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User: QuantumFlux

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Comments · 63

  1. Re:but, back to root cause on Malcolm Gladwell On Culture and Airplane Crashes · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's actually the other way around: autoland is typically only used in extremely low visibility (typically bad weather) situations. In most cases, a pilot can land a plane more accurately and smoothly as the human, visually, can account for far more external variables than the autopilot computer.

    Just not in this case, apparently...

  2. Re:Example: Rotax 912 on FAA Wants All Aircraft Flying On Unleaded Fuel By 2018 · · Score: 1

    Actually, the Rotax 912/914 series are approved to run on up to 10% ethanol. Probably could run them higher, but that's the official number. And in fact, even though they can run on 100LL, the manufacturer advises against it due to issues with plug fowling, etc.

  3. Will you try something neither evil nor douche-y? on Ask Nathan Myhrvold What You Will, Live Q&A April 3 · · Score: 1

    As a patent troll, you are both evil and a douche. As a "molecular gastronomist," you're just a douche. Do you have any plans to put your efforts toward something neither douche-y nor evil? Bill Gates has, isn't it your turn?

  4. Re:Another tough job on The Worst Job At Google: a Year of Watching Terrible Things On the Internet · · Score: 1

    They really don't have to watch all day -- a couple of hours probably provides an entire week's worth of material!

  5. Copper limited bandwidth on Why We Don't Need Gigabit Networks (Yet) · · Score: 1

    When I was working on large farms of big iron (SGI, Sun, IBM systems) we regularly found that GigE over copper couldn't do much better than 400-500 Mbit/s. These were enterprise-class NICs, not cheap-o home gear. Switching to fiber got us much much closer to theoretical max.

    When is fiber going to finally be available/affordable for the home market? I think that will make the biggest difference...

  6. Re:Nope on .NET Gadgeteer — Microsoft's Arduino Killer? · · Score: 1

    I think this could potentially do well in schools, where Microsoft may offer good deals on large purchases. Kids don't care about the whole MS vs FOSS debate -- well, maybe then nerdy kids but they're probably doing their own Arduino development anyway. For the rest, it's a good intro to programming/developing beyond the standard web/Flash-based crap that kids learn these days.

  7. Re:Apple proves the proposition false ... on Are Bad Economic Times Good for Free Software? · · Score: 1

    That popularity may be due to Apple's higher (perceived) build quality. If you're going to sink money into a computer or any other large purchase, would you rather buy something you think will last a few years or something cheap, built with cheap parts, that will probably break quickly and cause other headaches?

    I think if/when the economy gets REALLY bad, the balance will tilt toward the cheaper end, but for now, people want the most bang for their decreasingly available buck...

  8. Re:Is it feasible to bounce the beam off satelites on Boeing's Enormous Navy Laser Cannon · · Score: 1

    Is this serious or a subtle Real Genius joke?

  9. Re:MS hate on Microsoft's SkyDrive Drops Silverlight · · Score: 2

    And by the way, IT changes fast in general, no developer can honestly expect to code in the same language from college to retirement.

    You've obviously never worked in the scientific community -- where Fortran 77 is still going strong, some three+ decades later.

  10. Explains LaTeX on Hard-to-Read Fonts Improve Learning · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This totally explains why academics love the shit text that comes out of LaTeX (not the layout; it's fine -- I'm talking about that awful default font).

  11. Re:i hate big brother but... on Big Brother In the School Cafeteria? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't these children know their 7-digit home phone numbers?

    Nope, they just scroll to "Mom" in the Contact List of their cell phones. These *are* 5 year olds; they might not be able to tie their shoes yet but they're not savages!

  12. Re:Support on Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses · · Score: 1

    Things like releasing a $3000 workstation then 3 years later releasing an OS update that doesn't support it don't fly well in enterprise environments.

    Almost every business I've worked for keeps workstations around only as long as their warranties before they're surplussed. Given that AppleCare is 3 years, it might not make such a difference.

  13. GCD also replaces most synchronization / locking on Apple's Grand Central Dispatch Ported To FreeBSD · · Score: 1

    The other often-overlooked advantage of GCD is that submitting work to a queue is thread-safe, queues themselves are lightweight, and queues can be made internally-serial but parallel to all other queues. Apple's documentation has a lot of good examples of how to use this structure to eliminate almost all locking code (which is usually pretty heavyweight). If you need to serialize access to a resource, just create a serial queue and any other queue can send tasks to it without worrying about any synchronization.

    As someone who's struggled with performance from trying to determine how fine-grained to make locks, this seems like an awesome approach.

  14. Re:Greed is Good on College Threatens Students Over Email Addresses · · Score: 1

    He's talking about Christopher Kimball, not Alton Brown...

  15. Slashdot Hypocrisy on CSIRO Settles With Tech Giants Over WiFi Patent Spat · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If this were a private, for-profit company that was fighting for IP rights, Slashdotters would be up in arms defending those wanting to use the tech with arguments of Free-as-in-Speech, good-of-humanity, etc. But when it's a non-profit research organization doing exactly the same thing, Slashdotters rush to defend them.

    Are the ideals here really about freedom and liberty or just thinly-veiled anti-corporatism?

  16. People will still look for the errors on Fraud Threat Halts Knuth's Hexadecimal-Dollar Checks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If no one is cashing the cheques anyway, why bother with a cheque? Knuth could just create signed certificates and geeks will still scramble to get them. The guy is famous enough now that there's no need for any monetary incentive...

  17. Some application-specific FireWire-USB possible on Users Rage Over Missing FireWire On New MacBooks · · Score: 2, Informative

    You know, it's obvious there's no magic converter to go from USB to Firewire in all possible configurations, but it doesn't mean you couldn't make application-specific dongles.

    Potential cases:

    - you could have a small microcontroller convert SBP-2 (the Firewire disk protocol) to USB Mass Storage class and vice versa

    - you could have a small microcontroller read a DV stream and pump out a UVC (USB Video Class) stream

    Seems like there's suddenly a market for such things that didn't exist before; and a shitton of potential money to be made...

  18. Support the brewing industry too on Germany Fired Up Over Clean Coal · · Score: 1

    Gee, all that "waste" CO2 could go to carbonate all that wonderful German beer.

    And while they're at it, the nitrogen removed from the air could be shipped to Ireland for use in Guinness!

  19. State Secrets on Brain Will Be Battlefield of the Future, Warns US · · Score: 1

    Oh man, CIA is gonna be so pissed that DIA is givin' away all their mind-control secrets!

  20. But I can't wait that long! on Netflix Woes Mean a Gap In Shipments · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've been using Netflix lately to watch TV series. Are they implying now that I'll have to wait AN ENTIRE WEEK for the next episode? That's just cruel and inhumane!

  21. Re:Piling on... on Firefox's Effect On Other Browsers · · Score: 1

    Mind you having said that I'd prefer the directories were called "/settings" and ~/.settings" but I suppose 50 years of *NIX cruft precludes this !

    On the *NIX operating system I use, it uses ~/Library/Preferences/, but it's basically the same idea. 50 years of cruft didn't seem to slow them up at all...

  22. Re:How much do you think the US paid for this? on Sweden's Snoop Law Targets Russia · · Score: 1

    What would be an example of our (American, that is) "legitimate concerns" that wouldn't also be legitimate concerns of the free and open society of Sweden?

    Seems like something that should genuinely bother us ought to be bother them as well.

  23. Bender on Fastest-Ever Flashgun Captures Image of Light Wave · · Score: 1

    Ah, sweet photons.... I don't know if you're waves or particles, but you sure do go down smooth.

  24. Re:Really short periods on Trio of Super-Earths Discovered · · Score: 1

    Also, I wonder if one were on one of these planetary speedsters, would you be able to tell you were whizzing around your star so fast. When each season only lasts a day or two, I think you probably would!
  25. Women seem to fear failure more... on Do Women Write Better Code? · · Score: 1

    Where I work there seems to be a pretty good mix of male and female software engineers, and overall the finished code produced by both is pretty much the same quality.

    What I have noticed though is that female engineers seem much more likely to balk when asked to do something with which they are not familiar, whereas men will attempt almost anything asked even if it ends in total disaster.

    So if that observation is true, it would make women programmers -seem- to be better coders, if they're just avoiding the projects that would set them up for failure...