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Comment Define compliance the correct way (Score 1) 332

So you have a heart beat going on that is continually saying "I have been served with a *letter*", when you are told you can not tell anyone you have been served such a letter/request/command from on high --you comply --by stopping the lie. Now everyone knows the truth.

How does one get in trouble by compliance?

What the judge is going to rule you had to continue to lie, after being told not to?

This shit is damage, the net should route around it, the net is an artifact of the people that build their corner of it, so build a graceful failure into it --just good programing.

Comment Does anyone here think the SR is really gone? (Score 1) 620

It's now a trifle over 24 hrs since this story hit /.

If you can't located the new site(s) you should possibly consider surrendering your geek card.

And, as predicted by many here, there seem to be several (and growing) more SR style sites propagating through dark net, even as I type this.

Just as the king always lives in one form or another so it is with that which supplies a demand.

Dread Pirate Roberts is dead, Long live Dread Pirate Roberts.

All that was really accomplished was some advertizing to people that had no idea dark net, or the Silk Road existed.

Well it did, it does, and it's growing more outlets --thanks largely to the three letter agencies.

Comment Maybe the Higgs is just a statistical fluctuation (Score 1) 190

New data presented at a conference in India shows no new signs of the Higgs. The signal was probably just a statistical fluctuation."

Has anyone considered that the Higgs may actually be just a statistical fluctuation, a mathematical artifact required to both satisfy the symmetry of the fundamental particle structure and at the same time insure the uncertain nature of... well, nature.

I know this may sound like (and it may actually be) a silly question, but I am serious in asking it.

We have had to learn to deal with (if not fully understand) the dual particle/wave nature of light. Could we be looking for something that has a similar duality, only in this case of being both a mathematical construct but one that while having no physical existence still may mediate in physical ways with special particles like quarks?

Could such a thing exist (if exist is the correct term), even if the Higgs is not such a thing?

I'm not looking for religious based replies, I'm just considering the possibility (or not) of such a strange duality of an interacting but non physical thing existing (being present without physical existence?) and possibly even being measured, much as we do with the things we accept as having rather strange dual natures, like light.

Sorry for the probably poorly expressed concept, but it's the best I could do --if you can see what I'm trying to formulate a description of, and have any insights into the condition I'm trying to describe, I'd really like any edification anyone can offer --except religious explanations. I'm just looking for thoughts on the scientific possibility of could such a dual nature interacting concept (not a thing, just a concept of a thing mathematically expressible to a useful enough degree to make falsifiable predictions about, existing). The language is not helping me at all --how does one express the possible existence of a non existing, but interactive thing?

Comment Re:Possibly the person that developed the film (Score 1) 335

You make an interesting point. I'm guessing the fineprint when you signed up said you handover "non-exclusive, worldwide royalty free" permission to /. to use as they please (or suchlike). So essentially this is the only copy of you work, and you already have one licensee to it. But you cannot get rid of this work, and you cannot unlicense it.

Exactly the way I saw it... I am but one of /.'s million monkeys and even if I 'own' my post, I can never issue a takedown... How odd to think of myself as just another monkey, exactly like the ones in TFA --but then I agreed to this state of affairs and the monkeys are simply unaware (of such human foolishness). But they sure look happy --possibly there is a lesson we should pay attention to, lurking somewhere in this...

Comment Possibly the person that developed the film (Score 1) 335

might have a copyright claim, if not superior to the monkeys, at least it could be argued to be the first enforceable position in creation of copyright of the images.

That brings up a question I've always wondered about --at the bottom of every /. page it says:

"Trademarks property of their respective owners. Comments owned by the poster. © 2011 All Rights Reserved. Geeknet, Inc."

If a poster can not edit or remove his post, how can he possibly own it?

Much like the monkey I may 'own' this post, but exactly like the monkey I have no say in it's future after I hit the submit button. So who really owns it? I don't think it's me...

Comment Local information and link (Score 3, Informative) 135

I own some property in Pahrump (but don't live there, although I'm there quite a lot). So I can tell you the level of technical savvy in Pahrump is unbelievably low.

Even basic things, like fairly well established 'net conventions have not penetrated very far. For example, many local Gov. officials send all caps emails (but then so does a fairly large % of the local populace).

Nevada in general, and Pahrump in particular, are among the nations lowest ranked in education. The Nevada educational systems are in desperate need of overhaul.

It is also worth noting that when arrested in his University of Nevada, Reno dorm, he had a stolen TV and equipment for making counterfeit drivers' licenses.

Here's a link to the local paper, with pictures and local comments; http://pvtimes.com/news/grade-change-scandal-rocks-pvhs/

A quote from the comments by "3rd year Engineering Student":

@Isaac- I don't know the kid so I can't comment on his actual personality in different situations. It is unusual to have a smile when being arrested for a felony charge. Also hacking a system is really just the same as getting a code to access it without authorization. He also "hacked" when he changed his GPA. Given he actually did these things, he would be considered a "Black Hat Hacker" which is the worst type of hacker(there are good hackers like web designers). You need to check the definition of a hacker.

I think "3rd year Engineering Student" may need to check some definitions himself... but the pathetic part is that no one questions his expertise, or the definitions he offers.

Pahrump is a nice place in many ways, but it's also a lot like stepping back in time in many ways. The population is about 35,000, and it's about 50 miles from Las Vegas.

Comment Zero Day win32.elop.trojan (Score 3, Funny) 329

I wish I could take credit for this, but it's from a comment by "eMPee584" over on the http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/12/nokia-new-strategic-direction-what-is-the-future-for-qt/ (Blog link from the summary).

I think it just sums up the situation succinctly:

"Nokia got trapped by that win32.elop.trojan."

Has look and feel of a Zero Day exploit, and is creating that sort of confusion as well.

One could easily say it's not Zero Day, but then all ZD's are developed quietly over time and simply 'sprung' on the unsuspecting and unprepared innocent victims one day. Pretty much what happened.

QT has merit, and if the merit is good enough, and I think it is, it will have a strong future... just probably not with Nokia. (and yes I am a GNU/OSS/FLOSS fan boy, just not a zealot about it).

Anyway much credit to "eMPee584" for such a fine summation (assuming he was not quoting some one else, without attribution).

Comment Undetectable murder (Score 1) 280

The worry here should possibly be that someone, with essentially off the shelf hardware and software could conceivably commit the perfect murder --car component failed, deadly crash issues.

Get rid of your mother-in-law and maybe collect insurance and big settlement because some sensor or CPU 'malfunctioned'.

Not saying the tech is there yet, but I'd wager it will be soon enough --and that someone will attempt it eventually (possibly successfully --how would anyone know?).

Submission + - X Particle Might Explain Dark Matter & Antimat (wired.com) 1

cold fjord writes: Wired Science has a story on a new theory that tries to explain dark matter, and the balance of regular matter with antimatter. This theory may even be testable.

A new hypothetical particle could solve two cosmic mysteries at once: what dark matter is made of, and why there's enough matter for us to exist at all. ...Together with physicists Hooman Davoudiasl at Brookhaven National Lab and David Morrissey of TRIUMF, Tulin and Sigurdson suggest a way to solve the problem of missing antimatter: Hide it away as dark matter. The details are published in the Nov. 19 Physical Review Letters.


Submission + - An Anonymous, Verifiable E-Voting Tech (ted.com) 1

Kilrah_il writes: After the recent news items about the obstacles facing E-voting systems, many of us feel it is not yet time for this technology. A recent TED talk by David Bismark unveiled a proposal for a new E-voting technology that is both anonymous and verifiable. I am not a cryptography expert, but it does seem interesting and possibly doable.
Books

Submission + - How Google is Solving its Book Problem (theatlantic.com)

Pickens writes: "Alexis Madrigal writes in the Atlantic that Google's famous PageRank algorithm can't be deployed to search through the 15 million books that Google has already scanned because books don't link to each other in the way that webpages do. Instead Google's new book search algorithm called "Rich Results" looks at word frequency, how closely your query matches the title of a book, web search frequency, recent book sales, the number of libraries that hold the title, how often an older book has been reprinted, and 100 other signals. "There is less data about books than web pages, but there is more structure to it, and there's less spam to contend with," writes Madrigal. Yet the focus on optimizing an experience from vast amounts of data remains. "You want it to have the standard Google quality as much as possible," says Matthew Gray, lead software engineer for Google Books. "[You want it to be] a merger of relevance and utility based on all these things.""
Australia

Submission + - Aussie research company brings Wi-Fi to TV antenna (zdnet.com.au)

joshgnosis writes: The CSIRO has unveiled new technology that could bring internet to people in rural or remote parts of Australia using their existing TV antennas. Analog TV signal is set to be switched off in 2013 but this technology could see the spectrum used to deliver internet straight into people's homes through their TV antenna. Gartner expert Robin Simpson told ZDNet Australia that this would make it much easier for companies to get new customers. "What appeals to me about it is that it re-uses existing infrastructure, all of the competing wireless technologies tend to use high frequencies and therefore require new base stations, new spectrum and new receiving antenna infrastructure as well," he said. "The fact that they're re-using the analog TV stuff gives them a much easier market entry strategy."
Science

The Proton Just Got Smaller 289

inflame writes "A new paper published in Nature has said that the proton may be smaller than we previously thought. The article states 'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."' Would this indicate new physics if proven?"

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