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Comment Certainly not first, certainly not 15 minutes, etc (Score 4, Interesting) 106

Saw a similar, amateur setup in the tiny harbor of my hometown, NeuchÃtel, Switzerland, maybe, huh, 10 years ago?
Unfortunately the 8+ different cellphone charging cables provided weren't rugged enough for an outdoor/public setting, and I suspect that frequent damage is what eventually decided the owner to eventually, er, shall I say, pull the plug.

Also, re charging time: common Li-ion takes 2~3h for a full charge, 15 minutes may be a 80-to-90% top-off...

Comment Re:Ah well. (Score 2) 123

My bet would be a company into something like Flash-based SANs, with marketing guys not interested in the original meaning of IO.com but betting that such a catchy domain name will convince people they really care about IOPS, and/or to try and be perceived as the next big player in that field.
We'll see early enough anyway -- too soon I'm sure for everyone using on io.com today, sadly.

Comment Re:"Ownership of information" is quite clear. (Score 1) 102

...then I'm sure you don't mind sharing your financial details, medical history etc with us, your boss, insurance, etc... It's already electronically available somewhere anyway, right?

(and we're back to the whole "if you have something to hide" debate. I personally side with Schneier on this, privacy is a necessity: http://www.schneier.com/essay-114.html)

Comment Re:IPv6 Mess -- or is it? (Score 1) 551

Sorry, djb's rant is just bs. Was he just venting because he didn't invent IPv6 or something?

Nothing prevents a server from simultaneously serving both v4 and v6 clients. DNS publish both A and AAAA records, clients pick whatever they support.
It's a one-time setup for admins (but yes, too bad, they have to configure those IPv6 addresses somewhere).

Even easier for end users, most won't have to do anything. The "magic box from the ISP" one day answers DHCP (v4), rtsol (v6) and DHCP6 requests, so v6-capable devices (all recent OSes) get v6 connectivity; no change to the v4 part... except more NATing over time probably.

Doesn't look like a particularly painful transition if you ask me.
Granted, it would be better if it didn't require collaboration from ISPs, esp in the US...

Comment Re:Actually a good reason for it (Score 2) 217

during DDOS-attacks there is just to much state for the firewall to handle.

Sorry, this is wrong for all except maybe the most stupid firewalls out there.

A decent firewall will not only handle a lot more connections (or attempted connections) than any server can, it can also use a range of mitigation strategies should things start to get hairy, such as weeding out states selectively/faster, outright dropping anything unusual or matching any known-bad behavior, falling back to SYN-cookies (which don't require any state to be kept) and only forwarding traffic after completion of the TCP handshake (only allowing connections from non-spoofed addresses), adaptive per-IP/subnet/network rate-limiting, etc...
Heck, firewalls from reputable companies are devices designed to handle and resist attacks, and are tested accordingly. Regardless, while those will weather DDoSs fine, they can't magically prevent your pipe from being saturated either...

TFA completely misses the point too IMHO. Worthless.

Comment Re:Chemical battery efficiency is quite poor (Score 2) 347

The typical chemical battery used in hybrids have very poor efficiency. ...

Source please? Last I've heard, Nickel-based chemistries (early hybrids such as the Prius use(d?) Ni-MH) achieve 90% charging efficiency if fast-charged (that is, the battery stores 90% of the energy provided to it). And Li-ion's charge efficiency reaches an impressive 99.9%.
While compressed air may have many advantages over modern batteries, charging/discharging efficiency is unlikely to be one of them.

Comment Re:Very serious this. - E911 (Score 1) 76

Trusting Skype "fortunately-nobody-does-it-like-us P2P" for an emergency call? Well, at least it might get you a Darwin award... :/

As POTS replacement, I use (and would recommend) JustVoip coupled with E911 service from SIPgate (and a tiny UPS for the ATA and router/modem) => true emergency dialing for $2/mo.
Plus, naturally, others calls remain way cheaper than Skype given how many SIP providers there are to choose from...

Comment Nucular, really? (Score 4, Insightful) 361

So Stuxnet chatter is still observed around the planet, including in Iran and the US. Duh.

Now how exactly does this "expert" come to the conclusion that, somehow, activity from the US etc must be from infected home PCs, yet the same from Iran must be from some seekret uranium enrichment plant, which typically wound not be connected to the internet?

Oh, my bad, forgot, this comes from ScareTV... Never mind.

Comment Re:Nothing to see here (Score 3, Insightful) 214

At the end of the day, if you don't commit a crime, the presence of a camera will not affect you.

Wrong. It affects everyone, in a lot more ways than you think. Simple example: visiting any "embarrassing" place (medical facility, sex-shop, late movie, badly rated restaurant or bar...) is perfectly legal, yet I bet most people would behave differently if the footage of a camera at such places entrance was publicly available and/or archived forever, instead of only kept by the owner and for a short time.
More arguments against that stupid "If you have nothing to hide..." line

Comment Re:Surveillance = False accusation (Score 2, Insightful) 214

Well, unlike you [White Shade] I feel that so-called wholesale surveillance, if left unregulated, even "just" in public places, would become a threat, a violation of everyone's right to privacy and dignity.
Today we have cameras. To prevent crime we're told (but studies seem to indicate that doesn't work). UK especially. More and more, networked, centralized. With now Joe Sixpack watching too (brilliant, really). Plus license plate OCR to enforce traffic restrictions, with such info logged to some big-ass database and cross-referenced to car owners details. Software also tries to analyze and pick "suspicious" behavior. Next is facial recognition (too unreliable today, but technology only improves). All in all, logging everyone's moves relatively cheaply seems doable in a not-so-distant future.

Now would you consider a detailed list of all the places you went to (e.g. stores, bars, relatives, friends, doctor's office, lawyer...) free for anyone to look at (your spouse, your ex, your boss, your parents, the government...) or just your own damn business?
Where do we draw the line?

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