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User: John.Banister

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  1. Re:Unsearchable != Censored on Yahoo Censors Tumblr Porn · · Score: 1

    I was thinking the same thing, except a wiki instead of a blog, so that they could add themselves and their favorite keywords. Many times when I search for something, among the top results are these idiot pages that have no information on my topic of their own, just lists of links to other pages. Here's a case where a page like that could actually be useful. The Hidden Tumblr Wiki Index could be a route around the search stoppage.

  2. Re:Declared underweight? on Container Ship Breaks In Two, Sinks · · Score: 1

    I'm sure that's how it's done, but they still need to be insured. If they have multiple boats, then they want the customers of one to be using the others as well, so they link them together, using the name, or the paint scheme or both. If the customers of one boat get screwed, then the entire fleet will lose business. Also, a sinking is to large of a loss. They want to end up with another boat to replace that one on the route.

  3. Mission Accomplished! on First Successful Unmanned Drone Landing On an Aircraft Carrier · · Score: 2

    I know. It's the wrong George. It'll still be a long time before that gets old for me.

  4. Re:Expect more of this. on The Black Underbelly of Windows 8.1 'Blue' · · Score: 1

    If you run the XP in a virtual machine w/ no net access and use the linux host for your browsing & email, that eliminates many of the troubles from the lack of security updates.

  5. Re:Expect more of this. on The Black Underbelly of Windows 8.1 'Blue' · · Score: 1

    The KDE version of OpenSUSE is fairly XP-like. I think getting software from repositories is the only thing I'd have to explain to a Windows user (once the partitioning for the installation was complete).

  6. Re:SecureBoot is incomplete on Secure Boot Coming To SuSE Linux Servers · · Score: 2

    If some well meaning but less than perfectly well informed member of a management team decides that there should be a policy requiring secure boot, then it might be nice for the product that it's able to comply. Certainly it would be better to properly educate management, but dealing with software might be easier.

  7. Y'know, I think that business about antibiotics breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria applies more to the antibiotics that are safe for a mammal to ingest than to cell phones, hand soap & such. Bleach has been used for antibiotic purposes for a lot of years, but I have yet to hear of a super strain of bleach resistant bacteria (although this article comes close).

  8. Re:Pilot error? on Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport · · Score: 1

    If it's that accurate, I wonder if it could somehow be used for power generation. That'd be a lot of kinetic energy to collect.

  9. Re:Them females? on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I see lots of iPhone photos taken in a mirror where 50% is obscured by the flash. At first, I thought it was done that way on purpose...

    It turns out that being the governmentally mandated observer on one of these boats is one of the higher paying first jobs one can get with a brand new 2 or 4 year degree in biological science. So, the women I speak with most frequently are the ones working as observer, and, as ship's engineer, the conversations most frequently start with questions similar to: "why has the error differential between the automatic weighing scale and the observer platform scale changed from 1.2% to 2% during the daily test?"

  10. Re:Them females? on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I have the impression that the majority of the sex workers in the USA aren't organized and represented. Judging from the backpages advertisements, I don't think the majority of them own a remote shutter release for their camera, either. Being a commercial fishing vessel worker and largely celibate, I generally have this hungry look in my eye that discourages women from having conversations with me unless they need information about technical subjects (or unless there's payment involved).

  11. Better to use subtractive for firearms on In a Security Test, 3-D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament · · Score: 2

    I don't get this fascination with using computer controlled additive manufacturing to produce shitty firearms. If you want to use computer controlled manufacturing to produce firearms, better to get a CNC mill and use subtractive methods. Golmatic used to have a gallery of CNC manufactured firearms parts (out of steel, which actually works!). Looks like they're using trains now.

  12. Re:Them females? on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I'll trust that you're correct. My own view on society is likely somewhat challenged.

  13. Re:Them females? on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I found sort of a recurring theme in the book. There were brief, but to-the-point descriptions of what it takes to be the good enough client that shared a common theme: have good personal hygene (at least at the time); be respectful and courteous but not in love; be a financially generous repeat customer. And then, there were longer descriptions of the ideal client, which descriptions sounded kind of similar to ones of the ideal boyfriend. Those descriptions seemed kind of out of place as I wouldn't think that people with the inclination and capability to be that guy would be purchasing the book (since part of having the savior faire is knowing that you have it).

  14. Cleaning up on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 2

    As a programmer, my biggest fear is not getting to actually solve problems because an incompetent co-worker knows enough to leverage my intolerance for stuff not being cleaned up (and willingness to do something about it) against me.

  15. Re:Them females? on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    I was 27. There's this book but the summations in the reviews are pretty correct. And then there's ttp:slashslash(your city here).backpage.com/FemaleEscorts/ They want your business.

  16. Re:Better solution. on Ask Slashdot: What To Do When Another Dev Steals Your Work and Adds Their Name? · · Score: 1

    Or on some third person's masterpiece that also has his name on it.

  17. Edsel on 'Smart Gun' Firm Wants You To Fund Its Prototype · · Score: 1

    Enthusiastic designer adds questionably functional technology to the product, which technology is undesirable to the products buyers and leads to another orphaned product of most interest to historians later on in life.

  18. Deceptive linking on First Looks At Windows 8.1, Complete With 'Start' Button · · Score: 1

    The link to Ars should have been in the first sentence, the sentence that begins with "Ars Technica has taken a look..." Having that link be one from Windows.com makes this entire story look like advertising.

  19. I clicked "Caldera" on Artist Turns Volcano Into Naked-Eye Observatory · · Score: 2

    under "Property Features" in the Realtor.com, but nothing ever turned up. I wonder what an extinct volcano went for in 1979.

  20. Re:"Unlike most Bond villains" on Artist Turns Volcano Into Naked-Eye Observatory · · Score: 1

    He'd be the first Quaker to be a Bond Villain if he was.

  21. Re:What's there to dispute? on Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com · · Score: 1

    But ICANN is headquartered in Los Angeles, in easy shooting range of MS's lawyers. This fellow is located in UK, so it'll be expensive for him to have a legal battle unless he can find lawyers willing to work for a percentage of the take if he wins and they have to pay him for the domain. Of course, this rules out the idealistic "I just don't want them to have what they want out of this," approach unless he's quite wealthy.

    I have a hard time believing MS couldn't have had someone type www.xboxone.com from a laptop in a coffee shop back when they first thought up the name. The acquisition could have been done by an agent of theirs long before the new use for that name was known to more than a handful of people. MS probably figured that they're the large corporate entity, and he's an individual, so instead of having to prepare in advance, when the time came the legal system in a post Kelo vs New London United States would help them take whatever they want.

  22. If it's socially deleterious on Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good? · · Score: 1

    I see a lot of replies where "deleterious" seems taken to suggest "will cause immediate harm to your own data or system," but it occurs to me that the flying car analogy suggests the possibility of something more socially deleterious, like using facial recognition and aggregated social networking and other data to print out the personal home address of a random individual from a snapshot. In a case like that, I would make a not obvious to find setting that turns on easy for those who have shown that they could get the results the hard way if they wanted. I doubt you'll need to leave the feature undocumented, just have the documentation leave out the sentence that makes the "but that means you can..." part obvious. You can trust that most who would casually abuse the ability won't consider to read the documentation at all, and those who get the implication will likely figure out how to do it the hard way, regardless.

  23. Re:Instead of materials on UC Berkeley Group Working On Creating Inexpensive 3-D Printer Materials · · Score: 1

    What would you want to make out of glass? When I think of 3d printed stuff I'd want to use, it almost always ends up being parts made out of metal like, for example, beryllium foam core for lighter than air vacuum spheres, or a case for a custom rugged laptop, etc.

  24. Instead of materials on UC Berkeley Group Working On Creating Inexpensive 3-D Printer Materials · · Score: 1

    I wish they'd work on inexpensive laser sintering.

  25. Off Topic on Password Strength Testers Work For Important Accounts · · Score: 1

    Re: Natural Gas (Methane) -> Propane: Fischer-Tropsch process