Slashdot Mirror


User: Garfong

Garfong's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
114
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 114

  1. Re:I have a better name for this. on DARPA's ICARUS Program To Develop Self-Destructing Air Delivery Vehicles (darpa.mil) · · Score: 1

    Note the balloon is to simplify the challenge. The proposal needs to include discussion on deployment from other air platforms, especially high speed, high altitude aircraft. It also needs to include calculations of the anticipated maximum drop airspeed, and any anticipated modifications which might be required to drop the vehicle at airspeeds exceeding the anticipated maximum drop airspeed.

  2. Re:Biodegradable parachute? on DARPA's ICARUS Program To Develop Self-Destructing Air Delivery Vehicles (darpa.mil) · · Score: 1

    Per other comments you can't drop parachutes from the edge of SAM range.

  3. Re:Well, goodbye passenger car diesel! on Emissions Scandal Expands: Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda, and Mitsubishi (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    In terms of regular or anticipated natural disasters, the UK has it pretty tame. There's flooding to worry about, and that's pretty much it. On the other hand much of the US and Canada is either in an earthquake zone, or gets regular hurricanes, both of which can knock natural gas (as pointed out by GP). And many backup generator scenarios cannot be solved by a second site outside the disaster area. Hospitals come to mind immediately, and I know someone who's condo uses a backup generator for emergency power.

  4. Re:Oh, bullshit on Volkswagen Boss Blames Software Engineers For Scandal (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Sure, but in this case Mechanical is probably leading, and Software is just implementing according to specs provided by Mechanical.

  5. Re:What makes someone a Troll? on East Texas Judge Throws Out 168 Patent Cases · · Score: 5, Informative

    You need to look at the rational for granting patents. The original rational was that by providing a monopoly on an invention for a limited period of time, it would encourage inventors to publish new and useful inventions instead of keeping those inventions as trade secrets. So the original inventor would be guaranteed exclusivity for a period of time, and in exchange everyone would benefit after the exclusivity period had expired.

    But now people have started filing for patents which do not describe an invention in a useful manner, and then suing anyone who makes a similar invention. This basically reverses the intended purpose of patents.

    Analogy: patents were intended to protect invention prospectors from claim jumpers, but instead are being used by speculators who see an idea railway going a certain direction and buy up all the mindspace in its way.

  6. Re:Surprised "The Power of the Daleks" was lost on Dr Who Detective Philip Morris Hints At More Rediscovered Episodes · · Score: 1

    Were they shown on broadcast TV in the US? Many places in Canada get some US broadcast TV.

  7. Re:As always, guidelines are for beginners on Bjarne Stroustrup Announces the C++ Core Guidelines · · Score: 1

    I think the classic one is error handling in C. Usually each error case has some standard unlock all the locks; free temporary objects; close files, etc. Instead of copying & pasting for every error, put it at the end of the function and do if (error) { goto error_handler; }.

    Dosn't apply to C++ though since you can use exception handling. I think modern compilers will even convert the exception into a goto in many cases.

  8. Re:Finally on Phone Passwords Protected By 5th Amendment, Says Federal Court · · Score: 1

    Yes. From what I remember can even be compelled to produce documents contained in a locked safe in many circumstances.

  9. Re:That's not a bomb, it's a clock! on Obama Invites Texas Teen To White House After "Bomb" Clock Incident At School · · Score: 3, Informative

    It would be nice if we stopped painting entire organizations, professions, states and countries every time a story like this comes out.

    If the head of an organization (e.g. the Irving PD Chief) says something in their capacity as head, it's supposed to reflect on the organization. That's why they've called a press conference; are responding to interviews; etc. is to explain the position of the organization (although not necessarily the position of the members of the organization). If they give a dumb response it reflects poorly on the organization, the same way as if they give a good response it reflects well on the organization.

    The rest of your post is either a straw man or you're responding to the wrong post. I didn't talk about any of those things.

  10. Re:That's not a bomb, it's a clock! on Obama Invites Texas Teen To White House After "Bomb" Clock Incident At School · · Score: 1

    The Secret Service may be somewhat more on the ball than the Irving PD.

  11. Re:Or just do it right on MIT Simplifies Design Process For 3D Printing · · Score: 1

    Is this the what the product manager describes, what they really meant, what they want after presenting the prototype to a customer, what they want after getting the costing, or what can be ready in time for the trade show?

  12. Re:Regeneration on Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose · · Score: 1

    I'm not the poster you were originally replying to. Not that this changes anything of substance, but just so we're clear.

    You mentioned "covered in tree sprouts". Cut down a tree and you will get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of competing saplings in its place. But those eventually will be whittled down to only one or maybe a few surviving trees in the long term. It wouldn't be accurate to count those samplings on a 1:1 basis for replacing lost, fully grown trees.

    Fair enough. But my naive assumption would be that absent land use changes (such as converting the land to farmland) logged forest would eventually, through naturally processes, regrow into a similar forest. Forest management practices would merely either (1) accelerate this process, and/or (2) favor the growth of more economically profitable trees for future harvesting.

  13. Re:Regeneration on Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose · · Score: 1

    You have to take into consideration land cleared for building or agriculture where trees won't be allowed to regrow. If those types of land use are happening at a higher rate than other uses where trees are replanted or allowed to come back naturally, then you will have a net loss.

    This is true, as far as farmland expansion, but doesn't explain why toilet paper & timber are counted as a net loss.

    Even in those areas where they are allowed to regrow naturally, there will be attrition as the trees grown and compete with one another for space, light, and resources.

    I don't see how this follows. The old trees also competed for space, light & resources.

  14. Re:The one true language on The Most Important Obscure Languages? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find being able to read assembly incredibly useful when debugging optimized C/C++ code. In my experience it's not infrequent for a debugger to not be able to find the value of a variable in memory, even on lines where the variable is being passed into a (non-inline) function.

    And debugging optimized code is required a fair amount when fixing performance & reliability issues (when the problem may disappear on non-optimized code), and embedded (where the program may not fit on the device without optimization).

  15. Re:LTS on Ubuntu Is the Dominant Cloud OS · · Score: 1

    Not the OP, but Ubuntu does have the point releases (i.e. 12.04.1, 12.04.2, etc.) on LTS. You're not generally not required to use them, except if there's a security patch which applies to a package included in a point release. In this case I believe Ubuntu will only publish a patch on the updated package.

  16. Re:Ubuntu _is_ primarily a desktop OS... on Ubuntu Is the Dominant Cloud OS · · Score: 1

    Debian does releases. They also provide a rolling release, but that isn't the only option.

    They also provide security updates for their releases, so normally "patching in" security updates is done using apt-get.

  17. Re:Comparison? on Study: More Than Half of Psychological Results Can't Be Reproduced · · Score: 1

    Intermittent doesn't mean not reproducible. E.g.: A claim that "Saving file XYZ fails 0.001%" of the time is reproducible. Attempt to save the file a > 1 million times. If it never fails, you can say with high confidence the problem does not exist as described. If it fails ~10 times, you've reproduced the problem.

  18. Re:Yes on Do You Have a Right To Use Electrical Weapons? · · Score: 1
  19. Re:It's the base assumption that its invalid on Prosecutors Op-Ed: Phone Encryption Blocks Justice · · Score: 1

    The contents of smartphones, even with full disk encryption, can be searched with a warrant under certain circumstances. A court can order the production of the contents of the phone, and hold the owner in contempt of court if they refuse to comply.

    See In re Boucher, for example.

  20. Re:Now that's just evil on Windows 10's Privacy Policy: the New Normal? · · Score: 1

    "Linux has already removed the reason of needing VM's for running your applications thanks to the control groups kernel feature."

    That doesn't work with many bits of my software. To run multiple worlds in the game I'm creating, I need multiple separate server VMs with their own IP addresses for server linking and physical separation of game content. I can't just run the server application multiple times in the same instance. The game engine software was not designed to operate like that.

    Linux cgroups can give each container its own interface, with it's own IP address, and also lets you give each container it's own file system. See the man page

  21. Re:Do they have... on The Connoisseur of Number Sequences · · Score: 1

    Yes, that's A000027.

  22. Re:Once a government has your money, no give backs on Shuttleworth Loses $20m Battle With S. African Reserve Bank Over Expatriated Funds · · Score: 2

    Don't pretend people aren't born into privilege in the US too. As far as I can tell (as a Canadian) the difference between Prince William and Paris Hilton is Prince William has class.

  23. Re:but reporting about it is just as bad... on US Bombs ISIS Command Center After Terrorist Posts Selfie Online · · Score: 1

    The same thing would happen a lot in Europe too to provide cover stories for Ultra intelligence. They'd send out recon flights which would always "just happen" to spot a Nazi convoy -- every single time they went out. Or there would be a report from "French partisans peaking over a fence" detailing every unit stationed at a particular airbase -- but not what planes they were flying.

  24. Re:You can't, and that's the problem on SourceForge Responds To nmap Maintainer's Claims · · Score: 1

    And SVN (that Sourceforge used for revision tracking) is also open source. The Sourceforge platform also used to be open source but fairly early they started making new versions closed source.

  25. Re:not circumnavigation, and not all straight line on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 1, Funny

    The question doesn't say walking in a straight line, just walking west. A circle around the pole is the trajectory traveled when walking westward near either of the poles. The solution around the North Pole also requires walking a curved path. If you walk straight you either end up almost a mile away (if using Great Circles as your definition of "straight"), or exactly a mile away, hovering in the air (if using Euclidean "straight").