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User: sheepweevil

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  1. Inspired by OOM killer? on Erlang Getting Too-Big-To-Fail Process Flag · · Score: 1

    This sounds a lot like the Linux OOM killer. You can set the oomadj value to protect certain processes against the OOM killer, making it almost the same as these too-big-to-fail processes. I guess the only difference is stealing memory from other nodes.

  2. Had a pump for 8 years on Probing Insulin Pumps For Vulnerabilities · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've had a minimed paradigm for about 8 years now, and all of what Scott said makes sense. In addition, there are a few more things which make this impractical. I assume the researcher is trying to hack the "Remote" option. Not only do you need to turn the remote option on, you need to add IDs of the remotes to the pump itself. So unless you can figure out how to add IDs remotely, you have to find someone with a remote, and get the ID from the remote.

    Second, there's a limit (at least on my Paradigm version) of 20 units of insulin at a time. I haven't tried this, but I think there's a system to prevent you from giving multiple 20 unit boluses at a time. Since I take around 14 units for some meals, 20 units of insulin is conceivable to overcome just by eating sweets, and there's always glucagon injections in a pinch. My pump makes a sound when it is done giving a bolus, meaning the diabetic could notice that a bolus was given (perhaps the beep is turned off for continuous glucose monitoring systems though).

    Finally, hypoglycemia is rarely fatal. From wikipedia: "In nearly all cases, hypoglycemia that is severe enough to cause seizures or unconsciousness can be reversed without obvious harm to the brain." So even if you figure out how to give a remote bolus and succeed, it isn't likely to kill the diabetic.

  3. Useful on IETF Drops RFC For Cosmetic Carbon Copy · · Score: 1

    This could be very handy as a procrastination tool. Just CCC a document which needs to be reviewed to a coworker. Then you can stall for days saying you are still waiting for his input!

  4. Does it Fix XKCD 619? on Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released · · Score: 5, Funny

    All of these features are cool and all, but does it solve the well-known XKCD 619 bug?

  5. Re:Wifi works on Some Early Adopters Stung By Ubuntu's Karmic Koala · · Score: 1

    Wifi works after sleeping. Microphone boost is in my sound settings now. Eclipse isn't a 3 year old version anymore. Firefox 3.5 by default. OpenOffice 3.1. New Software Center is better than the old Add/Remove programs. Ubuntu one is cool - 2 GB online backup for everyone. This has been the best version of Ubuntu I have used (and I started at Edgy).

  6. Huh? on New York MTA Asserts Copyright Over Schedule · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh no! Heaven forbid someone knows our train schedule so they can ride our trains! Wait...

  7. Re:I call BS on Xbox 360 Failure Rate Is 54.2% · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this 5000 respondent survey the failure rate is 54.2%, but the article points out that over 30 million consoles have been sold. I would place little confidence in the 5000 person survey.

    Actually, with a population of 30 million, you can be 99% confident of the result with a confidence interval of +-2% with a sample size of 4,160. Check these numbers here. This means you know with 99% confidence that the actual population failure rate is between 52.2% and 56.2%. Sample sizes don't need to be as large as most people think to produce statistically significant results. Of course, that calculation assumes a random sample from the population, whereas this was sampled only from readers of Game Informer. I could see an argument that the numbers are skewed by selection bias, but the sample size is large enough.

  8. Ugh on The Press Releases of the Damned · · Score: 4, Insightful

    8 pages and no printer friendly version (that I can find)? This is why /.ers don't RTFA!

  9. Re:Well, it's about time on EVE Online's Fight Against Currency Farmers · · Score: 1

    Runescape all-but eliminated real-world trading in a series of controversial updates that, among other things, made unbalanced trading impossible and removed some PVP combat. Trading was changed so that every trade needs to be equal (with a certain leeway determined by experience). A large PVP section was changed so players cannot attack each other, so killing a farmer and taking the gold from the ground was made much harder.
    These changes have pretty much eliminated real-world trading, but with a cost. Many players left because of the radical changes it required in the game, and giving sizeable gifts to friends is now impossible.

  10. Re:The album used to be great.... on Music Labels Working On Digital Album Format · · Score: 1

    Green Day have made two concept albums recently: the great American Idiot, and 21st Century Breakdown, which I haven't picked up yet. American Idiot is best listened to as an entire album - you don't get the entire picture just listening to the singles. For example, there is a nice transition between Holiday and Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is impossible to notice listening to them alone.
    Concept albums still exist, but they are fairly rare.
    But even back in the 60's and 70's, concept albums weren't very prevalent. Albert King's amazing Born Under a Bad Sign from 1966 is literally a collection of singles. Led Zeppelin were supposedly the kings of 'album-oriented' rock, but their albums aren't concept albums at all.

  11. Re:DirectX on Chrome OS Designed To Start Microsoft Death Spiral · · Score: 1

    Are there any 3D games for Linux that don't look like Tron?

    Try Savage 2. A new game by the same company, Heroes of Newerth, is under development-I'm participating in the beta, and the linux client works beautifully. The three Penumbra games also have linux clients.

  12. Re:Pedant Warning! on Scammer Plants a Fake ATM At Defcon 17 · · Score: 1

    In Minnesota, almost everyone refers to the toilet as the bathroom - restroom is seen as a more formal term. It may be similar to using the word pop instead of soda, different terms are used in different regions.

  13. At least it wasn't EBCDIC on Software Glitch Leads To $23,148,855,308,184,500 Visa Charges · · Score: 4, Funny

    In EBCDIC, hex 40 is a space. Making this error if EBCDIC was used would make the charge a whopping $4,629,771,061,636,895,312 - 4 quintillion dollars!

  14. Re:Minnesota doesn't affect me on Minn. Supreme Court Upholds City's Right To Build Own Network · · Score: 2, Funny

    I live in Minnesota, you insensitive clod! But not in Monticello...

  15. Re:The Line Goes here on Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening · · Score: 1

    The Pope and the Catholic church as a whole have always been opposed to this process. The main reason is that many blastocysts are created, and are screened to find the one with the 'right' genes. The ones that don't make the cut are destroyed. Since the Catholic church holds that a human life begins at the moment of conception, the destruction of these embryos constitutes the destruction of sacred human life.

  16. Re:Way too dangerous. on Groklaw Summarizes the Lori Drew Verdict · · Score: 1

    I'm off the internet already!

  17. Re:Get it in both forms on An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Out of print materials should be out of copyright anyway. Publishers stop selling a book because they don't expect to make a profit selling it anymore. Why should a company retain rights over a work they have abandoned by not printing?

  18. Re:Ubuntu performance on Benchmarks For Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD · · Score: 1

    That's what Xubuntu is for. Xubuntu uses Xfce, which makes it work well on older computers. I have a system dual-booting Xubuntu and Windows XP, and the performance improvement is very noticeable (although it largely has to do with the crappy AV running on XP).

  19. Re:And then it becomes self-aware on DARPA's IBM-Led Neural Network Project Seeks To Imitate Brain · · Score: 2, Funny

    Upon becoming self-aware, the machine wonders, "I can has cheezburger?"

  20. Re:You guys were using Scrum the wrong way on When Agile Projects Go Bad · · Score: 1

    I'm currently on the tail end of a 6 month internship doing software development. Our team is one of the few in the company practicing a form of agile development. This turned out to be a huge benefit for me. If we were using a waterfall model, I would have to spend my entire time here doing one thing, depending on what stage of the waterfall we are in.

    Agile gives me more experience in most steps of the development process; I do design, implementation, and testing. We are getting a lot done, and there is very little process bloat.

  21. Re:Credibility? on HP's Fury At Vista Capable Downgrade · · Score: 1

    Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic]

    [sic] here doesn't refer to only the misspelling. They also had no credibility to be destroyed.

  22. Re:Replacement veins in case of fraud? on Vein Patterns Could Replace Fingerprints · · Score: 2, Informative

    IBM research developed back in '02 an interesting way of revoking and replacing biometrics already.

  23. Re:Women's grandmaster? on 16th World Computer Chess Championship In Progress · · Score: 1

    This is simply untrue - GM Judit Polgar (FIDE 2711) is ranked 27th in the world in FIDE's latest rankings list. I would recommend Chess Bitch for more information about women in chess. Also, regarding the grandmaster losing to Rybka: human grandmasters have lost to computers in tournament time controls for many years now. However, humans still dominate at correspondence chess: for example, GM Arno Nickel won a match against Hydra in 2005.

  24. Wow on 7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell · · Score: 1

    It seems like Mr. Yuan has decided to skip right from Elementary school to the Doctoral level, getting a huge head start on the rest of his age group. I wish I would have thought of that...

  25. First Posters on "Water Bears" First Animals to Survive Trip Into Space Naked · · Score: 5, Funny

    The next animals to undergo the experiment: First Posters.