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User: Fast+Ben

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Comments · 63

  1. Nah. It's still a-ok to call you a cracker.

    Cracker? I prefer Saltine American, thank you.

  2. Both companies produce yawn-inducing vehicles that no one really wants to drive. They need to shake up their lines and looks and catch up to their competition.

    This is what happens when you put the bean counters in charge. A car manufacturer needs to have "car guys" in charge that have a passion for making cool cars.
    Except for the Camaro and the Corvette, GM is building poor quality crap that nobody wants anymore.
    GM was way ahead on the electric car scene too with the EV1, but the bean counters killed it because it wasn't profitable that particular quarter.

  3. Re:No good dead goes unpunished on Ask Slashdot: When Is the Right Time To Discuss Retirement With Your Employer? · · Score: 4, Informative

    My current employer will not pay out my unused vacation if I do not give at least two weeks notice.

    Depending on which state you're in, that may be illegal. It certainly is in California.

  4. Re:Not At Coalinga? on Tesla Is Rethinking the Rest Stop For California Road Trips (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    There is a Tesla charging station at Harris Ranch in Coalinga.
    https://www.harrisranch.com/complex/tesla-charging-station-battery-swap/
    There's a hotel there as well, and the Harris Ranch restaurant serves one of the best steaks money can buy. I stop in there every time I have to drive the I5.

  5. Re:Flight Simulators and Computerized Calculation on Dutch Scientist Proposes Circular Runways For Airport Efficiency (curbed.com) · · Score: 1

    Better tell that to all the pilots before they start landing in crosswinds! Oh wait...

    Crosswind landings are no different - you'd BETTER have that airplane lined up straight on touchdown, or you'll have trouble.
    Sure, the approach is flown crabbed into the wind, but you'd better have transitioned into a slip before touchdown, or, as the airliners do, kick out of crab just before the mains touch (slipping would likely drag an engine nacelle or wingtip on the ground).

    I suppose I should have said "landing gear is built to handle very light side loads only" instead. The pilot's operating manual for every certified airplane in existence will tell you what the maximum allowed crosswind component is for that particular plane.

  6. Re:Flight Simulators and Computerized Calculation on Dutch Scientist Proposes Circular Runways For Airport Efficiency (curbed.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aircraft landing gear are designed to land in a straight line, they are not designed to handle side loads.
    It doesn't take much side load for that gear to fold up under the airplane.

    Not to mention instrument approaches... I'd love to see a precision instrument approach chart to a circular runway.

    Most large airports have several parallel runways. LAX for example has 4 parallel runways, normally all in simultaneous use - 2 are used for departures, and 2 for arrivals. This gets a lot of airplanes in and out at the same time.
    If the runway was a circle, you might be able use on side for arrivals and the other for departures at the same time, but that's it.

    Circular runways remains a stupid idea.
    Disclaimer: I'm also a pilot.

  7. Re:This is what the Dems get on Donald Trump Wins US Presidency (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    for ignoring the Middle Class. They focused on the very rich and the very poor. Those two groups got taken care of. The rich got tax breaks, cheap labor and cheap money (super low interest rates, etc) and the poor got the Medicare expansion, extended unemployment and a bit of stimulus. The middle class got fuck all.

    Nailed it. The "silent majority" middle class that got stuck paying for it all got off their duffs and went to the polls for a change.
    My co-worker, who normally can't be bothered to go vote, got a notice that his ACA health insurance premium went from $300/mo to $1200 - higher than his mortgage payment. This time he voted, guess for who.

  8. Re:Mechanical reliability on Obama Orders Feds To Study Smart Gun Technology (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Easy - build a mechanical lock into the gun. Many guns have a safety lever that you must turn before you can shoot. The "safety" will now be a key that you insert & turn - then your gun is useable. A lock can be made as sturdy as the rest of the gun, so it won't fail you.

    Locks can be picked, but a villain that successfully grabs your gun won't have time for that before you hit him with something.

    Smith & Wesson and other manufacturers has been building revolvers with these locks since the 70's. Nobody I know actually uses the locks, nor do I.
    Use of a firearm is a last resort - when a villain comes running at you with a knife, your sidearm needs to be ready to shoot right fucking now.
    Are you going to have time to fumble for a key and unlock your weapon in the 2 seconds it takes him to cover the distance between you?

  9. Add it to the price of gas. on Pay-As-You-Drive Car Insurance · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There was some talk about this in California a few years ago, they wanted to bake the car insurance into the price of gas, so that everyone would automatically be covered. This would have solved the problem with uninsured drivers, as well as promote energy efficient cars - drive a gas guzzler, and you pay more for insurance too. Personally, I thought it was a great idea, but of course the insurance industry lobby shot that idea down real fast.

  10. Or this one... on Swedish Student Partly Solves 16th Hilbert Problem · · Score: 1

    http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jh tml?articleID=676663

  11. Re:Punishment fitting the crime? on Disgruntled Fan Arrested, Indicted For Spam Attacks · · Score: 1

    >> "Maximum penalties: 471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines."

    Maybe a bit excessive - I'd say around half that would fit the crime :^)

  12. Re:Public Disgrace!! on The Economics Of Spamming · · Score: 2, Insightful

    >>Because they are actually delivering the pills, they aren't breaking the laws.

    They may not be breaking any laws selling the stuff, but now that their total sales are public maybe the IRS would be interested?
    Sort of like how they finally got to Al Capone...

  13. Re:F-22 "avionics" on F-22 Avionics Require Inflight Reboot · · Score: 1

    >> Hell if I know if it's useful in combat -- but nifty to the layperson.

    It makes you disappear from an opponents doppler radar momentarily - can quite useful in combat I'm sure...

  14. Better still on Rep. Boucher Outlines 'Fair Use' Fight · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Send that man some campaign contributions!

  15. Re:256 MB? No way! on Linux Web Browsers Reviewed · · Score: 1

    RedHat 7.2 with KDE ran just fine on my AMD 333 laptop with 64MB of RAM, albeit a tad slow at times. I just upgraded it to RedHat 7.3 with KDE3, and it's actually faster now. Konqueror is quite a bit faster.

  16. Go after the users? nah... on Is The Net At Fault For Illegal Filesharing? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder if these legal types are ever going to actually blame this on the actual people who are sharing ...
    Doubtful - not much money to be had there...

  17. Re:Announcing CCL: The Chord Command Line Interfac on Gibson Guitars and Ethernet · · Score: 1

    I want a chord kernel configurator!

  18. Re:blah on Image Detecting Search Engines' Legal Fight Continues · · Score: 1

    A browser can't display anything unless it downloads it first.
    If anybody don't want their images or text to be downloaded, don't put it on the net.

  19. Re:Practical joke on Convicted by the Movie Cops · · Score: 1

    Why not make it 208.225.90.120 and see if the RIAA is stupid enough to try to get their own website pulled...

  20. Scary Indeed. on Getting Into Space, One Way Or Another · · Score: 1

    I don't know what scares me more - him designing this himself, or a rocket designed by slashdotters...
    Just make sure to launch the thing in a *very* remote area.

  21. Re:Rivals? on TiVo Response to 2.0.1 Upgrade Issues · · Score: 1

    Good idea, simply set up a 900 number for time sync, charge $1 per call and be done with it.
    They might even make a buck or two on it...

  22. Re:Can IBM live up to it's marketting? on Eazel On The Ropes · · Score: 1

    Or is IBM only coming to their own rescue when they run their Linux ads?

    Good point, especially as they claim to be pouring $1 billion a year into Linux.
    Anybody know where this money is going? All I've seen so far from them is the S390 port, and how many really have one of those to play with...

  23. DSL in Southern CA on A Study on Regional DSL and Cable Speeds? · · Score: 1

    I have DSL both at work and at home, provided by Pacbell.
    At work we have the 'enhanced' business DSL with advertized speed of 1.5 to 6Mbps download and 384K upload speed, and measured download is always between 2 and 4 Mbps. This costs about $200/month and we get 5 static IP's.
    At home the advertized speed is 384K to 1.5M down and 128K up. For months it was working fine (even though I never got above 350K downloads, turned out the line was capped to 384K max), until christmas last year when the speed started dropping in the evenings. In February this year I couldn't get more than 3K some evenings, and I was not the only one having this problem. Pacbell has apparently become aware of this problem and says that they are working on it; my connection was fixed and I even managed to get the 384K cap removed. I now get around 1.2M download speeds consistently, and I think it's definetly worth the $40/month cost (even though their tech support is really, really bad).

  24. Could be useful on Wireless Net Access in Your Car · · Score: 1

    This could be very useful for companies that has large fleets, especially coupled with GPS.
    See which street your UPS/FedEx package is on ovre the net, or taxi companies tracking and dispatching their cars over the net along with a map for the driver.
    Or, if your'e having car trouble the dealer could query your car's self diagnostics over the net as the problem occurs.

  25. Re:is www.theregister.co.uk dead? on IBM CPRM Plan Replaced with Similar Copy-Prevention Plan · · Score: 1

    I'm in southern CA, no problems from here...