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User: fyngyrz

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  1. Not a democracy on Joining Lavabit Et Al, Groklaw Shuts Down Because of NSA Dragnet · · Score: 1

    FFS. The USA was designed as a constitutional republic. Not a democracy. Which is the only reason we ever had a chance. A democracy is one of the most failure-prone systems out there; majority rule is two retarded wolves and an intelligent sheep voting on what's for dinner. And no, choosing representatives doesn't make a society a democracy any more than choosing a dictator does.

    Other than that, yes. Great intentions, just as you say; yet these have resolved today in an almost complete and total failure to hit those lofty mark(s.)

  2. Who we are on Joining Lavabit Et Al, Groklaw Shuts Down Because of NSA Dragnet · · Score: 1

    The principles that underly the actual USA, specifically the constitution (as written, not as "interpreted"), are the foremost in the world by quite a distance -- they do the best job of balancing individual rights without falling overboard and choking off individual freedoms. Not perfect (oh, would I love to rewrite some of it), but still the best to date. Comparable efforts make serious mistakes, particularly in the areas of suppressing speech and giving cover to superstition. The ideal here in the USA was a profoundly well thought out constitutional republic, given the time frame the ideas were laid out in.

    However, those principles are now only a vague memory in the actual day to day operation of the US legal and social systems. So while one might admire the foundation, the intent, and even the attempts of many individuals within the context of what one could simply call 'The USA", it's a huge mistake to take those high points as a legitimate description of who and what we are today: A corporate oligarchy, wildly out of the citizen's control, engaged in wholesale deception to keep it that way. Today, we have embraced some of the most repulsive things we used to say we stood against. From torture to surveillance to pervasive, systemized political corruption to massive, for-profit imprisonment, the USA at this time is no more than a caricature of its founding ideals.

    Speaking to the younger generation (yeah, I'm getting old, and this is my lawn), I'm sorry, very sorry in fact, but you're well and truly fucked.

  3. Re:Nope on Next Up: the Jamming Wars · · Score: 1

    The reality is that privacy is and has always been an illusion created by inefficient management of information.

    No. It isn't. See (and read) the content my signature link points to.

    Privacy is as much a real thing as any other agreed-upon facet of a socially co-operative society. It can be enhanced; it can be eroded. There are potential benefits, and there are potential challenges. We're currently on a path to considerably less privacy, and the challenges are beginning to rear their heads at multiple points in our social structure. One of them is folks such as yourself who develop various limiting definitions and then spread them about -- this is exactly the same tactic the government uses as an erosive tool.

  4. multithreaded sorts on Qualcomm Says Eight-Core Processors Are Dumb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For example, lets say you take the same database of names and you want to sort it alphabetically. You can send each chunk of the database off to be sorted on each core, but now you have 8 pieces of the database that are all sorted and need to be merged back into the original list. This extra work of merging and communicating becomes the overhead.

    Nah, you're just doing it wrong. Take list of names, then mark as, or make sublists, the main list with [#ofThreads] of alphabet, which involves no more than looking at the 1st character and using that to target a list - a jump table of [alphabet] size would allow doing this in one instruction. There's a need to make sublists anyway, so creating them in a "deal the deck" way incurs no significant overhead. Hand off to multithread sort, result comes back in already completely in order, just link the new list ends in your [#ofTHreads] order and you're done.

    There are certainly hard-to-parallelize problems, but alphabetizing a list isn't one of them.

  5. I'll say it on Qualcomm Says Eight-Core Processors Are Dumb · · Score: 4, Informative

    You know what multiple cores are great for, that a very large segment of the population does? Image processing. A very large subset of things you can do to images responds very well to slicing an image into [#ofCores] slices, and then whacking away at them in [#ofCores] parallel.

    I write SDR software, that kind of programming can really benefit from multicore hardware too. At least, the way I write it, it does.

    Anyway, I think ol Qualcomm is lacking a certain basic understanding of what multicore architecture brings to the table. Er, phone. Desktop. Tablet. Whatever.

    But that's ok. Manufacturers that remain mired in the past fall to their competitors and so self-select themselves out of the game.

  6. Re:The Oligarchy on Most Americans Think Courts Are Failing To Limit Government Surveillance · · Score: 1

    "popular support" != "not totalitarian"

  7. Re:The Oligarchy on Most Americans Think Courts Are Failing To Limit Government Surveillance · · Score: 1

    That's regulation not totalitarianism

    That's a distinction without a difference. What it is, is government telling you what to do in an arbitrary and unreasonable fashion under circumstances where such restriction is often completely inappropriate. There are many totalitarian regulations in this area, from the erection of antennas and flagpoles to restrictions on homebuilding and property management where such actions by the citizen have no effect upon any neighboring property or structure. It's classic government out of control, just writ small, as opposed to the wars for profit, the care and feeding of the oil and military industries at the expense of everything else, the pervasive (and illegal by definition) surveillance, etc.

    (re shooting family pets) No idea what you are talking about here.

    Oh. Not paying attention again, then. Let me Google that for you.

    You need to stop with the overbearing rhetoric like "shooting family".

    Oh, do I?

  8. The Oligarchy on Most Americans Think Courts Are Failing To Limit Government Surveillance · · Score: 3, Informative

    A totalitarian government that objected to soda would just ban soda you wouldn't have light regulation in a few cities.

    Oh. You mean the way they ban pot and various other recreational drugs. The way they tell you how many windows your home has to have (and where.) The way they monitor your bank account, your communications, your travel. The way they shoot your family pets. And your family. The way they lie about the government's goals. The way they step all over the document that gives them the right to exist -- our constitution. Yep, I agree. It's not the soda bans in a few cities that made this land into the corporate oligarchy is it today; it's a whole bunch of other things. All of which are well in play.

  9. We just don't flex our muscles as much.

    You think not? (and remember, those are just the raids known to be "botched")

  10. Re:Movies with staying power on New for 2013: An In-Depth Analysis of Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey · · Score: 1

    "anecdote" != "data"

    Those movies have held their appeal to huge audiences. The fact that you are not in those audiences does not change the situation.

  11. Re:Figured this might happen on UK ISP Filter Will Censor More Than Porn · · Score: 1

    With a solid education and keen insights into their own limits, people with average or below average intelligence are not stupid at all.

    No. Just... no.

  12. Movies with staying power on New for 2013: An In-Depth Analysis of Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey · · Score: 1

    come up with one or more movies that have held their appeal over 20 or 30 years of re-watching and movie making progression.

    Wizard of Oz. Gone With the Wind. Sword in the Stone. Romeo and Juliet. Taming of the Shrew.

  13. Re:It's A Start on NSA Still Funded To Spy On US Phone Records · · Score: 1

    Sure are a lot of broken genes in the world. What is your proposal? Just let them continue to do damage?

    "Eugenics" doesn't mean what you think it means.

  14. Down the line... on Court Upholds Ruling On Dish Network's 'Hopper' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree that the decision is sensible in that it allows you to use your own gear at least somewhat as you would choose to (certainly they are not letting us use our gear "freely"), still, one has to consider what a broadcast entity dependent upon advertising revenues will do if those ads no longer generate cash.

    One fairly obvious path is "product placement", where the "ad" is in the show with some character brandishing, using, or otherwise making a point about it. That can be subtle... or it could be quite heavy-handed. There are other paths, some of which end with the disruption or even collapse of the broadcast entity -- if the advertising shifts context -- say, to billboards -- then there's no funding going to the broadcast entity, so now what? Or you might find yourself taxed, a' la PBS or the BBC, in order that these entities have operating funds. Some might applaud that, but some will scream bloody murder about the additional levy.

    Anyway, since ads do almost entirely support a lot of these entities, if you kill the viability of the ad to any serious degree, you can expect some kind of consequential change on the horizon.

  15. Re:Netcraft confirms it... on FreeBSD Co-founder Jordan Hubbard Leaves Apple To Join iXsystems · · Score: 1

    Wish Apple would fix the damned UDP sockets. That'd be some "UNIX-y goodness" I could get behind.

  16. Re:It's all the PIRATES' fault! on Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops · · Score: 1

    No, the problem comes from the fact that the stuff tastes *nothing* like butter. :)

  17. backyards existed before floodlights on Ask Slashdot: Setting Up Non-Obnoxious Outdoor Lighting? · · Score: 1

    Sure, we hang out. Built a deck just so we could. No electric lights, though. We look at the stars, we light the occasional candle, we laugh, talk, eat and drink -- all without requiring electric lights at all. And I live where it is *dark* (NE Montana.) When we grill at night (generally, we don't), a small flashlight suffices to examine the food. Tastes the same, light or dark.

  18. Re:It's all the PIRATES' fault! on Hollywood's Love of Analytics Couldn't Prevent Six Massive Blockbuster Flops · · Score: 1

    Videos, however -- meaning NTSC and PAL -- were blurry poo. An HD rental looks *fabulous*. It also *sounds* fabulous. So if the movie is worthy (yeah, now we're in rarified territory) then a highres stream or a blu ray from redbox can give you a better experience than you get in the theater. sandytaru is exactly right: why deal with 100 other people, crying children, their damned cellphones, their sneezing and blarting disease all over you, talking, crying, getting up and walking all over you, no way to pause, the bathroom is a looong way away and you *are* going to miss something if you go, the snacks are atrocious and the prices are worse, the cost of the ticket, the cost of driving there and back, the risk of getting your vehicle dinged... the guilt of seeing palm trees sacrificed in order to (badly) impersonate actual butter...

    Didn't take a lot of dithering about before I decided that a home theater system was the better path to take. Haven't been in a movie theater for several years now, feel no need to go back. Yeah, my family sees things a little later than others do, and spoiler-dodging is now part of our lifestyle, but it's still such a huge win that we have no regrets. And our theater is bloody awesome. :)

  19. Filter on British Prime Minister Promises Default On Porn Blocking · · Score: 1

    I share an Internet connection with a woman who would be mightily offended if she found such a filter was turned on.

  20. Re:The crucial point on British Prime Minister Promises Default On Porn Blocking · · Score: 1

    No, no. You want it to have some marketing zing. So call it the "In Continent." Easy to sell to old people, like most of our legislators. They've been considering incontinence as a lifestyle for some time anyway.

  21. Re:You don't understand the 4th on DOJ: We Don't Need a Warrant To Track You · · Score: 1

    "unreasonable" carries a heavy load in interpreting the 4th

    Only by those who would usurp the constitution's actual intent for random ideas of their own. The legal system is rife with such people; that's a good deal of the cause of many of our problems. I'm not arguing that there aren't bad judges, lawyers and legislators out there -- clearly, there are, and quite a few of them at that. I'm simply pointing out the obvious: The 4th cannot be read by a sane and honest person to turn on any individual or congressional idea of "reasonable"; that's already defined as the highest law in the land. Anything else is disingenuous (or clueless) at best, and may be an indicator of a much, much worse problem.

  22. well regulated on DOJ: We Don't Need a Warrant To Track You · · Score: 2

    Those words don't mean what you think they mean. Which has caused you to completely misinterpret what the intention was.

    Militia did not mean "national guard" or "army." It meant an armed citizen (male, typically) capable of fighting. You can be sure of this because there was no army or guard at the time. You can also be sure of it because that was how it was defined in law at the time.

    The intent of the 4th is, in fact, to ensure that the citizens are armed.

    While we're at it, "well regulated" didn't mean "lots of laws", it meant "consistently armed and prepared. So much shot, musket, powder, etc." Regulation was used in the sense that a clock is well regulated, consistent, dependable (in fact, a brand of clock at the time was "Regulator.")

    Take a look at the Militia Acts of 1792 in order to shed a little light on what these terms actually mean.

  23. You don't understand the 4th on DOJ: We Don't Need a Warrant To Track You · · Score: 1

    No, it *is* cut and dry. You say:

    They simply needed to be reasonable.

    The 4th amendment defines what a reasonable search and/or seizure process consists of. And that definition is: a warrant, describing the things to be searched and/or seized; said warrant only being issuable upon determination of probable cause, as supported by oath or affirmation.

    Just ask yourself: If that's not the definition of reasonable for the purpose of search, then why is it there in the first place? Do you think that's the definition of when they can't search? Do you think it's the definition of when you can have a cheeseburger? Do you think it is extra words left over from some other amendment?

    Here's the 4th amendment in its entirety:

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

    The 4th amendment tells you, albeit in somewhat archaic language, that search and seizure is not something that can be done unless all those specific points are met in a positive fashion. More pointedly, it's telling you that those metrics are what make the search reasonable. Reading it so that none of the metrics there apply if the searcher thinks the search is "reasonable" under any other criteria than those specified makes the amendment absolutely pointless and toothless; ergo that cannot be the correct way to read it.

  24. Re:Judicial control is what was missing on Federal Judge Rejects State Secrets Claims: EFF Case To Proceed · · Score: 1

    I think he's right. The military -- all branches -- operates with a code of honor that they're pretty darned proud of, and generally stick to as a matter of course. The NSA and CIA operate under the guidance of "we think we need to do X" and very little else.

    Regardless of the original genesis, I would far rather trust a platoon of marines or soldiers or sailors, etc., than any number of NSA or CIA employees above zero. The military guys would almost certainly call me "sir" and get between me and any real threat. The NSA and CIA guys... not so much.

    As you may have inferred, I support our military; I am under the very strong impression that they do the (crazy difficult) jobs they are assigned, and they're quite careful to do them within the limits of honor and constitutional obligation with very few exceptions indeed. I do not, however, think that they are being well used. But that's not a problem with the military. That's a problem with our political (cough) leadership.

  25. Re: Again, it's not 3D. It's stereovision. on BBC Gives Up On 3-D Television Programming · · Score: 1

    also, virtual reality and immersion imply interaction; that's not what makes something three d (and perhaps where your confusion is coming from.) 3d means an image has three dimensions. Width, height, and depth. Your stereo image doesn't have actual depth; if it did, you could look at things from any angle and your view would change accordingly. What it has is one locked view with one locked depth of field, again, just like a viewmaster.

    Well, you'll understand when the tech gets there. No point in me trying to repair the public's thinking on this. Probably can't be done anyway.