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Comment Re:Or maybe... (Score 1) 149

Definitely. Facebook email is an awkward and crippled parody of email. It is something to put up with for communicating with people who don't use use real email or who you don't trust with your real email address. But, seriously, why would anybody want to use Facebook email for communication that doesn't involve Facebook?

Comment Re:What's this story doing here? (Score 1) 304

Consider what they may not be teaching in order to cover topics that are

state-specific: bankruptcy, the financial impact of gambling and charitable giving

The school year and the material that can be covered in it is finite. If you add hefty new requirements, something else will have to be dropped. Maybe they can trim out all the "controversial" science.

Comment Re:Oh, really? (Score 5, Interesting) 71

Note that apparently the KN-08 is a liquid-fueled ICBM, which means it is completely useless for defensive purposes (you don't store liquid fueled missiles fueled-up, you fuel them just before launch - which would take too long to allow them to be used to react to an attack), and only really useful for a first strike.

Not necessarily. Titan II used liquid fuel and could be kept fully fueled in the silo indefinitely.

Atlas could be fueled in 15 minutes. Late variants reduced this further but loading the kerosene in times of high tension, which could remain in the rocket for long periods, and only waiting to the last minute to load the liquid oxygen. These versions were also kept in silos so they were only vulnerable during the time needed to load the oxidizer.

Comment Re:The more simple you make it the less complex it (Score 5, Interesting) 876

In practice, I believe that the present text-based programming paradigm artificially restricts programming to a much simpler logical structure compared to those commonly accepted and used by EEs. For example, I used to say "structured programming" is essentially restricting your flow chart to what can be drawn in two dimensions with no crossing lines. That's not strictly true, but it is close. Since the late 1970s, I've remarked that software is the only engineering discipline that still depends on prose designs.

Funny that you should say that. For the last 20 years, the trend in Electrical Engineering is away from graphical entry and toward text based design languages. Hardly anyone designs logic by drawing gates anymore. We use languages like Verilog and VHDL, which look a whole lot like software languages. Even the analog designers make use of Verilog-A or even just Spice, all text based. When it comes down to building a circuit board or analog circuitry on a chip, there is still a manual "compile" step of drawing diagrams and polygons but that is only because the result is ultimately a three dimensional object (well, more lke 2.5D) and it is the only way to be sure you get what you intended. It is not because creating designs graphically is considered convenient.

Comment Compression could do this (Score 1) 106

Bad form, I know, to respond to your own posting. But it occurs to me that data specific compression could accomplish the goal. Credit card numbers have structure. If you create a mapping between only valid card numbers and the minimum number of bits then encrypt that then it doesn't matter how the data is decrypted. It always produces valid looking credit card numbers. The catch, though, is that the bit mapping needs to be exact. If the total possible credit card numbers is not a power of 2 then there will always be decryption failures that produces detectably invalid results.

Comment How does the decrypter know what to send out? (Score 2) 106

If the software is detecting that the key is bad then all the attacker has to do is use software that doesn't do this. This assumes that the attacker has direct access to the file. If not, then well known throttling techniques apply and the new wrinkle doesn't buy much.

Making bogus data come out without requiring specific software for decryption seems like a very hard problem. Every data type will need, not just unique software but unique encryption algorithms that are both secure and not trivial extensions to known algorithms.

Comment Tandy 1000 was a PCJr clone (Plantronics, not EGA) (Score 1) 178

I never ran into software compatibility problems with my 1000 (for non-game software), but it sucked that Tandy essentially put an EGA adapter in it, but then modified it enough that EGA software wouldn't work with it.. :(

It was not modified EGA at all. It had exactly the same video as the PCJr and output one bit per RGB + one bit luminance just like and compatible with CGA.

EGA was very different in memory layout and EGA monitors used two bits per component.

Comment Re:So how is this a win (Score 4, Insightful) 103

Tesla was not competent enough to register the trademark in all markets it was going to do business, and someone else did. Rather than working out some medication where Tesla paid for the lack of foresight, it was simply taken away. I don't think that the ruling was wrong, obviously China does not value the free market the way the US does, but there should have a happy middle between millions of dollars and something reasonable to pay.

The only reasonable value to pay to a troll is zero. Actually, no. The correct amount is that the troll pays the victim for their trouble and legal fees. A reasonable compromise is zero. The company in question was 100% troll. They were not doing business under that name. They had no intention of doing business under the Tesla name. This is true regardless of whether Tesla was "competent" enough to defensively register its name in all markets before it had product to sell just in case a troll an idea how to make some easy, unearned money.

Comment water vapor plumes != liquid water (Score 4, Informative) 66

But as we understand it, water vapor plumes likely mean bodies of water; and so far, in nearly all cases, bodies of water do equal life.

Not in this case. According to TFA:

Astronomers think that as Ceres reaches the closest part in its orbit to the sun, the more intense sunlight causes its icy surface to sublimate (i.e. turn straight from ice to vapor without transitioning through a liquid phase) at a rate of around 6 kilograms (13 pounds) per second.

So, no liquid bodies. Just solids and gas.

Liquid water requires a substantial atmosphere, which Ceres lacks. At low pressure, ice converts directly to vapor and visa versa.

Comment Re:Windows.. (Score 4, Insightful) 346

Is a bad choice anyway. Not just a Microsoft bash, but aside from all the security issues, windows is XP is a desktop platform, not a OS to be putting on dedicated devices ( even the so-called embedded version really isn't any more appropriate for this, don't let the marketing folks fool you )

An ATM should be running off a custom embedded OS targeted for this purpose, not a commodity OS.

Who is going to write, maintain, and keep secure this custom OS?

The trouble with custom embedded OS's is that, in spite of the best intentions to limit their scope, they almost always need more features than can be written from scratch by a small team and be obviously secure. So they port code from more commodity OS's. Due to limited resources, the code in the embedded OS tends to fall behind. The porting effort can introduce bugs too that are non-obvious to the guy doing the port because he doesn't fully understand what he is porting.

Comment *Not* 25% faster than javascript (Score 2) 161

I was wondering how it could be 25% faster than javascript when it compiled into javascript so I checked out TFA.

Performance on the Richards benchmark is 25% better than the first release, making runtime comparable to the original JavaScript.

So it has 25% faster javascript output. It is not 25% faster than javascript.

Comment Re:Clearly they're not thinking evil enough (Score 1) 87

The same thing is going to happen to physical objects as 3D printers improve and eventually maybe we arrive at Star Trek-type replicators. If the facsimile of a precious original artifact is indistinguishable from the real thing, does it really matter which is the original?

That depends on what sort of object it is. If it is merely a decoration then perhaps it doesn't matter. An approximation indistinguishable by the senses may be good enough. On the other hand, if it is an artifact worthy of detailed study then it may have more to tell us then we already know. Microscopic details may be important. The isotope ratios in the material may even be significant. We can never be sure that a copy is truly indistinguishable where it counts.

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