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Comment Re:Hey, RIAA! Are your profits still in the dumps? (Score 1) 187

In the early days, they had almost total control over the entire industry from the radio playlists to the record store. (Research Payola.)
What changed is the internet and people suddenly discovering that there was another way to obtain, share, or sell their music.
Riaa wants to go back to the old days where everyone was their bitch, and that's not going to ever happen.

Comment Re:Block all BitTorrent traffic (Score 1) 187

Well, if it's because it's designed to transfer files, then you'd better kill FTP, HTTP, and all other protocols for transfering files. In case you didn't know, before bittorrent, that's what pirates used. Before the internet they used others that you've probably never even heard of. The violators of copyrights will tend to use the most efficient methods of transfering the files. Heck, at one time that was sneakernet. (AKA putting it on a disk or tape, and having someone run it over to the recipient, often literally.)

Comment Re:I wonder.... (Score 4, Interesting) 187

Rightscorp has followed a simple process all along.
Make threats to intimidate and milk them for money (extortion) and not actually go to court. I know the lawyers have a legal term for this kind of bad faith, but I've no idea what it is right now.
I suspect they are betting that Cox would rather fork over dough than actually go to court for anything if it's not too high of a cost, and that's what they are betting on. If Cox is dumb enough to do that, then they can use that for additional leverage to force other companies to pony up instead of going to court. Remember, often companies don't care if they are guilty or not, they just choose the cheaper method of resolution.

Comment Re:"Should we go back to paper ballots?" (Score 1) 127

I have full confidence in the functionality and use of an electronic voting machine.
However, I have no faith what-so-ever in the competence of the government contractors making, or the people administrating, the current generation of machines in use. The obvious issues are numerous, and that's before anyone even tries to employ them in a real world situation.

I suspect that if anyone were to design a fully featured and as reasonably incorruptible and idiot proof system as possible/feasible, nobody would be willing to use them.

Comment Re:The French are the world's Standards Board (Score 0) 376

I was an American in London who encountered a large group of French there.
The French were sitting around the fountain yelling insults and obscenities in French at those walking by.
Let's just say I don't really give a damn about what the French say, they made a really poor impression on everyone.

Comment Re:Police legal authority (Score 2) 165

The fact that (onduty) police would rather throw away evidence gathered using Stingray that admit they used Stingray seems to heavily indicate that even the police don't believe that evidence gathered without a warrant through the use of Stingray can very well get them into legal trouble.
If you think I'm talking about the Stingray "evidence" being excluded, that obviously isn't it for two reasons. First, they themselves dropped it, which if that was the penalty they were worried about, it would be extremely self-defeating to do so. Second, they have a tendency to "throw it at the wall and see what sticks". If you don't understand that phrase, it means try everything you can get away with, and see what works and then go with that.

It is easy to infer from their secrecy and actions that they don't think what they are doing is legal. Of course, who's going to arrest them or slap their dirty hands because you know damn well it won't be the cops. I guess they just got some coal in their stocking now that one of judges has decided to break ranks and make this information available.

Comment Re:Wouldn't it suffer eminent heat death? (Score 1) 523

Considering that the probe has to maintain workable temperatures, a nice warm nuclear battery would only help that situation.
Now as to that temperature that is only high when compared to the relative temperature that the comet spends much of it's time in, is still rather unimportant. You see, the lander is less than a cubic meter in size. (A cubic meter is 1m x 1m x 1m for those that don't understand volumes.)

Now to snag some dimensions from wikipedia, that comet is comprised of 2 parts, the Large lobe which is 4.1km ×3.2km ×1.3 km (2.55×1.99×0.81 mi), and the Small lobe at 2.5km ×2.5km ×2 km (1.6×1.6×1.2 mi).

Now, worrying about a tiny heat source like that itty bitty probe being hazardous to the comet is also completely ignoring the big giant unshielded nuclear fusion core it keeps getting closer and closer to. That's right, the sun is going to dump far more heat into that comet in one day than the probe and a thousand nuclear batteries could in their entire functional lifetime could.

Though I do wonder if the temperature at the comets solar perigee will ultimately reach, and if it will exceed the probes functional temperature range.

Comment Re:Contracts (Score 1) 307

(ianal) A variety of countries, even the USA, have laws that limit the b.s. people can slap in contracts. Especially if there appears to be an attempt to obfuscate or hide it, either by using very torturous and esoteric wording (other than standard legalese of course) and small print.

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