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User: jabuzz

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  1. Re:Fixed the headline for you... on ARM-Based Chromebooks Ready To Battle Windows 8, Tablets · · Score: 1

    Then install xrdp and x11rdp and problem solved. The Linux desktop that I am typing this on is nothing more than an RDP session, and has been for several years now.

  2. Re:fight against global warming on Scientists Turn Air Into Petrol · · Score: 1

    I am afraid that thermodynamics wins out and this process still adds to global warming by pumping heat energy from their process which will never be 100% efficient into the earth's atmosphere.

  3. Re:Fixed the headline for you... on ARM-Based Chromebooks Ready To Battle Windows 8, Tablets · · Score: 2

    Install CloudRDP into Chrome. Admittedly it does cost a small amount, but provides a proper RDP client (all of the others require a middle man somewhere). Then just enable remote desktop on your desktop.

  4. Re:Good that he reported it on Man Finds Roman Gold Coin Hoard Worth £100,000 With Metal Detector · · Score: 1

    Not much different in the U.K., well at least England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland might be different.

    People who own land own the "freehold" which means they hold it free of rent to the Crown, which actually owns all the land. Thus the Crown can "confiscate" the land should it choose to do so, because it is there's in the first place. Though these days you do get compensated when they do so. One of the points of the Magna Carta was to stop the Crown arbitrarily seizing land from the Baron's.

  5. Re:not the largest find on Man Finds Roman Gold Coin Hoard Worth £100,000 With Metal Detector · · Score: 1

    Since when where Torc's coins?

  6. Re:the mythbusters need to try that out on Foxconn Thinks the iPhone 5 Is a Pain · · Score: 1

    Hum, a fire set around a propane tank in my personal experience can cause a pretty big bang and a huge fireball that is maybe 15m high.

    How do I know well 25 years ago they built a new doctors surgery behind my parents house. Some local yobs set fire to the prefab building used by the work men and after a bit there was an almighty bang. After rushing to the back windows to see what was going on there was a huge 15m high flaming tower. I believe some windows further down the street where broken.

    My understanding is that the fire had only been going for a relatively short time before the explosion, as the fire brigade had already been called, They arrived less than a minute after the explosion. So certainly not hours let alone days.

    These days in the UK at least all temporary accommodation on building sites is steel container stuff so the local yobs cannot set them on fire. The wood based building was of course replaced with a steel one.

  7. Re:Right now in London on Thousands of Muslims Protest 'Age of Mockery' At Google's London Headquarters · · Score: 1

    Really I thought she was in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, which while in England is most decidedly not London.

  8. Re:What secrets do the Canadians have? Maple syrup on Canadian Spying Case Proves Floppy Drive Isn't Dead Yet · · Score: 1

    My favourite is the one where American's thing that they saved the U.K. from invasion by Germany. Sorry to disappoint but operation Sea Lion was permanently postponed on the 17th September 1940 months before for the USA entered the war and thanks to Ultra we knew it was postponed.

    Go read the wikipedia page on Operation Sea Lion to see why an invasion of Great Britain was realistically outwith the reach of the Germans at any point.

  9. Re:no sleep on UK License Plate Cameras Have "Gaps In Coverage" · · Score: 2

    Perhaps I am a garage and want to record the number plate used with each sale in case of card fraud?

    Perhaps I run a private car park that offers free parking for say two hours (imagine I am a supermarket), and be able to issue fines to those that stay longer?

    I can see a whole slew of perfectly legitimate reasons why private companies might want to track number plates, and reducing that cost to them reduces the cost of the products I buy from them.

  10. Re:Cost on Tokelau Becomes First Country To Go 100% Solar · · Score: 1

    Clearly you live in a hot sunny place. Large percentages of the worlds population use more energy in the cold dark nights of winter when the sun is useless.

  11. Re:Hawii on Tokelau Becomes First Country To Go 100% Solar · · Score: 1

    Really I wonder why Hawaii has not invested heavily in geothermal. Would seem like an almost idea location...

  12. Re:dd on Ask Slashdot: How To Clean Up My Work Computer Before I Leave? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Better yet a few days or a week or so before you leave do

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda skip=512

    That way you leave the partition table and first stage of the boot loader so it will look like the install is busted. You can then ring up IT and say your computer no longer boots and can they fix it. They will then happily reimage the machine :-)

  13. Re:Atlantic Currents on NASA Satellite Measurements Show Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Melt · · Score: 1

    There is a some evidence building that the position of the jetstream is influenced by the temperature differential between the Arctic and the tropics. It's all to do with heat flow. The theory being that the warming of the Arctic by a few degrees can have a dramatic impact on the position of the jetstream. The Arctic is warmer than it has been historically and the jetstream is doing unusual things.

  14. Re:C Programming Language on Objective-C Overtakes C++, But C Is Number One · · Score: 1

    Being English I find orientated is a verb meaning to be lined up with something, so I can just has happily be orientated to the North Pole as with the Orient which is a proper noun and is a geographic region.

    I never quite get this American notion that English words only have one meaning.

  15. Re:Bogus summary on Amazon Patents Annotating Books, Digital Works · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sure but it should have failed the "obvious to someone skilled in the art" test.

  16. Re:How about oing the same for snow clearing? on Man Digs Out Basement Using Radio Controlled Toy Tractors · · Score: 2

    You can buy radio controlled Piste Machines :-)

    http://shop.pistenbully.com/product_info.php?products_id=4233

  17. Re:As the French would say... on All French Nuclear Reactors Deemed Unsafe · · Score: 1

    Incorrect there was a planned site in Exmoor that was never developed due to the dash for gas. I would note that it would be ideally placed to smooth out the power from a tidal barrage in the Bristol Channel.

  18. Re:Screen size/resolution lock? on Apple's Secret Weapon To Influence Industry Pricing · · Score: 1

    All ISO paper sizes are an aspect ratio of sqrt(2).

    Personally I want a tablet or an ebook reader with a screen 216x297mm so it can display both letter and A4 full size without any rescaling.

  19. Re:This is a complete myth on Oil May Be Finite, But U.S. Production Is Ramping Up · · Score: 1

    It does not hobble the economy as in the long term economies structurally adjust to higher fuel prices. So because fuel is more expensive in europe we on average drive more fuel efficient cars and live closer to our places of work etc. The layouts of our cities are such that we are less dependent on having a car to do things.

    What matters long term is not so much the absolute price in fuel but the percentage fluctuation in that price. High fuel taxes provide a buffer to the large fluctuations in the raw material prices.

    The problem the USA has is the age of cheap oil is over for good. It is now going to cost the USA economy many trillions of dollars to structurally adjust to higher fuel prices. While there will also be a cost in Europe as well, it will be significantly less.

  20. Re:How about a Model T? on Tesla Model S: 0-60 In 4.5 Seconds · · Score: 2

    It has long been known that in the long term the absolute price of gas/petrol is not as important as the short term fluctuations. Basically higher prices cause long term structural changes in the economy, i.e. I move close to work, buy a more fuel efficient vehicle etc. The amount you actually spend on fuel as a percentage of your income is not that different between the USA and Europe.

    The killer is the short term price fluctuations. Having high fuel duty cushions this, so if the price I pay is 50% tax, then a doubling of the raw material only increase prices by 25% rather than 100%.

    Low fuel prices in the USA have resulted in an economy that will take many trillions of dollars to structurally adjust to high fuel prices. Given that high fuel prices are here to stay, that you might think this is good long term economic planning only shows up your ignorance.

  21. Re:Acne-causing bacteria? on Smartphones Can't Cure Acne, FTC Rules · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that we are really sure that bacteria are *NOT* the cause of acne. The cosmetic/drug industry has spent large sums of money on the issue on hopes of coming up with a "cure".

    As I understand it what happens is that a reaction to testosterone causes the sweat in a hair folical to become stickier than normal. This neatly explains why it starts at pubeity. As a consequence there is a tendancy for the pore to become blocked easier. This neatly explains why good hygene can reduce the symptons. What then happens is that the sticky sweat building up in the blocked poor is an ideal breading ground for bacteria that can make it worse. This also explains why antibiotics can also reduce the symptons. However bacteria are not the cause of acne.

    Unfortunately as far as I am aware this knowledge has only led so far to one drug, and it can only be prescribed by a specialist (at least in the UK) as it can have severe psycholoical side effects. It works by blocking all the "sweat" from being produced, which is something of a sledge hammer approach.

    The first drug company to come up with an over the counter medicine to fix the root cause, aka the stickier than normal sweat will of course become fabuously wealthy.

  22. Re:Meh on Costly SSDs Worth It, Users Say · · Score: 1

    One word MD3600f. It is the cheapest FC attached storage that you can buy with an SSD disk from something approaching a tier one manufacturer. It is rebranded LSI (nay NetApp) 2600 from Dell. You don't get the two SAS ports that you get when buying it as a DS3500 from IBM but it is basically the same thing. We have six.

  23. Re:Roundabouts on SignalGuru Helps Drivers Avoid Red Lights · · Score: 1

    Yes that does happen, if it becomes a problem you put traffic lights on the entrances to the roundabout to regulate the traffic flow and fix the problem. It the problem only occurs at certain times (aka rush hour) then the traffic lights can even be temporary.

    On larger roundabouts you can have protected left or right turning depending on which side of the road you drive.

    Roundabouts are hugely safer than crossroads with lights. You often hear people going on about getting t-boned at junctions on slashdot as an excuse for driving large cars. With a roundabout it is simply not a problem.

  24. Re:Tape on Ask Slashdot: Best Offline Storage Method For Large Archives? · · Score: 1

    Not if you are using enterprise grade tape. So these days that is primarily LTO. Sure even LTO tapes do fail, but having only only copy of something is dumb regardless of what you store it on.

    However as another person said tape is incredibly cheap if you have a lot of data to store. We pay something like 16GBP for a labeled LTO4 tape, that is 800GB raw and when it is sitting in the library consumes zero power. You don't even need air conditioning for a tape library it consumes so little power. Admittedly at work we have a couple of IBM TS3500 libraries with several expansion bays in two physical locations several miles apart.

  25. Re:Ok, ok. on News of the World Investigation Expanded to 9/11 Victims · · Score: 1

    There is many stories about what they actually did, but there is a suggestion that it is only a four digit pin, so they manually brute forced it. Yes it is tedious but the $$$ rewards made it worth it.

    Remember they where making payments totaling hundreds of thousands of pounds to corrupt police officers.