Slashdot Mirror


User: rah1420

rah1420's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
516
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 516

  1. Re:One thing for sure on Ask Slashdot: What Would Your 'I've Got To Disappear' Plan Look Like? · · Score: 1

    Stowaway on a train

    Stowing a way on a train might be a really bad idea, FWIW.

  2. Re:One thing for sure on Ask Slashdot: What Would Your 'I've Got To Disappear' Plan Look Like? · · Score: 1

    You can live on meat. Our paleo ancestors all did. Vegetables are a frippery.

  3. Re:So from here on out ... on Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Inadvertent my ass. CJ Roberts is playing the long game. He's playing chess and everyone else is playing checkers, to bastardize a quote from Erick Erickson. This is exactly what he wanted; he keeps the Supremes out of the political arena and galvanizes people to do what they should've done in the first place; repeal the freaking thing. Don't make the Court do the dirty work.

  4. Re:Spaceba! on Swiss To Build Orbital Cleaning Satellite · · Score: 4, Funny

    I get it. It's like an orbital Wall*E.

  5. There's Wi-Fi, and there's wi-fi on Ask Slashdot: Best Wi-Fi Solution For a Hotel? · · Score: 1

    You could do like the timeshare did where we recently stayed at in Ocean City, MD. They boasted free wi-fi. That said, the access point was in the office and was accessible only in the office, on a small bistro-style table (and only when the office was open) or in the indoor pool next door.

    Epic fail.

  6. Re:Spirit did well on Final Attempts To Contact Mars Spirit Rover Fail · · Score: 1

    If I showed this to my daughter, she would begin bawling even though she hates science and anything to do with it.

  7. Re:Heavy users? on Verizon Customers: Say So Long To Unlimited Data · · Score: 2

    >>He's been kicked out of buffets numerous times for basically eating "too much food"

    You been here FOUR HOUR. Son-of-a-bitch!

  8. Re:Wish they made it cheap on Researchers Develop Super Batteries From Aerogel · · Score: 1

    >I see that shit alot

    That imagery - a shit alot - is actually pretty funny.

  9. Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome on George W. Bush Live From Facebook · · Score: 1

    Your anecdote regarding this other dad's animus against Obama's refusal to sign Eagle Scout congratulatory letters; I'm curious why you paint all right wingers with this brush of ignorance. I am an unabashed believer in conservative values, but I'm also a thinking individual who would have no problem debunking the Eagle Scout thing. People like that give the rest of us a bad name. Frankly, if he had made a similar snarky remark about me I guess I would've been relieved that his politics were different from mine; my politics are born of considered rational thought and his are born of dogma. I will be happy to debate but I won't argue; I can't afford the time.

  10. Re:we have the same policy at work on When Your Company Remote-Wipes Your Personal Phone · · Score: 1

    The owner of this smartphone doesn't find it objectionable.

    I would much rather carry around a single smartphone than two. I have my apps in iTunes, my pictures in my local Picasa installation, my music in MediaMonkey. A restore is only a minor inconvenience.

    It takes ten blown attempts at the unlock code to wipe it. And don't think my wife hasn't tried, when she couldn't key it one night and absolutely HAD to use my phone for a phone call. It shut down after five attempts and wouldn't allow any more tries for 10 minutes. So you have to be a real dingleberry to blow the password ten times.

    The notice was clearly spelled out in the installation documentation and I had to acknowledge the risk several times before downloading the certs.

    My only concern at this point is REMOVING the security, but I'm sure I'll be able to discover how to do that if ever I should want to or need to.

  11. Re:Let us be honest on Factory To Make Biodiesel From Chicken Fat · · Score: 1

    "Vegetables is what food eats."

  12. Re:That's disgusting on Factory To Make Biodiesel From Chicken Fat · · Score: 1

    There's a big difference between "biodiesel" and "waste vegetable oil" systems. Biodiesel is probably not what your TDI is rated for; rather they do not want you running WVO in it.

    I have a 1996 Jetta TDI with a Greasecar conversion kit in it, and true 'nuff it does smell like french fries when going down the street running on veggie. However, another poster (an AC) was talking about running it on Chinese restaurant oil. To him/her I say "Nay!" Do not use that stuff. Use the oils from an Italian pizzeria. The oil that comes from there is barely used before being discarded.

    With the proper filtration, preferably a centrifuge, you can get the WVO practically particulate free. However, do not try this on a vehicle under warranty; I take no responsibility. I just know that mine runs fine on WVO.

  13. Re:Wow, no style. on New Video of Apple's Enormous iDataCenter · · Score: 1

    Most likely a combination of zoning and engineering.

    Floors above the 1st floor mean greater engineering for load bearing, etc. from my layman's perspective. Cheaper to just pour a slab, especially if you have the real estate for it.

  14. Re:only if you know you're in-route to a home-run. on Rounding the Bases Faster, With Math · · Score: 1

    >why are adults still playing this kiddie game?

    Because there's apparently money to be made. More to the point, because there are people who pay to WATCH them play this kiddie game.

  15. Re:Also as a practical matter on British Teen Jailed Over Encryption Password · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe that compelling disclosing a password to your computer might be a Fourth Amendment issue, not a Fifth ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...")

    The Fifth isn't going to help.

    In your strawman example, you'll be jailed for contempt if you are under subpoena to provide the color of the car, since you were only observing it as it sped away.

    I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. However, I can read the Constitution.

  16. Re:I don't feel sorry, but... on Canadian Spammer Fined Over $1 Billion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Please tell me how his physical appearance has anything to do with what he's being assessed as a fine.

    And you might amend that description to "bald, goateed, tattooed, BROKE, unrepentant and defiant." Seems to me that if you brag about your crime, threaten BK so that nobody can 'come after you' etc. etc. that perhaps the judge setting the award might take that into consideration when pronouncing sentence, dontcha think?

  17. Re:indoctrination on Big Brother In the School Cafeteria? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The conditioning happens earlier than that, I'm afraid.

    You need to put a television show on aimed at preschoolers. Make it have a fuzzy stuffed bear who helps kids with things they don't know how to do themselves. Make it a "special assignment" for this bear to help the kids.

    The kids are told to do X or Y (make their bed, change the lining in their rabbit cage) by themselves with no parent guidance. That's key number 1.

    So how does this external agent, this "stuffed bear" change agent, know how to visit the children to help them? How else? A flying ladybug, that conceals a camera in it. The camera flies in the neighborhood, sees the conundrum of the child, deploys the camera and takes some footage. It then flies to a line-of-sight position, and sends the signal to an orbiting satellite, from where it's beamed to the special agent bear's headquarters. His employer then takes him off of whatever he's doing to go help the child with what they want to accomplish. After all, "it's all part of the plan" (we'll make that a tagline of the show, too.)

    Farfetched? No, it's going on right now, unfortunately.

  18. Re:Expensive on School Swaps Math Textbooks For iPads · · Score: 1

    >

    This.

    I make fun of people who carry around their life in their PDAs while I use paper and pencil. I take them to the parking lot, put my "PAA" (Personal Analog Assistant) under one wheel and dare them to put their PDA under another one as I put the car into drive and step on the gas.

    At least I did until Motorola retired the ST7868 and my daughter gave me her cast-off iPhone. I then got assimilated. Someone shoot me.

  19. Re:The Red Button on Ideas For a Great Control Room? · · Score: 1

    We more or less had one of these.

    It was third shift at Purolator Courier's data center. We'd just finished the night's batch run, we were running the backups, CICS was getting ready to come back up.

    We had had some squirrelly underfloor sensors all day, because the cleaning people had been in to vacuum under the floor which always stirs up dust and sets them off. It would kick the trouble alarm rather infrequently through the overnight. We'd yawn, wake up, go over to the annunciator panel, hit "Reset" and that would be it.

    A gung ho tape jockey had come in to relieve the shift supervisor, who had retired to the shift supervisor's office for a nap after a hard night of pressing the "Enter" key. GHTJ sits bolt upright at the next sounding of the alarm and goes over to the annunciator panel, opens it, and apparently not realizing it's a trouble alarm figures he'd save the night's work by hitting the Halon Dump Abort switch so that we wouldn't have to evacuate the data center - halon being not very breathable, you see. However, the annunciator cover was open and his head was in the innards, and his aim was a bit off...

    Yup.

    Right for the Emergency Power Cutoff.

    BAM! The breakers all popped, lights went off, fans sighed to a halt here in the operations room. The one where the tape drives and consoles and printers were. We knew with a sinking feeling that the same thing was happening on the floor above us, where the CPUs and DASD (Direct Access Storage Device, "Disks" to those of you from Rio Linda) were now sighing to a halt, their circuit breakers tripped and un-resettable except by an IBM Customer Engineer.

    In the deafening silence, the phone rang. It was the Indianapolis air hub, which all of a sudden had sudden blank screens as all its planes came in for sorting the night's volume of packages...

    Whoops.

    The next night there was a plexiglass cover over the Emergency Power Cutoff switch. The Gung Ho Tape Jockey I think went back to hanging tapes. I don't remember.

  20. Translation: on Microsoft Says No To Paying Bug Bounties · · Score: 4, Funny

    "we don't think paying a per-vuln bounty is the best way."

    -- er

    "We can't afford the hit to our bottom line if we were to start paying people to find the bugs in our software."

  21. Re:Charging on Micro Plane That Perches On Power Lines · · Score: 5, Funny

    This brings back memories of when I was a kid. I and my friend had a 'fort' which was coincidentally under one of those "high tension" (what, about 50KV?) power lines.

    We had the bright idea that rather than run an extension cord out from his house, we could just shoot an arrow that had a conductor attached to it over the lowest of those power lines, then use a transformer to step it down to the right voltage, and Bob's your uncle; instant television in the old fort.

    Fortunately, we were much more interested in the architecture than the elctrical provisioning of said fort and quickly realized how in over our heads we'd be to try something like that.

  22. Re:Isn't fanning the blades the problem? on In Oregon, Wind Power Surges Disrupting Grid · · Score: 3, Informative

    As another poster in this article noted the term is "feather" the blades, not "fan" the blades.

  23. Re:Extreme on New Material Can Store Vast Amounts of Energy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First thing I thought of was Heinlein's Shipstone. That too would blow up if anyone tried to disassemble it, ensuring the Shipstone Corporation a virtual monopoly on the assembly process, without the tedium of a patent.

  24. Re:Plagiarism? or Ghost writing? Outsourcing? on Plagiarism Inc. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was going to mod this but decided instead to comment. I faced a similar situation in my freshman year in college. My English professor's only comment for my final paper was "This paper gets an 'A' if you answer my verbal question correctly, and an 'F' if you do not." Needless to say, I did answer the question correctly and in the process learned a valuable lesson about how I should attribute sources more completely in my subsequent papers. (Thanks, Mrs. G!)

  25. Re:Google Captcha processor here I come!!!! on Google Adds OCR To PDF and Images · · Score: 1

    A super computing grid?

    Oolcay itay.