Slashdot Mirror


User: Smallpond

Smallpond's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,709
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,709

  1. Re:The brightest people don't go into CS anymore, on Despite Push From Tech Giants, AP CS Exam Counts Don't Budge Much In Most States · · Score: 1

    Really? I've been on the wrong end of 4 patents. On the other hand, my sister is a pathologist. Her patients never sue.

  2. Re:Interest vs capability on Despite Push From Tech Giants, AP CS Exam Counts Don't Budge Much In Most States · · Score: 2

    Yes. What a surprise that a year of marketing hype hasn't had a major effect on people's choices for what to do for the rest of their lives.

  3. Re: The cure for obesity! on Diners Tend To Eat More If Their Companions Are Overweight · · Score: 1

    why not just have a glass of water, and mail a check to the coca cola bottling company separately?

    That's called Dasani.

  4. Re:Update to Godwin's law? on Obama Administration Argues For Backdoors In Personal Electronics · · Score: 1

    If you look at the college student he just posted about doing something, then the FBI convinced him to actually do it, then he was arrested. He was stupid, but its not clear he ever would have done anything without encouragement. He had no ties to terrorist groups, but the FBI can still show off how they "caught a terrorist" and you fell for it.

  5. Re:Survival on Energy Utilities Trying To Stifle Growth of Solar Power · · Score: 1

    The energy density of gasoline is 100 X better than current batteries, so why even bring this up? The interesting number is cost of energy storage, Pumped hydro is cheaper than flywheels or batteries (and has terrible energy density) but is the best current choice for storing lots of energy.

  6. Re:Survival on Energy Utilities Trying To Stifle Growth of Solar Power · · Score: 1

    Why batteries? Spin up a buried flywheel in a vacuum. Motor/generators for converting between mechanical and electrical energy can be close to 90% efficient.

  7. BIOS on Outlining Thin Linux · · Score: 1

    One thing we need to do is pry open the BIOS. Why should we need a VGA and keyboard or serial port to configure the hardware? Why is initializing the memory interface a secret? We can't improve servers if the hardware is still tied to the original IBM PC.

  8. Re:kill -1 on Fork of Systemd Leads To Lightweight Uselessd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is OS X open? no. Is it put together in many different ways from parts from many different developers? no. Do we care whether it becomes a tightly integrated ball of proprietary software? no. So do you understand the issue? no.

  9. Re:COBOL on Unpopular Programming Languages That Are Still Lucrative · · Score: 1

    Every language is influenced by Lisp.

  10. Re:So you're cheating on Surprise! More Than Twice As Much Mercury In Environment As Thought · · Score: 2

    I blame all that mercurochrome my mom put on my cuts when I was little.

  11. Re:mercury in CFLs is a net good on Surprise! More Than Twice As Much Mercury In Environment As Thought · · Score: 2

    Best not to assume that LEDs are better:

    http://www.gizmag.com/led-bulb...

  12. Re:Tax breaks for Unions too? on Protesters Blockade Microsoft's Seattle Headquarters Over Tax Breaks · · Score: 1

    While we're at it let's eliminate the deduction for mortgage payments. Why are we preferring homeowners over renters? Homeowners tend to be the ones with kids who use more resources. That makes as much sense as disallowing payments required to hold a job.

  13. Re:No thanks on Stallman Does Slides -- and Brevity -- For TEDx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have you noticed that Stallman only has power to the extent that people agree with him? That he has no means of enforcing anything other than by making a convincing argument? His highway has less tolls than any alternative.

  14. Re:Stevenson estate on Deadmau5 Accuses Disney of Pirating His Music · · Score: 1

    ... or the Grimm brothers, or Hans Christian Andersen. In fact is Disney any different than Deadmau5? Most of what they made it big on was other people's work.

  15. Re:citizens united protects cyborgs on Should Cyborgs Have the Same Privacy Rights As Humans? · · Score: 1

    Yes, there are no gray areas at all. If it's implanted inside you then its part of you, and if its separate then its not. Oh, wait. A diabetes monitor has an implanted sensor and an external battery pack, so which is it? Can I search the data on it to find out where you've been or what you've been doing or not? Does it matter whether its microchip is inside or outside?

  16. Re:metric tons, thanks for clarifying on Giant Dinosaur Unearthed In Argentina · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's tiny compared to the library of congress.

  17. Re: But is it reaslistic? on Islamic State "Laptop of Doom" Hints At Plots Including Bubonic Plague · · Score: 4, Funny

    The well-known terrorist organization Aqua Teen Hunger Force shut down the city of Boston in 2007 with just some boards with blinky lights.

  18. Re:My opinion on the matter. on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 1

    That's really cool, but why are you running the new browser instead of Mosaic?

  19. Re:My opinion on the matter. on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What's broken exactly?

    Software has bugs and occationally they crash. I'm not an expert GNU/Linux system administrator by any means, and I've lost count of the amount of times when I simply wanted to just find a way to make the init system restart a service automatically when it crashes. This is trivial with Systemd, you just set Restart=on-failure in the service file and it's done. No need to write error-prone shell scripts or fiddle with run levels. It just works and it's well documented.

    Straight out of Windows. Write buggy software. It's ok if it crashes once in a while because we can just restart it.

    Also straight out of Windows. Make everything into one big integrated binary instead of something that you can see into or hack on.

  20. Re:My opinion on the matter. on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Embedded systems are exactly the ones that don't want a bloated init system that requires dbus for communication.

  21. Re:snydeq = InfoWorld on Choose Your Side On the Linux Divide · · Score: 2

    I felt it was enough a problem to submit a bug report to the CentOS people: https://bugs.centos.org/view.p... -- the problem I see is that the documentation for systemd and the observed results are different. Further, there are no instructions on how to take a System V init and convert it cleanly to systemd. I don't have a Red Hat Enterprise support license, so I couldn't report the issue to Red Hat. One of the problem of using an alternate distribution.

    To this developer's eye, the systemd documentation is not ready for prime time. Note that this bug was reported against 6.5, not 7. I'll be looking at 7 when I get a round tuit.

    So why is your bug filed against upstart?

  22. Re:Men in education and healthcare? on ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science · · Score: 1

    2013 Mean salaries

    • Primary school teacher $54,740
    • Computer programmer $92,820
    • Doctor, internal medicine $188,440
    • RN $68,910

    There's also a gap in garbage collectors. Nobody is concerned about those jobs because they are low-end jobs.

  23. Re:What about nursing?? on ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science · · Score: 0

    Because women who want go into medicine end up nurses instead of doctors. This is the result of stereotypes, peer pressure and a largely male establishment.

  24. Re:The problem, as always... on ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can't even solve the problem of Unicode on /.

  25. Re:From the wikipedia on Scientists Baffled By Unknown Source of Ozone-Depleting Chemical · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Industry is much better than individuals at handling chemicals safely.