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Comment Re:This looks like a failure waiting to happen (Score 1) 243

The intent I fully and whole-heartily agree with... However, 2% of _world_wide_revenues_ is what concerns me. I'd rather see it phrased as 2% of world-wide revenue apportioned to user base / affected users (affected or not by breach).

Hence, the larger the breach, the larger the fine. I could easily see Company A arguing to US regulators : "We shouldn't have to pay for US users as the EU already fined us for everyone.".

Comment Why spread the vile? (Score 5, Insightful) 699

Why do people help these people spread their vile?

Posting stories on Slashdot / Putting it on CNN is only helping them get what they crave : Attention.

Some problems are best ignored - then they'll fade away out of frustration when they realize they're not getting the attention.

Blah blah - free press - I get it. I'm not asking for a law but common sense to take place.

People love dirty laundry - D. Henly.

Comment Re:not going to find it (Score 1) 361

If you legitimately own a copy on some medium, medium-shifting to another one is legal, just like you can rip your own music CDs to mp3s.

Incorrect, at least under U.S. copyright law. RIAA v. Diamond, 98-56727 (9th Cir., June 15, 1999) (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1054784.html), the seminal case on the issue, found a fair use in "space shifting" music to MP3 players, but did so under the auspices of the Audio Home Recording Act (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap10.html), which carves out specific exemptions applicable to sound recordings. No such provision(s) exist for video game ROMs, in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.

So... there's an exemption for Music but not for everything else so you read the negative into it? Generally, in case law as I understand it (not a laywer) - the absence of a case proving a poiint can't be inferred to prove a point.

Comment Re:Mortgage Backed Securites (Score 1) 1040

My only comment to this is hindsight is 20/20. The problem with statements like this is that they very obviously weren't at the time. Not just from the rating agency's point of view but many economists were feeling the same way. There were a few economists who cautioned against them and had them correctly evaluated but they were far from the majority and even then most of their opinions were hedged with speculative language.

Oh come now - just because there is a bunch of stupid economists that couldn't apply prior historical behavior to the situation at hand that makes those economists ones that should be excused? The housing bubble showed all signs of being a bubble. Any time a commodity rises as quickly as houses were you're guaranteed you're in the middle of bubble.

History is always 20/20 in terms of analysis. However, history serves some great examples for understanding what is going on today. Those who forget history are doomed to *u*k it up over and over again.

Comment Re:Surely (Score 1) 73

we already ruled out the sun as a driver of climate change, so the only conclusions are that the people of Saturn have been producing too much greenhouses gases, and thus destroying their planet. ipso facto, there are Martians on Saturn.

Martians? I thought there were too many cows.

Submission + - 1st International Flight for Solar-powered Plane (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: Solar Impulse is on standby for its first international flight this week. Brussels has been chosen as the destination for the first venture outside Swiss borders, which follows the solar powered aircraft's maiden flight and first overnight flight last year and will mark another important step towards the goal of flying around the world in 2012.
DRM

Submission + - Fox, Paramount may skip YouTube due to lack of pir (electronista.com)

mr100percent writes: Fox and Paramount have supposedly backed out of YouTube's imminent major movie service in an attempt to force action on piracy. Unofficial comments from the two claim that they won't get onboard as long as Google is indexing pirate video sites in its search engine and allowing them AdSense placement. Disney, not mentioned before, was also leaning the same direction, The Wrap said.

Comment Re:How Amusing (Score 1) 195

So... my formulas were off but in the end there were more solutions than I had thought reasonable :

I've starred lines where I think the assumption mac
windows linux mac
10002 133 7593
10282 254 7192
10562 375 6791
10842 496 6390
11122 617 5989
11402 738 5588
11682 859 5187
11962 980 4786
12242 1101 4385
12522 1222 3984
12802 1343 3583
13082 1464 3182
13362 1585 2781
13642 1706 2380
13922 1827 1979
14202 1948 1578 **
14482 2069 1177 **
14762 2190 776 **
15042 2311 375 **

Comment Re:How Amusing (Score 1) 195

Oh how I find this quite amusing. (Snapshot from when I was at the payment page)

  • Total payments: $92,658.36
  • Number of purchases: 17,728
  • Average purchase: $5.23
  • Average Windows: $4.13
  • Average Mac: $6.55
  • Average Linux: $12.15

Anybody care to run the figures and find out the % breakdown for each OS category?

( 4.13w + 6.55m + 12.15l ) / 17728 = 5.23

for some numbers w, m, l.

Comment Re:and in the usa you pay up to $0.25 per text for (Score 1) 573

AFAIK, It's pretty much always been free to block SMS. I've done it on all cell plans I've had (various carriers over the past 10-12 years). They don't like to advertise / push it - but if you ask how they'll certainly tell you and it's not complicated.

After all, you should be in charge of your bill - not somebody spamming you w/ SMS texts.

My wife and I use google talk to get around lack of SMS, which ironically probably costs the telco more but costs us less.

Comment Re:Absolutely spot on (Score 1) 419

I'd become evil in an eye blink. Deep within my lair I would tie people to by horrendously over engineered table and unfold my nefarious plots to educate people about how bad their sense of editing, spelling, grammar and story selection are.

"No Mr Samzenpus, I expect you to learn"

...tie people to my horrendously...

There - fixed that for you since you're doing such a good job as a villain.

Comment Finally!! (Score 1) 77

This will allow me to call my hot girlfriend who is just waiting for me on the other end of the line. Now I can do it via VOIP.

When I tell her about she'll be so enthused - I can just imagine her response now.

[ insert response below ]

Comment Re:That is the modus operandi (Score 1) 373

Actually 2 bit encryption has 4 keys : 00, 01, 10, and 11. I believe you're thinking of 1 bit encryption.

Depending upon your function to encrypt and what it does, having a 1 bit key doesn't make things necessarily any easier or harder. There may be additional values associated with the encryption algorithm which adds to the encryption complexity (eg: prior lookup on the past x+key bits that have been encrypted ).

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