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Comment Re:As the saying goes... (Score 5, Insightful) 999

And nothing of value was lost. Or gained.

Nothing was lost? All the work that the government workers could have been doing during the shutdown was lost. All the revenue from the National Parks were lost. Two weeks food inspections, drug inspections, VA claims processing were lost . Worldwide confidence in the US and the US dollar was lost. US credit rating was compromised with the possibility of higher interest rates on new deficit. Scientific tests will have to be thrown out and restarted.

You might not be personally affected, but plenty of money and confidence has been lost during the past three weeks.

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Comment Re:Well that's easily remedied (Score 1) 161

Adding a copy of the referenced material would be allowed by the Fair Use provision of the Copyright law.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: [...] reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; [...] http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

And posting something on the internet does NOT automatically make it public domain. Just because you see it on a web page does not mean you are free to copy it.

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Comment Re:404 Not Found (Score 1) 161

Adding a copy of the referenced material would be allowed by the Fair Use provision of the Copyright law.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: [...] reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; [...] http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

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Comment Re:Or... (Score 2) 190

Last night I sent my Gmail account an email from my ISP email system, then waited for it to show up. Nothing. So I resent it. Second time nothing.

The email contained two screen captures I needed at the office. The subject line was "Steve on telework". Nothing obvious that would trip Postini's spam filter. It is now 24 hours later and neither has shown up. I wonder how many other emails I don't get.

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Comment Re:pdf-epub (Score 5, Informative) 193

I also tried converting from PDF to EPUB. Sometimes the PDF isn't in a good condition and I get a very poor EPUB. If that happens, I convert PDF -> RTF, clean up and spell check in MS Word, then RTF -> EPUB.

This has let me fix over-large graphics, incorrect page breaks, constant spelling problems from the OCR, and font problems.

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Submission + - Most Veterans Administration Data Breaches from Mislaid Paper Documents (informationweek.com)

CowboyRobot writes: "Between 96 and 98 percent of our [data breach] incidents — it varies from month to month — deal with physical paper where people are not thinking about the fact that that piece of paper they're carrying around making benefits determinations has sensitive information and they need to protect it," said Stephen Warren, VA acting assistant secretary for information and technology. "If you consider the fact the VA has about 440,000 people that we service and that the department over 900,000 devices on the network, [a data breach count relating to IT assets] of somewhere between one and 10 in a month is pretty good," Warren said. "And many of those are things disappearing in inventory. Many are found subsequently because they got moved somewhere."

Comment Re:it is new... in a way. (Score 2) 111

You still don't understand RP propagation. Having an antenna receive a signal does not diminish the strength of the signal behind it any more than a metal light pole diminishes it. Both will cause a slight disturbance in the transmitted signal, but the rest of the signal will still continue past it. You can't calculate how many devices are receiving an RF signal by measuring field strength at a fixed distance.

Think of throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the waves travel outward. If you put a stick in the water, it will disrupt the wave slightly, but the rest of the wave continues radiating outward. The small amount of energy that the stick receives is so miniscule compared to the total circular wave, it can be thought of as zero. (Well, if the stick is 10 feet away from the source it intersects a circle more than 60 feet in circumference. A one-inch stick would disrupt 1/750th of the circle. 20 feet away? 1/1500th of the total circumference.) Plus, RF propagates in three dimensions, not just two.

And your proof? You suggest putting enough barriers around the transmitting antenna to capture all the radiated energy to gain back more than you started with. First, you would never effectively capture it all, unless you built a Fariday Cage around the transmitter. Plus you ignore the power loss in converting the RF power back to electricity. You can't prove your point by suggesting if you are wrong we would have perpetual energy.

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Comment Re:thin client initiative (Score 1) 171

Comment Re:Seems like a touchy strategy... (Score 4, Informative) 174

Every release or two, Microsoft creates a new file format .. it then takes the competitors 5 years to catch up at which time, MS releases a new file format.

Microsoft opened the barn doors when they pushed to have the office format declared an Open Standard. They were very nervous that other file formats would be declared the new preferred open format by governments and organizations trying to get away from closed, undocumented, and proprietary formats. This has allowed other office suites to accurately read and write documents in Microsoft's formats. If Microsoft now tries to change their format again, without documenting all the changes, they risk having the Office 2010 format declared the only supported file format users are allowed to use by many companies. Microsoft's last couple of releases have done nothing but change the UI or licensing terms without adding anything substantive.

The horse has left the barn and Microsoft will have a devil of a time getting it back in.

Comment Re:When ... (Score 0) 74

Stop spending trillions on "defense" and you can take care of the sick and elderly, educate the young, feed the hungry, pave the roads and repair the bridges., and still have enough left over to explore space.

Without that money spent on defense, you wouldn't have any sick, elderly, young, hungry, roads, or bridges to worry about.

Comment Re:Once in a Hundred-Year storm... (Score 1) 148

You are confusing NASA and NOAA. NOAA is the agency responsible with tracking and reporting weather issues.

NASA took a look at the track the hurricane followed, then tried to list all the factors that would have to be present for a second hurricane to follow the exact same path.

This is like throwing a stick into a river and predicting all the factors that must be present for that stick to hit a boat's propeller twice. River flow, ocean flow, weather flow are all highly dynamic environments and NASA is trying to tie the likelihood of this happening again to the phase of the moon?

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