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  1. Values, life-long love of learning on Ask Slashdot: Terminally Ill - What Wisdom Should I Pass On To My Geek Daughter? · · Score: 1

    My own father passed when I was six years old. Still, his memory was a huge influence on my life. Through my mother, older siblings, and business associates of his, I was constantly reminded of his values. He was known as an honest man of high integrity. I wanted (still want) to be known the same way. That has always been a tall order to live up to. But I am better for it.

    He also expected me to learn something every day. I still remember coming home from kindergarden and being asked "What did you learn today?" -- if I said "nothing" or "not much", I was told that wasting a day like that was unacceptable. He expected a specfic, concrete answer to that question each and every day. He belived in education and served on the school board. He encouraged all of his children to pursue higher education in what ever area they were passionate about.

  2. Re:Tesla and Leaf are different on The Best, and Worst, Places To Drive Your Electric Car · · Score: 1

    Also depends on how you charge it. The fast chargers will kill a battery faster. The chemicals in the goop do migrate, and though they start out evenly distributed, the uniformity of the chemical density degrades over time. Fast charging on a regular basis accelerates the degradation.

  3. Re:What's the term for a prophylactic prediction? on Empirical Study On How C Devs Use Goto In Practice Says "Not Harmful" · · Score: 2

    Indeed. And if one is old enough to have read/maintained any FORTRAN code dating from Dijkstra's era, you can understand why he wrote this paper. A lesser being would have gone off on an apoplectic rant. In fact, I may be one of those lesser beings, myself.

  4. Re:"Did I hit a person?" on Boston Dynamics Introduces Their Newest Four-Legged Robot, 'Spot' · · Score: 1

    That's really the point of back-drivable joints. It's a guarantee that if you get into a shoving match with the robot, the robot loses. The arm on the Willow Garage PR2 is like that. You can push the arm out of the way and smack the big, red E-stop button.

  5. Re:Good thing they put the blinky light on it's ta on Boston Dynamics Introduces Their Newest Four-Legged Robot, 'Spot' · · Score: 1

    The OSHA regs were probably written around the traditional industrial manipulators that have *no* sensors to detect collisions, have large mass, move verrrrry fast, and have high joint torque. They live in safety cages, and there are interlocks on the control panels for when a human needs to go into the cage.

    Bringing robots "out of the cage" is a topic of current research. It involves moving slower, reducing mass, lots of sensors to detect surroundings, and having backdrivable joints so that you can just push the robot out of the way if it bunts you. Kicking Spot on the flank is not just a demonstration of it's balancing algorithms. It says you can push it out of your way if you feel like it. I'd be interested in knowing what happens of you grab one of it's feet and hold on -- how much joint torque is present in the legs?

    LegoLand San Diego has a ride that consists of a couple of chairs mounted on the end of some big industrial robot arms, (Kuka's, I think). You can pick your intensify from 1 to 5 -- my daughter and I chose 3, which is the first level where you go up side down. It was very good humor. Level 5 looked intense.... Anyway, I'm thinking saddling up a few Spots for robot races could be a cool ride :)

  6. Re:Speed of first transatlantic cables (1858,1866) on New Fiber Optic Signal Processing Technique Doubles Communication Distance · · Score: 1

    Which is when people realized there is a difference between a transmission line and just a piece of wire.

  7. Re:Fry's Electronics on RadioShack Near Deal To Sell Half of Its Stores, Close the Rest · · Score: 1

    Which Fry's is that? The one's I've seen have one aisle of the most common cruft components, and the rest of the store is "other". When it comes to electronic components, I *am* the target customer, and I would never think of shopping at Fry's first, or at Radio Shack first, either. But... it is common for me to have an order Digi-Key every month, and every couple of months an order to Mouser and SparkFun, and a couple times a year to Adafruit. And several times a year I upload gerbers to a PCB fab house. The market exists, but there is *no* brick-and-morter supplier that could possible stock a useful range. There once was a time when I bought components a Radio Shack, but that was when the components were soldered onto the bottoms of tube sockets. Times have changed.

  8. Re:Second amendment zone of lawlessness on Justice Department: Default Encryption Has Created a 'Zone of Lawlessness' · · Score: 1

    I think that is a very interesting concept. If it is a munition, it should be covered by the second amendment. The problem you face is that ever since the Miller case, the 2A has been eroding to the point where even though something is obviously covered by the second amendment, you still might not be able to keep and bear it. From a pragmatic standpoint, it is in everyone's interest to push back on government incursions into the 2A, because those same arguments can be applied by the government to 1A and 4A, and any-other-A. If you don't like what the 2A says, then try to pass an amendment to change it -- because trying rubbery arguments to contort the meaning will eventually erode the other amendments.

  9. Re:worry about the other "Zone of Lawlessness"! on Justice Department: Default Encryption Has Created a 'Zone of Lawlessness' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And where are my mod points today. Yes. This. The Zone of Lawlessness is mostly inside the DC beltway.

  10. Re:I don't get it on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 1

    George Lucas in Love https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  11. Re:why the fuck on Google Plans Major Play In Wireless Partnering With Sprint and T-Mobile · · Score: 2

    Exactly. All that infrastructure build-out costs lots of money. You need subscribers to pay the rent on the cell site, you need coverage (cell sites) to get customers. It takes a lot of cash to bootstrap that. Coverage pulls in customers -- I'm a past T-Mobile customer -- their plans are much more subscriber friendly that the other guys, but darn I need coverage in a couple of their holes. I'm just one data point, but I'm sure others make the same decision.

  12. How is this not a HIPPA violation? on Healthcare.gov Sends Personal Data To Over a Dozen Tracking Websites · · Score: 1

    Serious question. HIPPA is very strict. Or so I'm given to understand, not having done a deep dive into the details. How can they do this without violating HIPPA?

  13. Re:What's the graduation rate for women? on Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System · · Score: 1

    I pretty much agree with you. But the *perception* of being able to compete is important, regardless of the actual importance of said competition later in real life. The point is that college students (of both sexes) make decisions based on their perceptions of the importance of various factors, and many of those perceptions may not be well calibrated. IMHO lecturing them that their perceptions are wrong is just another way to erode their self-confidence. Making them confident in basic lab/bench skills is actually pretty easy, and should be fun for all involved, and even though they may have a skewed perception of the long-term value, the short term value of increased self-confidence at a critical moment in time is invaluable.

  14. Re:What's the graduation rate for women? on Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System · · Score: 1

    Well, I have a lot of theories on that. My daughter, by the way, loves pink and purple and fabric arts. She also is a whiz at surface mount soldering, designs her own P.C. bpards, and completed multi-variable calculus at age 14. She is applying to engineering schools as a freshman for next fall. You do not have to do a princess-ectomy in order to end up with an engineer.

    You *do* have to give girls the confidence that they can compete. I've made sure that my daughter has good bench skills. Now, I know and you know that bench skills don't matter for diddly when you become a program manager, or a senior grade individual contributor writing the documents that another 120 people will implement. But I've seen talented girls switch out of engineering majors because they were intimidated by the fact that their lab partners had memorized the resistor color code and knew how to use an o'scope and they didn't. In the long run knowing the resistor color code does not get you the corner office. But being confident enough to stick with the major is a big deal.

  15. What's the graduation rate for women? on Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What percentage of the people graduating with qualifying degrees are women? If the hiring is close to that, is there a problem?

  16. Re:Central Computer on Radio Shack Reported To Be Ready for Bankruptcy Filing · · Score: 1

    ahhhh, no. Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Central Computer. But CC is not Radio Shack of the early 1970's. If you want basic components, visit Halted.

    But in the end, no store is going to have everything you want for basic electronics any more. When RS started, a nearly complete catalog of useful vacuum tubes filled a few pages in the back of the Radio Amateur's Handbook -- and you didn't need to stock inductors, just enameled wire and coil forms, because hand-wound coils were a normal part of scratch building. Contrast that to when DigiKey stopped publishing a printed catalog, it was about 3 inches thick on thinnest imaginable paper -- and now the online catalog database is truly enormous -- no brick and mortar store could stock all of that.

    Also, how can you possibly staff stores coast to coast with knowledgeable people at retail wages? Anybody with the knowledge to really be of help can get better work elsewhere.

  17. Re:Open source base station? on Where Cellular Networks Don't Exist, People Are Building Their Own · · Score: 1

    Anything else I can help you with?

    I will look at it and let you know. I am happy to see there is actual source code. Too many projects in RF-land claim to be open source, but are not.

  18. Open source base station? on Where Cellular Networks Don't Exist, People Are Building Their Own · · Score: 1

    Gee... I didn't find links to the schematics and source code on their web site. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough? Where are they?

    Or..... maybe it's yet another click-bait article abusing the term "open source'.

  19. Not just self-employed.. on Intuit Charges More For Previously Offered TurboTax Features, Users Livid · · Score: 0

    .. who doesn't have investment income?

  20. Out 'em: SnoopSnitch + Google maps on FBI Says Search Warrants Not Needed To Use "Stingrays" In Public Places · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A StingRay detector for some rooted Androids exists: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/an...

    So, I could see crowdsourcing StingRay mapping. Rooted Android + SnoopSnitch + IOIO board + interface application + Google maps + web site. If enough snoops were deployed, you could have a real time map of all StingRays in operation.

  21. Re:Yeah, but... on FBI Says Search Warrants Not Needed To Use "Stingrays" In Public Places · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, they need a license. But how do you know they don't have one? The FCC has mechanisms for special licenses.

  22. Re:Easy to follow rules. on Designing the Best Board Game · · Score: 1

    In middle school, I loved chess. Not that I was great, but I enjoyed it and studied it and became middling. Later in life, once I had a job that required concentration for 8 hours a day, chess totally lost it's appeal. A moment's lapse on concentration costs you the game in chess. It just wasn't fun at the end of a work day. That is when backgammon became my game of choice. Strategy, similar to chess, but the dice make it pointless to plan more than a couple of moves out. Within a broad strategy, you play the probabilities. A moments lapse of concentration or even a glass of wine don't kill you, especially if you play a short series of games for points..

  23. Re:Advance to Go on Designing the Best Board Game · · Score: 1

    Yes, indeed. One time I owned the entire lowest-rent side, hotels on all. I down-built to houses when other players were getting ready to build. They looked at me like I was looney. Shortly thereafter, once they understood the rules, they paid me to build hotels again.

  24. Yes, let's destroy our fastest growing industry. on India Blocks Code Sharing Websites On Anti-Terror Advisory · · Score: 1

    Were this any other country, I'd give this about 48 hours to get reversed. Since this is the Indian bureaucracy we are talking about, in may be more like two weeks for this to trickle through the system. But when you the take the fastest growing industry in the nation, that pays the best wages, and is your only hope for keeping the best and brightest from emigrating to greener pastures, and basically torpedo it, somebody is going to notice.

  25. Re:And for the people who can't drive on The One Mistake Google Keeps Making · · Score: 1

    Roger Moore, Roger Moore,
    Riding through the land....