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Comment Re:Typo: Digital Rights Management (Score 1) 371

So you want complete freedom of expression as long as others agree with your vision.

There's no such thing as complete freedom of expression.
We naturally put limits on expression to prevent assholes from taking advantage and causing us all grief.

Some people see DRM as part of the assholes who would cause us grief.

Comment Re:Backwards much? (Score 1) 200

But, honestly, with the bullshit "we can do a border search at an airport and within 100 miles of the border", they probably figured they didn't need to.

They've already been told they have search powers that are effectively unconstitutional, but some how magically legal.

There's nothing bullshit about the border search exception.
It was defacto law before it was dejure law and it was done before The United States were United.

Yes, 100 miles from the border is nonsense, but the basic principle existed long before the Constitution did.

Comment Re:"xenophobic fascist" (Score 1) 1097

The others aren't just prepared to murder Wilders. They want to abolish democracy and replace it with sharia law, and kill the Untermenschen i.e. the unbelievers.

Please don't try and conflate Islamic fundamentalism and the Nazis.
Untermenschen does not mean "the unbelievers" it means "the under-man"

The American who first used the term in the context of inherent inferiority, which is how we understand it, said thusly:
"This term is The Under-Man the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives."

That same year, he also published The New World of Islam where, if you glance at the chapter titles, you'll notice he calls Muslims "Bolsheviks."
Unsurprisingly, this is the same label that the Nazis attached to the Jews in an effort to slur them.
(And no, Bolshevism and communism are not the same as national socialism. The Nazis weren't commies.)

Comment Re:Liberty (Score 3, Insightful) 1097

Reliance upon the government to protect you after you have insulted someone is not freedom

What exactly is it that you think Government does?

Because collective security is the most basic function of Government.

As an example, if you insult the King of Thailand, the only thing keeping the Thai government from crossing borders to take you in for prosecution is your government.
Or do you think you can defend yourself against the resources of a nation state?

Comment Re:Money (Score 3, Insightful) 140

At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.

HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.
Ticketing cheaters serves that end and is not exclusively about monetary gain for the State

So yes, you are being cynical, though I wouldn't take off the tin foil hat.

Comment Re:Very expensive (Score 1) 299

They make deep cycle lead acid batteries for (mostly) boats. Typically they last 5-6 years in a marine application and you can drain them to about 10% without problems

Not sure why you'd want to go to a lithium based technology in a stationary application.

Lithium batteries have much higher charge and discharge rates.

And while you *can* discharge lead acid batteries down to 10%, you *shouldn't*.
The best lifespan is with a cycle that only goes down to 50%.
A 10% discharge cycle leads to significantly shorter lifespans for lead acid batteries.
This is not the case for lithium technologies.

Comment Re:"Close" Only Counts (Score 1) 342

Yeah, they were 'hands on'

That was a philosophical choice made by NASA: pilots should have as much control as possible over the systems.
Sort of like the design choice made by Boeing to let the pilot override the automated systems and break the airplane if he wants to vs Airbus limiting the max g-forces a pilot can generate.

It didn't hurt that Eisenhower told NASA to only recruit military test pilots for the Mercury program.
While NASA no longer exclusively recruits test pilots, they still make up a large portion of recruits.

Comment Re:This sh*t again? (Score 2) 247

Antitrust isn't really about consumers (although arguable it is ultimately) but about making sure the free market is both a market and free.

You should have prepended that sentence with the qualifier "American"
In Europe, anti-trust philosophy and regulation is most definitely focused around consumer welfare.

If you re-read the reporting a bit more carefully, the problem with Google's actions is not that it is bad for competition, but that it is bad for consumer welfare.

This is a major difference in thinking between Europe and the USA.
There are other large differences, particularly as a result of the EU's need to integrate markets across its member Countries.
That need to integrate was never a factor during the formation of the USA's anti-trust policies.

Comment Re:People are tribal even when they don't realize (Score 5, Informative) 247

And if you think that it's wrong of EU to investigate an American company, think about it this way:

Google is a European company.
Actually, many European companies.
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/

Google's European headquarter is in Ireland... well, actually, it's an Irish company that is headquartered in Bermuda.
Google USA licenses its IP to Google Ireland Holdings (headquartered in Bermuda).
In turn, Google Ireland Holdings sub-licenses the IP to its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands: Google Netherlands Holdings B.V.
Then Google Netherlands Holdings B.V. sub-sub-licenses the IP to another Google Ireland Holdings subsidiary: Google Ireland Ltd.

To coordinate all this, Google has a network of corporations in individual EU States, usually just "sales support" staff who run the ad-sales and ad-placements.

TLDR: The EU can't break up Google USA, but they can force Google Ireland Holdings to GTFO or change the way it offers services in the EU.

Comment Re:Clickbait-ish Headline (Score 1) 121

If you have no robots.txt telling them what you want them to ignore, they put it all in the index.

A quick search kicks back FTPs with robots.txt in the root directory.
allinurl:ftp:// XXXX robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

It doesn't really seem like Google is indexing the FTP.
Instead Google seems to be crawling through and only indexing txt, doc, pdf, html, xls, xml, aspx, rtf, etc.

If Google was indexing ftps, a search like intext:"Up to higher level directory" inurl:ftp:// XXXXXX.net should kick back folder directories, but it doesn't.

Comment Re:Offsite... (Score 4, Informative) 446

If you plan on having the medium survive your house burning down, it'll either have to be something really exotic(CNCed cuneiform tablets?) or something boring inside a sufficiently fireproof safe (which can get costly; but are a well recognized product category).

Fireproof safes (actually fire resistant) are not what you want to use for storing electronics or cd/dvd/bd media.

You specifically want a fire resistant "media" or "data" safe.

The difference is that "fireproof" safes are intended to prevent paper from charring/burning, so their design allows for internal temperatures that are high enough to cook your electronics. Media/data safes maintain a significantly lower interior temperature (and humidity), which safeguards your relatively fragile electronic hardware.

And it's not just enough to avoid high temperatures, your safe needs to be sealed against gasses.
In a home fire, you have all types of corrosive and unpleasant chemicals that are created from burning plastics, toilet cleaner, etc.
Those chemicals will generally attack any metal and plastic that they come into contact with (YMMV).

TLDR: You get what you pay for, so get the right thing.

Comment Re:Crossed lines (Score 1) 166

So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.

I'd love to see a fight between Big Oil and Big Insurance, because Big Insurance's profit margins are driven by data and not ideology.
No amount of Oil Industry pressure would let them accept a bad legal precedent which could screw with their long term 12%~15% profit margins.

Not to mention that the insurance industry is a very.... entangled business community.
Almost everyone who issues insurance policies is also hedging their risk by buying a reinsurance policy from one or more (re)insurance companies.
It's never just one insurance company that you're suing.

Comment Re:April Fool? (Score 2) 289

That's an interesting read. While nothing in the order says criminal penalties it mentions the laws which apparently let one person rule by diktat so I expect that they specify the penalties.

Isn't that the entire point of emergency powers? The order specifically says "national emergency."

Anyways, let's look at the laws that are cited:
Termination of existing declared emergencies: 50 U.S.C. 1601
Unusual and extraordinary threat; declaration of national emergency; exercise of Presidential authorities: 50 U.S.C. 1701
General authorization to delegate functions: Section 301 of Title 3
Inadmissible aliens: 8 U.S.C. 1182(f)

Presidential authorities: 50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)
Banning entry to aliens covered by the order: section 1 of Proclamation 8693 of July 24, 2011 [really long name] (PDF)
Critical infrastructure definitions: Presidential Policy Directive 21
Reporting requirements to Congress on spending for emergency orders: 50 U.S.C. 1641(c)
Reporting requirements to Congress in general for emergency orders: 50 U.S.C. 1703(c)

The only ones that I think worth quoting are:

50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)
  (b) Exceptions to grant of authority
The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly--

  • (1) [not what is cited]
  • (2) donations, by persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, of articles, such as food, clothing, and medicine, intended to be used to relieve human suffering, except to the extent that the President determines that such donations
  • (A) would seriously impair his ability to deal with any national emergency declared under section 1701 of this title,
    (B) are in response to coercion against the proposed recipient or donor, or
    (C) would endanger Armed Forces of the United States which are engaged in hostilities or are in a situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances; or [2]

8 U.S.C. 1182(f)
  (f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.

If the war on terror never ends, neither will these emergency powers.

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