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User: Antique+Geekmeister

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  1. Re:That is something I've never understood on How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture · · Score: 2

    > Why the heck is ASL not American English? Perhaps there is a good reason, but it just seems silly to m

    Bandwidth. Take the paragraph you wrote above, and try to turn it into signed English (which is a different language). It's much slower and less efficient than ASL, because ASL will leave out a lot of detail not critical to the conservation. There's a good description of the distinctions at http://www.signingsavvy.com/bl.... A lot of gestural, not necessarily linguistic bandwidth becomes more important. But it's ephemereal: it's not easily recorded for others to see the same message, later. The result is to discourage, or to focus less, on _literacy_ for the Deaf community as opposed to people who happen to be deaf. And there is a cultural difference.

    Also, do look at the families that _get_ cochlear implants for their children. I'm afraid that the children are the key issue, since a child raised in the "Deaf" culture is much more likely to participate, politically and socially, with that culture, to marry, to communicate, and to participate in enriching that culture. Then look more closely at _which_ children get implants: those of wealthier, better educated families who can afford the procedures, which cost about $30,000 at last check and who have good medical insurance. Namely, they're the cream of the crop of the next generation of potential Deaf members.

  2. Re:Let it die on How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture · · Score: 1

    Or how vaccines are killing deaf culture. Measles used to be a major cause of permanent hearing loss.

    Large doses of some modern antibiotics, such as streptomycin, can actually cause deafness, so there was an even more relevant issue you might hav mentioned there.

  3. Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 1

    > Substituting one god for another isn't going to effect your well-being to any great extent

    I'm afraid that it certainly does. Worshipping a god who demonizes and espouses genocide for non-believers, and paradise for martyrs, encourages all kinds of unfortunate behavior. I'm afraid that I'm going to "Godwin" myself and mention that many Nazis believed very strongly in a Christian god who wanted Jews punished for Jesus crucifixion: we see similar religious fervor contributing to genocide today in various devout theocracies around the world.

  4. Re:Please NOTE... on U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Rule On Constitutionality of Bulk Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Guns help. It's much easier to _detonate_ a fuel supply with a firearm.

  5. Re:San Fran = the new Detroit on Smart Car Tipping Trending In San Francisco · · Score: 1

    They mostly do that to avoid the import duties, which are pure protectionism.

  6. Re:Please NOTE... on U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Rule On Constitutionality of Bulk Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Armed infantry. or guerrillas, can destroy the fuel supplies, supply lines, and the personnel who reload and refuel the tanks. Tanks require far, far more fuel, maintenance, and much larger ammunition depots than ground troops. Basically, if you can engage in effective guerrilla warfare, you can defeat an artillery based army. Take a good look at the history of invasions of Russia and Afghanistan for particularly effective ground forces versus armor historical combats.

  7. Re:Constitutional Court on U.S. Supreme Court Declines To Rule On Constitutionality of Bulk Surveillance · · Score: 1

    I'm afraid this is not true. An appellate court, presented with a singular case, can make a wrong decision. That means appealing to the Supreme Court, especially ofr issues of constitutional law or refinement of previous Supreme Court precedents which are being misapplied.

  8. Re:Complete access and indefinite support for free on Should Microsoft Be Required To Extend Support For Windows XP? · · Score: 2

    > IMO the "right" thing to do is either release the source or provide full API and file format specs.

    Microsoft has a very poor history of providing API's. Examine the history of the "OOXML" API, which was broken from its publication and has never been actually followed by Microsoft Office products. Or look into the Samba and EU lawsuits against Microsoft, mentioned at http://www.linuxinsider.com/st.... The original specifications that Microsoft provided were _horrible_, and quite useless. And they're still patent burdened, which can block third party developers from being able to safely update such products.

  9. Re:Money money money on It's Time To Plug the Loopholes In Pipeline Regulation · · Score: 1

    Please go back and read what you wrote:

                              Why don't pipelines like that have passive shutoff valves every hundred feet or s

    I answered your actual question. Now, you' seem to be mocking it, based on how my answer does not apply to a question you did not ask, mainly:

                                Because, we do put routers between network segments and firewalls at each end-point, and no more fine-grained points of (virtual) compromise really exist.

    Yes, we do. But "every 100 feet" on a 10 inch pipe is not at every _endpoint_, it's at every _connection_. And that's a full pipeline cut-off valve. It has to be able to stop the full pressure behind a 10" pipe. Given a typical pipeline pressure of roughly 125 PSI according to notes in Wikileaks, that means that the cutoff has to maintain a good seal with 124 * 3.14 * 5 * 5, or about 9000 pounds. That is not a cheap valve.

  10. Re:Nearly Unbreakable on "Nearly Unbreakable" Encryption Scheme Inspired By Human Biology · · Score: 1

    > A fundamental law of physics is that information can NEVER be destroyed

    This is.... not even wrong. There are interesting trade-offs between useful thermodynamic work and possible information storage, but information in that sense is "lost" with almost every physical and chemical interaction.

  11. Re:Money money money on It's Time To Plug the Loopholes In Pipeline Regulation · · Score: 0

    For the same reason we don't put firewalls after 100 feet of network cabling. It's expensive and likely to _create_ more failures than it prevents.

  12. Re:Shorewall on Ask Slashdot: User-Friendly Firewall For a Brand-New Linux User? · · Score: 3, Informative

    _This_ is why many people hate asking It for help. Rather than answer the questions as stated, the poster is being told to buy more hardware and learn to program it himself by fan boys of half a dozen different toolkits, many of them requiring new hardware, without a good guideline to compare them, and many of them that require quite a bit of learning to master. Many of the suggestions are completely unsuitable to many environments: carrying a spare router around to put in front of a laptop is impractical. And even with a commercial grade firewall router in _front_ of a local network, that provides no protection against internal attack by infected laptops or houseguests:. And let's be honest, many households do leave their home wireless networks open to visitors.

    The built-in iptables in most Linux systems is not *bad*, and quite suitable for home use. I just took a look at the current release of webmin, and the interface to manage iptables is really quite good: just remember to not accidentally cut off the webmin interface while firewalling off other traffic.

  13. Re:Shorewall on Ask Slashdot: User-Friendly Firewall For a Brand-New Linux User? · · Score: 2

    Go back to the original spec. The poster wants a stable, sophisticated, flexible firewall. They also want it to be easy to configure. These are distinct, and to some extent contradictory requirements. And yes, for a new admin, the built-in "iptables" and most Linux firewall tools are confusing. Shorewall has a good reputation as robust and stable, and Webmin has an _excellent_ reputation as being a tool that makes system management much, much, easier.

    In fact, testing webmin with just "Linux Firewalls" configuration tool built into it might be enough.

  14. Like most decisions, it's partly mental on A Rock Paper Scissors Brainteaser · · Score: 1

    Like drawing to an inside flush, an "optimized" strategy is not necessarily what the opponent plays. There is no reason inherent in the description to make assumptions about the opponent's other play. They may also be constrained to play paper the other fifty percent of the time, and to play paper , then rock, then paper, then rock. In the real world, don't assume that the minimal description of the problem gives all the important data.

  15. Re:Aimed at FBI screen locking adware on Microsoft's Security Products Will Block Adware By Default Starting On July 1 · · Score: 1

    As it happened, he wasn't browsing at work. He was browsing at home, and since some employees are on call and need to respond quickly to service requests, he was off duty but using his work laptop for personal use. When he opened his laptop in the morning, it wasn't even in the active tab of his browser so wasn't apparent. But when he minimized the browser to show something else to a co-worker, oh my.

    Separating personal use from workspace resources can be very awkward, especially with companies where "Bring Your Own Device" is supported, or where you're laptop is company purchased.

  16. Aimed at FBI screen locking adware on Microsoft's Security Products Will Block Adware By Default Starting On July 1 · · Score: 1

    They're well behind the times. They're apparently aiming at things like this ransomware (http://privacy-pc.com/how-to/fbi-moneypak-virus-computer-locked-by-fbi.html) There are unfortunately a lot of ad tools out there right now that still try to lock your application to their web site. And I recently had to have a long talk with someone at work who browsed a porn site and had a dozen or so pop-ups _under_ his active screen, all showing webcam pornography. When he tried to close the web browser, the pop-unders were displayed, and it forced me to talk to him about keeping his workspace visitor safe.

  17. Bring it to history class on It's Time To Bring Pseudoscience Into the Science Classroom · · Score: 1

    The same critical thinking should be brought from the hard science classes, where it is so particularly effective, to history and "social studies". The awareness of how people are confused or deceived, and how to detect it, are invaluable in understanding what we often call the "soft" sciences, and to understanding human behavior in general.

  18. Re:Schwartz was a massive asshole. on Aaron Swartz and MIT: The Inside Story · · Score: 1

    What possibly makes you think that JSTOR is ossified? They've been very progressive with how they handle new document formats, with the overwhelming number of new specialty journals, and with the advances in the sheer size of the data in new and already cross referenced work. That work is ongoing, it's _not_ cheap, and they're working very hard every day to manage it.

    They've been precisely what a non-profit should be, and I applaud their efforts.

  19. Re:[sarc]How wonderfully counter-productive![/sarc on Senate Report Says CIA Misled Government About Interrogation Methods · · Score: 1

    They're looking for the "big fish", the "kingpins". The focus on catching the "kingpin" works equally badly for informants in drug cases.

  20. Re:Schwartz was a massive asshole. on Aaron Swartz and MIT: The Inside Story · · Score: 1

    > Judging from your Slashdot ID, both you, and I, then, have participated in many actions which you seem to consider DDoS attacks --- namely, Slashdottings. I wonder if you'd be OK, then, that you should be charged with felonies for each and every one of those actions? Oh, I forgot --- you don't have to worry --- you're not someone who has a public presence so that convicting you could be politically worthwhile.

    That's an odd, but interesting question. The last time I "slashdotted" a company I also called and gave the web administrator a courtesy call, to let them know what they were in for. One factor that made Aaron Swartz's behavior so reprehensible was that he _kept doing it_, apparently at full capacity, despite the obvious consequences to JSTOR and to MIT. It was actively destructive to an honest company and to research by thousands of people.

    JSTOR's provision of free access to the public domain papers is, indeed, interesting. But I do believe that was already planned when Aaron got caught. JSTOR is a library service, a non-profit. They'll do what they can _afford_ to do to make the information available.

  21. Re:Our space program on Astronauts' Hearts Change Shape In Space · · Score: 1

    The heart is a _very_ muscular organ, under a constant pumping action. I'd hardly call it an "equilibrium" state.

  22. Re:I would like to know on Samsung SSD 840 EVO MSATA Tested · · Score: 1

    I misspoke. I was thinking of various schemes I've been seeing to replace system _RAM_ with SSD's, and the problems with the approach.

  23. Re:Circadian Rhythm on Daylight Saving Time Linked To Heart Attacks · · Score: 1

    > Long haul drivers, never!

    That's not the case according to the company president who just retired. He described numerous cases of winding up doing, or helping with, the unloading because the staff when he or his crews arrived weren't ready to handle the delivery. For longer drivers, that's why they have coolers. A bit of fruit and vegetable was apparently helpful for keeping them "regular" when they drove.

  24. Re:Hey guys, let's watch trolls prattle their talk on Aaron Swartz and MIT: The Inside Story · · Score: 2

    Goodness. Logical fallacy much?

    I don't hate the man. I didn't hate the man. I just don't think it's fair to lay any blame on JSTOR or MIT for defending themselves from his abuse, and it _was_ criminal abuse of their resources, even if you refuse to call copying documents theft. Simply _scaling back_ the bandwidth of his downloads would have avoided JSTOR's problems and MIT's eventual cooperation with a criminal investigation, and people at MIT or campus guests like Aaron could have done their research unhiindered.

  25. Re:Schwartz was a hero on Aaron Swartz and MIT: The Inside Story · · Score: 1

    > Trying to control copying, in order to fairly compensate creators, isn't working. Surely we can find and use some other means. That's what the debate is really about.

    It is working. An enormous number of artists, and authors, are making a living this way and the public is getting access to those works at prices they can tolerate.

    It's not working very _well_, which is a different issues.