Comment A Petition for a Less Biased Response. (Score 1) 1
Link to new petition for a response not written by Pistole.
Comment Re:Sadly its real (Score 1) 828
It makes little difference whether or not Rossi destroys this planet. Earth is a classic type 13 which typically destroys itself at about this stage in it's development. Sometimes through war, often through environmental catastrophe, but more commonly a type 13 planet is unintentionally collapsed into a pea sized object through scientists trying to determine the mass of the Higgs Boson Particle.
Submission + - US Wiretap report: 34% increase (networkworld.com)
Comment Re:Patents have irrational value (Score 1) 213
He could mean:
a+bi is "larger" than c+di if and only if a^2-b^2 > c^2-d^2 (i.e. N(a+bi) >N (c+di))
or
a+bi is "larger" than c+di if and only if a > c and b > d
The first one is better though.
Submission + - Samsung withdraws counter-suit against Apple (tekgoblin.com)
Comment Re:Lord of the Flies + Pick-a-path books .. (Score 1) 458
Comment Re:that would be a poll tax (Score 1) 218
This is basically equivalent to requiring everyone to have a public and a private key, then signing the key of whichever candidate they want to vote for.
It would be a secure and verifiable system. However it would never work because it's not something that a normal voter would understand.
The only problem would be making it anonymous. If you required each person to have a new key for each election and had all keys signed by a central authority (recording only that a person already had a key signed, but not actually recording which key it was), I think it might be theoretically possible.
Also, since only the central authority can know which keys are properly signed, someone could always make a fake signed key, if someone were to try and bribe them into casting a specific vote. That way, even if the vote buyer required the person to cast their vote right in front of them, they'd have no actual way of knowing whether or not it was valid.
Alas, if only everyone was a cryptonerd.
Comment Some Actual Text From The Announcement (Score 3, Interesting) 391
1. We don't fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system.
2.We don't want to mislead our donors. When people make a donation to a nonprofit like EFF, they expect us to use their donation to support our work. Because the legal territory around exchanging Bitcoins into cash is still uncertain, we are not comfortable spending the many Bitcoins we have accumulated.
3. People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin. We were concerned that some people may have participated in the Bitcoin project specifically because EFF accepted Bitcoins, and perhaps they therefore believed the investment in Bitcoins was secure and risk-free. While we’ve been following the Bitcoin movement with a great degree of interest, EFF has never endorsed Bitcoin. In fact, we generally don’t endorse any type of product or service – and Bitcoin is no exception.
Comment Re:Shut up with the bitcoin stories (Score 1) 411
Although right now, 'mining' bitcoin is a fool's errand; it would be cheaper to just buy them than to spend the power mining them.
Actually, that's not true, at least not in every case.
Currently I'm mining on my gaming rig for about
However, I'm running on a gaming rig with decent graphics cards I already had. If I had to first purchase the items for the sole sake of mining, There'd be no gaurantee of ever being able to make back that investment.
Submission + - Patriot Act to receive four-year extension (google.com)
Submission + - Nine features we may see in Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric (arnnet.com.au) 1
A number of decisions were reportedly made about Ubuntu 11.10, or "Oneiric Ocelot," at the conference, while numerous other questions are still being debated.
Ready for a very early look at Oneiric Ocelot? Here's a roundup of what's been reported so far.
Submission + - Your Nintendo 3DS pwns you (defectivebydesign.org)
And if you have a child's best interests at heart, don't give it to anyone too young to know to never use her real name, type in an address or phone number, or take any personally-identifiable photos. They might, at best, end up in a Nintendo ad. At worst, who knows?
Some of the details are on Defective by Design's website. I haven't found the full text online yet. If you do, please post it in a comment."
Submission + - University Copyright Case About To Go To Trial (duke.edu)
This proposed order, in short, represents a nightmare, a true dystopia, for higher education....Yet you can be sure that if [these] things happen, all of our campuses would be pressured to adopt the “Georgia State model” in order to avoid litigation.
Disclosure: I am currently a graduate student at Georgia State University.