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User: Primitive+Pete

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Comments · 39

  1. Yes yes yes on Super Strong Metal Foam Discovered · · Score: 1

    Scaring the drivers is not a better idea than making cars safe enough to tolerate drivers' faults. It's just not.
    Machines have to be usable.

  2. Re:Replacement for air bags? on Super Strong Metal Foam Discovered · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe, maybe not. Elasticity is not the same thing as softness... steel is pretty elastic, but you don't necessarily want a face full of it in a car wreck. OTOH, landing in a bed of inelastic potato chips wouldn't be particularly painful (though it would be itchy).

  3. Um, an economics problem with this "solution"... on Researchers Claim "Effectively Perfect" Spam Blocking Discovery · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As a former manager and an "email direct-marketing" firm, I should point out that the spammers can increase the amount of complexity/variation in the templates by a wide variety of techniques, including rearranging paragraphs instead of just letters, making parts of the message optional, performing syntactic modifications of the included text,... Each new minor modification starts a research effort on the detecting side. The cost of detecting spam will rise much faster than the cost of generating spam.

    If you try to outsmart the spammers with this, you will lose. Complexity favors the spammers.

  4. Uh, this is why they need economists... on Brain Drain, Admin Failures Threaten the FCC's Role · · Score: 1

    ...because they have to have somebody on hand who understands the simple fact that what the market will bear IS what engineers are worth. By definition.

  5. Maybe... on Asus DR-570 E-Reader To Bring OLED Display · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree with your point about the passivity of e-ink (and I'm a kindle user), but I think it is also important to note the distinction between people who read, and people who look at the pictures (say, in Elle). There's probably room in the market for both products, and they may not experience too much conflict in user communities.

  6. Re:related topic: China ends Avatar showing on Google To Suspend Mobile Phone Launch In China · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah, "not enough local movies" seems like a predictable outcome of suppressing free speech.

  7. Too many keys!!! on Does Your PC Really Need a SysRq Button Anymore? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Frankly, there are a lot of keys we could get rid of, because they just take up real estate and don't help with the way I use the keyboard. I rarely have rekwirements to use the Q key, and I'm kwite sure that others could get by without it, too. These key-friendly users just need to akwire new work habits. What's hard about that?

  8. Re:Power? on New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance · · Score: 1

    You can skip the "screen saver" pictures of authors by holding the switch in the off position for ~5 seconds when turning it off. The screen goes blank (no picture or text). I don't think it saves any power, but at least I don't have to go around with an advertisement for a famous author I don't enjoy.

  9. Lottery tickets on Russia Plans To Divert Asteroid · · Score: 1

    It seems like the thing for the Russians to do is to buy lottery tickets under the name of the asteroid. That way, if the asteroid 'hits,' then everybody in Russia is rich. No problem.

  10. Re:Does this EVER work? on Geoengineering a Snow-Free Winter Fails In Moscow · · Score: 1

    Yes. See "Cloud seeding" on wikipedia for some details.

  11. The article says.... on Geoengineering a Snow-Free Winter Fails In Moscow · · Score: 2, Informative

    The article in Time says Moscow usually spends about $12M on removal, twice the $6M cost of seeding for this exercise.

  12. Uniforms are communication on Uniforms For the Help Desk? · · Score: 1

    The real issue of concern for me would be that many uniforms are associated with either semi-skilled jobs (fast food) or positions that require special garments to perform work (soldiers, firefighters). Most help-desk people that I've known (and the one I used to be) think of themselves as office professionals. What message does the uniform send to the non-IT staff with whom the help desk has contact. Clearly, you don't want to send messages that amount to either "semi-skilled" or "willing to move filing cabinets."

  13. Re:Flip the question. on Is Code Auditing of Open Source Apps Necessary? · · Score: 1

    It's different because users of paid merchandise or services can seek legal remediation if something goes terribly wrong. The payment creates and obligation. In free software, there's no corresponding obligation, because there has been no payment. Of course, paid OSS (e.g., from RedHat) falls somewhere confusingly in the middle.

  14. How does this help? on Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think a lot of comments above miss a more important point, that knowing the attacks follow a power law distribution (for argument's sake) still doesn't help predict individual events. Really, unless you're placing bets on terrorism (google for "futures market terrorism Poindexter") this won't help you much.