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User: kilonad

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Comments · 214

  1. Re:Huh on New Olympics Scoring: No More Perfect 10.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sadly, that's unlikely. Most of the top ballroom dancers are Russian or Eastern European. They start 'em young over there, and that becomes their lives.

  2. Re:and then what? on Startup Offers Instant-Boot Windows Alternative · · Score: 1

    Or you can text the name of a movie and the zip code, and it will return the times for that movie at local theaters.

  3. E911 Location on Worry Over VZW, Sprint Phones' 911 Alarm · · Score: 1

    I'm sure that whoever thought it was a smart idea thought that the primary reason people called 911 was in case of a medical emergency. E911 makes it possible to find your general location, but only to within a city block or so IIRC. A loud alarm on the phone would make it possible for them to find you even if you became unconscious. Unfortunately, it also makes you a huge target if you aren't calling for a medical emergency.

    The solution to this problem is to make a separate panic alarm which is activated either manually or remotely by the 911 operator, depending on your situation. Of course, if something happened to you as the result of the operator's decision to turn it on, they'd be liable, so that leaves manual activation, and if you stay on the phone with 911, how are you supposed to activate it?

  4. DRM-free, but what about 256kbps AAC? on iTunes DRM-Free Tracks Now Same Price As DRM Tracks · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Does this mean that all iTunes Plus songs, which are currently DRM-free and 256kbps AAC, are now $0.99? Or just that DRM-free songs are now $0.99 but 256kbps are still $1.29?

  5. Chimeras on Judge Says, Record DNA of Everyone In the UK · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What about chimeras - people who have two different sets of DNA in the same body? They allegedly make up a small but not insignificant fraction of the population. How will the system deal with them?

  6. Those with tinfoil hats should avoid the iPhone on iPhone Battery Replacement An Unwelcome Surprise · · Score: 1

    Recent stories revealed that the FBI and other agencies can listen to the microphone in your cell phone even if it's "off." The only way to get around this is to remove the battery, which you can't do with the iPhone. Many companies and government offices require that you remove the battery from your cell phone if you want to bring it on the premises (so you can still bring it in your car for safety, but not bake the battery while you're at work). Again, you can't do that with the iPhone.

  7. Re:Real Chocolate: Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Da on FDA Considers Redefining Chocolate · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hershey owns both Scharffen Berger and Joseph Schmidt chocolates, but has thankfully let them continue their good work.

    http://www.thehersheycompany.com/news/release.asp? releaseID=743393

  8. Re:How Internet-1 Became Ubiquitous on Internet2 and National LambdaRail To Merge · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ummm.... no. This network is for research and education, and for those purposes only. Notice how the first one was also originally for research and education, but that it got swamped by porn, spam, and torrents when the masses came online. Keeping the two networks separate ensures a decent level of service on the research network for the people who actually rely on it.

  9. Re:Ape on Best Practices for a Lossless Music Archive? · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Monkey's Audio is free software, but it does not have free source code. You are able to legally download and use it at no cost, which means that it fits the English language definition of the word free. Quit trying to redefine the word free.

  10. Re:How Hirise works on Mars Camera's Worsening Eye Problems · · Score: 1

    The HiRise camera uses 14 2048x128 pixel CCDs. The 2048 pixels are in the across-track direction (perpendicular to the direction of flight), and the 128 pixels are in the along-track direction. The charge in each pixel is read out (along the 128 pixel direction) at the same speed that the image moves across the sensor, a technique known as Time Delay Integration (TDI). The pixels aren't averaged, since all the signal from one point is kept together in one packet.

    If the first four pixels in a column die, no biggie, you lose 3% of your dynamic range. However, if the last four pixels die (the ones where the charge from all the other pixels must transfer through), you could very well lose 100% of your dynamic range since you may not be able to read out the image anymore. Imagine taking a very long road trip from LA to Long Island (the readout pixel), and finding out that the bridges got washed out.

    The "ghosting" effect you speak of wouldn't occur in this configuration. In a standard CCD, surface traps caused by radiation damage or manufacturing defects trap charge and randomly release it over time. If it's really bad, you could take an image and read it out, then read it out again without exposing the CCD to any additional light and still get a recognizable image. Since the charge in this CCD is continuously transferred, it'd end up looking like long streaks (limited to single columns as you suggest), reducing the contrast and the SNR of the image, but not causing double images.

    If anyone wants to read up on this, this PDF from NASA is a great resource: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/papers/6th_int _mars_conf/Delamere_HiRISE_InstDev.pdf

  11. Re:Knock it off. on Wiimote Straps Result in Class Action Suit · · Score: 1

    They scorch it so the flavors hold up better once a metric asston of sugar and milk are added. Coffee brewed to taste good when served black makes for a terribly weak drink if served as a latte or a cappucino.

  12. Re:Rep know he's being recorded on Verizon Can't Do Math · · Score: 1

    AFAIK, they're *always* being recorded by Verizon (for legal reasons), so it should be moot. Then again, IANAL.

  13. Morons on Verizon Can't Do Math · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks like decimal numbers just don't make any cents to their customer service reps.

    On a more serious note, it also looks like they can't read or spell, since the rep read "$0.002/KB Sent" as "0.002 cents/KB," as evidenced in the call.

  14. Re:Hmm. on Flexible Photo Organization Software? · · Score: 1

    Um, yes, those actually are important. The first describes how compressed the chroma channels are to the luminance channel (a compression concept central to little used imaging standards like NTSC and JPEG). White point chromaticity is pretty much white balance, and is useful for color management. Other people have already mentioned the applicable fields (UserComment and the like), but just because you don't understand what some fields are useful for doesn't mean they aren't important.

  15. Re:Dearly Departed on The Sun Had Sisters · · Score: 1

    Ah yes, but we're talking the gravitational pull between stars in a star cluster here, where the stars are a few light years apart.

  16. Re:Dearly Departed on The Sun Had Sisters · · Score: 1

    Question: What would happen to the Earth's orbit if the sun suddenly turned into a black hole?

    Answer: Virtually nothing. Why nothing? Because the mass is the same, and it's got the same center of mass. It's therefore equivalent. If a star goes nova, it still has the same center of mass and weighs the same (minus a small fraction of mass being converted into energy during the nova process).

    Just giving you some more stuff to ponder.

  17. Re:They hold nothing on Adm. Rickover on Google Adjusts Hiring Processes · · Score: 1

    Isn't water the primary coolant?

  18. Re:Simple solution..... on Sony's Win a Major Blow for Importers · · Score: 1

    Are you kidding me? This is slashdot! Wii don't like to read articles around here.

  19. Re:Google still wins on Google or Wikipedia - Which is Your First Stop? · · Score: 2, Funny

    What about it? Thousands of people sleep in the Paris Hilton every year!

  20. Re:the obvious use on DARPA Developing 'Droid' Satellites · · Score: 1

    While quite useful, remember that anything you see in the astronomy community is old-hat by defense standards. So if NASA is going to build an interferometer-based "terrestrial planet finder," then your guess is as good as mine (since I don't have clearance).

  21. Re:the obvious use on DARPA Developing 'Droid' Satellites · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anytime DARPA or any other defense agency mentions "telescopes" they're usually referring to the kind that point down, not up. I see this as a potential test bed for a possible future interferometry-based spy satellite (be it SIGINT or IMINT).

  22. Re:Here's one in Boston. on Numbers Stations Move From Shortwave To VoIP · · Score: 1

    Umm... that would be a phone number. Not quite what we're talking about.

  23. Caching violates net neutrality? on BitTorrent's Bram Cohen against Network Neutrality · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the services that Cachelogic offers violate net neutrality at some level, then the internet hasn't had net neutrality since the mid 1990s. Akamai and Squid Proxy do very similar things with data (replicating it in multiple locations for faster downloads). Cachelogic and Akamai still have to pay the backbone providers, just like everybody else. What violates neutrality is the backbone providers setting aside a certain amount of bandwidth (or setting up a second network) to make transfer speeds from some sites faster than others.

    If the ISPs want to create a second network of their own to push their own media services at much higher speeds, let them. I equate it to getting your internet access from your cable company. Your TV and your net access come down the same wire, and TV is a media service, so that's really nothing new. If you don't agree with that, then you can think of it as whatever the ISP wants to provide being on a faster LAN (since it originates "locally"), whereas the rest of the internet is still on a WAN.

    That said, the article's analogy to toll roads was an excellent choice, as anyone in the Northern Virginia area can tell you. When they first open, the toll roads are significantly faster but cost a fortune to use, with the promise that the prices will go down once it's paid for. But then it fills up to the point where it's only a tiny bit faster than the equivalent free roads, and the prices go up even more to cover the costs of expansion. After a few years, your choices are completely clogged free roads where you go 15mph, or a $3/each way 15 mile road where you go 35mph after the fourth or fifth mile.

    The conclusion that it doesn't matter if the media company buys more bandwidth the old fashioned way or pays the ISPs for the use of a secondary faster network is spot on. However, the customer will end up paying the same amount either way, which means there is no advantage for the customer by switching to the new tiered network model.

  24. Re:Human? on Using Watermarks to Combat Piracy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Except that both of those are linear processes and thus won't affect the watermark.

  25. Re:Global capitalisms complex effects on education on Loss of Applied IQ Among UK Youth? · · Score: 1

    You think it's easy for them over in India and China? Hardly. They too have to worry about outsourcing. Countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are snatching up jobs from India and China because their workers will do the same work for even less money. In all of the countries I mentioned, workers have to settle for very low wages because another equally skilled worker is always willing to work for less, because it means they know they'll have a job.

    The only industries I can really think of that have huge issues with outsourcing are manufacturing, customer service, and programming companies. AFAIK, other industries (medicine, food production, law, math, physics, chemistry, business, marketing, etc.) aren't having major outsourcing issues. Either way, eight year olds aren't deciding on the field they want to get into in fifteen years. You decide that when you start college, and many people change their minds during college. If you spend $30k a year to go to a private university to study something like history or psychology, and then try to get a job in your field that pays $40k/year, you're an idiot (unless you got into school for damn near free).

    You should want to go to a university or study hard to be a science/math nerd to prove that smart people still live here and that America can remain competitive in a global, knowledge-based economy. You should also do it because you love it, and if you pick the right field, and get advanced degrees, you can make a ton of cash. If not, you'll still end up contributing to human knowledge!