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User: dutchwhizzman

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  1. hacking satnavs on TomTom Satnavs To Set Insurance Prices · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is what will happen next, because faking good driver behaveor will give you lower insurance ratings.

  2. bad statistics to base premium on on TomTom Satnavs To Set Insurance Prices · · Score: 2

    I happen to be a 20+ years experienced driver, that drives about 3 times the average distance each year. Right now, I have a maximum no-claim insurance fee, because I haven't been in a crash that I was legally responsible for for over twenty years. However, if you would use the accelerometer in my satnav to judge my driving, or for that matter, the rate of wear on my tires, you'd be putting me in the most expensive insurance category, or maybe even not insure me at all.

    Just because I have had extensive training on how to make a car handle best in several safety trainings, race trainings and alike and actually use that in daily traffic, does not make me a bad driver. Just because I choose to buy a car and tires that can handle larger G-forces does not make me a bad driver. However, if you take statistics of all drivers that have proven to be crash-prone, you will find similar high g-force readings, if you decide to look at only g-forces and not at the full circumstances where those occur. Sure, for generic profitability an insurance company would do fine, but you would also be discriminating against people that have taken extra trainings and are in fact your best customers, since they pay their premiums and never ever claim.

  3. Yes it has on TomTom Satnavs To Set Insurance Prices · · Score: 2

    A very accurate accelerometer in three axis, that is used as a solid-state gyro. You can't predict exact location with it if you lose GPS for too long, but it's perfect for measuring G-forces.

  4. No? on RIAA Chief Whines That SOPA Opponents Were "Unfair" · · Score: 1

    He said that Fox does it while claiming it's unbiased news and not an editorial. That it happens overhere is not because it's news, but because it's someones' opinion. In practice *all* news stations and papers are biased. Even if the publications themselves appear to be neutral in content, the placement or the lack of placement tends to be biased. Left wing media tend to focus more on good things left wing parties do and on bad things right wing parties do and vice versa.

    Be smart, roll your own opinion based on facts if at all possible. Or if you can't get first hand information, be sure to check actual reports by as many different sources as you can get your hands on. Twitter has them, but the are hard to find due to enormous chatter of retweets and misinformation, live sat-feeds sometimes show different stories and pictures than what you get after editors got hold of the material as well. Read both left and right wing newspapers, watch more than one channel's news etc etc. It does help to have every perspective possible to a situation represented, if you honestly want to form your own opinion and not be part of the sheeple.

  5. NFC? on Higgs Signal Gains Strength · · Score: 1

    How are you going to toss a coin if NFC payments are going to replace coins? Throw up an iPhone and if the screen brakes, it's tails?

  6. sure but... on Higgs Signal Gains Strength · · Score: 1

    ... I'd hardly call any of those companies lean.

  7. what would proview cost to purchase on Apple Could Lose $1.6 Billion In iPad Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    What would it cost to buy the company, if it wasn't for this law suit? I doubt it'd be much more than a few million dollars if they are near bankruptcy?

  8. They still have to be your own cells, right? on Fracture Putty Can Heal a Broken Bone In Days · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It'd be a bummer if you don't have a large supply of your own stem cells in your home fridge, or else this wouldn't work, or am I misinformed and you can use other peoples stem cells for this?

  9. Netcraft on Lenovo Ordered To Refund 'Microsoft Tax' · · Score: 2

    Does not show what OS the CAs were running on, only the public website frontend server of those companies. If it's even that, and not some sort of caching or loadbalancing device. It's not uncommon for CAs to run their actual certificate generation platform on MicroSoft windows.

  10. cave paintings on Sandboxed Flash Player Coming To Firefox · · Score: 1

    Cave paintings exist where they sandboxed flash. It's about time Adobe did the same....

  11. Nope on Sandboxed Flash Player Coming To Firefox · · Score: 1

    They still crash the browser often enough. All FF did was kill plugins that were unresponsive for an X amount of time, but the didn't do any sandboxing or insulating.

  12. Relion has done so for years. on Little Ice Age: It Was Not the Sun · · Score: 1

    Why can't we simply accept it was the will of god and leave it at that? The amounts of money spent on all this science hasn't done the church one bit of good and it has to stop now. We need more people donating more money and come to church more often, but they have no time or money if they spend it all on science.

  13. It already is, but there's a solution on The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains · · Score: 1

    Make it an act of terrorism, that will really help!

  14. But there is on Job Seeking Hacker Gets 30 Months In Prison · · Score: 1

    Dutch Police just held a CTF to gain interest of white hat hackers to work for them. They are growing their "high tech crime unit" and need skilled people for that. Even though the prizes weren't directly job contracts, the first ten to finish, are invited for "a visit" and a tour.

  15. Time to invade Europe on Facebook On Collision Course With New EU Privacy Laws · · Score: 1

    This evil anti American regime must be stopped at all cost!

  16. Bad suggestion on Cystic Fibrosis Gene Correction Drug Approved by the FDA · · Score: 2

    It starts with cystic fibrosis and ends with a tendency to vote for whatever party is in the minority at the time they mandate yet another test. You can't keep on weeding out "unwanted" genes from the gene pool, because sooner or later, the decision what genes are unwanted will be used to create an "Uebermensch".

    It may be desirable to get yourself tested genetically if you want to have some insurance your child doesn't suffer from genetic disease. However, once you provide these services, it will be hard to get insurance, a job and what not if you or your parents don't use them. Even if they are legally not enforced, capitalism will enforce them anyhow. Discrimination of certain genes will make a paria out of probably over 50% of people, making it (practically) illegal for them to breed, making it harder to get loans, insurances and certain jobs. The USA economy has enough parias as it is, please don't make it worse by adding gene testing as a discriminator.

  17. Online shops can do this too on Retail Chains To Strike Back Against Online Vendors · · Score: 1

    What if Amazon writes the same suppliers to create unique models not available in brick and mortar stores? Who are the manufacturers going to listen to. Target, or Amazon? I guess they'll either give both their way, or go with the biggest seller, which most likely, won't be Target.

    The big deal with this used to be that you can't get service for your purchase through any other channel than the shop you bought it in. That sales model used to work long ago, but people tend to want to be able to get service for their product anywhere these days. Going for unique items that are basically badged "white label" products with a fancy brand name on them will bite them. Wouldn't you rather spend a little bit more money to get an equivalent model of your purchase that can be serviced anywhere? As long as it's not something you're unlikely to ever have to return, like underwear or breakfast cereal, you most likely would choose the name brand if you can afford it.

  18. Not the last person on Shmoocon Demo Shows Easy, Wireless Credit Card Fraud · · Score: 1

    that's only if you were to copy the RFID contents. The CCV2 is a one-time thing and isn't copied on the magnetic strip. The blank card she made can be used until it's blocked by the CC company, as long as no CCV1 or PIN are requested by the vendor. Typically, for low amount purchases, that's not the case, so it may take a while before the card gets blocked.

  19. false on Shmoocon Demo Shows Easy, Wireless Credit Card Fraud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can read RFID cards in peoples wallets at 30 ft with a transponder with higher send signal and a better antenna. The same applied for multiple cards. Some reading devices won't process if there is more than one card in it's reach, but that's a software decision. Devices purpose made to leech RFIDs do not play by the rules and legislation set out for "proper" RFID equipment.

  20. it's easier to block than you think on Fighting Rogue Access Points At linux.conf.au · · Score: 1

    Just window foil and energy efficient windows in a concrete/steel building will do it. I work for a mobile telco and we can't get any 3G at all inside the building, getting GSM900 reception is a struggle. It's so bad, we can't even use our cell phones in 90% of the rooms.

  21. it's about climate change, not water level on Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean · · Score: 1

    For those that don't understand the consequences of this. Warm currents of tropical ocean water that warm up Western Europe in the winter could stop or divert to other areas. This will likely give most of Europe a climate like the west of Canada and Alaska. Similar climate changes on the other coastal area's in the Northern hemisphere and possibly the southern are just as possible. Water levels will not directly be influenced, but may change due to "Ice age" In parts of the Northern hemisphere.

  22. Flawed logic on NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months · · Score: 2

    These coins have faces on both sides. That's why flipping them won't make a difference.

    And really..... "The Other Guy"? Democracy shouldn't be about having to choose from two evils. There should be enough options to choose from. Maybe the state representatives are a bad way to have your vote represented in Washington. How about having at least congress voted for nationally? That way other views than straight democrat/conservative get a chance to actually get representation.

  23. What is this oil fear about? on Web Developer Sentenced To Death In Iran · · Score: 0

    I'm sure other countries will produce more if Iran gets cut off. It may take some time, but we have other resource for oil, while Iran doesn't have other resources for basically, everything else. They'll run out of food rather quick and we know what happens if people get hungry. I'm fairly certain that it will take less than a year to starve them so badly, they'll overthrow their government just to get food for oil.

  24. Solution on DoD Using Plant DNA To Combat Counterfeit Parts · · Score: 2

    Go to war! That will make the military buy more stuff, so it will become cheaper and fraud isn't profitable anymore.

  25. doesn't recycle on Automated Machines To Recycle Phones For Money · · Score: 1

    The machine just collects, it doesn't recycle one bit.

    Also, given the cost of labor, I'd say you'll have a hard time getting this machine to be cheaper and less error prone than some shop clerk that does this work and checks your ID to make sure you're not anonymously selling stolen phones.