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Comment Re: Entropy underlies all? (Score 4, Interesting) 197

There's a gravity wave experiment in Poland looking at the simulation question. They've found our universe to cheat between the minimum length that would need to be simulated and the Plank length - it's all noise down there where we expected to find signal.

There could also be an undiscovered reason, but the shape of the noise matches to a few sigma that predicted by the 'spherical projection' simulation model, so that's a good place to look.

Comment Re:Quite possibly the stupidest vulnerability ever (Score 1) 118

"Oh no, Linux includes a "wheel" user group by default that grants superuser privileges to users in it! And someone could possibly add themselves to that group and gain root access!"

Or put another way:
"Oh no, Windows includes an "Administrators" group by default that grants superuser privileges to users in it! And an existing administrator could possibly add themselves to that group and gain administrator access!"

Agreed, stupidest vulnerability ever.

Comment Re:Quite possibly the stupidest vulnerability ever (Score 2) 118

"Oh no, Linux includes a "wheel" user group by default that grants superuser privileges to users in it! And someone could possibly add themselves to that group and gain root access!"

I think what they're trying to say is that Polkit has different AAA rules than sudo does, which you might not expect. So, gain mastery of Polkit and all the other new *Kits and systemd and whatnot if you expect to be able to run a secure server.

Even if they are publicity whoring and trying to get the press excited about a "Christmas-themed" vulnerability (I was waiting for "Redhat added PolKit and you won't believe what happened next..."), there's a kernel of truth in there that's worth knowing about.

And, yeah, I wouldn't expect a CVE to be issued.

Comment cui bono? (Score 3, Interesting) 141

Who benefits from banning [X]? With near certainty those are the people who bought off whoever is in power (the partisan nonsense in TFS is a smokescreen to keep you distracted). It doesn't matter if it's the UAW or the Auto Dealer's Association that is behind the corruption - you should be disgusted that politicians deign to tell you what kinds of cars you may purchase. "Yes, massa."

Comment Re:It's because it's by David Fahrenthold (Score 1) 200

but blame does not fall squarely on NASA ... Given that there is so much real waste, I don't understand the need to latch on to myths like this.

Your criticisms about precision are valid. There are multiple levels of meaning, though, and for some audiences "is NASA a good mechanism for humans to explore space?" is well answered by less-precise stories like this one.

This story illustrates one example - one Mississippi Senator uses NASA as his personal coke-n-whores vehicle. "Should we be funding public agencies to explore space?" is a valid question and this gives one anecdote about how such good intentions are perverted and abused. Elon Musk doesn't build $400M towers he's not going to use to get coke-n-whores (isn't a Model S good enough for that?)

Comment Remedies (Score 2) 173

1) What are the remedies for breach of the terms of the GPLv2?

This one is easy - if there's a breach then the license is void and Copyright is the effective law. Code was copied without permission, which becomes a copyright violation, and remedies are already established for that.

GPL is entirely based on the teeth of copyright - almost every OSI license is. If you hate imaginary property then you might question your use of licenses that depend on it.

Comment Re:Why not ask the authors of the GPL Ver.2? (Score 5, Interesting) 173

So asking the creators of the GPL in this instance will get you nowhere because their opinion on the matter lacks any weight, its what the actual wording says which determines what you are beholden to.

Most prose can be interpreted in multiple ways and not every interpretation occurs to every human at every time. Courts are well aware of this, which is why they will only ever offer an Opinion about what things mean - never claiming to offer the Truth. Even SCOTUS only offers opinions.

Now, those courts will also issue orders to men with a violent streak to enforce their opinions, so effectively they are Law. But never Truth, which is why subsequent cases can overturn previous ones. This also means that Law is never Truth, only the prevailing view of the status quo of a given time.

Comment Re: What Native American is supposed to mean (Score 0) 307

Those "First Nations" killed off previous nations, so that's more revisionist bullshit.

It's really all lazy white people who don't feel like saying, "Apache", "Cherokee", "Iriquois", "Abanake", etc. - maybe because their ancestors' guilt is more apparrent with the specificity.

Any drive to collectivize those nations (not tribes) is an attempt to negate their value. Sure, they shared a common enemy but that's about it.

Comment Re: We need communism (Score 1) 38

So Google is using its massive wealth to at least make a few small dents in the central planning quagmire that has granted all sorts of telecomm monopolies and seriously screwed up the progress of technology; everywhere Google exerts some competitive pressure the incumbents react and/or people get Google Fiber connections directly, improving their conditions, but ...

what we need more of is central planning, and less capitalistic drive to outcompete the extant market players. Sheesh - some people just can't handle cause and effect.

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