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Comment You realize.. (Score 1) 336

You realize that IDs don't necessarily stamp the age of a /. reader, just the age of the account.

I've been reading /. since 1998 but I only got around to making an account in 2005. It's very possible that someone at 1mill ID could have seen the "Good Ol' Days" of /.

But now you can feel good about yourself Mr. AC, you've managed to look like an ass while attempting to discredit someone's comments. Good for you.

Comment A Matter of Context.... (Score 1) 370

You know what really bothers me the most? There's a lack of context.

I can send you off to www.mysite.com/mypage.html and plastered on there can be a blacklisted pic. I can advertize it as a funny pic, you don't know, you wont know until you see it. Now obviously a SITE like that wont stay up for long, but posted on a big site quick enough you can frame many many people who had no intent.

Additionally with sites like 4chan. I'm sure a lot of 16-17 year olds go through that site but they look like they could be 18+, you can't really tell, and there's no way to be sure. If one of the pics posted on there is blacklisted, bam that's a lot of people who though they were looking at an 18 year old and soon are pegged w/ this problem.

The real issue is INTENT, did the offended INTEND to see kiddie pron? 9/10 cases, probably not. The difference is, did you close the page? or save the pic? and no level of government bullshit shy of tapping your pc is going to come close to detecting that.

It's like buying shoes, and then later the police come to your door and arrest you for buying shoes that were stolen. You didn't buy them BECAUSE they were stolen... but the govm't isn't willing to make the distinction.
Windows

Submission + - High-quality HD content can't be played by Vista (hdtvinfo.eu) 2

DaMan1970 writes: "Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance.

Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say "graphics OPM resolution too high"

http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hd-video-formats/high- quality-hd-content-cant-be-played-by-windows-vista .html

There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."

Security

Submission + - Buffer Overflow in RFID Passport Readers (wired.com)

epee1221 writes: "Wired ran a story describing Lukas Grunwald's Defcon talk on an attack on airport passport readers. After extracting data from the (read-only) chip in a legitimate passport, he placed a version of the data with an altered passport photo (JPEG2000 is used in these chips) into a writable chip. The altered photo created a buffer overflow in two RFID readers he tested, causing both to crash. Grunwald suggests that vendors are typically using off-the-shelf JPEG2000 libraries, which would make the vulnerability common."
Power

Submission + - New 'Stellarator' Design for Fusion Reactors (physorg.com)

eldavojohn writes: "The holy grail in fusion reactors has always seemed just a few years off for many decades. But a recent design enhancement termed a 'Stellarator' may change all that. The point at which a fusion reactor crashes is when particles begin escaping due to disruptions in the plasma. A NYU team has discovered that coiling specific wires to form a magnetic field to contain the plasma is a viable way to create a plasma body with axial symmetry and far better chance of remaining stable. This, of course, like other forms of containment does require energy but brings us closer to a stable fusion reactor. It may not be cold fusion or 'table top' fusion but it certainly is a step forward. The paper is up for peer review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
Communications

Submission + - Batteries the Focus of AT&T Investigation

An anonymous reader writes: AT&T is focusing on the batteries supplied by Avestor as the cause of its 2006 equipment explosion in a suburban Houston neighborhood. The carrier says it has 17,000 of those same batteries still in its network. Here are some photos of the equipment that was shredded in the blast.

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