* Posts by Paul Hovnanian

2099 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2008

Is the electromagnetic constant a constant?

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Red shift?

But looking at stuff with extreme red shifts means they are at extreme distances. And so we are looking at events in the Universe's distant past. Back then, alpha may indeed have been different. But it could very well have been different in the vicinity of the Earth as well. Back before the complex molecular interactions we depend upon were important. So it might be more accurate to say that we (and those distant aliens) happen to live in a time that is conducive to life. Not a region.

Some alien astrophysicist on a planet orbiting that distant star with (what we observe to be) anomalous red shifts doesn't see them now. But when he (I know, presumptuous of me to apply our gender specific pronouns to aliens) looks toward earth, he may observe the same differences from what he presumes to be essential for life. In our distant past. And writes our end of the Universe off as uninhabitable. And he thanks his local God for blessing his race as special.

RIM backdoor access for Indian probers

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Paris Hilton

One more double entendre in that subject and you'll have to label this article NSFW.

Paris, because someone will have to explain it to her.

Uncrackable quantum crypto undermined by new attack

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Lasers

And while you are worrying about the lasers cracking your crypto, you'll never even notice the shark chomping on your leg.

Reg hacks confront really wide Oz load terror

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What happens ...

... when one of these double wide houses meets a mining vehicle or something of similar size going the other way?

The simple solution for the Solar Challenge would be to get a couple of military surplus armored trucks (ala Mad Max) to run interference for them.

No.... You move the house!

Pumped-up radio telescope seeks new moniker

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Joke

Let the locals name it

RTMG - Radio Telescopio Muy Grande

Silicon Valley's social tech formula doesn't add up

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Paris Hilton

MBA-speak

"we don't measure ourselves in conventional ways"

Neither do I, but that hasn't fooled any of my dates.

Paris, shedding a tear because .... well, she's been disappointed again.

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead

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Didn't anyone remember to put him in /etc/inittab as a respawn process?

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

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Time Zones are Laws

Or, more accurately, established by laws in various jurisdictions.

Some of those jurisdictions place restrictions or conditions on the publication of their public laws and the subsequent rights to that information, even when published 'for profit' . All it would take is for one small town to set its time zone and then attach some sort of viral 'open source' condition to the subsequent compilation and publication of its ordinances.

Lady Gaga loses squatting complaint

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Object of adoration ....

... will stay up.

Well, yes. But not like it used to. I'm not young anymore.

Windows 8 secure boot would 'exclude' Linux

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Mushroom

XP

Will it exclude Windows XP as well? If so, this will not sit well in the corporate world (where XP is king).

Try telling your corporate customers that they've got to rebuild their legacy apps for Windows 8 and there will be dark muttering. Mention Metro and they'll be marching on the castle in Redmond with pitchforks and torches.

Feds probe naked Scarlett Johansson outrage

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I'm not worried

Back when naked pictures of me were of any interest to anyone, they were still using the daguerreotype process.

Aussie Sex Party takes the whip to .xxx domains

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Trademark

Will ICM really be selling the .xxx versions of just anything to anyone? Do you really think Microsoft, Boeing, or TheRegister won't raise a stink about seeing their names in front of the infamous TLD?

9/11: The day we lost our privacy and power

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We lost our privacy in the name of security. Since then, Bush used his powers to look for porn. Obama is using them to look for offshore bank accounts.

UK.gov coder defines open standards: 'A lot like porn'

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Facepalm

Writing software ...

... is like having sex.

Make just one mistake and you have to provide support for a lifetime.

Court bans man called Peter from calling himself Peter

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Change his name ...

... to Spartacus.

Chic USB drive leads double life as personal vibrator

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Devil

Better yet ...

... a BlueTooth storage device for your pr0n. No need to 'unplug' it just to plug it into your laptop USB port.

BlueTooth control makes for some interesting applications (remote control toys have already been developed for this). But the ability to join the vibrator to one (or more) mobile devices running remote control apps (possibly anonymously) could make for some interesting party games.

COMET WILL DEFINITELY NOT HIT EARTH – NASA

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Facepalm

Careful observations

NASA has made some careful observations to arrive at the conclusion that this comet poses no risk to the earth.

Now, was that meters or feet?

Furlongs???

Scottish TV news pumps goatse link

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Facepalm

Eye opening?

Not THAT eye!

It's official: IE users are dumb as a bag of hammers

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Lynx?

What about lynx users?

Or better yet, those of us who use wget and read the raw HTML (like in the Matrix).

Lost 1967 spacecraft found crashed on the Moon

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Actually ...

... that's where the Cybertronians are hiding from the Decepticons.

Bill seeks to decriminalise pianos in pubs and schools

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Sorry. American here

Did you folks just come out with a new series of Monty Python episodes that we haven't seen on this side of the pond?

Hacking Baseball

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Joke

Deep Analytics

As the capabilities of such powerful computing techniques grow, we may eventually have a system that is capable of explaining Cricket to Americans.

Taxman recruits fricking tax-collecting robots

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I guess ...

... the BBC didn't retire the Daleks after all.

Plague of US preachers falsely claim to be Navy SEALs

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Supreme Court Descision

I understand why the USSC found the Stolen Valor Act to be unconstitutional. Its the threat of the government control of speech and suppression of dissent by labeling it as lies.

On the other hand, there is no restriction on civil suits being brought for anything from fraud (misrepresenting ones credentials for the purpose of personal gain) to trademark violation. I can't stick a Rolex logo on a cheap watch or sell knock off products as name brands. I'd hope that the Navy (and other military branches) have groups dedicated to pursuing and bringing such abuses to court. I'd be happy to see such activities funded by us taxpayers.

Sadly, our military forces have a number of people who sympathize with religious nut cases and are more than willing to look the other way to support their fellow travelers' riding their coattails.

Revealed: Secret security plan should Kate leave Wills at the altar

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We have a saying ...

... that starts:

"If you love something, set it free."

There are several alternative endings which I'll leave to your imagination.

Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict

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Time for Google to go

I envy you people who live in countries with more reasonable approaches to patents (software in particular). I wouldn't be surprised to see outfits like Google more their engineering and operations to these locations should this sort of nonsense continue.

Sure, the use of the patented technology would still be prohibited within US borders. But the servers would be beyond the reach of the trolls. And good luck suing every Google user for their share of a $5m penalty (a fraction of a penny apiece).

Health experts flip over McD's burger-flip toy

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Happy

I'm going to market ...

... with the "Kiddie Cardiologist Playset".

Park the Mario Kart, and throw your keys in the bowl

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Missing remote

"The PS2 Move has already been described as an Wii remote designed to look more like a sex toy, "

[Sigh] Just one more place I'll have to look for a missing remote.

Dear US gov: Stay the hell out of Silicon Valley

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Big Brother

Government, stay out!

Unless you've got some of that nice R&D money. Or someone tries to steal our intellectual property. Or just competes with us with low cost labor (like those darned Chinese).

Otherwise, stay out!

Survey sets out to pin down nation's pr0n habits

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Big Brother

Kinsey v2.0

This could be a valuable study. If the data is suitably anonymized*, it could show the extent of pornography use by "normal" people who do not subsequently become the subject of law enforcement or mental health intervention. So far, we've got a pretty good idea about porn use among various classes of offenders. And this has led (through faulty logic) to linking porn with the propensity to commit such offenses. A good baseline or control group will go a long way to possibly disproving such links.

*Both the survey participant and the sources (URLs, newsgroups, etc.) need to be kept confidential so that this study can't be used to "clean house" or generate blacklists.

Alabama sex shop owner swaps 'Guns for Toys'

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WTF?

Something's not right here

The toy shop owner "hopes to take 300 firearms off the street" but then "all guns that were used in a crime will be handed over to authorities while all others will be placed in an auction for sale on the store's website". That's not taking guns off the street, IMO.

Dutch get wound up over invisible SMS

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Paris Hilton

Only intelligence services?

Only duly authorized law enforcement will be given access to network location data. But what limits are there on who can originate these invisible SMS messages?

Its one thing to have the cops following me around. But the wife being able to track me to my GFs apartment. Now that's frightening!

Paris, because that will be a popular location.

Toshiba intros laptop that CHANGES COLOUR

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Lost my laptop ...

... on my messy desk. It was blue. Anyone seen it?

Bogus Kama Sutra presentation opens your backdoor to hackers

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Paris Hilton

Where to start?

Backdoor, trojan, sexually transmitted disease.

I just don't know where to start on a good joke.

In-flight fight for stubborn iPhone-loving teen

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Playing cop

Far too many people are doing it. Its the job of the crew to enforce the rules, not the passengers.

What happens when the next passenger over decides to take matters into his own hands over the assault on the teenager? And then a passenger witnesses that act ..... when does it stop?

If you want your next flight to resemble a barroom brawl in the wild west, leave me out of it.

US Navy's electric plane-thrower successfully launches an F-18

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Joke

Other implications

It works fine.

Odd thing though. Our pilots all seem to prefer facing north now.

Many Microsoft workers big on company not Ballmer

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Balmer's Image

I've wondered about why someone with such a non intellectual image was chosen to run this kind of company. Given the reports of some of his antics, he seems more suited to running a blue collar outfit (construction, trucking, etc.). He is expected to lead people who value thinking more than how far one can lob a chair. Gates, for all of his faults, was a better fit for this position. At least he had written some code once upon a time.

I wonder how random that group of respondents is. Microsoft has a reputation for tracking down people who try to write anonymous editorials or stories about the inner workings of the company. While this survey might not be worthy of their attention, I could see more than a few people saying to themselves that its not worth the risk to participate.

Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP

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I don't understand

Was this a threat or a promise?

Is US prudishness ruining the internet?

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Its our political system

Business interests made a deal with the devil (moral conservatives), so to speak, to maintain a viable presence in our two party political system. Other than that, these two groups have little in common. The pro censorship forces are more closely aligned with the Chinese communists or the (now defunct) Russian Soviet party. Meanwhile, business interests don't like being side tracked by agendas that have anything other than maximizing market share and profits. They can't afford to alienate part of their customer base due to race, religion or cultural issues. The only color that's important to them is green.

But we (the US) have this problem in that, in order to survive economically, businesses must maintain political power. And in order to do so, they need to form a coalition with some other group. And the only group up for sale, so to speak, is the social conservative movement.

Fix our two party system and our campaign contribution system, which forces politicians to beg for funds and run for office almost continuously, and business interests will drop the moral minority like a hot rock.

Diesels greener than electric cars, says Swiss gov report

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Hydropower? Noooo!

Won't you please think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H fish.

BTW, the correct units of consumption are light-years per cubic mile of gas (my car gets 2.3).

VW to eliminate worst road hazard: drivers

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The best way ...

... to improve road safety is to adjust the nut behind the steering wheel.

Wikileaks publishes encrypted 'insurance' file

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Joke

Passphrase

"Help, help! I'm being repressed!"

Lindsay Lohan released from screaming lesbian ordeal

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Happy

Screaming lesbian gangs?

Pics or it didn't happen.

Supercomputer geek builds Cray-1 around home PC

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Can we ...

... build a Beowulf cluster of these?

Fanbois end Judas Phone 'Death Grip' with, um, SIM tape

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As always, the answer is ...

... duct tape.

Famous 'Invisible Gorilla' trick vid gets sequel

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But officer ...

.... when you're looking for a gorilla, you often miss other unexpected events.

That's my standard excuse after being pulled over.

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This explains ....

... Ballmer making announcements about product sales.

Russian spies dumped in Vienna after swap

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In related news ...

Rocky and Bullwinkle can finally retire.

Lindsay Lohan: The interactive court drama

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Paris Hilton

Too late

Lindsay isn't handling the party life nearly as well as Paris did. She's already starting to look a bit burned out. Give her a few years and she'll be trailer park material.

Just leave her alone. Why should we keep her out of the off-ramp hobo class? They need some loving too.

Apple denies iPhone 4 antenna glitch, blames inaccurate signal bars

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Wrong signal

The iPhone is supposed to be showing the local strength of Jobs' reality distortion field.