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Comment Re: PRIVATE encryption of everything just became.. (Score 1) 379

If you're throwing a large amount of encrypted data around then that will show up and make you a target, after all anyone who encrypts must have something to hide from the NSA and so they'll want to see what it is.

As the malware Regin shows - they route your data through other hosts known to you to disguise it phoning home - it phones your friends and asks them to pass the message on.

Comment Re:Why does the isotope ratio of one comet matter? (Score 1) 135

Also the life on earth has been processing the water for a few million years - splitting the water to be make sugars and splitting sugars to make carbon dioxide and water. The ratio in water we have now is due to the water from life (I'm avoiding the Dune reference with Water of Life :-) ) which is based on the availably hydrogen in the environment which is attached to hydrocarbons and other molecules as well as water. I think they physicists need to talk to a biologist about the facts of life :-)

What we do know is that the Kupier Belt bodies (which is the source of this comet and others with the same ratio) absorb a lot of neutrons to make the deuterium found in them.

Comment Re:There is no single "fair" value. (Score 1) 602

Fractional Reserve banking is one of the main drivers of inflation due to the "creation" of debt out of nothing.

You can have a bank making loans without being fractional reserve - they can loan LESS than the about of deposits. eg. $1k deposited, bank lends $500, rather than $10,000. The depositor & bank only risk 1/2 the original deposit rather than 10x the amount. This have the bank creating no money and so no inflation. It also means there is less "money" in circulation, but the risk of debt and a financial crash is removed as all the deposited money doesn't vanish if no loans are repaid.

Comment Re:These are real engineers, you Ruby weenies. (Score 3, Informative) 197

Actually there have been a few years of tests of Orion leading up this.
Tank drop tests to see how it lands in water and how well it floats afterwards.
Parachute drops out the back of planes to test the parachutes and descent characteristics.

This is just the combined test where all the features are tested together - think of it as the first beta with the individual feature tests as being the alpha testing.

Comment Re:Knee-jerk... (Score 1) 256

This is in the UK - so there isn't the "fine and points" rather than "court case". The "fine and points" is the court case - with it goes up to disqualification and jail time. Even if you plead guilty by post, your case will have been "to court" to be processed.

The accusation is a roadside breath test followed up by 2 further breath tests at the police station, or a blood test. The station tests are those which are used for the charges. You are shown the results of the tests at all stages.

Its not as if there aren't taxi, public transport or other forms of transport available to get home from a night drinking.

Comment Separate firewall box blocking traffic (Score 1) 131

Why do these places get hacked like this?

Secure work done on a non-networked system.
The networked system is routed through a firewall (running on a different OS, so no Windows everywhere) where only traffic to specific locations is permitted.
If you want to visit a "suspect" site then start up a disposable VM running a different OS containing a browser, connect over a VPN to a less tightly controlled exit point, and use it then dispose of the VM when you're done.
Do everything possible to block admin/network shares, and remember - not everything needs to be connected to the internet.

End users want easy everything then complain when their easy systems are compromised.

Comment Re:How will I explain this to my children (Score 1) 131

They don't say whose standards of behavior they are adhering to.
Its only really on the standard of "a legal democracy with full disclosure" where they fall down so pick anything else and their statement is true.

National security interests - these include anything which affects the US position in the world so thats the economy, communications, military advancements, technological advancements, scientific discoveries, etc. So any industrial espionage to benefit American industry is OK by the NSA. So is ensuring that those pesky Europeans don't invent any extra secure encryption to keep the Americans out of their communications. If Disney lobby the government, then protecting Mickey Mouse is in the national interest (as its a key symbol of American freedom).

Comment Re:PR screwup (Score 1) 523

They even the landing was "if possible/survivable"

Some of the non-scientist media journalists keep trying to play it as the lander failing. The clued up journalists and the scientists keep pushing the extraordinary data they've got back from the lander. Also they point out that they've managed to re-orientate the lander so that when it gets further into the solar system they should hopefully be able to pick up enough light to waken the lander and continue collecting data.

Rosetta is old news - we started orbiting the comet months ago.

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