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Comment Re:Going Cable! (Score 3, Insightful) 135

I live in a city with a good team with a decent fan base -- BUT we usually hear on the local news about the looming blackout threat most weekends.

Personally, I'm like 'Fine, whatever... no better way to lose MORE fans than by preventing your local supporters from seeing the game'.

Plus, maybe I'm a cheapo, but I consider the tickets, parking, food, etc. just too d-mn expensive to make it worth seeing it live. If they made the games more affordable for a family, maybe they'd have better luck filling seats.

[As an aside, I'm a bit disillusioned with the NFL these days, especially protecting some crapastic people like Rice & Peterson among others, so I don't really care if the NFL struggles or not]

Comment Re:summary (Score 1) 201

Good summary, the whistle blower is EXACTLY the kind of person we, the citizens, need at the Fed, and as it turns out, she is the type of employee who will have the shortest career at the Fed. It sucks.

Comment Send them into traffic (Score 1) 46

... seriously, sent the texting/chatting group into a lane that walks them right into traffic. That way, you address China's population problem, and you remove lots of idiots from the genepool (hopefully), or at least take out some of those who endanger the rest of us (I can only imagine how those types drive...). The one's who don't walk into traffic survive their Darwinism test.

Submission + - Hackers Can Control Your Phone Using a Tool That's Already Built Into It (wired.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A lot of concern about the NSA’s seemingly omnipresent surveillance over the last year has focused on the agency’s efforts to install back doors in software and hardware. Those efforts are greatly aided, however, if the agency can piggyback on embedded software already on a system that can be exploited.

Two researchers have uncovered such built-in vulnerabilities in a large number of smartphones that would allow government spies and sophisticated hackers to install malicious code and take control of the device.

The vulnerabilities lie within a device management tool carriers and manufacturers embed in handsets and tablets to remotely configure them. Though some design their own tool, most use a tool developed by a specific third-party vendor—which the researchers will not identify until they present their findings next week at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The tool is used in some form in more than 2 billion phones worldwide. The vulnerabilities, they say, were found so far in Android and BlackBerry devices and a small number of Apple iPhones used by Sprint customers. They haven’t looked at Windows Mobile devices yet.

Submission + - Ask SlashDot: What should the NSA be able to do without a warrant? (newamerica.net)

LessThanObvious writes: We have a general consensus in the U.S. and abroad that says the NSA has overstepped their boundaries in data collection and surveillance. The costs to liberty, free speech, privacy rights as well as economic and foreign policy costs outlined in the New America Open Technology Institute July 2014 Policy Paper — "Surveillance Costs" have been broadly discussed. It seems now that there is enough political inertia post Snowden and enough economic incentive to make changes to protect U.S. competitive position and international trust relationships for real change to come about. It is also pretty much a given that an organization like the NSA with a multibillion dollar budget is not going to simply dry up and blow away.

In a world where we are trying to defend our nation and others around the globe from highly sophisticated cyber-crime, cyber-attack and serious terror threats at home and abroad, it does seem that the NSA and other agencies have a legitimate role to play. Let's imagine a world where the NSA and other agencies rewrite the rules of when and where information could be collected, allowing for adequate transparency and protections for U.S. and foreign individuals rights. How can we find the needle in a stack of haystacks if they are no longer permitted to disturb the haystack?

Now under those circumstances what should the NSA be allowed to do without a warrant?

Comment Jackson should critique the black community first. (Score 4, Insightful) 514

This is not a racist rant, but a realistic look at some of the issues Jackson might want to address within the black community first before taking his usual stance of blaming everyone else:

72% of black kids born out of wedlock (compared to 17% for Asians). The Rev [cough] Jackson himself had an affair & fathered a child with another woman.
Double the unemployment rates of whites (roughly 5.4 to 11.5% as of last month)
Why doesn't he talk about the negative affects of hip-hop culture (glorifying violence, promoting misogynistic attitudes to an extreme, promotes wealth through any (often illegal) means)
On average, African American twelfth-grade students read at the same level as white eighth-grade students. 54% of African Americans graduate from high school, compared to more than three quarters of white and Asian students. [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/too-important-to-fail/fact-sheet-outcomes-for-young-black-men/]
50% of the murders in the country are committed by black men, who comprise only 6% of the total US population. NEVER talks about, but will spend endless hours race baiting over a single case like Martin.
Look at the murder rate in Chicago, his home town (and the perps)

As a liberal myself, Jackson's race baiting and racial profiteering sickens me -- he only uses his racial politics to advance his own ego and fatten his wallet. He hasn't been a civil rights leader in decades in my opinion, he's a self serving jerk who actually promotes racism, a dependence culture and victim mentality. He's done more damage to the black community than good, but is such a smooth talker, his fans don't see it.

Comment What I DON'T want it to do (Score 1) 427

- broadcast my location to anyone
- store any personal information (or at least allow me to have total control over what is stored)
- be hackable
- require me to charge it like a cellphone, fuck that, I want it to last for a year+ like a regular watch
- require the presence of my phone for its functionality
- act like a Dick Tracy gadget, there's enough asshats talking out loud via Blueooth et. al.

Honestly I'm not interested in a 'smart' watch, to me I see it being mainly just another piece of tech that people will be f*cking with when they should be watching the road, or making eye contact while talking to the person in front of them.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 210

Love the childish condescending tone. Some of us actually like to OWN what we buy. If I like a movie I will get in DVD/blu-ray because I don't have to worry about the cloud, licensing, proprietary this or that, some clause on the 37th page on the EULA etc. Shockers... I even still buy CDs for music for the same reason.

Comment Proporionate to other UK sentencing laws? (Score 1) 216

Anyone from the UK care to comment. Because I never thought of the UK as being draconian in their sentencing (if anything, a little light on some crimes).

What's the sentencing range for serious crimes like rape, aggravated assault, attempted murder, or causing serious bodily harm, etc? I mean do people get life for causing serious injury in the UK? I doubt it, so why does a football hooligan not get life for beating someone severely, but equivalently hurting someone with a computer merits life? Sounds like the UK it taking a lead from the US (and that's not a compliment)

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