Slashdot Mirror


User: dabadab

dabadab's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
544
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 544

  1. Also this git thingy can transform that for you automatically.

    No, it can't.
    It can convert x number of spaces to tabs (and vice versa) but it really goes only one way: once you converted to spaces you lose the semantic of tabs.
    If (assuming 1 tab = 4 spaces) you see 8 spaces there's no easy way to tell if it's 2 levels of indentation or, say, one level and 4 spaces of alignment.

  2. If you trust the quality and security of MS products and the business practices of the company enough to endorse them by using their products (or if you're too damned oblivious to have put a moment's thought into it, American-style) then you're already using Windows 10 and maybe Edge as well.

    No, not really. Just look at Visual Studio Code: it is pretty popular with web developers across all platforms - even I have found myself running it on my Debian PC. And I don't use it to "endorse them" but because it's the best tool I have found for the job.

  3. The real problem is that Tesla's "Autopilot" is the worst possible solution to the problem.

    While that is absolutely correct it is interesting to note that in actual practice it has performed very well when compared to old school human driving - and I think that speaks a lot more about humans' driving abilities than anything else.

  4. An awful lot of assumptions on Roomba Inventor Launches 'Tertill', a Weed-Killing Robot For Your Garden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As far as I can see this assumes that whatever you have planted is well-spaced, doesn't get bushy and weeds are well-behaved and don't grow too close to your vegetables. (In my actual garden none of these assumptions are true.)

    Also, there's the problem that it can maintain a garden up to 9(!) square meters.

    It looks a lot more like a science fair project than something actually usable.

  5. Re:good example... on Man Sentenced to Death For Blasphemous Facebook Comments In Pakistan (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 2

    Outlawing religion does not really help. Look at the Soviets: they basically did that and they still did the whole "opression in the name of ideology" thing.

  6. The "arbitrary code execution" hacks are generally exploiting buffer overflows and the one area that tended to be rather full of overflowable buffers was text processing where people were using "reasonably large" buffers without checking the size of the input (the gets() function of the standard C library was a really shining example).

  7. Re:The Answer Comes Around 1am on Report Shows Another Diversity Challenge: Retaining Employees (sfchronicle.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if you want to see who is most successful in IT just watch who walks out the office's front door at 1am, exhausted, stumbling to their car.

    To me it does not sound like "successful" more like "loser".

    a married man who has a strong wife who works as a team with him to fulfill the goals of family.

    I would expect one of the goals of the family is to be actually a family - and that does not really work when you get home from work at 1:30, totally exhausted.

  8. Re:Sounds odd.... on After 20 Years, OpenSSL Will Change To Apache License 2.0, Seeks Past Contributors (openssl.org) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You are reading it wrong.

    This article was about the decision about whether they should move to AL or not and "no response" was taken as a "yes" vote - but that's all.

    The actual license of the code can not be changed by the OpenSSL folks because they do not have the right to it - only the original contributor can do it.
    They have to do what every other license-changing project did: if the contributor does not respond or refuses the license change, his/her code will be removed and eventually rewritten by someone else.

  9. Try this on Your Hotel Room Photos Could Help Catch Sex Traffickers (cnn.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Police find an ad for paid sex online"

    Police calls phone number in the ad.

  10. Re:Guess what Elon has never seen on Tesla Unveils Residential 'Solar Roof' With Updated Battery Storage System (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    It is pretty heavy though.

  11. Re: Renewables will never work on Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Largest Source of Power Capacity (ft.com) · · Score: 1

    Nope. The capacity of an installed solar panel is the sum or average of expected generation over a day/month/year, so it takes generation time and location into account.

    No, it is not. In the case of solar panels the capacity has nothing to do with real life performance, it is measured as output generated with 1000 W / m2 illumination (that is the amount of sun it wold receive on a sunny sommer's noon).

    The same with all other generators: capacity is nameplate capacity and in the case of wind and solar, it is seldom reached.

  12. Re:Doesn't sound plausible on Cisco Develops System To Automatically Cut-Off Pirate Video Streams (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 2

    That is a tired argument and it is not true.

    Yet you go on and enumerate anecdotes from your own life that actually support the argument that somehow preventing piracy would not result in increased sales - and in this respect the actual reason (be it the inability to get legal content or the simple unwillingnes to pay for it) does not matter.

    I am tempted to think that the statement "money spent on preventing piracy has a negative ROI" is probably true.

  13. not everything will run in native 4K

    I think thath should read as "basically nothing will run in native 4K but at least actual resolutions will reach full HD".

  14. there is no statistical power to any of the claims that "self-driving" is safer, or even as safe as human driven cars.

    Also, there is no production-ready self-driving car so it may be just a little too early to demand such data.

    Mercedes-Benz is painting a target on itself for claims it didn't need to make - the function in these situations is to stop the car and nothing else.

    You know, besides affecting the length of the speed vector the self-driving car is also capable altering the heading of the speed vector so yes, there is more to it than simply stopping the car.

  15. You can't trademark sound or lyric because they belong to copyright category.

    Trademark and copyright are two distinct aspects that have nothing to do with each other so there's nothing to prevent a thing to be both a trademark and under copyright protection (Mickey Mouse is a very prominent example of such).

    And of course you can trademark sound - even the USPTO website displays a collection of trademarked sounds.

  16. Re:Oh yeah? Then what are you gonna do about it? on Apple CEO Tim Cook on EU Apple Tax Case: 'Total Political Crap' (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    What is sketchy is the retrospective nature of the "and grab a few billion from Apple while you're fixing it".

    Not really, it goes all according to the rules. When you are cheating with your taxes, does the Tax Office just say that you should not cheat any more or will it demand all the money you should have paid? Of course the latter.
    And as such, there's also a time limit, in this case 10 years (it goes back to 2003 as the 10 years begins from the start of the investigation, 2013) so although there was some shady business going on between Ireland and Apple since 1991, not all of the unpaid taxes have to be paid.

  17. Re: The losing side must automatically pay on 'Legalist' Startup Automates The Lawsuit Strategy Peter Thiel Used To Bankrupt Gawker (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    And what will you do to prevent the obvious - the emergence of "legal experts", aka lawyers who are not lawyers in the legal sense you can hire them if you have enough money?

  18. Is it really something new or noteworthy?
    I am not sure about the US but here in Europe ESL milk (PDF) is a pretty standard thing: it has a shelf life of 3-4 weeks and it is of course chemical-free.

  19. Re: This app exists on Uber Investor Suggests Addressing Police Killings With an App (usatoday.com) · · Score: 0, Troll

    No, actually I do not think so.
    But I also do not live in a country where police officers shooting people is a daily occurence.

  20. Re:please, editors on Amazon's New Kindle Is Only $80, Comes In White, and With More Storage · · Score: 1

    Thanks, I have missed it.

  21. please, editors on Amazon's New Kindle Is Only $80, Comes In White, and With More Storage · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, to get this right:
      - it's an update of the basic Kindle
      - the "memory" referred to in the summary is the system RAM, the storage space probably remains 4 GB (but Amazon is not very good at supplying exact specs for the Kindle line)
      - its screen has nothing to do with the Paperwhite's, it remains the same old 167 ppi, unlit screen of Kindle 4 vintage
      - the touchscreen was introduced by the 2014 update, it stays the same
      - the price also stays the same, $100 or $80 with ads
      - it actually got a little lighter and smaller

  22. What trophy? on Snapchat Sued For Facilitating 107 MPH Car Crash (patch.com) · · Score: 1

    I have never used Snapchat but I googled for their trophies and I just don't see any "speed trophy" - there are trophies for all kinds of things, but speeding is not one of them. Could someone please enlighten me what's this trophy they talk about?

  23. Re: Seattle has the same issue on How San Francisco Hazed a Tech Bro (backchannel.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ACLU is still proud of ensuring the involuntarily committed were released out of the "institutions".

    And is rightfully so.
    See, you can actually run a mental health program without practically jailing people as it is evident in many places in the world.

  24. Re:Energy density per kg on Siemens and Airbus To Push Electric Aviation Engines (networkworld.com) · · Score: 2

    Instead of electric engines they used regular jet engines, with the combustion chamber using heat from the reactor instead of burning fuel.

    Actually what they have managed to do (both the USA and the russians) is to put a working nuclear reactor on a aircrafts using conventional engines - the reactors had nothing to do with moving the aircrafts. After that point, the projects were abandoned because there were too many problems (radiation shielding was a big one).

  25. Re:Quality was never the problem on Torvalds Hasn't Given Up On Linux Desktop Domination, Will 'Wear Them Down' (cio.com) · · Score: 2

    Not so long ago, on an Ubuntu VM (I think), I was trying to change some system configuration or another.

    There simply was no interface to edit whatever it was I was trying to do. You just sort of ran off the end of the earth, and then you were on your own.

    The same also applies to Windows, nothing new here.