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Comment Re:what the... (Score 4, Informative) 161

He was the winning entry in the SPD's 'hackathon' to produce a video redaction system to meet their needs (his request for video was also the main reason for having the hackathon in the first place buts that's not important).

He pretty much meets the definition of hobbyist hacker from Wikipedia or the #3 definition of hacker from webster "an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer".

Comment Re:Only in some situations ... (Score 4, Insightful) 161

If you read the article you'd see that there are 3 possible versions of police video. #1 always exists, #2 will exist in most cases (when fully implemented) and #3 is only created upon request.

1) The raw video which is stored on DVD and available for any court proceedings. This version is not altered in any way.

2) The over-redacted version which this post is about. This version is intentionally altered to try and remove any identifying features from the subjects, including suspects and also filters out videos involving specific crimes (rape or involving kids). This video is not used for any legal proceedings; it's primary purpose is to allow interested parties to review police interactions with the public.

3) Videos legally requested under disclosure laws. These are manually redacted to remove the minimum required by law to protect peoples privacy. Depending on the subjects this would generally look like the videos you see on COPS where the subjects are clearly visible but some bystanders are blurred.

The idea is that by providing the second type of videos they can reduce FOIA or similar legal requests because in most cases seeing exactly who was involved is much less important as seeing what was done to and by each person involved in the incident. Before the existence of the over-redacted versions every request to view police body cams resulted in the the need to create a manually redacted version and this took up to 1 hour/minute to process.

Comment Re:Easy (Score 1) 613

Men's studies is not what you think it is, it's actually just a women's studies course taught from the perspective that all men are the problem and is often controlled by and taught by the same radical feminists in charge of the women's studies course.

Women's studies = "Women are the greatest"
Men's Studies = "Men are the worst"

Comment Re:"Citizens united" was a coup (Score 1) 142

Or maybe, just maybe, knowing that there are only 245 Republican congressman and 188 Democrats the gp was just commenting on the fact that a vote of 388 indicates exactly what he/she stated, that the bill has bipartisan support and is more likely than not to stand up to any challenges (at least in the House).

The word "guess" doesn't even appear in their comment.

Comment Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score 1) 372

A large part of the additional flooding is because Florida land management is terrible. Due to high demand for real estate flood plains and swamps are being converted to new developments and surprise, when you take away the natural areas for water to flow in an area completely surrounded by water other areas will suddenly see flooding.

Comment Re:Corrupted Minds Will Say Anything (Score 1) 703

And as soon as the interest in climate change science dies down either because a solution is found or it's show to be all hype a very large portion of those same tax based scientists who tagged "climate change" to their end of their research projects will suddenly find themselves out of a job.

Public researchers rely on public funding to keep their jobs and public funding relies on public interest. Public interest relies on someone showing that the research can have real world affects but as soon as the public no longer believes the field of study to be that important than the money goes away and so do the jobs.

Fossil fuel companies won't really lose all that much as the transition to a less fossil fuel reliant system comes into place because, surprise, they are also heavily invested in alternative energy sources. The last numbers I saw had them at about 65% of US business investments in new energy systems.

So who really has more invested in AGW, companies who will make millions either way (and profit margins on oil aren't all that great compared to a lot of other fields) or researchers whose very livelihoods rely on keeping AGW on top of the news cycle.

Comment Re:From 4Q 2005 through 4Q 2011 (Score 1) 368

Apart from iTunes, what lawful download store for Hollywood movies were people using during this period?

Not really sure what the point of this question is. In case you haven't seen a calendar recently it's 2015 so the fact UV only came out in 2011 is next to meaningless.

Things change in the home video world from time to time and collectors are always faced with the decision to upgrade or simply maintain what they already have. For those who transition they have two choices to make;

1) Maintain both systems which on the UV side requires next to no work since most internet capable video devices can playback UV movies but does require the person to maintain specific hardware to access their iTunes library.

or

2) Convert/re-purchase the things you really want in the new system. This can be expensive but is not unusual for a collector.

It's a choice that has been made several times over by most video collectors and I'm sure will be made again at some point in the future, possibly when 4k really takes off and iTunes and/or UV offer 4k upgrades from their previous 1080p only versions.

Comment Re:So more of the same then? (Score 1) 368

Never used iTunes for Music so can't answer that. I use 7digital for my music and haven't had an issue with them.

For movies I routinely purchase moves from Vudu, CinemaNow and Cineplex and since they are all UltraViolet compatible I can dl or stream any movies purchased from any of those stores through whichever app I happen to like best on whichever device I happen to be on. Unlike iTunes, I'm not locked into waiting for one store to have a sale, I can shop around multiple sites to find the best price. So when Vudu has a sale I might buy a new release HD movie from them for $9 and then watch it through the CinemaNow app on my Firestick or Roku or dl it for later viewing through Flixster on my tablet.

The other benefit is you can have multiple users linked to a single Ultraviolet library so if they purchase anything I can watch their movies too.

Comment Re:looks like Indians are smarter than us (Score 1) 75

By this logic no two companies can ever join in a beneficial partnership because every other company in a similar field isn't involved. Unless you're definition of 'harming' a competitor is doing a better job of marketing yourself to customers, I still can't really see the harm being done to tinyindiesite?

You still pay for your music service, you just don't get it applied to your data cap at a particular phone company. Yes, that allows Pandora users on T-Mobile to get more use of their phones/music but it doesn't prevent tinymobilesite from operating on T-mobile through any other ISP.

For the record, all the talk of t-mobile is moot anyway since any music service can register with them to be used without data restrictions. As someone else pointed out, a person managed to register his home computer to be his personal streaming service.

My point is that even if that weren't the case, it's not up to T-Mobile or Pandora to help tinyindiesite get a leg up. As long as T-Mobile isn't the only possible ISP through which tinyindiesite can operate and they aren't artificially affecting transfer speeds to affect tiny's performance then it's up to tiny to make their service competitive either through pricing, quality or making their own deals. Having the government step in to make things fair rarely if ever works out for the market and it's consumers in the long run. The government has some responsibility to provide protections (anti-dumping practices and such) but in general government involvement causes more problems than it solves. In fact there's a current Supreme Court case about raisins in which the government, to make things fair, want to confiscate 1 million pounds of a growers product, without any compensation, or have them pay $700k in fines, so that they (the government) can properly manipulate the raisin market. It's very similar to the Canadian Wheat Board which routinely forced farmers to let their crops rot instead of selling them for prices they (the government agency) deemed appropriate.

Comment Re: deflate gate (Score 1) 76

There is no record indicating how much the colts balls deflated as the NFL doesn't actually record initial inflation numbers, merely a pass/fail, so balls inflated to the max, losing a similar level of pressure would now be near the min but still pass. That and the colts balls were stored in violation of NFL rules, in front of the sideline heater means they weren't actually stored in the same conditions as the Pats balls.

For the record of all the deflategate balls, 1 lost 2lbs (mysteriously the only one ever in possession of the Colts), a few more lost about 1lb and most were just slightly below the min of 12.5. Real world tests show even the 2lb loss was possible with the weather conditions and normal ball handling procedures but a 1lbs or less is almost guaranteed. Even using the standard formula for air pressure, forgetting the ball has a rubber balloon inside and there are other factors in play, the temperature difference alone accounts for almost a .5lbs drop in pressure which would make every ball inflated to the league minimum show as under inflated before the first pass was thrown.

As I stated earlier, the early reports of all the balls being significantly below the league minimum came out of the Indy media who were trying to drum up the controversy, in reality, most of the balls lost less than a lbs of pressure.

At this point only Colt/Seahawks fans or just general anti-Pat'ers are still holding onto deflategate as still a thing.

Comment Re: deflate gate (Score 1) 76

Real world tests duplicated the deflation of the footballs exactly; no extreme heating was required, just normal handling. Even the calculations back up the pressure changes when correctly applied.

Oddly enough, according to the NFL investigation the only ball that was under inflated by a full 2lbs was the ball that was at one point in the possession of the Colts, all other balls were under inflated by factions of that. It's also been noted that a lot of the initial reporting on the 'scandal' came from Indianapolis sources and not the NFL. Simply put this was a non-issue that some people in the Indy media wanted to make a federal case. Even the players themselves admitted they were simply outplayed by a better team.

I don't even like the Pats per se, I just like watching exciting football regardless of what teams are playing. I do occasionally root against the Seahawks simply because one of my friends is a rabid fan and it's always fun to push his buttons. You are sounding very much like him right now when even when the replay of a call clearly shows the penalty was deserved he will argue it till his last breath.

Comment Re: deflate gate (Score 1) 76

Each team can inflate their footballs as they want. The officials just ensure that at the time of testing they fall within the accepted psi range.

The Patriots have already said they like their footballs on the low side of the range while the Colts preferred their footballs inflated to the maximum allowable.

Since the NFL doesn't track the pressures of the balls they inspect, just make sure that they pass, their is no indication that the Colts balls also didn't lose similar pressure during the game.

There are also pictures of the Colts balls being stored near the sideline heaters which is a violation of the rules and would also help account for any differences in relative pressure drops between their footballs and the Patriots.

All this is moot since in real world testing similar deflation was found. That and as is mentioned in another response, this only affected the first half and the Patriots scored 28 points AFTER their footballs were replaced/re-inflated.

As Dwayne Allen tweeted:

They could have played with soap for balls and beat us. Simply the better team.

Comment Re:deflate gate (Score 1) 76

If stating his conclusion was all he did than that would be fine but in his tweet he was essentially attacking the Patriots organization and accusing them of cheating.

When you are making accusations against a particular group or person you better double check your math and you shouldn't be surprised that there's blowback when it's shown that you were in fact wrong.

Comment Re:deflate gate (Score 1) 76

I think you missed a lot of deflategate. While Tyson and to a lesser extent Nye claimed what you say was required, it was shown the simple process of handling the ball in a regular fashion was more than enough to explain the discrepancies in psi. They were no extremes required, just simple normal NFL practices.

Comment Re:looks like Indians are smarter than us (Score 1) 75

And why is it suddenly T-Mobile or Panora's job to help TinyIndieSite.com? Neither are doing anything to prevent the service from running they just aren't giving it any of the special benefits that these two companies negotiated between them. You can still order TinyIndieSite.com's service, you just have to use your data cap to use it on their network like every other service on the internet and if it's such a great service then either T-Mobile will make a deal with them or one of their competitors will.

Companies enter into agreement like this all the time. Just because this is 'on the internet' doesn't make it anything special.

My cable company also has a partnership in a netflix like streaming service that I can get free if I happen to have the right internet package with them. It also shows up through their VOD service if I subscribe, bypassing all issues with download limits and bandwidth. Does that mean Netflix can complain because they aren't also getting that treatment? No. Why? Because I can also order Netflix and my cable company will stream that to me too without issue, I just have to pay the extra $8/mth to Netflix.

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