Slashdot Mirror


User: Technician

Technician's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
6,078
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 6,078

  1. Already regulated by free market forces on The Case For a Federal Robotics Commission · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Adding a layer of overseers adds a layer of cost to a marketing decision. Areas with high levels of automation and effecient production include food processing such as making cheese, semiconductor manufacturing, automobile welding, painting, ammusement park rides, etc.

    What can government oversight do besides drive up the cost for the remaining US manufactures? The decison to automate is a business decision.

    Government regulation should only intrude in safety such a OSHA guidelines. Anything beyond that is wasted resources and a higher cost of doing business.

  2. Re:What are the bounds of property? on Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World · · Score: 1

    One that I enjoyed reading a out is the ariel tram in Portland OR. Residents were concerend with the gondolas flying overhead and peeking into their private back yards. Residents were assured the view is out and not down. One resident then put offencive material in his "private back yard", and there was a stir on his choice of back yard decor. He reminded the tram operators that passangers can not see into his private back yard. Its your problem as it is my private back yard.

    Link http://gondolaproject.com/2009... Warning profanity

  3. Re:What did they expect? on The MOOC Revolution That Wasn't · · Score: 2

    When it has free competition, failure to pay is common. I am learning more online than ever before. Much of it is outside an online classroom.

    Examples include
    DMX512 lighting control
    Digital Photography and photo editing (formal training in the 70's limited to film SLR and darkroom processing)
    Additional electronics including digital signal processing. Formal traiining ended in the 1980's.
    Audio Engineering/Recording
    HVAC & Refrigeration
    Welding/Brazing
    Not all who learn are after a sheepskin, but the skills.

    Certifications obtained includes Journeyman ISCET Certification
    Certification is pending for the EPA Universal CFC Certification.

    What I don't have - Student Loans

  4. Re:Separate hardware from software on Windows Tax Shot Down In Italy · · Score: 1

    Tektronics has done this with their test equipment for years. I found out the hard way the drivers to transfer screen prints to my PC did NOT come with the optional communications module. To get simple screen cap functionality, the software suite price is about 5X the cost of the communicatins module.

    Are they sure they want to go this route? Fortunately for grey box PC's, alternative software is readily available. For Tektronics scopes, not so much.

    It looks like more moden scope communicaitons modules now come bundled with the softare package.

  5. Re:RT.com? on Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion · · Score: 2

    An embargo is usually in place to encourage a country to change a practice hostile to the US. When the leadership changes positions and is no longer hostile to the US, the embargo is lifted, unless things don't change.

    This started about the time of the Cuban Missle Crisis. Cuba has maintained unfriendly to the US ties. This has not changed. Thus the embargo status has remained. Lifing the embargo for Cuba to rebuild missle bases aimed at the US is not going to happen. They are too close to defend against missles launched from Cuba. Keeping missles out of cuba is the reson for the embargo. The US does not want the same relationship Isreal has with Gaza with bombs lobbed over the border to keep things stirred up.

    At the moment there are no bombs and missles, unlike other close neighbors that don't get along. Screaming about economic impact of an embargo is not going to fix this.

  6. Re:Two-Factor Authentication on Hackers Behind Biggest-Ever Password Theft Begin Attacks · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you have a Gmail account, look for the Last Account Activity at the bottom right. Use the Details link to see your recent history. Set your preferences to alert you to unusual account activity. More accounts should notify you of unusual logins and login attempts.

  7. Re:Google is your friend on Hackers Behind Biggest-Ever Password Theft Begin Attacks · · Score: 2

    http://www.thedomains.com/2014...

    The good news is that Namecheap found the attack early and took measures to defeat the attempt to log into NameCheap accounts, the bad news is this is not just a security issue for Namecheap but seems to be along the lines of the groups of Russian Hackers which gained access to hundreds of thousands of email accounts and millions of user Id’s and passwords last month so its an issue for all Internet Users

  8. Re:Placing all your eggs in one basket on New Nigerian ID Card Includes Prepay MasterCard Wallet · · Score: 1

    Is that sarcasm? In reality, I don't generaly carry credit cards at all. I do have some, but they are used very sparingly.

    Learn the credit card company's tricks. Have a high balance card? Get a great cash advance offer for 6 months? Beware. All your payments go toward the main balance and the great cash advance is untouched and then jumps to high interest after the introduction period. Buy a pair of socks or other purchases? Guess what your paymnets go towards while your cash advance at the higher rate continues to roll over month to month.

    If you use a cash advance or other promotion, put the card in a safe and don't touch it. Pay it off. Don't carry the card. If I had only one card, and it was tied to everything, I could not take advantage of great offers when they come up without being taken to the cleaners. Rotate the cards. Use the perks, but know the game. Using them carelessly is very expensive.

    Ever have a card company call you to find out why you are not using a card with a 0 balance? I have. Told them their interest rate was too high. I was using other cards instead. Got a much lower competitive rate. Now another card is in the lockbox unused. Can't do this with only one card. Use the leverage.

  9. Placing all your eggs in one basket on New Nigerian ID Card Includes Prepay MasterCard Wallet · · Score: 2

    Placing all your ID travel documents and cash in one basket is a really good idea.. Not.

  10. Re:But what of Netflix on Comcast Tells Government That Its Data Caps Aren't Actually "Data Caps" · · Score: 1

    They could start driving the customers to the competition. Some loss is acceptable to keep average selling price up, but there is a limit.

  11. Re:What goes around on Uber Has a Playbook For Sabotaging Lyft, Says Report · · Score: 2

    If they get away from this and this is how low the bar is set, I can imagine the established taxi service with a central dispatch system will employ the tactic on the orignator, and have some backlash protection quickly able to blacklist blocks of cell numbers on throw away accounts and whitelisting many bars and other public access phones.

    Blacklisted - Do not respond, long drive to arrive.. Trac Phone number or Magic Jack number, or already abused number.

    Tenative, unknown new customer on questionable prefix. Respond if very local to a driver. No long drives and limit wating time.

    Whitelist, Joe's Bar where Joe calls the cab for someone, gives customer's ID, or a taxi regular.

  12. Re:Not worth it on New Windows Coming In Late September -- But Which One? · · Score: 1

    This extra labor and skill simply adds to the TCO of the WIndows product. What is your time worth?

    Sometimes the cost of a clean copy is cheaper than the time and effort required to properly clean an OEM copy. It is much easier to wipe and install Mint or some other OS that comes clean and with fully functional applications. I've stopped dual booting on more than one or two machines, becasue each time I boot into Windows for some requried Windows specific task, I'm stuck waiting on the shutdown for "Configuring Windows, Please do not power off" screen on top of the AV Updates, Windows Updates, Flash Updates, etc that has delayed startup. This is how a once or twice a month Windows task turns from 5 minutes to 25 Minutes +.

    Unless you boot into Windows at least twice a week, it will remind you how much it is a time drain.

  13. Re:Just have them talk to my 3rd eldest, Larrisa on TechCentral Scams Call Center Scammers · · Score: 1

    Just added lenny to my sip phone address book. If you use IPPI, the full address won't work as it won't take the two dots in the address. Remove the first sip. from the address and it works great.

  14. Re:Scambaiter sites are NSFW on TechCentral Scams Call Center Scammers · · Score: 0

    Just a reminder that scambaiting sites are generaly NSFW. Some have explicit phontos and situations, and some simply due to the race isses. I got in trouble mentioning a 419 scam at work because it disparages a non white race only due to the country with the 419 Penal Code in the name of the scam.

    Save scambaiting for off work hours if your complany is super PC sensitive. Do study the scams to prevent being a victim. Do educate your co-workers against Advance Fee Fraud. Don't call it 419 or mention Nigerian law. That could be a PC issue at work.

  15. Re:Got one of these once on TechCentral Scams Call Center Scammers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On my first one, this is how it ended as I went to the website and downloaded the application and offered him the options of "Save" or "Cancel". This confused him for quite a while. He asked me to "Open" it , so I opened it in Package Manager and found the Exe contained another file inside the container. So I extracted that. Finaly we got to the non Windows issue and he hung up. This took almost 40 minutes due to trying to get remote access working.

    These guys are getting smarter in regards to people being on to them.

    The latest call was much shorter as they expalined my PC was uploading to some server. I reacted supprised and inquired as to the server my machine was logging into so I could check my router log. He immediately queried me on why I was skeptical. I explained that I wasn't, but needed to follow up on the breech with the network team to find the target server that was collecting our information. He again accused me of being skeptical and as I again said I wasn't, but needed security to follow up on the breech and check the network gateway logs, he simply hung up on me. They don't want to deal with anyone that understands computers.

    That call never got to the event viewer or remote access. Was fun to have him hang up on me wihout even saying goodby.

  16. Missleading title on 13-Year-Old Finds Fungus Deadly To AIDS Patients Growing On Trees · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I have not seen any AIDS patients growing on trees so this should not be an issue. :-)

  17. Re:Okay... and? on For Microsoft, $93B Abroad Means Avoiding $30B Tax Hit · · Score: 1

    Why single out Microsoft? Many multinational corporations have overseas divisions and not all income is brought home to be taxed, then sent back abroad to pay the workforce.

  18. Re:They always told me I was so smart... on It's Dumb To Tell Kids They're Smart · · Score: 1

    How smart you are depends on whose Kitchen you are standing in at the time. Sub Shop for kitchen and you get the idea. Put a BBQ chef in a bakery and watch the failure.

    A movie I really enjoyed about not telling students how good they are is "The Paper Chase" A student feels pressure to not flunk out as a failure. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... Older film, great drama.

  19. Re:From the wikipedia on Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical · · Score: 1

    True,

    But in semiconductor manufacturing, Lead is contamination. EDX of the sample shows it to be Pb free. All Copper Sulfate indicates Lead. The testing kit instructions clearly state this is normal for the kit.

  20. Re:From the wikipedia on Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical · · Score: 2

    I'm wondering how much is a false detection for a similar chemical, or as the result of another chemical reaction. At work our Lead detection kits respond the same to Copper. This has led to missdiagnosis in copper plating.

    Chlorinated hydrocarbons abound in the environment. Could this be by products of burning recycled PC parts and old monitors and wire. The copper and other metals theft and recycling may be the cause.

  21. Re:Probably has to do with demographic. on Do Readers Absorb Less On Kindles Than On Paper? Not Necessarily · · Score: 1

    I suspect the e-readers are more likely to be time pressed people who multitask alot often skimming for important points where readers of paper editions tend to close out distractions and read the full text without jumping about looking at key events in random order. E book manual owners tend to read them the same way I read the National Electrical Code going to revelant sections to answer specific questions. Other than the numbered chapters sections of the code, I would have had difficulting knowing if Hospital Isolated Ground requirements came before or after the section of low voltage wires in an elevator access shaft.

  22. Re:Drivers not included. on Hack an Oscilloscope, Get a DMCA Take-Down Notice From Tektronix · · Score: 1

    I bought the scope to use as a scope. That is just fine.

    Problem is I bought the optional communicaitons module, and can't communicate except by the hardcopy printer port.

    I guess a better analogy would be buying a USB port card for your PC. Only the card manufacture will provide the propritary drivers.. for 6X the cost of the card. You can use it as a cell phone charging port without the drivers if you like. See the problem?

  23. Re:I have worked at a few ISPs on Comcast Training Materials Leaked · · Score: 1

    I used this to ditch them.

    When they were the monopoly high speed provider in my neighborhood, they tried to push the Triple Play package even though I was set on Internet Only. As a new customer, they had a $100 connection fee where the teck comes out to "Verify" the connection and assist with router install. Could not get the fee waived for a self install even though I already had a router, wireless set up, NAS, Net printers, etc. Modem was an Actiontech Dual PC modem, so the only item need to connect was unplug the router from one modem and connect the other.

    Connected under protest of the excess fees. Ran into their throtteling of torrents where they start fast, slow to a crawl and never finsih even after running for days on a small file.

    Ran into their begging to upgrade all the time.

    As soon as DSL arrived in my neighborhood, I switched. Improved speed from 2 meg to 6 meg for a reduction in cost of $20 plus a comptetive switchover bonus of $100. Self install was painless Punched 1 DSL filter in at the Demarc so I didn't have in home stubs to the various phones and filters on each phone.. (RF Transmission line basics)

    They have tried to sway me back with their Xfinity product. It may be faster, but I'll take functanality over speed. Netflix doesn't stop to buffer. The 3 VOIP lines don't cut out (not throttled to upsell POTS instead.) or other games. When comcast calls, I tell them they blew their chance as customer retention efforts were non existant forcing me to flee at first chance. Please explain why I would want to try that again?

      If my DSL provider doesn't abuse me, they can retain me. They must be proactive in retention efforts.

  24. Re:I'm not so sure.... on Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some hospitals are taking photos of patients with higher cost proceedures as early as 6 years ago. My photo is in my medical records. A stolen ID would be spotted by any staff reviewing my medical history.

  25. Re:Trolls == Necessary Evil on Ask Slashdot: Would You Pay For Websites Without Trolls? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The only place truly free of trolls is a corporate internal social media website that is moderated and any despariging remark is subject to displinary action up to and including termination.

    Want to get fired? Simply ask about the workplace diversication and why nobody speaks Spanish except housekeeping. Instant termination. Only seen that discussion on the board once. All parties except those warning others that is a taboo subject are gone.

    The problem of no trolls is sensitive issues are never addressed. Does your place of employment include all races in engineering? Does your janitorial staff speak only one second languange? Don't ask why. It is troll bait. In a company monitored socail media it is a quick trip out the door.

    Please do not start a flame war on the taboo topic. Only discuss on topic troll free discussion boards. Thanks.

    Other taboo subjects include Is there a creator of the universe, is there genetic differences in race or gender in intellect, problem solving, politics, age, sexual preference, is all man created equal?

    Again do not discuss the taboo topics. Please. They erupt into flamewars.