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User: rasmusbr

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  1. Re:.50 WHAT? on Samsung SSD 850 EVO 32-Layer 3D V-NAND-Based SSD Tested · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I got a similar price on a 256GB drive back in June/July.

  2. Re:.50 WHAT? on Samsung SSD 850 EVO 32-Layer 3D V-NAND-Based SSD Tested · · Score: 1

    I'm more irritated by the bringing price down-part of that sentence. SSD:s are already about $0.55 per GiB and have been at that price point for several months.

    I hope the $0.55 price will turn out to be more like $.40 once production is in full swing.

  3. Re:Mostly done. Mostly. on In North Korea, Hackers Are a Handpicked, Pampered Elite · · Score: 1

    Nah. It's in your interest to stay as much off the radar of the Dear Leader and his buddies radar as possible. The second one of them perceives you as a threat you and your family is up for disappearance.

    They will go to great lengths to treat famous people well, because you can't disappear those discretely. Random nerds, not so much. One of these elite hackers will be killed the second the leaders perceive that person as a threat.

  4. Re:Probably SJW infested on Google Confirms That It's Designing Kid-Friendly Versions of Its Services · · Score: 1

    Maybe there'll be a conservative version too...

    Google Search: gay marriage
    Did you mean "may marriage"?

    Google Search: abortion
    Did you mean "adoption"?

    Google Search: the big bang
    Showing results for "Genesis 1":

  5. Re:Should I learn Imperial or Metric for max $$$? on Which Programming Language Pays the Best? Probably Python · · Score: 1

    I hear that most fields use metric, but some really high-paying ones like petroleum engineering use imperial units. Should I focus my studies on imperial units if I want to make more money?

    Whether you use metric or Imperial measurements is really a minor side issue.

    The important thing is that you use a good steel ruler and compasses. None of that plastic crap.

  6. Actually, what I think have the "suits" excited is the ability to things like identify what's in your refrigerator at any given time so they can send targeted ads to your (tracked) mobile device to buy crap you don't want while you're buying stuff you need. And to monitor your video/audio consumption habits for similar reasons (seamless ad insertion, product placements, etc., etc.).

    When anything and everything can send data to the Internet, who do you think will be receiving such data?

    That is mainly a problem if you sign up to get something for free. I don't expect that a company that makes 50 bucks net profit off of a fridge is going to risk their reputation in order to make a tiny bit more money by selling my data.

    I'm more worried that the NSA would hack into an accelerometer intended to detect vibrations of the compressor and use it as a microphone to spy on my kitchen.

  7. When I hear "Internet of Things", I think, "Twitter Enabled Refrigerator"

    It's that too, but that's not what the (more serious) suits are excited about. The suits are typically excited about increasing profits for stuff that already exists, or about new business to business inventions.

    Imagine for instance connecting everything in a factory in such a way that you can sit at a screen in a control room and detect or predict problems ahead of time. You could also have a risk function that quantifies risk. Sensors might for instance detect weak but unusual vibrations in a machine. Other sensors might detect that you only have spares in stock for one repair of that machine. The risk function has a model of how the factory works and the model shows that the machine is vital and that production will be significantly reduced if it breaks down, which means that you're looking at a fairly high economic risk. The system could then suggest potential fixes, like stocking up on more spares, or running the machine more slowly until the next scheduled maintenance.

    I think this sort of setup is already in place in many factories, but it will get more common and more advanced in the future.

  8. Re:Really? on IoT Is the Third Big Technology 'Wave' In the Last 50 Years, Says Harvard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah and there were virtual machines talking to other virtual machines and abstracting away resources long before anyone thought of the word "cloud".

    Simple shorthands like "cloud" or "internet of things" are needed because the suit-wearing people who decide where money gets allocated often prefer fuzzy thinking.

  9. Re:Really? on IoT Is the Third Big Technology 'Wave' In the Last 50 Years, Says Harvard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You don't get it. IoT is a shorthand for the idea of having lots of networked sensors and actuators. In layman's terms: setups such as self-driving cars that warn each other about road hazards.

    If this is the shape of things to come then there will obviously will be plenty of work for security experts.

  10. Re:I think you missed the point ... on Ask Slashdot: IT Career Path After 35? · · Score: 1

    We have to distinguish between the onset of mental illness and the prevalence. The onset is often between age 0-35. Look here for stats on schizophrenia http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/202/s54/s5.full Also note the comments about depression and anxiety. If you haven't had these before age 35 you're not likely to get them before retirement age.

    I'm surprised to see the suicide figures, that the onset is basically constant with age. I guess I've been getting information about the <i>relative</i> risk compared to other causes of death.

    The average age of onset of alcohol dependence is 22.5 http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jul2007/niaaa-02.htm Look at page 11 of this paper for age of first use for "other drugs" (as in not alcohol, cannabis) http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/11009/646_PP.pdf There does look to be a small peak in the 45+ bracket too. Medicine / opiate abuse, I'm guessing.

  11. Re:I think you missed the point ... on Ask Slashdot: IT Career Path After 35? · · Score: 2

    On the other hand, younger people are more likely to have a baby, develop a debilitating mental illness, develop a debilitating substance addiction, commit suicide, or die in a violent accident. All of which will drastically impact their ability to contribute professionally.

    Employers take that into account too.

  12. Re:Eliminating the bus driver is Pareto-stupid on The Driverless Future: Buses, Not Taxis · · Score: 1

    Perhaps if the bus driver makes minimum wage. But then, would you want to be driven by someone who makes minimum wage?

    Subways are easy to automate, it's been done in countless cities, but there you have an average of 100-200 passengers per driver which really does make it pretty pointless to eliminate the driver.

  13. Re:How about transfer rate and reliability? on Consortium Roadmap Shows 100TB Hard Drives Possible By 2025 · · Score: 1

    Most of Joe Six Pack's data is going straight to his various cloud accounts, which he expects to be cheap (if not free). This means that Google and Amazon need the price per unit of storage to go down, if they want to keep their customers.

    The limiting latency here is the > 50 ms latency to the servers and the limiting transfer speed is the 100 Mb/s or so offered by the ISP that Joe uses. Regular old HDD:s will do fine for the storage in that situation. The database that catalogs Joe's collection of "home movies" will probably be stored in RAM most of the time, but SSD:s do have their place here as well, of course.

    This is not exactly a niche case btw.

  14. Re:Python on Is Ruby On Rails Losing Steam? · · Score: 1

    Nah, real programmers just wire analog components together until they get the behavior that they need.

  15. Re:"Random" on Study: Space Rock Impacts Not Random · · Score: 2

    It's a bit worse than that. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you are not allowed by the laws of physics to simultaneously know all the initial conditions with arbitrarily high precision.

  16. Re:Back to barges? on Elon Musk Talks "X-Wing" Fins For Reusable Rockets, Seafaring Spaceport Drones · · Score: 1

    They're doing this because they don't want to delay their landing trials until they get cleared to fly the stage back to the launchpad.

    Basically they don't know how long it'll take for the government to issue a permit (and the government probably doesn't know either).

  17. Re:Mod parent up. on Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Starting and Running a Software Shop? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's actually pretty common for the founder to be someone who doesn't have any technical knowledge or any knowledge of managing the finances of a business. The founder could be a person who brings money and ambition to the table. (I'm not sure if this applies in this particular case, but it would not be unusual).

    The most important decisions then are usually the first 2-5 employees that they hire. The first person must be an experienced, ambitious, loyal and tireless person with the right technical knowledge who for some reason prefers to work for a tiny startup instead of a larger, more established company.

    Best of luck!

  18. Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. on Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate · · Score: 2

    Yes, there has been rapid heating over the last 150 years, as the Earth recovered from the effects of The Little Ice Age. Nothing particularly unusual or exiting about it, because the one thing that's known for sure about the Earth's climate is that it's always changing.

    The first picture on that page shows an ominous-looking and unprecedented (in the 2000-year period covered by the graph) temperature spike over the last 150 years. This coincides with a rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Even if that is just a coincidence we still have to face the fact that we are probably headed for CO2 concentrations in the 1000+ ppm range, a range where the atmosphere has not been since the Jurassic.

    We can hope that the warming will be significantly less severe than the models predict, but it would be good to have a plan B and a plan C when the stakes include all coastal cities around the world.

  19. Re:Global warming is bunk anyway. on Harvard Scientists Say It's Time To Start Thinking About Engineering the Climate · · Score: 1

    There was a 30-year period in the mid-1900's when there was significant cooling. That does not negate the fact that the trend over the last 150 years is, by human historical standards, rapid heating.

    Now, do you think that 20 years of little to no warming disproves the connection between CO2 and average temperature?

  20. Re:IQ of congress on Number of Coders In Congress To Triple (From One To Three) · · Score: 2

    I think it might be the creative aspect of it. The social climate of these conspiracy scenes seems to revolve around the idea that everyone will refrain from debunking each other's theories, even if they clash logically. So you get to invent your own take on the course of events and underlying motives of the different actors in the conspiracy and nobody gets to call you out on it.

    When I was maybe 10 or 11 I used to enjoy fantasizing about secret tunnels and stuff run by ancient secret organizations, so I can kind of relate.

    It helps to meddle with creative hobbies like visual art or music, or indeed creative writing if that's what you like.

  21. Re:I liked the original title better on The New-ish Technologies That Will Alter Your Career · · Score: 1

    Internet of Things: Yeah, but the industrial applications will be huge. Imagine a factory where each machine, or every subsystem in every machine, has a health status that updates in real time, based on sensor input (I imagine this is already in place in many factories). With a sufficiently advanced setup a lot of workers could probably be laid off.

    Parallel Programming: Already in use by most of those who benefit from it.

    3D printing: Already in use, but could have a lot of niche applications.

    Web APIs: Massively in use already.

    Embedded systems: Massively in use already. Whole classes of consumer-oriented embedded systems have come and gone, including mp3 players and feature phones.

  22. Re:Ability to respond != Ability to feel on How To Anesthetize an Octopus · · Score: 1

    This thing that you're describing is called sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a state where you are still dreaming, but you are also partially aware of your surroundings (mainly through hearing) and here is the scary part: you are strongly convinced that you are not dreaming and that you are in fact awake. This combination of dreaming while thinking that you are awake can make for some pretty strange and frightening experiences...

    Sleep paralysis is often posed as an explanation for the widespread phenomenon of people experiencing nightly visits by evil entities such as witches and (in modern times) aliens.

  23. Re:uh, no? on Alleged Satellite Photo Says Ukraine Shootdown of MH17 · · Score: 2

    How about, instead of spreading misinformation, point the readers to the actual video footage of BUK missile launches and let the viewer decide for themselves? After watching these, it's clear, that there is a very distinct vertical trail left by the booster stage, that is visible for many miles around.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    > Sure, if you know nothing about aircraft, missiles, photography and are prone to believing conspiracy theories.

    Good advice. You have to show your bias more more accurately, or everyone would see it.

    The first of those videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgToM8cbBI) shows the smoke trail dispersing and becoming difficult to make out within about half a minute. The missile is launched at 1:20 into the video and the root of the trail is half gone at 1:50. I'd say there's maybe a 90-second window (at most) for anyone with an average smartphone camera who want to gather evidence of a launch with this missile system.

    You also have to factor in that an unsuspecting civilian who is standing a couple of miles away will hear the launch about 10 seconds after it has happened and will most likely be confused by sound reflection and refraction against ground objects like houses and trees, which will make it difficult for them to locate the source of the sound quickly enough to get a good picture.

  24. Re:Meanwhile in America.... on Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph · · Score: 1

    Alright, time for some back of the envelope calculations!

    A maglev line between Chicago and Atlanta through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, would stretch about 1200 km.

    Assuming a top speed of 500 km/h and a time penalty of about 10 minutes per station along the route and a 5 minute penalty for the departure and destination stations, the ride would take 1200/500 - (5+10+10+10+10+5)/60 = 3.23 hours, which would be quite competitive with air travel, based on travel time alone.

    I'm afraid the numbers would get rather bleak once we start to talk about the financial viability of the project. Generally, you get the most societal benefit from infrastructure projects that offer attractive options for day commuting, so any tax subsidies ought to be focused on such projects and not on projects that merely offer attractive options for weekly commutes or one-off journeys.

  25. Re:Fair-weather power sources are lame... on Philae's Batteries Have Drained; Comet Lander Sleeps · · Score: 2

    I don't think ESA would ever be cleared to handle plutonium, let alone launch it into space. For starters, I don't know who would have the authority to clear ESA to use plutonium.