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Comment "Native" mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and J... (Score 1) 47

FTFY.

Until the boffins at Intel or ARM create a processor whose machine code is JavaScript, you need bullshit quotes around that 'native' claim.

If you want to make the argument that you don't need native code, that's your prerogative. Depending on the use case and requirements, you will no doubt be correct in a large number of cases -- I don't need a native slashdot app, the HTML version is quite sufficient.

But why in God's name do you need to make a preposterous claim like that? What does that buy you?

Comment Because the Titanic really wrecked ocean travel .. (Score 1) 186

"They don't want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can't let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public."

Puts and end to all of what? Did we stop ocean-faring after Titanic sunk? What is this guy talking about?

Comment Reminds me of TRESOR (Score 1) 222

No affiliation, but this sounds like a good reason to move to TRESOR-like implementation in which the AES key is kept in hardware registers that are cleared when you go to S3 and on each reset. It's still vulnerable to anyone that gets root access to your OS, but a cold-reboot attack or a DMA attack on the RAM are not going to work -- so that's some forward progress.

Anyone want to take a stab at porting it to TrueCrypt?

Comment Re:Islam (Score 1) 169

You should really start referring to them as "my opinions of how the 4th amendment works". As far as I can tell, not a single practicing or academic legal authority has ever endorsed this construction.

Now, of course, it's a free country -- you can represent your views however you want. But you don't get to pick your facts and you definitely don't get to reinterpret the law just because you don't like it (hellooo segregationists).

Comment Re:Regulations a bit premature (Score 1) 1146

The problem is that many of us rent or otherwise occupy a dwelling for a much shorter period of time than the lifetime of these bulbs. So either you've got to convince my landlord (or the next tenant) to pay me for the remaining lifetime on the LED bulb (how can they measure that, we don't know) or else I've got to swallow it when I move somewhere else.

The time horizon of these things is just way too long to make sense except for those already fairly stable in where they are.

Comment Re:News for Nerds? (Score 2) 586

You seem to have misunderstood the point of insurance. The way it works is that you pay more than you need to most of the time on the off chance that something goes horribly wrong.

The issue is that the vast majority of spending doesn't go to "the off chance something goes horribly wrong", it goes to treating a very small fraction of people with multiple chronic conditions. That's not catastrophe insurance, it's continued expense.

Since you made the analogy to homeowners insurance, it's the difference between having your house burn down once by accident and living right in the middle of a dry forest that periodically burns down. Insurance will cover the first case without issue, but in the latter case you simply won't be able to get homeowner's insurance because the company figures out that they aren't so much insuring you against a random chance of disaster but signing up for continued upkeep of a house that's nearly certain to burn down again.

Comment Re:good riddance (Score 1) 146

What 23andMe does is market a product that you use to extract unique information about your own body, which is then presented to you in the form of suggestions about what health measures you should take -- in other words, medical advice. Very different.

So does the local palm-reader.

The point appears to be that you can provide medical advice if you are completely unscientific about it, but as soon as you try to offer even a little bit (even of experimental or tenuous) fact, then you have to go whole hog.

Comment Re:Freedom of thought (Score 1) 392

This is in Germany. They have a different history than we do in the US. You will find laws like that in France and other nations that where under Nazi rule. They are a democratic nation and it is up to them to change their laws if they see fit. Canada also has laws about hate speech that would not fly in the US. The US never had Nazis in control of our nation so we feel the best protection is freedom of speech. In many places in the EU they do not feel secure in that. The US has stricter restrictions on porn because of our culture. Although the restrictions are really very minimal outside of broadcast TV and radio.
I hate when a bunch of people from Europe start spouting off options about the US's rules. Germany is a free nation so let it's citizens decide what works best for them.

This line of logic might be fine for Nazis, but ultimately it has the problem that "a free nation" is not just a statement about the derivation of rules but also about some meta-rules that govern the process of rules-formation itself. This is sometimes called constitutional (not in the capital-C sense) or meta-political ordering that goes beyond the individual policy choices. One of those meta-political rules that I think has merit is that, irrespective of the democratic nature of the process, no body-politic ought to be able to suppress organized dissent or prevent those from offering a contrary platform. Otherwise, I think you (in general, not in Germany ever) risk the run of falling into the "one-man-one-vote-one-time" trap where a democratically elected government is able to use the levers of power to permanently embed itself.

Ultimately, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

[ FWIW, I don't think there's anything wrong with (polite!) normative comments about contrary policies abroad. I have no problem when people from Europe say (respectfully) that they are bewildered by American support for the RKBA and that, if they were the voters here, they would not chose such a policy. I disagree with that, but they are entitled to their opinion and no one should begrudge them that. ]

Comment Re:clemency? (Score 1) 504

. Before it's done, it will become clear that the House and Senate oversight committees were either derelict in their duties or complicit in illegal activities. They either knew or they didn't. Either way, eventually they will be the ones asking for clemency.

Huh? I don't agree with the behavior or the votes of the Intelligence Committees but it's hard for me to accept that this constitutes some sort of criminal act because I disagree with their (vile) politics. This is getting perilously close to criminalizing legislators over holding divergent views about the proper role of secrecy and surveillance. What happens if some next neo-con administration accuses the SSCI of treason over denying some operation or publicizing some classified fact?

Is it no longer enough to disagree with our political opponents that we have to accuse them of criminality at every turn?

Comment Re:Slashdotted content (delete when available agai (Score 1) 465

Why would someone who supposedly fears the police send an unencrypted e-mail acknowledging that heâ(TM)s a member of an Islamic group that is trying to change the government of Iraq?

Why would such a person also provide his full name and how long heâ(TM)s been in the country?

So that if you refuse to do business with him on equal terms with Americans, they can sic the DOJ on you for discrimination in a public accommodation.

After all, it's illegal to refuse to do business with Mr Aghazadeh based on his religion or national origin.

Comment Re:Sunrise (Score 1) 545

That's not efficient with respect to the marginal utility of an extra hour of light. Imagine that following set of preferences from winter to summer solstices. At the marked point, we would "naturally" (if we left things as they were year round) get another hour of daylight in the morning -- since light gets longer symmetrically from noon.

8H: 8AM-4PM
9H: 8AM-5PM
10H: 7AM-5PM
11H: 7AM-6PM
12H: 7AM-7PM =====
13H: 7AM-8PM
14H: 7AM-9PM

The underlying issue of our asymmetric preferences cannot be wished away without adjusting where the solar zenith falls with respect to noon.

Comment Re:I don't see the problem (Score 1) 545

There is a perfectly rational reason for it -- the additional light we get from longer days in the summer is not distributed according to our preference. The marginal utility of adding an hour of light between 6-7PM is much greater than adding it from 5-6AM. Unfortunately for us, as the days get longer, they get longer equally in both directions from noon (the zenith).

Picture this, it's the winter solstice and the daylight is 8-4. Now someone says "where is the best place to add an hour of light, at the end or the beginning?" -- at first it's equal -- the first 2 hours bring us to 7-5. But after that, the utility of adding 6-7AM is much less than adding 5-6PM, since people aren't going to wake up an hour earlier to take any advance of the former. Similarly for 6-7PM and so forth.

Our preferences are not symmetric, the natural extension of light is. DST fixes that.

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