Slashdot Mirror


User: OzPeter

OzPeter's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
3,831
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 3,831

  1. Re:Fake temperature controls on One Night In the Hotel Room of the Future · · Score: 1

    but some only appeared to recognize the room key itself (ie, not any plastic card or even a generic mag stripe card).

    Just ask for 2 room keys when you check in - one for you and the other for the room.

  2. Re:Not a custom app on One Night In the Hotel Room of the Future · · Score: 1

    My phone is now faster, cooler, quieter, less cluttered and gives me fewer irritating notifications. Die, apps, die!

    Getting off topic here, but I still use a 2007 RAZR and I only need to charge my phone once a week (if that). And I amazed a guy sitting next to me on a plane the other week when I told him that I didn't even bother to pack my charger on that particular trip.

    Other benefits of this phone included being small and lite, and me not caring when I drop it as I know it will survive pretty well any fall onto a hard surface.

  3. Re:Greatly disappointed on Leading the Computer Revolution In a Totalitarian State · · Score: 1

    This story has been up for several minutes already, and no "First Post!" or "In Soviet Russia, computers build YOU!" comments. Slashdot is really going downhil...

    You insensitive clod!

    Ever since Natalie Portman spilt her hot grits after being told that Netcraft finally confirmed that /. was dying (as indicated by the new overlords - Dice - no longer wanting the site) we have all been in mourning and unable to formulate the correct meme.

    Now get off my lawn as I have to have room to tie this onion to my belt.

  4. Re:Why not both? on Sharp Announces Sales of DC Powered Air Conditioner, Other Products To Follow · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wouldn't it be possible to have both in the same appliance?

    Yeah, that AC/DC appliance would be really rocking, and a company that succeeds in doing it really would be a rising power. But I'd be worried about the low end manufactures doing dirty environmental deeds, dirt cheap as well as the build quality of the system overall. After all you don't want to be shaken all night long by your air conditioner - that would really lead you down a highway to hell.

  5. Re:Negotiating salaries is for the birds. on Google Staffers Share Salary Info With Each Other; Management Freaks · · Score: 1

    only to have to turn them down after being offered the job because they weren't paying a decent wage for the job at hand

    I thought the trend now days was for you to indicate how much you were willing to work for when you applied for the job (complete with salary history of your previous jobs), and hope that you were within the acceptable range.

  6. Re:Misleading and Hyperbolic Title/Comparison on A Tweet-Sized Exploit Can Get Root On OS X 10.10 · · Score: 4, Funny

    A lot of security exploits could fit within a tweet, but I've never seen that comparison before.

    You're right .. they should have specified it in pico Libraries of Congress. At least that's a unit of measurement that most people here would understand.

  7. Who needs Lifelock? on FTC Accuses LifeLock of False Advertising Again · · Score: 1

    With all the personal data being stolen every which way, there is so much free credit monitoring being offered to consumers by companies that if you haven't already been offered some, then you must live in a cave and not need any.

  8. Re:Used to be an obligatory post on Cray To Build Australia's Fastest Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    This would be posted when Slashdot was still news for nerds:
    "I wonder what a Beowulf cluster of these could do.."

    Why don't you ask Natalie Portman why things have gone down hill? I'm sure you can get her comment before her breakfast of hot grits. But just be prepared for an answer that welcomes the new overlords.

    The sad thing is that Netcraft will now finally be able to confirm what is going on, to the point that not even an insensitive clod in Soviet Russia will be spared any feelings. Now if you will excuse me, I need to change the onion on my belt.

  9. Re:Uh huh. on Report: US Military Is Wasting Millions On Satellite Comms · · Score: 1

    So about $450 million over the last 10 years opposed to how much spent in Afghanistan and Iraq over the same period? \

    There was some statistic a few years ago about how the cost of air-conditioning for the troops in Afghanistan and the Middle East exceed NASA's budget.

  10. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    4) You were traveling at normal speed with no visible traffic in front of you, crested a hill and then ran into the traffic that was stopped just over the crest of the hill.

    This happened to me once, I had stopped behind the car in front of me (in a line of stopped traffic extending down the hill for about 1km), two cars had stopped behind me. A third car came over the hill, impacted into the last car which shunted into the car behind me, who shunted into my car with enough force that my car was put off the road with a broken rear axle. Fortunately I had stopped with enough room that I wasn't shunted into the car in front of me. This also occurred just after dusk, and a light rain was falling, so it was the worst of all possible conditions.

  11. Re:Stallman quote on The Free Software Foundation's Statement On Canonical's Updated Licensing Terms · · Score: 1, Redundant

    D'oh moment. The text of the quote is in TFA, but there is no attribution that it was Stallman who said it.

  12. Stallman quote on The Free Software Foundation's Statement On Canonical's Updated Licensing Terms · · Score: 1, Troll

    While I am not 100% in agreement with Stallman all the time (EG I am vehemently against toe cheese), where the hell did the quote from him in the TFS originate? It is not in TFA.

  13. Re:As a motorcyclist... on NYC Asks Google Maps For Fewer Left Turns · · Score: 2

    Not for safety reasons, but because I don't want to sit there for 15 minutes waiting for a car that weighs enough to pull up behind me to trigger the lights to turn green.

    20 or 30 years ago I asked a cop in Australia about what should I do when the lights don't respond to a motorcycle. His reply was that if you are sitting there for so long then you can consider the light to be defective and you can proceed with caution. However this was before the widespread introduction of red light cameras and I never put it to the test.

  14. Re:Power purchase preference or hard limit? on Facebook's New Data Center To Be Powered Entirely By Renewables · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is this one of those things where they site near a wind farm and tick a box on a form that says they want to buy green power but in reality the actual electrons that enter the data center are "from the grid" and not actually exclusively produced from renewable sources?

    Whats worse is that after you buy those electrons from the power companies and use them in your process, you give them back for free. Imagine the overall cost savings you could have if someone developed a market for used electrons and you could sell what you didn't need. I bet that its those power companies that are suppressing that idea so that they can hold on to all those $$$.

    But to answer your question. If the Green power company pours X amount of electrons into the grid, and the FB pays that company $$ to pull X electrons from the grid and uses them to power their data center, then what is the problem if they also mix with electrons from other sources? What you are proposing (dedicated onsite, pure green power stations for each enterprise) would be cost prohibitive and stupid for a number of reasons - such as not utilizing scales of economy in the power generation, having to colocate the data centers at the site of the renewable generation, and finally having zero redundancy in their power supplies.

  15. Re:Energy Storage? on Facebook's New Data Center To Be Powered Entirely By Renewables · · Score: 1

    I RTFA but they didn't mention any energy storage component. What do they do when the wind isn't ideal?

    This wind power failure meme needs to die .. there are many well proven approaches to energy storage that have been used since before grid sized renewables were even a twinkle in their designers eyes.

    A prime example is Pumped storage which is being used All over the world

  16. Latte type? on Facebook's New Data Center To Be Powered Entirely By Renewables · · Score: 1

    Is that a European or an American Latte?

    It's kinda important .. sort of like swallows and coconuts.

  17. Re:My 0.02 on In 6 Months, Australia Bans More Than 240 Games · · Score: 3, Informative

    I read about this and I'm really glad I don't live in Australia right now. America still has SOME freedom left although it is rapidly dwindling.

    Read TFA .. the ESRB has signed up to the same service as Australia and both Goole Play and Firefox Marketplace support the IARC.

  18. FFS RTFA It's a TRIAL on In 6 Months, Australia Bans More Than 240 Games · · Score: 3, Informative

    From TFA

    While this current trial will only last 12 months initially ...

    So the Oz government has signed up with a global, unified ratings system from the IARC. And all that is required from the game publishes is to submit answers to a bunch of questions to set a ratings level for their game. For free.

    Sure, the OZ government has probably tailored how the answers to the question map into the desired Australian ratings system, but this sounds like a great step forward with consistency and transparency. Also from TFA

    It's worth noting that the IARC has also submitted plenty of games which have been accepted by the Classification Board - we're still figuring out the exact number, but there are hundreds of digital/mobile only games classified R18+, MA15+, M, PG and G which have passed through the IARC process.

  19. Alternate headline: Amazon tracks what you read on Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In a message recently released to investors, Amazon has announced that its plans to improve targeted advertising will now utilize metrics gleaned from analyzing what eBook pages it's locked in market monkeys (IE The people who think that they are the customers) read, as well as how long they linger over each particular page. This will allow Amazon sell more highly targeted advertisements to its actual customers and thus tap a previously unavailable segment of analytics.

    For example, the monkey reads a book that contains both an explicit sex scene and a restaurant scene. By timing how long the monkey takes to read each scene (and hopefully in the future each paragraph - along with eye movement measurements) Amazon will be able determine what sort of sex the monkey prefers as well as the types of food they like. Correlating this data with data obtained from other books the monkey has read, Amazon will be able to craft an individual marketing scheme that highlights the monkey's desire for blindfolds as well as chocolate lava cake.

    Note that Amazon has been rumored to be in talks with Facebook about posting such campaigns to not only the monkey's FB feed, but also to the feed of their friends as well. This will have a synergistic sales effect of either the monkey's friends sharing the same taste (and thus opening up new markets), or the monkey paying to opt out of the campaign (in order to hide their behavior) - and thus bringing in more revenue . Amazon has already applied for a patent on paying to opt out of a marketing campaign and they have also started trialing the technology in some market segments in order to estimate how much value monkey's place on their privacy.

  20. Re:Whats is the slashdot stupid icons over the tit on AMD Reveals Radeon R9 Fury X Specs and Preliminary Benchmark Performance Results · · Score: 1

    I can't even read the end of the friggen titles, come on slahsdot, get those STUPID icons out of the way of the titles of the articles

    You just need to stretch out your browsers windows so that it is wide enough to accommodate the headline layout as envisaged by the might /. design team.

    Or in other words the idiots at /. designed a layout that looks good on their monitors and never tested it beyond that. Why should they, as it works on their systems!

  21. Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop on SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That's a tough one.

    Maybe over a span of fifteen minutes or so?

    So do you want to fill the whole pipe up at once? Or are you going to break it into airtight sections with pressure proof doors at each end? Because each set of doors you insert into the system will cost money in maintenance and testing and will have to be available 100% of the time.

    Now lets do some basic math. Suppose that you let the air in at 1/3 the speed of sound in order to protect equipment and people. Assume no friction and that the air travels down the pipe as a plug. So the maximum distance between doors is constrained by the time it takes the air to traverse that distance. 15 minutes is 900 seconds. At 100m/s the air will travel a maximum of 90000 metres.

    So in a perfect world you have to have emergency self sealing doors located every 90km along the pipe. So lets round that down to 50 miles. GIven 400 miles between LA and SFO, that means you need 8 sets of emergency doors. But there is the chance that a capsule could stop on a door, or a door could fail. So you need at least to double the number of doors in order to stay within your safety limit. So that's 16 sets. Plus we ignored friction, so lets add another 4 to round it up to 20 sets of doors.

    So that's 20 sets of mechanical devices that need regular maintenance and weekly (if not more) testing - and that testing has to be done when the hyper loop is not in use - because if a door does not fully retract after testing then the capsule is screwed. They also need high availability power supplies to operate the doors, and pumps to pump each individual section back down to its working pressure, and a staff of people to service them (probably another 5 to 10 people on payroll based up and down the hyper loop just to do that on a sustainable basis).

    So we have just added a shitload more money to the operating costs of the hyper loop.

  22. Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop on SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track · · Score: 1

    These seem like they may be valid complaints, I don't know. But you're complaining about something in the prototype/proof-of-concept phase.

    Right now, the hyper loop concept seems to me like a bad kickstarter project that is all full of dreams, but is missing a practical design. But safety can't be tacked on at the end, it has to be considered up front and will impact the design. Yet nothing in the designs shows any thoughts to safety or survivability. I was puzzle by this (as I know that Musk is a smart guy), but just now Bruce Perens made a comment below that made my head spin bit. Basically his comment is that Musk is somehow conspiring to kill high speed rail, with the implication that the hyper loop is just a tool for this purpose.

    I have no knowledge of the politics of high speed rail, but the inadequacies of the hyper loop as passenger transport is puzzling. It is much better suited to transporting freight.

  23. Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop on SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track · · Score: 0

    Because there's no way you could let air into the tunnel, of course.

    And how quick do you want to do that? And what do you think about being hit by a hypersonic shock wave?

  24. Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop on SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track · · Score: 1

    Travel in the tube is stopped anyway so just let air into the tube.

    Possibly the only comment that makes some sense. However if you just fully open up the pipe to the outside world then you will subject the capsule to one hell of a shockwave which would make pulp of the people inside (one way to solve the rescue problem), and would probably damage the pipe.

    On the other hand if you bleed air in to restrict the shockwave you will still be in the same boat of needed to have air in the capsule - a 4 foot tube several hundred miles long has a huge volume and will take a very long time to fill

    Alternatively breaking the pipe into sections that can be isolated and independently filled with air might work - but from the designs presented by musk I am betting that this would be cost prohibitive. (maintenance, regular testing, availability).

  25. Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop on SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track · · Score: 1, Troll

    There's probably no way to do that safely.

    To quote from the link you so kindly supplied:

    oxygen production typically lasts at least 15 minutes

    Do you want to speculate how long it will take to extract people from a hyper loop capsule?

    Here, let me help you.
    1. Time to locate the capsule
    2. Time for the Hyperloop Emergency Extraction Team to respond.
    3. Time transport man lifts to the location of the capsule at some arbitrary point between the start and finish location
    4. Time to safely raise those man lifts to to the height of the pipe
    5. Time to safely cut through the pipe and capsule.

    I'd wager that it is a bit more than a standard aircraft emergency oxygen supply can hold out for - by at least an order of magnitude or two.

    So you counter with "well make it bigger". And then I'll counter with "Here you are wanting to change the design so that the capsule carries more air than even needed for the transit of the trip itself. But the hyper loop capsule design was predicated on not having an internal air supply. If Musk couldn't make it work carrying its own air supply for the trip duration - how could he make it work when it needs to contain multiple times more air?" And so on.