIDN'T BOTHER TO GET ONE! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 1

    I usually do put my comment in the message body, but in this case I was replying specifically to the parent post's subject line.

    Next time that happens, I'll write something like "[see subject]" instead so that nobody gets confused.

  18. Re:Sure... too bad they DIDN'T BOTHER TO GET ONE! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 1

    Thanks.

    Incidentally, at the time I posted complaining about the offtopic mod, I noticed that several other pro-totalitarianism posts were modded up an other pro-civil-rights posts were modded offtopic. It wasn't just my post that I thought TLAs (or their shills) were spending their modpoints on.

  19. Re:Sure... too bad they DIDN'T BOTHER TO GET ONE! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 1

    Offtopic? Wow, the three-letter-agencies have modpoints tonight.

  20. Sure... too bad they DIDN'T BOTHER TO GET ONE! on Ross Ulbricht's Lawyer Says FBI's Hack of Silk Road Was "Criminal" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    [nothing else needs to be said]

  21. As long as you have documented your accusations, you have little to worry about.

    Well, other than being bankrupted before the judge is ready to rule on the issue...

  22. Re:I have one on The Greatest Keyboard Ever Made · · Score: 1

    I got a Monoprice.com-brand buckling-spring keyboard (with Cherry switches) for about $50 (on sale), and am very pleased with it. (It doesn't seem to be all-plastic either; it's at least as heavy as my old Tandy 1000 keyboard).

  23. Re:So what they are saying... on US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants · · Score: 1

    passing a law that covers people outside your legal jurisdiction would be pointless

    Indeed, precisely because the US Government acting outside its legal jurisdiction is unlawful (by definition!).

  24. Re:American Exceptionalism on US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants · · Score: 1

    I'd go find a citation, but I don't feel like googling that particular topic at work.

  25. Re:American Exceptionalism on US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants · · Score: 1

    Suppose I (a US citizen) fly to China and commit a murder. Would you expect US law to be used to convict me in a US court? Obviously not. It's up to China to police murders in their own country, even if the murderer is a foreigner.

    Although the US would tend to defer to China in that example, if China refused to prosecute then the US legal system would be legally justified in prosecuting instead. There are people who went to places like Thailand in order to circumvent US age-of-consent laws and then tried to make the same argument you're making. They ended up in federal prison anyway.