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User: bombastinator

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  1. Re:How about the creators of Tor on Should The FBI Have Arrested 'The Hacker Who Hacked No One'? (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 1

    we already that. IF a car model has a design feature that kills the passengers such as defective seatbelts or whatnot, that is what happens. Your implication is that the use of this system as a hacking tool was accidental, and also not a case of criminal negligence.

    What is more important? Intent or effect? How much if any care was taken to prevent misuse of the application in the way it was misused?

    In the 80's Regan and thatcher closed the national mental health hospitals nation wide in their countries in what was called in Brittan "throw the nutter in the gutter" program. In the US of the 300,000 some patients over 150000 were dead within the year. Additionally there was a giant rash of "arsons" resulting from said patients attempting to move into unfinished building sites and starting fires to stay warm. The net economic cost was in the billions.

    Was this murder? Was it criminal negligence? Was it merely "a timely cost savings" as the administration called it?

    Intent and effect. Your argument is quite similar to the NRA slogan " guns dont kill people, people kill people" My favorite response to this comes from Australian comedian Jim Jefferies. feel free to google " jim jefferies gun control" for the video He's pretty funny.

  2. Re:What do Slashdot's readers think? on Should The FBI Have Arrested 'The Hacker Who Hacked No One'? (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 1

    > What do Slashdot's readers think?

    I think the FBI should fuck the hell off, along with the rest of the federal government. Their purpose isn't law enforcement, it's to violate our civil rights, instil fear, and keep the populace under the thumb of the elitists who run the government (for their own benefit).

    Seriously, we need to disband the FBI, the DHS (as Ron Paul said, "we fought World War II without a DHS"), ATF, TSA (a bunch of dumb-fucks who couldn't hack it at McDonalds), DEA, NSA, and pretty much the rest of the federal agencies. We don't need some massive, sprawling, byzantine, corrupt bureaucracy... we just need self-government.



    I think you're a trumper, and like most trumpers your understanding of how the government works and what the various agencies actually do is both limited and damaged by extremist propaganda.

    see my post about historical precedent for further opinion.
  3. There is historical precedent here on Should The FBI Have Arrested 'The Hacker Who Hacked No One'? (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 2

    this situation reminds me very much of that man who published a book on how to cook methamphetamine at home. the book sold so well he became a multi millionaire though he made no meth. Of course using his book, hundreds of thousands died from addiction and explosions.

    was his an action of unmitigated evil for personal gain which ruined countless lives? YES

    Was it technically illegal when he did it? NO

    Is it reasonable to assume that anything not deemed actually specifically illegal should be accepted by society no matter how damaging it is? That appears to be the question. IMHO the answer is a resounding NO, but i am one man.

  4. Re: This is fucking awesome on Family Sues Apple For Not Making Thing It Patented (nymag.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Nope. IF it was legal to drive while facetiming this would be true. There was a shoert period when it was but that was many years ago. Apple probably dropped development after it became illegal to text and drive.

    The guy driving while playing with his phone was breaking the law and is solely liable. This is nothing but a nuisance lawsuit designed to extort a few bucks from apple, of which the plaintiffs will see next to zero.

  5. Re: Applying tort to patents on Family Sues Apple For Not Making Thing It Patented (nymag.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You won't need it. This is a classic nuisance suit. I watched a lawsuit much like this in court once. A driver of a bobcat wasnt wearing his seatbelt when he lifted a load too high digging out a house foundation, and it fell into the foundation and he was crushed. He got absolutely nowhere.
    If using the phone in such a way while driving was not illegal, they might have a case, but the driver broke the law and is solely liable. This sort of case is a 95% loser. Barring incopetence of the defense it has no chance. There is thhat 5% though. Also it will cost apple a good bit of money to win the court case which they will not get back. This case was likely taken on 33% contingency. The sleazeballs pushing it are looking for a portion of what it would cost apple to defwnd the case in a settlement. They might even get it if this was a one time affair. The problem is it isn't. Apple would have to keep on payong for every accident. There are two likely outcomes:

    A. Apple offera tiny tiny settlement which is eaten almost entirely by the lawyers, screwing over the family, or

    B. Apple pulls the trigger and demands a court case. It will cost them a couple hundred grand at least to puto bed, the plaintid's lawyers eat it partially because they will be desperately trying to avoid a situation where they will not only lose but also have pay apple's court costs.

    So its give the family a pittance and reward the troll attourneys, or punish the attounrneys. I would really rather take B myself but it almost certainly won't happen. In the case of the bobcat thing it went to court because the plaintiff was so offended by the fact that the lawyers that talked him into it so badly screwed him that he screwed them back by excercizing his right to go to trial, forcing them to prosecite the ridiculous dog of a case and get hammered for it by the court.

  6. Re:Here's an idea. on Social Media a Threat To Undercover Cops · · Score: 1

    If an undercover cop gets killed though it wouldn't be hard to sue facebook for wrongful death.

    The thing about facebook is that what they do is sell identities. They sell information about you to people who can make money off that information. As such they want to gather as much information as possible and give you as little choice in the matter as they possibly can. It's wrong. But until companies get their noses rubbed in it they won't stop. They have the most hidden system they can legally get away with because they don't want people opting out, and they don;t care who gets hurt as long as it isn't them.

      I avoid facebook like the plague, but they probably have data on me anyway simply because people I know use it.

  7. there is a video demonstration on Was Flight Ban Over Ash an Overreaction? · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a british kid's show called "bang goes the theory" (it's awesome)that had a great little demo of what happens. Basically the ash turns to glass on the hot jet engine turbine blades. It might not be nearly as bad for piston engine planes assuming they have air filters, which is not always the case.

    there's a blackhat video here (all I could find) it's the whole show. Luckily the demo is at the beginning. If someone could cut out the pertinant clip it would be cool

    http://www.megavideo.com/?d=0XOVBR18

  8. interesting they would pick the dell mini 9... Arr on Linux Reaches 32% Netbook Market Share · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Funny that their favorite computer is the Dell Mini 9. It's not a very advanced machine, to the point that it een got discontinued once.
    They brought it back though because it is very popular for the single reason that it has a reputation as being the most hackintoshable netbook there is. This implies that a lot of these netbooks are running more MacOS than linux.

  9. hide it in your bra on Encryption? What Encryption? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The standard technique for moving such files a while was to hide the data inside pornography. They are one of the most commonly trafficked file types on the internet and people prefer not to look at it too closely. Or did before it became a standard..

  10. Adding unfair competition doesn't make it better on Time Warner ToS Changes Could Mean Tiered Pricing, Throttling · · Score: 1

    I wonder what corporate genius thought this would make it more acceptable instead of less acceptable. This is like the Simpson's "can we have a pool dad" chant.

  11. Re:It's all about the money. on The Case For Working With Your Hands · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Schools in the US are funded almost entirely by local property taxes so quality can vary a lot by area. It is common for parents to choose where to live according to the quality of the local schools. Rich people can send their kids to private school, and often do. The education offered the is frequently (though not always) much better. I attended a high end private school for junior high and a public school for highschool. The difference was jaw dropping. I tested completely out of most of my freshman classes and probably some of my sophomore stuff too. I had taken algebra 1 through trigonometry by the 8th grade and there was simply no way to place me for math, so they just put me in the freshman class and I did algebra all over again. I basically took no math in high school.

  12. Re:It's all about the money. on The Case For Working With Your Hands · · Score: 1

    Sounds like you went to a much better funded high school than I did. Must be nice. The original article is about how services like this basically don't exist anymore. Typing huh? like with typewriters? How long ago was this?

  13. Re:It's all about the money. on The Case For Working With Your Hands · · Score: 1

    >"Most secondary schools have advanced networking equipment, multiple severs and hundreds of modern PCs, along with an IT services department."<
    Sure. Much of the equipment is donated. Sometimes by the manufacturer. Apple has a huge educational program. A lot of companies will ditch machines after only 2 or 3 years. Schools also vary widely in funding. You ever attend an inner city public junior high?

    >"I don't know of a computer in my college older than 5 years."<
    Sure. And how much do you pay for college? Did you go to a private high school? If it's a tech school I bet they have trades equipment there too.

    You're familiar with personal computer costs I'm sure. a CnC milling machine can easily cost 30k or more. The very very cheapest models still cost 3 times what a cheap computer would. Now insure it against a 16 year old. Remember it's got high speed spinning bits and if you get your hair caught it will pull your face right into the machine. Would you like to talk welding? Poisonous gas, temperatures that can make skin explode. Auto shop? Please bring an auto. Did you know it used to be common practice for there to be enough sports teams for everyone in the school to be on one? They didn't have gym at all. They had sports. Modern high school sports are a creepy last vestige of that practice. Why is it still around? Because it pays for itself. We used to pay for all of this in public schools. The US used to have one of the best public school programs in the world. We don't any more. Its getting worse every day, just as it has every day for 40 years.

  14. It's all about the money. on The Case For Working With Your Hands · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trades weren't pushed out of high schools because they were "retooling" they were pushed out because there was no money to teach them. Teaching trades requires expensive equipment that must be kept up and insured against accidents. Teaching IT requires obsolete donation computers that cost nothing and have very little upkeep. If Moore's law slows the donation computers will probably dry up too and then there will be nothing at all.

  15. Re:What? on What OS and Software For a Mobile Documentary Crew? · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I have to agree. This is critical. Video editing is an art. Artists HATE changing their tools. It used to be with film cameras that if a pro quality camera got discontinued the second hand value skyrocketed, frequently to above the original new retail price. An artist has to get used to the behavior of a media to the point that you don't have to think about it before you can really really start to get work done. Your editors and pixel pushers will know only about the software suite they have trained to use whether they think so or not. Getting them to become efficient on a different software suite can take months, and you start risking horrible footage destroying "oops" mistakes while they train up. If you don't know what they trained on you are going to have to go MAC. It's the only thing that runs everything.

  16. Re:after a few minutes of internet searches.. on Reliable Male Contraceptive In the Works · · Score: 1

    I did find one site www.malecontraceptives.org/methods/others.php The site won't load but their google cached page did. The page claims that the male test never took place and instead was a test of the wives of 20 soldiers for a neem based spermicidal cream. They have an annotation too, but of course that page doesn't work either. This one has a bit more credence in that there is now a neem based spermicidal cream that is now widely sold throughout India.

  17. after a few minutes of internet searches.. on Reliable Male Contraceptive In the Works · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your affusively swenstionalist article points to the existence of neem oil as a pesticide, and apparently a fairly good one (doesn't make me want to drink it btw) but does not mention at all any trials by the Indian military or it's effectiveness. The much less evangelical Neem wiki and the neem entry at drugs.com mention many medical uses, mostly for skin diseases in traditional medicine, and food additives, but makes no mention of male contraception. Female contraception tests in animals are mentioned but not any clinical tests.

    I was able to find for both male and female contraception at a new age herbal medicine site http://www.sisterzeus.com/neem.html which seems to contain linked end notes but all the notes are missing. This is quite disturbing as false annotation has been a repetitive problem in the New Age movement, the most famous being the "Chalice and the Blade" scandal about 20 years ago. Google searching the two names mentioned in conjunction with neem did yield some results. Noel Vietmeyer has apparently written a book (not a paper, a book) extolling neem as a wonder plant, but he is not the one who performed the study. It is the only reference I can find. All other references seem to lead back to that one.

    I can find no first hand evidence at all on the internet that the Indian military study took place at all.

  18. Re:The pre-existing condition is a claim of fraud. on Murder Victim's Claim Denied for 'Pre-Existing Condition' · · Score: 1

    They can cure Hepatitis now? Wow! That's what I get for spouting things I learned way back in college without looking to see if they changed. Could someone mod dynasoar up please? I tried but I lack mod points atm.

  19. The pre-existing condition is a claim of fraud. on Murder Victim's Claim Denied for 'Pre-Existing Condition' · · Score: 1

    Hepatitis C eats your liver. It's incurable and fatal. This guy had numerous drug convictions and had really low chance of getting a liver transplant even if he could afford it, which of course he couldn't, him being a junkie and all. He was a walking dead man. If he knew he had hep C, or even merely that his liver was failing, not that hard since it turns your skin bright banana yellow, the chances that this is insurance fraud is very very high. I'm with the company on this one.

  20. I wonder how long it will take on World's First X-Ray Laser Goes Live · · Score: 1

    I wonder how long it will take for all the advances produced by the millions and millions of dollars and careers spent will be squandered by crappy information security and shipped to china for 37 cents in long distance charges.

  21. anything that can be sent can be recorded on Robo-Arm Signatures Are Legal, Gov't Buys One · · Score: 1

    On a business, rather than celebrity autograph level, how is this different than an autopen except that it's (lots) harder to detect forgery? How is this a good thing?

    Anything that can be sent can be recorded, and anything that can be encrypted can be decrypted given enough time. The security of the device seems to be based on the fact that it is more or less unique. This will not remain true, and therefore the security offered will not continue to exist. All this machine has done is make one of our last fairly good low tech verification systems useless not even for some other great purpose, but for the convenience of celebrities. Forgive me if I find this less than noble.

  22. Re:Google on EU Investigates Phorm's UK ISP Advertising System · · Score: 1

    and you do this on a treo 680 running t-moblle how?

  23. Re:Google on EU Investigates Phorm's UK ISP Advertising System · · Score: 1

    You can choose not to use google in much the same way as you can choose not to be bitten by mosquitoes in the middle of the Minnesota woods.

    You are free to swat at will. You may occasionally miss, You can wear bug repellant but it is imperfect and tends to wear off. You may be unable to swat at all. On many systems (such as say my treo 680) because the script and cookie handling functions are not advanced enough to be able to do more than simple global on/off you are more or less stuck with it. Almost everything I use on the internet requires scripts/cookies these days. Even with firefox+noscript/cookiesafe google has an annoying habit of staying on unless specifically killed every time.

    In the end if you walk into the woods you get bit. The only question is how often.

  24. Re:Hmmmmm on Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In? · · Score: 1

    Religious shops always suck.
    They have no problem with all kinds of favoritism and unethical behavior because it is for the cause. The ones I have seen have been Christian but this is generally how it works. At least they didn't pressure you unsubtly to convert and start donating part of your salary as well. That one is also pretty standard.

  25. can anyone coroberate this from a seperate source on Amazon Culls "Offensive" Books From Search System · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The source of this article is not exactly a main line news source. Can anyone corroborate this?