Posts by Chris C

What's explicit?

It's often-said in the US that the nipple and areola are defined "sexually-explicit". A women can go to a clothing-required beach and display every part of the breast except for the nipple and areola. Why? And why can men, who have the same EXACT breast structure (except for the milk ducts which are under the skin and therefore never seen anyway), show off their breasts without offense to anyone and nobody asking them to cover their breasts? And don't you dare say size -- there are a lot of (fat) men who would put most women, even well-endowed women, to shame in breast size.

So why is it that women must cover their breasts? If you're one of the people who claim that the breast is "sexually-explicit", can you please define that for me? Because I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't understand that. Other body parts, such as legs, buttocks (women are allowed to wear thongs in public), and earlobes are erogenous zones and are often sexualized and involved in sexual activities, but those are not required to be covered at all times. What makes the breast so different? Specifically, what makes the nipple and areola so different?

Perhaps if we didn't require women to cover their breasts at all times, and people actually grew up seeing women with uncovered breasts, then it wouldn't be such a shock or such a big deal, and it wouldn't be viewed the way it is today. Then again, a lot of good God-fearing Christians* still think that sex itself is the devil's work, so I'm not holding my breath.

* This is not an indictment of all Christians or religious people, only the puritanical and stupid ones. After all, if God created us in His image, shouldn't we celebrate our bodies instead of being ashamed of them?

Idiot judge

"The judge also noted that Doe had plenty of time to confirm the girl's age himself when they met in person."

Then could the judge (or any of you reading this) kindly inform me exactly *HOW* Doe could confirm the girl's age? While I think he should have exercised much more caution and better judgment, the fact remains that it is literally impossible to confirm a person's age. It may be difficult to believe, but <gasp>, people lie. I know, I know, young women have never claimed to be older than they really are, just as older women have never claimed to be younger than they really are.

Seriously, how can you confirm someone's age? Given the prevalence of fake IDs, it would seem that they're easy enough to get if you want one. Hell, you don't even need to have any ID. I didn't get my license until I was 18, so there was a time that year that I was legally an adult but had no way to prove it (using the often-used but illogical notion that a driver's license is proof of age).

So how could Doe confirm her age? Was he supposed to do carbon dating? Or maybe he was supposed to cut her open and count the rings? Both of those are as logical, and yield the same level of proof, as any other method used.

re: supercomputers for animation

Your title says it all, really. Nowadays we need 6000-core supercomputers, 150TB of storage, and probably over 4440 KWH (4.4 Megawatt-hours) per day* for animation. 50 years ago we needed a guy with a pencil and a stack of paper.

* 4440KWH guess -- 750 systems (6000 cores / 8 cores per system) at 240 watts per system plus 400 drives (150TB using 500GB drives in a 6-data, 2-parity configuration) at 12.5 watts per drive for 24 hours per day. This doesn't take into consideration things such as air con, switches and other external equipment, loss due to AC/DC conversion, etc.

This speaks volumes...

This speaks volumes about Apple fanbois. And no, there is no pun in that previous sentence; those who read it and snickered are the same type of people who are paying actual money for this ridiculous juvenile piece of trash while people are literally starving and freezing to death in the streets. Seriously, what is it about passing gas (either flatulence or burping) that these adult-by-age-but-child-by-maturity-level people find so amusing? I've never understood it, not even when I was a child.

"Maybe the App Store will next feature iPuke? Or iRidiculeEthnicMinorities? Only time will tell."

OK, so the iFart is stupid, immature, and juvenile, and in a sane world, it wouldn't be there. But how the fuck do you jump from there to racism? The former is based on lack of maturity, the latter is based on hatred and fear. To suggest that racism will be considered acceptable simply because immaturity is accepted is absurd, even for Apple.

But Mommy!

I can just hear the ISPs: "Waaaaah! They're not playing nice! They're actually USING the service they're paying for! How can I make a profit when my customers keep using the service? Mommy, mommy, make them stop!"

As for the quote: ""The future lies in tiered services", I think there's a typo in there. I think it may be more appropriately written as ""The future lies in teared services" because there will be plenty of tears all-around if ISPs try the tiered approach.

Seriously, how difficult is it to understand the the digital distribution system? Company A subscribes to a high-capacity communcation line (DS-3, OC-x, etc). Their monthly fee covers all of the of the data passing through that line, both incoming and outgoing. Customer B subscribes to a consumer-grade communication line (DSL, cable, etc). Their monthly fee covers all of the data passing through that line, both incoming and outgoing.

Now here's the important part -- the telecomm companies have peering agreements with each other in which they agree on pricing for allowing each other access to their networks. Let me put it another way -- THEY'RE ALREADY GETTING PAID.

To analogize, imagine you own successful retail outlet. Some of your customers, and most of your vendors, use a toll road to access your store. In addition to this, you offer a home delivery service, and all of your deliveries are routed via that toll road. Your customers are paying a toll to drive to your store, your vendors are paying a toll to drive to your store, and you are paying a toll to deliver goods to your customers. What the ISPs want to do is start charging your customers when you make a delivery, even though you are already paying a toll to use the road for that delivery. In other words, they want to get paid twice for the same service/usage.

So much wrong...

1) Get your facts straight -- there HAVE been BIOSes in the past which were GUI-based and allowed the use of the mouse. This is not innovative, is not novel, and most certainly is not an improvement. The reason it wasn't used extensively is because it's a crap idea and because modifying the settings with a mouse is more difficult than using the keyboard. If you can't figure out how to use a keyboard, you almost certainly should not be touching your BIOS settings (unless you're physically disabled and literally cannot use the keyboard).

2) Allowing you to flash your BIOS from within Windows is the single worst idea the BIOS manufacturers have ever come up with. If malware writers actually wanted to cause damage instead of taking control of people's systems to form botnets, blasting the BIOS with bad data would be the perfect way. No way to fix that except to replace the chip (unless you're one of the few who have a motherboard with dual-BIOS). And no, I don't think there should be a DOS program to flash the BIOS, either. You should have to be in the BIOS screen already in order to flash the BIOS.

3) To the "Gee, look at Apple, they're light years ahead of their time!" idiots, if Apple is so smart, then why was it INTEL that created EFI? The ONLY reason Apple used it was to provide another barrier to people trying to use non-Apple hardware.

So when...

So when are we going to stop calling them "Internet Service Providers" and instead call them "World Wide Web and Email Gateways"? That seems more appropriate, since that seems to be all ISPs want to do nowadays. Anything they can't do deep-packing-inspection and filtering on is unwanted. Anything they can't monitor and turn into advertising revenue is unwanted. Anything that uses more than dial-up bandwidth is unwanted.

Repeat after me...

Repeat after me -- co-location has literally nothing to do with "net neutrality". I can't stand Google, but if they want to mirror their content in multiple co-location facilities, that's their choice. You know, there *IS* a reason that co-lo exists in the first place. To somehow claim that it goes against net neutrality is so asinine it boggles the mind and makes even less sense than "if it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college" (see Lewis Black if you don't understand the reference).

What's next? Are you going to claim that it's unfair for one company to have a DS-3 line when another company only has a T-1? Perhaps it's unfair for one company to use either a co-lo or a hosting service for their web and/or email instead of an in-house servers? Maybe you'd like to bitch that I live closer to my CO than you do to yours, so the phone company is able to transfer more packets to me than to you?

I'm all for net neutrality in the sense of treating all packets the same -- no "shaping", filtering, prioritizing, or delaying (as mentioned above, what makes your packets any more important than mine?), but co-location has nothing to do with it.

Constitutionality

I'm too tired to speak about this other than to say I hope this company dies a painful death while its valuable employees are hired by other firms (it's likely not their fault the company does this, so the employees shouldn't be punished). But about whether or not religious instruction is outlawed by the US Constitution, here is the text of the first amendment:

"Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

So no, religious instruction is not outlawed by the Constitution (at least not this amendment). In fact, this amendment does not prevent religious discrimination, either. It merely says that CONGRESS shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about private companies' policies on the issue. Having said that, there are various state and federal laws regarding employment discrimination (religious and otherwise).

Lesson learned

"Without knowing the details of the simulation it's difficult to speculate on what lessons might be learned."

With all due respect, it's not difficult at all to speculate on what lessons might be learned -- none. The government NEVER learns any lessons. Instead, they stick their fingers in their ears while burying their heads in the sand, all while screaming "I'm not listening!". If the US federal government had the ability to learn from its mistakes, we wouldn't be in our current state (economic, political, social, or military). If DHS was able to learn from its mistakes, it would not continuously fail the cyber-security exercises. George W Bush is famous for his ill-advised "No child left behind" nonsense. How about "No federal agency left behind"? How about we design tests that the federal agencies MUST pass, and if they fail to pass said tests, we get rid of the management (withOUT benefits, bonuses, severance pay, etc)? It's an idea so crazy, it just might work. Either that, or do as Michael Moore suggested a couple of years ago -- since we're so keen on outsourcing, let's outsource the government. Same incompetence, same (lack of) protections for the citizens, but at a much-reduced cost.

Reducing competition

So one company can't buy another one if it would "reduce competition" or increase cost for the DoD? So what happens if one of the companies goes bankrupt? Will the DoD and DoJ give it a huge wad of cash to continue operating? Oh, that's right, they would. We learned that from MCI.

@kain, @paul

@kain -- "What ISP wants to lose money because a non government agency . I mean will some like Comcast listen to the RIAAss. Sure the RIAAss could sue Comcast, but Comcast has the money and lawyers on stand by to beat RIAAss into submission ."

You seem to be under the illusion that said ISPs such as Comcast actually give a shit about their customers. I can assure you, they don't. I have plenty of horror stories from my own personal history with them over the years (all the way back to when they were MediaOne), as do many people I know. Add to that Comcast's continuous lies about throttling, their steadfast refusal to specify what the magical "too much" marker is, and their decision to outsource installation to inept, incompetent third-parties who can't get the job done right and don't even bother to test it before they leave. Face it -- most people use Comcast for Internet for one reason, and one reason only -- they have to. If you can't get DSL, you have no other choice. And such is life for most of us.

@paul -- "After they sued a chronically ill teen who was unable to defend herself in court because she was hospitalized I decided the RIAA was unforgivable forever. I will never buy music from an RIAA member again."

I completely understand your feelings, but I have to ask -- how do you know which artists or labels to avoid? How do you know who is represented by the RIAA? The RIAA has a history of lying about who they represent. They have repeatedly said (and displayed on their website) that they represent labels which they have never, and will never, represent (the one I'm specifically thinking of is Fat Wreck Chords).

More of the same...

Yet another group of US corporations who have been mismanaged to their financial detriment, and yet now they want the US citizens to finance their turnaround. So who's going to be there when the US citizens either A) make a bad decision and thus lose *their* money, or B) lose all of their money because it has been taken/stolen to finance these corporations?

Seriously, if I make a bad decision regarding my personal finances, I'm shit out of luck. I'm on my own. I don't have anyone to go crying to. I have to face the reality that I made a bad decision, and hopefully learn from it.

Why should these corporations be any different? They had all of the information they needed, and they still willingly and voluntarily made their decisions. And yet now *I* am being forced to literally pay for their bad decisions, thus telling them that their actions do not have consequences?

At the same time, my state is forcing me to reduce the risk assumed by private health insurance corporations by requiring me to purchase health insurance from these private for-profit corporations at whatever rate these corporations want to charge. Yes, that really was their explicitly-stated reason -- to force healthy people, who would normally not purchase health insurance, to purchase it thus increasing the income and profit of the health insurance companies, reducing their payout ratio.

Boy, I sure am glad I live in the "land of the free".

Protectionism -- yes and no

For those crying "USA protectionism", you are both right and wrong. This federal law has nothing to do about "protecting" US corporations. If you had a clue, you'd realize there are very few US gambling casinos, and they are grouped in very few locations (Atlantic City, Vegas, Reno, etc). No, the real protectionism is about two things -- horse racing (which is explicitly excluded from the Wire Act) and state-sponsored gambling (states' scratch tickets, Keno, etc).

Let me repeat part of that because it bears repeating -- horse racing is the ONLY kind of gambling which the Wire Act allows across state lines. So yes, it's most definitely US protectionism. But not in the way you imagine.

Having said all that, my opinion is that if people want to gamble, let them gamble. But don't even think of allowing them to use government-funded assistance when they lose everything. it is not, I repeat, NOT any establishment's obligation (be it a casino, bar/pub/tavern, etc) to parent/police an individual. It is the individual's obligation to accept personal responsibility for their actions.

Two reasons for SSL

SSL is used for two distinct reasons, and this piece is only relevant to the first reason. That is, to validate that a web site is actually controlled by a specific entity. Yes, this is why SSL was created in the first place, and it most certainly *should* still be used that way. But most of the time, it isn't.

Unfortunately, people wanted to conduct commerce on the Internet, and the webmasters and/or their companies didn't want to pay the fees to get SSL certificates. So instead, a new SSL industry was born. One in which the controlling entity is irrelevant. One in which the only controlling-entity check is that the IP address of the web server matches the certificate. This second reason for SSL is simply to provide encryption for the connection (for the commerce transaction), not to confirm identity. This reason is simply to make sure that the data transferred between the two endpoints cannot be easily deciphered/read if intercepted. Go try to buy a cheap SSL certificate, and you'll see that you can easily get one without having to prove your identity at all.

But speaking of SSL security, shouldn't anyone seriously concerned with security be using 256-bit AES at this point instead of 128-bit RC4?

P'shaw

Oh, p'shaw. I live in Massachusetts. We've got the Big Dig. You haven't seen "stupendous incompetence" until you've seen that. If you're upset after your civil servants needlessly cost you £40m, imagine how we feel knowing the idiots in charge of the Big Dig have cost us over £5b? The estimate a couple years ago was that it was over-budget by $11,000,000,000. I'm sure we'd love it if our civil servants only screwed us out of $80,000,000.

Umm... multicasting?

Sorry, but you lost me at:

"While broadcast TV can deliver a single copy of “Survivor” to millions of viewers at a time, Internet delivery requires millions of distinct file transfers across crowded pipes to accomplish the same end: this is the vaunted end-to-end principle at work."

And surprisingly, you didn't lose me by the reference to "Survivor". No, it was by the sheer ignorance regarding networking. I'm far from a network guru, but even I know about multicasting. I may not know how to set it up or use it, but at least I know about it. You know, Class D using the old class system of addressing. I'll grant you that I've never seen it used in practice. Regardless, this "broadcast" scenario you analogize is EXACTLY what multicast was designed for. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, old versions of Norton Ghost used multicasting for restoring images over a network.

Paul the peckerhead, and the Virgin overseller

I find it astonishing that people like Paul can't see the completely idiotic, illogical nature of their statements. Paul states "As one of the many who do not use P2P but have my service affected by those that do I think this is fine." as if the people who actually use the service they pay for are somehow doing something wrong. I don't use BitTorrent, either, but I completely support people who want to use the full amount of bandwidth they pay for. So, in keeping with Paul's logic, let me say this:

I do not use iTunes, therefore I recommend ISPs block access to iTunes and all the bandwidth-hogging it entails. Similarly, I do not visit MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube, so I recommend that ISPs block access to those high-bandwidth sites as well. Lastly, I do not use the full one-gigabit-per-second from my gigabit switch; my equipment uses 150Mbit/sec at most, so I recommend that all manufacturers of gigabit-speed use lower quality parts to reduce their costs. After all, since I don't use the full capacity that I paid for, nobody else should be able to use full capacity they paid for, either.

Now, as to the "I work for Virgin so am not unbiased." AC who so eloquently stated "But if P2P traffic is consuming so much bandwidth that it is having a detrimental effect on other users then something needs to be done. Other users are also paying for that service and bandwidth is not infinite." You are absolutely, 100% correct. We just don't agree on what "needs" to be done. Those of us with fully-functional brains would suggest that you don't oversell your service; that instead, you sell service capacity based on what you can actually provide, and not punish customers when they dare have the audacity to actually use the service they pay for.

This really is not a difficult concept. If you sell me a service, I am well within my right to use the full benefit of that service. If I pay for a rental car, the rental agency doesn't say to me "The car is yours for the week, but you can't drive it after noon". If I have an event catered, the caterers don't bring three tables full of food and then tell me nobody can touch the food on the third table.

And seriously, if you're offering ANY SERVICE over 3Mbps, what do you expect it to be used for OTHER THAN downloading large amounts of data? Nobody is going to get a 50Mbps line just to access the web and email. If the ISPs are so concerned about people using too much bandwidth, so much that it affects other users, I suggest they stop increasing the bandwidth they sell to customers. It doesn't take a genius to deduce that when they increase the bandwidth, people will use that extra bandwidth. And if their overall capacity does not increase by the same proportion, then the net result is that the customers allegedly affected by the downloading will become more affected.

Good ideas

"...the Blue Eaters machine is supposed to have more than 800 TB of main memory (with at least 32 GB of main memory per SMP node), and more than 800 TB of main memory."

I believe that statement is repetitive and redundant.

"...comprised of 162 racks of servers, organized into three columns, with each column having five rows with 9 racks each."

3 columns times five rows times 9 racks = 135 racks. Where do the other 27 racks go?

"The Blue Waters data center will not have room-level air conditioning, either..."

It's not my place to question data center designers (having no personal experience with data centers myself), but from a layman's viewpoint, won't the data center still get hot? Even if you can pipe all the heat away from the processors and memory using the water cooling, what about the hard drives? Will those also having water-cooling blocks attached to them? If not, won't the spinning platters and moving heads generate a good amount of heat?

At any rate, it's good to see someone thinking about data center design to increase efficiency.

How many customers?

"The ViaSat-1 will have a throughput of about 100Gb/s... ViaSat claims the satellite will let distributors price a basic service at 2Mb/s... It's expected to be able to provide service to about two million subscribers."

So they're expecting to provide service of 1,000Gb/s (512Kb/s) to 4,000Gb/s (2Mb/s) from a 100Gb/s satellite? It's good to see the practice of massively overselling capacity is alive and well.

And am I the only one who thinks even 2Mb/s will be virtually useless by the time this is launched? With the massive increase in size (and thus bandwidth) used by most websites in recent years, even 2Mb/s will look like dial-up speed for anything other than email. I'm sure some people in rural areas (or for whatever reason can't get high-speed Internet through other means) will be happy to wait 10-20 seconds for each page to load, but most others will probably think it's not worth the cost they'll have to pay for it.

re: SSL is mostly immune

"Fortunately SSL will alert you to this trickery :) The certificate will be invalid if the IP address of the fake site is different to the real site, and will cause some warnings to appear on the browser."

Umm, no, that's not correct. SSL does literally nothing to say "this site really is this organization". As you mention, SSL simply says "this site matches this IP address". You're assuming that the rogue site would use the real site's SSL certificate instead of getting (or creating) their own.

Let's say the rogue DNS server returns 10.1.2.3* as the address for www.bankofamerica.com. If the server at 10.1.2.3 has an SSL certificate for www.bankofamerica.com, and that SSL certificate is assigned to 10.1.2.3, then your browser will accept it as valid and will not throw up any flags. So the question then becomes "Can a rogue individual get an SSL certificate for a well-known domain?" I'd venture a guess and say it's not outside the realm of possibilities.

* Yes, I know 10.1.2.3 is a private address. I only use it here as an example.

Sport?

I'm sorry, but nobody is ever going convince me that hunting is somehow a "sport". Give the animals opposable thumbs, give them guns, and train them as the hunters have been trained, and then maybe I'll consider it. Attempting to sneak up near a defenseless animal and shoot it is not "sport". It's even more egregious when the hunters DON'T eat what they kill, when they kill simply for the sake of killing. And while I have nothing against shooting inanimate targets, marksmanship contents, etc., I don't view them as "sport", either. Content yes, sport no.

As for re: Warning: pdf -- I suggest YOU get a hold of yourself. Did you think that maybe, just maybe, The Reg warns people that it's a PDF file because exploits in PDF readers now mean that PDF files can be a source of infection? And since many virus scanners, especially older ones, will not scan PDF files, I'd say giving a warning about a link to a PDF file is most definitely NOT a bad idea.

re: Yet more fear mongering

There are two ways to look at this announcement.

The first way is the way you see it. Specifically, that the government is trying to keep the people in a state of panic, so as to provide the reasoning and thrust behind the continuous removal of liberties which were once considered so important that this nation was built upon them.

The second way is that there are multiple reports saying the government had plenty of advance notice regarding the 9/11 (11/9 for the rest of the world) attacks, but did nothing with the information, choosing to ignore it instead. They probably feel that they cannot let that happen again, for the common people may lose faith in them if it happened again, and the government cannot afford to lose the faith of the people. This is especially important now, in this time of economic crisis, when a black man was recently elected to be the next president (which itself is apparently already leading to many problems with the bigots in the country who can't seem to look past the color of a person's skin)*.

Both of these choices are plausible, but unsubstantiated at the current time. While I'd like to think it's the second choice, I agree that the first choice is more probable.

* Imagine if people of every color would stop fighting each other. Maybe then they would pay attention to what the government is doing**. As Motley Crue wrote 23 years ago ("Fight For Your Rights") -- "We're all slaves to time / No color's right / Throw our hate into the fire". And as Tree wrote 9 years ago ("All of Us") -- "Take a good look at our history / Shouldn't really come as a mystery / Take a good look back at our past / It's not about race, it's all about class".

**Unfortunately, even if we stop hating/fighting along race lines, religion will always promote hatred and fighting, as ironic as it may seem. We simply need to look at the Middle East, wherein many of the countries' laws are based on the ruler's interpretation of their religion. That's precisely why the US' Bill of Rights' Amendment I begins "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...". Of course, then Congress went and decided to give religious organizations tax-exempt status, and put God everywhere from our Pledge of Allegiance to our money to the Presidential inaugural oath.

Here's hoping

Here's hoping the guy gets what he deserves while in jail. I sincerely hope inmates hate child abusers as much as I've been led to believe.

Re: If you hate... By Paul --

Fuck you. Oh, and try forming a title that makes sense next time. There are plenty of people willing to "stick up for a pervert". Just look at the "extreme" porn law, and you'll see that. There are *NOT*, however, many people willing to stick up for a child abuser or for someone who gets sexually excited by images and videos of child abuse.

No, distributing pictures is *NOT* the same as "thought crime", and only a truly fucking retarded idiot would even think such a thing. You want to know why people say distributing images or videos of child abuse "supports real abuse"? BECAUSE IT FUCKING DOES, YOU IGNORANT TWAT! It's not a difficult concept -- someone who gets sexually excited by images or videos of child abuse wants to collect images and videos of child abuse. Are you still with me, or did I lose you already? Don't worry, it's just a little further... In order to provide images and videos to these sick fucks, you need to ENGAGE IN CHILD ABUSE. Do you see how simple a concept it is? Unless you're trying to say that the images and videos are merely simulated child abuse, which I think we can safely assume is not the case.

And since you're obviously too stupid to think, I'll also inform you that when you distribute something, you are actively promoting and encouraging it. Sharing music on file-sharing services encourages others to listen to the music. In exactly the same way, sharing images of child abuse encourages others to share (and produce) their own images.

Now, if you get sexually excited by the thought of child abuse, but have never engaged in child abuse and do not solicit any media (images, videos, magazines, etc) containing child abuse, then I would support you and your rights. As long as you are not harming anyone, and are not promoting or encouraging the harming of anyone, I have no problem with you. I'll think you're a sick individual and would strongly suggest psychological help, but I would still fight for your rights. When you start viewing child abuse, distributing media containing child abuse, or physically abusing a child, however, you have crossed the line, and I'd like few things more than to remove you from the planet.

Infection today - not sure what it is, though

I got a call from a client today saying their internet was slow. Turns out someone managed to get infected on Monday (24 Nov) by vising .ru porn sites which redirected them to scan [dot] scannerantispyware [dot] com, which then redirected them to repeatedly download "/load/setup_351_6777_.exe" from files [dot] downloadproas2009 [dot] com. Looks like a rootkit because Task Manager and Process Explorer don't show any unusual processes, even though the system started DOSing two websites this morning (26 Nov). The two sites were hq-live [dot] net (DOS from 10:10:02 EST [GMT-5] to 10:55:04), and ruler-cash [dot] com (DOS from 11:10:15 EST to 13:26:56). It was still going with the DOS, but that's when I blocked all traffic to/from the system at the gateway firewall. It looks like the command-and-control site is laleila [dot] com ("/stop/getcfg.php").

In light of this, the customer finally gave me approval to block all traffic to .ru domains. Not a silver bullet, but it should help.

How is this not 1984?

So, with regard to data protection and data sharing, the secretary of state is given unyielding authority to literally write new laws, and amend or remove current laws, with no approval and no oversight? And he/she is not accountable and does not have to answer to anyone? How is that not a dictator? I think the US and UK need to attack the US and UK so that we can "democratize" the US and UK like we did to Iraq.

"The only caveat to this is that the minister *SHOULD* get the ICO's opinion before making such an order." In other words, it would be nice if they get the ICO's opinion, but this toothless wording is completely meaningless and was probably only thrown in there to appease the people who think the government won't abuse the power.

So basically, the secretary of state can unilaterally decide that it would be in the public's interest to sell the data in the ID card database (once it's up and running) to the highest bidder, and there is no debate and no recourse (since the secretary of state would be given unlimited power to alter the laws as he/she sees fit).

Why is it that the US and UK are in a race to see who can become an official dictatorship first?

And seriously, is "Ministry of Justice" a real organization in the UK? Is it just me, or does that sound like it's ripped straight from 1984? Do you have a Ministry of Truth as well?

So many...

How in the hell did the judge let her off with just a warning? There's no doubt about it, this is a mistrial, period. According to this article, she posted details of the case, which is illegal. She solicited external thought and opinion, which is illegal. She may have contaminated the rest of the jury members by discussing it with them. At the very least, she should be arrested and charged with contempt of court (for soliciting external thought and opinion), obstruction of justice (for knowingly and willfully violating court orders and forcing a mistrial), and waste of taxpayer money (for forcing a mistrial, thereby wasting the money consumed by the trial). To let her off with just a warning is to tell other potential jurors that violating court orders is no big deal.

re: Won't go back...

"What happened to copyright?"

Let's ask Google. After all, most people were happy when Google announced they would be scanning every book they could get their grubby fingers on, thereby infringing the authors' copyright by scanning, storing, and indexing the books in their entirety. Somehow, even though Google was scanning the books in their entirety, thereby making a complete digital COPY of the books, some people think COPYRIGHT law doesn't apply. Go figure.

Cost?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the satellite radio company broadcast everything simultaneously (like analogue radio)? They send out the signal, and the subscriber's receiver picks it up and pulls the selected channel from that signal, right? If so, then they could have 57 trillion people receiving the signal without paying for it, and it still wouldn't cost them a single penny extra. They have to broadcast the data whether there's one subscriber or one billion. Any signal you can receive over the air (without you requesting the data) does not cost the company anything extra. Now, if you'd like to use alternate marketing speech such as "unrealized sales" or some such nonsense, then we can talk. But no, it doesn't *COST* them anything.

Why not jail them now?

"Manangsang claimed authorities would be better placed to identify, follow and, in due course, punish those who deliberately infect others with the disease."

Well, since you're planning their punishment already, without them having actually committed any crime, why bother waiting for them to commit the crime? Save the victim the trauma, and just haul the sentenced-without-a-trial non-criminal to jail now.

I would love to know their definition of "sexually aggressive", though. To me, that would imply someone forcing themselves onto someone else, which I sincerely hope is already against the law. Though I imagine there won't be any formal definition. It'll all be a vague relative thing, if they attempt any definition at all. More likely, it'll be like the US Supreme Court's definition of obscenity -- we'll know it when we see it. You can't argue with a rigid, well-defined, not-open-to-misinterpretation, unambiguous definition like that.

re: Set Theory...

JW Otherworld nailed it. They advertised "Vista Capable". Without specifying a specific version of Vista, the purchaser must conclude the computer is capable of running any and all versions of Vista.

To analogize, if you purchase a stereo system that is advertised as "iPod capable", do you question which iPod can be used, or will you assume they all can? How would you feel to find out that it's only the first-generation iPod that works, and not your brand new nano?

As for anyone who wants to argue the definition of "capable", here's another analogy. Any 33/45 turntable can play a 78, but that doesn't mean the audio produced will be as intended.

Fuel source

OK, so it's a fuel-cell car, powered by compressed hydrogen gas... First, let's ask the Hindenburg how safe hydrogen is. But ignoring all safety issues, where does this fuel source (compressed hydrogen) come from? More to the point, how much energy is used to make it, and where does THAT energy come from? And of course, what's the ratio of "energy used to make compressed hydrogen" versus "energy released from compressed hydrogen to power the fuel cells"?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky

Why did the person recording stay there for so long looking at it while it was open, after it did it's close-and-open routine? I stupidly kept watching, thinking something else MUST happen since there was over a minute left. But no, nothing. I felt like I was part of a "Pinky and the Brain" episode, where Brain gets everyone in the world to watch something so that he can brainwash them. Then again, maybe he already did that with "reality" shows... Zort! Poit! Narf!

@Keith T

"Stealth is going to be more important for the drop-off phase where you are going to be "in country" afterwards. Plan the mission so that stealth is not important on pickup."

What part of STEALTH did you misunderstand? The very notion of these missions is to make it so that nobody knows they were there. Planning an extraction in which stealth is not important will likely involve a lot of gunplay, something I'm pretty sure the specops team and the aircraft pilot would like to avoid (not to mention the diplomatic issues it would cause). While I don't agree with a lot of what our military does, let's not put them in any unnecessary danger.

re: Hydrogen vs Helium

"...apparently you can get away with anything (except environmentally friendly anything with nuclear or atom in its name) if you state something like,'for environmental reasons...'"

Exactly what part of "radioactive waste", which can be highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years (source: US NRC [www.nrc.gov]), is environmentally friendly? And, if it *IS* determined to be "environmentally" friendly, radioactive waste isn't exactly PEOPLE-friendly, now is it?

re: pass the word

"the problem lies with websites which try to steer you in the right direction by laying down a list of preconditions as to what is and is not acceptable as a password, such as insisting on a certain number of letters..."

Exactly. While I do remember a lot of passwords for my own system and for my clients' systems, I also find it extremely difficult to remember a completely random password. And a completely random password is not more secure than a correct password (in fact, I'd say they're less secure). Allow the user to select a suitably long password without any other restrictions, and it'll be far more secure (as long as the users actually use an easy-to-remember but hard-to-guess phrase).

For example, which is more secure -- "Abcd123!", "a7bF23jZ", "rustic-albino-black-moon", or "I can't think of a password today, so I guess this will have to suffice"? The more conditions you force upon the user, the shorter they will make the password so they don't spend all day typing it in and so that they can remember it more easily (for those times when they misplace the paper they wrote it on). Compare that with long strings which they can remember much more easily. Along with the typical conditions (requiring a certain number of numerals, requiring upper and lowercase, etc), the one thing that I personally think is the most self-defeating is when these idiotic sites have a maximum password length. Since these sites *should* be storing password hashes, not the actual passwords (there's literally no reason for anybody to see your password), a maximum length shouldn't be a problem. For people thinking about hash collisions, that should be avoidable by saving and comparing the hashes of multiple algorithms. I'd say it's extremely unlikely (if it's even possible) to create a string that will cause a collision in both MD5 and SHA1.

I've actually seen sites (which like to call themselves "high-security") that require at least two numerals, require upper and lowercase characters, require special characters (punctuation, etc), and have a minimum password length of 8 characters... and then have a maximum password length of 12 characters. Then again, these are also the same kinds of sites that think they're increasing security by having additional "security questions" whose (true) answers are easily discovered or are a matter of public record. For those, I'll just use completely random answers or satirical answers that won't be easily guessed (Q: "In what city were you born?", A: "Insecure insanityville").

Useless stats

"Samsung has just announced its 256GB SSD for notebooks that does sequential writes at up to 200MB/sec (seq' reads: 220MB/sec)..."

Woohoo, more useless stats. Few people care about sequential reads and writes because that's not what 99% of your accesses are. You need to know the random reads and writes (which should still be much better than disk, but still not as good as sequential due to the page/lbock sizes of SSD storage). More importantly, though, how does it deal with lots of smaller files? Any device can handle one large file rather well. It's when you're reading and (much more so) writing lots of small files that you really see things slow to a crawl. I'd like to see a universal test wherein part of the test is reading and writing lots of small files. Then we'd see how drives will operate in the real world. Theoretical numbers and peak numbers are meaningless except to PHBs.

Co chain-link, then?

So basically, they created a circuit using really tiny chain-link. While it's certainly interesting in the context of bendy computers, it's not exactly a new idea. Chain-mail armor has been around for how many hundreds of years? We've known for a very long time that if we want metal to bend, we need to form it using links. Look at wristwatches if you want another example. What interests (and always amazes) me is that they can make it so damn small.

Charging?

OK, I know somebody mentioned this in a comment the other day, but it's even more appropriate when we're talking about California. Let's for the moment assume that everyone has a new electric car. And let's even assume that there are charging stations all over the place, much like petrol stations today. Who will supply the power to the charging stations? Every year, California has problems with not having enough power supply for the demand (hence the bill/law to allow the utility companies to shut off residents' aircon units).

Do we really think it's a good idea to flood the market with devices which will massively increase the demand for power without first finding an appropriate supply that can provide the capacity required?

For those people who want to discuss slow-charging, let's discuss it. Let's use LA county as an example. According to the US census bureau, in 2006, LA county had 3,356,353 housing units (population was 9,948,081). Assume each of those housing units has an electric car that needs to be charged, and assume 70% of them will arrive home from work at the same time, and will begin charging their car. Even slow-charging at, say, 100W, that would be a power draw of 234.944 megawatts just to charge the cars. For the entire state of California, the number of households was 13,174,378. Using the same assumptions, the power draw for charging cars in the entire state would be 922.20 megawatts.

Give her a break

I say give the lady a break. Yes, I had a chuckle over it, too, but we all make mistakes. Yes, her mistake probably cost considerably more than our mistakes. But nobody claimed she was super-human or flawless. She's probably putting herself through more psychologically than any of us could do to her (and likely more than she deserves). Now, if she makes the same mistake again, then reel her in. Otherwise, admit that mistakes happen, and that we all make them.

On a sad note, given his typical outbursts, I can't tell if Webster is being satirical or not. For the good of humanity, I hope so, but somehow, I suspect he isn't.

Re: How to destroy the music business? No, just the record companies.

"Oh wait, this means only talented musicians will make it. Can't have that. It would be the little boy pointing at the Emperor's new clothes all over again..."

Spoken like a true Freetard. Are you actually so stupid as to believe that the only musicians with talent are the ones who constantly tour? There are a lot, yes a LOT, of musicians who don't want to tour. They have families they don't want to leave for months at a time, or they don't want to live their lives on a tour bus, or whatever other reason. It doesn't mean they aren't talented musicians.

Simply put, if you enjoy their music so much, especially so much that you want to go see them perform it live, why shouldn't you compensate them for the ability to listen to it in perpetuity (on CD, MP3, FLAC, whatever)?

As for music subscription services, I'll pass. If I hear something I like, I'll buy the CD. For one reason, I can play it wherever I want to; for another, I don't need to continue paying a subscription fee until the end of time in order to continue listening to it. Subscription services are only good for people who 1) only care about what's trendy today, 2) only use music to pass the time (and don't particularly care what's playing), and 3) companies who want it as background noise; and, of course, the labels who see it as a cash cow until the end of time.

Idiots

First, I have to say: Kenny, you're an idiot. To say that this was a good design decision, while DVI (and VGA) monitors are CURRENTLY being manufactured and sold, is a stupid idea. To claim that it's an attempt to let go of the past, while the displays CURRENTLY being manufactured, just screams of insanity. How can "right now" be considered the past? Only to you and Jobs. Or are you actually implying that nobody would want to connect their notebook to an external monitor?

On to the primary point of my comment... why is it that we're allowing the entertainment industry, who is the only one who wants DRM, to dictate how we use our computers? And why aren't the "green" people jumping on this? If the video card needs to encrypt the stream before sending it across the wire, and the TV/monitor needs to decrypt it, then we're wasting large amounts of energy (compared to sending the signal across the wire as-generated, with no encryption or decryption).

And let's not forget that this is virtually meaningless. Someone WILL break the encryption scheme (if it hasn't been done already). Then they can create a hardware device to go between your precious encrypted content and your non-DRM display. Either that, or (even easier), they'll create a software hack to run on the computer to make it think the display is authorized.

I don't know what's sadder -- the fact that we've outlawed the process of people trying to get legitimately-purchased media to play on their equipment (via the DMCA), or that people have to jump through hoops to get legitimately-purchased media to play on their equipment.

@ein mahl

"Can an organization claim "not for profit" status when their CEO supposedly makes $500k per annum? Feels like an oxymoronish sort of a concept to me."

There are some "not for profit" organizations out there where the CEO makes millions per year. Why do you think the organization is let with zero profit? But I do agree with your point. If my opinion, a "not for profit" organization should have reasonable salaries for all employees, even the CEO.

Bad decision, not the same

This is a very bad decision. In the case of "okidataparts.com", the trademark name was used in conjunction with a generic term, the end result being a generic term -- "Oki Data Parts". The name does not imply that Oki Data operates or authorizes the site in question. In this case, however, "ITT Barton" was the name of the company making the products (the name of the company was then changed to "Barton Instrument Systems LLC", and they've since been acquired by another company). They may have had a trademark on "ITT" only, but "ITT Barton" was the name of the company. As such, this reseller's domain "ittbarton.com" is very likely to be assumed by purchasers to be the official and/or authorized domain for the company's products.

If the reseller had called his domain "ittsurplus.com", "ittbartonsurplus.com", or something similar, then it would be acceptable. But to use the defunct company's name as your domain name is not something that should be allowed.

Here's a question for the "good decision / common sense" commenters -- do you think it would be acceptable for a person to purchase surplus Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) computers, then register the dec.com domain name to resell those DEC computers (yes, I know HP controls the domain name, but assume for the purpose of this hypothetical question that they didn't)?

@david wilson

"If someone has my fingerprints, they'd have to be rather dumb to, for example, use them to make fake prints and board a flight, since even if they weren't caught out trying to fake their way past a scanner, what would happen if I decided to use my ID here when I'm already logged in The System as being on my way to the States?"

Don't you see the problem here? "The System" says you're logged in in the States and in the UK. Which is the real you, and how do you prove it? YOU know you're you. But how do you PROVE that you're you?

As for people being able to frame you for a crime nowadays, yes, it can happen now. But do we really need to make it easier? If somebody wants my fingerprints, they need to be physically close to me at some point. Once my fingerprints go into a government computer system, they're accessible everywhere in the world. And then I get picked up for a crime in Seattle when I've never even ventured further than New York (or, for the UK readers, you'd get picked up for a crime in Scotland when you've never ventured outside Ireland). Someone like me, who's self-employed and lives alone, doesn't have the pleasure of an alibi 24/7, so I have no way to prove that I wasn't in Seattle. Paranoid? Maybe. But in this day and age of "guilty unless proven innocent, and even then, still considered guilty", I have every right to be paranoid about this.

Remember, "identity" is nothing more than bits in a computer. So far we've only looked at it from the perspective of the database getting cracked and people's data being exposed. What about the far more serious problem of the database getting cracked and data being changed? Suddenly your ID card doesn't match the database. In fact, your data can't be found anywhere in the database. Therefore, you must be a terrorist. Or a terrorist will crack into the database and change the data of a "safe" person to their own data. If it's not a well-known person, nobody would know the data was changed, and the terrorist would then be able to go about unimpeded. In short, the system is useless. If this goes forward, the system WILL be cracked. It's not a question of if, but when.

And don't you dare say it wouldn't happen. We've used that phrase too much throughout history, and look where we are.

What's a "North American" accent?

Can someone please enlighten me by describing what this "North American" accent is? Only a moronic retard would even claim that such a thing existed. For deity's sake, we have at least three distinct accents in my little state of Massachusetts (Western Mass [no accent], Worcester, and Boston). Then you have New York (specifically, NYC), New Jersey, the south, the midwest, and let's not forget Canada, eh? Or Mexico. That doesn't even begin to cover the islands such as the Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Jamaica, etc.

So which of those (or one of the many not listed) is "the" North American accent?

But I want it my way!

This just screams the mindset of the youth of today -- "But I want it my way! Waaaaaaah!!" There's an incredibly simple concept at play here -- if you want to use any product, you must agree to the author/creator's stipulations. If you don't like the restrictions the author/creator places upon use of said product, don't use it. It's that simple. Just because a product exists doesn't mean you should be able to use it however you want. This is especially true in this case where Apple would likely get support calls from people having trouble with their unsupported, unlicensed systems, and Apple's (justified) refusal to help these people would garner ill will and bad press for Apple. I hate Apple and all of their products that I've seen, but in this case, I have to side with them.