Slashdot Mirror


User: DrHyde

DrHyde's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
168
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 168

  1. What a brilliant idea, deliberately do even more damage to the hearing of those of us who wear hearing aids.

  2. Re:Wrong focus on Pod Planes Could Change Travel Forever (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    There are all kinds of things that can be done to make the roads safer without changing who drives and maintains what or how they are trained.

    Rebuilding dangerous junctions or corners, for example. Better separation of fast and slow traffic. Improving sight lines by changing where signs are positioned. Putting shades on traffic lights so that you can see them better when the sun's shining on them.

  3. There's a better way on Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Have a Pager? Do You Find It Useful? · · Score: 1

    If your phone "likes to die", have you considered just getting a new phone that isn't broken, or carrying a spare battery if it's dieing because you're draining the battery?

  4. Re:should be interesting on Julian Assange May Surrender To British Police On Friday (twitter.com) · · Score: 2

    And "the right thing" is to arrest Assange for jumping bail and haul him back in front of the court. The whole point is that he is *not* currently in detention (and so of course isn't being detained illegally) when he should be.

  5. Is it the year of the Linux desktop yet? on Intel Gets Called Out Again For Their M.I.A. 3.0 X.Org Driver (phoronix.com) · · Score: -1, Troll

    I know this'll get hate, but it's why I switched to using a Mac. I don't have to arse about trying to find device drivers and relying on people to write them for free out of the goodness of their hearts.

  6. Other publishers' games on Report: Activision Buys E-Sports League's Assets (esportsobserver.com) · · Score: 1

    > Others note with skepticism the idea of a game publisher buying an e-sports league, which could lead to concerns about how games from other publishers are treated.

    What's the problem? It doesn't matter that a chess tournament doesn't include a bit of Scrabble, or that the FA Cup doesn't include baseball.

    I presume that people compete by playing Call Of Grand Theft Warcraft 97 against each other, and you don't have one person playing Call Of Grand Theft Warcraft 97, one playing Minesweeper, and one playing Doom 2, so why does it matter. And if other publishers feel left out they can start leagues for their own games.

  7. Buy more hardware on Ask Slashdot: A Development Environment Still Usable In 25 Years Time? · · Score: 1

    Until about five years ago I supported a custom application running on CP/M. I just kept some spare hardware so that if anything broke I could swap it out, and I also could use the spare parts for developing on. Not that I actually did any development for the last fifteen years of the contract, all I did was visit once a year to blow the dust bunnies out.

  8. Re:"the software industry" lol wut on The Medical Bill Mystery · · Score: 1

    "The software industry" != "developers".

  9. Typing speed on Lots Of People Really Want Slideout-Keyboard Phones: Where Are They? · · Score: 1

    The main argument in favour of physical keyboards is that you can type faster on them. It's probably true. Trouble is, data input is a minute part of what people do on their phones, so it's a micro-optimisation. And it's a micro-optimisation that comes with all the costs associated with having to engineer a small device with loads of moving parts.

    For the majority of people, a mildly sucky virtual keyboard - one whose quirks you quickly learn - is a price worth paying in exchange for a smaller, lighter more reliable device.

  10. In praise of older people on Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry · · Score: 1

    Right now we''re recruiting some more developers at my employer, and while we're not actively discriminating, we seem to be consistently favouring older applicants. You can only get so far with youngsters who are willing to work all hours - eventually you have to address the debt, both technical and process, that they leave behind. And to do that you need at least some older people to mentor the kids and to rebuild and maintain the relationships between your engineering team and the rest of the business.

  11. And the point is what? on Nissan Develops a Self-Cleaning Car · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    What's the point? Have they not heard of rain at Nissan? I find that rain does a really good job of cleaning my car.

  12. I'm deaf and I hate "deaf culture" on How Cochlear Implants Are Being Blamed For Killing Deaf Culture · · Score: 1

    I'm deaf. I despise "deaf culture". Deafness is a disability that we should strive to overcome and eradicate instead of retreating into a ghetto of our own making.

  13. More disks on How Do You Backup 20TB of Data? · · Score: 1

    I'm backing up 8TB at home, by rsyncing to another 8TB of disk space. It's been working reliably for years, starting back when a TB was a lot and adding/replacing disks over time.

    A 4TB hard disk is pretty cheap these days, so he just needs to get six of 'em and make another RAID array. Once you've done the initial rsync, I presume that subsequent changes will be relatively small, so transfer speed doesn't matter much, so he could hang them off a USB port in one of those USB-to-SATA dock things.

  14. Re:What is "computer-directed flight control"? on Bugatti 100P Rebuilt: The Plane That Could've Turned the Battle of Britain · · Score: 1

    I was thinking that the absolute earliest the Germans could have got anything into production, assuming that everything went their way, was mid 43. Bomber Command had twice as many planes available at that point.

  15. Re:What is "computer-directed flight control"? on Bugatti 100P Rebuilt: The Plane That Could've Turned the Battle of Britain · · Score: 1

    It would have been an electrical (or possibly mechanical if they could make it light enough) analogue computer. Analogue fire control computers were common on naval ships from WW1 onwards, and used in bomb sights and anti-aircraft guns in WW2. I presume that it would just be a moderately complex negative feedback system.

    Mind you, the pictures make it look like it wouldn't really have been a useful military plane. Too small to carry any significant load, guns, or fuel. It was designed as a racer, not a military plane, and while companies like Supermarine could apply lessons from racing to mass-produced military machines, they still had to design the military machines from scratch and not just do quick adaptations to existing designs. The Spitfire, for example, has its origins in a 1931 design, and had two substantial re-designs before finally entering service in 1938. Even if the Germans get their hands on this unfinished prototype in mid 1940 when France falls, there's not a chance that they'd get anything related to it into production until they're already getting their heads kicked in by the Red Army and RAF Bomber Command.

  16. Not video games on Ask Slashdot: What Games Are You Playing? · · Score: 2

    I play Go. With real people, face-to-face, on a wooden board. I'm not interested in big flashy video games, and haven't been since Doom.

    There are a few interesting games on iOS devices. They're mostly good because the very limited user interface - you don't have eleventy million keys, or joysticks - and limited CPU grunt, storage and memory means that game designers have to actually think about gameplay and come up with original ideas instead of just releasing yet another Doom clone with MOAR MEGGERPIKSELS. Harbour Master, Osmos, and Tower Bloxx are all a few years old but still great fun.

  17. I don't care about upgradeability on Ask Slashdot: Best Laptops For Fans Of Pre-Retina MacBook Pro? · · Score: 1

    I'm posting this on my Macbook Pro, made of Chinese slaves' retinas. I love it.

    I've never felt the urge to perform brain surgery on any of the laptops I've owned over the years. I bought each one pretty much maxed out, and ran it for four or five years. The one thing that irritates me about my latest Macbook is that I can't carry a spare battery with me. But on the other hand, its battery life is very good and it's very rare for me to spend so long between charging opportunities that it's a problem. And the one time it was, well, it's a price worth paying. Other laptops - and I looked at many when deciding which to buy - all found worse ways to suck.

  18. Re:Let's cut the conspiracy theory on When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education · · Score: 1

    I hope you always charge this nincompoop for helping him. After all, if you help him for free, there has to be a catch, there has to be a law being broken. And I don't mean just helping him with his computer. Charge him for helping him trim his garden hedge, for helping clear snow from his drive, for keeping an eye on his house when he's away, ...

  19. Re:Let's cut the conspiracy theory on When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education · · Score: 1

    The bit of the teacher's letter that is quoted doesn't even say that she's a member of a union, let alone that specific one.

    Anyway, I know where *my* union's money comes from and what it's goals are. The money comes from members and a very little bit comes from adverts in our magazine.

  20. Re:WTF? on Free Resources for Windows Perl Development · · Score: 1

    I'm one of that group. And yes, my beard *is* going grey. I've not used Windows for over a decade. I have no idea how to set up and configure a current Windows to be secure and to have a reasonable development environment. Nor do I care to learn, as I have better things to do with my time, like making tasty booze and grumbling about The Youth Of Today with their ghetto blasters and hard core pornography.

    But if this lets me test my code on Windows before releasing it, and spot and fix stupid errors, then that's a Big Win. I still won't bother fixing any major Windows-only bugs (like Adam says, it's too big a time investment from which I will get no benefit), but the vast majority of bugs are trivial little things and I *will* fix those.

  21. Emacs on The Gym Arcade · · Score: 1

    Cool, more emacs modifier keys!

  22. Degrees are useless on The Stigma of a Tech Support Background · · Score: 1

    What makes you think that people should take your degree seriously? Certainly my experience is that people with computer-related degrees are less useful in the workplace as programmers or sysadmins than people with either no degree or a degree in an unrelated field such as economics, geology, astrophysics or theology. I don't care why that might be.

  23. In Soviet Britain ... on UK Gov't To Require ID Cards For Some Foreign Residents · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... card identify YOU

  24. Re:Because CVs lie on Testing IT Professionals On Job Interviews? · · Score: 1

    The problem we set is too big for anyone to completely solve in the time available. Just by looking at how far the candidate gets we get a good idea of who's an excellent programmer and who's merely very good. And after their time is up, we discuss the code with them, as it gives a good base from which to talk about algorithms, data structures, benchmarking, profiling and optimisation.

  25. Because CVs lie on Testing IT Professionals On Job Interviews? · · Score: 1

    Anyone we invite for interview as a programmer has to sit a little test. They have an hour and a half to solve a problem. They've got an interwebnet connection and all the docs. It's amazing how many people with great CVs this weeds out because they can't do simple things like open a file.