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User: jowilkin

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Comments · 19

  1. Let them trade for press again on Anonymous Hacks Westboro Baptist Church · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After the Virginia Tech shootings the WBC threatened to protest the funerals. Some radio guy offered to let them have air time in exchange for not doing so.

    As a friend of one of the people killed in those shootings I was very happy the family wouldn't go through this even if it resulted in a sick group like the WBC getting radio air time.

    I think we would be serving the families of these new victims well by making some sort of similar compromise. I doubt anywhere near the number of people listened to that radio interview as would have seen the protests in the news, so I don't think it even helps the WBC cause at all.

  2. Re:Nas Drive, with offsite backup on Ask Slashdot: Best Long-Term Video/Picture Storage? · · Score: 2

    Raid 0 is a real bad idea for backup, if one drive fails, your whole array goes down. A NAS is a good idea IMO, but you should not be using Raid 0. A better solution would be to use something like Raid 6 (which allows 2 drives to fail without loss of data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_6 ).

  3. What can slashdot do? on Ask Slashdot: How To Encourage Better Research Software? · · Score: 1

    It's kind of useless to post this on Slashdot honestly. What good is it going to do? If you have an idea for how to solve this and are a researcher then talk to the NIH. Otherwise this is just a lot of hot air.

    If the software is mature enough to be widely useful, then a company should try to commercialize it under and SBIR or an STTR or something. If it's not mature then it should stay what is is - a research prototype. Most research prototypes end up being useless in my experience and it's not worth the effort at all the try to pull them all together. If there are a bunch of useful ones like you seem to be claiming, then submit a grant and do something about it.

  4. Yes on Should Colleges Ban Classroom Laptop Use? · · Score: 1

    I absolutely agree that in many cases laptop bans can be helpful. Some people do actually use them to take notes, but the vast majority do not, and it is very distracting for the students who sit behind the laptop users. It's virtually impossible for your eyes not to be drawn to all the flashy lights and images flying by the computer screens in front of you as you try to pay attention to the lecture.

    Ideally you could just ban laptop usage that was unrelated to the class, but that is very difficult to enforce and would be a strain on the professors time while they should be teaching.

    It's part of an ongoing problem that schools do not yet know how to properly utilize technology in the classroom. Until they figure this out, technology can be a distraction instead of a benefit to students.

  5. Re:And what happens.. on Air Cannon Ties Pirates In Knots · · Score: 1

    Water jet engines are not that expensive, and the pirates make a TON of money on ransom. They have built full towns just to house hostages, I think they can scrounge up a bit of money to buy a new engine. It's a small investment for a multi-million dollar ransom.

  6. Re:Poorly-defined problem on "Mandelbulb," a 3D Mandlebrot Construct, Discovered · · Score: 1

    Who says this is publishable? Seems like some people having fun on a fractal forum. Interesting to look at, but probably not publishable in an academic sense.

  7. Re:i use folding@home on The Science of Folding@home · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it's debatable if using research facility workstations for FAH is a good use of taxpayer money. What about powering them down instead?

    I have been wondering about power consumption of these distributed computing projects for a while. How do you justify the sheer amount of energy used to run these things?

    SETI is a much more questionable use of power IMO, but Folding@home has not really shown to be enormously useful considering the amount of power it uses.

    Why not put all the money used powering computers involved in FAH into innovative research grants instead? Granted this is logistically much harder than convincing people to install a program on their computer, but it would be much more effective in furthuring cancer research.

  8. Re:Line By Line Rebuttal on CoS Bigwig Likens Wikipedia Ban to Nazis' Yellow Star Decree · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't worry, it looks like 90% of the posters here were not able to figure it out either :)

  9. Re:Line By Line Rebuttal on CoS Bigwig Likens Wikipedia Ban to Nazis' Yellow Star Decree · · Score: 1

    You just spent way too much of your time rebutting a parody. The article is not real...

  10. Re:wood for the trees on Hackers Breached US Army Servers · · Score: 1
  11. Re:just the next logical step in evolution of cont on Sony Rumored To Be Debuting Wiimote-Like Controller At E3 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I guess you never had a power glove... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

  12. The OK-ness depends on the popularity of the war on When Does It Become OK To Make Games About a War? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think time is only a minor factor in this case. The level of "OK-ness" of making a war game is also highly correlated with the popularity of the war IMO. In World War II we seemed to have a clear enemy who was clearly in the wrong. It was cause for celebration to defeat them at the time and thus it's OK to relive this defeat in the form of a game. The Iraq war is extremely unpopular, and it's unclear whether we really "won" anything as a result of it.

  13. Re:Hilarious Overkill on Java Program Uses Neural Networks To Monitor Games · · Score: 1, Informative

    It IS a neural network. A neural network is a mathematically well defined thing. That doesn't mean it was a good idea to use a neural network in this case (it wasn't IMO). I certainly wouldn't sign off on this as a thesis, what is the research aspect supposed to be? Using neural networks for image recognition was done and recognized to be a bad idea a really long time ago.

  14. Re:The '90-ties are over on Java Program Uses Neural Networks To Monitor Games · · Score: 0

    Agreed, all they are doing is image recognition. Neural networks are definately not the best way to accomplish this. They sure sound catchy to the average Joe though!

  15. Re:Cars on Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves · · Score: 0

    Used computers are never good value for money. They depreciate in value so fast, that you can almost always get a better one new for the price of the used one.

    Your comment is so clearly contradictory it's funny. If computers depreciate in value incredibly fast then used ones would be a much better deal than new. If computers did NOT depreciate in value, then new ones would clearly be a better deal...

  16. Re:A better idea on Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic · · Score: 1

    Uh, antibiotics don't treat viruses like influenza... Helpful treatment would have been extra fluids, etc, which the navy could have provided.

  17. Time to pay for what you use on Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage · · Score: 1

    The idea that ISPs should just let people use as much bandwidth as they want is kind of ridiculous. When some people are using in one week as much as others use in one year, it only makes sense to charge the heavy users more money. You know sort of like...every other utility on the planet. You pay for the amount of electricity you use, you pay for the amount of water you use, telephone service you use, etc ..... I am one of the people who use a ton of bandwidth so yes I am saying that I should be paying more than others. That said, if it the company doesn't have such a policy in place, it's obviously wrong to be cut off for using a lot of bandwidth and I would be extremely pissed if it happened to me.

  18. Who Cares?? on Analyzing YouTube's Audio Fingerprinter · · Score: 0, Troll

    I didn't read TFA, but why should I care how YouTube does this??? It's not any kind of AI breakthrough, and the only reason to subvert the system is to do something illegal...

  19. Re:Gold plated baby! on Should Network Cables Be Replaced? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually gigabit ethernet was originally designed to run over cat 5 cables, so it's no surprise that yours still work. If installing a new network then it makes practical sense to use cat5e, but cat5 is still perfectly valid.