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User: Defenestrar

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Comments · 667

  1. Re:Already failed on Mark Zuckerberg Tapes Over His Webcam. Should You? (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Because it's like using gloves in a biology lab. If it contacts your skin your aseptic technique has already failed...

  2. Re:interesting on Mark Zuckerberg Tapes Over His Webcam. Should You? (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    There is: billionaire.

  3. Re:Side Impact Regulations on DeLoreans To Go Back To Production (cnn.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    400 horsepower and they don't need to meet modern safety regulations... What could possibly go wrong?

  4. OPM only had to do it once... on DHS Offering Free Vulnerability Scans, Penetration Tests (krebsonsecurity.com) · · Score: 2

    I'm sure they're very thorough. You can have your system vetted and as secure as OPM.

  5. Re:Is this a joke? on Ask Slashdot: Innovative Operating Systems/Distros In 2015? · · Score: 2

    And 3D UIs existed back then too - just watch a copy of Jurassic Park ;)

  6. Re:Right... on Morgan Stanley Employee Pleads Guilty In Data Breach Case · · Score: 1

    Yup. Right after that I think: "I bet this guy's job performance would have tanked if he was the only one who didn't take work home or on travel."

  7. Re:What is there to disassemble? on 9th-Grader May Face Charges After Homemade Clock Mistaken For Bomb · · Score: 1

    You're right, Hollywood hasn't helped things, but I also understand that the reason a hand grenade is dangerous is that the over pressure from the detonation of the propagating reaction of the chemical explosion causes a pressure vessel rupture physical explosion (See figure 2.1, Danial Crowl, Understanding Explosions, Center for Chemical Process Safety, 2003. - a book already open on my desk before this story posted to Slashdot). With a pencil case (the one in the video looked larger than I would have guessed) you're right that you'd probably have a non-directed overpressure wave, but ANFO would give a detonation shockfront rather than a deflagration one which leads to a much higher max overpressure to be translated to the surrounding air. Thus, even 10 MJ to 20 MJ in a small volume is still, if you'll excuse the pun, rather shocking.

    P.S. Without knowing anything else, I would hazard a guess that your youthful experimentation did not meet optimum yield because you used a straight up agricultural conformation of ammonium nitrate rather than reprocessing it. Learning about that is much easier these days with Google rather than issues of Phrack or the (often inaccurate) Anarchist Cookbook from some BBS

  8. Re:What is there to disassemble? on 9th-Grader May Face Charges After Homemade Clock Mistaken For Bomb · · Score: 1

    Sorry about the above typo.

  9. Re:What is there to disassemble? on 9th-Grader May Face Charges After Homemade Clock Mistaken For Bomb · · Score: 1, Insightful

    A pencil box certainly has enough volume to cause a major hazard! An ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mix (easy homemade explosive) has something around 40 megajoules per liter energy density.

    I think it's ridiculous what happened to the kid, and I'd love to see some public sense where it comes to electronics and chemistry (I believe it's illegal to privately own an Erlenmeyer flask in TX). That said, inaccurate claims about what can or cannot hurt people won't contribute to easing public fear (because they'll be debunked and then the reputation loss splashes further than the original reassurance). Instead, pick an argument which resonates with the region. For example, in Texas I'd point out that a failure to educate children about electronic or chemical safety is the same as failing to teach them gun safety. Guns are everywhere (in Texas), and children get hurt and killed when they don't know how to treat them safely. If that argument takes hold, then eventually enough people will learn enough basics about electronics and chemistry that this would have been laughed off before it went anywhere.

    Telling people that something with the internal volume of a fewof hand grenades or a couple hundred 0.22 rounds can't hurt them isn't going to help.

  10. Re:There's still no magnetosphere on Elon Musk's Latest Idea: Let's Nuke Mars · · Score: 1

    Tongue-in-cheek? Yeah, maybe from most people, but this guy has a reputation for coming up with a crazy sounding idea, launching it, and then going on to the next crazy idea. Never underestimate the probability of what Elon Musk might start just cause it sounds like fun.

  11. Re:Yes on Do You Have a Right To Use Electrical Weapons? · · Score: 1

    Check your state permit, and how they've decided to "peer" other state's permits. WA for example has a concealed pistol license - it's specific to one out of the many types of concealable arms.

  12. Re: Yes on Do You Have a Right To Use Electrical Weapons? · · Score: 1

    I don't remember the word "personal" in the Second Amendment, but I do remember "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..." in the Declaration of Independence. That document claimed it as an intrinsic right of a people to throw off a government which no longer serves them.

    I don't think a reasonable argument can be made against field artillery without at least addressing the Revolutionary War and whether or not it was justified or legal (i.e. via unalienable rights which trump lesser government laws against treason and rebellion). It is much harder to throw off a government without the ability to match its military capability. Regulation of arms (or militias) is a separate issue, but I think relegating the Second Amendment to only personal defense or hunting game without considering (modern) arms necessary to resist a depraved government's (modern) military would be an unwarranted assumption fallacy.

  13. Re:Touch it with a 12 mile pole. on China's Island-Building In Pictures · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You get the 12 mile military and 200 mile fishing limits for your land per international law. However, this must be land above the water. You cannot find land under the surface, dump tons of dirt on it, and claim those rights, per same law.

    This doesn't mean you can't create the islands, but you can't do the 12 mile/200 mile thing. China [a nuclear power with a massive army and permanent UN veto] ... can.

    FTFY

  14. Re:Terra Forming? on China's Island-Building In Pictures · · Score: 1

    I don't think jingoism was something everyone else leaped to. The intent is clearly not scientific (although hopefully they took notes and let a few scientific observers watch).

  15. Re:Intervention? on China's Island-Building In Pictures · · Score: 1

    That's actually a pretty good technique. Multiple exclamation marks is one of the most grievous grammatical gaffes generated these days. I almost always read them sarcastically on first scan. (Perhaps I'm giving the author the benefit of the doubt)? If I can't parse the phrase sarcastically, I'll lump it into the MySpace social media transplant group and just move along.

  16. Off Topic Editorial Complaint on Two Years Later, White House Responds To 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    So how many of you know that Slashdot is up for sale? It's been on the firehose and elsewhere on the web all morning, but, as near as I can tell, not on the Slashdot front page? Is Slashdot ownership not news for nerds or stuff that matters anymore?

    Oh, and way to go USA on finally getting around to answering that petition... Nice to see such a quick, open, and transparent response to the citizenry. At least this one is honest.

  17. Re:Blimey on German Scientists Confirm NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: 1

    Harvest heat from the microwave background and then push it back out at the wavelength and direction of one's choice. Might not be the most bountiful source of energy in the universe, but it's mostly everywhere ;)

  18. Re:Google Opinion Rewards on Researchers: Mobile Users Will Trade Data For Fun and Profit · · Score: 1

    Verizon's program will track your physical location, network use, and just about any other information they can get while watching what happens to/with your smartphone and share it with anyone willing to pay for it for marketing, sales, etc... reasons. Always on, only the one large opt in with no incremental no opt out, and definitely no aggregation/anonymization.

  19. Google Opinion Rewards on Researchers: Mobile Users Will Trade Data For Fun and Profit · · Score: 2

    I'm generally willing to answer survey questions for a fraction of the revenue. So Google Opinion Rewards and Nielsen's TV watching logs are generally ok with me. Market research which doesn't split the value of my opinions with me will generally (but not always) get short shrift. (Note that value doesn't have to be monetary, I'll often give opinions when I think there's a chance of influencing the item in a direction beneficial to me). Passive tracking options which don't give me an option to selectively participate/abstain are DOA as far as I'm concerned (like Verizon Rewards).

  20. Re:not sure what to wish for... on "Breaking Bad" At the National Institute of Standards and Technology · · Score: 1

    I agree. Which OU had control of the space? Where's the dirt? Is even there a single decent paparazzo left in science reporting?

    I give kudos to the selection of the "special projects" building though*. Nothing like a remote corner of campus with sloped earthwork embankments around all the lab windows for doing something like this. Do you realize how much of a success this indicates for NIST's culture of safety (which they've been working hard on ever since that little Pu oops in Boulder)? Even their alleged illicit activity takes safety into consideration (although the explosion indicates the potential perp. missed something in the hazard analysis - but hey, what do you expect from criminals).

    *For those that don't know, that was a politically clever rename of the hazards building, similar to how they also came up with the Center for Neutron Research name.

  21. I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time an author called a journal editor (or reviewer) nasty names based on received comments.

    Hmm... I wonder if the AC would have said the same thing if shortscruffydave had called out a syntax error in C; you know, nothing code breaking, just sloppy editing.

  22. Re:2001: A Space Odyssey on Which Movies Get Artificial Intelligence Right? · · Score: 1

    The counter here, is the same in every other threat/hazard matrix. You define an index value - like the ANSI Z.10 relative hazard index and then use that as a quantification when you define an acceptable risk for any given task.

  23. Re:Where's the Stainless Steel Rat movie? on Han Solo To Get His Own Star Wars Movie Prequel · · Score: 0

    Stainless Steel Rat movies would be horrid. At least half their value was the way that the writing style was an extension of the protagonist's persona. You'd never get that on film. You might be able to pull each story off in a fast paced forty-five minute episode - make a mini-series out of the books, but you'd still lose a lot. If they want content for the big screen - Vorkosigan is the way to go! Much more of Bujold would translate to film.

  24. Re:kessel run on Han Solo To Get His Own Star Wars Movie Prequel · · Score: 1

    While it's not cannon anymore (i.e. from a book), stating it as a distance was a demonstration of the ship's power such that it could fly so close to a black hole cluster that it could do the traditional smuggling run in a distance of less than twelve parsecs.

  25. Re:Question on Han Solo To Get His Own Star Wars Movie Prequel · · Score: 1

    The Mos Eisley Cantina... Duh!