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Comment Re:What's so bad about it... (Score 1) 210

Ever use VNC or something like TeamViewer or GoToMyPC? Ever have a virus that copied your keystrokes or screenshots and sent them off to some server somewhere? Ever see a picture on the net where someone had something on their screen that was embarrassing? How exactly do you plan on ensuring the decrypted message doesn't get copied? A system having it's own viewer does nothing to help the system. The only thing it helps with is fooling people into believing their messages will be erased.

https://www.google.com/search?q=snapchat+screenshot&oq=snapchat+screenshot&aqs=chrome..69i57.2441j0j7&bmbp=1&sourceid=chrome&espvd=215&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

Comment Re:What's so bad about it... (Score 1) 210

A company that makes a peer to peer protocol to send encrypted messages where the key comes from multiple clients (and each client will not send the piece after the expiration date) is going to make money.

This has nothing at all do to with an erasable internet. You've described a system where someone has a time limit to view information, and if they fail to view it then it's destroyed. Anything that can be seen or heard can also be copied, so once it's decrypted and visible it no longer matters that there's a time limit.

Some firm that uses decent cryptography will make a mint just assuring people that a conversation has a high chance of staying stays private and vanishing after it was done.

This is not possible. You do not have control over the recipient's system so there is no way to ensure it's actually erased. It doesn't matter how much encryption or protection you use on a message. Once it's decrypted it's out of your control and the recipient, or anyone with control over the receiving device, can do anything they want with it. Even if you did create an easy to use system of encryption, those keys would be stolen and shared just like passwords are.

Comment Re:Then Fire Him (Score 1) 509

It shouldn't be hard to believe that they couldn't function without the mass collecting of data that they do. Before the internet and cell phones bad people had to plan bad acts using paper letters and landline phones. Do you not think those were being monitored back then? Way back in the 80's I remember learning about that spray that turned paper translucent so they could read what was written without opening the envelope. I remember learning about the system that listened to every phone call made over copper wires that could pick out certain words and notify someone if key words were said in a phone call. I also remember learning that a really long time ago, a past President authorized the copying of telegraph messages for the sake of national security. The reason he doesn't know how to do his job without collecting data from everyone is because that's how they've been doing thier job for generations. We're now asking them to stop doing something they've been doing for decades. Go back and watch "Enemy of the State" which was made in 1998 and see how much of that stuff turned out to be real. The problem isn't so much that the data is being collected. It's that there's no oversight and rampant abuses of that data.

Comment Re:Can someone please explain ... (Score 4, Interesting) 658

I work in the trucking industry and we already pay gas taxes per mile per state. Your claim that we could just collect odometer readings is grossly over-simplified. Nobody is "trying" to over-complicate anything. It is by it's nature a very complicated concept that there are no simple or cheap solutions for.

A state cannot collect gas taxes for miles driven in another state. If you live in Oregon on the Washington border and do most of your driving and buy most of your gas in Washington then you're already paying gas and road taxes. If Oregon taxed you by your odometer then you'd be taxed twice for the same thing from two different states. That would be like buying something from Amazon and paying sales tax from the state the warehouse is in and again for the state you're in.This leaves you with two solutions. Either trust the driver to log how many miles they drive in each state or you install expensive equipment into every single vehicle to automatically track those miles. If you go with a device you also have to figure out how to make it perfectly reliable, impervious to GPS/cell blocking, and it has to be very cheap. When we had big satellite domes on our trucks the drivers would throw a metal pail over it when they wanted to drive somewhere without it being logged. You've got to create a system that cannot be defeated by something as simple as wrapping the module in foil. Do you really think we're going to create a massive system where everyone's car is inspected and scrutinized to make sure it's working? How do you tell that someone hasn't just taken the foil off right before going to have their GPS monitor checked? The bottom line is that you can't.

In the "old days" the driver would have to keep a log of his odometer reading each time he crossed a state line. That log came back to the office where someone would have to enter all those numbers into a spreadsheet and calculate the number of miles driven in each state. Those numbers then went to each respective state's revenue office where taxes were calculated, then we paid them. If he missed a number it was a pretty good chunk of work to figure out what it should have been based on his route and the previous and next odometer readings. Today it's a lot easier now that we've got GPS/Communications on all of our trucks. We pay a service to scrape the GPS data and auto-calculate the miles driven in each state. It's more accurate but it still isn't perfect but the states have agreed to just go with those numbers unless there's a big discrepancy somewhere.

Do you have any idea what it costs to do this? Do you have any idea the hundreds of thousands of dollars this costs a company to do for a fleet of just a few hundred trucks? For us we get so many benefits from having GPS and comms on a truck that it's worth it. We can monitor the ECM data and pull data like fuel mileage so we can spot a truck that's getting 3mpg instead of 5 or 6. The fuel savings there alone are huge. We can also monitor events like a hard brake so we instantly know if a driver somewhere slammed his brakes on. If it weren't for all of these benefits there's no way we'd spend the money it costs to do it all automatically and we'd still be collecting paper logs from the drivers.

This is one of those ideas that sounds great as an idea, but the reality is that it's impossible to actually implement.

Comment Re: Speed? (Score 1) 67

With this technology, latency will be the least of your issues. 237.5GHz is in the upper EHF range and have a very short range because they get blocked by pretty much everything from molecules in the air, smoke, fog, rain, snow, humidity, and physical objects like walls and trees. In areas with high humidity you'd be lucky to get a signal to travel more than 1km and you still need line of sight. You won't be replacing fiber with this anytime soon.

Comment Re:time to impeach (Score 1) 223

So party A does illegal things then Party B takes over and continues doing illegal things while expanding the number of illegal things they do, then later Party A gets back in control and keeps doing those same illegal things and adds even more illegal things, and your solution is to tell everyone to support party B?

Comment Re:second hand e-smoke (Score 1) 314

It's only heated to between 150F and 250F. Any hotter and it tastes burnt. Ethylene glycol is not used. If there were issues with PG being heated then fog machines would be illegal and hospitals would have never installed vaporizers in their ventilation systems. The only arguments that exist here are the false ones made by big tobacco fearing the loss of tobacco sales, by big pharma fearing the loss of Chantix and nicotine patch sales, and by corrupt politicians fearing the loss of tax revenue.

Comment Re:second hand e-smoke (Score 1) 314

Before linking ANY study you have to do some research. This is a very controversial topic with a number of very powerful players trying very hard to make sure e-cigs don't interfere with big tobacco profits and with tax revenue from tobacco sales. You have to check and see where the research came from and who paid for it or you'll find yourself helping big tobacco and corrupt politicians.

The study that found those substances was one of the very early ones done a number of years ago when the only source of vape juice was China, and some of the samples they bought were poor quality. The other part you missed about that study was that only trace amounts were detected and they weren't concentrated enough to cause harm. There have been a rather large number of studies done since then and the reputable ones have shown that PG/VG is completely harmless. Nicotine has also had a large number of studies done on it for some time and it has about the same negative effects as caffeine, though it is addictive. The flavors are food additives that have been proven safe and approved by the FDA for years.

It really is pretty simple though to see whether or not they're safe. The ingredients are simple and have been around for years. There's nothing new here that needs to be studied any more than it already has. If PG wasn't safe then hospitals wouldn't be piping it into their ventilation systems and it wouldn't be used in asthma inhalers.

Comment Re:No (Score 4, Informative) 253

Sure there is. http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/services/prosupport/computrace?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukbsdr3 Computer will ship with the Laptop Tracking and Recovery software agent and a persistence module embedded in the BIOS. The software agent can survive operating system re-installations, hard drive reformats and even hard drive replacements. When a lost or stolen computer connects to the Internet, the software agent contacts the monitoring center to report the computer’s location. For systems with GPS technology included, Laptop Tracking and Recovery has the ability to capture and report more detailed location information. It also provides the ability to track your laptops as they change hands or move around the organization.

Comment Re:Good for you! (Score 5, Interesting) 314

I'm an ex-physics major in my 40's and regularly hang out with 20-somethings who are studying chemistry, physics, and programming. Something I noticed that totally and completely shook the earth I stood on was how much smarter they actually are than people were when I was 20. Kids today grow up with insane amounts of information at their fingertips. They don't have to open an encyclopedia to learn something not taught in school, and they're not limited by the half-page description in that encyclopedia. They were exposed to complex and detailed facts about the world that were nothing more than fantasy or religion two or three decades ago. Their brains grew up with so much information that their brains learned to cope and understand it all in ways my brain never had the chance to do.

The one thing though that I have over them is experience, caution, and patience. I have the ability to do something right the first time even though it takes me longer. They are faster but it takes them more tries to get it right and many times my one try is much faster than their 10 tries. You've got to use what you have to your advantage. If my boss needs something done quick-and-dirty style he asks one of the younger people. If it needs to be perfect he asks me. We all have a place here and by combining all of our strengths together as a team we kick some serious ass.

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