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User: evilviper

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Comments · 18,056

  1. Insane price on New Video of Tesla's Mass-Market Electric Car · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So much for it being affordable...

    $49,000 USD AFTER deducting the $7,500 federal tax credit.

  2. Re:Linux is the best AV solution (its also free) on Symantec Exec Warns Against Relying On Free Antivirus · · Score: 1

    In my experience (which is fixing other peoples Windows infested crap) the most reliable way of detecting a virus is to run from a Linux livecd.

    Download clamav, then check the drive.

    ClamAV is decent, but it completely misses old and obvious viruses, like infected boot-sectors.

  3. Re:Once more around the block my friend on CrunchPad Will Be a 'Dead Simple Web Tablet' · · Score: 1

    With each new generation of hardware the geek seems determined to re-invent the web appliance.

    It's exceedingly clear that people want a computer which:
        A) Works better (fast, responsive, stable).
        B) Is simpler (UI & maintenance).

    Which no one wants and no one buys.
    Not in the numbers which matter to WalMart.

    You could have said the same thing about MP3 players, before the iPod came along.

  4. Re:Unofficial? on Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released · · Score: 1

    What does unofficially open sourced mean?

    Means somebody found the source code while dumpster diving.

  5. Re:Advantages vs. traditional rotating wing? on Flapping NAV Performs Controlled Hovering Flight · · Score: 1

    Okay...now you are rotating the blade through 360 degrees rather than the rotor shaft.

    No, 180 degrees at the most. Much easier.

  6. Re:So... on NSA To Build 20-Acre Data Center In Utah · · Score: 1

    You don't just "hide" a facility that has that much electricity coming from civilian sources going into it.

    You don't "hide" a secret facility at all, in the traditional sense of out and out pretending it doesn't exist. You simply create a COVER STORY. Something plausible which explains why they need the power, and why you don't get to take a tour...

  7. Re:In other words, it's Apple-baw on Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs · · Score: 1

    If Apple were truly concerned about Theora and patents, all they'd need to do is implement it as a plug-in -something they should have absolutely no trouble doing

    Quicktime plugins for VP3 have been around forever (~'95 IIRC). Ogg Vorbis qtx plugins have been around since it came out as well...

  8. Re:I'm pretty sure... on Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World · · Score: 2, Funny
  9. Re:Quantum Computers on New AES Attack Documented · · Score: 2, Informative

    How do you create a key, when the entire large number method is made obsolete by quantum computing?

    There are several methods of public-key encryption which are secure against quantum computers. Try Lamport Signatures for a start:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature

  10. Re:Another thread, another flamewar on Firefox 3.5 Benchmarked, Close To Original Chrome · · Score: 3, Informative

    there are also numerous FF plugins to do that.

    No, there aren't, I'm afraid. There are numerous apps written that understand Youtube's naming scheme, but that's all. They don't actually parse the SWF, and any trivial changes to the site layout breaks them. Not to mention that FLVs on any other site still won't work.

  11. Re:Advantages vs. traditional rotating wing? on Flapping NAV Performs Controlled Hovering Flight · · Score: 1

    Attach an airfoil to your arm notice that at some point during the "rotation" the rotor blade will shift from aligned with the relative wind to perpendicular to the relative wind.

    Helicopter rotor blades need to be able to change pitch anyways. Easy to adjust pitch to correct this minor issue.

  12. Pretty baseless on Staying In Shape vs. a Busy IT Job Schedule? · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I have a very slow metabolism, ever since I was a pre-teen I would gain weight fairly quickly if I didn't actively work out, regardless of how much or what I eat. (Barring starving myself, I suppose...)

    Physics happens to disagree with you...

    People vastly overestimate the number of calories you burn when you work out. In fact, short of running marathons, you probably can't get away with eating an extra 500 calories without gaining weight, and much much less if you have a more moderate exercise routine.

    And no, cutting a couple hundred calories out of your diet won't starve you... You'll be a bit hungry for a couple weeks, as your body gets used to the different routine, but that's about it. Then you'll get used to it, and will have a hard time stuffing your face as you're used-to.

    I think you'll find, even if you do add exercise to your routine, your body weight won't change... Exercise is good for your health, of course, but it simply isn't enough to notably alter your body weight.

  13. Re:Another thread, another flamewar on Firefox 3.5 Benchmarked, Close To Original Chrome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm very much looking forward to the element - because every other solution tends to suck bigtime under Linux.

    Before Flash came along, web video on Linux was a great thing. MPlayer supported the big tree formats very well (Quicktime, Real, and Windows Media) and performed extremely well. Open Source browser plugins didn't disabled the controls, and made it easy to download the source of the video, no matter how obfusticated the web page code.

    In fact, MPlayer supports all types of FLV video as well... The problem being the way its embedded into a page requires a SWF interpreter to even find the URL to the FLV file, and as of yet, nobody has written-up what should be a rather simple bit of code to do that, and pass the URL back to the user, or directly to a video player.

  14. Re:Advantages vs. traditional rotating wing? on Flapping NAV Performs Controlled Hovering Flight · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There aren't biological structures that can rotate infinitely, because biological mechanisms require plumbing (blood, etc.) and muscle attach points on both halves of the rotating structure.

    You need to take a good long look at your own shoulders...

    No, not really a free-rotating structure, but more than close enough to be re-purposed into driving a rotor or propeller.

  15. Re:Good... although on Madoff Sentenced To 150 Years · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He could have left at anytime, disappeared, with billions.

    "When you steal $600, you can just disappear. When you steal 600 million, they will find you."

  16. Re:Sunday Express article "fiction", says NASA on Has NASA Found the Lost Moon Tapes? · · Score: 1

    Whether this means the Apollo 11 tapes haven't actually been found, or the way they were found is completely made up, is anyone's guess,

    Well, since the "search" is "winding down," either they've found at least one of the tapes, or they're being extremely quick to completely give up on recovering one of the most significant historical artifacts in all of human history...

    Which do you think is more likely?

  17. Re:Automation on Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet · · Score: 1

    what I see is that "simple pilot error", as you call it, causes more fatal accidents than "simple mechanical error" in all decades except the 2000s,

    In other words, you're saying: "from 2000-2008, the number of 'mechanical failure' crashes exceeds those of simple 'pilot error'. In other decades, the distribution has been similarly very close."?

  18. Re:Still human error. on Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet · · Score: 1

    So bad software is an act of God?

    No. But extreme conditions inside a storm may well qualify.

    In any case, imperfect software causing a crash is most certainly not a case of "human error" by any perversion of the term. It would be in the same class as a mechanical failure.

  19. Re:Automation on Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    However, many NTSB reports conclude with "pilot error" as the cause of accidents.

    That's too vague to be useful...

    Looking at the chart, from 2000-2008, the number of "mechanical failure" crashes exceeds those of simple "pilot error". In other decades, the distribution has been similarly very close.

    http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

    This was a controversial move, but until now has worked well for Airbus.

    I wouldn't quite say that. Airbus is pretty notorious for issues like 10lbs of force being the minimum needed to affect the rudder, while 20lbs of force will deflect the rudder too much and seriously risk causing the tail to break-off.

    Contrary to your implications, the Airbus computer doesn't do ANYTHING to detect and/or correct this situation, or most other failure scenarios.

  20. Re:This is why airbii make pilots nervous. on Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet · · Score: 1

    Even in the case of a engine failure, a small hydraulic pump and impeller would deploy to power the hydraulic controls, giving the pilot some control over his plane.

    Yes, and in the event of an electrical failure, the backup systems would kick in as well.

    A bad car analogy would be replacing all cars' hydraulic brakes with electric brakes.

    There's no reason an electrical link can't be more fail-safe than a hydraulic link...

    Hook two motors together... Turn one, and watch as the other magically turns on its own. An electrical link is every bit as "real" as a hydraulic one, and can work very well without external power being added.

    Or in the case of brakes, short out the positive and negative terminals of a motor, and watch as it severely resists your attempts to turn it... At higher speeds, the effect is much more pronounced.

    And with hydraulics on jumbo jets, it doesn't matter how good the link is, because you're completely dependent upon the compressor to actually affect the large controlling surfaces.

  21. Re:Still human error. on Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Still human error. [...] Blame the programmer, the tester, the lack of analysis.

    If you arbitrarily redefine terms, anything can become anything else...

    You're really stretching it to the breaking point, however, as any act of god can be written off as humans not making everything so unbelievably robust as to withstand all possible events.

  22. Re:Windows has been doing this for 6 years on Ksplice Offers Rebootless Updates For Ubuntu Systems · · Score: 1

    Yeah. Rebootless updates. Uh-huh.

    I fail to see the problem:

    "Ksplice can apply all 64 of the security patches from this interval [from May
    2005 to May 2008] without rebooting."

  23. Re:Awesome stuff on The Video Bay, Now In Beta · · Score: 1

    I was looking for somewhere that I could make videos in Ogg Theora format and upload them. I had tried a combination of archive.org and theorasea.org but it was quite terrible really

    http://v2v.cc/ ?

    Your own web host, perhaps?

  24. Re:Communist is best.. on Emigrating To a Freer Country? · · Score: 1

    Generally south east asia is pretty good. China is communist, so is Vietnam. But this is really in name only.

    Vietnam is one of the most pro-American countries in the world. 80% of the populace have a positive view of the US.

    But as a foreigner living there, you can say what you want about the government, and pretty much do what you want. They do not want a story about you being arrested on some BS in the international papers.

    Not really. If you're rich (and with exchange rates what they are, you probably ARE RICH there) you have much more latitude about what you can get away with. However, should you actually pose a real threat to the government, openly advocating for change, and getting an audience big enough to matter, you're very likely to be put under house arrest, kicked out of the country, or just disappear one day.

  25. Re:Come to the USA! on Emigrating To a Freer Country? · · Score: 1

    The continent of Europe is HUGE - (larger than the US!)

    The planet of Jupiter is HUGE - (Larger than the Europe!).