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  1. Re:A solution in search of a problem... on Technological Solution For Texting While Driving Struggles For Traction · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is against the law pretty much everywhere. However that law is enforced pretty much nowhere. It is just simply too difficult to enforce it, as a police officer has to catch the person in the act to even write a ticket. And then the ticket is so laughably small in terms of the monetary penalty as to be pointless to even write.

    Make the punishment fit the crime. If you're swinging a loaded gun around pointing it at people and unintentionally shoot someone you're going to jail. You drive around like a jackass, speeding, weaving in traffic, running lights or stop signs, at worse you get a ticket that cost a little bit of money. And yet far more people are killed by idiot drivers than are by gun accidents. It's completely irrational.

    It's simple. The first ticket is a freebie, a $1000 and lose your license for a day. The second ticket within a year and you lose your license for a month. The third ticket in a year and you lose your license for a year. You get caught driving without a license you go to jail for a year. You put black boxes in cars that record the last half hour of activity to provide irrefutable evidence. Also use that information in the case of a collision and if it shows any person caused the collision it's their third strike and they lose their license for a year. No need for distracted driving or no telephoning or no texting or even drink driving laws. One way or another the people left on the roads will be much safer and nicer. Oh, and the 40,000 killed and hundreds of thousands more injured and maimed would go away almost over night along with much of the massive financial burden caused by the idiotic carnage on the roads.

  2. Re:What are the bounds of property? on Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World · · Score: 2

    Now, would you please refer to sections B. and C below? To answer your question, you must angle the camera's down so that they record only up to the top of the fence or to the property line.Private property has an expectation of privacy in Georgia.

    Not taking a section quoted out of context to make it appear you are right when you were really wrong:

    (2) Any person, through the use of any device, without the consent of all persons observed, to observe, photograph, or record the activities of another which occur in any private place and out of public view; provided, however, that it shall not be unlawful:

    (A) To use any device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of persons incarcerated in any jail, correctional institution, or any other facility in which persons who are charged with or who have been convicted of the commission of a crime are incarcerated, provided that such equipment shall not be used while the prisoner is discussing his or her case with his or her attorney;

    (B) For an owner or occupier of real property to use for security purposes, crime prevention, or crime detection any device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of persons who are on the property or an approach thereto in areas where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy; or

    (C) To use for security purposes, crime prevention, or crime detection any device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of persons who are within the curtilage (fenced yard) of the residence of the person using such device. A photograph, videotape, or record made in accordance with this subparagraph, or a copy thereof, may be disclosed by such resident to the district attorney or a law enforcement officer and shall be admissible in a judicial proceeding, without the consent of any person observed, photographed, or recorded;

    Ummm...you do realize the parts you quoted out of context are really the exceptions to the law that state where recording is legal? Reading the entire section it only states it's illegal to record activities "which occur in any private place and out of public view". It doesn't say a single word about recording on another persons property. In other words what you linked to actually shows you're wrong. At least with regards to GA law. Please try again.

    I'd advise you in the future to ask someone for evidence first, especially if you are going to make demands after you've just insulted them via their speech. For example, a better way, "It smells like BS to me, would you please supply some evidence and additional information?

    My original post said exactly what you suggest except I spelled out "bullshit" instead of a weaselly acronym. I even said please. I certianly didn't say you smelled like it or were stepping in it or anything.

  3. Re:What are the bounds of property? on Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World · · Score: 2

    Also, as far as I am aware, you are not allowed to have security cameras on your property that film parts of other's properties. Those laws should suffice, or at least be amended to include "roaming" cameras.

    Ok. I'm calling bullshit. Please provide a sample of such a law. I've never seen video camera footage that did NOT film others peoples property. I'm not really sure how that would be possible while still getting a useful image.

  4. Re:Follow the money... on L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing · · Score: 2

    Many will likely go 'cluck, cluck...they are the independent press and shouldn't do that' and, of course, they are right. But the 'independent press' is rapidly disappearing because there is no longer any money to be made in being part of the 'independent press.' Newspapers (such as the LA Times) have a plummeting circulation of mostly older subscribers and a shrinking advertising base. Most of them are losing money hand over fist or, at best, barely breaking even. Television news (network and local) is seeing its viewer base plummeting and consequently, its advertising revenues are declining rapidly, leaving it fortunate to still be on the air. Internet media gets lots of hits but not much revenue.

    Da. Their 20th business model doesn't work anymore. Rather than adapt to the world changing technological advancements of the last 30 years they just bitch and moan lamenting over people no longer wanting their news spoon feed using 20th century technology. But of course none of that is the news disseminating organizations fault. It's technologies fault or their customers fault or anyone elses fault.

    The LA Times reporter was likely grateful for any scraps of information that his CIA friends would give him because he would never have any way of getting that information otherwise. He is probably lucky if the LA Times will pay him car mileage to drive over to meet with a source. You get what you pay for. Follow the money. What do you pay for news?

    You're arguments make no sense. No one pays directly for news nor have they for the last century. The cost of a newspaper doesn't even cover the printing and distribution costs much less the actual news gathering cost. I don't recall ever receiving a bill for the nightly news. You're as clueless as the news organizations. You don't even know what they were selling (hint: it had nothing to do with the news). Their ad revenue dropping, well let me just guess who's fault you think that is.

    There are organizations that that are taking over at least part of the function of the 20th century press. You've probably heard of at least one, WikiLeaks. And the government is doing their best to outlaw them. The government wants nothing more to do with that whole freedom of the press thing again. It's too much of a pain in the ass when they do all the things they're not supposed to be doing. It actually holds they accountable. The only press they want is press like the LA Times.

  5. Re:Probably US Navy missile on 3 Decades Later, Finnair Pilots Report Dramatic Close Encounter With a Missile · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here's something I don't know the answer to: Do air-to-airs or ground-to-airs have any sort of range safety feature like rockets, or do they just automatically blow up at the end of their runs? Or both? Or neither (in which case why did it blow up?)?

    In that era, yes. I beleive most anti-aircraft missle systems in that era were semi-active radar guided missiles which require a ground based radar to paint the target. Most likely there was a safety system where if the painting radar shuts down the missle destructs. Even air to air radar missles (e.g. Aim-7 Sparrow) required the firing aircraft to keep it's nose pointed towards the target aircraft to keep it painted. I beleive the Aim-54 Phoenix was one of the first missles with self contained terminal guidance.

  6. Re:Ridiculous on The CIA Does Las Vegas · · Score: 1

    Balderdash. There is not a press. What is this, communism, comrade? We have many presses.

    No. It's Corporate and Government collusion. It's the quid pro quo. The Corporations only print stuff that keeps in power the Government that they pay to pass the laws that keep them in power. It would be a waste of money to get the politicians they're paying off thrown out of office.

    We The People have the government, and thus the press, which we deserve.

    Anyone who thinks voting really matters in this country needs to wake up and start paying attention to what's happening. When the Executive branch rules by fiat (both Republican and Democrat) and government officials are not so much as questioned about blatantly and admittedly perjuring themselves it's clear rule of law is pretty much gone. Democracy and voting only works when the rules are followed. Anyone who tries to change the current unworkable system would be labeled a subversive and discredited. Just look at what has happened to everyone who has revealed Government wrong doing over the last 8 or 10 years.

  7. Re:Transparency on FBI Studied How Much Drones Impact Your Privacy -- Then Marked It Secret · · Score: 1

    The difference between then and now is not that this administration has kept them secret, but that they were discovered during this administration. What seems to be different is that during this administration more secret programs are coming to light rather than they are keeping significantly more secrets.

    That's just plain bullshit. Obama has done more to penalize and intimate anyone who dares to disclose what he doesn't want disclosed than any past administration.

    Even in the current far more partisan atmosphere far more Reagan officials were actually indicted or convicted of actual federal crimes, and last I checked the current administration hasn't started any questionable wars leading to thousands of casualties. Not to excuse any misconduct on the part of the current administration, but I think its an exaggeration to say this administration is objectively more secretive or less competent. It certainly isn't objectively more criminal.

    That's because anyone who has leaked information that Obama doesn't want leaked, even illegal government activities, has been at best harassed to the point they have no way to make a living and at worse and in most cases prosecuted and thrown in jail. And the officials that actually committed the illegal activities exposed are not even investigated much less prosecuted. So that there have been less prosecutions has nothing to do with less illegal activity.

  8. Re:Transparency on FBI Studied How Much Drones Impact Your Privacy -- Then Marked It Secret · · Score: 1

    Obama is worse than Nixon.

    I would guess only by virtue of the technology available rather than any moral dichotomies. If Nixon had the tools available today he likely would have been right up there with Obama.

  9. Re:Transparency on FBI Studied How Much Drones Impact Your Privacy -- Then Marked It Secret · · Score: 2

    Maybe? I don't think there is any chance the government could hide something like Area 51 in 2014. Watergate would have been revealed as quickly as Bridgegate. Secretes that would have previously taken decades to get out now take hours, days and weeks. Secrets that could have been squelched just a decade ago are now easily retrievable from computer storage and backups and surveillance and the ease of communicating not just messages, but evidence such as video, audio and pictures.

    Without a doubt, the governments of the past were able to keep more secrets. This is why the Arab Spring happened. Information is easily transferred and stored thanks to technology that has become mainstream in the past 5 - 10 - 15 years.

    This is just plain wrong. Those same technologies that you mention (and more) allow governments to collect and maintain orders of magnitude more information on individuals then in the past. There are more leaks because the amount of secrets has increased orders of magnitude. And the ratio is severely skewed towards the secrets rather than the leaks.

    Just 20 years ago it took a large number of man hours and money to monitor one individual to the level they can monitor whole populations now. You would have a dozen or more people just to follow them around determining their location. You would have to bug every phone they used. The conversations recorded and each one manually listened to for pertinent information. And even with all that effort you still wouldn't have the level of information they collect now.

  10. Government protects rights that apply to the least popular person as much as to the most popular person. Business gives the rich more rights.

    And yet when those businesses fail it's the government that perpetuates those failed businesses. Strange that. You are truly a fool if you believe we live in a capitalist democracy. In the US we live in the imploding hell that Ayn Rand predicted. Capitalism has given way to who can buy the most politicians to pass laws perpetuating obsolete and/or failing business models and businesses. Democracy has given way to who will pay the most to get their business perpetuated.

  11. Re:Uh... Yeah? on Court Allowed NSA To Spy On All But 4 Countries · · Score: 1

    Countries have interests. They have a foreign policy aimed at defending these interest.

    Collecting all and storing all communications between everyone including US citizens who happen to communicate with someone overseas has absolute nothing to do with "foreign policy aimed at defending these interest" or using "spies as a tool of their foreign policy". If anything it's a detriment to that since resources are being wasted on on irrelevancies rather than being focused on schwerpunkt. It's exclusively a means to control the people. The whole point of the government in the US is that the people are supposed to control the government. What the NSA is doing isn't in their charter. You're argument is what is called a straw man. You're defended a premise that wasn't at issue. At issue is the NSA's actions that have nothing to do with the foreign policy interests of the US.

  12. Re:Jurisdiction on Fox Moves To Use Aereo Ruling Against Dish Streaming Service · · Score: 1

    The US writes all the treaties.

    And ignores them when they're not convenient. Amazing how that works.

  13. Re:Families come first on Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry · · Score: 1

    Greenbird I am truly sorry I did not intend for this to be a TIRADE personally directed at YOU at all.

    You do realize this is both the internet and /. so apologies are considered uncouth (and yes that's sarcasm). And unnecessary.

    For the record - the guys that work for me get paid TOP DOLLAR and I give raises to the one's who perform. Because I spent most of my career as a developer when I went into management I was extremely determined NOT to become the clueless boss I always had, a.k.a. PHB, okay?

    And that's a good thing. More managers like that and maybe the industry will stop turning out nothing but crap. Your response seemed to come across that way though probably through the lack of context you provided here. I'm just constantly amazed by management who seem to somehow expect something for nothing in the tech industry.

    A while back I got tired of programming and worked as a headhunter for 2 months. I would get guys from one country - you guess - I would ask "So what are you looking for" and they would answer "X$ more"... I'd be like "There's more to work that just money, what kind of projects would interest you?" and they would say "X$ more". When the first question a prospective hire asks is the rate, they fail the interview.

    I would agree that the types that focus exclusively on money aren't usually the best type to work with and often end up being the blowhards you referenced in your earlier post.

    And yes, there is nothing worse than the project built entirely by junior guys. Even worse is the client who believed the vendor who told him to fire all the good developers because he could get guys in some third world hell hole for $4/hour. And of course these "developers" took a 3 week programming class...

    Worse if you're trying to manage the project but I make a good part of my living cleaning up after crap like that. And it is definitely much more enjoyable if you can do it right from scratch rather than trying to fix something that's already all screwed up.

  14. Re:Families come first on Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry · · Score: 1

    There are now xvalues, glvalues and prvalues

    Out of C and C++ to long I guess. It's been a good 10 years since I did any serious work with either. But to make my original point it only took a quick read to grasp those new concepts. When the schooling runs from Nand gates and K-maps on up grasping new things is much easier.

  15. Re:Families come first on Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry · · Score: 1

    As a tech hiring manager I can state with absolute experience and clarity that believe it or not, this is not the best answer. The guy (or gal) who is wooed away by a high salary will disappear just as fast when the next employer comes along and offers $1/Hour more. This approach will also increase outsourcing, as it reinforces the incorrect yet often quoted in management circles foolishness that programmers are like ditch diggers - interchangeable, easily swapped out, etc.

    My guess is you are unhappy with your salary and think you should make more. Maybe you should, but if money is all that motivates you, you made a very poor career choice and should consider going into sales.

    Wow. You latch on to one statement I made, completely alter the context and then go on a tirade about me being whiny and unhappy. I can only guess you're projecting?

    Nothing I said was about me. It was about what I've seen and experienced in my 20+ year career. Personally I choose where I work on more than just the basis of money (although admittedly it's one factor). And the vast majority of people at my level think the same way. A good working environment with good people is worth a goodly chunk of pay. That being said though the long and short of it is you get what you pay for. You pay cheap you're going to get crap. And no, highly skilled individuals aren't going to work for junior pay no matter how much you want to whine about it. It's a pretty simple concept and is applicable to pretty much every field. Higher skill and experience equals higher pay. Why do people expect it to be different in tech?

  16. Re:Families come first on Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Poppycock! It only takes years because the colleges are failing at producing the quality employee and the company ends up having to re-teach what the grad was supposed to learn in school. Worse, they now may have to unlearn bad habits that the student was taught in that rotten school.

    Bullshit. No school of any kind is going to teach you how things work in industry. First off in almost every case the instructors have little if any industry experience. Teaching and working in industry are 2 completely different skill sets. Second a college's job should be teaching fundamentals: language theory, programming theory (e.g. L-Values vs R-Values), data structures, algorithms and the like. Those are the types of things that can be taught in a structured graded environment. Because thirdly there is no way possible for any school to set up a program that would represent what you are going to face once you start working in industry: Working on a team of 10 individuals where the work has to get done no matter that 3 of them are incompetent idiots, requirements changing on a daily bases without changes to resources or schedule, balancing supportability vs reliability vs speed of completion, being to do risk assessments on the fly as conditions change radically throughout a project. Because these types of things are radically different for each project you work on these are things that can't be taught in a classroom environment and are only learned through experience.

    As someone said further up these are also intangible skills that are almost always overlooked by HR types and managers who haven't worked in the trenches. And as GP said these are the types of skills that when missing cause software projects to fail or to turn out the kind of crap we typically see when they do manage to "succeed".

    The bigger the employer, the more scrutiny they come under. Again, you need some metric to weed out the chaff in a way that won't get you sued in any of a thousand different ways. Some metrics work, some don't.

    There is no "metric". As has been discovered using "metrics" like these ends in tossing out the good candidates while hiring the idiots.

    Again, it is trying to work within the hiring laws that skew the tables with things like affirmative action How many times has /. had stories about the gender gap or other minority in tech? I see at least a story a week including this story. All these lead to a perception that those groups need to be given preference even over better qualified applicants solely to meet the numbers.

    Again bullshit. Did you see the recent diversity numbers put out by the big name tech companies? These "metrics" you claim are supposed to be saving them from diversity issues has resulted in an overwhelmingly white/Asian male majority.

    Yet when government does that you get upset??? Throwing money at a problem isn't only foolish it is a quick way to the poor house. What you are calling for is cronyism or nepotism where the only way to get a job is to be in that one person's contact list. That's no way to hire someone and you really don't know why that person may be in that contact list.

    You sound like HR or a clueless hiring manager. Throwing money at the highly skilled personnel who will get the job done is exactly how to get the job done and make money. Paying a lot for three highly experience highly skilled people will payoff far more than hiring 10 much cheaper inexperienced college grads who don't have a clue about risk evaluation, supportability, performance, etc... And the people are on the contact list because they are the types that have a history of getting things done and bailed out projects that started with those college grads working on them who cocked them all up.

    Way to put your head in the sand and ignore the fact that the universities and colleges are failing in their task of producing qualified student

  17. Re:Does it really matter? on Can Google Connect the Unconnected 2/3 To the Internet? · · Score: 1

    I don't know about you but news makes my life considerably worse than it would be without it, as news is not so much "news" as it is "bads"

    Yeah, things like weather, traffic, political information, pricing information for goods and services, job information, all that does nothing but make people miserable.

    You just have no idea how much access to information enriches your life. I dare you to live a year without any access to any news or information source.

  18. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 1

    [citation needed]

    WTF are you demanding a citation about?

    Nobody has yet seen a graviton. Our understanding of gravity is so far utterly theoretical. For example, we have never succeeded in making it in the lab, as we can with magnetism.

    Our understanding of pretty much everything is utterly theoretical. For all we know this whole thing is just an illusion and we're in the matrix. We can experimentally in a controlled environment show cause and effect of gravity to a very small margin of error. We can't experimentally show the effect of releasing certain amounts of carbon into the atmosphere on global climate. There is no way to isolate any effects of the carbon verses a million other interactions.

    But we do have both contemporary and historical case studies where we can observe the impact (both local and global) of human activity on climate.

    Bullshit. Such a study would have to somehow isolate the human effects from all other interaction and effects and we don't even know and/or understand what the vast majority of the interactions are. Otherwise all the study is showing is correlation not causation.

  19. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 1

    And yet, science is also based on assumptions.

    Yes it is. And the level of trust in those assumptions should be based on how well our theories explain those assumptions.

    Every scientific paper doesn't start by explaining gravity, even if it's a factor in whatever it's going to go on and try to prove.

    No but what I have a problem with (and didn't express very well in my post) is people claiming the current theories on climate science are as well understood as the theory of gravity. And our understanding of gravity isn't particularly solid either. Our understanding of the complex interactions involved in the climate of this entire planet are miniscule when compared to our understanding of gravity.

  20. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 1

    Yes, that's true. But often those breakthroughs target one particular assumption in a core theory, often one that has been causing problems for some time (e.g., the discrepancies regarding the aether theory in 19th-century experiments which led to Einstein's breakthrough in relativity). They don't generally question the entire nature of the underlying scientific paradigm.

    Not 99% of science. Most scientists who are working every day in a lab are not actively questioning the foundations of accepted scientific theories. If they did, they'd be wasting their time... and holding back scientific progress.

    I don't disagree with most of what you say. For the most part you're saying what saying what I was trying to elucidate but in a much more loquacious and elegant manner. When I wrote my reply I was focus more on climate science specifically although I didn't express that very well. I chalk it up to not having finished my morning caffeine yet. From my knowledge most scientific advance aren't from someone saying "That's wrong. I'm setting out to prove it's wrong." As you stated it's usually more a result of discrepancies in a related experiment or observed phenomenon that don't fit the assumed theory and can't be explained by problems with the method.

    That being said here's the part where we differ.

    For the majority of climate scientists today, the assumption of global warming has become part of a "hard core" in their research programs. They believe that it's now more productive to treat this assumption as "settled" and focus on investigating other aspects of climate problems, rather than worrying about continuing to debate this fundamental question.

    Given the complexity of the system, the scale of the system and our extremely limited knowledge of system's interactions there is no way any theory of how the climate of this entire planet works should in any way be considered settled or part of a "hard core". The problem being that even though they may be right to at least some degree regarding AGW they are most likely largely wrong about the details of how and why and subsequently the consequences and causes of any consequences. These are important because they dictate what mitigating actions may be taken. History shows mitigating actions taken without sufficient understanding of a system usually results in less then desirable if not outright negative result. This has happened over and over in mankind's intervention in nature. We often take a bad situation and make it worse trying to fix it.

    Now I'm not saying no action should be taken to try to limit man's contribution to carbon production. I am saying what actions we do take need to based on more solid ground rather than alarmist theories based on insufficient knowledge.

  21. Re:I get enough flying priuses already. on Toyota Investigating Hovercars · · Score: 1

    Now I agree whole heartily with everything you said except:

    Although every drivers manual reads we should slow down if someone wants to merge into our lane

    This is wrong and it drives me nuts. People don't know how to merge. You're are supposed to drive at a consistent speed if someone is trying to merge into your lane. The merger is supposed to adjust their speed. Their supposed to decide whether to slow down or speed up to merge in front or in back of you. If both start slowing down and speeding up it becomes a confusing guessing game. Now if you mean by slowing down providing enough of an opening for the merger to fit that's another issue. Unless you're driving at a very slow speed if you're following so close that a car can't fit in front of you you're following too close. Tailgating is probably the second most leading cause of serious collisions (whether directly or as a result of reducing wiggle room).

  22. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 2

    It means there is a large and growing body of research that has collected diverse and disparate lines of evidence that support the major governing theory on the topic. In particular, it's enough that we can say with a high degree of confidence that the fundamental aspects of the theory of global warming are well founded and reasonably accurate.

    The biggest problem with this argument is that our level of understanding of the "climate" system on this planet is miniscule when compared to the complexity of the system. This discovery is just another example. The other problem is that anything that challenges the theory of global warming seems to be either twisted to fit the current theory or ignored. The theory is supposed to be changed to fit the evidence.

    That's what some pendants would like you to think. They want you to ignore the fact that science is both a process and the body of knowledge collected (and verified) through that process.

    You seem to ignore the fact that science is all about challenging the "verified" body of knowledge collected. That's actually the primary point of science: doing experiments to test current theories and looking for evidence that doesn't fit current theories.

  23. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, it does. It's the only way for practical research to ever happen. You can't go around questioning fundamental assumptions at every turn. This doesn't mean that those fundamental assumptions are "settled" for all time, but from a practical standpoint, science must treat some core assumptions as effectively "settled" in order to get on with any detailed research.

    The level of ignorance is astounding. "questioning fundamental assumptions" is exactly what science is all about. Nothing is ever settle in science. Major breakthroughs occur when you successfully challenge fundamental assumptions. And this gets modded up. It's no wonder the current climate debate is so off kilter.

  24. Re:Queue the deniers on Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 1

    AGW is a science thing - and science has agreed that it exists though not to which degree.

    See. An example of GP's point. Science doesn't agree on things. Science posits theories then performs experiments and looks for evidence that both support and oppose those theories. The problem with the current climate in the climate debate is that any evidence that might oppose current theories tends to get either twisted to fit the current theories or shouted down. It's supposed to work the other way around. The theories are supposed to be twisted to fit the evidence.

    could it be that the geology of the antarctic is becoming destabilized because of the lessening of the weight of the ice sheet, in turn causing more geological activity?

    Wow. You could not have presented a more perfect example.

  25. Re: 50MB = 750$ on AT&T Charges $750 For One Minute of International Data Roaming · · Score: 1

    T-mobile is the one of the best value plans around

    Nothing beats Ting.