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Comment Re:Why is it even a discussion? (Score 1) 441

WE get nothing at all. But the Congressmen supporting these bills get nice fat cheques from the big corporations who see net neutrality as a threat to their business model (especially those who make their money through the old legacy business model of selling linear channels instead of the new consume-what-you-want-when-you-want business model that entities like Netflix use)

Comment Re:UAC - A Double Edged Sword (Score 1) 187

The only times I tend to see UAC prompts are for software installs/update, changing system or privileged settings (e.g. anti-virus settings), running certain older software (games mostly) that need admin rights for some reason or running certain pieces of software that legitimately need admin rights to do their job (e.g. Process Explorer or the tool that I use to log GPU calls for a DirectX app)

Comment This should be no different to physical documents (Score 3, Insightful) 100

The feds cant use a warrant obtained in the USA to require a US based company to hand over physical documents stored in a foreign company, why should they be able to do it for electronic documents?

If the feds REALLY need this data so badly, why dont they just go to Ireland or wherever the data is being held and get a warrant from there?

Comment What SHOULD have happened... (Score 2) 629

What SHOULD have happened in this case is that the kid should have been given a few days of detention. All of the teachers should have been made to change their passwords, not type them in when students can see and not let students use them. And the student body should have been given a warning that anyone caught messing with the computers or using the teachers passwords will get a few days detention.

If the same student re-offends (and continues to mess with the computers) they can then be given a suspension.

Comment 3D printed guns are no different to any other gun (Score 3, Informative) 245

3D printed gins are no different to any other home-made gun.

It doesn't matter if its 3D printed, machined with a lathe, hand-forged by a blacksmith or made on a production line, its still a gun and is still just as illegal or legal as any other gun (depending on what sort of gun it is and what jurisdiction you are in)

Comment What I want to know is... (Score 3, Insightful) 136

Why all the stories I hear about mass-lawsuits over piracy seem to be for crappy films like Dallas Buyers Club and that Hurt Locker thing.

Why hasn't Warner Bros filed a mass-lawsuit over piracy of the new Hobbit film? Or what about a lawsuit from Universal over the latest Fast & Furious film.

I am sure there are films out there that have been pirated a LOT more than Dallas Buyers Club (a film I hadn't even heard of before the lawsuit showed up) so why aren't we seeing these kinds of mass lawsuits on those films? (or if those lawsuits do happen, how come they dont get as much attention as the ones we hear about like this Dallas Buyers Club film?)

Comment Makes no sense whatsoever (Score 2) 460

The number of people saved over the years by pilots doing things with airplanes that no computer system (or remote operator) could ever have done vastly outnumbers the number of people killed because of deliberate actions by pilots.

Examples of such heroic flights where lives may not have been saved without pilots in the cockpit include:
US Airways Flight 1549
British Airways Flight 9
Air Canada Flight 143
British Airways Flight 38
Northwest Airlines Flight 85
TACA Flight 110
United Airlines Flight 232
Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 8

Comment Re:Not many devices (Score 1) 56

Canon digital camera with CHDK (Canon Hack Development kit for adding new features to Canon cameras) should be able to do this if someone was to write the code for it.

So it has a camera, its programmable and it (at least the Canon PowerShot SX130IS sitting next to me anyway) has no network connectivity.

And its probably easier to find a camera that is supposed by CHDK than to get hold of an ancient PDA AND a camera dongle for it.

Comment Re:If no deal, then Iran *will* get nukes (Score 1) 383

The whole point of this new deal is that A.The US and its partners aren't trusting the Iranians to keep their side of the bargain, they are verifying that they will via inspections and enforcement and B.If the Iranians do anything to break the deal (build facilities they aren't allowed to build, start producing uranium enriched beyond the level allowed by the deal, kick the inspectors out or whatever else) the sanctions and other things will be re-imposed even harder than before.

Unlike what the opponents to this deal (Israel, some in Congress, others) would have you believe the options are not "this deal" vs "a deal that gets Iran to give up their nuclear program completly", its "this deal" vs "do nothing and let Iran continue to move towards a nuclear weapons program"

Comment Won't work in many countries (Score 1) 42

Here in Australia (and probably in many other countries too) you have to undergo a complete identity check before you are allowed to open a prepaid phone account.

I am surprised the USA still allows you to obtain a phone number that has absolutely zero records indicating who obtained it. But I suspect companies like TracFone and AT&T that sell a lot of these prepaid phones don't want to have to deal with the ID checks and have been able to lobby the government against them.

Comment Re:Oh For Crying Out Loud (Score 2) 161

There are JavaScript (and other client-side-but-in-the-browser) implementations of all kinds of encryption algorithms out there. The mega.co.nz site does client-side encryption before uploading to the server (so they never get the plaintext)

I see no real reason why you couldn't have a client side/browser extention/JavaScript/whatever implementation of something like PGP/GPG where the private keys never get seen by the web mail provider (it would mean each device you want to send email from has to have its own copy of the private key stored somewhere though)

Google and Yahoo already have in-browser addons in development that are designed to do client-side end-to-end encryption in the browser for their email platforms.

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