Slashdot Mirror


User: jmichaelg

jmichaelg's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
994
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 994

  1. Hypocrisy writ large on Facebook Paid 0.3% Taxes On $1.34 Billion Profits · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I suspect the poster, as most people, choose not to pay more tax than they're required to pay.

  2. Re:Mining and refining in space on NASA Plans To "Lasso" Asteroid and Turn It Into Space Station · · Score: 1

    It's quite simple really.

    You slice off a chunk the size of a suv, attach a metal cylinder to the back of it and drop it into the atmosphere. The rock vaporizes from the reentry heat and the trailing cylinder captures and distills the vapors. The cylinder acts like a refinery column and segregates the various metals according to their heat of vaporization.

    The main risk is pirates snagging your cylinder after the refined metals have cooled but other than that it's easy peasy.

  3. Re:SSDs on Ask Slashdot: Do You Test Your New Hard Drives? · · Score: 1
    > Anything but data center quality HDD would be silly, not to mention unreliable as hell and heavily expensive.

    Guess Google is silly then using the cheapest possible hard drives and accommodating the inevitable failures.

  4. Re:MAFIAA popped the trial balloon. on GOP Study Committee Director Disowns Brief Attacking Current IP Law · · Score: 0
    You mean the attorneys Obama appointed to Justice?

    Both parties are guilty of cronyism. Or did you think Hollywood just supported Obama because they think he's a nice guy?

  5. Re:Job Performance on CIA Director David Petraeus Resigns, Citing Affair · · Score: 1

    Except he's agreed to abide by the military code of conduct. So it's not as easy to ignore an affair as it is for a civilian. His rank as general is gone.

    There are several odd things about this. First, the FBI investigation should have happened when he was appointed to head the CIA so why is this coming out now? Did the FBI just get around to doing their background check or has the affair been known for some time? Moreover, since the only forced resignation was his generalship, why did he resign from heading the CIA?

    I doubt this had anything to do with next week's Benghazi testimony. The House is still going to want to talk to him and since he's an American citizen, the House can subpoena him if it comes to it.

    ---
    Booth may have been a patriot but he was a patriot to the losing side.

  6. Re:Shameful behaviour on Apple Hides Samsung Apology So It Can't Be Seen Without Scrolling · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They just might care if the judge shuts down Apple UK for an indefinite amount of time. Contempt punishments are entirely up to the judge issuing the punishment.

    I can't for the life of me figure out what Apple thinks they're gaining when they continue to draw attention to the ruling that Samsung didn't infringe.

  7. Stop the Internet! Wired Declared!!! on Wired Proclaims the Death of the Game Console · · Score: 1

    This is the same magazine that published a multi-page article trying to figure out why Felix Bumgarten's skydiving descent took less time than Kittinger's. Lot's of graphs, lots of math and lots of theories but none add up. End of story. What a mystery! Until a commenter mentions that Kittinger's chute deployed much higher than Bumgarten's did.

    If that was the only article in Wired like that it'd be one thing but unfortunately, there are more, many more.

    If it wasn't for Steven Levy's rare articles, I wouldn't bother with Wired.

  8. Re:three words, one hyphen: on Why Can't Industry Design an Affordable Hearing Aid? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll see your three words and go in two; no hyphen: Regulatory Capture.

    Healthcare is expensive because the government passes scores of rules that benefit the incumbents and keep out innovation. They pass those regulations because someone ends getting richer as a result.

      Ear Trumpet's developers received a cease and desist from the FDA after they published an iPhone App that tested your hearing and then loaded an equalizer to adapt playback response according to the test results. That's all they were selling - a test and an equalizer with presets. But you can't buy it anymore because the FDA objected.

    Another case in point. One of my students' father was trained as an M.D. in China. The family emigrated to the U.S. and the father had to go through medical school all over just to prove he knew what he was doing. The only thing that improved in med school was his English. Were he, and hundreds of thousands other fully capable practitioners, able to come here and just hang out their shingle, you'd see health care costs plummet. But no. The medical profession protects its own from competition by convincing everyone they know best by limiting the number of doctors and med students.

    Healthcare would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the government stayed the hell out of it.

  9. Science and Italian judges? on Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link · · Score: 4, Informative

    Considering it wasn't too long ago that Italy put geologists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake, it's a bit difficult to give this latest development anything more than "there they go again...."

  10. 15 second re-boots on Ask Slashdot: What Distros Have You Used, In What Order? · · Score: 1

    I bought a Asus i3-based laptop for $350 at Best Buy. Came loaded with crapware and no Win7 CD - you had to burn your own DVD before you used the machine. Even with an after-market SSD, it was very slow.

    After several freezes, I finally gave up and installed Ubuntu 12.04. It runs much more smoothly than with Win7. It freezes sometimes when it resumes from suspend but it's not bothersome because rebooting takes 15 seconds. Apps start within 2 seconds and I'm simply able to get things done more quickly.

  11. Moving to aluminum may have been a bad idea on Teardown Finds iPhone 5 Costs Apple About the Same As Did 4S · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I read that when Jobs was testing the first iphone prototype, the screen was plastic because it was thought to resist fracturing when dropped. After a few times in his pocket getting scuffed up by his keys, he told the team to replace the plastic with glass which eventually led to Apple using Gorilla Glass. He didn't give a damn how expensive or inconvenient the transition was going to be, an easily scratched face wasn't going on the iphone. Though the backing was scratchable, it was made of stainless steel which meant minor scratches could be buffed out if the owner cared to.

    Given Ifixit's 30 second test showing how scuff-prone the new aluminum backing is, it's hard to imagine Jobs having greenlit this particular design choice.

  12. Re:Limited hardware supported, not by vendor thems on For Android Users, 2012 Is Still the Year of Gingerbread · · Score: 1

    Since I can't edit a post, I'll edit it here - Evidently Microsoft might have switched gears on its update policy and as of Windows 8, might send upgrades over the air to all Windows 8 platforms.

    Whether ZDNet has it right or not, it's hard to tell as I couldn't find any Microsoft update policy statement.

  13. Re:Limited hardware supported, not by vendor thems on For Android Users, 2012 Is Still the Year of Gingerbread · · Score: 1

    >Apple supports firmware updates including full hardware support for about 3 years at least.

    That is probably why I'll buy the new iPhone when it comes out despite knowing it'll have a proprietary power plug instead of microusb and a walled OS. Maintaining the OS is crucial since no OS is bug-free when it's shipped. Android, by not having a routine patch policy, is just a few bugs away from a clever black hat finding the flaw that'll give them complete control of handsets around the world.

    I had hoped that perhaps Microsoft would have understood this but the way they rolled over for the telcos suggests that Apple is currently the only handset company that has a grip on how important a uniform platform is.

  14. Car Locator on Ask Slashdot: Best Use For an Old Smartphone? · · Score: 2

    If it's worth the $25 a month to you, you can buy a data only plan from Simply Mobile, plug the phone into your 12v line and hide the phone in your car. If your car gets stolen, you'll be able to locate it. That all assumes of course that the phone has GPS.

  15. Re:Bull fucking shit! on Why Cell Phone Bans Don't Work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Enforcement, traffic laws, safety systems don't matter. What matters is the number of people and number of registered cars.

    As hard as that may be to believe, Smeed's Law has held up since the 1940's when Smeed first proposed it.

    Every advance in safety is offset by people engaging in riskier behavior.

  16. Re:Google tossed this away on Why Amazon Is Google's Real Competition · · Score: 1

    I too have a prime membership but I cast a gimlet eye on Amazon's results when I'm buying. This afternoon, I dropped $100 at a 3rd party that I found with Google and paid with Google Wallet because Amazon's price was close to three times what I paid the 3rd party despite having to pay for shipping in the later case.

    You have to realize that Amazon shades the prime prices to cover shipping costs - your $75 annual fee plus the profit on Prime products only works for Amazon if their prices are slightly higher than other folks who break out both costs. Sometimes, like today, the Prime premium isn't worth the price.

    I'm currently shopping for a set of wheels for my bike and Amazon's price is nowhere near competitive. They're expensive so I'm taking my time finding a good deal before I buy - in those instances, Amazon tends to lose out because their target buyer tends to be price-insensitive.

  17. Seems the LHC's win was an IT win on Texas Scientists Regret Loss of Higgs Boson Quest · · Score: 2

    The Tevatron in Illinois is capable of reaching 1 tera volts or 8 times as much energy the LHC needed to produce the Higgs.

    Seems to me the LHC found it because they were able to pull the signal out of the background which was more a data analysis feat than a "let's smash protons together even harder than we have before" feat.

    Then again, I'm not a physicist so perhaps I missed something.

  18. The original paper on Making Saltwater Drinkable With Graphene · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a link to the original paper on Grossman's website.

  19. Re:Make phones like laptops on Google Trying New Strategy to Fix Fragmentation · · Score: 1

    Look back to how Windows propagated. When DOS first came out, hardware was all over the map. There wasn't a standard PC platform. In the mid-80's I was running a Mac publishing firm and I simply wasn't interested in trying to port our products to DOS because I didn't think we could do a good job supporting customers who had such disparate hardware. So products like Crystal Quest, Fluent Fonts and Conflict Catcher stayed Mac-only. By the late 80's, my sales VP was pushing to expand into the early versions of Windows. At that point, we had a solid foundation in Mac software and I thought perhaps we could handle the issue. I was wrong. When we started shipping Windows-3 versions of our products, we had a support nightmare. There were just too many platforms to make coherent support possible.

    In 1995, fifteen years after DOS hit the shelves, Microsoft set out a definitive list of what minimum hardware a manufacturer had to provide to be able to bundle Win95. Prior to Win95, it was so bad a manufacturer could sell a Windows PC without a mouse. The market learned that if they wanted the new Windows, they had to see a special logo that meant their new PC could support it. That one move changed the landscape and made experiences like yours possible. It took him 15 years but Bill Gates finally saw the value of forcing manufacturers to build a standard PC.

    Google is run by smarter guys and it probably won't take them 15 years to figure this out. Somewhere down the road, there'll be a Android-Inside logo that only appears on handsets that meet minimum hardware and software specs. Moreover, the Ai logo will mean customers will be able to upgrade their OS whenever Google releases a new version instead of having to wait for the telcos to allow them to do so.

    Once that logo appears, you'll see your WinXP-like experience repeated and Google will see more iPhone developers working on Android. It's just a matter of time.
     

  20. Re:Diesel on Hybrid Car Owners Not Likely To Buy Another Hybrid · · Score: 1

    Diesel is 35 cents a gallon more expensive in California and California has the most expensive gasoline in the country. Do we also have the distinction of having the most expensive diesel as well?

  21. Yep! It's so! ---Sony! on PlayStation 4 'Orbis' Rumors: AMD Hardware, Hostile To Used Games · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You expect this kind of craven, heavy-handed behavior out of a Samsung or a Panasonic, sure. But Sony?!?!?

    Why wouldn't you expect this of Sony? Recall that:

    • Sony intentionally shipped a rootkit on their music CDs in 2005.
    • Revoked the ability to boot into Linux after people had purchased the PS3.
    • Sony sued George Hotz for disclosing Sony had messed up their PS3 crypto implementation. Since the cat was out of the bag, the only reason for the suit was to punish Hotz for publishing the truth.
    • Sony supported SOPA.

    Don't know how many times you have to see SONY acting in this manner to realize that's the way SONY really is.

  22. Re:so it begins on California To Join Nevada With Rules For Autonomous Cars · · Score: 1

    > Parking and traffic have to do with the number of cars, not just their driver's skill.

    Traffic has to do with the number of cars on a road plus the space each car allocates itself on the road. As traffic speeds up, we spread out to give ourselves time to react to the driver in front of us stopping unexpectedly. A robot doesn't have to do that as it's reactions are faster and the robot can talk to other robots up the road. The net result is that instead of 70 mph traffic requiring 7 car lengths between cars, you can have cars traveling within inches of each other. You've suddenly multiplied the carrying capacity of the freeway by sevenfold without laying any concrete.

    Parking has to do with finding a place that's out of the way of other cars and convenient to your destination. If the car can self park, it can drop you off and trundle off to some location miles from where you are. Or better yet, it can hire itself out to carry someone else somewhere else and then come back and get you when you're ready.

  23. Re:Liability mitigation is the crucial rule on California To Join Nevada With Rules For Autonomous Cars · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What you're proposing is a No Fault liability scheme. Circa 1989-1992, the insurance companies attempted to get a proposition passed that would have established No Fault insurance. Their pitch was very similar to your list of advantages plus they said that since their costs would decline, our rates would have as well.

      Despite the idea making a lot of sense, the personal injury lawyers succeeded in killing it as they viewed the proposal a direct threat to their livelihood which of course, it was. The proposition was aimed at cutting their take out of the transaction.

    Your post makes a lot of sense but unfortunately, I think the political climate in California has gotten more bizarre over the intervening 20 years and what makes logical sense doesn't mean too much in California.

  24. The data's study show that 1 in 6 in the control group had a familial incidence of cancer whereas the study group's ratio was 1 in 4. Moreover, the study asks about the number of cigar and pipe smokers but ignores cigarette smokers.

    Not clear to me how you can draw much of a conclusion with those confounding factors.

  25. A lone atom doesn't make a sword on Bacteria-Killing Viruses Wield an Iron Spike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A single iron atom isn't going to much of a sword. Iron swords work because the iron atoms support each other.

    A lone iron atom might do something chemically like pretend to be a heme molecule to bypass the bacteria's defenses.