Robert Sund's Techdirt Profile

Robert Sund

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  • Apr 27, 2014 @ 11:40am

    Re: Re: Assaulted.

    http://inthesetimes.com/article/16610/post_occupy_mynypd_makes_new_yorks_blood_boil


    McMillan contends that Officer Bovell grabbed her breast from behind and she reacted instinctively, elbowing backwards in reaction to what she considered an assault.

    For several minutes the woman lay on the ground as onlookers made increasingly agonized demands until an ambulance arrived

    I was unable to speak with McMillan?s lawyers, who are under a gag order from the judge

    Vital facts were disallowed in his courtroom, such as the video of McMillan having a seizure after her struggle with the officer and Officer Bovell's record of police brutality.

    the judge disallowed every question except: ?Were the protesters smelly?? and ?Was it personal for you??


    Yet Cecily McMillan, not Officer Bovell, is on trial

  • Apr 26, 2014 @ 07:06am

    Safe policing

    I really hope I have it wrong, but there seam to be ample evidence of refocusing of law enforcement, from keeping citizens safe to doing "safe policing".

    "Safe policing" as in:
    Chatting up a lone woman, and tackling her when she gets scared and try to run away.
    Attacking youngsters for sexting.
    Pointing guns directly at scared children heads during drug searches at schools.
    IP enforcement, sometimes with hole departments as in London.
    Wrecking apartments instead of doing investigations. And often the wrong apartment. And with massive force, teargas, guns and terror gear.
    Beating up homeless people.
    *Several cars with armed police to assassinate a single animal in an animal shelter.

    And the list goes on. They share a common trait: they provide no security for the population; they provide ample opportunity to display disproportional force; and they are safe, for the police.

    Safety for the police is just as important as for other human beings. But the very low number of police killed at work do show that a significant number prefer to do such things instead of doing actual policing.


    It is less popular to do things that can "provoke" such people as your father. It might get "unpleasant". It won't get an award. Nor a pension cushion from an monopolist. And it means working alone with scant backup. It might be dangerous. The same goes for city officials; there is so many needs that can be fulfilled which don't piss off potentially unpleasant people.

    Easier to pretend your family is safe, than to "pretend" it is safe enough that a single armed police officer can stay in your neighborhood, and others, alone.

  • Apr 26, 2014 @ 04:42am

    Re: Re: Yes, the RIAA are scum...

    Copyright monopolists grip on artists would evaporate quickly if Kim Dotcom had been allowed to launch his music service two years ago. He planned to pass on 90%+ of the income directly to the artists, and keep the rest for himself. The monopolists wouldn't be necessary, nor payed.

    It would wreck their ability to drain wealth from the creators, and their ability to pay "enforcement" and politicians.

    It were a life or death situation for their role as parasite. Living from actual competitive work in competition with every talented person on the planet would be tough.

    To them, Baboom is a irritation, and Internet is a dire threat that can spawn something unknown, anywhere, anytime, that irrevocably topples their cabal.

  • Apr 21, 2014 @ 07:53pm

    IMHO the main article really should have included the amazing results obtained by the University Hospital of North-Norway (UNN). In particular the work done by world famous doctor and researcher Mads Gilbert and the rest of the Cold Water Survival team.

    One such rescue was the one of Anna B?genholm, that went head first through the ice 18:20. She managed to find an air pocket and stayed conscious for 40 minutes upside down and locked in the ice. Her friends chopped away the ice for 80 minutes and were then able to drag her up and out of it.

    Her body temperature was 13.7 degrees Celsius.

    Mads Gilbert and his team of doctors saved her and the first heartbeat came 22:15.

    She recovered completely and is now a full time doctor herself.



    Information in norwegian

  • Feb 03, 2014 @ 09:55pm

    The freezing of time

    I have thought about it, and I subsume that matter cannot fall trough the event horizon because the speed of time would be zero, but the same consideration have to be made for all directions including matter that would be moving away from the gravitational pull.

    This would have a profound effect on the pressure particles close to a event horizon can exert on particles further out. Fewer photons would exert pressure for the same reason.

    It follows that the reduction in the speed of time in the center might be as important as the gravitational pull itself in triggering the collapse.

    As the surrounding matter falls towards the center the gravitational well deepens and time gets frozen gradually further from the center.

    If nothing can fall through the event horizon, then nothing can escape it either.

    This would explain both what triggers the collaps, the release of energy in the supernova, and why black holes are rather dark.

  • Jan 24, 2014 @ 04:32am

    Would you copy a fish

    If he bought one fish, were the copies theft?
    Jesus did massive copying and sharing, no wonder the establishment hanged him.

  • Jan 24, 2014 @ 03:57am

    Slaves and serfs

    A slave that ran away actually deprived the owner of his property. Someone that steals him/her-self is a thief, and theft is immoral. Free slaves is worse than pirates.

    Poor owners. Squeezing serfs for centuries to carve out a livelihood.

  • Jun 06, 2013 @ 01:21pm

    Re: Re: Re: I don't get it..

    Sony have changed its mind before and shown its true face. They have infected peoples computers on purpose as proved by the Sony rootkits, and they removed the ability to run GNU/Linux on playstations after the customers had bought them, rendering rendering-farms expensive junk.

    They will change their mind again.

    No one in MS or Sony have been jailed for any of their scams. They game the citizens with inpunity.

  • Apr 26, 2013 @ 06:11pm

    hex stricken

    There will call upon you to night, a Deutsche Grammar phone, and on mere suspicion strike your line six times!

  • Mar 11, 2013 @ 08:19am

    Re: Re:

    I knew someone that wrote rm -Rf * .o during his doctorate. The computer responded back that there were no .o files. This puzzled him as he had just compiled some software and were convinced that there would be a lot of those .o files.

    Notice the extra space.
    His line of thought were (erase, all of, the .o) files.
    I believe in backup. It can be a real savior

  • Feb 27, 2013 @ 08:14am

    Heavy encryption

    4 bytes larger key gives more than 30 extra years;
    1kB more gives several thousand extra years;
    1MB more gives several million extra years;
    before it is feasable to crack the key.



    For good (symmetric) algorithms the strength doubles for each additional bit. This is true both for computing power and the size of look-up tables[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table].

    If computing power and RAM size doubles each year, 4 bytes gives 32 extra years before it is feasible to crack the key (because the key is 4.000.000.000 times stronger). It is one among many easy improvements one can make to significantly improve resilience. It is also a strong argument for longer pass-phrases.


    For asymmetrical crypto the key must be longer (because the strength/bit is lower), but this isn't a problem as the key is both generated by a computer and used by a computer.


    Proper end-user to end-user crypto use a combination of both. GnuPG use a new (one-time) symmetric key for each file you send; and it uses asymmetrical (personal) crypto to encrypt that key. This enables strangers to exchange information, and to send information to several different people that don't share the same personal asymmetrical key.



    I presume that part of the reason citizens assume that governments respect their privacy when they use Internet to be at the same level as communication with letters, is that the governments really should.