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  1. Re:So is this because... on Tor Usage More Than Doubles In August · · Score: 1

    I mostly agree, but on the barriers to people standing for office - yes, there are huge barriers to prominent, powerful spots like President, Senators, etc. But there are lots of lower-level slots that are reportedly much easier to get. State-level Representatives and Senators in most areas, less prominent city-level positions in bigger cities, even some Federal Representative seats. If you want to stand a chance at running for one of the higher-level positions, you generally have to win elections for and serve in lower-level positions for a while. If you do well there and are able to amass some supporters, then you have a shot at running for a higher-level office. Repeat that a few times, and you're in the running for the really powerful positions. It doesn't sound all that bad when you think about it that way - do you really want some guy off the street with no experience in governing anything to be the next President? (uh, no comment about Obama...)

  2. Re:Forget $200k... on The $200,000 Software Developer · · Score: 1

    The nice part about being a software developer - you can learn it by yourself for free (well, you need a semi-modern computer and an internet connection, but if you're eating and have a roof over your head, that usually isn't much more). So get to it already. Make an application or website or whatever that does something, keep it open-source, and release it to the world. Any popular language/platform will do, and it helps if it's useful to somebody or even popular. Employers like people who can get things done a lot better than the like people who complain that the world won't hand them everything on a silver platter.

  3. Re:The Free Staters chose my town as the test bed on The Free State Project, One Decade Later · · Score: 1

    You're using the presidential elections of 1916 to determine politics? I'm pretty sure that the policies of both parties have swung wildly in the last 100 years. It's going to take a lot more detailed information to disprove the pretty clear idea that the modern-day Left has taken over California generally and San Francisco especially over the course of the last few decades.

  4. Re:Wrong place for this sort of thing on The Free State Project, One Decade Later · · Score: 1

    One of the more insightful things I've read on here in a while. I'd only add that if people have such an ironclad notion of honor, then pretty much any type of government would work fine, from Communism to Libertarianism to total anarchy.

  5. Re: Watch your clauses, people! on Largest DDoS In History Reaches 300 Billion Bits Per Second · · Score: 1

    Yeah, he has a typo, but he isn't writing a newspaper intended to be read by millions and doesn't have any editors. One would think that Mr. AC would at least run spell-check if he was publishing a newspaper.

  6. Re:My BitCoin story (As if you care) on Bitcoin Hits New All-time High of $32 · · Score: 1

    This actually is more interesting than all of the wild theoretical arguments about whether bitcoin is destined to go down in flames or take over the world. Who knows? For now, it is what it is, and it's interesting that you've found good uses for it - I hadn't heard of Gunbroker auctions accepting bitcoins yet. That said, I wouldn't keep any amount of money in Bitcoins right now that I wasn't willing to lose.

  7. Re:State sponsored on Stuxnet's Earliest Known Version Discovered and Analyzed · · Score: 2

    I think the fallacy with this is that the techniques required to do this sort of attack are out there for anybody to discover. No matter what the US or any other country does, somebody will use it eventually. We (presuming it's the US) just have the level of technical know-how and resources to get it done sooner than most other countries. Somebody somewhere will use it against us in 20-30 years whether we use it now or not, so why not use it now and get some benefit from it while we're still the only ones that can do it? Especially if it allows us to stop something very dangerous from happening without directly killing people or staging massive raids or invasions.

  8. Re:Not as big a worry now on Stuxnet's Earliest Known Version Discovered and Analyzed · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, 20% is the absolute minimum concentration where it is possible to create a critical mass, and thus a nuclear detonation. I'm guessing that getting an actual detonation at that concentration level requires a ton of advanced warhead design/engineering and boosting techniques, and is still probably pretty low-yield. Probably nobody would actually bother doing it because it's much easier and more reliable to just keep on refining until you get to 90%+ where you can skip a lot of the tricky stuff and get higher yields and lighter, smaller weapons.

  9. Re:OTOH on Professors Rejecting Classroom Technology · · Score: 1

    Then the benefit of doing it all electronically is that you can easily set and enforce word count limits instead.

  10. Re:Unfortunately it's extremely common on Hacker Faces 105 Years In Prison After Blackmailing 350+ Women · · Score: 1

    Or maybe because he did it to hundreds of strangers over the internet instead of to one person who he was already in a relationship with. Doing it to your partner is generally wrong, but probably not the place for a legal solution except in the most extreme cases. This most definitely needs a legal solution.

  11. Re:waste of money on Machine Gun Fire From Military Helicopters Flying Over Downtown Miami · · Score: 2

    I'd say completely out of the question. They would have to completely conquer all of continental Europe first, because it would be insane to devote most of your military capability somewhere halfway across the world while powerful enemies are sitting right next door. The US would go all-in on that fight too, because we know perfectly well that the Soviet conquest of Europe would tilt the odds way in their favor for a more direct conflict with the US. Then, they would need complete control over both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the skies above them, and the skies above the US coasts, since ground forces on ships are highly vulnerable to sea and air attack. Meaning essentially the complete destruction of the US and all allied navies, and the bulk of the Air Force as well, which they have zero credible capability of doing. I don't think the Soviet Navy ever had any ambition for doing anything beyond closing the Atlantic to bulk shipping from the US to Europe in the event of a major war in Western Europe, and even doing that is far from certain.

    Only after doing all of those nearly impossible things without triggering a nuclear war (also probably impossible) would they have a chance at trying to land troops in the continental US and dealing with the millions of small arms in civilian hands... after the Army throws everything they've got at them, of course.

  12. Re:Government goes with lowest cost on Lockheed, SpaceX Trade Barbs · · Score: 1

    I'm inclined to disagree with that. I'm sure there's quite a bit of waste, corruption, and featherbedding in the cost of these jets, but there's also a ton of revolutionary technology in them too. The kind of stuff that's so new and untested that you can't estimate costs or anticipate problems properly. That makes for ridiculous costs, but also aircraft that nobody else can match. I'm sure we could do much, much cheaper if we set out to build a F-16 style jet using all old tech, optimized for manufacturing efficiency.

    That's what SpaceX did, as far as I can tell. None of their technology is all that advanced, but they've done a lot of revolutionary stuff as far as design and manufacturing for efficiency and low cost. Thus, they're doing the same stuff everyone else is, only for a tenth of the cost. And bypassing all of the red tape involved with designing under government contracts probably helps too.

  13. Re:Why is this posted AC? on Ask Slashdot: Typing Advice For a Guinness World Record Attempt? · · Score: 1

    I think it matters because you create an identity for yourself. If I reply to your post and you reply back, then I know that it's the same person, and not some other guy who thought it would be funny to pretend to be you. If you reply to my post and some other guy also does, posting as AC, how do I know which one is you? How do I even know if what you are saying is true? With an account, I can click on your name and read all of your previous posts. As an AC, you could be pretending to be somebody else or making the whole thing up entirely.

    And of course, it's good for the site, because having an identity gives people an incentive to post quality stuff and not post incoherent nonsense and flames.

    I've mostly stopped replying to ACs who reply to my posts, because in my experience, 90% of AC replies are nonsensical flames. If there's anything with less of a point to it than having an internet discussion with someone whose reply to your post is a nonsensical attack, it's having that discussion with an AC, where you don't even know if it's the same person, or if they will see your reply at all.

  14. Re:So Proud of Gun Ownership on New York Paper Uses Public Records To Publish Gun-Owner Map · · Score: 2

    How would you feel if they registered all of the homosexuals and printed maps of where they all live? What's that, there's a difference, you say? Indeed there is - gun ownership is a specifically enumerated right in the bill of rights, while homosexuality is not.

    Both being recognized as rights is good for society. If you think you can justify one, then why not the other?

  15. Re:It goes the other way, too on Possible Habitable Planet Just 12 Light Years Away · · Score: 1

    Exactly. We don't know much of anything about any potential alien civilizations. All we can say for sure is that if they are advanced enough to get here, then we would be totally at their mercy. We barely understand why other human cultures on our own planet do things, or even our own culture a few decades ago. What hope do we have of guessing how some completely different species would behave? For all we know, they could want to destroy us just because we might potentially be a threat to them in the future. It would be insanely risky to assume that they must be benevolent by our definitions just because they are so advanced.

  16. Re:Why would they stop developing weaponry? on North Korea Launches Long-Range Rocket · · Score: 1

    That's true. But then, it's also true that it would have been lost without the US or Britain. Without all 3 fighting together, the allies would not have been able to win. It isn't realistic to imagine any of them sitting out the war entirely, so imagine what it would have been like if any one of them switched sides.

    The USSR switching sides would make the combined Nazi-Soviet empire a land-based colossus, virtually impossible to invade.

    If the UK switched sides, the sea lanes between the US and the USSR would probably be closed. The USSR goes down, and the US is pretty much powerless and left out, at least until the next war.

    If the US switched sides, the sea lanes would probably be closed between the UK and the rest of the world. The UK goes hungry and either makes terms or gets invaded, and with US supplies fueling the Nazis, the USSR would be toast.

  17. Re:Why would they stop developing weaponry? on North Korea Launches Long-Range Rocket · · Score: 1

    More to the point, even if we had beaten them, what would we do then? There's no way we'd ever have enough manpower to effectively occupy China. All we could do would be to prop up some government we thought we would like, and tell them that we'd invade them again if they annoyed us.

  18. Re:Well on North Korea Launches Long-Range Rocket · · Score: 1

    So what? Every single country on the planet with a viable military force has some sort of plan for how to attack every other country, no matter how unlikely it is that they would ever want to do it. Such things are a necessary part of figuring out what your diplomatic posture should be in various situations, whether your military as a whole is too large, too small, or badly proportioned, etc. They're also good practice for the planners, and the information they get in making plans for how we could attack country X are probably also very useful if we want to figure out what happens if we want to ally with country X to attack country Y instead.

  19. Re:WATER? on Over 1000 Volunteers For 'Suicide' Mission To Mars · · Score: 1

    Heat may not be that big of a problem, actually. Heating energy is fairly constant proportional to temperature difference on Earth, because it all has roughly the same atmosphere. You real concern for heating is not outside temperature, but heat transfer rates. On Mars, with no atmosphere to speak of and a requirement to pressurize the living quarters, necessitating no material flow in or out and very thick walls, heat loss to the environment might actually be very low.

    Space is even colder, but most of our spacecraft have to be artificially cooled, not heated, because the only heat transfer mechanism in space is radiation to the environment, which is very slow for the temperatures we are working at. Mars would add some limited conduction to the ground and probably very limited convection from the atmosphere. I haven't run any numbers for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if all of the equipment you need to live there (power generation, air handling, etc) generates enough heat that you have to artificially cool the habitat to compensate for it.

  20. Re:One More Baby Step to Global Sharia Law on Saudi Arabia Calls For Global Internet Censorship Body · · Score: 2

    I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view, but if the sane Muslims want to be seen as the majority, they need to be seen to be cracking down on their extremists rather than shielding them. When at attack like 9/11 happens and the first thing out of the mouths of every major Muslim spokesperson is "Don't you dare even think about profiling Arabs/Mulims!" then people are going to look at all of them a lot more suspiciously. Why isn't the first and only thing out of their mouths after a major attack "God damn those murderous maniacs for attacking my country!"

    I'm sure somebody will point out a few quotes from spokespeople saying just that. The trouble is, they never seem to be the majority or to have the loudest voices. Better fix that, or that global war between Islam and nonbelievers that the extremists are hoping for might just happen someday, and I don't think the results will be what they expect.

  21. Re:What took them so long? on Halliburton's Missing Radioactive Cylinder Found · · Score: 1

    For all of the hoopla over it, these types of sources are actually pretty weak. I don't know the activity level of this particular one, but most likely you'd have to put it in your pocket and walk around with it for a day or three for any measurable damage to happen. I haven't read that much about this actual situation, but they probably tried that before they even bothered calling in the National Guard. It most likely bounced far enough from the road that it wasn't detectable this way. No matter how sensitive your sensor is (I do remember reading that this was an AmBe source, which is primarily a Neutron source, requiring a Neutron detector), you still have to get close enough to it for the activity level from the source to be significantly above background levels. With a 130-mile path traveled, that's a lot of ground to cover very slowly.

    Yes, these sources are supposed to be locked up tight under lock and key while in transit, and this was a fuckup of tremendous level. I fully expect that the people directly responsible and managers several levels up from them will be looking for new jobs, if they aren't already, and their license to handle nuclear material in the US may be in doubt for a while.

  22. Re:Make it illegal on Hiring Smokers Banned In South Florida City · · Score: 1

    Agreed and, well this is a bit of a hijack but, this is what makes me the most worried about all of the Government health insurance/Single Payer/Socialized Medicine stuff. Give the Government control of the healthcare system, and they suddenly have a great new reason to legislate against anything that might possibly affect your health. Wanna ban something? Bribe a few scientists and journal types to dummy up a study showing that it's unhealthy, then use that to claim that people who are using/doing whatever you want to ban are increasing healthcare costs, buy some ads to scare the public, then sponsor some legislation against it. Think it sounds paranoid? It's already happened a bunch of times, and more Government control of healthcare makes it easier.

  23. Re:really ? on The US Navy's Railgun Program · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not sure if GP was serious or not, but looks to me like the modern US Army and other armed forces go to an unbelievable and completely unprecedented amount of effort to avoid collateral damage compared to every other military force that has ever existed. Those who seriously complain about it either have no idea what they're talking about, or are pursuing an anti-American agenda and don't have the courage to be straightforward about it.

  24. Sounds nonsensical on PlaceRaider Builds a Model of Your World With Smartphone Photos · · Score: 1

    Their whole theoretical plan, assuming the part about the phone taking pictures of its surroundings and uploading them without the user noticing actually works, still sounds like nonsense to me, because there is likely to be little connection between the types of criminals who hack phones and the ones who break into houses and steal things.

    If you are the type to break into houses and steal things, then you are probably focused on a relatively small geographical area - you need a connection to the type of criminals who can actually move your stolen property, which is the sort of thing that only really works in person. You probably have little interest in hacking phones like this because such a scheme would generate data for places all over the world, 99% of which are completely impractical for you to exploit.

    If you are the type to hack phones and computers, then the only way for your work to be practical is if you have a way to turn your hacks into money remotely, without ever actually travelling to the place where the hackee is, since each one is probably not worth anywhere near the cost of travelling there. Only by combining a lot of them without ever actually travelling anywhere can you make money.

    Getting these two types of criminals together doesn't seem very practical - how does a hacker get in touch with a break-in man in a city far away? How could they come to trust each other enough to actually pull a directed robbery? Any break-in man would probably think he was either being screwed with by someone trying to get him to pay money for nonsense info, or being set up for an ambush by police or some other group of criminals. And any hacker would probably also think he was being set up in some way by police or some other criminal group. And you'd have to establish a lot of these relationships for the whole scheme to start to make any sense. Yeah, it's not happening. Let hackers stick to stealing credit card info and bank account login info, and let break-in men stick to conventional, local methods of figuring out who is worth the effort of robbing.

  25. Re:Republicans disrupting a REPUBLICAN ban! on Light Bulb Ban Produces Hoarding In EU, FUD In U.S. · · Score: 1

    Wait a second, I thought Democrats/Liberals were constantly ripping Republicans for voting in lockstep every time against whatever thing they wanted to do. And now some of you guys are pissed that some Republicans are against a bill that some other Republicans passed and signed into law. So which is it that you want them to do?