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Comment Re:Just because something is a theory... (Score 1) 1218

Theories make all these electronics work, theories make radio/cellphones/broadcasting work. I took a weather class in college and found out there's three theories on why it rains.

I think you have that a little backwards. Theories don't make all of those things work, the fact that they work is evidence that the Theories are accurate.

Comment Re:year of the? (Score 1) 530

Yes. Long gone are the days of the toaster repair man. I know whenever a TV breaks I always call in a repairman to fix it. Same thing is true with printers and portable music players, both the CD kind from back in the day and the solid state ones we use now. I know if my iron started to short out I would certainly take it apart and rewire it rather then spend $20.00 on a new one.

Asking people to be able to repair a PC on their own is more like asking people to be able to re bore a piston than change an air filter. Changing an air filter would be like getting a new mouse or keyboard.

Comment Re:The big difference here is (Score 1) 679

If I had mod points I'd give them to you. The 90's is where Microsoft really began being oppressive, and no one really noticed at first. It wasn't until stories started coming out about hardware companies wanting to sell computers with Linux along with Windows that I really started hearing about the backroom deals Microsoft used to keep that from happening. By that time Mac was the only other choice at the consumer level.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 1) 251

Changing the wheels is actually a bigger deal than you might think. It can require altering the suspension, it does require alteration to the odometer (or a warning that the odometer is incorrect making the vehicle difficult to resell), and altering the speedometer.

I guess that's only if you change the wheel size, if you keep the same wheel size and just go for a different look then there shouldn't be an issue. Except maybe coverage of wheel related failures.

Comment Re:Only the rich should have health care? (Score 1) 842

Parent obviously doesn't know what he is talking about. The only reason we didn't have cancer in earlier times was because it had different names, not because it didn't exist. Also, it's not like humans are the only ones who get cancer. I didn't read any further then that to see what other BS he had to say for himself.
Encryption

Submission + - Flame uses a yet unknown MD5 chosen-prefix collision attack (arstechnica.com)

SpanglerIsAGod writes: We have confirmed that Flame uses a yet unknown MD5 chosen-prefix collision attack," Marc Stevens and B.M.M. de Weger wrote in an e-mail posted to a cryptography discussion group earlier this week. "The collision attack itself is very interesting from a scientific viewpoint, and there are already some practical implications.
The Military

Submission + - Drones, Computer Viruses and Blowback

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Michael Crowley writes that using drones rather than soldiers to kill bad guys is appealing for many reasons, including cost, relative precision and reduction of risk to American troops but there’s plenty of evidence that drones antagonize local populations and create more enemies over the long term than we kill in the short term. The failed 2010 Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad has said that about the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan and the Washington Post has described how drone strikes may be breeding sympathy for al-Qaeda in Yemen. "It is the politically advantageous thing to do--low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically and it is unpopular only in other countries," says Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence until May of 2010. "Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term." Now there’s another component to the new warfare that threatens blowback: cyberwar. Like drones, cyberweapons are relatively cheap and do their work without putting American troops in harm’s way. The blowback comes when those viruses get loose and inflict unintended damage or provide templates to terrorists or enemy nations that some experts think could lead to disaster and argue that cyberweapons are like bioweapons, demanding international treaties to govern their use. "We may indeed be at a critical moment in history, when the planet's prospects could be markedly improved by an international treaty on cyberweapons, and the cultivation of an attendant norm against cyberwar," writes Richard Wright. "The ideal nation to lead the world toward this goal would be the most powerful nation on earth, especially if that nation had a pretty clean record on the cyberweapons front. A few years ago, America seemed to fit that description. But it doesn't now.""

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