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User: occasional_dabbler

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  1. YOU INSENSITIVE CLODS! on Is That Dress White and Gold Or Blue and Black? · · Score: 1
    I'm colourblind

    Although the model sure does look hot in that clingy grey and slightly greyer dress ;-)

  2. We passed 'peak UX' on Users Decry New Icon Look In Windows 10 · · Score: 1
    I'm going to set myself up for a karma decimation here, but I think MS already had the best UX of any platform, they just blew it by trying to smear it onto every device in existence.

    Windows Phone 7

    This was, and still is, a UX that fitted the device perfectly, it is intuitive, efficient and beautiful.

    Some 'for instances'

    why do we need a 'button'? This is already an artificial construct; if an idea is captured by text then touch the text to access the associated sub-levels. Or headings that extend beyond the screen; so you naturally swipe to see the end of the title and you get to the next page with a new title.

    I am probably as upset as anybody for how Windows8/8.1/10 has evolved but for entirely the opposite reasons of most people.

  3. Re:I asked AdBlock's creator those questions... ap on Google Now Automatically Converts Flash Ads To HTML5 · · Score: 3, Funny

    These are all great opinions, but before I can take frequent contributor *apk* seriously, I need to know what opinion on 'hosts' is held by Frequent Contributor (TM) BENNET HASELTON!?!

  4. Electric vehicles have other advantages too on The Best, and Worst, Places To Drive Your Electric Car · · Score: 1

    Such as performance, see Tesla's insane button or this review of the Zero motorcycle

  5. Drink on What Your Online Comments Say About You · · Score: 3, Funny
    The number and length of my comments increase and their quality decreases in proportion to how much I've drunk. This is a rare, sober comment...

    Plus, obligatory XKCD

  6. Re: Imagine going back in time 15 years and warnin on SpaceX One Step Closer To Launching Astronaut · · Score: 1

    Really? In what way?

    He's a secular despot, which I'd take over any theocracy.

  7. Re:Imagine going back in time 15 years and warning on SpaceX One Step Closer To Launching Astronaut · · Score: 1

    Putin is no angel, but under his watch Russia has been a far better world citizen than the USA, by any measure.

  8. Re:Proving Again that Dictators Lack a Sense of Hu on Anonymous Claims They Will Release "The Interview" Themselves · · Score: 1

    Had I mod points tonight, you'd have got an informative. Thank you.

  9. Re:One year too early on Ask Slashdot: What Can I Really Do With a Smart Watch? · · Score: 1

    Very true. Pebble looks the best solution for now but with the Apple watch and the equally interesting looking Microsoft Band thingy the market is hardly mature.

  10. Re:hooray for the government on Councilmen Introduce Bills Strongly Regulating UAV Use in NYC · · Score: 2
    My reply appeared above your comment, for some reason... Bird strike inside of the FAA rules should be acceptable as an everyday occurence (laundry bills aside). 1549 was outside of these rules (many more birds hitting both engines) and it was a lucky escape; a very experienced pilot and a suitable place for a ditching (The first well-observed and survivable ditching in maybe 50 years? - it was by no means certain that ditching was a safe manoevre; all the substantiation was from scale model tests and simulation - no full-size tests).

    To be quite blunt: if a bird of 8lb goes into your engine you're ok, if a bird of 9lb goes into your engine there's no guarantee. If the bird's bigger brother goes down the other engine then you're in the realms of statistical probabilities and prayer.

  11. Re:hooray for the government on Councilmen Introduce Bills Strongly Regulating UAV Use in NYC · · Score: 1
    One of the institutions of which our colonial cousins should be very proud is the FAA, who make all the aerospace regulations freely available. These may seem like archaic and restrictive laws to prevent you from building your own aeroplane/rocket/drone but in fact they are extremely well researched and analysed specifications for anyone who wants to make a safe aeroplane/rocket/drone. They are also copied pretty much verbatim by everyone except the Russians (who have a similar system but with significantly worse weather!) and us Europeans, who go to great lengths to harmonise with the FAA so that the rules are more or less equivalent

    So let's get to details and look at 33.76 regarding bird strike. The rules regarding what an aircraft engine should be able to ingest are enlightening: even the largest engines are only certified safe to fly after ingesting a bird of 8lb. This is a lot less than a person (that was a ridiculous example from the GP; ingesting a person would destroy an engine). Birds are obviously a lot more easily ingested than a carbon-fibre and steel drone.

    Any reasonably large drone would have enough mass to endanger a civil airliner and you're just playing the numbers until one is brought down with three to four hundred deaths.

  12. Re:Space has its own problems on Ask Slashdot: How Should a Liberal Arts Major Get Into STEM? · · Score: 1

    I think the problem is similar in both cases; the actual technical part, that people on /. are likely to enjoy, becomes a smaller part of the job the longer and/or more successful you are at it. If you work for a commercial enterprise then you are a businessman, and the people who enjoy that environment and get on are not generally the techies. If you want to stay in pure technical work then think about academia.

  13. Re:Space has its own problems on Ask Slashdot: How Should a Liberal Arts Major Get Into STEM? · · Score: 2
    Very well put. I took an engineering degree at one of the World's best schools (Cambridge University) I ended up as an aerospace engineer and it has not been a bad life, all told; I could take you around most civil airliners and show you the parts that were 'mine' with some pride.

    What I know now is that I would have been happier and/or richer being either:

    (a) a banker, or

    (b) a programmer.

    Most of engineering is very, very dull indeed.

  14. Re:Just like in my personal life... on Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby · · Score: 1

    Thank you. Homo Habilis was the point to which I was referring. When I was a kid my Dad had a book from Reader's Digest all about the development of homo sapiens. It was called The Last Two Million Years

  15. Re:Just like in my personal life... on Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby · · Score: 1

    Where did I say we need to do it now? I'm not an idiot, I'm an engineer. I just said we need to do it in the next billion years or so.

  16. Just like in my personal life... on Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ...there is no fairy godmother gonna make it all alright.

    The situation is very simple: The probability of all life being extinguished on Earth in the next 2 ish billion years is 100%. If we want to survive beyond that we need to get off planet. Earh is 4.5 billion year old. Talk of cost is ridiculous: I can fly from UK to US for less than one day's wages (on a good day) and I'm just a regular guy. 500 years ago it took the lifetime's savings of a wealthy man to make the same journey. It is ALL about energy. Once we have a reliable means of providing it on a sun-scale then we can do anything we want. We evolved to an understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics in a few million years, why the hell shouldn't we make a few more steps, given the same time again?

  17. Re:Not surprising at all. on Apple Accused of Deleting Songs From iPods Without Users' Knowledge · · Score: 1

    Not a single song has ever been deleted from either my Winphone or my Nexus tab from either my Windows or Linux Boxen (either to either) ever, that I didn't request myself to be deleted, ever. The Kindle is still a good enough product that I will put up with Google's shitty behaviour for now but the iPod is so passe that I don't need to put up with Apple's douchebaggery any more.

  18. Re:How many gas stations were there... on Toyota Names Upcoming Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car · · Score: 1

    conventional electric

    Now that we're discussing hydrogen, electric is conventional I think that shows where this is heading.

  19. Re:Will it work with my distro? on Major Performance Improvement Discovered For Intel's GPU Linux Driver · · Score: 0

    Oh, for mod points today! Well played, sir, you made my evening :-)

  20. Re:Not a very exciting name on 'Microsoft Lumia' Will Replace the Nokia Brand · · Score: 1

    In Spanish most words in femenine form can mean prostitute. This isn't considered sexist by Spanish girls, because they all have bigger cojones than the men anyway.

  21. Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been on Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores · · Score: 1

    They have some nice niche products not related to the noise-cancelling tech. I used to travel a lot for work and a pair of these made life a little more comfortable; you can't wear headphones all the time. They are expensive and the sound is quite coloured, but the bass and the volume you get from such a tiny thing is impressive. I had an equaliser setting saved in iTunes to flatten them out a bit.

  22. Re:ipoo on Apple's Next Hit Could Be a Microsoft Surface Pro Clone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Strange. Apple makes the best products

    Best?

    For whom? By what standards?

    They make some very good products and have a consistent and effective design language but they are as much a fashion company now as a technology one.

  23. Re:Fission is Dead on Fusion and Fission/LFTR: Let's Do Both, Smartly · · Score: 2

    Damn, Posting as me to delete the accidental downmod when I was trying to upmod. Fat fingers, sorry...

  24. Re:Not Invented Here on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 1

    From what Ive seen in the press recently it looks like the phones might come out of vapourware. I'm still quite a fan of Ubuntu, even with Unity, I think it would make a nice UI for a phone.

  25. Re:Some physiologists on What Will It Take To Run a 2-Hour Marathon? · · Score: 1

    To be eligible for the record the start and finish have to be within a certain distance of each other. Times set at Boston, for example, are not permitted