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User: Cragen

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Comments · 292

  1. Re:turn it off, all of it on Does Mega Media Control 90% of Content? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I could, I would turn it all off. (Being a developer, it's a bit hard.) I got sent overseas 30 years ago for a year. (Pre-Internet! lol) We usually got all non-ridiculous news in 3 - 4 days. So, I kicked my news habit. (There was no English TV either, so I also quite accidentally kicked my TV habit.) So, really, how much does this "news" really affect your life? No much, really. Have a nice day. Cheers!

  2. Re:Capitalism works on Verizon Tech Charged In $4.5M Equipment Scam · · Score: 1

    He probably feelss that most market traders would trade their mothers, wifes, and children, for starters, for more money. I have no idea where he got that notion. Your compassion reply surely has helped rid him of that idea. happy holidays.

  3. Re:KFC on Forget an Essay; Earn a Scholarship With a Tweet · · Score: 2

    Or, maybe, "Send me $5000 or the chicken gets choked!"

  4. Re:Also on New Theory Challenges Need For Dark Matter · · Score: 1

    Yeah, and why do they never sit down to drink their coffee? Hmmm? "Sip and Run" is all they do! Why, oh, why? Hmmm?

  5. The Accessibility Elephant on Book Review: Head First HTML5 Programming · · Score: 1

    Does the book say anything, anything at all, about Accessibility? Might be nice, for a change.

  6. Smaller /. numbers here, please on The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix · · Score: 1

    Seems like this sort of story always brings out the low number /.'ers. I remember one post in the last few years where each reply was by a lower post until someone showed up with a number under 1000. (If I remember right, lol. Memory is not my strong suit now. And the older I get, the less I can about that. lol) While this was all happening, I was changing vacuum tubes in military crypto boxes. lol Hell, I remember my dad testing our TV's vacuum tubes at the A&P grocery store.

  7. Sorry, no. on AT&T Issues Scathing Response To FCC Report · · Score: 2

    I guess you haven't been to Europe lately. I lived in Germany the last 3 years. Any thought that cell phone service in the EU is cheaper than anywhere in the US is just laughable. Or, wrong, if you need the word. Happy Holidays.

  8. Re:No good can come from this on US Government Probes Huawei and ZTE · · Score: 1

    Better than tanks, imho.

  9. Re:Anti-matter vs. dark matter on Cosmic Antimatter Excess Confirmed · · Score: 1

    Ha! Reminds me of the time I went to a talk by a Tibetan lama. He asked a question of the audience and requested that everyone who thought the answer was "yes" to "raise your arms." I had to do a mental double-take to get back to the question. :) (In the USA, our expression is "raise your hands".) Good to get my brain nudged from its nap every now and then.

  10. So that's where all the articles are coming from.. on 2011 Geek IQ Test · · Score: 1

    On a side note, a lot of the "current" articles on InfoWorld seem to be very, very, very similar to articles that have appear on /. A co-inky-dink? (Use of geeky work to throw off the posse...) Prollynot.

  11. Freaking Stroke of Genius ... on The Stroke of Genius Strikes Later In Life Than It Used To · · Score: 1

    To actually be able to figure out how to get some to pay them to research such stuff. I bow to the masters of the truly useless info.

  12. News or Advertising? on B&N Releases Nook Tablet To Rival Amazon Fire · · Score: -1, Troll

    Not much difference lately. /sigh. Time to look for a new news site, maybe.

  13. Well, I was with you right until... on The CIA's Social Mining Department · · Score: 1

    "And we would look elsewhere.." The previous three sentences were quite enough basis for some (many?) of us to realize that none of it is for our benefit. Monarchy, Communism, Theocracy, Democracy, and the rest are all designed for those that rule. Fortunately, Democracy's rule making process, up to recently, makes very hard to affect anything very positively or very negatively, really, so it gets my vote. And, no, I don't vote. The good news: Looking anywhere outside yourself for answers is waste of time. However, one can penetrate the illusion of all this silliness to find mental peace. It's just not easy. Good Luck.

  14. Re:Money on Why Microsoft Embraced Gaming · · Score: 1

    Interesting idea. Main reason I have a pc is gaming. (Well, I also have an xbox360 but wouldn't have bought if the kids were so adamant. Now that they are in college, I don't play it much.) Not a social fellow so the tablets and smartphones are useless. Fortunately, the wife agrees with all the above (or all bets would be off).

  15. Re:A fatal flaw in Christianity. on Theologian Attempts Censorship After Losing Public Debate · · Score: 1

    Indeed, Paul's original mission was to wipe out the religion of Christ. (Christianity) Looks like he did a pretty good job.

  16. Re:Where's our futuristic paradise? on The Real Job Threat · · Score: 1

    Sadly, the SFP (Sci-Fi Paradise) will not happen as long as people regard everything as territory. (Or some clever saying to that effect.) "Work", "Accomplishment", and "Success" are just concepts with no real foundation but someone's idea of what they think they want that really turns out to be really nothing but "chicken feathers" that will disappear in a good wind. Ah, well. (Off the lawn, bud.)

  17. Is the past is viewable in one direction or all? on Ask The Bad Astronomer · · Score: 1

    1. Astronomers view light that was created in the past. Is the past is viewable in all directions or just one? (If my laymans' view of the "view of the past via light" is way off, please tell me how that works.) If the past is viewable in all directions, the stuff you are looking at is on the rim of the expansion which seems backwards to what I would have guessed. 2. Here on earth, things speed up or accelerate either due to a force from the initial event or an external force (like gravity, energy addition, etc.). Is the accelerating expansion of our universe due to the initial event? If so, how? (Maybe that is where all the "missing anti-gravity" is. lol) Thanks.

  18. I am smart enough... on Gnarly Programming Challenges Help Recruit Coders · · Score: 2

    To not want to work for Facebook.

  19. Who exactly is ""U.S. Intelligence"? on US Intelligence Mining Your Social Network Data · · Score: 1

    Yawn...Who profits the most? The contractor doing the work, I think.

  20. Re:John Galt? on Searching For Mark Pilgrim · · Score: 1

    Oh, my. I wish I had mod points. Too bad John Galt was in such a (ultimately) useless book.

  21. Amazing that '1984' arrived in unexpected places on Iran Blocks VPN Ports · · Score: 1

    When I was in high school, in the 70's, we "studied" the book "1984". We all assumed, I assume, that "1984" would happen in Russia or in a bizarro America. I do not remember anyone suggesting that religion would be the driver. ( I don't include the Chinese government in this particular assumption as China, to me, seems to have simply re-introduced the feudal system for the masses with a "ruling committee" replacing the emperor at the top.) What a mess.

  22. Re:Print on Ask Slashdot: Best Long-Term Video/Picture Storage? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Interestingly, a distant cousin of mine just today posted a picture of a family group which includes our great(-great?)-grandfather, which is a copy of picture taken around 1875. One of my cousins presumably still has this picture. I have no idea where the pictures I took of my daughter currently are. I took movies of her and her brother on the mini-tape format. Only way to show them is through the camera to the VHS machine. (Not exactly sure where the camera is.) So, good luck with that! My advice. Take a few pictures to get it out of your system then enjoy every swinging second of being with your kids. They will grow up and head out into the world unbelievably fast. (I still can't believe mine are in college.) Good Luck!

  23. Not Really Surprising... on China Removes Cyberwar Video, Denies Everything · · Score: 1

    The idea of "Lying", or more closely, "Denying", is more like they are purposely showing you your (or our) inability to do anything about what they just did right back in your face. I think it's more about "Screw you, scum. What can you do about it?" than "Who, me?" Which is pretty much what they do to their people all the time. "Might is right. Peasants suck. Go, Communism! Have a nice day." And they think they are making themselves "happier".

  24. Re:sorry, on The Epidemic of Digital Distraction · · Score: 1

    Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater => which was shortened to SAST cuz we viewers were, um, too, um, ... what?

  25. Not exactly. on How Face Recognition Can Uncover SSNs · · Score: 1

    The reviewer, unsurprisingly, left off (or didn't emphasize) a quite important part of the study. Still it's pretty neat. From TFA: "At the head of the research team was Alessandro Acquisti, a CMU professor who pointed out in 2009 that the social security number system has a huge security flaw — social security numbers are predictable if you know a person’s hometown and date of birth [emphasis mine] . This study essentially adds a facial recognition component to that study. Acquisti, Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman ran three experiments. In the first, they data mined Facebook for photos of people with searchable profiles. They then used that database of faces and identities when applying off-the-shelf facial recognition technology (PittPatt) to “anonymous” singles on a popular dating site. Acquisti told me in an interview last month that they were able to reidentify 15% of the digital Cupids. In the second experiment, they used a $35 webcam to take photos of CMU students. They then asked the 93 participants to take a quick online survey. While they did that, the facial recognition software went to work figuring out who they were. Acquisti told me that 42% of those participants were linked to their Facebook profiles. Finally, the third experiment was the one to link faces to their unique nine digits For those participants who had date of birth and city publicly available on their account, the researchers could predict a social security number (based on the work from their 2009 study). "

    (That would also be "Place of Birth", not hometown, as those two items are often quite different.)