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Comment Re:vBulletin (Score 2) 259

Writing a program that solves a Calcudoku is pretty simple, actually. Hell, a 6x6 only has a couple hundred possibilities; that's a piece of cake to brute-force. I think right now you're more relying on security through obscurity -- it's not been broken because it's not yet used often enough to be a tempting target for a spambot creator.

AI

Chatbot Eugene Wins Biggest Turing Test Ever 235

An anonymous reader writes "Eugene Goostman, a chatbot imbued with the personality of a 13-year-old boy, won the biggest Turing test ever staged on 23 June, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing. Held at Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes, UK, where Turing cracked the Nazi Enigma code during World War 2, the test involved over 150 separate conversations, 30 judges, 25 hidden humans and five elite, chattering software programs. 'Thirteen years old is not too old to know everything and not too young to know nothing,' explains Eugene's creator, Vladimir Veselov."

Comment Re:Seems partly justified (Score 2) 227

But the minimum is 200 not 398.98 so the judge could have decreased it again by almost half. As it is, it just seems like the political cop out "I don't like this bill that I am signing and supporting..."

You're confusing two things here. $398.98 is the amount the judge granted as "disgorged profits" -- in other words, money that UMaple directly made off of MapleStory's work. In this case, it's only the amount of money they made from AdSense revenue.

But that's separate from the copyright infringment. The infringement penalties have nothing to do with any money that UMaple made; it's just a statutory penalty with mandatory minimums for each copy. That's where the minimums come in.

Comment Re:This IS a LiIon failure mode though (Score 1) 362

I thought the same thing, and was thus expecting that the first response from Tesla would have been "$40,000 is a completely ridiculous, inflated number with no basis in reality." But that's not their response. It's not even, "Yeah, earlier versions of our technology could have had this issue, but we've totally fixed it for the upcoming Model S and Model X versions". But no, the response we're getting from Tesla is more along the lines of "well, yeah, you need to keep it plugged in."

Which frankly makes me think that it's not a made up number at all.

Comment Re:Awh, that is so cute (Score 1) 509

A nobody claims that a billion dollar company doesn't know what it is doing.

Michael Stonebreaker is probably the best-known database researcher alive. He invented Ingres, the first relational database, and developed the core of what is now PostgreSQL. Since moving to MIT, he's continued to push some of the bounds of database technology.

Disagreeing with his conclusions here due to the success of Facebook is reasonable. But to call him a nobody exposes your ignorance, not his.

Google

Google Pushes New Chrome Release, Pays $14k Bounty 182

Trailrunner7 writes "Google has released version 8.0.552.237 of its Chrome browser, which includes fixes for 16 security vulnerabilities. The company also paid out more than $14,000 in bug bounties for the flaws fixed in this release, including the first maximum reward of $3133.7. The new version of Google Chrome has fixes for 13 high-priority bugs, but the most serious vulnerability the company repaired in the browser is a critical flaw resulting from a stale pointer in the speech handling component of Chrome. That flaw, along with four others, was discovered by researcher Sergey Glazunov, who earned a total of more than $7,000 in rewards for the bugs he reported to Google."

Comment Re:Probrem! (Score 1) 696

My point was about the code pinkers and Cyndi Sheehan types who were protesting both wars and now can't be found anywhere.

Since Obama's inauguration, Cindy Sheehan has been arrested twice in front of the White House for protesting. She's demonstrated outside of his vacation home in Martha's Vineyard, and was doing the same on the streets of Oslo when he was getting the Nobel Prize. Code Pink is still protesting; I can easily find a reference to them doing so last Halloween in front of the White House.

Now ask yourself; is the problem with the protesters going away, or is the problem with the news media?

Comment Re:Mixed feelings (Score 2, Informative) 2424

Well under the current system they are either turned away or forced to pay some exorbitant amount.

Actually, under the current system they are turned away if their condition isn't dire. Otherwise, they get treated and billed an exorbitant amount. Usually they are unable to pay, so in most cases the hospital has to eat the cost, but they'll try to defray it by raising the rates that they're charging the insurance companies, which gets passed on to the rest of us.

Comment Re:Not until 2014 (Score 5, Informative) 2424

But there are provisions that will take place immediately -- things like making sure that young children can't be denied from a new plan due to a pre-existing condition, prohibit dropping people from a plan when they get sick, letting dependents stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26, adding tax credits to small businesses to allow for coverage purchase. It would be pretty easy for Democrats to spin taking those things away as a bad thing.

Comment Re:healthcare debate (Score 2, Informative) 999

There's one thing I noticed in the health care debate, none of the Democrats proposed voters get the same health care as congress gets.

Actually, Congress uses an insurance exchange system (the FEHBP) that serves as the model for the Democrat's health care overhaul -- the FEHBP has a variety of plans in the exchange, and they can pick the one that best suits their needs. In fact, the Democratic plan actually states Congress and their staff will have to move from the FEHBP to the main insurance exchanges.

Comment Re:It's true (Score 1) 965

I disagree, and the usability bugs I currently have open on Apple's bug tracking system agree with me.

I love the fact that your corroborating witness here are your own bug filings. It's actually less compelling than "I'm totally right, because my mom agrees with me."

Not to pick on you, because I basically agree with your point, but I found that statement rather humorous.

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