Slashdot Mirror


User: AJWM

AJWM's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
4,548
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 4,548

  1. Gum? on Space Shuttle Gains Remote-Control Landing Capability · · Score: 1

    T-RAD is a smaller version of the Cure In Place Ablative Applicator (CIPAA), a backpack-mounted system, that mixes two compounds together into a pink, goo-like material called STA-54. (emphasis added)

    In other words, chewing gum!

    The STA-54 material tended to bubble in a weightless environment

    And bubble gum at that!

    Some things never change. (Duct tape, of course, has long been standard equipment aboard the Shuttle.)

  2. Re:A disturbance in The Force? How stupid is this? on WGA Turning Off PCs in the Fall? · · Score: 1

    Treat me right, I treat you right. You fuck me, I fuck you. Not a pretty motto, but I've always lived by it and it has worked for me more often than it hasn't.

    Also known as "tit for tat", which turns out to be the best strategy in a repeated "Prisoner's Dilemma" scenario. (Although that also requires being able to forgive after retaliating.)

  3. Re:Warming on Scientists Blocking out the Sun · · Score: 2, Informative

    Decimal point error: .05% (0.0005) of 3.058E15 KWh/day is 1.529E12, not 1.529E14 KWh/day. That's still a lot more than the (1.24E14/365 = 3.397E11) KWh/day that humans use, by about a factor of about 4.5.

    And speaking of effects on Earth's temperature, if it weren't for greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the Earth would be quite a bit colder (close to freezing) -- and water vapor contributes far more to that greenhouse effect than does CO2. (This is the reason that humid climates are warmer at night than dry climates -- the day's buildup of heat is blocked from radiating back into space by the H2O in the air.)

  4. Re:re #5 playstation #7 tired enthusiasts on DVD Format War Already Over? · · Score: 1

    +1 funny

  5. Re:Doubts... on Hurricane Simulator to Destroy Full Size Building · · Score: 1

    I somehow doubt that plastic film is going to help a window much if it gets hit by a piece of 2x4 blown by a 120 MPH wind...

    Which is why folks in frequent hurricane country (eg, Florida Keys) just put thick plywood shutters over the windows. Quite likely the ones already made to fit the windows and attach to the fittings for them. When you get two or three hurricanes coming through in a season, you start getting serious about planning for them.

  6. Re:Doubts... on Hurricane Simulator to Destroy Full Size Building · · Score: 1

    Especially for owners of quarter million dollar beachfront property.

    In south Florida that'd be slums. In the Keys you probably can't even get an empty lot for that. My inlaws have some property there (bought about fifty years ago) and I'm sure they could get easily double, maybe triple, that from someone who just wants to scrape the existing structure off and rebuild. (Hey, it'd be worth more after a hurricane destroyed the property -- which it won't, because it's a concrete and steel structure.)

    Just wait until the sea level rises above US 1, though...

  7. Re:You're way off base... on Interstate Highway System: 50th Anniversary · · Score: 1

    There is only one allowed intersection between any two Interstates.

    There are many, many examples that contradict this. I-76, I-270, and I-25 all intersect at one point north of Denver.


    That's not a contradiction, that's an example of more than two Interstates intersecting at (approximately) the same point. What GP was talking about is, eg. I-70 and I-25 don't intersect anywhere but at the mousetrap. Likewise I-76 and I-25 only intersect at that one point.

    2) Traffic radio subbands that inform drivers of looming traffic jams.

    They have that a lot of places --you'll see the signs "Traffic Info - Tune to AM 570" or some such. And if you're in Colorado I'm sure you've noticed the variable message signs up over the highways, for everything from traffic/weather warnings to Amber alerts.

  8. Re:What happens when roads are obsolete? on Interstate Highway System: 50th Anniversary · · Score: 1

    Or paint them white, to reduce global warming.

  9. Re:On-the-job learning on Is Microprocessor/Controller Design Dead? · · Score: 1

    I don't sweat 1MB of code because we have 1GB ram, so nothing's hurting.

    Except your cache -- and your instruction pipeline on the frequent cache misses.

  10. Re:Piffle on The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A · · Score: 1

    Dual layer DVD's have been out for a couple years now and the media /still/ costs about $2 a disc

    Still? Still? When DL first came out the media cost about $10-15 disc -- probably more than that but I bought my first DL burner about 2 years ago when the media price dropped to about $10 (3 for $29.95). It was at least a year after that before the price started to drop, as competitive suppliers began filling the pipelines.

  11. Re:Why burn just 1? on The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah they have. DVD+R DL used to be about $10/disc ($30 for a 3-pack). Now they're in the $2-$3/disc range. Still a long way from the price of blank single layer DVD+/-R, let alone CD-R, but the price is coming down.

    Hey, I remember when blank CR-Rs were in the $10-20/disc range. RAM cost $50-$100/megabyte (not gigabyte). And DVD burners were still on the horizon at $15,000 each. And we likedit. (Hell no we didn't!)

  12. Re:While it would be comparing apples and oranges. on Another Microsoft Exec Steps Down · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

  13. Re:Is this good or bad? on Another Microsoft Exec Steps Down · · Score: 1

    As the economy grows in places like India and China, labor costs there also rise. Sub-saharan Africa could be the next great pool of low cost labor if the AIDS problem there is beaten. It could also be the next big market if their economy improves.

    Whether this has anything to do with Gates' contributions in that regard, (and bearing in mind the current Microsoft investments in India and China), is left as an exercise for the reader.

    In any case, good done for the wrong reasons is still good being done. Henry Ford paid his workers a higher than average wage in part so they could afford to buy cars -- but he still paid them that wage.

  14. Re:Temperature issues on Laptop Explodes at Japanese Conference · · Score: 1

    A Lithium Ion battery has an energy density that is less than an order of magnitude from that of TNT!

    Yes, and sugar has an energy density four times that of TNT, fat nearly 10 times.

    What makes TNT so exciting is that it doesn't just burn, it detonates with the shock front moving at several times the speed of sound. If that two pound battery could release its energy in about a tenth of a millisecond (as the equivalent mass of TNT would do), I'd be nervous.

  15. Re:Laptops can't... on Laptop Explodes at Japanese Conference · · Score: 1

    Kids usually are nothing but a drain.

    Short term, maybe. But somebody has to support the next level of the Ponzi scheme called Social Security.

  16. As long as they stay out of law enforcement. on Microsoft Developing Robotics Software · · Score: 1

    "Please put down your weapon, you have twenty seconds to comply!"

  17. Re:Grinding your eyeball? on The U.S. Navy's Doctrine of Laser Eye Surgery · · Score: 1

    Okay, I have to ask: how in the world does one determine that an 11 month old needs eyeglasses? It's not like you're going to read an eye chart or do the "which looks better, this? or this?" thing.

    (Related question: how in the world do you get an 11 month old to keep his glasses on? ;-)

  18. Re:the product is stupid on A New Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd worry the most about antenna shapes and sizes and various analog circuitry.

    My parents worked at (met at) a secret radar research site (the misleadingly named TRE - Telecommunications Research Establishment) during WW-II. My mom once mentioned that since it was known that in case of lost aircraft there was a real danger of some of the equipment falling into enemy hands, it was routine practise to include dummy circuitry and sometimes wholly bogus equipment just to add to the confusion. Sometimes such equipment was deliberately allowed to be "captured".

    A slight weight penalty, but deemed worth it.

  19. Re:'Long overdue'...or 'same shit, different day'? on Microsoft to Turn to Driver Quality Ratings System · · Score: 1

    I don't think that it's necessarily reasonable to expect Microsoft to go through and completely thoroughly analyze the code of every certified device driver to ensure that they're all playing nicely.

    Why not? If they don't want to do the work, don't certify the driver. But hey, Microsoft is a big, innovative software company -- you'd think they'd have some automated tools for this if it's so much work. (Or, more likely, just bill the vendor for the certification.)

    You can't expect any sort of software to perform flawlessy right out of the gate

    Define "out of the gate". If you mean "hot off the developer's workstation", then perhaps not. If you mean "out of the shrinkwrapped box", you damn betcha I can expect that. (Well, okay, realistically perhaps not, but I should be able to.) And since you refer to "any sort" of software, I damn well expect real-time critical system software to perform flawlessly. And what the heck else is a driver? (For some values of "real-time" and "critical".)

    It will give more incentive to companies to get it done better the first time, since it can't be good publicity for them for their drivers to have a "red" rating.

    That part of it I don't have a problem with. I have a problem with software that doesn't work getting certified in the first place.

  20. Re:'Long overdue'...or 'same shit, different day'? on Microsoft to Turn to Driver Quality Ratings System · · Score: 1

    So what you are saying is that if I have a Linux kernel module that I create, it adhere's to the API and it crashes the system it's Linux's fault?

    You left out the certification step. If you hand off your module to the kernel developers and they're happy with it and include in a release (whether mainstream or a distro), then yeah, it's Linux's (or the distro provider's) fault.

    This is one reason that the kernel maintainers won't help you if you're using binary-only modules -- effectively, they are "uncertified".

    You obviously haven't done any programming

    LOL! Too many years of it. And designed APIs. Add up my salary over the timeframe and I've been paid over a million dollars to do programming. (I just wish more of it had stuck ;-)

  21. Re:'Long overdue'...or 'same shit, different day'? on Microsoft to Turn to Driver Quality Ratings System · · Score: 1

    If the OS crashes because of a zero-divide, it's buggy. There are ways to trap that sort of thing.

    (Heck, as coded in your example, the compiler should catch it!)

  22. Re:Composite output? on Samsung Ships the First Blu-Ray Player · · Score: 1

    It's handy if your high end digital screen is in the shop and you need to hook the player up to your old 27" analog temporarily. Especially if you've got a lot invested in HD/Blu discs that won't play on your old DVD player.

    Beyond that, though, you've got a point.

  23. Re:hmmm . . . on Samsung Ships the First Blu-Ray Player · · Score: 1

    In theory, the DVD player can do a better job of upsampling because it can grab data from before and after frames too to help with its interpolation. Hypothetically a TV could also do this but it would have to buffer the frames, and it'd be working off of the already-interpolated full frames (containing artifacts) rather than the raw data (well, raw compressed data) that the DVD has available.

    Whether any DVD player actually does this, rather than just do some simple graphic interpolation per frame like the TV probably does, I don't know.

  24. Re:Don't watch them all in one day.. on Samsung Ships the First Blu-Ray Player · · Score: 2, Funny

    40x25 animation? QBasic? Luxury!

    Back in my day we flickered the segments of 7-segment numeric LED displays, and did it by punching in machine code on the hex keypad.

    (I can hear the next one coming: "Keypads!? You had keypads?.... We had to short out the contacts wi' our tongue, and put wires on our eyballs to see anything..." Although making flip-books from punch cards is probably more realistic.)

  25. Re:Give Vista Developers A Break on Why Vista Release Date Really Slipped · · Score: 1

    1. I'm told that MS Office runs on Linux just fine under Wine, athough I haven't bothered to try it myself.
    2. Mplayer plays WMV files just fine on Linux.

    Lets, see, that leaves just:
    3. Cost $300 retail
    4. Come pre-installed on almost every new computer
    5. Lack proper security
    6. Become infected by malware in a matter of hours


    Hmm. No thanks.