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User: josh82

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Comments · 73

  1. Re:The readability seems to be questionable. on Stanford's Authoritative Alternative To Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    Poster didn't say it was a translation, just that it was intended as such.

    And even if it were a translation, it may have just been a bad one. I mean, who disputes that there are both good and bad translations?

  2. Re:Agree on Does Anyone Really Prefer Glossy Screens? · · Score: 1

    LCDs started with matte finishes because they simply used matte plastics for the surface of the display, not because they actually put effort into it.

    Success by default is still success.

  3. Re:Not your home network? No right to complain on Schools, Filtering Companies Blocking Google SSL · · Score: 1

    You're delusional and should go read your network agreement policy again.

    Network agreement policies aren't law. And even their terms are often enforced by a legal system, you can't sign away some rights (legally-speaking) no matter how hard you try, and no matter how awesome you believe your contracting powers to be. Clauses in otherwise legally-binding contracts are invalidated all the time for this reason.

  4. Re:BRUCE NEVER SAID THAT on 9/11 Made Us Safer, Says Bruce Schneier · · Score: 1

    In other words, it's like saying "My girlfriend is pregnant because I took her out for drinks".

    The correct response to that is "Umm..."

    One crucial and missing middle step is "We got drunk and had unprotected sex".

  5. Re:BRUCE NEVER SAID THAT on 9/11 Made Us Safer, Says Bruce Schneier · · Score: 1

    "He didn't literally say "The US is safer because of 9/11", but he did make the comments that post-9/11 terrorism is all about scale, and that it's harder to pull off a large scale terrorist act because of the threat of being caught."

    So, in other words, you see that the problem is that the words "The US is safer because of 9/11" most straightforwardly imply that 9/11 directly made the US safer, whereas the reality is that 9/11 only indirectly made the US safer.

    What the idiot paraphrasing Schneier should've said was that "The US is safer because of the response to 9/11."

  6. Re:Perfect Example on Open Source Could Have Saved Ontario Hundreds of Millions · · Score: 1

    "Acupuncturists and Chiropractors don't count as "private clinics". If I wanted to see frauds and charlatans, I'd go to a carnival.

    Do MRIs count? You could drop a few grand and book yourself one in Alberta for Monday. It's no private operating room, and that province is a bit like a carnival, but they'd certainly approve of your kind of hyperbolic rhetoric there.

  7. Re:Spain of course. on Emigrating To a Freer Country? · · Score: 1

    "Having said this, the Conservatives just promised a couple of days ago to start to dismantle the surveillance state that the closet socialists in Labour have built during the last 12 years."

    Do you mean their membership in Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists was supposed to be kept a secret?!?

    Somebody's really got some explaining to do...

  8. Re:Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac HOLY CRAP on Google, Circa 2001 · · Score: 1

    From his testimony: "At best, this mixing of private and political incentives creates marketplace confusion; at worst, it leads to a serious misallocation of capital and an increasing risk for American taxpayers."

    Isn't this pretty much what every classical liberal, libertarian, or generally right-leaning economist has been saying since the advent of their respective positions? This guy was hardly on to something novel.

  9. Re:spiritual beliefs? on Stone Age Mass Graves Reveal Green Sahara · · Score: 1

    I now see the error of my ways.

  10. Re:spiritual beliefs? on Stone Age Mass Graves Reveal Green Sahara · · Score: 1

    "Did you at least pronouce the 'v', unlike other non-Frenchman?"

    You're confused with a prayer of thanks for the sun not being too hot in Australia.

    That's why I said "unlike" rather than "like" (implying that most people get it wrong and say "wala").

  11. Re:spiritual beliefs? on Stone Age Mass Graves Reveal Green Sahara · · Score: 1

    BS. I used the term "voila" the other night when I served dinner. Doesn't make me a Frenchman.

    Did you at least pronouce the 'v', unlike other non-Frenchman?

  12. Re:Is LexisNexis Still Relevant for Non-Lawrers? on The Ridiculous LexisNexis Search that the Justice Department Used · · Score: 1

    Is LexisNexis Still Relevant for Non-Lawrers?

    I'll report back as soon as I'm finished non-lawr school.

  13. Re:Really only 43,684,588 pages? on New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google · · Score: 1

    "Why does Cuil claim to have "2,784 results" to my search yet display only one?"

    Because Google does the exact same thing?

    My random Google search just now generated, on page three of the listings: "Results 201 - 300 of about 4,320.

    On page four: "Results 301 - 321 of 321".

    Have you really never seen the following at the bottom of a Google page?: "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 321 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

  14. Re:In the Soviet States of America...... on NOAA Requires License For Photos of the Earth · · Score: 1

    Now we have the US claim you need a license to take a picture of the earth. It's just a 21st century version of screaming, "Papers Please". I for one, don't hail our old overlords.

    I, for one, welcome our new Slashdot pundits.

  15. As we've all learned from Law and Order... on Google Caught On Private Property · · Score: 1

    ...as long as the police don't tell them to do it (or can fake that they didn't), it's addmissible in court.

  16. Re:Get a UPS on Why Power Failures Can Always Lead To Data Loss · · Score: 1

    "It's good thing that hard drives never fail!"

    "They don't!"

    Tell that to anyone who's was lucky enough to purchase a DeathStar.

  17. Re:easy solution on Canadian ISP Hijacking DNS Lookup Errors · · Score: 1

    [I]t doesn't take long until an OpenDNS drone recommends OpenDNS, yet somehow they always "forget" that tidbit. People who follow those recommendations are swindled as much as users of ISPs who manipulate DNS.

    Except when you're not paying money for it, it's hardly a swindle (see: swindle).

  18. Re:Bail on The Inside Story On the San Francisco Network Hijacking · · Score: 1

    "IANAL, but isn't $5 million US for bail a bit excessive for this?"

    Perhaps you haven't heard of something called the American legal system.

  19. Re:Maby a good idea for the future, forget it toda on Researchers Test BitTorrent Live Streaming · · Score: 1

    Though as long as you leave your client open while you're not watching said video, you (in conjunction with others) will be providing more than enough upstream throughput to provide enough for other(s) downloading.

    Enough people doing this consistently en masse is fairly unlikely, though. Tragedy of the commons and all.

  20. Re:No Problem Here on Schneier, UW Team Show Flaw In TrueCrypt Deniability · · Score: 1

    "yes, put your hidden directories/partitions in /etc/slocate then slocate will not reveal their existence.

    It seems to me there is something wrong with this sheme but I cannot put my finger on it. Hum ... but then again I'm not a security specialist."

    Zing. You really got me good on that one.

    Except... it works well enough if the mount point for your encrypted partition is something common. Like /home or /usr/local or /var/log/commonname, and you mount over top some already existing but mundane files. Sure, you raise the question of why you aren't indexing those (supposedly mundane) files, but there could be good reason not to index something like /var/log.

    I guess I hadn't foreseen that someone might use something like /home/supersecretshit as a mount point. Lesson learned: never underestimate other people's stupidity. I'll never doubt you on that one again.

  21. Re:No Problem Here on Schneier, UW Team Show Flaw In TrueCrypt Deniability · · Score: 1

    Be careful you don't use slocate if you're on Linux either. (Hint: you probably do without knowing it.)

    Keep in mind, though, that you can simply add exceptions to your updatedb.conf file, such that the directories/partitions you list will not be indexed (and hence will not be locatable by slocate).

  22. Re:FTP Attachment? on FTP Hacking on the Rise · · Score: 1

    You have refuted me thus.

    (I admit I wrote my reply in haste; though, in my defense, I submit that the term 'attachment' is ambigous -- though I also admit the contrary, viz., that few people with sufficient knowledge would call an email link an 'attachment'. I normally don't -- except in haste, apparently.)

  23. Re:FTP Attachment? on FTP Hacking on the Rise · · Score: 1

    "What the hell is a "FTP attachment"?
    Doesn't make sense."


    Were you to have RTFA, you'd have realized that the entire worry is that most links (e.g., to malware, viruses, etc.) in email are HTTP links.

    Given that these are the vast majority, some organizations (of whatever sort) only scan for (and thus block) HTTP hyperlinks.

    And so some brain farmers find it advantageous to use FTP links, which are neither scanned for nor blocked.

    This is a problem (especially for you, since it is apparent they've already farmed your brain).

    Here is an example of an FTP attachment: ftp://127.0.0.1/attachment.exe

  24. Re:Yet another one on RoadRunner Intercepting Domain Typos · · Score: 1

    I suspect the most likely explanation for them knowing the exact filename and time is that the copyright holder (or some flunky under their direction) complained to the ISP. And they complained with just such information so as to not be complaining frivolously.

    It is likely your ISP neither gave a damn nor kept track of the filenames/times themselves.

    Of course, this doesn't really make sense of the above poster's claim -- I assume the claim is just referring to some rather benign traffic-shaping (benign in theory, not in practice), since said poster didn't bother to back it up with more elaboration. Otherwise, I agree that it would be fucking scary.

  25. Re:huge power consumption on "GiFi" — Short-Range, 5-Gbps Wireless For $10/Chip · · Score: 3, Funny

    "His chip uses only a tiny one-millimetre-wide antenna and less than two watts of power"

    "Typically, these types of networks measure power consumption in mW, not W."

    All right: two thousand milliwatts then, smartass.