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User: _anomaly_

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  1. Re:But didn't their patents protect them? ;D on Cisco Spending Millions of Dollars Secretly Purchasing New Juniper Products · · Score: 1

    Yeah, true. The show's OK so far. Has more potential to interest me than most of the other stuff on TV these days.

  2. Re:But didn't their patents protect them? ;D on Cisco Spending Millions of Dollars Secretly Purchasing New Juniper Products · · Score: 1

    So, you're watching Halt and Catch Fire too? ;-)

  3. Re:Tech isn't there yet on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 2

    I agree with the point you're making, in this post and others, but what if the smart gun manufacturers erred on the side of an operational, not disabled, weapon? In other words, if the battery dies or fails, or if it's determined that a fingerprint scan couldn't be gathered successfully (if it's using fingerprints), then default to an enabled state?

    This would still put the onus of making the gun safe on the gun's owner, much like making sure a trigger lock is in place, requiring that the battery be checked frequently, and so on.

    I realize that there are still other fail cases that would reduce reliability (like, in the case of fingerprints, a scan was successfully gathered but is not correctly identified), but eliminating the power failure, among others, by defaulting to an enabled state would no doubt get much closer to your high reliability target, would it not?
    The way I see it, this would likely prevent more accidental shootings while getting closer to that reliability target.

  4. Re:Beer with bacon fat and maple syrup on Ben Starr Answers Your Questions About Sustainability and Kitchen Tech · · Score: 1

    You must be talking about Voodoo Doughnut Maple Bacon Ale by Rogue. I had it a couple of years ago while visiting the brewery near Portland, OR. It's interesting, but a bit too interesting to have more than a pint, IMHO.

  5. Re:Gun nuts on "Smart" Gun Seller Gets the Wrong Kind of Online Attention · · Score: 2
    I'm sure there are parts of the Brady Bill that should be revised, re-worded, or even taken out, but I'm not going to get into that, or argue about semantics.

    However, you may be able to say that a flash suppressor has no affect on the function of the weapon in a literal sense, but I'd argue it completely changes the weapon's intended use. A weapon intended for target practice, sport, or self defense has absolutely no need for a flash suppressor. This type of "feature" is intended for covert use of the weapon, which I'd argue falls under what most would categorize as an assault weapon.

  6. Re:WTF? Pebble is not "progenitor" on What Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble · · Score: 1

    More than one year before the Pebble there was Metawatch [metawatch.org] (which uses exactly the same display type), and ages before the Pebble there were much, much more advanced "smartwatches".

    Like the inPulse watch? You know, made by Allerta, who became Pebble?

  7. Re:Standard practice... on Peanut Allergy Treatment Trial In UK "A Success" · · Score: 3, Insightful
    1,000 peanuts and 70,000 people

    ;-)

  8. Re:Heard a story on NPR this morning... on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I should have added a disclaimer that it, of course, is highly dependent upon the school district and/or individual school. I just thought I'd bring up the possibility that there may have been that caveat when it comes to cancelling schools in the area.

  9. Re:Learn to freaken drive. on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    No doubt this false sense of security (and driving talent/experience) comes standard with most 4WD/AWD/4x4 vehicles.
    When I had a 4x4 SUV, I even found myself having trouble keeping in mind the fact that I wasn't invincible.

    My girlfriend and I were in Illinois a few Christmases ago when we found ourselves having to begin our 5-6 hour drive after 5-6 inches had already fallen. Even in IL, those country roads were not cleared one bit. We were in a Hyundai Sonata (4-door sedan, front-wheel drive), going maybe half the speed limit. We encountered numerous vehicles in the ditch, almost all of which were SUVs. We did end up doing a 180 in the middle of a straight road (presumably hitting some hidden ice under the snow), but we were able to at least make it to a major city in Indiana where we gave up (having gone half our distance in 5-6 hours) and stayed the night.

  10. Re:Canadian driving on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    They do that here in Kentucky, too. I believe it's just streams of highly-salted water, where the water evaporates and leaves those lines of salt, which won't be "brushed" off the road by traffic like normal salt crystals tend to be.

  11. Re:Heard a story on NPR this morning... on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    I'm not arguing that it wasn't a disaster, but so far, in the comments I've seen that the NWS changed from a Winter Storm Watch to a Warning sometime around 3 or 3:30am. I'm not sure about Atlanta and surrounding areas, but that's awfully close to the cut-off time where schools can be cancelled. My father was a teacher, and from what I recall, if the call didn't come in that school was cancelled by 3 or 4am, it was on, regardless of what you woke up to.

  12. Re:I used to wonder about that on FileZilla Has an Evil Twin That Steals FTP Logins · · Score: 1

    Yeah, me too, and I would bet that Microsoft moves to incorporate the Windows app store into desktops. The app store could easily be expanded to offer desktop versions of software, in addition to tablet and phone versions. It would be a way for Microsoft to have more control over what gets installed on desktops running their OS... and having more control is definitely what they want.

  13. Re:C object inheritance on Ask Slashdot: It's 2014 -- Which New Technologies Should I Learn? · · Score: 1

    That's not inheritance. That's a workaround to a lack of support for inheritance.

  14. Re:What? on Building an Open Source Nest · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://nest.com/ ...and their blog post about being acquired by google: https://nest.com/blog/2014/01/13/welcome-home/

  15. Re:Albert Einstein said... on Ask Slashdot: How Can I Improve My Memory For Study? · · Score: 1

    Good quote, but it doesn't apply. Most university courses won't allow you access to reference materials during exams or quizzes.

    At the engineering school I attended, during what we affectionally called boot camp (the first 3 semesters where you take Calc 1-3, once a day for an hour, with a test and a quiz every week), we weren't even allowed calculators during exams, much less a text book.

  16. Re:disabilites? on Ask Slashdot: How Can I Improve My Memory For Study? · · Score: 1

    Good suggestion. I have a friend whose wife returned to college in her 30's and had difficulty with testing. I'm not sure what office it is, but they allowed her to take her tests apart from the other students, and on a different time table. I think it has really helped her, at least with the testing part.

  17. Re:Cloud != Backup on 4 Tips For Your New Laptop · · Score: 1

    it's free

    Absolutely not, unless you know someone who can give you the hardware for your FreeNAS box. If you have an extra computer laying around, chances are it doesn't have what you'd need for one. I recently looked into what would be required to setup a FreeNAS box, but I don't have the available funds to build a decent one. I have an old computer using rsync to avoid catastrophic hdd failure, but the hardware is all too old for FreeNAS.

  18. Re:It's pretty simple on How a MacBook Camera Can Spy Without Lighting Up · · Score: 1

    Wow, thanks for educating me. I guess the pronunciation is what convinced me I was right, but as you point out, if you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. +2 for the Pink Floyd reference.

  19. Re:It's pretty simple on How a MacBook Camera Can Spy Without Lighting Up · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but it's desserts. Think of it this way... you would actually want two desserts, but who wants two deserts?

  20. Re:Memories... on Doom Is Twenty Years Old · · Score: 1

    I had a similar experience with Doom, about the same time, '94-'95. We'd play it on our high school token ring network, during our "computer science" class (which pretty much amounted to learning how to program in some variant of Basic). The teacher got so annoyed, catching the 3 or 4 of us playing during her lectures that she eventually would allow us to play after we finished our in-class work. Needless to say, those of us interested in playing became pretty decent at coding Basic quickly.

  21. Re:Something is wrong with the entire system on JPMorgan Files Patent Application On 'Bitcoin Killer' · · Score: 1

    The sad part is that a lot of people said "OK".

  22. Re:find an old modem on Ask Slashdot: How Would You Stop a Debt Collection Scam From Targeting You? · · Score: 1

    No receiving party pays for long distance in the US, unless its a collect call (or other specialized service like a toll-free number or VOIP) .

  23. Re:Like with everything else, moderation on Toronto Family Bans All Technology In Their Home Made After 1986 · · Score: 1

    I try not to judge anyone's methods of parenting because I'm fully aware that it's never as easy as it may seem, even when a child is screaming in public while both parents continue to ignore them. I don't know the circumstances that lead up to that situation, and try to remind myself of that before I start cursing them under my breath.

    Thanks for elaborating. If I ever have kids, I hope I can retain the clarity it seems you have when those special times arise.

  24. Re:Like with everything else, moderation on Toronto Family Bans All Technology In Their Home Made After 1986 · · Score: 2

    Disclaimer: I'm not a parent. I have spent a lot of time with one niece and several nephews, and have witnessed a lot of parenting of younger children.

    From my point of view, it seems that a lot of parents often forget that children can be very different, even at the same age. It's easy to say "yes, of course the same thing won't work with every child!", but it seems that often people will stop right there, and not consider the reason that some children are different and that the answer "just try Y instead of X" isn't always an option.

    But given a choice between tablet, tv, or 'working' in the yard with me (eg, poking at the dirt with his tools and periodically helping me when he's interested), he'll pick the yard every time.

    I think you're missing one very important distinction there... YOU. I'd guess he's outside because young kids love to emulate and *gasp* spend interactive time with their parents. The fact that you think he's choosing outside over technology, even implying he may be better than the other kids staring at screens, is very telling... he's outside to be with you.

    When I was a kid (I'm 35), TV time was very limited, especially during the day when there were other things we could do. When we finally got a computer, time on it was limited as well. I even remember wanting to be outside with my Dad over watching daytime cartoons or whatever. It's not choosing the great outdoors over technology, and I hope you realize this.

  25. Re:They still haven't explained what this does on Samsung's Smart Watch Coming September 4th, Without Flexible OLED Screen · · Score: 1

    He/she didn't, and no one else is. It's being a called a smart watch. Just like your smart phone isn't just a phone, like the rotary kind that used to sit on your (grand)parents' night stand.