Posts by Ian Michael Gumby 4454 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2006
Hmmm.
That's a funny one.
I wish you would get your facts straight.
In the two shuttle disasters neither had to do with a mixup of measurements.
One was a deficiency in the O ring. The other was due to an ice formation knocking lose some of the protecting tiles during liftoff and then during reentry... boom. (no tiles, no heat protection...)
So if you're going to go 'WTF' please get your rant in order.
Oh wait, they have.
How old was the Fukushima reactor? Its design is probably older than most if not all of the posters here. Since that time, reactor design has improved, reducing the risks of a meltdown.
Also note that Fukushima wasn't just the result of a poor design. TEPCO (I believe thats the company that built and ran the reactor, modified the landscape by taking down natural barriers to the sea so that the reactor would be built on hard ground. While at the time of construction, this was the practice, however to reduce costs they took out a natural barrier so that they could easily offload supplies from ships. (Per WSJ report.)
They also didn't plan for the size of the Tsunami and while its deficiencies were pointed out, they were not yet fixed.
Looking at the nuclear reactors of the same generation in the US, they would not face the same level of risk that the reactors in Japan faced. And note that in the US only a percentage of the reactors are of the same generation as the one in Japan.
The sad thing is that we need Nuclear power until we can actually get fusion reactors working.
Of course we could kill off a large percentage of the world's population to reduce our bio mass and food requirements so that we can use those crop lands for bio fuel....
Soylent Green is made from people!
Look,
Here in the US, the bumper hitch is really a square receptacle that can take various hitches and since its removable, its easily stolen or lost. So when not in use, most people take them off.
So there's an after market of things you can put in the hitch:
1) Truck balls
2) replica claymore mines made from the same ABS plastic and looks damn real until you see the red 'replica' tag on the side.
3) Boat propellers that spin in the wind.
4) Oversized 'belt buckles'. Like what you see some trucker wear.
I'm sure there is more, but I'd settle for the claymore replica.
First, most if not all of the commentards have never set foot in South Carolina. (And why would they want to?)
I wanted to put this in perspective... South Carolina is chock full of self righteous Southern Baptists. While there are other religions represented in the state, go in to any rural South Carolina town, you will see a plethora of Southern Baptist churches. (Note they are segregated too.) Even if the town is broke, has high unemployement, these churches for the most part are the best looking structures in town.
One of their Universities in Columbia SC has the gamecock as their mascot.
So why aren't these people finding it offensive to see 'I (heart) cocks!' bumper stickers?
Or co-eds walking around in tight shorts with 'cocks' written across their bum?
I kid you not.
The reason being is that these same people who find 'truck nuts' offensive recognize the term 'cocks' to refer to 'gamecocks' (a bird) and not a slang term for male genitalia. I kid you not.
And that's not a hypothetical bumper sticker. Spend time driving around Columbia SC and I guarantee you will see at least 5 of those bumper stickers on the road. More if you're in Columbia during a football Saturday.
Or go walk around U of SC campus and you'll see girls wearing 'Cocks' across their butt on shorts or sweatpants.
Your hard drive is connected to your PC by an internal cable so you're not streaming.
Were to say that you were streaming from your NAS to your PC or wi-fi connected lap top? Maybe.
But you're not a commercial organization.
At the same time, I would have to argue that its a trivial and obvious patent.
You will eventually come around. :-)
The point I was trying to make is that you can't just build a better mouse trap anymore and expect people to come.
This isn't to say that if you build a better product, people won't buy your product.
People point to Android phones. Ok. sure. But you still have a couple of ghosts that you will have to deal with down the road. Oracle v. Google. Security, those sort of things.
What I gave was a simple example of something that I knew wasn't portable.
However the basis for the argument still stands.
There are vendor lock-ins which now exist that make it more difficult to move from your basic phone platform.
What you spend on your phone apps is not what others spend on their phone apps.
Of course I'm waiting for the N9 to hit the streets. I got to see one and its not bad.
It used to be that if you built a better phone, within 2 years the market will choose your phone over the competition because either their existing phone died, or their contract ended. (In the US we have contracts because the phones are subsidized by the telcos.)
But when you have your phone, and then your paid for apps, and then your tie ins to other products in a personal use digital ecosystem, you have more resistance to change phones. If a lot of the music I've purchased is in iTunes, unless my phone supports iTunes, I'm not going to be able to take my music with me. (unless I have another Apple product that's portable and I want to carry two devices....)
So Apple is creating a barrier that locks consumers in.
And then there is Android. Same issue here.
Third Party Apps won't transfer licenses from one brand to another. So if you have an iPhone then get an Android, you're going to have to buy another copy of dirty birds.... have enough $1.00+ apps that you like and use? You're going to think twice.
As to Nokia, their kit is well made. OS? Maybe Apps? Hardly. Sorry Nokia but other companies synch mail accounts, contact books, etc better.
While Nokia can fix this, they will have to create some sort of compelling reason to get iPhone and Android users to switch.
First, the F35 isn't as stealthy when compared to the F22 and other stealth aircraft.
But then again, look at the cost of the F22...
Is the F35 stealthy enough is the question.
Someone pointed out the 'advantage' of UAVs.
Ok...
1) UAVs can do higher G maneuvers that a meatbag can't take.
2) UAVs can have an extended time in the air because its possible to switch pilots as their shifts end.
3) UAVs can be built cheaper because they don't have to protect a meat bag and survive.
But then again, having a meat bag in the plane has an advantage in that the guy flying the UAV is in a bunker somewhere and doesn't have the ability to assess the situation that someone in a cockpit can.
1) This is a research project
2) You're not drinking the bio fuel so the question is do you really have to wait until the crop matures
3) The study was done in Sydney, right? While Aussies are thinking outside of the box, Agave is grown in Mexico. In fact Te-kill-ya is only Te-kill-ya if it is made from the Agave grown in Mexico.
4) Agave grows in dry climates. Tree Huggers will like this because unlike man made solar plants in deserts, its 100% natural and would have a lesser impact on the environment.
5) Wasting lifestyle? Stop 3rd world nations from over populating the world and creating human bio-mass.
6) Want clean cheap energy? GO NUCLEAR.
That's your reality. Nuclear power is the clean cheap and most efficient source of power. That is, until you have fusion energy which is still yet another 50 years away.
Charlie, do you even think about the problem before you post?
Where's the weak link?
The phone app? Hardly. You can limit the feature to smurt phones that either have you authenticate via a web page, or you download an app where you have the ability to do lots of encryption and authentication to verify its you.
The car company? (Or rather the car communication company where you have the subscription)
They can do lots of encryption from your phone while they authenticate that its you and your command that you want to tell the car.
The process of communicating from the car company to the car itself?
Hmmm this is where the communication is at its weakest link. Security is an afterthought.
You send a short burst message to the car assuming that only you have the capability to communicate with the car.
Now I really haven't looked at the system or the problem, but just spent a few minutes reading the article and your quote. So I could be off base.
The real danger is that some moron in some former eastern bloc country may think it funny to disable a car driving down the freeway in the US during rush hour. When that starts to happen, you can bet lawyers will be suing the crap out of OnStar and such.
The evil thing is that some unethical lawyer could decide to pay a hacker to start doing just that.
(Which would be a good movie plot....) ;-)
Smart is relative.
And yes, while IBM does have a few smart people, they are vastly out numbered by arrogant smug gits who couldn't pass a Turing test.
The reason why they are talking is that if they didn't, then no one would notice that the product exists.
I really do feel sorry for all of those smart people who are being out numbered by their smurt counterparts.
Do you think that anyone in the Western world would ever prosecute a phone hacker for spoofing a misinformation text?
Sending pics even fake ones of bestiality or Pedophilia would still get someone in trouble even if it was against the taliban,
Sorry, but I still give you an A for effort. :-)
There is this thing called the court of public opinion.... But back to your 'innocent until proven guilty' claptrap...
The actual quote is that there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. That means that he burden on the prosecution to prove their case.
You may know he is guilty. Everyone may know he's guilty, but if the prosecution doesn't make their case, then the courts will not convict.
Casey Anthony went free, even though everyone knows she did it.
O.J ... ?
“This makes no sense,” the group's executive director, David Segal, said in a statement. “It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”
Sorry, but didn't Schwartz break in to a networking closet and gained access to a network/server where he was not specifically granted access?
That's criminal trespass.
Uhm...
Am I the only one who caught the news that Win7 is only for the phones and not for a tablet OS?
Am I the only one who remembers the series of N devices which could be considered the precursor to today's tablets?
Did Nokia drop the Intel partnership? Or did it silently fade in to the background?
I'm not going to make any wild speculations, but I don't think Meego was totally ditched. Maybe its not the front runner, but definitely not dead.
But what do I know? I'm not some Russian web site claiming to be an expert on all things Nokia.
Think of this in a Scout / Attack role.
While the V-22 can bring in a bunch of troops and supplies, a smaller fast chopper that can come in and work in a support role is going to be needed.
Imagine having an LZ where the V-22 come in and land and having air support buzzing around quickly taking out enemy positions.
If your V-22 can do 220+ knots, you're going to need choppers that can keep up.
You can arm it with hell fire missiles and a chain gun.
The problem is that there is a large percentage of IT folks who don't think about their work once they start down a certain path. That's the point Stonebraker is right on that point. You get someone started down a path working with MySql, the end up deciding that extending or modifying MySql is easier/cheaper than redoing their infrastructure.
Not all problems are best solved by relational databases. Also some problems require customized solutions in order to scale. What ends up happening is that you have to make compromises in order to create a generalized solution.
Having worked with his Illustra crew while at Informix, I'm going to give Stonebraker the benefit of doubt.
Sure it took 5 years for Informix to absorb the extensibility of Illustra and to make it scale. But it was done and the current release 11.7x definitely has a lot going for it. (Except that Mills and company at IBM still baby DB2... ;-) [Yes I'm that Gumby and yes I'm an Informix bigot]
The point is that Stonebraker knows his stuff and he's actually right in some of his comments.
Sharding data isn't a good idea.
Assange's legal team is doing a wonderful PR job that doesn't fly in terms of validity in International Law.
Assange is wanted in Sweden for the crime of Rape. Regardless of how other countries define Rape, its how the Swedes define rape that counts.
Rape does not require the dual standards test. So if the Swedes accuse him of rape by their laws, that's all that counts.
Assange's team is trying to try the case in UK courts. Again, the law is to determine if the EAW is in fact valid. Not the facts of the case.
I dont' deny the AC's right to comment.
I do wish he/she would stop trotting out old things which have already been proven to be false.
The US will not do a rendition on Assange if he is sent to Sweden.
His appeal will fail.
The first appeal was dragged out and every argument raised by the defense was debunked and when the defense witnesses were questioned under oath the following occured:
1) The defense attorney from Sweden testified that he lied when he said that he was not in contact with the Swedish Authorities during the time Assange was out of contact and then abruptly left the country on the same day that a warrant for his arrest was issued.
2) Defense expert witnesses testified that they were misinformed by the defense team and that their statements and expert opinions would be false when placed in the proper context.
In issue 1, the defense attorney almost perjured himself, however the large issue is that he obstructed justice and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that he gave counsel to Assange to get the heck out of dodge. (Think of a lawyer saying... "I'm not allow to say this, and please don't take this as legal advice... but you should really think about getting the heck out of here before they can question you and then charge you.... I don't think that the accusation of rape is enough for them to warrant an EAW.)
In issue 2, having an expert witness for the defense say that they were mislead by the defense and in light of the facts presented by the prosecution, that they would then side with the prosecution? That's worse than having no expert witness at all.
The interesting thing... Had Assange, gone to the UK and then hopped a flight to Australia the Swedes would probably have let this drop until he tried to enter Sweden again. Staying in the UK opened the door to the EAW.
"I don't like EAWs due to the level of abuse they get (an EAW for a parking ticket, really?) and that they are used by nations with dubious legal systems (e.g. Spain, Greece)."
If you live in the UK, get a 'parking ticket' in Spain/Greece and you don't pay it and head back to the UK, you could easily fight the EAW and probably win. However...
1) The cost of fighting extradition is going to be more expensive that the fine +ticket,
2) The next time you try to enter Spain/Greece they can arrest you if their laws allow.
With respect to Assange. He fled jurisdiction on a crime that is a felony. Therefore it is not a waste of time.
While I may like your reasoning, the US Courts do not. They believe that the reporting done by the press outweigh the harm of the theft. Meaning that the greater good of informing the public outweighs the harm of the alleged theft, as long as the newspaper is not actively involved in the theft.
So unlike the recent issue of the newspapers actively committing a crime to obtain material for a story, just publishing stolen documents isn't a crime. Or rather viewed as a crime. There are precedences for this.
But you also raise an additional point. Unlike the traditional press which takes the purloined documents and then publishes them, Wikileaks 'sells' the information to the press acting more as a middle man in the theft. This would be an interesting take, however, they also dumped the documents for free on their website. It would be a bit of a push by the prosecution and you run the risk of setting a bad precedence if you lose.
Tie Wikileaks to the crime. Meaning they told Manning how to get the documents out of the US and in to their hands... then they are not a mere recipient of the documents but an active participant. Then you have Assange with his balls in a vice.
Assange knows this hence he's fighting any extradition. Also if he's charged and convicted, his movements and rights will be diminished.
The one thing I have to wonder about is mens rhea. That is if Assange does get tried on the rape charge, could he argue that he's innocent because of the absence of mens rhea? The because he's an Aussie male neanderthal, he lacked a 'guilty mind' because what he did wasn't rape under the laws of his country and therefore he didn't commit a crime?
I don't know how that would fly or even if its a legal/valid defense under Swedish law.
But lets see what happens.
If you paid attention to the first appeal trial, you would actually learn that Assange is being sent back to Sweden because he allegedly broke Swedish Law.
You would also have learned that the charge of Rape is one of the 30 some odd laws where you don't have reciprocity. That is, rape as defined in Sweden does not have to equate to rape as defined under English law. So that Assange's lawyer's argument that what he is accused of aka 'rape' isn't defined as rape under English law so that he shouldn't face extradition to Sweden. This is pure bunk under the EU treaty as it has been pointed out.
Assange is now trying to fight the EAW by playing the US trump card. Guess what. That's not going to fly because under the EAW, he would actually have more protection in Sweden that he would in the UK. Also lets not forget the fact that the US doesn't have enough evidence to bring him to trial within the US.
So the only debate we'll have on these comment boards is from commentards who haven't taken the time to actually read the law.
Assange has to go to Sweden and face his crime. If he's charged and then found guilty, he'll serve his time and get bounced out of Sweden, probably back to Australia.
That's pretty much it.
Look on the bright side. Sweden's prisons are like the US club fed. No Bubba s
"would *love* for Assange to go to Sweden, yesterday if possible. It will immediately put an end to all the "poor persecuted me" crap in the media, and I suspect all that will happen is 2 uncomfortable hours in interrogation. After that he'll probably walk free, which immediately nukes his claims that evil empires are out to get him, and will indeed make him look pretty stupid given the last few months worth of media coverage."
No, he'll get charged for rape and go to trial.
What happens after is anyone's guess but the worst is that he'll face 1-2 years in a Swedish prison from what I heard is a bit like being in the US 'club fed'.
That's what Assange doesn't want to happen.
Remember we're talking worst case. He's convicted. After serving jail time, and IMHO he'll get jail time for this if found guilty because of his accusations and fighting the extradition, he gets booted from Sweden. (Odds are he'll not be let back in to the country... ever...). Then he goes to the UK. But since he's convicted of a sex crime, he may get booted from the UK, so back to Australia.
That's what is most likely to happen.
The whole farce of fighting the extradition is that he's actually making money from it.
Ponder that one...
Dude!
There will be no extradition from the US unless Manning offers proof to show that Assange was a party to the crime and not just the recipient of the data. Once the US can show and prove this to be true, then and only then will you have an extradition to the US.
The publishing of the classified documents alone isn't enough to get Assange extradited. There has to be strong evidence linking him directly to Manning.
But again this is all moot.
Who cares besides Assange?
Wikileaks is DOA.
As already posted ad nauseum and explained in court filings...
The Swedes were going to arrest him, however their process is to bring someone in for questioning and then to formally charge them.
The Swedish prosecution has already told the British Courts that this is not a mere interrogation but that they intend to charge Assange.
As to you laughing loudly, yeah, he could get a slap on the wrist and a light sentence. But remember he's the clown making this in to a media circus. Note that by not facing this head on, he's raised his profile as a 'bad boy', got tonnes of money from suck..er.. I mean supporters... and a book deal to boot.
So I guess he's going to be laughing all the way to the bank.
Look,
To be totally honest Assange is nothing more than a boil on the buttox of Uncle Sam.
He won't be extradited to the US until the US has something concrete on him and that won't happen until Manning decides to flip and spill his guts in court. And Manning will do this...
But Assange aka Wikileaks is pretty much DOA now. Anyone who has handed them anything of value is already facing jail time. And there's other sites that offer more protection along with the regular press which will actually vet the material. So if anyone with half a clue wanted to blow a whistle... Wikileaks is the last place they'd turn.
Assange goes to Sweden, faces his accusers in a trial, end of story. If he gets jail time, he gets jail time. It means when he's released, he gets booted from the country.
Will the UK let him back in? Maybe/Maybe not.
Most assuredly, Assange goes back to Australia. (Which is what he said he wanted to do...)
So there is no need for the US to do anything.
Don't you know that Assanage claims not to be the hacker but merely the recipient of the alleged materials and that Wikileaks is really a member of the press even though they have no paper, and they provide no commentary or 'vetting' of the material?
Shame on you for making a mockery of Julian by insinuating that he ever coerced or aided anyone in a hacking attempt in connection to Wikileaks.
It would be better if you actually cut and paste the entire comment in context.
As I was saying... when you send e-mail to a large site, you can expect to have your e-mail scanned automatically to determine if a) The content contains no viruses or harmful payloads. b) The e-mail isn't spam.
So there is no expectation of privacy. The owner of the server has the right to inspect any inbound internet traffic, specifically e-mail to their server so that they can prevent harm.
You can try your argument in court, provided you can get a lawyer to agree with you and of course you'll watch your case get dismissed.
Remember on a server like these, the good of the general public trumps the rights of an individual.
Yahoo!s defense is that it would be impractical and impossible for them to actually warn all of your 'friends'.
There argument would go something like this...
There are two possibilities of e-mail communications between friends where one friend is a Yahoo! account holder and the other is not.
1) Non-account holder friend initiates the e-mail thread.
2) Non-account holder responds to e-mail from friend.
Ignoring scenario #2 and focusing on scenario #1, it would be impossible for Yahoo! to be omniscient. Because the friend is a non-account holder, we don't know who they are in advance. Therefore any e-mails sent to our servers would be scanned automatically, thus there is no expectations of privacy. At the same time, we have no way of notifying in advance to non-account holder that it is our practice to scan the inbound messages.
There is more to the argument, but the basis of the argument is that there are no technically feasible solutions that they themselves wouldn't violate the law(s) in multiple countries. Therefore the burden of notification falls to the user who agrees to the T's and C's. Its the simplest, legal, and cost effective manner of notifying the counter part to the e-mails.
Hasn't anyone heard of 'There aint no such thing as a free lunch'?
Yeah. Someone provides a free service and millions use these resources. So eventually the service is no longer free or the company offering the service finds a way to make money from the service.
Common sense right?
So anything you say that is unencrypted, sent from a server you don't own to another server you don't own isn't going to be private.
Yahoo! is just pointing out in their T's and C's is that you have no expectation of privacy and anyone you communicate with has no expectations of privacy when the said mail hits Yahoo!s servers.
At the same time they are not going to warn your friends... that's your job.
"Now, see ... #
Posted Monday 11th July 2011 11:55 GMT
This is frankly sinister.
When someone is actively prevented from giving someone else money, without legislative reason, we can't possibly claim to be living in a "free society™", now can we?
"
This was your initial post to which I was responding to.
As I said, there is nothing sinister because Wikileaks can still receive cash donations even while Visa and MC are not allowing them to use their systems to process payments.
So I fail to understand what point you were attempting to make in your initial post.
With or without Visa/MC/Amex/Discover/Diners/etc you are still living in a free society.
At the same time, you're free to bash the CC card houses just as they are free to not want to do business with you when you violate their T's and C's.
I fail to see your point.
You can easily go and write a check at any time put it in the post. There's always cash too.
I mean no offense but the IRA raised a shit load of money in the heavily Irish neighborhoods of Boston in cash and got it funneled to Ireland to buy weapons....
So your comment doesn't hold water.
Not only did Wikileaks knowingly dump millions of classified documents on to the web with total disregard for their contents, only to claim to 'vet' them after the fact, but Wikileaks also claimed to have documents that would expose a very large US Bank.
These types of actions tend to piss off companies that spend millions to lobby the US Government for favorable laws and legislation that makes their companies more profitable. And then when you shit on their customers? Sorry, no one is forcing you to do business with them. Like I said earlier. There's always cash...
They include the gestures to 1) make it non-obvious and 2) to exclude prior art where HP and the Web tablet and phones are able to communicate by touching them together.
In fact one nice feature is that the Palm Pre (whichever is their latest model) and the Tablet are able to work in conjunction with each other. You can make and receive calls from the tablet when its in proximity of your phone.
I also believe this to be true of the data access (3G) so that you don't need two contracts as long as you have your phone with you when you use your tablet. (Which is probably all the time.)
So someone in Apple wants to apply for a patent to puff up their resume. Big deal.
The sad thing... it will actually get approved.
"So if you manage to simulate a human-level consciousness, would you consider that it stops being a simulation? Does the Human Rights Act not apply if it's not human?"
Only if it could show that it had more intelligence than the average commentard. :-)
Seriously?
Its only a simulation until you can show that it can pass a Turing test. Even then, if you cut power, does that mean death, or just sleep if you can persist the last known state?
If you can persist the last known state, then when you restore power and restart the simulation, you just continue where you have left off. So no need to question about Human Rights Act.
The T's and C's of the contract depend on the parties agreeing to the contract.
With respect to CC to Consumer... they can change the contracts at any time. Of course there are restrictions and limitations placed on the CC companies by law.
With respect to corporate contracts... you'd be surprised at what some people toss in to contracts, enforceable or not.
You want to change the analogy to say that the insurance company has been providing coverage and then backs out? Happens all the time.
What they can't do is stop providing service in mid contract.
So once your annual contract is over, they can decide to stop providing insurance. Immoral? Hardly.
This is why there's a national flood insurance to help those who own homes in Flood plains. Even with the national insurance, many home owners don't have coverage.
The analogy doesn't fail. Visa is actually very good at their risk analysis.
You're view of morality is an interesting one. Stopping to offer coverage in a state because of a change in the business climate isn't moral or immoral. What would be immoral would be for an insurance company delaying or failing to pay out a valid claim. That is immoral and unconscionable, yet it happens all the time. Having an insurance company playing doctor and saying what meds they will cover and what they won't is also immoral. Again totally different things.
Looking at this, I first thought that they were jurisdiction shopping. It has nothing to do w Paypal, but datacell which does have a presence in Denmark.
The key issue is that Teller claims that it isn't them and it's MC and Visa that are refusing to handle their transactions as long as Datacell collects funds on the behalf of Wikileaks.
So their spin is that they can't get any acceptable answer and thus they are suing.
Btw did you know that The Sunshine Press Foundation is Wikileak's corporate arm?
It's interesting. Could be that funding is drying up and the appeal costs money...
On the surface there is merit, in the US they could apply tort law. However that doesn't mean that they have a case...
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