Comment HA! (Score 3, Funny) 553
Ha! I have been shaming and banning fat people for years now. Where is my patent?
Comment Re:I'm entirely inclined to believe Watts (Score 4, Insightful) 1079
Strange... this would almost lead someone to conclude that these border patrol agents are some sort of collection of individuals whose behavior might vary.
Nah, that is just silly.
EA Flip-Flops On Battlefield: Heroes Pricing, Fans Angry 221
An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica is reporting that EA/DICE has substantially changed the game model of Battlefield: Heroes, increasing the cost of weapons in Valor Points (the in-game currency that you earn by playing) to levels that even hardcore players cannot afford, and making them available in BattleFunds (the in-game currency that you buy with real money). Other consumables in the game, such as bandages to heal the players, suffered the same fate, turning the game into a subscription or pay-to-play model if players want to remain competitive. This goes against the creators' earlier stated objectives of not providing combat advantage to paying customers. Ben Cousins, from EA/DICE, argued, 'We also frankly wanted to make buying Battlefunds more appealing. We have wages to pay here in the Heroes team and in order to keep a team large enough to make new free content like maps and other game features we need to increase the amount of BF that people buy. Battlefield Heroes is a business at the end of the day and for a company like EA who recently laid off 16% of their workforce, we need to keep an eye on the accounts and make sure we are doing our bit for the company.' The official forums discussion thread is full of angry responses from upset users, who feel this change is a betrayal of the original stated objectives of the game."
Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Comment Re:this is a joke? (Score 1) 219
Nowadays things still die when you kill them with fire
Comment Re:What's the point? (Score 4, Insightful) 59
Crypto wouldn't work... the cloner doesn't have to break the encryption to copy the chip.
Imagine in this way.... you have an encrypted hard drive, and someone wants to pass off their hard drive as yours. They don't have to break the encryption... they can copy the drive byte for byte, and hand it to the person who if verifying that is the original. The person checking the data is the one who does the decrypting.
Comment Re:Security enhancement at best (Score 4, Informative) 59
I don't know if it will be that easy. These fingerprints seem to be based on the fact that all RFID chips have flaws, and they are all flawed in different ways.... including the device that is trying to act as the clone of the RFID. What this means is that this clone RFID has to be able to mimic EXACTLY the flaws of the real thing without giving itself away by its OWN flaws. Without knowing more details about the flaws they are trying to measure, it is hard to say whether that would be possible. If the flaws are easily mimicked in the sense that you can create a clone whose own defects are not detected because they are all superseded by the original's flaws, it may work. If they vary so much that every clone will have some flaw that is severe enough to shine through, it would be impossible.
Comment Re:Hmmmm (Score 1) 570
There is a difference between a normal password and a password used for encryption. For example, a password to log in to a website does not need to be able to handle 4 million guesses a second.... it will be rate limited by the website way before that happens.
You only need to choose a large random password for encryption that you need to be able to handle a local access attack..... like hard drive encryption... so you most likely only need one. so it is probably something you don't have to type in very often..... and you can choose something you never change, as a local disk attack is unlikely to occur without you realizing it, at which point you can know to change your password to something new and very long.
Comment Re:i will keep my files locally (Score 2, Insightful) 183
So you have to physically open the safe every time you want to back up you data? That sounds like quite a bit of a hassle to me, and I can imagine you start skipping days because you it is too much work to open the black box, take out the hard drive, connect it, run the back up, put the drive back in the safe, and lock it back up... with an online backup, your backups can take place automatically every couple of hours without having to physically move anything.
Also, what happens if the black box is stolen?
Comment Re:Yes, but why is a project necessary? (Score 1) 100
I don't think this is necessarily fair. Laws inherently need to be complex, as they address complex issues. While you may find a person that can fully understand ONE area of law, it would be impossible to find a single congressperson (or any person) who could understand fully ALL the laws that cover all areas of government. Take an environmental protection law for example... to fully understand the consequences of a carbon tax, for example, you would need to be an expert in climate science, economics, etc... you will never find anyone that is an expert in all of the things required.
What you hope, is that a congressperson surrounds himself with the necessary experts, who brief him/her as well as they can on the things they have to know to come to a sound decision. Anyone who thinks they can understand all of the consequences of a law all by themselves is delusional.
Comment Re:More stuff becoming digitized (Score 1) 450
It is also not just about going digital, but consolidation of digital content. I used to burn movies, backups, and other content that I wanted to save but not use every day to DVDs... but with TB hard drives so cheap now, it is much easier just to place that data on a hard drive. They are more reliable, easier to keep backups of, and faster.
Think about most people you know who have a decent size DVD collection... why keep all those separate DVDs, that take up a ton of space, get dusty, and can fail. You could easily store a very large DVD collection on a TB drive, and back them up to another TB drive.
In addition, I keep ALL my old documents. I have documents dating back 20 years to my elementary school days... I have copies of school papers I wrote for 4th grade, computer programs I wrote in 3rd grade, etc... I find it hilarious to look back at how I wrote and coded when I was so young, and someday I can share it with my kids. When it is so easy to archive stuff, why not?
Comment Re:Researcher is the wrong word. (Score 4, Funny) 201
of COURSE they aren't real researchers. The summary writer mistakenly thought the study authors were from UCLA, which would mean they would have been some of the smartest, unbiased, amazing people in the world. However, they were actually from USC, meaning they were spoiled, unprofessional, RIAA lapdogs who also smell.
And yes I happened to go to UCLA, but that is besides the point.
Comment Time the *$&*()^ out (Score 2, Funny) 201
These guys are from USC, not UCLA. As a UCLA graduate, I am extremely upset that anyone would make this mistake. USC students and professors are smelly, unclean, spoiled children who work for the RIAA. UCLA students and professors are the opposite.
Never, EVER, confuse us again.
