Slashdot Mirror


User: wisty

wisty's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,205
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,205

  1. Re:Why? on Makers Keep Flogging 3D TV, Viewers Keep Shrugging · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I like 3D for some stuff. Crowd scenes and other chaotic stuff can look great on it. Big cars exploding out of the screen is just trashy, though. There's some beautiful underwater documentary I saw - swarms of hammerheads swimming past in 3D is very very cool.

    The thing is, people know that the price will drop, the glasses will become lighter (and probably incompatible with old 3D TVs), and the new ones won't give you headaches. There's only a few good 3D movies every year, and you can see them in cinemas.

    When I was young, my parents only had a black and white set (because they were tight, and hated TV). I used to think color TV looked crap. Suddenly, there were color clashes everywhere. But I got used to it after a while.

    3D is nothing to be excited about now, though.

  2. Re:And Yet on China Cuts 'Excessive Entertainment' From TV · · Score: 1

    If NK decides to follow this model, the world will be a much better place. I mean, it would kind of feel good to see the US and South Korea pulverise the North Korean troops, but then you'd realise that they were mostly just brainwashed conscripts.

    It kind of sucks that your roommate and his friends got screwed over, but compare Chinese GDP growth to Russia. Over the last ~20 years, China grew steadily for a decade, then shot up like a rocket. Russia went backwards for a decade, then shot up a little less. Russia is still richer (per capita), but it came off a higher base. Between 1990 and 2000, Russia's economic growth (and presumably improvements standard of living) looked like China's in the 60s. You can't call that "fortunate".

  3. Re:Quality on Nginx Overtakes Microsoft As No. 2 Web Server · · Score: 1

    Actually, native English speakers are some of the worst people in the world at noticing the difference between different vowels. You can replace every vowel in many English sentences with "eh", and English speakers will still understand you. In Texas, you can use "ah" instead - "Ah wahnt tah thah stahre, ahnd bahght sahm ahpples ahnd ahrahngahs".

  4. Re:That's true on China Cuts 'Excessive Entertainment' From TV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Funny story - the spread of technology in China is almost guaranteed to topple the idiots running North Korea. Firstly, it's made most Chinese despise the North Korean government, which makes the Chinese - North Korean alliance a bit of a farce. Everyone except North Korea (who think China is still their friend) knows that China's only concern now is whether or not it suffer any collateral damage (i.e. bombs, shells, or fallout falling on Chinese soil), and how to deal with the refugees.

    More importantly, North Koreans buy black-market goods from China. This includes iPod clones, many of which will come sold pre-loaded with the best Korean entertainment videos, all of which come from South Korea. It's getting harder and harder to explain that they are so superior, when all the South Korean shows are about families which are 10X richer than the families shown in pro-North propaganda.

  5. Re:This seems... on Earthquakes That May Be Related To Fracking Close Ohio Oil Well · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, but can you prove that the small fraking-caused quakes didn't release stress that would have caused a much more dangerous larger magnitude quake?

  6. Re:Design Matters on Arise SIR Jonathan Ive · · Score: 1

    And how many Windows apps correctly use powershell objects?

    Pretty much every stack on Linux supports cTypes and/or XML and/or JSON and/or Google's protocols, and stuff used to support CORBA. This is an old problem. The solution isn't in the protocol. If you want to pass an array or dictionary, it's easy. If you want "live" objects, with rich abilities, you are almost certainly fucked, as everything in your stack has to understand how to deal with exceptions.

  7. Re:R&D on What's Wrong With the US Defense R&D Budget? · · Score: 1

    I suggest you watch "Yes, Minister". The problem is, soldiers don't get to choose how money gets spent. R&D is popular, because it makes the politicians look good, and gives the top brass a chance to fly around getting their palms greased by contractors. A president who launches a new fighter jet looks like a hero. A president who buys more kevlar jackets and better food for the troops looks kind of boring. And you can guess where there's more discretion (thus lobbying and bribery) in awarding the contract - kevlar jackets are more or less commodities (so you just award the contract to the lowest bidder), while a new jet is a mess project with lots of scope and all kinds of possible overruns.

  8. Re:The rot and waste aren't new! on What's Wrong With the US Defense R&D Budget? · · Score: 1

    IIRC, it was part of a larger contract. There were a bunch of items, and so they just split the bill up, so the company would get payed piece by piece. They were lazy with the accounting, and didn't put a higher price on the more expensive items, but weren't really ripped off.

  9. Re:Ken Murray's blog on How Doctors Die · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At the heart of the debate, most people think they can live forever. They think that death is unnatural, and if you can stave off the attack then everything will be OK. Let's say you have cancer. With treatment, you have a 10% chance of survival, but a much lower quality of life during treatment. Without treatment, there's a 0% chance of survival. If you assume you'll live forever if you survive (which most people seem to do), the choice is trivial, even if your life expectancy barely exceeds the time you'd have without treatment. The real answer should be very different for a 30 year old and a 90 year old.

    This is why the system is geared towards resuscitations. It *sounds* logical - of course you want to resuscitate, right? His point is that unless a patient is young (80) and fit (not otherwise terminal), it might not be such a great idea.

    The last days of life after being resuscitated are not likely to be enjoyable, for the patient or their family. They can "go peacefully", or with broken ribs, hooked up to life support (assuming they can't , as their family debates whether to finally switch them off. Even on the tiny off-chance that they do survive, they aren't going to live forever.

    Doctors need to balance cost, quality of life, and length of life. It sounds inhumane to say that cost should be a factor, but it is, and people have to face that fact.

  10. Re:The final frontier on China Reveals Its Space Plans Up To 2016 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Studies show that Japanese speakers have great difficulty distinguishing between "r" and "l" sounds. Kind of like how English speakers can't even hear the difference between most Chinese words.

  11. Re:Which surprises you most? on GnuPG Short ID Collision Has Occurred. · · Score: 1

    Note, the probability of a collision is approximately 1-exp(-n^2 / (2*N)) where n is the number of samples, and N is the state space.

    Basically, if n is roughly sqrt(N), you are quite likely to have a collision. If n is way less than sqrt(N), you are fine. This is why Git works, with its 160 bit space - you'd need somewhere near 2^80 entries to have a high probability of a collision. One billion (2^30) entries a second, 2^25 seconds a year for a a thousand (2^10) years is 2^65 ... leaving you with about a 1-exp(-2^130/2^161) = 1-exp(-2^-31), which isn't one in a million.

    But with a few thousand keys, you'll be on very thin ice with a 2^32 keyspace.

  12. Re:Sureeeeee on Do E-Readers Spell the Demise Of Traditional Schooling? · · Score: 2

    Schools have had TVs and video players for decades - delivery in not the issue.

    The internet has given more feedback to video producers (especially that Khan guy), and helped identify what is popular, but it's not like no-one ever thought to put classes on TV before.

  13. Re:Maybe, maybe not... on Is Overclocking Over? · · Score: 1

    >> Not a single game I've played in the past 3 years has come close to taxing my setup

    Try Dwarf Fortress ;)

  14. Re:Witchhunt on E-Crime Police Raid Melbourne Newspaper · · Score: 1

    Adapting off Yes, Minister:

    The Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph are read by people who think they run the country; The Age is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Australian is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Sydney Morning Herald is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Australian Financial Review is read by people who own the country; The Green Left Weekly is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and Lloyd's List DCN is read by the people who are going to see that it is.

    * Appendix: The Courier Mail is read by people who think that everything south of the Murray River is another country, The Perth Now is read by people who might as well be in another country, The Adelaide Now is read by people who wish the rest of the country didn't think they were in another country, and The Mercury is read by people who get angry when their state isn't drawn on a map of the country.

  15. Re:Witchhunt on E-Crime Police Raid Melbourne Newspaper · · Score: 1

    Adapting off Yes, Minister:

    The Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph are read by people who think they run the country; The Age is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Australian is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Sydney Morning Herald is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Australian Financial Review is read by people who own the country; The Green Left Weekly is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and Lloyd's List DCN is read by the people who are going to see that it is.

    * Appendix: The Courier Mail is read by people who think that everything south of the Murray River is another country, The Perth Now is read by people who might as well be in another country, The Adelaide Now is read by people who wish the rest of the country didn't think they were in another country, and The Mercury is read by people who get angry when their state isn't drawn on a map of the country.

    The Australian is read by the people who think they run the country.The Age is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Sydney Morning Herald is read by the people who dThe Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.

  16. Re:What's rogue about him? on Aerospace Corp Pays $2.5m To Settle Rogue Software Dev Case · · Score: 1

    Change that to was. He's apparently dead now.

    Did they catch him when some kind of automated billing script kept on kicking without him? And if so, how long did it take for them to connect the dots?

  17. Re:Wow... on Aerospace Corp Pays $2.5m To Settle Rogue Software Dev Case · · Score: 1

    *Within* the public service, he'd be promoted instead.

  18. Re:Wow... on Aerospace Corp Pays $2.5m To Settle Rogue Software Dev Case · · Score: 2

    Yeah, but I bet their status updates are flawless.

  19. Re:Cheaper on Clothier Slammed For Using 'Perfect' Virtual Model · · Score: 1

    If your BMI is around 20 (or around 18, if you are finely built), and your doctor says you're OK, then you aren't the kind of "walking coat hanger" I'm talking about. Amanda Hendrick has a 24 inch waist ... I doubt you are really that thin and have a healthy BMI. Also, the photo of her was kind of trashy, which is why it got complaints, it wasn't an objective thing. It really depends who tells you to fatten up. Old relatives and fat women tend to think everyone needs to fatten up.

  20. Re:Cheaper on Clothier Slammed For Using 'Perfect' Virtual Model · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yep. And you notice that "super models" and actresses are a lot plumper, with decent curves, and sometimes even a tiny bit of body fat. Women have to look like they can survive pregnancy before they are sexually attractive (thought there'll be some weird fetishists who'll say otherwise). A rail-thin model is essentially a self-propelled coat-hanger, not the epitome of beauty.

  21. Re: beard on Russian Scientists Say They'll Clone a Mammoth Within 5 Years · · Score: 1

    And throw chairs when someone says "google".

  22. Re:Space elevator coming next? on Graphene Spun Into Meter-Long Fibers · · Score: 1

    > Or what happens when the weight on the end returns to earth after moving away from the initial breaking.

    There's another, much bigger weight up there. It's called the moon. Do you worry about what happens when *it* comes crashing down too?

  23. Re:In other news on China Telecom Companies Pledge To Stop Monopolistic Practices · · Score: 1

    In the south, yes. Most meals in the north of China are wheat based. Rice isn't uncommon in the north, but wheat noodles, wheat dumplings, pancakes, and bread are the bases for a lot of meals.

    But rice is still used in a lot of expressions.

  24. Re:Canon or Nikon on Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography? · · Score: 2

    Why not take it to the logical extreme, and say that if he's not using a 4x5 and scanning it in (at a massive resolution), or a scanback (for landscapes), he's not interested in photography?

    It's a matter of trade-offs.

    There's specialized cameras - scanbacks, and large format film cameras. But these cost about as much as a small plane.

    Heavy, expensive, good quality (especially in poor conditions - like low light or moving targets, or both) - there's DSLRs. You need to make 2 choices - what brand (Canon or Nikon), and what size. If you choose a APS-C size by Canon, then there's no real difference between the models (though the more expensive ones may have a few better features). If you want a recommendation, get a low-end Canon APS. If you like taking photos from medium distance (animals in a zoo), get a 50mm prime. For "family photos", the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 USM IS is heavy and expensive, but very very good. Then there's long lenses (for long range shots - something like a 300mm if you want to shoot birds), and wide lenses (for artistic landscapes, a 10-20mm can practically photograph itself, it's that wide). I don't know about Nikons, but a low-end Nikion APS-C would also be fine.

      Mini-DSLRs - cameras with interchangeable lenses, that aren't as big as a APS-C DSLR. You won't get a good choice of lenses, so why bother messing around with them? Just get a superzoom.

    Good quality (except in really bad conditions) - big, chunky point-and-shoots, like superzooms. These can be in something of a no-man's land (as they are a bit bulky, but no-where near as good as a DSLR), but pretty good in all but the most adversarial conditions. Superzooms will be a little distorted (there's a trade-off between zoom range and quality), but more flexible. Anything by a recognizable brand would be good. A good zoom range (i.e. 35X optical zoom) is flexible. A good apature (i.e. 1 : 2.0 - 4.5) is *probably* a better quality lens.

    Good quality in most conditions - Canon S95. Lacks flexibility, and not nearly as good as a DSLR in bad conditions, but fits in a pocket.

    Convenient - the latest iPhone camera.

  25. Re:Support on Is HP Paying Intel To Keep Itanium Alive? · · Score: 4, Funny

    DB2 is the best big-iron database, and MS-SQL is the best big-iron database for people who don't really like databases.

    I guess that leaves Oracle as the database for people who like databases, but not too much. The Mitsubishi Lancer of databases, as it were.