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Comment Re:Funded by the NSA? (Score 2) 322

At any other point in time, I would have laughed at such conspiracy theories. However, there is a good chance that the NSA simply wants to keep its backdoors. Now, there may not be intentionally backdoors in Windows, but certainly, as Stuxnet has revealed, the NSA has a very good understanding of the security flaws in Windows. Why risk losing good intel because of a new operating system that is based on Linux?

Comment Very True But It Is a Useful News Item Nonetheless (Score 5, Insightful) 169

Most people who follow space stuff already know that Mars One is either a scam or simply delusional... although I suppose it's nice that other people are starting to notice this too.

I think it's important that a possible change of heart internally is seen by any of the other members. A lot of time when I read about instances where people get sucked into, say, a Nigerian money scam or worse Scientology, it often becomes a serious issues because they were first tricked into giving a little bit of money and then a little more until it's a sizable sum in total. At that point it's very hard to get out because you're mentally holding yourself prisoner there with the logic that if you quit now, you've lost that investment and you're going to look like an idiot. But, through inaction, you maintain the outward appearance of knowing what you are doing and your investment is still good -- hell, it's even growing because they need another small to medium sized payment. And down down down you go into the trap. It takes a lot to not chase your bets and to say, "I fucked up by giving them the $99 applicant fee but better quit now than waste anymore time and resources. Lesson learned."

And I think the fact that a DOCTOR (no matter what kind or what validity) says, "I paid the money, I saw they were preparing me for the biggest snuff film ever and I got out." Well, now the average person involved in this project can say, "He is right, I came to the same realization, I'm no stupider than this academic." This is why there are support groups out there for gambling problems and cults escapees. The ideafication of your exit is sometimes important than your ability to make your own decision ... because without that your decision only has one option and it's the wrong option.

Comment The Rise of Joke Theft on the Internet (Score 2) 90

I'm not talking about your humorous Sarah Silverman satire video but the actual people who misappropriate a joke for their own. I've seen it on Facebook where someone reads a joke on Reddit or XKCD or SMBC and just rehashes it as their own idea in a post knowing that no one else out there could possibly be wasting their time on something like SMBC. Do you see this as frequently as I do? In all honesty does this bother you or merely flatter you? Is it just a natural unavoidable quality of memes or do you think it's more sinister?

Comment Re:depressed (Score 3, Interesting) 123

The only way to avoid technical surveillance is to keep everything sensitive away from email or phone calls or instant messages. There is no way to avoid being the target of the NSA and CIA if they really want to get your data. None at all. The NSA and CIA are creating these techniques against countries such as Russia, China, and Iran with devastating success. (Look at the Iranian nuclear weapons program getting hacked by Stuxnet.) You have no way to avoid the hacking of your data if they are really set in doing it.

Now, you can try to make your data so computationally intensive that the CIA/NSA hopefully will not go out of their way to hack your accounts. Email is NOT secure. But you can use PGP or whatever to try to encrypt your emails. You can encrypt your hard drives to try and avoid hacking. You can avoid the iPhone and move to an open source cell phone firmware such as Cyanogenmodâ"at least you have a CHANCE of someone finding any NSA/CIA backdoor. Use anonymous VPN religiously to avoid having the same IPs.

Otherwise, there's nothing much you can do except to decrease your electronic footprint. Everything you put out there is hackable.

Comment Re:Has anyone studied? (Score 4, Insightful) 262

Okay first off, I just wanna say whoever modded the parent up is walking evidence that this site has become a complete shithole. It's not just Dice's fault, folks. The community moderates unadulterated feces to the top these days.

Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind? What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far?

This is such an unfounded concern, I'm not even sure where to start. I grew up in the prairie of Minnesota and I could only hope that the wind is reduced there. It is absolutely brutal at times and causes erosion and top soil loss. Why do you want dust carried far? What seeds are you concerned about falling too close to the parent plant? I just, this hasn't been studied because there's nothing to argue about. Like solar there's a lot of energy to be harvested. There's no way to harvest all of it, a lot of it is dissipated as friction against water and earth and I can't think of one positive purpose of that friction.

How does that affect terraforming?

How does that affect our ability to transform the planet into a more livable human environment? I can't even parse this or apply it to the topic at hand. "How does that affect X?" when X has nothing to do with the discussion just sounds like fear mongering.

What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?

This is well documented and researched but I am constantly confused as to why "migratory birds" are the stipulated losses. It's any birds. Migratory or not. And the numbers have been scientifically estimated to be 140,000 to 328,000 per year. But we're getting smarter about designing these windmills to prevent avian death.

These questions will never be answered

Well, the first two are just too fucking vapid and inane to be answered. The latter, I've answered for you.

, I don't think, because the politics that drive wind power are the same as those that drive anthro climate change - "We're right, shut up if you disagree?"

You know, that could be said about any politics anywhere because modern politics are about inaction and hot air. Companies and scientists are trying hard to expand our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels. And that's smart whether it's biofuel algae, solar, wind or even failed corrupt initiatives like corn ethanol. In the end there are going to be regionally localized energy productions that will account for a large amount of that local populace's consumption. This will likely still be augmented by fossil fuels -- maybe as emergency or backup but I don't think we'll ever see them completely removed from the equation.

The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis. The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.

We're 7 times as numerous as the Earth can sustain. Unless and until we fix that problem, our habitable climate WILL be destroyed.

Scientifically, can you explain how you came to calculate the multiplier of "7 times as numerous as Earth can sustain?" Because the idea that the Earth can only sustain a nice round even number like a billion people raises suspicions. But it's pretty evident that nothing is going to talk sense into you, Malthus. Science and human ingenuity has gotten us past radical adjustments to population crises ... let's hope it can continue on and even help us abate the horrors we have committed against the environment. Please stop inventing caveats to working solutions or claiming that concerns are not being herd. It's just a petty attempt to grind one of possible sources to a halt.

Comment I'm a Member of That 1% (Score 4, Interesting) 192

The summary maybe should have mentioned something more important: SteamOS is basically Debian Linux with Steam libraries. Valve likely wants to release SteamOS hardware and is pushing for ports/originals that target that platform. If this takes off, it's great news for gaming in Linux as it's just a matter of installing the right packages to be able to run these games. In fact repo.steampowered.com already has packages that you can install on 64 bit Debian to be able to select SteamOS as a session on your Ubuntu or Debian box. But you don't even need to go that far -- if you're running Ubuntu and have a steam account, please try this: apt-get install steam. It's that easy and like the article says there are many great titles. I highly recommend Faster Than Light.

Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?

Could we please stop this shit? Please?

Comment Re:So much for Debian 8, then... (Score 1) 338

> How about us people who used to think Debian was the very best Linux server system in existence, and who evangelized its use and put it in businesses and donated to SPI.

Fakedebianist pls, I don't think there are that many of you that don't know what a stable release is.

Jessie is about to be debian stable, which means that the packages have undergone "some" QA testing, which provides the quality that made debian what it is.

Somebody asking to backport stuff to jessie at this stage, after the problem was known months in advance or so TFS says, is either ignorant or malicious.

The correct way to handle this is to ship a tested version of chrome, which implies no kernel patching, and apply security patches as usual. Those itching to run the latest chrome can run a newer kernel, run a backported chrome + kernel patch (maybe package it in a module and use the dkms system which works for my 3d drivers very well), run chrome in a VM (which is what I'd do if I was concerned about what data flows between chrome and google).

The debian dev rejecting the request has been rude, but he ends up being right.

Comment Re:Yes. What do you lose? But talk to lawyer first (Score 1) 734

You are insinuating that the Chinese government are sending infiltrators in a long game to influence American elections but you're completely wrong about that. The rich Chinese people are having kids in the United States as a Plan B if China decides to kill everyone when the political winds change.

Let me explain. In China, almost every way of making big money is technically illegal. The government owns all the land, and the means of production are owned by the government or government oligarchs. The rich got that way by breaking laws, and bribing the right people. Once in a while, there are political changes. New people are installed; older ones fall out. Then when there's a consolidation of power, the laws are suddenly enforced against you. That means that the disfavored are facing long jail terms or even execution.

http://blogs.reuters.com/nader...

You have Chinese nationals buying real estate in the United States and European countries as a Plan B. Their kids are raised outside Chinese, if they can afford it, to make sure that they don't get ensnared in any uprisings. If things go wrong, then you can escape with your life to the United States.

Comment Re:If I can make it here I can make it anywhere... (Score 2) 734

>> even when they move here, they stay together and don't mix (its true even though you may not like this fact) and after 5 years here, they will still not really know what the US is truly about.

You know, that's always been true about immigrants? Hell, my great-great-great grandparents immigrated from Canton Glarus, Switzerland, to New Glarus, Wisconsin. Make sense why the town was named New Glarus? I doubt they even ever bothered to learn English. Their children born here knew English, though, and their kids - including my great-grandfather - only spoke English.

And such as it was, such as it will be.

The only reason people bitch about immigrants not assimilating is because they can only see the situation from the limited view of their own lifespan. Look at a bigger picture and immigrant families assimilate just fine.

Comment Re:No-SSN is not "get out of taxes free" (Score 2) 734

It wasn't necessary for your kids to have SSNs for you to be able claim them as dependents until ca. 1986. Maybe the poster's boss was raised before then?

Even though I moved around a lot as a kid, and didn't live in Louisiana until 1985, I have a Louisiana SSN because that's when my parents had to get me one.

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