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Comment Re:That's the way the cookie crumbles (Score 3, Interesting) 455

In the US this would almost certainly be considered 'fair use' because it is commentary on OP's original work.

The US four factors test for fair use is largely met:
Purpose: The authors of this video have added significant commentary that was not present in OP's original work.
Nature: They are using OP's video not as a creative work, but as statements of facts to support their commentary.
Portion: They used a large percentage of OP's video, but not all. This might be an item in your favor, but since this video is low res, they used as little as they could to make their point.
Market: They are not likely to have reduced the commercial value of OP's video.

So this seems to me that this is 'fair use' of OP's video. The commentary they present is certainly utter rubbish, but the law allows people to use evidence from original works as evidence for their arguments, even rubbish arguments.

OP has already posted a comment that attests that this is an unauthorized use of his original video. That taints the authors and their message. I am not sure that any further action improves the situation.

Comment UltraVNC SC (Score 1) 247

I've been using Ultra VNC Single Click http://www.uvnc.com/pchelpware/sc/index.html for years. It only works with Windows, but it is small, open source, and relatively secure.

1 Your support client calls you
2 You open VNC in listen mode
3 Your support client runs a custom version of UltraVNC SC that is set to connect only to you.

Easy. Fast. Cheap. And it works.

Comment Re:public safety (Score 1) 457

So, the auto industry is still making Pintos with exploding gas tanks?

Companies can and do meet the desires of their customers when there is competition and independent data for comparison. I agree that companies do abusive things when they believe that they will not be caught or can not be economically forced to change (monopoly), but the auto industry makes cars that are much safer today largely because many consumers buy safety.

I value human life, but I understand that people make choices about safety every day. While a government regulated minimum safety level may be good public policy, companies can and will provide the safety their customers demand if customers have choice and data.

You can certainly believe that every company will screw you each chance that they get, but that level of pessimism about the actions of others will not guide you to a better situation. Certainly the article here is saying that the TSA has said "oops" with people's lives many times. It is only a lack of terrorist intent that has kept these government failures from contributing to loss of lives.

Companies are certainly out to make a buck, but perhaps the problem here is a willingness to accept government incompetence because of a fear of corporate incompetence. Personally I would rather let corporations handle security screening because the economic pressure has the possibility of making security a selling point. Economic and consumer pressure has little to no effect on government security.

Comment Re:public safety (Score 2) 457

Lets look at safety history.

In the auto industry, the government moved first to require seat belts and passive restraints. After all the public would never buy a car with safety features. But ... after many years, we did start to see cars advertized based on their safety features. When the public values safety and can look at independent data (government crash tests, insurance claim rates) they can and do make decisions where safety is a factor and sometimes safety is the deciding factor. So a free market of security features can occur where there is competition and independent data. (The government still sets a minimum security level, but car makers routinely exceed it because it helps them make money.)

In the air line industry, El Al still runs their own security independent of the TSA. Their customers have a choice and deliberately choose to use an air line with higher security.

So tell me again, why is it that free market economics cannot drive effective and increasing security?
Google

How Good Software Makes Us Stupid 385

siliconbits writes "The BBC has an interesting article about how ever improving software damages our ability to think innovatively. 'Search engines' function of providing us with information almost instantly means people are losing their intellectual capacity to store information, Nicolas Carr said.' This sadly convinced some journos to come up with wildfire titles such as 'Google damages users' brains, author claims.'"

Comment Re:Hit or Miss (Score 2, Informative) 149

What a waste. Even the first page has an obvious error:

the tool kit dropped by astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper during a spacewalk in 2008

That tool kit re-entered the atmosphere in August of 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidemarie_Stefanyshyn-Piper#Lost_tool_bag_during_spacewalk Come on guys. Do some fact checking.

Government

The Upside of the NASA Budget 283

teeks99 writes "There are a lot of articles circulating about the new changes to the NASA budget, but this one goes into some of the details. From what I'm seeing, it looks great — cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going: commercial space transportation; keeping the ISS going (now that we've finally got it up and running); working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we can go off to the far flung places); automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit). Quoting: 'NASA is out of the business of putting people into low-earth orbit, and doesn't see getting back in to it. The Agency now sees its role as doing interesting things with people once they get there, hence its emphasis on in-orbit construction, heavy lift capabilities, and resource harvesting hardware. Given budgetary constraints and the real issues with the Constellation program, none of that is necessarily unreasonable.'"

Comment Re:Spin-off bicycle Technology (Score 1) 67

So what you are saying is that instead of investing in space technology so that we can see spin-offs in other areas, we could be investing in bike technology that spins-off to space technology.

That's not how it's suppose to work. It's suppose to be only space that has spin-off technologies. /sarcasm

We really need to realize that any tech that pushes the envelope will have spin-off technologies.

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