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User: xlv

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  1. Re:Google's method is not perfect either. on Why Gmail Has Better Security Than Your Bank · · Score: 1

    but have fun connecting your Android phone to your Google account

    I just enabled two factor identification earlier today after reading some posts here and managed to update my Android phone pretty rapidly. The only issue was that I had to click on "try again" to see a dialog asking me for the password and then the auth code and it wasn't obvious as I selected a few other options first. That's on a Nexus 5 with Android 5.0.1.

  2. Re:Love collision avoidance in my Volvo on Government Recommends Cars With Smarter Brakes · · Score: 2

    she was trying to adjust the stereo (i will call this a huge influencing factor, we have a touch screen display)

    That is the actual problem. Whoever thought having a touch screen display as the user interface in a car should be banned from working in the auto industry.

  3. Re:Wait for it... on Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine · · Score: 4, Informative

    compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region

    According to CNN, it was due to weather on the regular flight path.

  4. Re:Santa Barbara isn't like the rest of CA on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 1

    I was going to post something similar. You can see the different water sources at http://waterwisesb.org/educati.... The Santa Barbara metro area (including Carpinteria and Goleta) uses less than 10% state water as most of the water is runoffs accumulated in local reservoirs or ground water. As the parent stated, it's been pretty dry here and the water level in Cachuma lake is pretty low.

  5. Re:Yeah...whatever you believe today... on Low-Protein Diet May Extend Lifespan · · Score: 1

    I lost like 40 Pounds over 4 months...to weight levels I've never seen before ever...

    Congratulation on the weight loss but I'm just curious, what was your weight at birth?

  6. Re:Whenever I hear about electric car failures on Tesla's Having Issues Charging In the Cold · · Score: 4, Interesting

    newsflash: batteries generate electricty from stored chemical energy

  7. Re:But why? on Amazon To Launch 'Amazon Appstore For Android' · · Score: 2

    > to get the $.01 per transaction google currently gets.

    more like 30% unfortunately for us Android developers... OK, that's shared with the carrier but still...

  8. Re:Dogs eat hearing aids - seriously! on Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive? · · Score: 1

    It's also possible that the dog liked the way the hearing aid tastes.

    Yes, I believe that's the case. Ever noticed how dogs will also sniff around the ears when they meet new dogs. I know that my dog likes to smell the tissues I use to clean his ears and he also chewed the ear plugs my girlfriend left on a bed pillow once... and he's not really the type of dog that will eat anything he can get to.

  9. Re:It's not news that fat is harmful on Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately · · Score: 1

    So why is this considered news, let alone for nerds?
    [...]
    It is interesting to me however that fat cells secrete nasties.

    Well it looks like you changed your mind as you were writing the post as the second paragraph implies you learned something reading the summary...

  10. Re:Sad code, sad article on The Exact Cause of the Zune Meltdown · · Score: 1

    or at least it would be if it was "==" instead of "=" so next time I should double check before pointing problems in somebody else's code...

    In any case, as others have posted, the loop termination is not correctly implemented but pointing out the weird termination because of a missing '<' is not as funny.

  11. Re:Sad code, sad article on The Exact Cause of the Zune Meltdown · · Score: 5, Funny

    for (;;) {
            int daysInYear = IsLeapYear (year) ? 366 : 365;
            if (day = daysInYear) break;
            day -= daysInYear; year += 1;
    }

    This is what Knuth called an "N + 1/2" loop

    No, this is what Knuth would call an infinite loop as there's no way to terminate the loop except on the last day of each year...

  12. Re:Or Star Wars on Machine Condenses Drinking Water Out of Thin Air · · Score: 4, Funny

    (I don't know - coming to slashdot and getting you're Star Wars references wrong... *sigh*).

    I don't know - coming to slashdot and getting you're/your wrong... *sigh*

  13. Re:These are hardly the best compressed air cars on Compressed-Air Car Nears Trial · · Score: 1

    A company called MDI already has compressed air cars on the streets of Mexico city.

    Maybe you should have looked at the summary a little bit closer and clicked on the links, specially the part about "Motor Development International, the vehicle's developer"...

  14. Re:Exchange rate info is wrong on Landing IT Work Overseas · · Score: 1

    I should have mentioned in my post that they "just" divided instead of multiplied the exchange rate as the ratio is correct, i.e. $75000 is about 48000 euros. Still a basic mistake that the author/editors should have caught before publication...

  15. Exchange rate info is wrong on Landing IT Work Overseas · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just checked the info for Paris and they got the exchange rate wrong:

    typically paying about (euros) 75,000 in Paris -- but with the current exchange rate, that's just $48,000.

    Can the rest of the article been trusted if they cannot get something so fundamental while working abroad right?

  16. Re:Loopholes? on Speculation On Large-Scale Phone Location Snooping · · Score: 1

    It may be the case that the records are not well protected but when you said they are public records, it means I can contact whoever is the custodian of those records and just ask and get the details (i.e. who called who and for how long) for any phone number and that is thankfully not true. I just wanted to point that out in my initial response.

  17. Re:Loopholes? on Speculation On Large-Scale Phone Location Snooping · · Score: 1

    phone records are public (who called who and for how long)

    Phone records are private, at least in the US, only phone numbers may be public if they're not explicitly setup as unlisted numbers.

  18. Re:no, this was not the WWW on Even Before Memex, a Plan For a Networked World · · Score: 1

    I lived in France from 95-98 I think you've tried it too late as by then the internet was way better and the minitel was already on the decline. The BBS comparison mentioned in this thread was more accurate in the early-mid 80s before the internet was available to common folks and people were connected their C64/PCs to minitel to get extra services on top of the "online" shopping services available for the standalone minitel.

  19. Re:Hmmm, threw an exception on Software Update Shuts Down Nuclear Power Plant · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd rather it shut itself down then suffer major failure. Personally, I'd rather it doesn't suffer a major failure at all, whether it's after a shutdown or not. Oh you meant than and not then, never mind...
  20. Re:Really a fair deal? on Firefox 3 Antiphishing Sends Your URLs To Google · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, it does explain it pretty well on FF2. If they changed that it would be news.


    FYI, here's the text in the popup for Firefox 2.0.0.7:

    If you choose to check with Google about each site you visit, Google will receive the URLs of pages you visit for evaluation. When you click to accept, reject, or close the warning message that Phishing Protection gives you about a suspicious page, Google will log your action and the URL of the page. Google will receive standard log information, including a cookie, as part of this process. Google will not associate the information that Phishing Protection logs with other personal information about you. However, it is possible that a URL sent to Google may itself contain personal information. Please see the Google Privacy Policy for more information.

  21. Re:heh, OK, France is socialized on Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent · · Score: 1

    ...but really, is that an acceptable allocation of resources?


    I am not arguing that. The post I replied to implied that socialized medicine does not work. I just pointed out that even in his own post, he mentioned that it could work. Just because one implementation does not work does not mean that the concept cannot work.

    Disclaimer: I am French but have been in the US over 15 years.

    A few years back when visiting, I went to see a doctor there and I was not covered by the system there and did not fill out any reimbursement form of any sort and what I paid cash was about the same as my co-payment here in the US...

    Government does NOT allocate resources well at all.


    How come people in the US are paying more for health care than other western nations and still getting less coverage?
  22. Re:real sources of our health care problems on Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent · · Score: 1

    Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go.


    Well, according to your own statement, "socialized" medicine can work as going to France to get treatment is still being served by universal health care medicine... or do you think people over there are being put on the waiting lists after non residents?
  23. Re:Subversion on Version Control for Important System Files? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Subversion is the ideal solution - because it needs a lot of junk in .svn directories :( And it can mess with some scripts that do recursive grep or something similar.

    That's true, but in practice is that such a huge problem? We use SVN already for all project code and have managed to make do with it. If you can grep and operate on a few megs of in-house development source, a comparatively tiny /etc directory shouldn't be too much hassle.

    I've been using svn for a few years now for projects and system files. There's a few problems with the .svn directories for system files. For instance, modprobe on Linux will check and complain about the files in /etc/modprobe.d/.svn when they are parsed.

    As explained by somebody else, using the export command is not that useful as then /etc is not directly under revision control and that opens the door for synchronization errors.

  24. Re:Cheap not so green electricity ? on New Law Lets Data Centers Hide Power Usage · · Score: 1

    Again, depleted uranium should not be part of the current discussion as we're discussing civilian nuclear technology for electricity production. One can support that use while still being strongly against the use of depleted uranium by the military or any nuclear based weapon for that matter.

    I too didn't say nuclear wasn't polluting, just that it was the greenest tech available right now for large scale electricity generation. And we do have to get real: pollution is a real problem, oil is running out. There is an alternative to oil/coal use for electricity generation and until something better comes along, it should be pushed as the better option for the near future.

    The problem with the nuclear waste in the US is that there's a ban on reprocessing. Again, I'll point you to France where there is no such ban and waste is recycled and thus only a smaller amount of waste needs to be taken care of for the longer term. I know that this also produces weapon grade plutonium so don't bother pointing that out...

    For your other reply in this thread referencing "Flight 94" (I think you meant Flight 93), a lot of western countries have been dealing with terrorism in the last decades and you cannot use that as an excuse for everything. Besides, newer pebble bed designs are supposed to be safer and another Flight 93 is probably NOT going to happen again as passengers will rush the cockpit faster in such situation.

  25. Re:Cheap not so green electricity ? on New Law Lets Data Centers Hide Power Usage · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think the people of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island might disagree with you, as well as all the people suffering from Depleted Uranium and Plutonium poisonings.


    There are now more than 100 cvilian nuclear plants operating in the US, 109 I think from a recent PBS segment. There was only one accident in the US in civilian nuclear plants, nobody was injured, no radiation released.

    The Chernobyl accident was due to poor maintenance and not following the established rules, i.e. human error and/or incomptence.

    In France there are about 60 generating 80% of their electricty and exporting to the neighboring countries. France has the lowest air pollution of all industrialized countries.

    Depleted uranium is due to military use and has nothing to do with civilian nuclear use.

    I just can't understand why people who claim to understand science or at least the scientific process cannot go past the "nuclear bad" mantra... and by the way, I consider myself to be an environmentalist...