Slashdot Mirror


User: john@iastate.edu

john@iastate.edu's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
225
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 225

  1. Punishment? on Fighting Spam With A 17th Century Law · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    We can only hope it involves adding 1-3 inches to your spine...

  2. Re:What about the poor? on Every Road a Toll Road · · Score: 2
    You want the people who use the roads to pay for them? We already have a system that already takes into account the number of miles driven and fuel efficiency. It's called the gas tax. When you fill your car you're paying more taxes than fuel costs.
    I don't know where you are, but this is not the case here, the federal gas tax is about 18/gallon, and state taxes are about 10/gallon (other states vary from this amount somewhat).

    The gas tax is a good idea, it just doesn't nearly cover the costs (e.g., the largest portion of my city and county property taxes go to roads).

  3. Re:What about the poor? on Every Road a Toll Road · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The smartest thing the poor can do is find a place they can live without a car (e.g., travel on foot, bike, or bus). Even a piss-poor car is going to cost you at least $200/month, probably more. If you're poor, that's money you could probably use for food, rent, medical needs, etc.

  4. Send Laywers, Guns, and Money on Seeking Someone to License the Heart of Your Company? · · Score: 2
    Seriously, if this falls apart, it'll all be about who had the best laywers.

  5. It's not just software patents on Losing the War on Patents · · Score: 2
    The other day I bought a can of silicone lubricant which claimed a patent for the `novel' idea of putting the MSDS on the back of the label.

    D'oh!

  6. Re:Australian Govt department has sold my info... on Vermont Goes Opt-In, Corps Unhappy · · Score: 2
    Judging from the crap I see in our logs spammers may well be simply taking every first-initial-last-name combo they have and using them on every domain under the assumption that if there is a jsmith at one domain there may well be jsmiths at several more.

  7. Ethernet != IP on Firewire or Gigabit Ethernet? · · Score: 4, Informative
    With ethernet you must worry about ip addresses and routing all that information.
    IP is just the most popular protocol layered on top of ethernet -- if you were using ethernet to talk to disk drives for example, there is no reason you would *have* to use IP -- you could just talk to them directly via their MAC-addresses or layer some other protocol on top of ethernet.

    On the other hand, ARP, IP, UDP, and DHCP are all well-understood protocols so you might well decide to do it that way.

  8. Re:Or buy it premade on Linuxwatch Budget System of 2001 · · Score: 1
    no, these are manuf. rebates, none of that get-stuck-with-msn crap.

  9. Or buy it premade on Linuxwatch Budget System of 2001 · · Score: 2
    Some of the local big box retailers have had 900Mhz Celeron systems complete with 17" monitor and printer for $399 after rebates.

    I know some people hate eMachines, but my two have been problem free, including one which is now more than 4 yrs old.

  10. What a bunch of scumbags. on Microsoft Caught Rigging ZD Net Poll · · Score: 0
    I think that about covers it.

  11. Re:I name this dolphin.... on Name The MySql Dolphin · · Score: 2
    SQLipper (rhymes with flipper) :)

  12. Happy Old Fart on Laptop Case Modding? · · Score: 2
    Oh, don't worry about me -- one of the benefits of being an uber-geek is you can have both plenty of money stashed away and a good time in the meanwhile.

    My prediliction is to spend money doing things with my family rather than on shiny bits, YMMV.

    And the USB cable nonsense was my attempt at humor, too.

    Oh, and my doctor made me give up Dr. Pepper (etc) a couple of years ago, so that's one vice I can no longer enjoy :(

  13. Maybe I'm just an old fart.... on Laptop Case Modding? · · Score: 4, Funny
    but this sounds like a pointless waste of time and money.

    If you have this desperate need to stand out maybe you could just run a USB cable through your nose piercing or something.

  14. Did you consider UDP? on Scalable, Fault-Tolerant TCP Connections? · · Score: 2
    or did you just not mention why you rejected it?

    If you're thinking of going to the trouble of simulating TCP with raw sockets, UDP seems a simpler alternative to that.

  15. Re:More UPS fun on Clustering with Consolidated Physical Storage? · · Score: 2
    When playing at home, just keep in mind that more than 48v dc can kill you and if it grabs you, you won't be able to let go.

    CURRENT KILLS, not voltage. Shuffle across the floor and touch a doorknob, that's many, many times more than 48volts and I doubt it has killed anyone yet who isn't a silicon lifeform.

  16. Re:Yes you are... on ZeoSync Makes Claim of Compression Breakthrough · · Score: 2
    B is not random. It is a description (in some format) of A

    If it is not random, then it has some pattern and should compress even better.

    Clearly their claim is a steaming pile of technology (if you get my drift).

  17. We do this... on Using RFC 1918 IP Addresses on Internal Routers? · · Score: 3, Informative
    One thing to note is if you are using DHCP the forwarded packets will have the 10.x.x.x address (assuming that is the primary address of the router interface).

    You'll just need to use the 'shared network' statement (or equivalent if you are not using ISC's dhcpd) to take care of this.

  18. Re:The Correct Answer - NOT! on On the Differences Between MIS/CIS/CS Degrees? · · Score: 2
    Computer Engineering: This is a degree for hardware people. This is a degree for serious geeks who like math and logic, but don't want to become programmers

    My undergradute degree is Computer Engineering -- programming is what I do -- in fact, many Cpr Eng grads end up in software either by choice or because there are roughly 10 software jobs for every hardware jobs.

    In fact, the most common degree in our dept is some flavor of Engineering, but we've got a couple of Physics people, a couple CS, and some odder ones too.

    At this school, anyway CS, is for people who like theory, not programming.

  19. Re:Not totally unprecedented on Cornell University Sues Hewlett Packard · · Score: 2
    Quoting from http://www.iastate.edu/~isurf/news/news6.html we find that patents are big business for Universities:
    A Final Chapter for FAX Algorithm

    Earlier this year, the last Type III facsimile machine manufacturer holdout finally agreed to obtain a license from ISURF on this ISU technology. This final settlement brings the total number of licensees of the ISU FAX algorithm to 24 with royalties totaling over $36 million. The patent survived three re-examination challenges at the USPTO and serves to remind us the importance of keeping good research and invention records.

    This was a patent the University discovered it had just before it was to expire -- well after fax machines were ubiquitous...

  20. Re:Searching for prior art... on Canadian Company Claims RDF Patent · · Score: 2
    If you follow the chain of references back from the W3C's papers on RDF they go back past the filing date. Certainly concepts like MARC bibliographic entries predate the patent.

  21. Re:Ridiculous on LotR Takes Top Spot on IMDB · · Score: 2
    You can't know if you enjoyed a movie unless you have watched lots of movies. ...
    I believe you've missed the (badly made, to be sure) point.

    Of course, anyone can say "I liked that" or "I didn't like that" -- but to make comparisons, you obviously need to have experienced more than one of whatever it is (movie, meal, walk, etc). And the more the better.

    If the only thing you'd ever eaten was a Big Mac would you be qualified to rate it as the best meal ever?

  22. Re:I heard this years ago on Megabytes (MB) or Mebibytes (MiB)? · · Score: 2

    That's one point twenty-one gigawatts...

  23. Re:It would help on Megabytes (MB) or Mebibytes (MiB)? · · Score: 2
    Yes it is. 1GB = 2^30 bytes, not 1e9. Drive manufacturers use the smaller unit so you'll think that their drives are bigger than they are.
    That's deceptive

    Look carefully, you'll find the disclaimer in the fine print...

  24. Re:OR, just use strncat, strncpy, etc. on Oracle 9i Isn't Quite Unbreakable · · Score: 2
    The strn* functions are miserable piles of excrement. They were not intended for range-checking but for making sure a fixed-size buffer was completely filled (because of the brain-dead directory structure on some early Unixes).
    char buffer[8192];

    strncpy(buffer, "hello, world", sizeof(buffer));
    Neat, we just spent time copying 8179 extra nuls! And heaven help you if your source is exactly as big as the buffer -- no nul for you!

    You're better off writing your own.

  25. Iowa State's Immersive Environments on University of Illinois uses a Cluster for Immersive VR · · Score: 3, Informative

    ISU has probably the premier researcher in this area, Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira. Here's some info on the environments at ISU: C6 and more...