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User: DarthVain

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  1. Just doing their Job. on Colorado Sued By Neighboring States Over Legal Pot · · Score: 1

    Seems normal to me. Police enforce laws not make them.

    There was a number of police that came out in Canada that said basically that busting pot was a huge waste of time and drain of resources, however they are still tasked to do it. Their complaint wasn't so much about the morality of doing pot, but that of a staffing and resources issue, where they thought it was a waste of time and resources that could be better spent, you know solving real crimes, or targeting more harmful drugs.

    The only horse that law makers keep beating about pot is that it is a "gateway" drug that leads users to do harder drugs. Which is complete BS, but even if it were, the only reason it might be is you have you drug dealers that sell both, "oh we're all out of pot, here try some Meth!". By legalizing it, and selling it, regulating it, and taxing it, you can still enforce the sale (just like cigarettes), but you would basically be putting the pot black market out of business, essentially eliminating the "gateway" to begin with.

    How will this change? Eventually the old farts that made the laws will die, and newer more progressive law makers will change them. Slow change, but it is going to happen.

  2. OMG Piracy! on Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' · · Score: 1

    I can't wait to see how Sony and the MPAA somehow spin this whole mess into how movie piracy is somehow secretly funding North Korea, Terrorists, and all of 'Merica's enemies...

  3. Re:Dubious because facts on US Links North Korea To Sony Hacking · · Score: 1

    Sony, doesn't exactly have a stellar network security record either. This very well could be any hacker group looking for LULZ. I mean all this about the movie and North Korea, particularly if it eventually comes out to BS is pretty funny (and sounds like a movie itself). As to the threats, that well could be copycats etc... and people overreacting to some 12 year old's idle threats...

  4. What they should have done: on Top Five Theaters Won't Show "The Interview" Sony Cancels Release · · Score: 1

    Rather than run it normally, show it for free, or at least at a huge discount.

    Get as many people to see it as possible. That would send the message that you are going to achieve the exact opposite should you try this garbage again.

  5. Hypocrisy on In Breakthrough, US and Cuba To Resume Diplomatic Relations · · Score: 1

    I always thought the US embargo of Cuba was a bit of hypocrisy at least in modern times, particularly after the fall of the USSR.

    I mean as you say it isn't like the US is making a big deal about other nations that aren't democratic, and by any measure much much worse than Cuba, as far as human rights violations etc... China being the big one.

    I guess it is more close to home physically, which probably played into it. However unfortunately I suspect it had more to do with internal domestic politics in Florida than anything else which is a bit sad. Lets punish a whole people forever to possibly win a few extra seats in a particular state. I doubt it is any coincidence that Bush killed the idea, when his brother was the governor of Florida.

  6. Cloud City on NASA Study Proposes Airships, Cloud Cities For Venus Exploration · · Score: 1

    Whatever you do, don't let the guy who administers the floating city wear a cape, it will go right to his head...

  7. Tethered Balloon on Army To Launch Spy Blimp Over Maryland · · Score: 1

    What I would like to know is how a "Tethered Balloon" costs multi-billion dollars?

    Perhaps it *is* a technological marvel, as how else can they conceivably get a balloon made out of pure gold to float?

    It sounds more like a line item on a ledger to hide money.

  8. War, what is it good for? on Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates · · Score: 1

    Paying off debt apparently...

    We should have the war to end all wars coming then by that assumption!

  9. A dose of Realism. on Denmark Makes Claim To North Pole, Based On Undersea Geography · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Canadian here. Much of the "ownership" of the north is symbolic. The ownership is in most ways determined by use (of the lack thereof). This is why there are stupid islands that Canadian and Danish forces regularly visit, even if in dispute, as they can claim they still "use" it. Even if like the moon, it is only to set foot on the barren rock and plant a flag for symbolism. The folks sent there I think have about the right attitude about the whole practice as I recall, Canadian forces leaving booze for the Danes to find, and likewise they would leave booze for the Canadians.

    This is why I thought Stephen Harper was such an idiot on this topic. When talking about the ownership of the North, he decided that he should do a pork project to build "Ice Hardened" warships in the idea of protecting our claim to the North (As if they are going to fire on anything but perhaps some arctic seals). They are however of a Finnish design, and are basically armored corvettes. Unless however the polar ice gets very very thin and all but vanishes however, they are not going to be very capable. What we should have done was expanded and improved our fleet of real ice breakers.

    As I hate to say it, but all the UN and other countries can say what you will, but only one country currently really has claim, the same one with the largest fleet of icebreakers in the world, the only one to actually build nuclear ice breakers, and has a fleet of 12 or so of them. As when it comes down to having the capability of actually using the north for anything, they are the only ones that really can effectively. Even if you say with the weakening of polar ice, that will take time, and the only country that will be able to take advantage of it first (and make a claim) will be Russia.

    Canada should be building ice breakers not warships if they really wish to protect their claim on the north.

  10. Oh Cloud! on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 1

    Making police look like stupid thugs... is there anything you can't do!

    That is one thing the Cloud is very good at in modern times, offsite backup, which so many struggled with years ago.

    I know I was looking at getting security cameras for my house, and the only ones I looked at were the ones with Cloud capability... A thief might steal your cameras, or computer, or recording device, or destroy them, however if it has already uploaded to the Cloud.... :)

  11. Summary Poorly worded! GASP! on MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin · · Score: 1

    It likely had more to do with MIT revoking his professor title, rather than the other way around. It makes more sense to say that MIT revoked his professor title, and then took down his lectures. You know, because he is no longer a professor at MIT anymore...

  12. Land Mines on US Navy Authorizes Use of Laser In Combat · · Score: 1

    Another example are Land Mines, they are banned by much of the world, however the US never agreed to any ban/treaty.

  13. Counter Culture on China Plans Superheavy Rocket, Ups Reliability · · Score: 1

    While an interesting comment, it is sort of counter to your argument. A space program isn't something that normal enterprising people can do, it is something that only their governments can do. While you might argue that due to educational culture, the Chinese might be more inclined to produce more engineers than say financial advisers, however I don't think that there is a lack of those people in the other space fairing nations.

  14. Re:ITIL on Ask Slashdot: Are Any Certifications Worth Going For? · · Score: 1

    I would agree with this one, as I have seen it around on job competitions a lot. Many of the other ones like Oracle are specific to a particular job, just like some of the code heavy ones.

    That said, I think this is more endemic of the whole issue of HR departments and Management that make the decisions not having a clue and need some sort of thing to base a decision on. I've seen many just list a great many certs and other qualifications, where if I had everything they were asking for, I certainly wouldn't be applying for their crappy job because I would be some sort of computer god. Not to mention silly things like years of experience that do not match up with the length of time a certain piece of technology has even existed for.

    I find that so much crap is listed as qualifications that you don't really know what the actual job is because it is basically *everything*. I have done a number of interviews that were pretty much a waste of my time, because you try and guess from the Job title (which can be ambiguous) and the qualifications (which can be a bunch of BS and include everything including the kitchen sink), then when you actually get the interview and see what kinds of specific questions they are asking you see the actual focus of the job (which has little to do with 90% of the qualifications listed) and find you are either ill suited, or not interested, you just did a lot of work for nothing. It is frustrating to say the least.

  15. Power Conservation on Orion Capsule Safely Recovered, Complete With 12-Year-Old Computer Guts · · Score: 1

    Many people mention things like them being hardened and dependable, but another thing older technology has is that it can run on a lot less power. Which is pretty important when you are pretty much limited to solar power and whatever you have for batteries on hand which need to do a number of other things as well. Likely any savings on power conservation is more desirable than additional unneeded CPU cycles.

  16. Coder Lockin on Why Apple, Google, and FB Have Their Own Programming Languages · · Score: 1

    Not only that, but I think it is more relevant to developer lock in to a particular platform. Just like C# and Apple, and say porting video games from Xbox to Playstation. They want exclusivity on applications developed for their particular platform. This is nothing new. It is just a way to exclude competition to their particular market, and to prevent or at least make it more difficult to get the same functionality from a competing service.

    As probably many people mentioned, any coder worth their salt can use or learn any new language without too much effort. Coders with multiple experience would of course have an edge.

  17. Capitol Costs. on Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies · · Score: 1

    Nope. I doubt this worries any power utility or industry.

    The biggest obstacle to home rooftop solar power is the capitol costs VS electrical prices.

    1) Capitol costs are high, and electrical prices are low, so to break even on a large investment is like 20 years, which is too long.
    2) Capitol costs are in solar panels and installation, very few have battery systems, most either do nothing or sell back to grid (hence part of the issue with electrical prices)
    3) Batteries would help in remote location installs, but in that case the effect on electrical providers would be nil as they won't be providing service anyway.

    About the only situation where this might come into play would be if electrical prices go up, and consumers lack the ability (for whatever reason, hostile regulation for example) to sell back to the grid. In such a case then it might make battery storage feasible. However again it would depend on the cost of the batteries, how long they last, and a host of other factors.

    Anyway in the near term, this has little significance on anything really.

  18. Re:USA is slow on The Sony Pictures Hack Was Even Worse Than Everyone Thought · · Score: 1

    Never really thought about the effects of infant mortality, interesting if truly how they calculate that statistic.

    As to your analogy and saying I am wrong, I am not sure how you have proved either. That is fine if you and your buddy have 100MB and 1GB connections, however if most of the connections in your country are SIGNIFICANTLY less that than by a very large margin, I am not sure what you are talking about. I understand that in many large metropolitan cities, a good connection can be found for many areas, however outside that it is not good.

    If you are suggesting that MOST of the US has extremely good connections, and that there is a small but very poor portion (your dead baby analogy) bringing down the statistics, I think you are incorrect.

  19. Ob. Event Horizon Quote+ on How Astronomers Will Take the "Image of the Century": a Black Hole · · Score: 1

    I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars, but she's gone much, much farther than that. She tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of pure chaos. Pure... evil. When she crossed over, she was just a telescope. But when she came back... she was alive! Look at her, Miller. Isn't she beautiful?

  20. Re:USA is slow on The Sony Pictures Hack Was Even Worse Than Everyone Thought · · Score: 1

    Well unless your Hacker is sitting in a trunk splicing wires, or splinter cell infiltration level expert of Sony HQ, your limitation is going to be last mile. Unless they are storing their ill gotten gains on some cloud that happens to be sitting on a fat pipe (even then you're sharing resources with other users).

    I think the parent (likely in the US) was thinking about how long it takes them to DL Frozen to their home PC and thinking about how many hours that takes, then dividing 100TB by the Bluray version size, and going, wow that would take a long time. Though heck, just doing a transfer over a network of 100TB is going to eat time. I guess I am just saying that were the Hackers and Data both actually sitting in say urban Japan, rather than your Redneck Hackers of the US, their times are going to be significantly better by many levels of magnitude.

    Then again, they were sketchy as to the details. It could be that Sony has had a leak for years, and hackers have just be trickle draining them without being detected, and Sony is reluctant to admit that they have had a breach for so long...

  21. USA is slow on The Sony Pictures Hack Was Even Worse Than Everyone Thought · · Score: 1

    I suspect that because Sony is a Japanese company, and has their headquarters in Japan, likely has most of their important datacenters in Japan, which unlike the USA, has incredible internet speed, and because Sony is a tech monster, likely has some pretty serious connections to their stuff.

    Now couple that with what we have already seen of general network incompetence with the last huge Sony breach to their Playstation network, due to them simply not updating their software to a version several years out of date, I don't think it is all that surprising.

    However you are right, 100TB is nothing to sneeze at, and would take some time, and likely multiple connections to work. I suspect that Sony was clueless about what was going on, until someone complained about slow network connectivity, and eventually some sysadmin started looking at things, and started to see connections, and bandwidth saturation, and then trying to figure out who was doing it, and on finding it wasn't Sony, needed approval about severing the connections (if even technically that easy)... and once approvals and technical fix were done, well 100TB is gone.

    I suspect with the amount of interconnectedness of distributed networks, it wasn't as simple as walking outside with an axe.

  22. Density is the right word. on Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby · · Score: 1

    Space is not, by it's very nature and name. Couple that by being very big (vast understatement).

    So yes, their very well might be life all over the place (relatively speaking), however baring some magic technology and revolutionary understanding of the basic principles of the universe, we'll never meet, see, or communicate with them in any way.

  23. Not so crazy on Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby · · Score: 1

    A space anchor. I have thought of it before.

    The universe is expanding. Everything in it is moving around. Were one to somehow achieve stationary stature relative to the rest of the universe, presumably things would just fly by you and you would not need to exert effort at all.

    How you might maneuver to someplace you want to go might be a bit of a problem. Possibly using space grapples or something like that to time points of stationary stature VS resuming spatial influences.

    Specifically how one does that might be a bit troublesome, but an interesting thought problem. However without something analogous to wind, you would be forever just going with the tide, or in generally one direction as to where things are moving for you. How you get back might be a bit of an issue.

  24. Apple Behavior on Apple Accused of Deleting Songs From iPods Without Users' Knowledge · · Score: 0

    Apple has exhibited this behavior for a long time now using iTunes "limitations" as a way to promote anti-competitive practices and force consumers to use only Apple Store music.

    iTunes has had an issue whereby it frequently looses the location of locally stored non-Apple music, breaking the link in iTunes, making it not only unplayable, but on Syncing (see above article), removes all those broken links from your device. There is a way to re-link your files as a "feature" but you have to do it one song at a time, and iTunes would regularly forget the location of several hundred at a time making it practically useless.

    The issue has been around for like a decade now. At first people complained loudly at Apple, but it fell on deaf ears, was never addressed, and people soon figured out that because it really wasn't in Apples best interest (i.e. it makes it easier to NOT use Apple songs), they simply ignored it. Then an enterprising group of people developed an open source Java application, that would re-link all your broken links for you. However what would then happen over the next 4 or 5 years, is that Apple would release a new version of iTunes, that would just happen to break the 3rd party software (intentionally? Who knows?). Then the developers would update the Java program to work again, Apple would break it again, fix, break, etc... Until finally they gave up as it took too much effort to maintain the thing.

    It is this sort of unscrupulous counter-consumer BS why I moved to Android and Samsung. I have little doubt that Apple knew exactly what was happening, and was fully aware of what would happen, and doesn't care. They will either throw lawyers at it until it goes away, or simply pay off some puny (in relative terms) settlement, and continue acting in their fiscal best interest rather than the best interests of their consumers satisfaction.

    Likely the error message just like the fix one broken link at a time, is simply a measure so that if it ever goes to court they can say, "see we acted in good faith" should it ever come to legal proceedings.

  25. Minecraft on 18th Century Law Dredged Up To Force Decryption of Devices · · Score: 1

    A shovel , used properly, is for digging. That doesn't mean improperly used, it can't perform as well as a club...

    Given the parents quote from the summary, the real question isn't about the use Act itself, but its application, and about what is within the jurisdiction of the courts. I doubt any reasonable person would say "everything", and many might argue that encrypted personal content on a personal phone is not.

    Presumably their case was so weak they couldn't use many of the other means necessary that already exist to obtain information, otherwise they wouldn't have used the archaic Act in the first place.