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Fuck you.

No, seriously, fuck you.

The conversation (which I have had NUMEROUS times with brain-dead linuxites like yourself) goes as follows.

Me: "This is what I've got doing my recording. It works pretty well."

Linuxite: "Dude, you should TOTALLY be using MythTV instead, it's open source and it'd go in your system no problem! You could even record multiple shows that way and everything. And if you've got any problems at all all you have to do is go on ForumXYZ and the wiki and they'll get it all fixed up!"

Me: "Hey guys, I'm having problems with this, here's my hardware configuration, here's the distribution I'm using, here are the errors I'm seeing."

Somebody Like Phoenixwade: "How DARE you use ATi, don't you know they're the devil? You need to spend $400 each on a pair of Happauge cards and a motherboard of X spec and then you need to blip fraggle toggle the command line and zorp waggle blizzle the driver and..."

My assessment is not "dishonest", you annoying ass. It is based PRECISELY on the legions of linux nerds who keep telling me I should convert my system, which works perfectly well, over to the software they claim is superior. And no, in these economic times, I am not going to waste $500+ just to try them out. It either works on the hardware I already own, the hardware I know for a fact works correctly with the software I currently use, or it is flawed on that basis.

Honestly, you are the kind of user I'd tell to box up your computer and take it back to the store.

Honestly, you're the kind of jerk who should never be let around another human being.

schwit1 sends along an Ars Technica report covering the release of documents obtained under the FOIA suggesting that the Justice Department may have been evading privacy laws in their use of "triggerfish" technology. Triggerfish are cell-tower spoofing devices that induce cell phones to give up their location and other identifying information, without recourse to any cell carrier. "Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target's location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that 'triggerfish' technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all. The Justice Department's electronic surveillance manual explicitly suggests that triggerfish may be used to avoid restrictions in statutes like CALEA that bar the use of pen register or trap-and-trace devices..." The article does mention that the Patriot Act contains language that should require a court order to deploy triggerfish, whereas prior to 2001 "the statutory language governing pen register or trap-and-trace orders did not appear to cover location tracking technology."

CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."

roelbj writes "The full trailer to the next Star Trek movie is now available at the movie's official web site. The upcoming J.J. Abrams-helmed installment represents a changing of the guard, a reboot of the franchise, and a return to the original-series crew. It should prove interesting to see how Abrams' writing staff (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias) tackles the Star Trek universe and all the continuity and baggage that comes with it."

snydeq writes "Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform, in large part due to Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and to embrace virtualization of other OSes, which has turned Mac OS X into a flexible tool for development, InfoWorld reports. The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development. Yet for many, the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development, with developers citing its virtual memory system's poor performance in paging data in and out of memory and likening use of the default-network file system, AFS, to engaging oneself with 'some kind of passive-aggressive torture.' What remains unclear is whether Apple will lend an ear to this new wave of Mac-based development or continue to develop products that lock out uses programmers expect."

geekboy_x writes "The SEC today charged Mark Cuban with insider trading violations, alleging that he divested himself of stock in mamma.com before the stock was diluted via a public offering." Something tells me that the billionaire blogger won't be talking about this one publicly any time soon.

Iraq wasn't using the money it got from oil to make a better life for it's people.

And the US gov't is doing a good job of using its money to make a better life for its people?

Give me a break. Iraq was no threat to the world. Saddam was content, after being spanked during Kuwait, to sit back and chill.

Astronauts flying aboard space shuttle Endeavour are delivering a device to the International Space Station that may leave you wondering if Nasa is taking recycling too far. Among the ship's cargo is a water regeneration system that distills, filters, ionizes and oxidizes wastewater — including urine — into fresh water for drinking or, as one astronaut puts it, "will make yesterday's coffee into today's coffee". The US space agency spent $250m for the water recycling equipment but with the space shuttles due to retire in two years, Nasa needed to make sure the station crew would have a good supply of fresh water. "When the shuttles retire, that nice water-delivery system that we have will go away," said Endeavour astronaut Sandra Magnus. The Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. In space, there's an additional challenge: steam doesn't rise, so the entire distillation system is spun to create artificial gravity to separate the steam from the brine. The water has been thoroughly tested on Earth, including blind taste tests that pitted recycled urine with similarly treated tap water. "Some people may think it's downright disgusting, but if it's done correctly, you process water that's purer than what you drink here on Earth," said Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper.

An anonymous reader writes "Do you contribute to open source projects under your real name or a nickname? The openness of open source can be encouraging, but software patents you have never heard of can become a nightmare if a patent troll sues for implementing 'their' scroll bar. A real name also means you end up in the big index we call search engines. An assumed name could be an additional layer of protection, but what are its pros and cons and is it worth the hassle when asked to participate in a meatspace meeting?"

I was assuming that infantry soldiers would use it after they shot up a building. It would be nice to see what damage you inflicted before going in. By that time the folks inside probably have a good idea that they have visitors. The article itself seemed jsut as focused on armor which you generally do not use to sneak up on anybody.

404 Clue Not Found writes "The One Laptop Per Child project's XO-1 laptop is once again available to the general public via its Give One Get One promotion, where $400 will buy two laptops, one for the purchaser and one for 'a child in the emerging world.' Having learned from their delivery and fulfillment headaches the first time around, this time they partnered with Amazon.com to handle shipping. But a year after its initial release, the market has become saturated with Eee-wannabe netbooks from every major manufacturer. Can the XO-1's charitable appeal, unique chassis and dual-mode screen compete with the superior performance and standard operating systems of its newer peers?"

The problem with paradoxes is simple. If you throw out any theory with paradoxes, you can start by dumping :
-> big bang theory
-> quantum mechanics
-> relativity
-> newtonian physics

There wouldn't be much left :

Indeed if scientist respected the laws of mathematics there would be no paradoxes in physics. Any theory containing even a single paradox would be thrown out the window immediately, like they are in mathematics. You could simply say time travel has the potential to create paradoxes ... and is therefore impossible ...

It wasn't to be : It wasn't very practical with physics theory. After all, the big bang theory requires FTL travel (faster than light) and a "limited" suspension of at least causality, along with changing a few universal constants here and there (in fact even Genesis is more likely : suppose an "eternal" being, alive or not created our universe, and you don't have any causality problems. Who created the creator ? Nobody, he's always been. Mathematically that's simple to express and quite consistent. Of course the 7-days stuff of Genesis is a bit more problematic). Oops. Physicists weren't quite ready to dump that one.

Newton's physics would be thrown out, due to the black body radiation paradox (has nothing to do with black holes). But as long as nothing was there to replace it, nobody really thought throwing it out was a good idea.

Relativity would get thrown out due to Schwarzchild geometry (black holes), and quantum mechanics would get thrown out for a hundred reasons, it's "known paradox count" is somewhat of an embarrassment really.

So physics just "tries to get along" with paradoxes, which never works in practice, so basically experiments just like to get close to paradoxes, because in the real world they don't exist. Therefore the paradoxes we're seeing in theories are really something that's not described, rather than a real paradox. Sometimes we really can't get close enough to take a look, which is the case with black holes, or the edge of the universe (if there indeed is one, like the big bang theory predicts), in that case we're stuck, and the only option is to search for the needle in the haystack some other place.

That obviously brings the problem which paradoxes are acceptable and which aren't. Nobody's given even a basic answer to that one though. Apparently paradoxes are acceptable as long as they only manifest in places we know nothing about.

Paradoxes are also the real reason for the claim "passing through a black hole makes anything possible", which is simply another way to say that once you've proven 1=2, you can prove anything, no matter how wrong. Of course the problem is in our understanding of black holes, which is mathematically inconsistent, the problem is not that inside black holes anything is possible. Same goes for any other paradox in physics.

Of course many people believe that since there are many "paradoxes" in physical theories, especially quantum mechanics, everything is really possible, if you only think hard enough about it. However history does show us that every single time we approached a paradox in experiment, it turned out our theories produced the paradox, and the world disagreed with our theories.

You can resolve the black body paradox of Newton's theories yourself. Google the "black body radiation problem" (the third link is nice). Then heat up a piece of metal until it glows. According to Newton's physics if you do that, the universe should explode (calculate this for yourself). Or to put it mathematically, the energy output in radiation should "approach infinity", which is another way of saying "this should produce a huge bang". There you've just explored one of the great historical paradoxes. All paradoxes are like this.

To be more exact: god may be a good fit for what we observe, but not a useful fit. You can always adjust religion to fit new facts (and even make the adjustment an expected part of the religion) so you don't have any unexplained bits dangling about, but that says nothing about the predictive nature of the explanation. Science isn't about explaining history, it just happens to use history and therefore also explains it -- it's about usefully predicting the future, for our own betterment. In the end, science really only cares about showing that the planets move in a precisely predictable manner, not about proving that it is or isn't God doing it: nobody cares. And really, that's not a "how" so much as a very, very precise "what". What's going on out there, exactly? What can we use it for?

nk497 writes "A new wireless camera called the I-Ball is being developed to be shot into locations using a grenade launcher so troops can see what lies ahead. The I-Ball sends real-time, 360-degree video back to soldiers while it's flying through the air and when it lands."

Rinisari writes "Finally, the day has come. Adobe has released a pre-release version of the 64-bit Flash player. It is available at the Adobe Labs Flash Player 10 download site immediately. Where are the Windows and Mac versions? 'Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering upon Adobe's commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. Until this pre-release, use of 32-bit Flash Player on Linux has required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility with 64-bit browsers. With this pre-release, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions.' Windows and Mac OS X 64-bit versions will follow, and the final versions all will be released simultaneously. Tamarin, the JIT compiler in Flash, is now capable of producing 64-bit code and nspluginwrapper is no longer required. There are, however, no plans to release a debugger version of the 64-bit plugin."