Slashdot Mirror


User: sjames

sjames's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
34,276
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 34,276

  1. Re:Less accessible on Norway Will Switch Off FM Radio In 2017 · · Score: 1

    Further, analog radios can consume next to no power (in some cases, actually no power) and continue to work to some degree even when the batteries are practically dead. That can make a big difference in an emergency.

    I have two or three extras they were giving away at a trade show.

  2. Re:DAB or DAB+? on Norway Will Switch Off FM Radio In 2017 · · Score: 2

    It *SHOULD NOT* be less that 192kbps, but is it?

  3. Re: And GOD said on The Origin of the First Light In the Universe · · Score: 1

    Or perhaps we're actually living in the Twilight Zone and God is a 6 year old boy.

  4. Re:I guess he crossed the wrong people on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 1

    Too bad the new organisms don't get a few years of safety study.

  5. Re:I guess he crossed the wrong people on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 1

    *IF* that pesticide has no biological mechanism of interacting with humans, being scared of it is stupid.

    The pesticides in the plants we eat now other than the GMOs have had a thousand years of human testing. Further, if they were at all inclined to cross with some wild non-food species to gain something more toxic to humans, they more than likely would have by now.

    Compare to something that has had zero years of human testing and in some cases no animal testing.

  6. Re:in my opinion this guy is like Jenny McCarthy on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That I find more believable and far less serious. Some of the comments here make it sound like he's telling people to replace insulin and heart medication with lettuce or something.

  7. Re:Did they mention the yummy GMOs on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 2

    Another inarguable point is that the plants bred a thousand years ago have had a thousand years of human testing.

  8. Re:Did they mention the yummy GMOs on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 1

    Name a bacterium that infects both jellyfish and corn and has a habit of swapping genes with it's host.

  9. Re:Did they mention the yummy GMOs on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are actually a few differences that can have real consequences. For example, simple cross breeding is a fairly slow and limited process that gives us time to see if a problem is developing. It is further limited by the need to stick with plants that can cross-breed in the first place.

    Another factor is that not all genetic modification techniques lead to the plants breeding true. The next few generations may be substantially different from the original.

    If the work was being done in a verifiable cautious manner, it might be OK, but there is a history of modifications that "can't escape to the wild" being spotted in the wild. It's somewhat amusing the number of weeds that gained roundup resistance from roundup ready canola. Also amusingly, in spite of Monsanto's claim that only their transgenic techniques could have produced roundup ready crops, traditional breeding has managed it in a few cases including in coca.

  10. Re:I guess he crossed the wrong people on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 1

    Agreed, but it might not be smart to eat plants that manufacture an unaccustomed pesticide or an unusually large amount of it.

  11. Re:in my opinion this guy is like Jenny McCarthy on Columbia University Doctors Ask For Dr. Mehmet Oz's Dismissal · · Score: 1

    Genuine curiosity, what is he advocating that actually endangers his patients (or anyone else's) health?

  12. Re:I'd Like To See Electronic Voting Work on The Voting Machine Anyone Can Hack · · Score: 1

    The simplicity of a salt isn't the issue, it's the size. More salt confounds the process.

    As for the question of your ballot being void, you can't know. Any more than you can know that your ballot didn't somehow end up in the river or burning in someone's fireplace before it made it's way to be counted (as I said, not perfect).

    However, the election officials and press observers can know if a lot of void ballots get checked from residential addresses (remember, validating void ballots triggers an investigation). Presumably, the large number of void ballot validations after the election might cause such measures as enabling voters to check if their ballot is void or not (now that the election is over and the controversy is starting to boil).

    At that point, nobody will be able to prove that their particular ballot was meant to count but was issued void, but there will be enough people complaining that it becomes evident something is wrong and likely of a criminal nature.

  13. Re:Are things back to normal now? on Gyrocopter Pilot Appears In Court; Judge Bans Him From D.C. · · Score: 2

    White House guards were busy guarding the White House. This guy landed at the Capitol building.

  14. Re:Must hackers be such dicks about this? on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    You seem really desperate to see him as public enemy #1. I can see that nothing short of major brain surgery can change your mind. Certainly the absence of anything happening and their apparent inability to get a warrant hasn't convinced you.

    If law enforcement walked past you, stopped, then turned and looked right at you, you're saying you are too clueless to guess you are of interest to them? Sorry to hear that.

  15. Re:Think walls of steel... on Scientists Locate Sunken, Radioactive Aircraft Carrier Off California Coast · · Score: 0

    Not the Pu, but most everything else. But Pu is low level waste.

  16. Re:We all need to realize... on AMD Withdraws From High-Density Server Business · · Score: 1

    I'm cheering for AMD for much the same reasons. I'm also hedging my bet with ARM.

  17. Re:Sadly, I don't see an "out" for AMD on AMD Withdraws From High-Density Server Business · · Score: 1

    I certainly don't agree with him on Windows and I have no strong feelings about Steam, but he is quite right about the CPUs.

    When the story broke on the cheat embedded in the Intel compiler, I actually gave it a spin and looked at the assembly code. I also actually patched it out and saw the difference on an AMD compute node. I routinely see AMD perform on-par with Intel in compute intensive jobs.

    The very top end Intel processors are faster than the top end AMD, but unless your constraints include "must fit in a shoe box", you will get more bang from the buck buying more AMDs.

  18. Re:Must hackers be such dicks about this? on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    I'm saying that they didn't feel that the "threat" was serious enough to divert the plane. After, the lack of anything happening at all is a pretty good clue (for the cluefull) that the "threat" which could have been a bit of dark humor was, in fact, a bit of dark humor.

    As for the rest, I'm guessing that the combination of the feds looking right at him and an IQ above 60 told him who they were there for to at least 90% certainty.

    This kind of idiocy is exactly what gets innocent people killed by cops.

  19. Re:Think walls of steel... on Scientists Locate Sunken, Radioactive Aircraft Carrier Off California Coast · · Score: 1

    Age for one. It's been down there for over 60 years now, so a lot of it has decayed.

  20. Re:I'd Like To See Electronic Voting Work on The Voting Machine Anyone Can Hack · · Score: 1

    Salting is a simple enough matter, just a few random bits, much like the salt in a password hash.

    As for the rest, I suggest facilitating the process of selling bogus votes. That is, any polling machine can be used to freely generate a bogus voting receipt which will appear to validate at the website but has a void flag set. For extra fun, someone validating a bunch of voided ballots (that they cannot see are void) will trigger an investigation.

    The void flag is just a second election key mixed in with the hashed data. A real vote will have the correct election key hashed in. Election officials WILL be able to distinguish a void vote from a real one.

    It wouldn't prevent all problems, but it would leave a great deal of evidence behind distributed among the voters so that it would be quite difficult to make it go away.

    I can imagine other schemes which would be more air-tight but would put too many technical demands on the voters.

  21. Re:Warrant after probable cause established? on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    No, actually he didn't give them a reason. He made a joke they didn't find funny. Had they actually believed he was going to cause a problem, why did they wait until the plane landed (after an uneventful flight) to harass him?

  22. Re:Since when.... on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    They clearly have nothing. Note that they didn't think it was important enough to have the plane land early (like they surely would if they actually thought he was going to do something harmful). If they had anything more than the tweet, they should have had no problem getting a warrant by now.

  23. Re:Must hackers be such dicks about this? on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    So naturally, they allowed the flight to continue to it's destination to give him the maximum possible time to do the bad thing (which never happened) because they truly believed he would do it, right?

    The fact that nothing at all actually happened is purely immaterial, I suppose?

    Now, turn in your Jr.g-man badge.

  24. Re:Must hackers be such dicks about this? on FBI Accuses Researcher of Hacking Plane, Seizes Equipment · · Score: 1

    No, none of that. He tweeted. That's it, just a tweet. A spit in the ocean if you will. He didn't mess with the pilots or frighten the other passengers. As far as we know, he didn't belch obnoxiously or fart during the flight either.

    If the feds ACTUALLY believed he was hacking the plane, why did they wait until it landed to do anything? Shouldn't they have ordered the plane to make an immediate emergency landing before something happened?

  25. Re:...Wikipedia has "atrophied" since 2007... on How Many Hoaxes Are On Wikipedia? No One Knows · · Score: 1

    The best though is the self-generating reference. Wikipedia article goes up, magazine publishes article using Wikipedia. Said article is used as a citation to satisfy [citation needed].