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Comment Re:Everyone is a potential criminal in L.A. (Score 5, Interesting) 405

Not necessarily everyone in the world.

But to the NSA, certainly *EVERYONE* inside the United States of America is suspicious.

I read a line from TFA with disbelieve ...

"This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity"

How naive the author of TFA can be !

The author should have known that the so-called "criminal justice system" of the United States of America is no longer the same one under the Constitution of the United States of America !

Under the "Patriot Act", under the Bush and Obama Administration, United States of America has essentially become the United Soviet of America.

There is no longer the presumption of innocent until proven guilty.

Nowadays, *EVERYONE IS A SUSPECT* no matter what you have done.

Nowadays, It is *UP TO THE DEFENDANT* to prove himself/herself innocent.

Yesssirreee, that's the USA that we've gotten, the United -freaking- SOVIET of America.

Comment Nevertheless, I do thank MS for pointing it out ! (Score 3, Interesting) 117

That is certainly an issue, but not the huge gaping security flaw the summary makes it sound like

A security flaw is a security flaw. Whether or not it's a "gaping hole" it still can be exploited.

For that, I sincerely thank Microsoft for so kindly pointed out that security flaw.

No matter what's the ultimate intention / agenda of Microsoft in this case, with this security flaw exposed, let us hope that Google can do something to plug it, and make those "Billion Android Devices" just a little bit more safer.

Submission + - Traffic Light Robot in Kinshasa (theprepaideconomy.com)

Taco Cowboy writes: To many, Africa is a backwater continent.

Unbeknownst to most, however, there are genuine and very practical inventions that came out of Africa, one of which is the Humanoid Street Light Robots.

In Kinshasa, two humanoid street light figures have been installed in a busy road junction. They stand 8 foot tall, made of stainless steel and aluminium, and powered by solar panel.

Featuring green and red lights, Kinshasa's robot cops are designed to merge some of the functions of human officers and traffic lights. The anthropomorphic robots can raise or bend their arms to stop passing vehicles or let others pass, and are also programmed to speak, indicating to pedestrians when they can cross the road.

The street light robots are equipped with rotating chests and surveillance cameras that record the flow of vehicles.

While these "Robots" might seem " primitive " to some, nevertheless they fulfill a needed role and there are plans to install more street light robots in other busy road junctions.

Comment No shit ! (Score 4, Interesting) 144

Not all of us like to pull all-nighters.

For some of us, our brains refuse to stop going overdrive until our mission / project is over.

Since my college days, whenever I am in a mission for something, my brain kicks up to the overdrive, and even if I sleep, it still keep churning and churning, resulting in me having really lousy sleeps, with imageries of what I was doing, what I am going to do, what I ought be doing (some times they are " hints " from the sub-conscious) kept on flashing up in my dreams.

For example: I may be in the middle of a very difficult and confusing debugging job.

After non-stop eyeballing the codes, countless re-and re-re-running of the resulting compilations, I get tired and hit the sack.

But in my dreams, images of the screens popping up, with texts (source code) scrolling up and down and sideways, with my "dream self" doing the "virtual debugging" inside my dreams.

It's a goddamn fucking torture, man.

That is why sometimes I rather pull an all-nighters to get the job done, rather than having those un-ending-loop of imagery invading my sleep.

Comment In the 18th century ... (Score 5, Insightful) 246

... people can claim that they did not know how to do witchcraft, but they could point out to the judge which person were witches which were not.

In the 21st century, people can claim that they do not know how to hack, but they can tell the court who are the hackers and who are not.

As if people never learned any lesson from what had transpired three long centuries ago.

Comment Nowadays perjury to congress is no more crime ! (Score 2) 96

As has been portrayed to all of us, lying to the congress, even under oath, is not a crime, as long as you can proof that you are part of the spook network, and/or in charge of the "security" of the nation.

We have become a country where the laws no longer apply to certain *special privileged* people.

Comment NSA is sooooo unlucky ! (Score 5, Insightful) 96

Snowden is the gift that keeps on giving... if you want to turn rational people into a stupid mob

Making the people stupid is what every government in the world is busy doing, including the government of the United States of America.

And NSA, being a part of the government of the United States of America, knows that the more stupid the Americans are, the more easier their job will become.

But NSA is soooooooooooo unlucky, for there are _still_ a portion of the Americans who prefer to use their brains, yes, the ones in between their ears, rather than believe in everything that came down from the White House and the Congress.

With Snowden's revelation, at the very least, we have proofs that our government, the government of the United States of America, has turned rogue.

Our Constitution, the Constitution of the United States of America, have been violated.

Our rights, as defined by the Bill of Rights, have been purposely ignored.

And luckily for America, we, whom still manage to keep our rationality (unlike those who soak in everything Obama / Feinstein said) know that we not only have the right, but it is *OUR DUTY" as Citizens of the United States of America, to stand up against this goddamn rogue regime.

Comment Re:How? (Score 1) 320

What is far more scary is the trajectory of all of this - they are light years ahead of where we thought they were in the inevitable decent into a police state.
If you had made such claims about the NSA a few years ago on slashdot you would have been ridiculed and marked a troll. It would have been unbelievable to most.

But where will they be in 5-10 years when they are better at hiding their activities? I am not saying I know and I am not a conspiracy theorist but to be honest whatever it is it looks pretty grim.

You are way too optimistic.

What we know *NOW* is what what Snowden has leaked out, and what "people in the know" decided to share.

It does not mean that the picture is complete. Far from it !

There * could be * far more devastatingly advanced infrastructure already there, and/or being built, that even Snowden does not know about - and/or something so sensitive even the people in the know dare not share with us.

I am not saying that we should let our imagination run wild and speculating everything and anything.

What I am saying is that I no longer have no idea how wide, how deep and how extensive the NSA surveillance program has covered.

And I am not kidding to you when I say I am scared, for I can no longer foresee what type of future all of us (and our children, and their children) gonna have.

Comment Debunked ? (Score 1) 382

RR Malaysia denied it, making it debunked

If RR world HQ denied it, may be I'll believe it to be debunked.

RR Malaysia ? How much weight does RR Malaysia has ??

... why would RR Europe not tell RR Malaysia the details

Would IBM's Armonk HQ tell IBM Moscow everything ?

Would Boeing Chicago world HQ tell Boeing Beijing everything ?

Are you a troll or are you just stupid ?

Submission + - Did NSA impersonated Facebook and others ?

Taco Cowboy writes: Following the revelation of NSA's fake Facebook server by Snowden, Mark Zuckerberg is very upset and said that he has called up Obama to complain.

Mr. Zuckerberg also calls the US government as a "Threat to Internet" and wrote "“When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.,"

NSA has responded to the allegation by insisting that what they did was legal.

By saying the “NSA does not use its technical capabilities to impersonate US company websites” — the NSA appears to overly simplify what had been reported by the The Intercept

In one man-on-the-side technique, codenamed QUANTUMHAND, the agency disguises itself as a fake Facebook server. When a target attempts to log in to the social media site, the NSA transmits malicious data packets that trick the target’s computer into thinking they are being sent from the real Facebook. By concealing its malware within what looks like an ordinary Facebook page, the NSA is able to hack into the targeted computer and covertly siphon out data from its hard drive. A top-secret animation demonstrates the tactic in action.

Now the question is, did NSA impersonated FB and others ?

The original report on NSA's QUANTUMHAND is available @ firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/

Zuckerberg's reaction can be had @ www.itnews.com.au/News/375099,zuckerberg-decries-nsas-fake-facebook-server-malware.aspx

and/or

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social/Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-says-US-government-threat-to-internet/articleshow/31968638.cms

and/or

abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2014/03/mark-zuckerberg-calls-us-government-threat-to-the-internet/

NSA's skirt-the-issue type of denial is reported @ arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/nsa-says-indiscriminate-facebook-hacking-allegations-are-simply-false/

Submission + - Math equation could help find missing Malaysian plane

Taco Cowboy writes:

Days after a Malaysian airliner with 239 people aboard went missing en route to Beijing, searchers are still struggling to find any confirmed sign of the plane. Authorities have acknowledged that they didn't even know what direction it was heading when it disappeared.

In 2009, Air France Flight 447 en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro vanished over the Atlantic Ocean, triggering the most expensive and exhaustive search effort ever conducted for a plane. After two years, officials could only narrow the location of the plane's black box down to an area the size of Switzerland.

What took two years for other experts in the search for the black box, took only five days for consultants who applied the Bayes' Theorem, to finally find the device 12,000 feet under water.

"It's a very short, simple equation that says you can start out with hypothesis about something — and it doesn't matter how good the hypothesis is," said Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of "The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy."

The hypothesis is subject to change, based on probability, but can still be used with the theorem. Pretty much based on the concept of learning from experience, one can say.

It is because of this character of the formula — forcing researchers to change their hypothesis with each new information — that the probability becomes more accurate.

Bayes' Theorem, which is also used in Google's driverless cars and predictions in stock markets, is based on probability. Because the theorem starts with a hypothesis – something McGrayne said "can be very subjective" – it had been seen as controversial until the 1960s. But because it forces researchers to change their hypothesis with each new piece of information, the probability becomes more accurate.

The theorem was used in World War II to locate German U-boats and the lost nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion. It was also used during the Cold War to spot Soviet submarines.

"The AF 447 search is rooted in Bayesian inference," Lawrence D. Stone, chief scientist at Virginia-based scientific consultancy Metron – which was contacted to apply Bayes' Theorem in the search for the Air France plane – wrote in ORMS Today magazine in 2011. Bayes' Theorem "allows the organization of available data with associated uncertainties and computation of the PDF (probability distribution function) for target location given these data," he said.

Despite assistance from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and the United States, Malaysian search efforts are even further from locating Flight MH370. The search area has been expanded to almost 27,000 square nautical miles – an area roughly equivalent to the state of Indiana – authorities said. That's more than 10,000 nautical square miles larger than the search for Air France Flight 447, before Bayes' Theorem was applied.

Stone told Al Jazeera that in the current search for flight MH370, it is "highly unlikely" that Bayes' Theorem is being applied.

That is not to suggest it is totally absent.

Bayes' Theorem is pervasive, and those involved in the current search have applied a certain Bayesian flavour in their search, "but it then got upset when their prior calculations were incorrect," said statistician Professor Bradley Efron of Stanford University, as quoted by Al Jazeera, referring to the conclusion by Malaysian authorities that the MAS plane could have ended up in the Strait of Malacca.

Bayes' Theorem, after all, is all about learning from experience, which is probably why Efron said one would need "reasonably accurate past experiences" for the theorem to work. In other words, to calculate accurately to locate the plane.

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