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  1. news?

  2. Goldman on NSA Hacked Huawei, Stole Source Code · · Score: 0

    Remember when Goldman lost some of their trading software? The US government couldn't move fast enough to arrest the guy(Aleynikov ). Time for Huawei to go to the police and ask to for the same. Someone should go to jail, and there will be billion dollar lawsuits. Huawei is a massive, mufti-billion dollar a year company and their source code does have significant value. Huawei has be hacked and has been damaged. If the police do nothing, then change the laws. The next time a Goldman Sachs gets hacked, don't prosecute. Don't extradite some kid from a foreign country to face face prosecution here.

    We are the US. One thing that makes us different from the Chinese Communist party is that Chinese Communist party does what it wants and only applies the law when convenient. We do not. We believe in equal protection form the government and equal application of the laws. An American company caught polluting in China will be shown no mercy. A Chinese company polluting in China will come to a quiet, negotiated solution or face no charges at all. This is a key difference between us and them. If the US government really is no better than they are, we need to rethink everything up to dissolving the government.

  3. Re:whohoo! Swiss cheese! on Java 8 Officially Released · · Score: 1

    But Java now has "critical new features, including Lambda expressions". Java really didn't work without Lambda expressions. Now I can FINALLY get a Java "hello world" to compile and run! Yippee.

    (ok, so Lambda expressions are cool, but are they critical?)

  4. Bernie on Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Trust Bitcoin? · · Score: 1

    One could ask: after Bernie Madoff how could you ever trust a fund manager again?

    At some point Visa or Bank of America will start exchanging bit coins and change very high fees. They will have the same internal controls they use for the rest of their business. We don't need any innovation. The old processes work today and will work in the future. We need some company who knows how to run a transactional financial service to set up a service for bit coins. This does not exist today.

  5. evilly tapping fingers together. on Federal Smartphone Kill-Switch Legislation Proposed · · Score: 1

    Will this be activated by simply logging into someone else's, oops. I mean, _MY_ Apple/Google account and filling out a form? No reason why. Just wondering.

  6. TSA on Ugly Trends Threaten Aviation Industry · · Score: 2

    As a private pilot, doing short hops in your own plane is nice. You skip the humiliation of the TSA.

    Unless you own a jet, longer flights are hard to do in a private plane. Range and speed limit how far is practical to travel in a few hours on your own.

  7. Barry Bonds on Congressmen Say Clapper Lied To Congress, Ask Obama To Remove Him · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I will remind you that Barry Bonds went to jail for lying to Congress. They didn't hesitate to throw him in jail.

    Either throw Clapper in jail or rewrite the laws to reflect reality: If you are powerful enough and have the full support of the current administration, you are immune from prosecution.

    And while you are at it, take that stupid blindfold off that statute of justice. That is from another world and another time. It has no relevance today.

  8. Re:Thought Experiment on Nissan Unveils 88 Pound 400-HP Race Car Engine · · Score: 1

    huh? I said run the exhaust into a compressor that then pushes all the exhaust into a storage tank. The air flow through the engine would be unchanged.
    This is a thought experiment. The fact that you are trying to compress large amounts of hot gasses (not easy), the tank size/weight, power and size requirements for the compressor are all ignored. The point is: tail pipe emissions are not the end-all-be-all when it comes to actual pollution generated/environmental impact of the system.

  9. Thought Experiment on Nissan Unveils 88 Pound 400-HP Race Car Engine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You attach a compressor to the exhaust pipe on a normal car. The exhaust is compressed and stored in a tank. The tank can hold the exhaust from one lap of a race. During a lap, no emissions are released. Would you have a "first race car in history to complete a lap during a formal race with absolutely zero emissions". No. You wouldn't. Whoever is claiming "zero emissions" is a fool. Altering the time or location when emissions are released does not make something zero emissions. How much nasty bunker oil was used to ship all the parts around the globe to make the damn thing? How many children in China will get cancer because they live next to the mine that produced all the rare earths that went into the magnets and electronics?

    Minimizing pollution is a noble goal. Making blatantly false and misleading statements to support your world view, biases or support your agenda is wrong on many levels.

  10. Re:"familiar confrontational 60 Minutes style" on Khosla, Romm Fire Back At '60 Minutes' Cleantech Exposé · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would have respect for 60 Minutes, if they started the NSA interviews with: "A lot of people think you should be in jail and branded a traitor to your country. You seem to act with complete disregard of the Constitution and you wrongly assumed you wouldn't get caught. Plus, you haven't stopped any terrorism, you live in secret with no over site, you've pissed away billions in taxpayer money and all the while you are drawing crazy high pay. What say you?"

    That is the "familiar confrontational 60 Minutes style"

  11. "familiar confrontational 60 Minutes style" on Khosla, Romm Fire Back At '60 Minutes' Cleantech Exposé · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What are you talking about? Didn't you see the 60 Minutes/NSA love fest?

  12. Has he checked Ebay? on US Customs Destroys Virtuoso's Flutes Because They Were "Agricultural Items" · · Score: 3, Informative

    TSA agents have been know to do unscrupulous things.

  13. The ones who need the most help on Are High MOOC Failure Rates a Bug Or a Feature? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's say you are a smart kid. By 10 years old you are ready to ace calculus. You will suffer horribly waiting around year after year with nothing to do but get in trouble, become board and go completely off track. Schools are designed to severely punish the brightest and make them wait for the mean.

    This is a way out. It can only be viewed as a good thing.

  14. Gag Order on Apple Denies Helping NSA Subvert iPhone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Working with the NSA most likely comes with a caveat: "you follow this gag order or we will put you in jail for interfering with national defense and releasing classified information." In other words, something almost as bad as giving aid to the enemy.

    I hate conspiracy theories, but it is plausible that they are under a secret order from a secret court ordering them to deny everything. This is precisely why in the US we should never every have secret courts.

  15. The process on X11/X.Org Security In Bad Shape · · Score: 2

    This is a good thing. This is the way it is supposed to work. This is how things get better. A little late, but it good to see this happening.

  16. Ivy Bridge? on What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro? · · Score: 1

    Does anyone else think it is strange that Broadwell is on the way, and they have an Ivy Bridge processor in this thing (Xeon E5-2697 V2)?

    I know. This is what Intel sells, but still. It just feels "old".

  17. IANAL on Italy Approves 'Google Tax' On Internet Companies · · Score: 2

    So what prevents Google for closing their Italian office altogether? Simple tell Italian companies, he is a webpage to buy services and an account in Ireland to pay. If you need help, here is a support number in India or some other location. Somehow I doubt Italy can enforce a rule that says companies can't buy an online service from Ireland.
    The nifty thing with the internet is that you can work remotely. Or am I somehow missing the point?

  18. Work? on Rise of the Super-High-Res Notebook Display · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps the only reason you have a laptop is to watch YouTube. Some people do actual work on a laptop.

    If you use Word, Excel, Eclipse, etc. you don't get enough lines top to bottom. Even at 1080p. For many applications such as web browsing you have tons of unused white space on the left and/or right with 1080p, but you are constantly scrolling up and down.

    The more horizontal lines of resolution, the better. In an IDE with lots of tool bars and debug windows, etc. I have the up down space of a 1984 Mac for my code. It sucks.

  19. Breaking News on ATF Tests Show 3D Printed Guns Can Explode · · Score: 1

    Plastic not as strong as steel!

    On a related subject. Plastic doesn't hold up to the extreme heat generated by multiple rounds as well as steel.

    If you didn't see this coming, you are on track to earn a Darwin.

  20. prying money from their cold dead hands on Microsoft Hands Out $28k In IE11 Bug Bounty Program · · Score: 1

    Microsoft:
    3 months ending 2013-06-30:
    Revenue: 19.896 Billion USD
    Cost of goods/revenue sold: 5.602 Billion USD
    Gross Profit: 14.294 Billion USD
    Source:
    https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&fstype=ii&ei=wcBTUtihB8z2qQHI8AE

    Out of their costs of goods sold, these researchers got 0.00049982%.
    Me thinks their contribution to M$ is more than a few 10,000ths of 1%. They did what the 5.6 billion spent on internal people failed to do. And M$ doesn't have to pay their healthcare.

    The cost of the meeting (hourly pay, room, overhead, etc.) for a bunch of execs at Microsoft to figure out how little to give these guys most likely cost more than 28,000 USD.

    One can't help but to note that they gave the Google employees just enough to pay for dinner in downtown Palo Alto.

  21. 500 USD? on Security Researcher Makes His Point By Hacking Into Zuckerberg's Facebook Page · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What a joke. Face book should fire the guy costing 150,000 USD a year ( take home pay and all in cost to FB are not the same ) who wrote the offending code.

    500 USD for a bug is an insult. How much do their QC people make a month? They failed, and they are getting a lot more than 500 USD.

  22. Don't panic on Losing the War Data For Iraq and Afghanistan · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can start another war and re-build the data set.

  23. DOA on One-Way Ticket: Mars One Project Applicants Top 100,000 · · Score: 1

    One solar flare pointed in the wrong direction and they will fry before they get there. Without science fiction, there is no practical shielding tech that offers a solution (a room with 6 inch think lead walls is heavier than you think). Keep in mind, if you have a heavy shielding solution and you get that thing up to speed, slowing down becomes a problem. You could end up flying right past Mars. You could bring some big thrusters to slow you down. Oh wait, that is more weight. Or you could use some superconducting magnets to deflect the charged particles. But then you'll have figure out how to get the spaceship to run without computers. Computers and huge magnetic fields don't mix. And superconducting magnets are extremely heavy. Don't worry. We'll just do it the way they do it in Star Wars.

    Are they going to land on the surface? I doubt it. The atmosphere makes it very hard to land anything larger than the rover without making a new crater. If you landed, you would have supplies for a few hours before death. You can't do it with parachutes. You need a big rocket to slow you done. Oops. A lot more weight.

    It goes on and on. Mars is distraction. Money and energy should be spent on more practical projects. We'll all be dead from a antibiotic resistant super-bug before we have any hope of putting someone on Mars.

  24. Taxes on China Has a Massive Windows XP Problem · · Score: 5, Informative

    China's whole tax system works on a printed documents called a fapiao (fa-piao).
    Every company in China has at least one dedicated machine with a special dot matrix printer to print fapiaos.
    The software to print fapiaos only runs on Windows XP.

    It can not be understated how critical fapiaos are to China's tax system. Big companies use them to pay the 17% VAT (some services and logistics companies pay less than 17%). If you lose the fapiao you get from your supplier, you might as we have lost actual cash. You must have it to offset the VAT you owe. During your annual tax review, you must have fapiaos to keep your taxes low. These are so important, there is a booming business in faking fapiaos. This is mostly done through fake transactions. Faking the actual fapiao is not so easy these days. Each fapiao carries a unique number and can the traced.

    If you go out to eat, you can demand a fapiao. For westerners, this can be submitted to reduce your taxes. The top tax rate is 45%, so fapiaos are very valuable. For local Chinese, they submit them as a business/company expense. For people working in restaurants, this is a source of extra cash. If a customer doesn't ask for a fapiao, the employees can print one anyway. On the black market, these can be sold for 5-10 cents on the dollar. The same applies to cab drivers. Many passengers don't take their receipt. The receipt is a valid fapiao that can be used to reduce taxes. The cab drivers will sell them for extra cash. Just ask. :)

  25. Zynga shares jumped 12%? on Don Mattrick Leaves Microsoft To Become CEO At Zynga · · Score: 2

    Does no one remember Nokia?

    Their new strategy will be to strike a deal with M$ and then develop solely for the Windows Phone because everything else is a waste of time.