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User: Eivind

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  1. Re:On the slippery slope on Time Reporter "Can't Wait" To Justify Drone Strike On Julian Assange · · Score: 1

    There's no need for that last step -- you already have a political system that ensures people are forced to vote for the "lesser of two evils" rather than their actual preference -- and those two evils are really more or less equivalent, I mean there's differences, but not in these things.

  2. Re:I-75? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    True. But mortality is equal to frequency of accidents, multiplied with death-risk in an accident. Even if death-risk is higher, you can still be a lot safer if the frequency of accidents is much lower.

    These capsules run inside a sealed (airtight!) solid-steel pipe. That alone eliminates a pretty large fraction of all accidents, it's not as if you'll ever get a pedestrian on the track or crash in an intersection in one of these.

  3. Re:GoDaddy IIS on Apache Web Server Share Falls Below 50 Percent For First Time Since 2009 · · Score: 1

    They switched because they where paid to do so, because it looks good in marketing. They're in the position to control the webserver for millions of domains, thus Microsoft bribes them to use IIS.

  4. Re:Sensationalist summary at all? on Building a Full-Auto Gauss Gun · · Score: 1

    What happens to the balance of the wheel when you release the bullet ?

  5. Re:Not really a step further on Full-Size Remote Control Cars · · Score: 1

    Hard to say. Seems plausible, certain even, that always *having* a cellphone saves lives sometimes. It means quicker alerting of 911 for example, especially in the case where something happens far from the nearest landline.

    I was just taking issue with the "even more dangerous" nonsense. There's plenty folks argue as if the world is going to hell and everything is deteriorating. Some things are, but traffic-fatalities certainly are not one of them.

  6. Re:Not really a step further on Full-Size Remote Control Cars · · Score: 2

    What do you mean "even less safe" ? The roads in most of the developed world are safer than they've ever been, and improving rapidly. For example, here in Norway when I got my drivers licencee we had around 400 casualties a year, now 20 years later we've got around 170.

    And that is despite the fact that driven-kilometers has almost doubled in those 20 years. Thus fatalities-pro-driven-km has fallen by something like 80% in 20 years.

    I expect autonomous cars will continue the trend, and in another 20 years we'll have double-digit-fatalities, despite another increase in kilometers-driven.

  7. Re:Have they studied physics? on "Slingatron" To Hurl Payloads Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    True. So perhaps that's more easily doable than I imagine. A solid-fuel booster is similar to a explosive shell, but it's not throttlable and poorly controllable in general, is that sufficient for orbital insertion ?

    People have -not- been making liquid-fuel rocket-engines that survive 60000G for 100 years, indeed they like to blow up even under 1G if built imperfectly.

  8. Re:Have they studied physics? on "Slingatron" To Hurl Payloads Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    Seems to me there'd be plenty application.

    What about artillery-shells that are able to do last-second course-corrections ? I suppose in atmosphere that's more easily done by aerodynamic fins, though.

    I'd not call it impossible either, but it does seem to me to be a fairly tricky piece of engineering.

  9. Re:Have they studied physics? on "Slingatron" To Hurl Payloads Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    orbital insertion engines that can withstand 60000G and survive to function are in somewhat short supply.

  10. Re:No reason to light up snipers these days... on Why Protesters In Cairo Use Laser Pointers · · Score: 2

    Turkey comes to mind. The military there has on several occasions defended the constitutions againts attack from government, and then handed the keys back over to the ones who, by the constitution, should hold them; namely the people (trough elections)

  11. Re:The really scary thing... on Group Chat Vulnerability Discovered in Cryptocat, Project Fixes and Apologizes · · Score: 1

    True, you have to stay secure for the length of time the message has value. This varies. If you're the military, and reporting the position of a patrol in the field, this doesn't need to stay secret for very long. (3 days later the info is pretty useless anyway)

    Breaktroughs in algorithms makes this hard. You can nest encryption, which means you're safe unless *all* of the levels are cracked, but it's a hassle.

  12. Re:useless without infrastructure on Ask Slashdot: Permanent Preservation of Human Knowledge? · · Score: 1

    That's both right and wrong. It's right in the short term: If there's no civilization, what you need is knowledge of how to survive without one - designing CPUs isn't a useful skill in that setting.

    But bootstrapping civilization should be -much- faster than discovering everything for the first time, even if 99% of humanity dies out. I thinkt it's perfectly plausible for CPU-design to become useful again in a generation or two, short enough that normal books should survive if protected from the elements.

  13. Re:Depends on the energy source duh! on Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All · · Score: 1

    Then get sure. This argument was old a decade ago, and is getting ridicolous by now. (you hear it against solar too, not just about wind)

    Windmills produce (over their average lifetime) 15 to 20 times the energy needed for producing them in the first place.

    Photovoltaics produce 5-10 times the energy needed for producing them.

  14. Re:Surpassing Vista on Windows 8 Passes Vista, Hits 5.1% Market Share · · Score: 1

    A large fraction of new PCs come with 8. And it's a problem. For example, my wife bought a 8-PC a couple of months ago, and hates it. Now she wants to buy a new computer for her mother, except she can't imagine going with a win8-thingie since she conciders those horrible. Might end up going with Mac, or scrounging for one of the new PCs still being sold with 7.

    You know things are bad when nontechnical users are willing to pay a premium to get your 4 year old product, rather than the current one.

  15. Re:Online presence is a self-marketing tool on Ask Slashdot: Is an Online Identity Important When Searching For Technical Jobs? · · Score: 1

    Or post things you want googleable under your full name and things that are more controversial under a pseudonym. For typical employers it's not even as it needs to be hugely well-hidden, they seldom do more than look at the top 1 or 2 pages when googling your name.

    Is it possible to find out who (say) Indian Homemaker or Conjecture Girl is by researching on the web ? Certainly. Is it likely that the antics of these pseudonyms will be linked to the identities behind them when they apply for a job ? Not really.

  16. Re:Sigh on Ask Slashdot: Does LED Backlight PWM Drive You Crazy? · · Score: 1

    No, they'd be _less_ efficient at higher switching-rates. That's because in an ideal world the waveform is square, i.e. goes instantly from on to off and vice-versa, but in the -real- world switching isn't instant, and there's a (short) "half-switched" state where some energy is wasted as heat in the switching-circuit. This wasted energy would go up with higher frequencies, simply because there'd be more switching.

    Not that it matters, I suspect we're talking sub-percent of the energy-budget of a screen anyway, atleast as long as you don't want to go up into Mhz.

  17. Re:Sigh on Ask Slashdot: Does LED Backlight PWM Drive You Crazy? · · Score: 1

    Yeah. And he forgets about the fact that the photoreceptors in the eye -also- don't react instantly, as demonstrated by the fact that a spinning white/black disc will appear uniformly gray. The highest detectable frequencies for flashing is in the 10s of Hz, certainly not in the Khz.

  18. Re:Good on Have We Hit Peak HFT? · · Score: 1

    Yes, when you buy stock, the money goes to the -previous- owner of that part of the company.

    But long-term stock-ownership is still influenced mostly by the performance of the actual company, whereas that's entirely irrelevant for HFT. Apple is valuable today, compared to 20 years ago because they as a company grew in every way over those 20 years.

  19. Re: and if license picking were mandatory... on Your License Is Your Interface · · Score: 1

    You need the permission of the author to make copies, but there most certainly are implicit permissions.

    Write a blog-post, put it on a website with no mention of any licence, and you have just given me implicit permission to download the post (creating intermediare copies in RAM and possibly in disk-cache).

  20. Re: and if license picking were mandatory... on Your License Is Your Interface · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In this specific case, there's -already- a default licence that says who can do what wit software in the absence of specific permission from you. It's called copyright. It spells out clearly and unambigously what one can do, and what one needs the permission of the author to do.

    The only possible source of confusion is if publishing something openly on the web constitutes implicit permission to do something more than what copyright already allows.

  21. Re:It adds up on Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE · · Score: 1

    Not "probably" -- definitely.

    A *one* watt saving is at $0.15 Kwh a saving of $0.00015/hour while surfing. If an average surfing employee costs $30/hour then we're talking a 0.005% reduction in cost for that employee -- if the employee surfs for 1000 hours/year, then that's a win if the employee, over those 1000 hours, waste no more than 3 minutes.

  22. Re:It adds up on Microsoft Boasts of Tiny Energy Saving With IE · · Score: 1

    Not really. Sure, if you multiply a tiny number for 10,000 then you get a higher number. But every other number rises for that company too, so the savings stay tiny relative to the rest of the budget.

    1 watt saved times 10000 is 10 KW saved for every hour those computers are used for browsing. If an average corporate computer is used for browsing 10 hours a week, then you're talking a saving of $150 - $250/year, depending on how much AC they use and what power-prices they pay.

    $250 on the budget of a 10.000 employee firm is no more noticeable than $0.25 in the budget of a 10 employee firm -- it's still a saving of $0.025/year pro employee. In practice, this is down in the noise.

  23. Re:Definitions. on Inside PRISM: Why the Government Hates Encryption · · Score: 1

    "they", as in Afghanistan or Iraq, didn't send 737s. A extremist organization did. And yes, it's a huge problem that organizations exist which are extremist enough to be in favor of violence for their political goals. (it doesn't help much that those goals are repugnant to most of us)

    So the question is, what policies will help most in figthing such organizations ? It's not clear that every drone-strike creates new terrorists, but it does seem clear that continued occupation by foreign forces, spiced up with the occasional abuse from some soldier or other, creates increased resentment and probably is radicalizing. Drone-strikes are just a tiny bit of that puzzle.

  24. Re:Science works on Fear of Death Makes People Into Believers (of Science) · · Score: 1

    I'm not terribly concerned with somehow insulting a person who doesn't exist.

  25. Re:Definitions. on Inside PRISM: Why the Government Hates Encryption · · Score: 1

    I don't think those are remotely comparable. At those times, the US was in a full out war with the nations they bombed. Japan was not occupied by allied forces, and with some cells of opposition left, Japan, the nation, was at war with USA.

    The current "war" is different. It's a war of ideas. Having the military upper hand is a given -- the sum total of military expenditures in all those countries where most drone-strikes are made, don't add up to 5% of USAs spending. The question really is not if USA is military superior to Afghanistan.

    Nominally, Afghanistan is at peace. Nominally, criminals of any kind inside it's borders, is a police matter. Yes I know, that doesn't quite match the reality. Nevertheless there's a -huge- gulf between police-methodology and having flying killer-robots run by a occupying nation circling the landscape day and night, raining death on whomever is deemed a threat to USA.

    It's debatable if the examples you gave where supportable too, but in any case the situation was -entirely- different.