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Comment Re:The reason I don't like it (Score 1) 146

Playing catch-up made Google make some stupid decisions.

iGoogle was absolutely awesome. I resorted to making my own web page for a while, but then switched to a place called "NetVibes" While they are after a corporate "watch overall my stuff" type environment, carefully picking the apps to put on your page gives you a useful start-up interface.

Comment Re:Not going to use it (Score 1) 146

Anybody remember how the censored inages (and other search results) because of the evil of porn?

[citation needed]

There is plenty of porn on web search and image search. If something is missing, and you think it's deliberate, please explain what and why you think so.

Watching too much cranial-rectal-inversion porn or something?

Just last week, Google censored the fuck out of Blogger blogs with "porn" on them, then had to change the rules again due to people being pissed off about it, settling on "we didn't mean to delete it, here, you just have to hide it."

Do you even know what DejaNews IS kid?

Comment Re:Easy life (Score 1) 208

You'd have to browse Pubmed with blinders on to miss all the studies of how weight training leads to injuries. Just picking one author who writes about them, here's 1 2 3 4 studies on it. I only do body weight exercises now, and I count myself lucky that I only have one mild uncorrectable shoulder injury from my lifting days.

Makes me wonder if the studies controlled for crossfit idiocy or not.

Comment Re:Easy life (Score 1) 208

A sauna is like exercising, in that it's hot, uncomfortable, and you sweat too much. But the advantage is that you get to sit down and do nothing.

The sweat may be the key to this. Salt isn't bad for you, as long as you are pissing or sweating it out. Something that the "western world" folks do a lot less of during the course of their lives. Higher sustained salt loads in the blood and tissues may cause some harm.

Comment Re:Is that really a lot? (Score 1) 280

Americans have no interest in those jobs. I see no shortage of minimum wage, unskilled labor job postings here. Problem is most people think they're better than that.

They have no interest in those jobs because they are "under the table" and don't pay minimum, don't pay taxes, don't have work rules, and don't allow advancement.

The fact that the illegal is here, and can't work, means the job he takes is automatically depreciated to whatever he will take it for. If there were NO illegals, all those jobs would pay what the market is willing to bear, a lot more.

It absolutely fucking amazes me that the same set of folks who cry all over a "living wage" and want healthcare and unions and all that also want to torpedo the balance of wages by letting all the illegals in the country. It's almost as if, the democrats are... lying... to their constituents.

Comment Re:Nothing important. (Score 1) 203

Actually they are not. The one who are vaccined survive. The ones who aren't risk to die. The problem is for the minority of children below roughly 12 month, they are to young to be vaccined and if they catch the desease they might die from it. Everyone who actually is vaccined does not need to bother how many others are vaccined. Except if it is the postman, the milk man and another important servant who suddenly dies from an easily preventable illness.

I am not sure I am going to be too upset about an event that keeps the snotting, drooling, noisy, stinky, bulky, and slow crotch droppings from being dragged out into inappropriate public places all the time.

"Let's keep Junior and Juniess at home for the first several years cuz they might catch something and die" is OK in my book.

Comment Re:Overstamp twice. (Score 1) 133

No need for such over-complicated and over-engineered solutions.

Each gun already imprints a unique microscopic signature on a bullet and casing. Just submit a scan of a fired bullet and cartridge to a central database for each new firearm sold, where it's linked to the serial number. They're test-fired before use anyhow, so I'll bet the manufacturer could easily add a forensic-type scanner to the manufacturing process, likely completely automated as well. Then we wouldn't have to rely on serial numbers on the gun at all then. Any bullet in good condition could likely be linked with the serial number using that database.

Law enforcement already uses this technique, but can only perform matching tests if the gun or additional fired rounds are found. This wouldn't require any new technology at all, only new procedures.

Not really. Those "unique" qualities are only such for a limited time.

Using, or even cleaning, the firearm will cause them to change.

Someone wanting to use the firearm, and change it's ballistics characteristics needs only a few minutes with the a few tools. File, sandpaper, perhaps a punch.

If the gun is fired and then tossed, they can match them. Fired and kept and the owner wants to change it's profile, it's really easy.

Get yourself a firearm, and use it. Stop watching so much TV.

Comment Re:Overstamp twice. (Score 1) 133

If you do it stupidly, like put a "1" through an "A", it would be fairly obvious and narrow the search down.

Punching 1 through an A leaves the firearm with two possible choices in that digit. Do this for 9 digits, and you get 2^9 = 512 possibilities. Punch twice through each digit and you get 3^9 possibilities.

In fact, punch *all* the digits in each position, then file it down.

This will rapidly be entered into the "big book of best practices" for criminals.

And it's also a moot point, since easy access to guns reduces crime, and it's likely that 3-d printed guns will be easily available in the next decade or so.

(And so what if the 3-d printed gun is reliable for only the first couple or shots? That only means that you use your 3-d printed gun that took 2 hours to print and $3 to build a couple of times and then melt it down.)

It's also simply illegal (to various degrees in various states and jurisdictions) to have a serial number removed.

Knowing it goes only a little ways toward solving the crime it was used in.

On the other hand, it is VERY useful if you are a gun grabber and want to make a political point.

This particular technique has been known for over two decades. I heard about it in college.

Up next on slashdot! New device for putting on an axle to reduce friction of your cart! Carry heavier loads longer distances more easily!

Comment Re:Does the pit have to be straight down? (Score 1) 122

The article suggests that the earth's rotation would cause the dropped to hit the wall on the way down. So why can't the tunnel curve to account for this? Presumably it would curve the other way as it exits. It also suggests that going from North to South pole wouldn't work because of their relative altitudes, but is there an antipodal point where the altitudes are close enough feasibly go from one side to another - e.g. build a tunnel / raised platform to bring each side to the same altitude. I realise this is all completely hypothetical, bad movie remakes notwithstanding.

You are going to have to excavate quite a bit of material. It seems like that would be a handy thing to do, build yourself a shield volcano around the entry point to get above sea level. And then on one side, build a hill or cliff to make entry high enough on the near side to get to entry on the other side.

See, this is what happens when you let theoretical physicists dream about stuff. Sometimes you need less Dc Cooper and more M. Eng Wolowitz.

Comment Re: You sunk my battleship (Score 1) 439

First off, the new reactor have lifetimes of 30-50 with no refuel. Look up the S9G reactor. Secondly, within 5 years, China will have a navy with far more ships than america. Third, the world, esp america, is not at peace. For all intents and purposes, we are currently in WW3. Fourth, by going to small ships, you need a lot of them. In addition, by building them small, more single mission, it means much lower costs. Think of spacex with their new rockets and SATs.

LOL. 5 years?

It'll take them that long to steal the plans for such ships from other countries, let alone figure out how to build and run them.

China's economy is going to collapse for other reasons long before they get a chance to build a competitive navy. Yeah, they can dominate their little section of the world but they aren't projecting force any time soon with anything other than a big bridge made of human bodies.

Comment Re:Lasers are easy to stop (Score 5, Funny) 517

Ships can launch surface to surface missiles and torpedoes as well. Ships are still perfectly capable of killing other ships. They just don't line up and broadside each other with 15 inchers anymore.

Is it only me or does this really sound utterly gay?

To be fair, those ships are already full of seamen.

Comment Re:Bound to happen (Score 1) 619

Everyone running ad blocking software is not sustainable, since ads pay for a lot of stuff. People also don't want to have to directly pay for things (plus, could you imagine if every website was paywalled?)

Seems to me that the best solution is to just run unintrusive ads. People don't really mind ads all that much, they just hate it when they're noisy (literally and metaphorically) and get in the way

Until the unsustainability point is reached, nobody gives a shit.

How about this, YOU PAY ME to show me ads. I use that account to micro-pay for the content I want to see (without ads). This will be a de-facto support of the good or wanted content on the internet by the people who want to exploit the internet. Remember, my eyeballs are the PRODUCT not the target.

Then I can choose my level of consumption to fit my annoyance, and you get to stay in business.

Ads are not just annoying, they are a threat to the stability of the computer and the integrity of the data on it; therefore are also a financial and criminal risk to the person who user it. You can't tell me you've never had a friend or old relative get infected with some shit right? Ever hear of cryptoblocker? It gets in, through ad networks exploiting security holes.

Comment Re:Ask yourselves these questions... apk (Score 1) 619

Nice to see you're still pushing that.

The ad companies have already realized that they can set up *.adserver.com and dish out ads from an infinite number of hostnames. Some of them have even started setting up CDN networks using IP Anycast: pull a tiny file from the closest server by IP with the IP of the ad server to pull the final ad from, no hostnames at all. After all, it's not like a human is ever going to intentionally visit your adserver so why bother with a human readable hostname?

Hosts had its heyday, and there are still a lot of hidebound ad companies too big'n'slow'n'stupid to change that you can block so there's certainly merit in continuing it for now, but it's going the way of the buggy whip.

Maybe you should get a job writing a new hosts file driver for Microsoft that can handle wildcards and IP blocks.

Maybe a few of them. Maybe on the particular porn or torrent sites you frequent.

A relatively stale HOSTS file I use is still QUITE effective at blocking ads.

The next step, will be to set some static DNS settings up in HOST and then install and use a DNS server on which, I run authoritative zones for places I don't want to see. While more of a pain, it'll be more effective.

And when they register domains, it'll be blocks of IP addresses. They'll spend more money trying to get ads to my network than just taking the revenue hit of the three users ON my network will ever cost them.

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