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Comment Re:BYOD means I/T loses some control over it (Score 1) 377

Besides that, one data leak and it's the CEO's who's job will no longer exist.

Maybe. Maybe not. It depends upon how well he (or she) can spin it.

And the easiest way to spin it is to blame you.

So if you're having trouble getting the CEO to support the "NO BYOD HERE" policy then start hunting for a job with a more informed CEO. Leave that job and that CEO to one of the BYOD advocates. Let them deal with whatever loss happens.

... I'll have another job by next week anyway.

Maybe. It depends upon how high profile the loss is. It's easier to get a different job BEFORE the story about how the company lost $500,000 because someone in Accounting brought in an infected laptop and the CxO's and BoD are all claiming that it was your fault. Be proactive.

Comment Re:Detective story (Score 1) 44

But Gaiman never claimed that it was "new". And I'm sure that if you asked him he could give you a dozen or more references that he pulled from for that.

The problem is when you take something as obvious (and done multiple times) as a detective story with supernatural elements and call it "new". It shows a lack of research.

There's even a TVTropes page dedicated to the sub-genre of detective-vampire.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VampireDetectiveSeries

Comment Bad, bad feeling about this one. (Score 1) 44

From their answers:

Michael Reaves: ... I can't really comment on the "Twinkleteeth" style of vamps, because I haven't seen any, ...

It's only the most successful vampire franchise at the moment.

David Raiklen: It's time to give old myths a new spin.

Look at the book sales and movies. There are easily a THOUSAND different interpretations of vampires out there right now. What will be different about YOUR "spin" that hasn't been done over and over already?

Michael Reaves: Well, how about just plain people, instead of overblown Transylvanian counts?

You mean like in every vampire story EXCEPT Dracula?

David Raiklen: ... And there's nothing supernatural about our vampires.

So you'll have a different origin story for the first vampire and they won't have a problem with crosses and they will reflect in mirrors and so on.

Unless they don't reflect in mirrors in which case you'll have to explain how a non-supernatural (does that make it natural?) breaks the laws of physics.

Comment Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score 5, Interesting) 127

Just a few points:

Also note that despite the claims of the Muslims that Allah is the God of Abraham, this claim must be false when scriptures are compared.

Except that they both use the same original scriptures. Islam just adds on the words of their prophet similar to what Christianity does.

Similarly, when scripture is compared the Islamic "Mehdi" pretty much has the characteristics given of a Christian Anti-Christ (there is more than one, this one just happens to be the one most detailed in Revelations).

Except that the concept of "anti-Christ" does not exist in the original scriptures. Only in the addendum of the Christians.

I'm an atheist so "have no skin in the game", I'm just giving a comparison of mythologies since that comparison is not known even to most religious and educated people.

The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer. So comparing three mythologies that do not make sense to each other will not result in any insights except that they are different.

From your link:

Are we to assume that just because the Quran states that Allah is Yahweh of the Bible that both Jews and Christians are obligated to believe this to be true?

Are you obligated to consider MY fan-fiction to be canonical? Am I obligated to consider YOUR fan-fiction to be canonical? Particularly when the ORIGINAL material was a "shared-world" effort with lots of individual contributors who dealt with a lot of allegories and parables and such.

Yet, the Quran teaches that Allah is the author of evil:

When you have a monotheistic religion where EVERYTHING was created by a single omnipotent, omniscient god then arguing about whether that god created "evil" or "sin" is kind of silly.

Whomever wrote the link that you linked to has a religious point-of-view.

Comment Re:Thoughts on Vampire rules? (Score 1) 103

But with the newer stuff, their abilities are amped and their weaknesses are nerfed. Why not?

Exactly. You get eternal youth (at whatever age you "died") and all kinds of extras in exchange for a literal blood thirst. Which may or may not require you to kill a person (depending upon the writer) or animal.

So what effect would that have on society? And when did it start?

Are there "good" vampires and if so, why aren't they converting some of our best scientists? Why aren't they our space program? Stake them on Earth, send them to Mars and have a machine pull the stake. No need for food during the trip. Be the first vampire to see Saturn up close and then turn the ship back to Earth. How many astronauts on Earth would willingly "go vampiric" to do that?

Comment Re:Thoughts on Vampire rules? (Score 2) 103

Do you feel that we should stick more with the classic mythos? Or are you in favor with your own spin.

The problem would be FINDING the "classic" vampire. They've been changing ever since they were first invented. Mostly because the person telling the story needed a certain feature set for that story.

I'm not saying anything against Michael Reaves. But the main problem with most of the stories is that the reality created by the writer is inherently limited to the knowledge of the writer. So there are usually huge plot holes such as "if vampires are so cool then why wouldn't everyone want to be a vampire" or "if vampires are so powerful then why do they have to hide".

Comment Re:Minor difference at best (Score 2) 129

All excellent points. And there are still more.

#1. Unless your password is "password" or some variant AND the site does not limit password attempts then "password strength" isn't that important.

#2. You are more likely to have your passwords compromised by using a cracked computer or by falling for a phishing link.

#3. If not #2 then when one of the sites you use is cracked and their username/password file (unhashed, unsalted) is stolen.

Also, why can't a site tell you what the requirements are PRIOR to you having to come up with a username/password/secondary-password/pet-name/school-name/maiden-name-mother?

Comment Re:Seems familiar (Score 1) 121

The part that annoys me is:

The example given is around shark attacks. While the risk of shark attack is extraordinarily low, the media often makes it seem like an epidemic, and the gullible populace overreacts. The authors give many examples of where people don't comprehend risk and statistics. The authors note that people buy lottery tickets, often described as a tax on the mathematically disinclined, despite knowing the odds.

So if you misjudge a shark attack, you keep all your limbs and you have one fun day at the beach. Otherwise you might end up dead or crippled.

But if you misjudge the lottery, you lose the few dollars you put into it. Otherwise you end up with a lot more money than you started with.

They are not at all similar. At least not until you get into "gambling addiction" and phobias.

Comment The opposite. (Score 4, Insightful) 149

uh... I've always thought that to gain any meaningful stats, you need a large enough sample...

That works for trends. Not for the actions of individuals.

From TFA:

Rather than thinking of intelligence as a simple connect-the-dots picture, think of it as a million unnumbered pictures superimposed on top of each other.

He's a bit wrong there. It isn't a million unnumbered pictures. It's one picture per person in the country at the time. That's over 300 million pictures. Each one overlapping millions of other pictures.

uh... I've always thought that to gain any meaningful stats, you need a large enough sample...

And after a certain point you are just amplifying the "noise". And enough "noise" can appear to be a pattern.

It is only after an event that the "noise" can be filtered out and the extraneous pictures discarded.

Comment Re:After the fact... (Score 3, Insightful) 149

The additional data allows a more solid case to be built, and makes it easier to find co-conspirators.

Yep. So the "compromise" could be lots of data collected but only kept for a short time (weeks, not years).

On the other hand, the frequency of any threats is so rare that do we really want to erode our liberties like this? Is regular police work just not capable of "connecting the dots" without this kind of surveillance?

Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.

Comment Re:God made it. (Score 1) 197

Are you telling me that the galaxy isn't full of people who grow lumps of rubber on their heads?

Who happen to breath the same combination of gases and who are comfortable in the same temperature range and gravity range.

Not to mention the inter-breeding. So much inter-breeding.

But that's what happens when you have writers who know more about getting a job writing for a show than they know about science.

Comment Re:God made it. (Score 1) 197

As that was a plot point in Star Trek Enterprise.

I think that the main issue is that people see the TV shows and movies and think that "life" has to look like that.

But those are just theatrics so that human actors can play the parts. Look at the variations of life on Earth. From whales to worms.

The Universe is so large that it cannot possibly be that we are the only life thriving on a planet orbiting a star.

It's not just whether there are other civilizations out there. It's also whether either of us would develop technology that the other would be able to understand or recognize as signals AND broadcast them during the time when they could be received AND with sufficient power to be received.

Comment Free advice for Amazon. (Score 2) 66

Drop the idea of "TV show". They've been done and you probably do not have any better ideas than the networks have.

Instead, look at the books you're selling. Create "mini-series" type programming from the literature that is already out there. Focus on story arcs where you can have a beginning and an end.

The Black Company by Glen Cook.
Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust.
A steam-punk version of Doc Savage.
Perry Rhodan.
Neal Stephenson either The Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon.

Go big. Bigger than the networks. Bigger than the movie studios. Fill the niche they aren't willing to.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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