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Comment Re:HVAC (Score 2) 509

The problem is that you'll probably have to work where there's no air conditioning, because it's either broken or hasn't been installed yet. That might not be fun in the summer in southern states. But at least you won't have to work in shit like a plumber would in "emergency" situations.

Submission + - Sony Forgets to Pay for Domain, Hilarity Ensues (eq2wire.com)

Dragoness Eclectic writes: Early Tuesday, gamers woke up to find out that they couldn't log in to any Sony Online Entertainment games--no Everquest, no Planetside 2, none of them. Oddly, the forums where company reps might have posted some explanation weren't reachable, either.

A bit of journalistic investigation by EQ2Wire came across the explanation: SOE forgot to renew the domain registration on SonyOnline.net, the hidden domain that holds all their nameservers. Oops! After 7 weeks of non-payment post-expiration, NetworkSolutions reclaimed the domain, sending all access to Sony's games into an internet black hole this morning. Sony has since paid up, but it takes a while for DNS changes to propagate around the world. SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address. Good job, guys.

Submission + - Japanese Woman Arrested to Selling 3D Printable Files of Her Vagina (3dprint.com)

jigmypig writes: A woman in Japan has been arrested for selling 3D printable files of her vagina to random men via the internet. The files included items such as 3D printable smartphone cases engraved with nothing else but her genitalia. To do this, she scanned her vagina and then put them into a 3D printable file. Men were then able to purchase the files directly from her, and she would deliver them via email. As you know, the rules in Japan concerning the exposure or depiction of female genitalia are very strict. There is already a petition being passed around trying to get her released.

Comment Moderation doesn't work that way (Score 1) 2

It would be really hard to upmod messages from sock puppet accounts simply because mod points are given for reading a lot of articles on a given account. Basically, if you don't regularly use an account, it doesn't get mod points, so you're not going to have lots of sock puppet accounts with mod points. (I'm sure you could do shit like spam page reloads or something, but they've probably got ways to detect that.) That alone makes the system fundamentally better than one where everyone gets to mod everyone else's posts with no limit until there's nothing but circle jerk left.

Comment Re:Going back to cash (Score 1) 753

Last week I swiped my card at a gas station pump before noticing the tamper proof seals had been broken.

Most likely from some brat kid breaking them with his fingernail.

The real reason for the seals is to stop people from getting free (or almost free) gas. If you know how to operate the pump side controls, you can press a couple of buttons to change the price to pennies per gallon. They're only downloaded when the price changes, and the back-end system then only selects which price level (cash or credit) to use for a transaction.

And if you're using debit, the PIN pads are supposed to be potted and keys injected into battery-backed RAM (code in RAM is a good idea too) to prevent tampering. In the US at least, the key is supposed to be only known by the clearinghouse at the other end of the comm line, and only comes out of the pad already encrypted.

Comment Re:Useless coins (Score 1) 753

The US had a nice dollar coin (the Susan B Anthony). But it looked too much like a quarter, being only being slightly bigger, so people didn't use it.

Then they made a new one (the Sacagawea). It was the same size (because vending machines), but made out of a brass-colored metal, and no edge milling. The metal looks nice when it's new, but with relatively low time in circulation it tarnishes to an ugly brown that has no contrast for the artwork. And people still won't use it, because the US government (probably mostly due to Congressional inertia) keeps making singles. They've even issued them with different artwork, but nobody cares. I'd be surprised if 10% of the US population even knows they exist, and probably more people know about the 2-dollar bills that nobody uses either.

There are a few places where you might find the dollar coins used, such as some parking garages. It's more reliable to make change with coins than with worn-out GWs, and quarters are no good when you're charging $8-$15 and people are likely to want to use a $20 bill at unattended payment terminals. The coins become a sort of local currency because of repeat business, so there is some amount of recirculation.

The post office used to have nice coin-operated stamp vending machines that took any coin from a penny to a dollar (except for those old monster JFK half-dollars), and gave dollar coins for change, but they yanked them out years ago in favor of some kind of complicated credit card-based scale/postage printing machine that basically nobody uses. So now you have to wait in line to buy a sheet of bog-standard stamps. (But I can get them at the supermarket check-out too, so meh.)

Submission + - SpaceX Wins FAA Permission to Build a Spaceport in Texas

Jason Koebler writes: SpaceX just got approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to build a 56.5-acre spaceport along the Gulf of Mexico on the Texas-Mexico border—a huge step toward actually making the spaceport a reality.
Wednesday, the FAA, which handles all commercial space launch permitting in the United States, issued what's known as a "Record of Decision" that suggests the agency would allow the company to launch 10 Falcon 9 rockets and two Falcon Heavy rockets per year out of the spaceport, through at least 2025.

Submission + - StartStarterer seeks to revolutionize the way Crowdfunding Websites are born

orcundead writes: A new campaign on Indiegogo is raising funds for a new Crowdfunding website which in turn will help fund... Crowdfunding websites. From the project's pitch text: "In today's world, many people would like to run their own crowdfunding website, but lack the resources to set up, launch and maintain such a service... By focusing solely on crowdfunding websites and automating such rudimentary tasks as writing a campaign pitch, setting up perks and adding images and videos, StartStarterer will be able to eliminate much of the unnecessary form-filling and headache normally associated with setting up a new crowdfunding campaign."

Comment Re:Mars no, (Score 2, Informative) 78

Permanent Lunar presence for Helium 3 extraction YES

Uh, huh. So what exactly are you going to do with that helium when you extract the few parts per million on the lunar surface? We don't even have fusion working yet, and He3 is not a first-generation fusion fuel.

We'll be on Mars long before we can use He3 for anything but inflating balloons.

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