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User: mellon

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  1. Re:fast forward 5 years.... on NASA's Greenhouse Gas Observatory Captures 'First Light' · · Score: 2

    If that's your best argument, it sounds like you've come to the debate unarmed. Congress is notoriously hostile to climate science.

  2. Re:fast forward 5 years.... on NASA's Greenhouse Gas Observatory Captures 'First Light' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, and really, really huge (many orders of magnitude bigger) amounts of profit would be lost by oil companies' shareholders if we decided to believe the absolutely overwhelming evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming. Being a global warming scientist is a lot less lucrative than using those same skills to do just about anything else, so it's really hard to believe that job security is the motivational basis for roughly 99% of scientists who study climate change saying that we have a problem. Chances are that they just want to try to prevent their children seeing the last days of civilization and then dying painfully.

    The double irony is that a lot of climate change deniers are the same people who stockpile weapons in case of the collapse of civilization. It's almost as if you bloody well want to spend your last days futilely defending the dwindling supplies in your bunker.

  3. Re:Are they "small government" republicans ? he he on 3 Congressmen Trying To Tie Up SpaceX · · Score: 1

    And yet... OP has a point! Dunno why someone modded that flamebait.

  4. Re:All good until someone simulates biometrics... on DARPA Wants To Kill the Password · · Score: 1

    That's great, except that it's still the case that the interpretation of the biometrics happens at the source, not at the validation point, so it winds up just being bits, which can be trivially faked and are probably very predictable.

  5. Re:All good until someone simulates biometrics... on DARPA Wants To Kill the Password · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly right. Biometric passwords are much easier to fake, because you can't change them. They also provide a nice means of identifying surveillance targets. It's almost as if these guys are getting direction from the NSA or something.

  6. Useless data is useless on Expensive Hotels Really Do Have Faster Wi-Fi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I get widely differing performance at different hotels in the same chain, for some chains, and consistent performance for others. And of course, different performance in the early evening than in the early morning. So these numbers are basically garbage.

  7. Re:Face it ... on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 1

    I didn't claim to offer a solution. I was just commenting on the parent, who claimed that it was wrong to mod its parent flamebait. I agree with the moderators. Unfortunately new moderators have come along and modded the article up. We don't need more hope-killing hysteria. Telling people not to hope, that we're already doomed and defeated, is the surest way to keep them down. It's a fairly safe assumption that when someone does that, they are doing it precisely for that reason: they don't want you to get involved.

  8. Re:Face it ... on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 1

    No, I don't mean buy politics. I mean get involved.. The whole point of votes is that everybody gets the same number. When change occurs in government, it occurs because people get involved.

  9. Re:Face it ... on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 2

    Vote. In. The. Primary. If you are in a gerrymandered district, register for the party that owns the district. Participate in the campaign if you have time. Run for office if you have more time. Even if you don't win, if you get attention you can move the Overton window in your direction.

  10. Re:Face it ... on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 0

    No, it's flamebait. If you care about this, get involved in politics. If you don't care enough to get involved, go back to your pizza and your TV.

  11. Re:Well on Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken · · Score: 1

    Funding isn't going to do it. Grass roots organizing is the only way around a political machine like that. That means tables at shopping centers, leafletting, speaking engagements at local organizations, etc. It can be done, but it's a lot of work.

  12. Re:News to be filed under "duh..." on Multipath TCP Introduces Security Blind Spot · · Score: 1

    The irony is that the article mentions that mptcp makes surveillance harder, as if that's a bad thing. Really tells you where the author(s) are coming from...

  13. Re:**waves arms wildly** on Seat Detects When You're Drowsy, Can Control Your Car · · Score: 1

    Essentially you are saying that you would rather risk crashing your car than have the health insurance companies know your health status. I think there's a teaching moment in here somewhere. If we can't admit to the system that pays for our health care that we have health problems, something is badly broken. If this is the model for why a car being able to tell you are impaired is "spooky," I think the problem is not with the car.

  14. Re:Not for deaf/hard of hearing... on Unintended Consequences For Traffic Safety Feature · · Score: 1

    Actually, you do hear its beeping from inside of nearby buildings. Possibly we just need sound lasers.

  15. Re:Somebody has to do it on Microsoft Opens 'Transparency Center' For Governments To Review Source Code · · Score: 2

    You don't even have to do the Ken Thompson trick. They're showing you source, sure, but is it the actual source from which your binary distro was compiled? Get real. Even if they have good intentions, chances are they don't have a reproducible build process.

  16. Re:Classic Obama on White House May Name Patent Reform Opponent As New Head of Patent Office · · Score: 1

    Obama actually wasn't in favor of passing "Obamacare." That was Pelosi. Obama very nearly decided not to bother. Get your history straight. Obamacare is one of the most recent examples I can think of of Congress doing its job. And if you think I'm an Obama shill, you are just looking for a fight, because I agree with Obama about half the time at best. I'm sure you can find a better Obama shill without looking too far.

  17. Re:Classic Obama on White House May Name Patent Reform Opponent As New Head of Patent Office · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, you're not getting me. I am not saying Obama is good or Obama is bad because of his good or bad qualities as an autocrat. I am saying he is good because of his good qualities as an executive. The stuff he's doing as an autocrat I sometimes agree with and sometimes disagree with, but it shouldn't be something he has to do as an autocrat. Congress should be doing the right thing, and it's not. We could debate the merits of the various executive orders he's given since he came into office; I certainly understand why he's been acting as an autocrat. Congress wants him to be an autocrat: they've made that crystal clear. But that's the problem. Congress is supposed to be making these policies, but they have abdicated them to the executive. First with Bush, by letting him do things they shouldn't have let him do. Now with Obama by forcing him to set policies they should have set, because they will not govern.

    We clearly don't agree in general, but if you think it's okay for Bush to be an autocrat, you can't turn around and say it's not okay for Obama. And if you think it's not okay for Bush to be an autocrat, then we agree; the question is what to do about it.

  18. Re:Classic Obama on White House May Name Patent Reform Opponent As New Head of Patent Office · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's really simple. I do not think Obama is perfect and wonderful. But I think he is less harmful than Bush Junior was, because he's competent. He gets things done. I don't like everything he gets done, but he is the head of the executive branch, not the legislative branch. It's his job to get things done.

    Expecting the president to change laws is treating him or her like an autocrat: a king. The president is not supposed to make policy; he or she is supposed to implement policies made by congress and the courts. What sucked about Bush was that he thought it was his job to "lead the nation" and he did a piss-poor job of it, with Congress' help.

    We really need to get over our collective feudal attitude toward the presidency. The founding fathers understood that the president was not a king; George Washington famously refused to be named king. Why have we forgotten this principle?

  19. Re:Piracy Warnings on MP Says 'Failed' Piracy Warnings Should Escalate To Fines & Jail · · Score: 1

    Decreasing government revenues is a choice, not an inevitable outcome of some fundamental change in society. Part of the nature of the decreasing revenue is that we keep moving more and more discretionary spending into corporate welfare, like private prisons. The best part about this is that the worse you treat people in need, the more likely they are to wind up in prison. $$$.

  20. Re:Well, this won't backfire! on Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit · · Score: 1

    Nono, that's common practice. The problem is that even if the positive stuff is well-sourced, there's almost always less of it than there is of the scurrilous stuff, so WP:DUE doesn't help. (As you can see, I am a veteran of the BLP wars... :)

  21. Re:Well, this won't backfire! on Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit · · Score: 1

    Required for what? Fairness, or not getting sued? For not getting sued, you are right, but my point is that Wikipedia actually has a serious problem with the way it does BLP articles, one that I don't think can be readily addressed by the current BLP policies. By "problem" I mean that it's producing articles that aren't accurate or useful, not that it's going to get sued. I really don't think that suing them will work to correct this problem, for the precise reason you state. Unfortunately, it may not be possible to fix this, because as far as I can tell Wikipedia isn't taking the problem seriously. I don't expect this lawsuit will change that, because I don't expect it to succeed.

  22. Re:Well, this won't backfire! on Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit · · Score: 2

    It's not that simple. The problem is that dirt sells, so for any given interesting person, there is always dirt. Getting reliable sources to say anything else about the subject of the BLP is harder, because good news doesn't sell. So if you are a person who is prominent in a small community, and you get famous because of an exciting news story, you wind up with a BLP page that makes you look like a scumbag, and says absolutely nothing about whatever it was that got you prominent enough that a gossip story about you was able to make the news. I've seen this happen to a couple of prominent figures. It's unfixable, because a gossip column is more reliable than an organizational web page. Personally, I count myself lucky that I don't have a wikipedia biography.

  23. Re:lololol on Otherlab Working on a 'Fundamental Jump' in Technology for Exoskeletons (Video) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are you nuts? This is going to help my mom to walk. Screw military applications—if they can make this work, it will change the lives of a lot of people who have physical disabilities.

  24. Re:Everybody is wrong... on Robert McMillen: What Everyone Gets Wrong In the Debate Over Net Neutrality · · Score: 2

    More importantly, it's the only restaurant in town, and there are no grocery stores. So if you want a cheeseburger, you go there. And because of that, they can charge you extra for better service, because nobody else is able to offer you service at all. Honestly, the restaurant analogy doesn't work very well.

  25. Re:Everybody is wrong... on Robert McMillen: What Everyone Gets Wrong In the Debate Over Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    If you want to use your restaurant analogy, what he's saying is that if the restaurant charges _me_ $5 for a hot dog, they also have to charge _you_ $5 for a hot dog. But no, that analogy still doesn't work, because what's going on here is that the ISP has the only path between you and the greater internet. And they are saying to online services, "look, guys, if you want to get a clean connection to our customers, you have to pay the vig. otherwise, we put you on the congested router, and your customers switch to someone who paid the vig." This is a problem because it disadvantages new entrants to the market: it is anti-competitive. So yes, us pro-competition "commies" want that stopped. I'm not clear on how that makes us commies, but whatever...