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User: kzanol

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  1. This really triggers a deja vu moment for listeners of the escape pod podcast just in September there was a two part episode perfectly Matched to this topic: The revolution, brought to you by Nike. http://escapepod.org/2018/09/0... Also shows that the results probably aren't necessarily what you wanted...

  2. Re:The hell with those guys... on Robin "Roblimo" Miller, a Long-Time Voice of the Linux Community, Has Passed Away (wikipedia.org) · · Score: 1

    No Idea what you're talking about

  3. Oh wow, that brings back memories..

  4. Re:What a breathtakingly awesome announcement! on Volkswagen To Build Electric Versions of All 300 Models By 2030 (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    I see one huge flaw with this plan: The way to get a successful electric car is NOT to stick a battery+electric motor onto an existing design - that just gets you yet another bunch of compliance cars with sub-par performance and driving characteristics that no one actually wants to use.

    Concentrate on just a few models.

    Design these new models as all electric models from the ground up.

    Distribution of components is radically different than classic internal combustion based cars- you can have multiple small motors, not necessarily located under the hood. You want the battery as an integral part of the chassis right at the bottom. You definitely want to put way more effort into aerodynamics to get best range. Since you just got rid of engine noise, concentrate on wheel noise and wind noise to actually make the most of the low-noise experience possible with electric cars.

    The resulting cars may not look exactly like today's cars because of the changed parameters - but they'll actually work and be fun to drive. I guess it'll be a challenge to get there without creating weirdomobiles (BMW i3 anyone?).

  5. Re:MythTV on Ask Slashdot: What's Your Media Setup? · · Score: 1
    Also Mythtv.

    Backend: Headless server in the tech closet:
    2x pcie dual dvb-s2 receivers.
    8x4TB HDD
    1x payTV subscription card (Sky), used by all the sat receivers via oscam and sasc-ng

    A couple of tvs in the house, all w/ Acer aspire revo ion-based mini PCs running mythtv frontends.

  6. Re:This is nothing new for me. on 2015 Means EU Tax Increase On Cloud Storage, E-books and Smartphone Applications · · Score: 2

    Up to now, this only happened when the retailer had a branch where the customer was located; US Retailer w/ branch in Germany selling to a German customer.

    Now, all retailers in Europe have to deal with the hassle of having to individualy deal with the seperate tax offices in all the (european) countries its customers are located in.

    Abslolute nightmare.

    One exception: for b2b deals where the customer has an european tax ID, it's possible to bill without tax and the customer has to pay the tax to its local tax office.

  7. Re:useless without infrastructure on Ask Slashdot: Permanent Preservation of Human Knowledge? · · Score: 1
    The german republic has a program in place that aims to preserve information even in case of catastrophic failure of civilisation:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_archive, http://www.geschichtsspuren.de/artikel/58-ausweichsitze-regierungsbunker/83-barbarastollen-kulturgutschutz.html

    Their solution is to put the material to be preserved on microfilm, seal the microfilm into stainless steel drums and put the steel drums in a mine shaft, The big advantage of such an analog solution is that for retrieving/reading the documents you don't need any particular hardware, any light source + magnifying glass will work.

    Still, it's only a short-term solution, the films are expected to keep for several hundreds of years (>500) but not for thousands of years.

    BTW, Switzerland also has a similar project, also using microfilm stored in a mine.

  8. Re:Throw it in the trash and go about your busines on Ask Slashdot: What To Do About Patent Trolls Seeking Wi-fi License Fees? · · Score: 1

    Sound advice. Make them file an actual suit, Should they actually do so, the OP could get his lawer to file a 3rd-party complaint against his wifi manufacturers (+ other big manufactureres potentialy infringing). This would drag the big guns into the fight, see if the troll actually wants to tangle with cisco & co in the courtroom.

  9. Re:Have racehorses been cloned? on Cloned Drug-Sniffing Dogs Prove Successful In South Korea · · Score: 1

    Yes. Been done. Austrian showjumper Hugo Simon had a very successfull horse, E.T. Problem: it was a gelding which certainly made breeding the horse a challenge. Entry "E.T. Stallion", a clone of E.T wich was not used in competition, but was used for breeding. a couple of offspring of E.T. Stallion are said to be active at the moment. See http://www.cryozootech.com/index.php?m=the_horses&d=et_stallion_en&l=en

  10. Re:First hit on a google search on Crazy Non-Compete Contracts? · · Score: 1

    useful tips about what's worth fighting over. One thing I'd definitely encourage you to fight over: cause of termination of current job.
    It may be reasonable to have to honor a non-compete statement in case you quit a job or are fired with cause - it's NOT reasonable to have a non compete if you're layed off because of downsizing or similar motives.

    I've personaly been in the position where the company I was employed with decided to close down a branch office and lay off all employees. The non-compete in my contract would have kept me from working in web development for 6 months and would have effectively stopped me from founding my own business; the settlement I reached with my employer to get out of that non-compete clause involved cancelation of a severance package and was quite costly.

    Negotiation of a better contract at time of employment (or at the time you're asked to sign the non-compete) is usualy much easier.

    And yes, I do realize that the non compete probably wouldn't have held up in court in my case; however if you're just getting started with your own business it's you have neither the time nor the money for a drawn-out legal fight; besides it doesn't help to inspire trust in your new customers.. So getting this settled out of courts was much to be preferred.
  11. Re:USB/Firewire drives on Online, Inexpensive and Secure Data Storage? · · Score: 1

    You're missing out on a really neat trick that can radically reduce the amount of disk space needed for multiple copies of your data:

    instead of just using "mkdir daily.0" do a "cp -al daily.1 daily.0" before rsync:

    this creates a copy of the previous days backup directory tree, with all files as hardlinks to the previous days data.
    Meaning: only space for the directory entries is used, actual file content is just referenced. running rsync over this hardlinked tree will result in just the changed files being copied.
    Since rsync works by creating new files and moving them into place instead of overwriting existing target files, changes will only affect the newly copied tree.
    In a usual backup scenario, most of the files stay unchanged, so this allows you to GREATLY increase the number of generations you can keep available on disk.

  12. Re:I'm looking for the same, plus more on Ultimate Wireless Webcam? · · Score: 3, Informative

    We're running two like that: Webcam Graz - Schlossberg or
    Webcam Graz - Telecom Building
    Both are Axis Webcams in an outdoor housing with a standard (netgear) access point squeezed into the same housing. At the installation site there's just a power feed, network connectivity is provided using directional wifi antennas from about 1.5km distance.
    More detail on request :-)

  13. Re:openvpn on Cheap Point-To-Point VoIP Through NAT? · · Score: 1

    sorry. not just wrong thread, wrong planet No, That's actually a viable solution for the question asked: If the op sets up a vpn connecting their network(s), he'll be able to use any voip solution he likes, without having to worry about nat. May fail the "ease of use" requirements though.

  14. Avocent on It's 2004: What Are The Best Remote KVM Options? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For infrequent use you could consider what we're using: Standard (8-port) KVM Switch that can be controlled by Keyboard + one Avocent KVM IP Switch in front of that. Not too expensive and works reasonably well as long as you don't need to access more than one box at a time.

  15. Re:drbd on What is the Best Remote Filesystem? · · Score: 3, Informative
    What about drbd? Its a mirroring thing, like raid 1, over a network

    Won't help in this situation:
    A drbd setup will keep one (or several) partitions syncronized between two servers. The problem is, one and only one server may access the device at a time.
    drbd is useful for high availability configurations where you need a standby server with current data that can take over if something happens to the primary server. It's most often used together with a cluster manager like heartbeat.
    In the scenario described above, where you need concurrent access to the same data on several servers, drbd isn't yet useable.
    Still, keep watching: development definitely moves in a direction that should make this possible. Steps needed to make this happen:

    • Make drbd writeable on both servers
    • add a distributed file system like GFS
    • add a distributed lock manager
    It'll be some time before drbd will be able to do all that.
  16. Re:Keyboard on What's the Oldest Hardware You are Still Using? · · Score: 1

    You know, with the amount of responses I always see to this sort of thing on Slashdot in favor of buckling spring mechanisms, I am absolutely amazed that none of the major manufacturers still makes a keyboard like this
    Where did you get that idea? There IS a manufacturer still making these; they got the technology licensed from lexmark who got it from IBM.
    Check http://www.pckeyboard.com for more information.
    And yes, price IS a problem: these keyboards cost ~$50.

  17. Re:Psychological Quirk on What's the Oldest Hardware You are Still Using? · · Score: 1

    As for the steel backplate in the thing: it's known that consumers generally associate some heft to objects with higher quality, to the point that some products are weighted to take advantage of this.
    Nah, there's a solid engineering reason for the steel backplate:
    The backplate is concave so that the keys ar at a more comfortable angle; many newer keyboards try to simulate this by having differently shaped keycaps for the differnt rows.
    this doesn't work as well since it doesn't change the direction of travelfor the key, while the concave backplate does.

  18. Re:SB16 on What's the Oldest Hardware You are Still Using? · · Score: 1

    built-like-a-tank IBM PC
    Yay! The old IBM 1391403 Keyboard absolutely rules - still using one of these (1989) as my main keyboard at work. Just did the quarterly keyboard cleanup (remove keys, put in mesh bag, throw into washer), so it looks like new.
    Found in a review of keyboards: "this keyboard feels like the actuator of the death stars main armament".

  19. Re:3ware on Mirroring Controllers - What have been Your Experiences? · · Score: 2, Informative

    With 3ware, you can't. Strictly one drive per cable.

    Reason: Yep, if you HAD two drives on the same cable, failure of one could quite easily make the other one inaccessible as well.

    That's why one drive per cable is generaly recomended for software raid as well.

  20. Re:Proprietary doesn't necessarily mean unusable on On the State of Today's eBook Readers? · · Score: 1
    Lately I've been reading a lot of stuff from Baen.com, because they sell their books in unencrypted RocketBook format

    Yes, the support for diverse formats at bean is really great - rocketbook, html, ms-reader, RTF, mobibook (Readers for Palm, WinCE, Psion). if you don't find a format you can use there you must have a REALLY weird setup.

    If you haven't done so: check out the aa href="http://www.baen.com/library/">free library with a nice selection of SF/fantasy titles available for free download - no encryption, no DRM - great stuff!

  21. Take a look at one of these... on On the State of Today's eBook Readers? · · Score: 1
    Regarding PDAs: The sad fact is that it's an absolute PITA to read long text on the stamp-sized displays provided by these devices.

    What I found to be fairly usable is a precursor of current tablet - PCs, the SonicBlue ProGear. Original came in Linux and Win98, but can you can also use W2k or XP. 10" 1024x768 color touchscreen, 1x USB, Wireless, Runs ~4h on a charge.

    While it's no longer in production you can stell get new units for QUITE reasonable prices. Have a look at mira2go.

    IF you consider getting one of these: you definitely want a 128M version with 6-cell battery, regardless of operating system; these will cost ~$800. it's also worth checking on ebay for good deals on these.

    For use as an ebook reader or as a webpad, CPU speed is adequate - but don't consider doing computationaly expensive stuff, you'd be disapointed.

  22. Check Out Zyxel DSL Modems on Using DSL Modems for Point to Point Connections? · · Score: 3, Informative

    So, anyone have 2 DSL modems working point to point, back to back? Are there any caveats or precautions?
    Check out the SDSL / GSDSL Devices from Zyxel; I'm using a lot of these in back-to back configurations covering distances in the range from ~ 300ft to 4 miles.
    I'm using two differnt models: the older Prestige 681 SDSL Modems/Routers and newer Prestige 782R G.SHDSL Routers.
    Both have a max. linespeed of ~2Mbits; what you actually can get depends both on line quality and distance. Under identical conditions, the newer 782R will get about 20-30% higher troughput.
    From my experience I'd expect to get about 1 - 1.5 Mbits over a 2 mile link if it's reasonable quality.
    There's probably lots of other devices that would also work, it's just that I've successfully used these myself. Prices (new) in Europe are about $480 each; with a bit of luck you should be able to get them used for a lot less.

  23. Re:Why post this story? -- It's funny. on Submitting Code to ITAR for Export? · · Score: 1

    he modded the story (+1, Funny), and the only way to do that with a story is to post it
    And rightly so - It would have been a pity to miss that example.

  24. Re:Remote Object Calls. on Programming PHP · · Score: 3, Informative
    PHP still doesn't have Remote Object calls correct? What sort of Remote object calls do you need?
    • xmlrpc: works
    • SOAP (via http, https or smtp transport): works
    • CORBA (ORBit / satellite): works
    I've probably overlooked some more but it should still get you started :-)
  25. Re:SonicBlue ProGear 1050 on What are Those Tablet PCs that Stock Traders Use? · · Score: 1

    that'd be the sonicblue progear. it's no longer sold so you wont find them being advertized. nevertheless, there's a couple of places you can get these: www.mira2go.com or have a look at the usergroup at yahoo.com: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progear/. not too fast but still a great device for reading ebooks or surfing from bed :-) - I'm writing this on my progear running win 98. btw, linux support for these things is great, some drivers are currently linux-only