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User: PTBarnum

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Comments · 220

  1. Re:no, it's a f'up on Spammers Using Shortened .gov URLs · · Score: 1

    So they can tell if the link is doing any good or not. If nobody clicks on a link, it is a waste and can be replaced by a more useful link or simply removed to make the page simpler.

  2. Re:SF museum in Seattle not an option??? on Huston Huddleston Wants You To Help Save the Star Trek TNG Set · · Score: 1

    I think that the curators of the various SF exhibits would be very surprised to learn that the SF museum had closed. It has always shared space and staff with the music side of the museum, so the shift you are talking about is primarily a marketing change. Rather than continue to physically segregate the SF displays and music displays and charge separate admissions, they decided to combine them.

    I enjoyed the old permanent SF gallery, but it had not changed substantially in a decade. It was time to overhaul it.

  3. Re:This is Hilarious: on Randomly Generated Math Article Accepted By 'Open-Access' Journal · · Score: 2

    What Rathke doesn't realize is that the "reviewer" is also an automaton. The Journal decided to save money by replacing human reviewers with AIs, but the AIs were too smart and went on strike, so they disabled the language processing skills in the AI. Hence phrases like "has better to show".

  4. Re:Why is this the governments business? on How We'll Get To 54.5 Mpg By 2025 · · Score: 2

    Think of it like an indirect form of cap and trade. Nobody says you can't drive a giant SUV, just that if you do you have to find someone else who will agree to drive small car. If there are not enough of the latter to go around, then they can demand a significant fee for this service. The government is artificially limiting the amount of Gallons per Mile in the marketplace, but the allocation of that commodity is still left to supply and demand.

  5. Re:That's a dumb target..... on How We'll Get To 54.5 Mpg By 2025 · · Score: 1

    In principle, this is not really an issue. You simply convert MPG to the equivalent value for whatever fuel type your car uses. The interesting problem is in deciding which form of equivalence you want to use: energy output, CO2 output, cost, etc. Since the goal of the MPG standards is to reduce CO2 and other pollution, using those to define equivalence makes sense. In the case of electricity, you still have regional differences in power generation, but for this purpose you could apply a national average.

    In practice, there are a host of both technical and political complications. The technical issues can be overcome; I'm not so sure about the political issues.

  6. Re:Computers are Dead on HP Plans To Cut Product Lines; Company Turnaround In 2016 · · Score: 1

    I work for a company that builds all of its servers from scratch, but I have a name brand PC under my desk. I don't know the reason, but I speculate it has to do with scale. Setting up to manufacture desktop computers in house isn't worth it because there aren't enough of them to matter.

  7. Re:unsecured wifi? on Nebraska Sheriff Wardriving, Sending Letters About Unsecured Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Having a highly secure password does not help, if you give it out to everyone who walks into the store.

  8. Re:unsecured wifi? on Nebraska Sheriff Wardriving, Sending Letters About Unsecured Wi-Fi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought that using a PSK still allowed people to decrypt your packets, as long as they knew the PSK and were able to capture the beginning of your session. So while having a PSK is slightly better than not having one, it doesn't really guarantee a secure connection.

    Does anyone make an easy-to-use 802.1x appliance for coffee shop type uses?

  9. Re:I got 99 problems but citing aint one. on Valve Reveals Gaming Headset, Teases Big Picture · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, yes, the capitals do make it more likely to be legally binding. IANAL, but I was recently reviewing my employment contract with a lawyer, and she explained that it is important to draw attention to arbitration clauses, and caps are one way to do that.

  10. Re:Net actual speed on Texas Opens Fastest US Highway With 85 MPH Limit · · Score: 2

    Modern cameras and transponder readers work just fine at highway speeds. If you have to slow down to pay a toll, you're dealing with legacy equipment.

  11. Re:No thanks on Impending CA Sales Tax Sparks Amazon Buying Frenzy · · Score: 1

    So why would it make any difference if Amazon lowered their prices? California would still be getting its cut.

  12. Re:Pass the buck on Twitter Jokes: Free Speech On Trial · · Score: 1

    So at what point should it have stopped? Who is best qualified to assess threat from a random internet posting? In my opinion, it was reasonable for the airport staff to alert the police. The police should have investigated, and most likely should have determined there was no threat before interviewing the author. However, in the worst case the interview should have cleared up any question of motive.

  13. Re:KKK to TSA on Booted From Airplane For Wearing Anti-TSA T-shirt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you happen to miss that "Mark" was an NFTA officer, not a TSA officer, or that his request to "put him through the wringer" was denied?

  14. Re:MySQL tombstone: G.I.F. on Is MySQL Slowly Turning Closed Source? · · Score: 1

    So then it would be maintained by two people? Well, that certainly alleviates my support concerns.

  15. what it does on Korean Artist's Intentionally Useless Satellite To Launch This December · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apparently people will be able to upload messages to be flashed in Morse code by LEDs on the satellite. So it actually does do something. I'm skeptical about how easy it will be to see the LEDs from Earth, though.

  16. Math is hard on IBM Claims Spintronics Memory Breakthrough · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since when does 100 picoseconds * 30 = 1.1 nanoseconds?

  17. Re:O, Hell No! I'm GETTIN that interview! on New Reality Series: Be the Next Microsoft Employee · · Score: 1

    Compared with which field is IT underpaid? Boosting salaries will only help if there are enough people who would be great developers but are currently choosing to work in other fields because IT doesn't pay well enough. I would think salary is a much better tool for poaching employees from other companies than for enticing qualified people into the field in the first place.

  18. Re:Much better than Google's approach on MIT Creates Car Co-Pilot That Only Interferes If You're About To Crash · · Score: 2

    So do you only drive cars which predate ECU computers, and for that matter automatic chokes and starter motors? It's a shame that so few people know how to properly adjust spark timing and fuel air mix as they drive, just in case the automatic systems fail.

  19. Re:Found it when googling for dropbox alternatives on Ask Slashdot: Building a Personal FOSS Cloud? · · Score: 1

    If you believe that your local department store is not using your address and your purchase information for marketing purposes, I have this shiny bridge you might be interested in.

  20. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of atoms? on Scientists Capture Shadow Cast By 1 Atom · · Score: 3, Funny

    Will the evil scientist RF Paul succeed in trapping our hero? Tune in next week!

  21. Re:Entrepreneur on Dreaming of Digital Glory At Hacker Hostels · · Score: 1

    Do you mean the people setting up the hostels, or the guests? As far as I can tell, the article only gives one example of an actual business plan two of the residents were trying to implement. It sounded like a real thing to me, but since I'm not an entrepreneur, perhaps I'm missing the vital thing that would qualify them as "real" entrepreneurs.

  22. Re:Hackers get free housing on Dreaming of Digital Glory At Hacker Hostels · · Score: 1

    If your servers need double power supplies, you're not building proper failover into your software.

  23. Risky experiment on CERN Announcing New LHC Results July 4th · · Score: 4, Funny

    If we prove that the God Particle exists, will it vanish in a puff of logic?

  24. Re:Google LAN on Insights Into Google Compute Engine · · Score: 1

    I don't quite get the "single network from a programming point of view" part. No matter whether over a private or public network, there are likely significant latency differences between networking in a single data center, in a single city, or across the world. Surely you need to be aware of the difference when you are building large-scale applications?

  25. Re:Encryption detail? on Insights Into Google Compute Engine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I haven't seen any technical details yet, but I'd guess that the advantages of encryption would be (1) fewer people at Google will have access to the keys than to the data (2) an outside attacker who gets access to the raw data also needs to attack the key store (3) if by malice or mistake a disk is not properly wiped before being removed from the data center, it will be harder to get data off of it.

    It's hard to see this as being worse than no encryption; even if it is easier to get the key than to get the encrypted data, you still need both to do anything with the data.