Comment Re:Oh come on ... (Score 1) 126
Fuck, I'm getting senile. "before a cursory glance" should be "beyond a cursory glance" of course.
Comment Re:Oh come on ... (Score 1) 126
Are the USPTO that incompetent?
It's been explained to me that this is standard MO for the USPTO. They never check patents before a cursory glance, and only when it is challenged do they actually look into the merits of it. Apparently this is because they just don't have (anywhere near) the amount of manpower they would need to keep up with the vast number of incoming patent applications.
Anyone know how true this is?
Comment Funny? (Score 1) 126
I'm not sure why this is modded Funny. It's exactly what's going on here! Patent trolling is a protection racket; it's extortion pure and simple.
Comment Mother of all fuckups... (Score 1) 745
Savage and his colleagues assume
Well there's your problem...
Comment Jill 'Bates? (Score 1) 225
Nobody's commenting on someone being called Jill Bates? Really?
Comment This comment section... (Score 1) 545
Without reading the comments I'm certain this very comment section will form a live demonstration of some of the major problems with attracting women to tech...
Comment Disappearing act? (Score 4, Interesting) 231
What's the betting that the site will one day suddenly disappear, taking all the outstanding donations which happen to be on their accounts with them?
Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays 65
An anonymous reader points out this recently published study (PDF) on detecting malicious (or at least suspicious) Tor exit relays. From their conclusions: "After developing a scanner, we closely monitored all ~1000 exit relays over a period of four months. Wed discovered 25 relays which were either outright malicious or simply misconfigured. Interestingly, the majority of the attacks were coordinated instead of being isolated actions of independent individuals. Our results further suggest that the attackers made an active effort to remain under the radar and delay detection."
One of the authors, Philipp Winter, wrote a followup blog post to help clarify what the paper's findings mean for Tor users, including this clarification: "First, it's important to understand that 25 relays in four months isn't a lot. It is ultimately a very small fraction of the Tor network. Also, it doesn't mean that 25 out of 1,000 relays are malicious or misconfigured (we weren't very clear on that in the paper). We have yet to calculate the churn rate of exit relays which is the rate at which relays join and leave the network. 1,000 is really just the approximate number of exit relays at any given point in time. So the actual number of exit relays we ended up testing in four months is certainly higher than that. As a user, that means that you will not see many malicious relays 'in the wild."
Comment Good luck with that (Score 1) 731
So I indicate to you, by using AdBlock, that I hate advertising and do not wish to see any (from which you could deduce that showing me advertisements would be useless at best and counterproductive at worst), yet you choose to force ads down my throat anyway? Well fuck you then.
Comment Re:For comparison (Score 1) 479
Sorry, that should be 60/6 Mbps of course.
Comment For comparison (Score 1) 479
I live in the Netherlands. I have a 60/6 MBps cable Internet connection, in combination with digital HD cable TV and telephone service, for € 54 ($73) per month. This is with "unlimited" bandwidth (they do have a "fair use" clause, but I've never heard of anyone hitting it). For the Netherlands this is pretty typical.
Comment Nothing to do with net neutrality (Score 1) 479
With the landmark Net Neutrality ruling this week will larger providers try to move to similar price models?
Why would they? The one has nothing to do with the other. If anything, since providers can now be payed at the back end as well, they could in theory lower prices at the front end. In theory.
Is Earth Weighed Down By Dark Matter? 247
Nerval's Lobster writes "There may be a giant ring of dark matter invisibly encircling the Earth, increasing its mass and pulling much harder on orbiting satellites than anything invisible should pull, according to preliminary research from a scientist specializing the physics of GPS signaling and satellite engineering. The dark-matter belt around the Earth could represent the beginning of a radically new understanding of how dark matter works and how it affects the human universe, or it could be something perfectly valid but less exciting despite having been written up by New Scientist and spreading to the rest of the geek universe on the basis of a single oral presentation of preliminary research at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December. The presentation came from telecom- and GPS satellite expert Ben Harris, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas- Arlington, who based his conclusion on nine months' worth of data that could indicate Earth's gravity was pulling harder on its ring of geostationary GPS satellites than the accepted mass of the Earth would normally allow. Since planets can't gain weight over the holidays like the rest of us, Harris' conclusion was that something else was adding to the mass and gravitational power of Earth – something that would have to be pretty massive but almost completely undetectable, which would sound crazy if predominant theories about the composition of the universe didn't assume 80 percent of it was made up of invisible dark matter. Harris calculated that the increase in gravity could have come from dark matter, but would have had to be an unexpectedly thick collection of it – one ringing the earth in a band 120 miles thick and 45,000 miles wide. Making elaborate claims in oral presentations, without nailing down all the variables that could keep a set of results from being twisted into something more interesting than the truth is a red flag for any scientific presentation, let alone one making audacious claims about the way dark matter behaves or weight of the Earth, according to an exasperated counterargument from Matthew R. Francis, who earned a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Rutgers in 2005, held visiting and assistant professorships at several Northeastern universities and whose science writing has appeared in Ars Technica, The New Yorker, Nautilus, BBC Future and others including his own science blog at Galileo's Pendulum."
Comment Alien pod (Score 1) 339
Obviously this must be an alien pod buried millions of years ago and patiently waiting for its pilot to arrive riding the lightning. We were bound to stumble across them some day!
Comment Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score 1) 475
... decent monetary policy is a necessary though not sufficient condition for good economic performance.
Exactly. In other words, without a lot of scientific research you can't conclude from the fact that the Eurozone did worse than the US for the last few years economically that the ECB therefore did a worse job of making monetary policy. They could have just been dealt a much worse hand. Ultimately I don't think you can make comparisons like this between the Eurozone and the US anyway. The Eurozone is not one country, which makes a huge difference in practice and invalidates all kinds of comparisons.
It is designed to maintain its value against other currencies,
I have to disagree again. It can't maintain its value against other currencies if it is to be a success. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. If it ever becomes a large and stable economy then the bitcoin will have to be worth much more than it is worth today against other currencies. That's what I'm banking on anyway...
