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User: Detritus

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Comments · 6,170

  1. Re:The money on The 700MHz Question · · Score: 1

    Nothing, the money goes into the General Fund, like all taxes and duties.

  2. Re:Apple's device? on Class-Action Lawsuit Over iPhone Locking? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a nickel, kid. Buy yourself a real history book. Software was a "product" long before Bill Gates started hawking his wares. They just weren't marketing it to Joe Consumer.

  3. Re:Due diligence on Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers · · Score: 1

    5 milliseconds is a very long time. I often work with radio receiver data that has been sampled at a plodding 40 kHz rate, and many interesting things can happen in much less than 5 ms. That's enough time for a signal to travel 1500 km.

  4. Money on Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As I've said before, it's all about money. There are almost irresistible forces that lead organizations to connect control systems to the Internet. An isolated private internet is extremely expensive and difficult to maintain. It's so much easier, cheaper, and tempting, to plug that cable into the public internet, perhaps with a crappy firewall to provide an illusion of security. Even if an engineer is willing to stick his neck out and say that it's an unacceptable security risk, he isn't being a team player and will be overruled by someone higher up the food chain.

  5. Re:Damn I'm Cynical... on Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct · · Score: 1

    One way to destroy a generator is to put it online without properly phasing it with the grid.

  6. Re:Emergency Communications on The Journey of Radios From Hardware to Software · · Score: 1

    In my area, the state police are on low-band, local police are on high-band or UHF T-band, and the fire department is on UHF T-band. Some agencies are moving to 800 MHz. The feds are on their own set of bands, distinct from state and local agencies. None of them are interoperable.

  7. Re:Slashdot summaries are the worst on The Handheld Calculator Turns 40 · · Score: 1

    That's the only model that died on me. It did last 20+ years, so it wasn't that bad. My HP-16C is still going strong, and only on its second set of batteries.

  8. Re:Slashdot summaries are the worst on The Handheld Calculator Turns 40 · · Score: 1

    I'd be more impressed if you had a working TI-59. TI had some good ideas, but the quality of their calculators was often horrible. I bought a few of their early models and they all had short lifetimes. I've had much better luck with my HP calculators. Of all the ones that I've owned, only one has failed.

  9. Re:A footnote to history on The Handheld Calculator Turns 40 · · Score: 1
    I can remember using those mechanical adding machines. The ones designed for business use weren't too bad, but if you wanted multiplication and division, the machines were huge, about the size of a typewriter. They must have been very expensive, due to the large number of precision parts. I saw many of them sitting on the shelves of the local office machine stores after the introduction of relatively inexpensive electronic calculators.

    I built a Heathkit digital clock in the early 1970s, when those things were still rare. It had panaplex digits and a LSI divider chip that ran off the power-line frequency. It had a bunch of parts, mostly to drive the high-voltage panaplex displays.

  10. Emergency Communications on The Journey of Radios From Hardware to Software · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to see the technology used to solve some of the inter-agency communications roadblocks that afflict the USA. Every agency has their own frequencies, protocols and hardware. In an emergency, they often find that they can't talk to any of the other responders. In addition, it would be great if the radios could work with the current cellular networks. This is one of the reasons that the military is investing money in SDR. Many people still remember the soldiers in Grenada who had to request close air support by using a phone card and making a call on a local wireline phone to Fort Bragg.

  11. Re:Simple Solutions on Do Not Call Listings to Expire in 2008 · · Score: 1

    Why do you hate Syria?

  12. ESPN on Suit Seeks 'A La Carte' TV Channel Choices · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's always aggravated me that I have to pay for ESPN, reputedly one of the most expensive channels on cable, because ESPN has the market power to force their inclusion in the basic tier. To receive the Science Channel and the National Geographic Channel, I have to pay for a tier that includes all sorts of crap that I don't watch.

  13. Re:Seriously? Look at the war on drugs. on 10,000 Cameras Ineffective At Deterring Crime · · Score: 1

    While I'm not a big fan of the "war on drugs", I will give the police credit for breaking up some of the most notorious local gangs/crews, which were responsible for many murders. In recent years, MS-13 has become a problem in my area, and I support any efforts to lock them up and deport them.

  14. Homemade Weapons on Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun · · Score: 1
    Since the device does not appear to be very complicated, what happens when its design is leaked and any electronics hobbyist with some microwave experience can replicate it in their basement? The government may find that they no longer have a monopoly on inflicting "unbearable pain" on their enemies.

    Besides keeping kids off my lawn, I can think of many useful applications in the area of animal and pest control.

  15. Re:Wait... only one base providing data refersh? on GPS Transitions to New Control System · · Score: 1
    I wouldn't bet on it. I was recently reading some material on the "Argus Effect", which was demonstrated by a series of top secret high-altitude nuclear tests (Operation Argus) in the 1950s. The tests showed that a nuclear device could be used to create large numbers of relativistic electrons, which would get trapped by the Earth's magnetic field lines. So this has been a known hazard for decades, and I know that the Air Force has done research on how to protect spacecraft from charged particles.

    CHRISTOFILOS, N. C., "The Argus Experiment," J. Geophys. Res., 64, 869 (1959).

  16. Re:Notebook Security on Which Lost/Stolen Laptop Trackers Do You Like? · · Score: 1

    It's simple. All you need are two people. One to create a distraction and one to grab the laptop and walk out the door. This is a very common trick, it's been used by pickpockets and other thieves for millennia.

  17. Re:Wait... only one base providing data refersh? on GPS Transitions to New Control System · · Score: 1

    They have backup systems in place.

  18. Re:Big Iron on GPS Transitions to New Control System · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If the legacy crap works, it isn't crap. I never had a PDP-11 "blue screen" on me.

    Real programmers use FORTRAN, not the quiche-eating boutique language-of-the-month.

  19. Invasion of the Brain Slugs on Meteorite Causes Illness in Peru · · Score: 1

    We've just received this message, "Send more scientists!".

  20. Re:what makes you think its cold? on Meteorite Causes Illness in Peru · · Score: 2, Informative

    The object's surface can become very hot and vaporize without having a significant effect on the core temperature of the object. You have to consider the object's surface-to-volume ratio, the length of time it's exposed to atmospheric heating, and the heat dissipated by erosion of the surface material.

  21. Re:Andromeda Strain!!! or not... on Meteorite Causes Illness in Peru · · Score: 1
    Very few spacecraft carry RTGs. Their primary use is for deep space missions, not those that are in Earth orbit. Solar cells are simpler and cheaper.

    Nuclear reactors have been used on spacecraft with very high power requirements, like Russian ocean surveillance satellites.

  22. What a Maroon! on University of Florida Student Tasered At Political Rally · · Score: 1

    If you resist arrest, you are going to get smacked down by the police, and this idiot was definitely resisting arrest. If you think the taser is inhumane, would you rather go back to the "good old days" when you would get popped with a blackjack or baton? I'd much rather be tased. Even if you are being arrested on questionable grounds, that doesn't give you the right to resist arrest and assault police officers.

  23. Re:Weird Angle on GameStop Manager Suspended After "Games for Grades" · · Score: 1
    "gang members with baggy pants" hanging out in his store, i.e. black people

    What planet do you live on?

  24. Re:I applaud him on GameStop Manager Suspended After "Games for Grades" · · Score: 1

    If you owned a liquor store, would you sell booze to known alcoholics?

  25. Re:address space on One Less Reason to Adopt IPv6? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Because they were pioneers. As in other things, pioneers take the risks and reap the benefits, or get 30 arrows in their back.