Slashdot Mirror


User: Al+Al+Cool+J

Al+Al+Cool+J's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
290
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 290

  1. Re:Apparently on SCO vs. IBM Trial Back On Again · · Score: 1

    A sufficiently massive projectile of sufficient velocity will result in a huge amount of momentum that needs to be conserved. You will either need
    1) a very very massive ship,
    2) powerful engines,
    3) to shoot an identical projectile in the opposite direction, or
    4) to live with the fact that you will propel yourself into a much higher orbit, or quite possibly out of orbit

    Nuking has its advantages.

  2. Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here on Thanks to DRM, Some Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week · · Score: 1

    I found it worked well enough even with hundreds of concurrent visitors. Even if some connections did fail, it's still better than doing nothing and have all connections to the old IPs fail.

  3. Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here on Thanks to DRM, Some Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week · · Score: 1

    A simple trick I've often used is to port forward traffic from the old IPs to the new. For an an emergency physical move once, I just left behind a linux laptop and it port-forwarded the traffic for multiple web/email/DNS servers until the DNS caught up. Worked fine.

  4. Re:No legitimate use on Cellphones Get Government Chips For Disaster Alert · · Score: 1

    Disease, as in the movie Outbreak.

    Widespread acts of terrorism (we could well have seen such a system used on 9/11).

  5. Re:A sense of scale on Forget Space Travel, It's Just a Dream · · Score: 1

    The reason that mankind is unlikely to colonize space is that most alien technological civilizations in the galaxy will have already beaten us to it. People who talk about the scale of distance in interstellar travel often don't appreciate the scales of time that existing civilizations would have had to work with. Even at just 1% the speed of light, you can colonize the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years. That's nothing when you consider that another civilization could easily be up to a half-billion years older than us.

  6. loophole on Should Smartphones Be Allowed In Court? · · Score: 1

    If smartphones were prohibited in court, then wouldn't that make it harder to convict somebody of stealing smartphones, due to the lack of evidence the prosecution could present?

  7. Re:I've cracked it! on FBI Wants You To Solve Encrypted Notes From Murder · · Score: 4, Funny

    So chances are we'll never be able understand it. Shaka, when the walls fell.

  8. Re:Why's this on Slashdot? on Girl Seeks Help On Facebook During Assault · · Score: 1

    Gun laws simply disarm honest people. That is it. there is no other use.

    So, basically you're saying that people are better off being shot accidentally or by a first-time offender, than by a career criminal.

  9. Re:Sounds rather slanted on Ranking Soccer Players By Following the Bouncing Ball · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Spain *are* a much better team than Switzerland and this system would show that. Have them play a thousand times, and Spain would win the vast majority. So I'm not sure I see your point.

    You do make a good point about Italy. However I'd be interested to see what the system actually says about Italy before condemning it.

  10. Too much work on Digitally Filtering Out the Drone of the World Cup · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When the World Cup started, I thought of playing around with notch filters to remove the noise, but the whole thing just reeked of effort. The human brain is actually pretty good at filtering out noise if you give it a chance. Just watch the games and don't worry about the vuvuzelas and before long you won't even notice them. I don't. It's a lot like what happens when you live next to a highway.

  11. So what? on New York Times Bans Use of Word "Tweet" · · Score: 1

    There is no story here. This is commonplace. Most organisations that deal in the written word maintain a style guide of prefered spellings, punctuation rules, and choices of words. This is business as usual.

  12. Re:5G Phone on North Korea Develops Anti-Aging "Super Drink" · · Score: 1

    It's not called coal - it's iDiamonds

  13. Re:Physician, not physicist on Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel? · · Score: 1

    If the method of space travel being discussed doesn't result in high-energy collisions with hydrogen atoms in the first place, as is the case with a Star Trek like warp field (aka an Alcubierre drive), then he clearly isn't qualified. Every write-up I've seen on this guy's analysis, including TFA, is appended by notes explaining various things this guy omitted or didn't think of.

    Frankly, whenever somebody claims to have proven that something is impossible, usually the only thing they have proven is that they are unimaginative dolt.

  14. Physician, not physicist on Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel? · · Score: 2, Funny

    What does this guy know about space travel? He's a prof at a medical school, FFS. This is rocket science, not brain surgery!

  15. Apples and oranges on Amazon Surrenders To Macmillan On eBook Pricing · · Score: 1

    By and large, people who make music are reasonably good at figuring out how to make decent music. They practise, they play for friends, they perform in small venues, they attract a following.

    On the other hand, people who decide to write a book, often have no fucking clue how to write. Maybe they have a good idea, or an interesting story, or a unique perspective on certain events. But write a coherent well-structured book? Ha!

    And the problem is, people think they can write. Let them all self-publish and many aren't going to believe they need professional help. Many musicians at least know they can benefit from a professional sound engineer, but how many first-time writers hire their own freelance editor?

    Take book publishers out of the picture, and most auto-biographies would be unreadable. Large amounts of non-fiction would be unreadable, as would a surprising number of novels. Books that requires illustrations, would be filled with really crappy illustrations. Or none.

    You think text books are hard to follow now? Leave academics to their own devices and see what you get.

    Book publishers bring a lot more to the party than their music industry equivalents. They rewrite and restructure, fact-check, illustrate, do graphic design, obtain clearance for the use of quotations and excerpts, and translate to foreign languages.

    I spent ten years writing custom software for book publishers, and I know that their's is one of the most complex and challenging businesses going. I'm not saying I agree with Macmillan's e-book pricing. But comparing them to the RIAA is ridiculous.

  16. Re:An Alternative on Will Your Super Bowl Party Anger the Copyright Gods? · · Score: 1

    I get the feeling you really don't understand fandom.

    People have natural tribal impulses, not to mention competitiveness. Belonging to a fan culture helps meet those primal needs. It doesn't matter if you are a fan of a sports team, a sci-fi show, a music act, or a political party. It's enjoyable to gather with fellow fans, and share a sense of pride, accomplishment, and belonging. Fans become emotionally invested, and it can become a huge part of their lives, and in my experience, almost always for the better.

    And it's ridiculous to try and write off fans as being irrelevent spectators. If fans didn't exist and people didn't care about professional sports or entertainment or the democratic process, then those things wouldn't even exist. We only have them, because people do care, and watch, and pay money, and participate. And for that I am thankful.

  17. Re:So how do we DDoS Microsoft? on Microsoft Bots Effectively DDoSing Perl CPAN Testers · · Score: 1

    Why single out a relatively new service to hand the root of your domain over to?

    Because that is the service that all of your internet-using customers will use to seek information about your company.

    Maybe 'example.com' points to my mail server, because I am an email company.

    Then that would be a stupid email company and deserves to go out of business.

    I'm sorry, but if http://example.com/ does not bring up your company's website, then you are a dismal IT failure, and no amount of rationalisation or waving RFCs about will change that.

    I understand and appreciate that there is often perceived to be a "right way" to do things in IT, but you still have to balance that against common sense, practical considerations, and user expectation. The "right way" may be right when seen within a specific and confined logical framework (networking 101), yet be completely moronic when placed within a broader context (business and marketing on the internet).

  18. Re:litmus test on Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Antimatter can be transported with perfect safety inside a suitcase. You just need a suitcase made of antimatter.

  19. Re:Valuable time in big cities on Chevrolet Volt In a Gasoline-Only Scenario · · Score: 1

    Is Toronto really that bad? I've lived all over Vancouver, and would have a hard time thinking of any residential neighborhood that isn't a few minutes away from a major grocery store. As long as you don't try to run errands in the middle of rush-hour traffic, and don't let brand loyalty rule your life, then I don't see what the problem is.

  20. Re:STFU on The LHC, Black Holes, and the Law · · Score: 1

    Sure, but what is the highest-energy hadron to be detected at ground level? High energy cosmic rays are detected by the fluoresence trails they leave in the upper atmosphere and the shower of particle debris that reaches detectors on the earth's surface. My understanding is that the hadrons in the particle shower generally are absorbed by the top 10% of the atmosphere, and what reaches the surface is mostly muons. I'm also going to take a wild guess and assume that the Large Hadron Collider will mostly be used for colliding hadrons.

    Off the top of my head I can think of several significant differences between the earth's surface and the upper atmosphere. For one thing, there is a lot more of the earth's surface here at the earth's surface than there is in the upper atmosphere. There is also a lot more breathable atmosphere down here, as well as a lot more people. I'm surprised scientists haven't picked up on those differences. Speaking as a people, I am quite attached to the earth's surface, and very fond of its breathable atmosphere, and wouldn't want anything bad to happen to either.

    The idea that something must be safe if it already naturally occurs in the upper atmosophere is demonstrably false. The upper atmosphere periodically sees nuclear sized explosions due to impacting meteors, and I'm pretty sure we wouldn't want to have those happening at the earth's surface.

    It's worth noting that scientists were unaware that these nuclear sized explosions were occuring in the upper atmosphere until a few decades ago when the Defense Dept decided to share some of their satellite data. If scientists can overlook nuclear sized explosions happening above their heads, then you have to wonder what else is going on in the upper atmosphere that they don't know about. Perhaps these high energy hadron collisions are in fact horrifyingly dangerous, and we should be thankful that they are happening out of harms way in the upper atmosphere, instead of say, central Europe.

    Just a thought.

  21. Re:Zero warning on Fifth Anniversary of a Cosmic Onslaught · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you were to test it on every rat in existence, leading to the total exctinction of the rat species, then blow up the earth, and kill every other sentient being in the universe, while ascending to godhood and changing the laws of physics so that salt water can no longer exist, then I think that would pretty much prove it. Your problem is that you're just lazy.

  22. Ideas? on $300 Sci-Fi YouTube Video Lands $30m Movie Deal · · Score: 1

    Don't get me wrong, it was a well made short film, and the special effect were impressive, but as far as I recall the extent of the idea was aliens blowing the crap out of Montevideo, with the explosions getting bigger and bigger. Granted that's probably as good a plotline as Transformers 2, but all in all, I would rather see money go to somebody that has shown they can write a good story, and not just map out action scenes.

  23. Emergency services? on India Hanging Up On 25 Million Cell Phones · · Score: 1

    Will these 25 million people still be able to use the blocked cels to call emergency services? If not, then I wonder how many people will die or suffer injury as a result. I'd have to think it will be more than will be saved by inconveniencing terrorists.

  24. Re:From Peak to Asymptote on Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil · · Score: 1

    Assuming of course, a spherical chicken in a vacuum.

  25. Ridiculous on Global Warming To Be Put On Trial? · · Score: 1

    This is not the accepted scientific way to test extreme claims. The accepted way would be to get a professional magician to offer a million dollar prize to anyone whot can prove global warming to the magician's satisfaction under conditions the magicians controls.

    I'm a little surprised Exxon hasn't pushed for such a scheme, because it's the surest way to be certain that global warming is never proved.