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Comment Re:SF museum in Seattle not an option??? (Score 1) 131

by dlgeek (#41726055) Attached to: Huston Huddleston Wants You To Help Save the Star Trek TNG Set
Sorry, but having seen the former permenant collection, I was incredibly disappointed at the temporary "Icons" exhibit. It's nowhere close to the original in scale or impact. It takes up only about a quarter of the space the other one did (when I was there, the part that used to have robots had a horror exhbit and they redid the wall so you can't even get to the part with the cool weapons and all the old pulp mags, let alone where the death star used to be). It's also way less dense, and has almost none of the literature scattered around that the old one used to.

Comment Not just research telescopes (Score 3, Insightful) 37

by dlgeek (#41628263) Attached to: Small Telescopes Make Big Discoveries
There was an incredibly relevant article[1] in Analog Science Fiction & Fact recently. The basic premise is that it's not just smaller research telescopes that are valuable - in astronomy, even amateur observations are incredibly valuable (often because they happen to notice things the bigger telescopes aren't pointed at). The author details a large number of findings that are rooted in observations by amateurs.

Mr. Olusevi shouldn't limit himself to just $30,000 research telescopes. He should also be trying to get $300 telescopes in backyards all over Africa.

[1] Plummer, Alan. Atlas' Apprentices: Amateur Contributions in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Comment Re:Newbie question (Score 3, Informative) 105

by dlgeek (#41087603) Attached to: Private Key Found Embedded In Major SCADA Equipment
Actually, yes. The most common format for storing RSA keys is PEM and it looks like this (randomly generated key just for this post):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIBOQIBAAJBAKLdFpep/qw/SIf/wsO4T17GnttlhLjLrVCfM9p4D2gnnz3OiO45
Xw1wonFOPR0D9ewAIi4yAhcMFXc2jyw3GbMCAwEAAQJAJV7R1k89jsyemgZH7J0Y
KUkuHm22/KhPxpYhUdoGvwEqvuyEFdM6kGuFj5AwMD/R8E9g1JFrQSej1aXCvHM5
oQIhANE3nxoo1pSLRrPv3/dPkq8l9VYtTcjCkiivbh6XHVa5AiEAx0gCx6DMBiGA
rxdplBG9pA91lUptz6wQbiMsFsvzfcsCIB1zD+E1yGamaDBh3ovIVqRy2mLkA6Pz
x3EUqJKDwOx5AiBW7DgaLy8O9YoV1VZ9+YcIip21MrPXQ6we/kR65RceJQIgYDV0
I5e4ncpwsbz6q+VWjZ3mNaOnNgkxESmtQY4vzQo=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

The base64 data in the middle is a structure that contains a bunch of numbers. The numbers present in a private key are different (a supserset) of a public key, so even if it's in a format that doesn't have the BEGIN..., by parsing the structure, you can see what's in it. (Try pasting the key block above into the stdin of openssl rsa -noout -text.)

Comment Re:Man rating of Dragon and Falcon (Score 2) 282

by dlgeek (#40077021) Attached to: SpaceX's Falcon 9 Successfully Reaches Orbit
The Soyuz has a limited on-orbit lifetime though. After the recent loss of a cargo Soyuz, there was a threat we'd have to abandon the station if the currently docked capsule expired before they could re-certify the platform and launch a replacement mission. Being able to fly a rescue dragon to the station for re-enty could be a posisble way to avoid this in the future by allowing a crew to stay up longer.

That being said, it's of course incredibly unlikely that we'd see such an convergence of event during the short time between the certificiation of Dragon and that of Falcoln that would cause NASA to pay for such a flight. Since I doubt you could even fit much cargo on the passenger version on the empty ride up, it'd be incredibly expensive to do except in the case of extreme emergency.

Comment Re:So (Score 5, Insightful) 545

by dlgeek (#39984557) Attached to: Connecticut Resident Stopped By State Police For Radioactivity
Without knowing exactly what they did, it's reasonable to assume they searched his car. Generally, this requires a warrant unless it's incident to an arrest, and even then, there are limits.

There's not much legal precentdent either way as to whether or not slight radioactivity consitutes probable cause, but it's a very worrying slippery slope if it does. Cop wants to harras you? All he has to do is put a few drops of some nuclear medicine on your bumper (or worse, on your person) and you'll be stopped and searched thoroughly, just because he thinks you're guilty. Hell, he can just claim you registered, search your car illegally and haul you in for whatever he finds.

TL;DR: It's a slippery slope for due process.

Comment Re:Get a Warrant (Score 1) 168

If I send an email, did I share it with my ISP so it is not private?

Yes. See the Stored Communication Act (18 USC Â2701 - 2711), and United States v Lifshitz, (369 F3d 173 [2d Cir 2004]).

What about my stock portfolio stored on vanguard.com?

There's about 150 years of case law that declare that bank records can be subpoenaed with the defendant having no standing to move to quash. It's actually one of the main precedents the judge used in this case to squash the defendant's motion.

Comment Re:Half right (Score 1) 168

While I agree with you, and think the vast majority of the decision is very well reasoned, this quote scares the crap out of me:

The widely believed (though mistaken) notion that any disclosure of a user's information would first be requested from the user and require approval by the user is understandable, but wrong. While the Fourth Amendment provides protection for our physical homes, we do not have a physical "home" on the Internet. What an Internet user simply has is a network account consisting of a block of computer storage that is owned by a network service provider.

If that becomes a set precedent, it will have an incredibly chilling effect on online privacy.

Comment Re:This is the root of our economy woes (Score 1) 175

by dlgeek (#39603277) Attached to: Amazon Pays No UK Income Tax, Under Investigation

Yes, GE and Amazon have been job creators, but that was then. Once companies have enough employees to get their job done, hiring essentially stops. Workforce numbers among established companies is, to a large extent, static.

I can't speak to GE but I work for Amazon and we're hiring like crazy. We have something like 2000 open engineering positions in the US alone, and we pretty much open a new position for every one we fill.

I won't speak to the tax issue, but saying Amazon is no longer a jobs creator is just entirely untrue.

Comment Re:Sales tax... (Score 1) 244

by dlgeek (#39397995) Attached to: Connecticut Considers Digital Download Tax
This is a common misconception - sales taxes aren't paid for by the seller, they're paid by the buyer. The seller just collects on behalf of the government.

While it's true that out-of-state entities have no obligation to collect sales tax on behalf of a government if they don't have a physical presence in that state, the tax is still due. It's called a use tax, and it's the obligation of the consumer to report and pay it. Almost all states that have a sales tax also have a use tax, they're just extremely poorly enforced.

Comment Re:So putting it into perspective ... (Score 4, Insightful) 165

The two aren't even close to comparable, for two reasons: 1.) That's only valid if you're comparing two means to accomplish the same goal. If someone was suggesting moving cargo on land via rocket-power, your complaints would almost be justified (except, see below), but these accomplish completely seperate goals. Come up with a less polluting way to get into space, we'll certainly listen to you.

2.) You're comparing pollution per time, not pollution per mile. If you want a fair comparison, you want the total amount of pollution to accomplish the task. If I could (theoretically) come up with a rocket system that can move cargo along a 60-mile track in less than 30 seconds, compared to a truck that'd take an hour to do it, I still come out ahead even though the rocket pollutes more per second than the truck.

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