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Comment Re:No (Score 1) 218

The simple vernacular that bikers use. Despite what gov't regulations designate as a Motorcycle vs. Car, bikers will call a vehicle based on certain characteristics. To give you an eye opening look into our world:

Scooter / Scoot: Two wheeled vehicle denoted by having an open space in front of the seat where the driver's legs can move freely. Controlled by handle bars. Exposed to elements.

Motorcycle / Bike: Two wheeled vehicle that the driver would have to straddle and feet are fixed on either pegs or runners without much freedom of movement. Controlled by handle bars. Exposed to elements.

Trike: Three wheeled vehicle that typically must be straddled in a similar fashion to bikes. Controlled by handle bars. Exposed to elements.

Cage: Four or more wheeled vehicle with an open floorboard in front of the seat. Controlled by steering wheel. Shielded from elements, often temperature controlled.

Semi: 18 wheeled vehicle (Four wheels per weight bearing axle, plus two directional wheels) with similar seating to a cage. Controlled by steering wheel. Shielded from elements and temperature controlled. Give a wide berth lest you want to be road pizza.

This Thing: 2 wheeled cage that thinks it wants to be a bike but with the amenities of a car. Controlled by steering wheel. Protected from the elements. If you show up to a 1%'er (Biker Gang) rally in one of these, expect vandalism/bodily harm. If you show up to a non-1% rally in one of these, expect to be laughed at and made the butt of jokes for the duration of the rally, whether or not you stay there.

Comment Re:What whas the problem in the first place? (Score 1) 250

When performing risk management, if there is any hint of doubt in the security of a system then the system must be assumed to be insecure and compromised until such time it can be proven that the system is fully secure in all use cases (a near impossibility in itself). This means that if there's a rumor of a leak in a mission critical system, regardless of evidence or lack there of, a responsible organization should immediately sandbox the system and test it for holes and apply countermeasures if any holes are verified in the sandbox.

Note that countermeasures could be anything that extends from software patches to hardware firewall to complete system decommission and redesign.

Comment Re:About time (Score 5, Informative) 118

Actually, Copp had this figured out for quite a while. Being slashdot and all, I understand the general inability to RTFA, so here's the pertinent part about this guy's history:

Copps has been a longtime pro-consumer advocate. He was the lone member of the five-person FCC to vote against the merger of Comcast and NBC, and since the 2010 net neutrality rule was vacated in February he has been urging the FCC to reclassify broadband ISPs as a common carrier service. He has also advocated against continued media consolidation and big telecom mergers.

The general gist of the rest of the article goes on to say how the rest of the suits were congratulating themselves on a job well done with the Telecom Act in '96 and generally celebrating the current state and where they see themselves going... until Copp takes the stand and gives everyone a verbal bitchslap:

He led off by agreeing with the several executive speakers that true competition is the way of the future, and the best way to serve consumers. “But we haven’t given competition the chance it needs,” he continued, before referring to how poorly U.S. broadband compares on the global stage. “We have fallen so far short that we should be ashamed of ourselves. We should be leading, and we’re not. We need to get serious about broadband, we need to get serious about competition, we need to get serious about our country.”

What I take from this is that this guy is a single life jacket trying to defend us in a sea of self-serving destruction bound sharks. Good luck to us all.

Submission + - Elon Musk expects the Spanish Inquisition (businessinsider.com)

Doofus writes: Business Insider is running an article this morning about Elon Musk's fears of an AI-powered apocalypse. For a technology expert and inventor with Musk's credentials, explaining fears of technology may seem a bit incongruous. In a transcript of a CNBC interview with Elon Musk, the question of Musk's investment in an AI development firm came up, and he explains his reasoning for investing in the firm.

I was also an investor in DeepMind before Google acquired it and Vicarious. Mostly I sort of – it's not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return. It's really, I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there and we need to –

Musk goes on to explain a bit more about his concerns and references Monty Python as he does it.

Submission + - Comcast is turning your home into a public hotspot. (speedify.com)

agizis writes: Comcast has started using customers’ routers to create public wifi hotspots. They claim the "opt-out" hotspots don't leech from your paid bandwidth. But the bandwidth comes from somewhere. So, is it extra or is it what you paid for? The answer matters, because if they’re using your bandwidth, you should opt-out, but if it's extra, then you should start using it.

Submission + - MIT Researchers Can Measure Your Breathing Through Walls Via Wi-Fi (itworld.com)

jfruh writes: Anyone who's struggled to set up a home Wi-Fi network knows that signals can be easily dropped or blocked by walls and other physical objects. MIT researchers have been trying to figure out ways to filter out Wi-Fi interference, and in the process have turned Wi-Fi signals into a radar-like technology that can measure extremely subtle movements through walls. While the researchers have touted the tech as leading to health monitoring benefits — checking on a baby's breathing in the next room, say — the law enforcement and surveillance possibilities are obvious.

Submission + - Watch celestial mechanics in (almost) real time! (io9.com)

wisebabo writes: If Sir Isaac Newton weren't already dead and in Heaven, I'm sure this would make him die and go there.

Here (scroll down to the GIF, please) is a time-lapse sequence taken by Cassini at Saturn of a small (okay tiny) moon "Prometheus" pulling out streamers of dust from the nearby ring over and over again. For eternity. (Or at least tens of millions of years). While the sequence only shows one such event, a quick glance at a larger scale (scroll to the top, please) shows that it is doing so repeatedly. L i k e c l o c k w o r k.

Despite all the troubles in the world (although the number of deaths due to war DO seem to be decreasing which is a minor problem in itself http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...) these kind of things make me realize that I am living in an incredible age.

Submission + - This Is How Formula 1 Brakes Work

cartechboy writes: For the most part, you probably have a simple understanding of how your car's brakes work. But a race car, that's a whole different beast. Brembo's the biggest name in the brake industry, and it just released a video explaining the technology that goes into the brakes on a Formula 1 race car from pedal to caliper. Obviously it starts with every component being beefed up from a normal braking system, but there's also aluminum monoblock calipers, carbon rotors and pads, a brake-by-wire system with a redundancy in case of an electronic failure, and a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Of course, KERS is the most interesting bit as the it allows for smaller rear calipers than before which of course reduces mass. Believe it or not, all of this stuff ends up trickling down to mass-market cars eventually, it's just a matter of time. So the next time you tap your brakes, remember, that technology was likely proven on a race car at some point.

Submission + - Interviews: Ask "The King of Kong" Billy Mitchell About Classic Video Games

samzenpus writes: Billy Mitchell owns the Rickey's World Famous Restaurant chain, sells his own line of hot sauces, and was called, "probably the greatest arcade-video-game player of all time". His was the first to achieve a perfect score in Pac-Man, and held many record scores in other arcade games. He is probably most famous for the 2007 documentary,"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". The film follows a challenger on his quest to surpass Billy's high score in Donkey Kong, which Mitchell had set in 1982. Since the film was made, the Kong crown has been held by a number people including twice by Mitchell. Billy has agreed to put down the quarters and answer any questions you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

Submission + - FCC Demands States to get out of the way of municipal broadband (engadget.com)

RavenLrD20k writes: I hope that Mr. Wheeler has the ability and the stones to actually act on this, but I'm not holding my breath. From the article:

While his recent waffling on Net Neutrality is still cause for concern, Tom Wheeler's recent statements in support of municipal broadband are worth cheering. In a statement posted to the FCC site, Wheeler said that: "If the people, acting through their elected local governments, want to pursue competitive community broadband, they shouldn't be stopped by state laws promoted by cable and telephone companies that don't want that competition."

That's about as strong a statement as one can expect from the head of a regulatory body. Plus, it's a pretty blunt challenge to both the industry he once lobbied on behalf of, and the government officials many believe are in their back pockets. In particular he cited the case of Chattanooga, TN which built out its own gigabit per-second fiber network out of frustration with the options offered by the incumbent Comcast. The trouble is, Tennessee's state government passed a law restricting municipal broadband projects...


Submission + - DOT Aims to Regulate Map Aids in Vehicles (nytimes.com)

schwit1 writes: The US Department of Transportation is intensifying its battle against distracted driving by seeking explicit authority from Congress to regulate navigation aids of all types, including apps on smartphones.

The measure, included in the Obama administration’s proposed transportation bill, would specify that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authority to set restrictions on the apps and later order changes if they are deemed dangerous, much the way it currently regulates mechanical features of cars.

The measure has the support of automakers, which already mostly comply with voluntary guidelines for built-in navigation systems, but it has run into stiff opposition from technology companies, which say that any such law would be impractical and impossible to enforce. It’s another example, they say, of federal regulators trying vainly to keep up with a rapidly changing industry.

Submission + - LinkedIn spam lawsuit can continue (pcworld.com)

Charliemopps writes: A lawsuit filed in September 2013 in the Northern District of California alleged that LinkedIn mislead its users about the number of times it would attempted to invite their contacts using their name. LinkedIn tried to get the suit dismissed but Thursday Judge Lucy Koh ruled the suit can continue.

Submission + - Need to move to IPv6 highlighted as Microsoft runs out of US address space (networkworld.com)

alphadogg writes: Microsoft has been forced to start using its global stock of IPv4 addresses to keep its Azure cloud service afloat in the U.S., highlighting the growing importance of making the shift to IP version 6. The newer version of the Internet Protocol adds an almost inexhaustible number of addresses thanks to a 128-bit long address field, compared to the 32 bits used by version 4. The IPv4 address space has been fully assigned in the U.S., meaning there are no additional addresses available, Microsoft said in a blog post earlier this week. http://blog.azure.com/2014/06/... This requires the company to use the IPv4 address space available to it globally for new services, it said.

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