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Comment: Comet? (Score 1) 84

Yet another possibility is that a comet may have hit the Earth, dumping the extra carbon-14 in the atmosphere. But astronomers have ruled that out on the basis that a comet carrying enough carbon-14 must have been over 100 km in diameter and would surely have left other evidence such as an impact crater.

Not to mention completely obliterating all higher forms of life on the planet, you know, like astronomers...

Comment: Assume the worst... (Score 1) 510

...and take the control out of their hands.

It's obvious that no one in power can be trusted to NOT collect as much as they can collect. It doesn't matter whether that is a government or a business. There is only one REAL solution. Encrypt everything. And since one cannot trust proprietary solutions to NOT include a back door into the encryption scheme, the only solution is to use open source software AND for such software to be routinely audited by knowledgeable people. And for all of us to be vigilant concerning other ways to circumvent the encryption.

It seems to me that this is a declaration of an arms race between those in power and the average user. But of course, hasn't it always been that way?

Comment: Re:No problems (Score 1) 388

by It doesn't come easy (#45927957) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Misdirected Email?
Hmmm. It is actually interesting. Email addresses are unique to the world. No one else can create the same value @ domain unless the domain gets sold to another entity (which has not happened to @gmail.com as far as I know). If you have an email address assigned to you from a reputable source, anyone else who sets up an account with that email is already doing something wrong.

I wonder what the legal implications of this is...

Comment: What happened to "networks are overloaded"? (Score 4, Insightful) 229

So, the original reason for data caps were that a few unscrupulous users were hogging all of the bandwidth and making everyone else suffer through a poor network experience...

I guess either that wasn't the real reason or AT&T doesn't mind if you have a poor network experience as long as they get more money...

Comment: Human soceity not ready for this (Score 5, Insightful) 370

by It doesn't come easy (#45670369) Attached to: Chimpanzee "Personhood" Lawsuits Fail In New York Courts



Comment: What an incredibly dangerous device (Score 1) 549

by It doesn't come easy (#45588179) Attached to: RF Safe-Stop Shuts Down Car Engines With Radio Pulse
Basically, this device is causing the car's computer(s) to crash. So, during low speed tests, in a wide open area, the car slowly glides to a stop??? I wonder what might happen if this were applied on a narrow highway, with lots of other vehicles on the road, at highway speeds? And what will happens when this device is used by the disgruntled (postal) worker, or some teens (not picking on teens, I used to be one myself) out for a mischievous time?

What if occasionally the computer's crash in a less expected way -- say for a moment the computer thinks you're trying to "park" (using your computer controlled parking assistant) while traveling at 60 miles per hour?

There are so many things wrong with this that it boggles the mind.

Comment: What "pay" are we talking about? (Score 1) 1216

Do you mean the paycheck received on a weekly basis? Do we count stock options or awards? Dividends from preferred stock not available to the average worker? Annual bonuses? Perks (such as the use of a company paid private plane)? Corporate "gifts" of all sorts?

Steve Jobs famously worked at Apple for a one dollar annual salary. However, does anyone here really think that he only made a dollar per year?

The idea has merit, but it is a foregone conclusion that people in power will figure out how to work around the "ratio".

Comment: Absolutely agree (Score 1) 559

by It doesn't come easy (#45222635) Attached to: 4K Ultra HD Likely To Repeat the Failure of 3D Television
There is way too must current content that is still not transmitted in 1080p. Buying a new (expensive) TV just to display most shows in standard resolution makes no sense at all. Yes, I know live broadcasts are usually in high def, but one can only watch so must sports on TV. To be fair, I think it is actually a legacy problem. There is so much good legacy content recorded in standard definition that it is tough for new content to compete, at least from a percentage perspective. Best excuse for a good movie or TV series remake that I have heard...

Comment: Re:Con CERN (Score 3, Interesting) 164

by It doesn't come easy (#44824387) Attached to: Black Holes Grow By Eating Quantum Foam
Actually, it kind of fits if you bring all of the intelligent guesswork together. I read somewhere that the tiny tiny tiny black holes (possibly) created by the LHC would evaporate (due to Hawking Radiation) at an exponentially accelerating rate -- the more mass they lost the faster they would loose more, ending in a quantum sized obliterating explosion. If true, and if this new idea is correct as well, that would imply that there is a perfect point where the mass evaporation from Hawking Radiation would *just* equal the mass accumulation from consuming quantum foam. If the black hole mass starts out greater than this point then the black hole grows, less and it shrinks. Someone ought to be able to calculate (roughly?) the magical amount of mass needed to produce a pseudo-stable black hole...

Comment: Short answer: No (Score 1) 418

by It doesn't come easy (#44811199) Attached to: Is It Time to Replace Your First HDTV? (Video)
